Slashdot Mirror
How Free Speech Died On Campus
theodp writes "The WSJ catches up with FIRE's Greg Lukianoff and his crusade to expose how universities have become the most authoritarian institutions in America. In Unlearning Liberty, Lukianoff notes that baby-boom Americans who remember the student protests of the 1960s tend to assume that U.S. colleges are still some of the freest places on earth. But that idealized university no longer exists. Today, university bureaucrats suppress debate with anti-harassment policies that function as de facto speech codes. FIRE maintains a database of such policies on its website. What they share, lifelong Democrat Lukianoff says, is a view of 'harassment' so broad and so removed from its legal definition that 'literally every student on campus is already guilty.'"
That was a major issue at my University, StFX.
The entire "community code" was so vague, you were in violation of something at any given time. They put fines on student accounts for violations, and don't release transcripts unless they're paid.
Most of the examples in the article have a pro-conservative leaning. So I went to their FIRE database and tried to find some cases where I knew universities tried blocking left-wing people from speaking. Not surprisingly, I didn't find at least the ones I was aware of.
I think it's good someone is defending conservatives' right to speech. I simply feel they should be open about their partisanship.
Beetle B.
Norfolk State: "The policy broadly prohibits using any university internet technology resources "to further personal views" or "religious or political causes." It also prohibits downloading or transmitting "inappropriate messages or images," without defining "inappropriate."
Unfortunately, most universities don't have an explicit policy in place. If you're an undergraduate, rather than tell you they don't want opposing viewpoints, they'll just graduate you quickly with average marks. But if you're a graduate student? Your advisory commity will they'll revoke your funding (after the first year), your review committee will slow-walk your research, your lab-coordinator will have difficulty finding you space to work and - if you're lucky - you'll be forced to write massive changes into your thesis before you graduate. If you're not lucky? That's 3-5 years of study with no degree.
Graduate studies costs 4-5x more than undergrad studies, and carry a stigma of "Well, you couldn't cut it there, why would we accept you here?".
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
I'm not surprised the Wall Street Journal allowed Mr. Lukianoff to mischaracterize the contents of Fordham's statement.
Read it for yourself and see if it really matches the tone of WSJ's article : http://www.fordham.edu/Campus_Resources/eNewsroom/topstories_2601.asp
November 9, 2012
The College Republicans, a student club at Fordham University, has invited Ann Coulter to speak on campus on November 29. The event is funded through student activity fees and is not open to the public nor the media. Student groups are allowed, and encouraged, to invite speakers who represent diverse, and sometimes unpopular, points of view, in keeping with the canons of academic freedom. Accordingly, the University will not block the College Republicans from hosting their speaker of choice on campus.
To say that I am disappointed with the judgment and maturity of the College Republicans, however, would be a tremendous understatement. There are many people who can speak to the conservative point of view with integrity and conviction, but Ms. Coulter is not among them. Her rhetoric is often hateful and needlessly provocative--more heat than light--and her message is aimed squarely at the darker side of our nature.
As members of a Jesuit institution, we are called upon to deal with one another with civility and compassion, not to sling mud and impugn the motives of those with whom we disagree or to engage in racial or social stereotyping. In the wake of several bias incidents last spring, I told the University community that I hold out great contempt for anyone who would intentionally inflict pain on another human being because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, or creed.
"Disgust" was the word I used to sum up my feelings about those incidents. Hate speech, name-calling, and incivility are completely at odds with the Jesuit ideals that have always guided and animated Fordham.
Still, to prohibit Ms. Coulter from speaking at Fordham would be to do greater violence to the academy, and to the Jesuit tradition of fearless and robust engagement. Preventing Ms. Coulter from speaking would counter one wrong with another. The old saw goes that the answer to bad speech is more speech. This is especially true at a university, and I fully expect our students, faculty, alumni, parents, and staff to voice their opposition, civilly and respectfully, and forcefully.
The College Republicans have unwittingly provided Fordham with a test of its character: do we abandon our ideals in the face of repugnant speech and seek to stifle Ms. Coulter's (and the student organizers') opinions, or do we use her appearance as an opportunity to prove that our ideas are better and our faith in the academy--and one another--stronger? We have chosen the latter course, confident in our community, and in the power of decency and reason to overcome hatred and prejudice.
Joseph M. McShane, S.J., President
Compare and contrast with
Mr. Lukianoff says that the Fordham-Coulter affair took campus censorship to a new level:
"This was the longest, strongest condemnation of a speaker that I've ever seen in which a university president also tried to claim that he was defending freedom of speech."
I guess in the print edition, the WSJ and Lukianoff can assume most people won't actually read the statement being attacked.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Today's students can take back their freedom of expression, but will they have the guts to do so? Or will they continue to lament that "the man" doesn't allow them to say unpopular things?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I suspect that runs afoul of contract law.
Your advisory commity will they'll revoke your funding (after the first year), your review committee will slow-walk your research, your lab-coordinator will have difficulty finding you space to work and - if you're lucky - you'll be forced to write massive changes into your thesis before you graduate. If you're not lucky? That's 3-5 years of study with no degree.
This is true, I've seen this. But usually it's not because you are in the wrong party. In the cases I've seen, it's been some kind of weird personal vendetta.
In one case I knew a physics student failed his oral exams because he was too confident. In another case, for a music degree, a professor didn't like the student because he didn't take enough notes in his class. The student complained to other professors, and the answer he got was, "Yeah, it's not fair, but we have to live and work with him, we don't have to deal with you, so we're not going to do anything about it."
It's a lousy system, and it's as if professors feel they need to fail somebody, and if there isn't anyone bad enough to fail, they'll find some other reason to fail them.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It's a lousy system, and it's as if professors feel they need to fail somebody, and if there isn't anyone bad enough to fail, they'll find some other reason to fail them.
I had a prof who said 'I know what it takes to be a real physicist, and none of you have it' and failed the entire class.
We were all asked to leave after appealing.
Professors are high level employees, even though they seem relatively low in the university hierarchy they have a lot of independent authority and judgment, and the entire system is setup around professors being both professionally and ethically responsible to their discipline as a whole. If they don't think you've demonstrated the right behaviour they can be rid of you as a drain on that community, and as someone who would tarnish the universities reputation. The upshot of this is that professors can break all sorts of soft rules to get whomever they want as grad student, pay them past funding periods, run labs the way they want, run their own IT etc. But it also means the occasional asshole has quite a lot of authority to make your life miserable, and well, every department has at least one prof you just don't want to go near.
I'm in Comp sci, and we have a prof who repeatedly insists (via e-mail) that we should cut off internet access to the department. The last place I was had a professor who's entire workload was teaching 2 courses (no committees, no research), and he liked to teach courses on whatever was 'cool' (as defined by his teenage daughter I guess), even if this had nothing to do with the broader programme goals. Getting rid of a tenured professor is really really hard, it's expensive, and usually they don't go completely crazy until they're towards the end of their careers, so you don't want to fire someone with health problems etc. There's a huge legal expense, and bad press. And students sometimes love the crazy ones because they are certainly interesting.
Yep, but it is worse than that. Universities these days want to hire young stars that will essentially bring in enough money to pay their own salary and keep a phalanx of students. This makes the department look like they are on the cusp of whatever passes for research in their area.
The emphasis is on "young" too. Age discrimination starts early in academia. If you aren't a star by 35, good luck. And if you get rejected for tenure at one place, expect the same at the next. Many professors only get to their really good research until their 50s when they've acquired a lot of experience and depth of thought.
I wish I had a fix for this system, but I don't. Every time I think of something, I can argue why it wouldn't work or even make things worse. There does need to be some sort of oversight. But professors won't agree to any oversight unless it is by their peers...who probably find nothing wrong with any professors behavior.
Professors are hired on their ability to do research. Most professors spend 39 hours a week doing teaching, administrative duties at the university, applying for grants and service to the field (peer review, organizing conferences, etc.). So when do they do their research? Well, they find time for research by working more than 39 hours a week. If you think about that for a moment, you will realize that most professors do research exclusively in their free time, yet their research ability is what they were hired for. There are only two positions that sometimes actually are research positions at universities: PhD student and postdoc. Also, there are far more postdoc positions than there are professor positions. So you end up with a rarefied group of people who were selected for research ability, luck and ruthlessness in pursuing their goals, and then you task them to a job's capacity with administration and teaching without much oversight. I don't know how anyone can think that the result of that should be good for research, for students or for professors.
Nice thing about laws that make everyone guilty is that you get to selectively prosecute those you don't like.
In physics, it seems to me there is very little in the way of consolation prizes, at least within the field. (But in the end they always seem to do well enough outside their own field).