And does so gloriously. Would you like to read more about the University's robust commitment to free inquiry and expression? Of course you do!
Granted, it's kind of sad that it even has to declare something that should be obvious at a university, but in this day and age ...
Oh, and here's a bit from the letter to incoming freshmen (or do I now have to say "freshpeople"?):
"Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own."
I had not previously encountered evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad of Concordia University (his faculty website is here), but I found this recent lecture of his to be fascinating indeed.
Food for thought during exam time.
Incredibly, there have been haters responding to Lin's deeply personal account of his own struggles. Well, screw those people. I for one am grateful that he shared his vulnerability and offered a space to discuss the sometimes overwhelming pressure to perform, be it academically, athletically, or any other form. You know, the fact that someone is prominent and successful does not mean that his or her psychological pain and lived experience are any less real or significant. Let us all make an effort to be better, kinder, and more compassionate to each other, OK?
The end of the academic semester is always a grand display of sadism, masochism, insomnia, human folly, general misery, operatic despair, and - occasionally - flashes of mordant wit. In that vein, enjoy this relevant bit of exam-time lunacy from the reliable McSweeney's.
Class is in session one last time. Repeat after me: You do not give up your civil liberties and individual rights when you set foot on campus.
Got that? No? Write it out 100 times by hand then.
As a fellow teacher and I were just saying, thank goodness for FIRE. Keep fighting the good fight, my friends. Support and defend academic freedom, uphold the civil liberties of students (and faculty!), and abolish all campus speech codes! (Why? Because they are evil, muzzling, and blatantly unconstitutional, that's why, and because - to put it baldly - you do not have a right to never be offended.)
Why are humanities not only valuable but freaking awesome? You'd better figure it out on your own, because university presidents can't mount a substantive defense of the humanities. Of course, I think most university presidents aren't worth the pixels it would take me to express my displeasure with most university presidents. No wonder higher ed is in trouble: its putative leaders have no idea about education.
The umpteenth reminder: free speech also protects speech that you don't like.
Here's a bit of it:
Though some ignorant people argue that "hate speech" is unprotected under the First Amendment, that is not the law and never has been. Nor should it be. The test of our commitment to free expression, after all, isn't our willingness to tolerate speech that everyone likes. If you only support free speech for ideas you agree with, you're a hack. If you only support free speech for ideas that everyone agrees with, you're a coward.
It *is* graduation season. Take a look at these addresses to the Class of 2014:
"Black Mass Cancelled Amid Uproar As Cultural Studies Club Withdraws Sponsorship." Seriously, this is the real headline! Then again, some of us have always known that Hahvahd was of the Devil, hahaha!
By the way, here is the statement from Hahvahd President Drew Faust - FAUST! Folks, I can't make this stuff up if I tried.
Here's a piece of it (issued before the club withdrew its sponsorship):
"The decision by a student club to sponsor an enactment of this ritual is abhorrent; it represents a fundamental affront to the values of inclusion, belonging and mutual respect that must define our community. It is deeply regrettable that the organizers of this event, well aware of the offense they are causing so many others, have chosen to proceed with a form of expression that is so flagrantly disrespectful and inflammatory.
Nevertheless, consistent with the University’s commitment to free expression, including expression that may deeply offend us, the decision to proceed is and will remain theirs. At the same time, we will vigorously protect the right of others to respond—and to address offensive expression with expression of their own.
I plan to attend a Eucharistic Holy Hour and Benediction at St. Paul's Church on our campus on Monday evening in order to join others in reaffirming our respect for the Catholic faith at Harvard and to demonstrate that the most powerful response to offensive speech is not censorship, but reasoned discourse and robust dissent."
So Condoleezza Rice won't be the Commencement speaker at Rutgers after all because too many people there don't want to hear her. You know, it's embarrassing that an institution of higher education that supposedly prides itself on the free and open discourse and debate of ideas can do this to the country's first black female Secretary of State and still pat itself on the back for being oh-so-enlightened and progressive. Rice was the most powerful woman in the US during her time in office. If she hadn't been in a Republican administration, colleges and universities across the country would have canonized her by now.
There are a few stories that crossed my path recently:
You don't say! This glorious "satire" hits too close to home:
We will establish a Workplace Agency for Success and Teaching Excellence (Waste) to oversee the large number of Committees on the Recording and Assessment of Professors (Crap) that must be established in order to make these assessment efforts possible. We estimate that this office will need a staff of 60 highly trained Waste managers and appropriate Crap support staff with an annual budget of £100 million. We believe that these funds can be readily obtained through efficiency savings garnered from the large amount of instructional waste present on campus. Further savings will be obtained through the use of more contingent staff and by increasing charges to staff for renting office space and for car parking.
In other words, the admin will eat the faculty in the name of education. It's already happening. Do you know that for the average price of one college VP you could hire an entire battalion of lecturers who actually - you know, this is a revolutionary thought indeed - teach students?
So another academic organization wants to boycott Israeli institutions (hence the tag "Nerds Behaving Badly"), but this time the pushback has been gratifyingly robust. Law prof William Jacobson has been keeping track of this and of the increasing number of institutions that are voicing their opposition. Here is a collection of official statements by various university presidents on the topic.
Michael Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, has recently written an op-ed about this in the Los Angeles Times, and it is worth a read. Here's a piece of it (and it's also the quote of the day):
Boycotts don't serve these debates; they seek to cut them off by declaring certain academic institutions and their faculty off-limits. This tactic, in the words of Richard Slotkin, an emeritus professor here at Wesleyan University, "is wrong in principle, politically impotent, intellectually dishonest and morally obtuse."
As president of Wesleyan, and as a historian, I deplore this politically retrograde resolution of the American Studies Assn. Under the guise of phony progressivism, the group has initiated an irresponsible attack on academic freedom. Others in academia should reject this call for an academic boycott.
Academic boycotts are antithetical to the very idea of academic freedom. Every responsible nerd should be voicing his/her opposition. This is the real issue. Israeli policy is not. Remember, darlings, that the AAUP opposes all academic boycotts as a matter of principle.
RELATED POST: Here.
UPDATE: Even the Washington Post editorial weighs in: "terribly misguided" and "fundamentally wrong."
