It’s a good thing you hold no power in our society as anyone who speaks with “objective” moral clarity in favor of the preclusion of another individual’s right to speak as an invited guest is frightful in their own delusion and a danger to society.
Okay, not objectively. Just like the person who says that Beethoven was a better musician than Rebecca Black is not “objectively” right. Sure, we’d consider anyone who thinks Rebecca Black is a better musician to be some combination of weird, stupid, and wrong, but technically it’s not an objective statement. To be fair, my intentional hyperbole in declaring a clearly subjective statement which nonetheless has a fairly clear “correct” answer objective was really hard to spot. As previously pointed out, there is erotic fan fiction of Ann Coulter that qualifies as better literature on every front compared to her books - including honesty, because it’s at least upfront about its statements being completely fabricated.
Ex-girlfriend of mine went to business school. On the first day, she sat through a lecture about the joys of union-busting–zero attempt to be impartial. Later, in a class, she tried to defend unions; the professor held her after and told her never to contradict him in class again.
BB&T gave grants to universities with the requirement that they teach Ayn Rand.
North Carolina Republicans defund academic programs run by their critics and otherwise interfere in academics for blatantly partisan purposes.
But sure–the real problem is professors who tweet.
I’ve raised these examples repeatedly, and Urbanredneck, you ignore them. Why on earth do you think that tweety professors, not partisan legislators or big banks, are the real threat to academic freedom? Is it because the former, and not the latter, are what Fox News rants about?
There may be a difference in the extent to which his personal beliefs would relate to the subject matter, but for me the questions would still be the same: is he fair and measured and professional in his academic work, and in the classroom?
As i suggested in my earlier post, i believe that objective scholarship and good teaching are compatible with strong political commitment. The fact that a person might disagree with Obergefell doesn’t mean that he can’t properly teach the Constitutional principles involved, or fairly discuss and explain the reasoning of the majority and the minority in the decision. If he disagrees with the majority, there’s nothing wrong with him telling the class that; the court itself ruled 5-4 on the case, so it’s not like there is judicial unanimity on the question. It’s also possible that he supports the legal reasoning in the case, and agrees that Obergefell was properly decided, but still has a moral objection to same-sex marriage. If that’s the case, and he wants to tell his students, i don’t think that’s the end of the world either, although he does run the risk that he’ll be perceived as unfair by some of them as a result.
I believe in birth control and abortion on demand. At the same time, i am somewhat unconvinced by the argument for the “right to privacy” that the Supreme Court found the penumbras of the Bill of Rights in the Griswold v Connecticut and Roe v. Wade cases. That is, i like the outcomes of those cases, but am not fully convinced by the legal arguments used to support them. I would prefer, to be honest, that abortion be made legal by legislatures.
In other cases, i disagree with the reasoning and the results. In the church/state separation cases, i find some of the arguments in favor of ceremonial deism to be tortuous sophistry, such as Sandra Day O’Connor’s argument in Lynch v. Donnelly, that:
Frankly, if she thinks a prayer is the only way to solemnize a public occasion, she’s either not very smart (something i don’t believe), or she’s being disingenuous.
But i believe that i can, and do, teach my students about the significance of these cases, and why they are important in our legal and political and social history, without imposing upon them my own legal interpretations or my own social and political beliefs. As a history instructor, i am less interested in which side they believe or support than that they understand and can explain the significance of these cases, and how they reflect broader historical events and ideas in American history. I am confident that a good law professor, whatever his or her social and political and religious beliefs, could do the same sort of thing in the field of law.
I wrote a paper for a Queer Lit course once, called “Clear Cutting the Rubyfruit Jungle.” The professor (a very butch lesbian) laughed out loud when she saw the title. Still gave me a B-, but for valid reasons relating to the overall quality of the paper, not the position I took in it.
(In fairness, the position I took was, “The Rubyfruit Jungle is a fucking awful book and nobody should ever read it,” and not something directly hostile to the concept of gay rights.)
In my general experience, most teachers want students who will engage, regardless of what their actual position is. One of my high school teachers had this Doonesbury comic on their wall, and it seems to pretty accurately capture the attitude of a lot of academia, in my experience.
I think this is overwhelmingly true. There are a few martinets scattered across all fields, who can’t stand the thought of being contradicted; but on the various times I’ve confronted a teacher–often in front of the entire class–I’ve never faced retaliation.
Similar story: my high school girlfriend had an arch-conservative history/social studies teacher. She was, at the time, realizing she was lesbian (which was a super-big esteem boost for her boyfriend, lemme tell you, but that’s neither here nor there), so after he ranted about how homosexuals should all be imprisoned, she wrote a paper for him in which she came out.
Got an A on it and his respect.
This sort of conservative attack on professors has very little to do with promoting academic freedom, in my opinion, and very much to do with trying to build a safe space for themselves in which they don’t have to hear views they disagree with.
It’s not just partisan legislators, big banks (and big businesses). One of the most insidious partisan influences on academic agendas comes from the Koch brothers:
Two Koch family foundations and one Koch institute gave $33 million to higher education in 2015, the most ever in a single year for the nonprofits and nearly $10 million more than the previous record in 2014.
… The higher education donations, which come mostly from the Charles Koch Foundation, go towards founding free-market academic centers, professorships, post-doctoral and graduate fellowships, scholarships, course creation, lecture series usually featuring speakers who come from universities or think tanks funded by Koch, and student groups that read laissez-faire economics books and even books authored by Koch himself.
… From the indoctrination of young minds, Koch foundations harness what they call a “talent pipeline,” funneling students into the Koch “social change” infrastructure, often as professors, think-tank fellows or political operatives. Over decades, the ranks of Koch-funded professors, as well as Koch think-tank and political recruits, have grown significantly.
According to Charles Koch Foundation vice president for higher education Ryan Stowers, the Koch’s had a network of 5,000 “scholars” in 2014. The foundation now funds at least 53 free-market academic centers, run by many of these scholars, on college and university campuses around the country.
But yeah, colleges are all hotbeds of liberalism so you’d better watch yourself and act properly leftist if you want to get passing grades! 
“We’re all Keynesians now!”
- Richard Nixon
(attrib. by Milton Friedman, so maybe.)
Isn’t “your ideas and your speech are unbefitting a kindergarten classroom, let alone an institute of higher learning” exactly the sort of value judgement that public institutions like UC Berkeley are prohibited from making?
I’m not sure that I follow that logic at all, but let me step past that and make a couple of basic points. IIRC, a lot of the Coulter controversy was misrepresented by right-wing media to support exactly the kind of bullshit conspiracy theories that this thread is about – she was allegedly banned but in fact the event had never been properly cleared in the first place, there were concerns about protests, security, appropriate venues, etc, and also, IIRC, she later refused to attend. Whatever. Beyond that here’s what I regard as the basic question …
Coulter, like Limbaugh and others of their ilk, is in the business of promoting and enriching herself by making outrageous bullshit statements that are so outrageous and demonstrably false that they get media attention just for how insane they are. I have no problem with Coulter appearing on Bill Maher’s show because that’s entertainment, and somewhat edgy entertainment at that. I love to see Coulter and Maher both kind of smirking when she says something totally off-the-wall idiotic, like “I don’t really believe this and you know it”.
So the question is, does this sort of dialog belong in an institution of higher learning, or should we have standards here? If Coulter, then why not climate change deniers? If climate change deniers, then why not Alex Jones, who claims that NASA is running child slave colonies on Mars? Where do you draw the line, given that we don’t have infinite time to spend debating self-serving morons?
Good thinking.
He did say something about “IF” he had that many dimes, though. Do you think TPTB would let us initiate a Kickstarter?
I hope not - I’d like to think that even a public institution has the right to refuse to let dishonest scheißsters with backwards, insane ideas speak. Anne Coulter’s ideas are as wrong and as dishonestly presented as Ken Ham’s, and the fact that she’s “political” should not count as an excuse.
Well reading the article it seems she might have gone out of her way in encouraging the student to jump up on stage. If she was prodding him along with “go, go, go” that seems like she was guilty and needs to be held accountable.
At least as guilty of the “Gang of 88” professors and others who helped organize the near lynching of the accused. I mean, some of them were leading marches and hyping their followers to go after the young men. Plus they signed the statement.
And again, not a damn thing happened to any of them. They all got promotions and are comfortably enjoying 6 figure salaries.
I still dont get why you have no problem with publishing a proffs tweets and holding them accountable for them? In real life people are fired all the times for things they say “off the cuff” so to speak.
You dont know if these proffs mentioned are truly objective. So what is wrong with exposing these few? If you look at the site I’d bet there are no more than maybe 100 of so so why not allow the idiot proffs to be exposed? At least the students can be watching.
And it doesnt matter. If you say it in a lecture. If you say it in a tweet. Or even if you say it while your drunk you still should be held accountable.
Yet again you blithely ignore all the evidence of actual thought-control on campus by conservative forces. Why, I wonder, is that?
Now, there’s one case I’ll grant you where professors way overreached. It was here in North Carolina. There was a freshman student who came to campus and joined Campus Crusade for Christ*; she was outspoken in her beliefs about how the US is a Christian nation and should be legislated accordingly*. A professor started harassing her for her beliefs, and ended up writing and publishing an article specifically about her, calling her a “Cis-het Christian bigot.”*
The student had previously said something about how if Hillary Clinton* came to campus, she’d be ready for her, but nobody was ready for what she’d do. The professor wrote in his article, “In my view, she simply lacks the intellectual coherence to form any sort of rational plan – including, but not limited to, killing a presidential candidate…She comes across sort of like Squeaky Fromme minus the handgun and resolve.”
That sort of harassment of individual students by a professor is surely beyond the pale, wouldn’t you agree? Yet his university refused to punish him at all.
- Oh, shit–I just reread the article, and it looks like I got a few irrelevant details wrong.
I admit to knowing little about how programs at universities are funded. I’m sure corporations and individuals can have an impact.
Which is exactly what sites like this are for. To give such people knowledge of what the mindset of the professors and staff are. Would you want to give money to a professor who is all smiles one second then tweets he wants you dead 5 minutes later?
As for your example, on the opposite their is alot of “group-think” in academia where jobs, tenure, and grants are awarded to people within a small circle of academics.
Some of us also think that is grossly unfair and unAmerican and that what employees do outside their jobs should be remain their business and not their employers. I oppose things like this watchlist site because they are a best a ridiculous waste of time (most universities have rigidly enforced policies in place to protect free speech by students) and at worst such websites will be used to spread distortions if not outright lies.
Ok, maybe they run their classes fairly. But should such a person be given a chair, fellowship, “Distinguished Professor” status, or higher ranking job if you know they tweet some pretty radical things?
Depends on how good he or she was at their subject matter. I regularly took classes from faculty that did not like me or in some cases assumed because I was Roma I was there to steal or con. You know what, I still made the Honor Roll every semester. I deal with people in the business world that don’t like or trust me. Written contracts exist because there are always some people you don’t want to rely on an oral agreement. Learning to work with people who aren’t identical to you is part of life. Some might argue it’s one of the most important lessons of university education. Well, that and discovering you can learn from people of different values without adopting their values.
So he said “I’m sorry I got caught”.
Ok, he runs his classes well. He researches and writes good books.
Now should he be in charge of molding young minds on the taxpayers nickel? Should he be given a promotion like an department chair?