That dream being the free exchange of ideas, once again under siege from inside the academy — the very place where the free exchange of ideas should, by the standards of liberalism, be most in evidence.
Alas, we’ve surrendered liberalism for the kind of creeping totalitarianism whose resemblance to liberalism is limited to a familiar smile and wink.
From the NYT:
The appointment of Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, as a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution is drawing fierce protests from faculty members and students at Stanford University and is threatening to rekindle tensions between the institution, a conservative research body, and the more liberal campus.
Some 2,100 professors, staff members, students and alumni have signed an online petition protesting Mr. Rumsfeld’s appointment, which will involve advising a task force on ideology and terrorism. Faculty members say he should not have been offered the post because of his role in the Bush administration’s prosecution of the Iraq war.
“We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and international laws and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed,†the petition reads.
[…]
John Raisian, director of the Hoover Institution since 1989, defended the appointment, which was announced on Sept. 7, saying Mr. Rumsfeld is an expert on the subjects that the panel will study.
“I appointed him because he has three decades of experience, of incredible public service, especially in recent years as it relates to this question of ideology and terror,†Mr. Raisian said. Mr. Raisian said Mr. Rumsfeld had accepted the appointment, which would last one year.
Such short-term appointments, whether by the institution or by an academic department, do not require the extensive review that a tenure decision might.
[…]
The institution, which is housed in a tower close to the heart of the campus, has had close ties to Republican administrations, including Mr. Bush’s. Like graduate schools on campus, it operates largely independently from the university  with its own endowment and doing its own fund-raising  but still is part of the university.
At times, though, there have been tensions. In the late 1980s, some students and faculty members successfully fought a proposal championed by the director of the Hoover Institution to place Ronald Reagan’s presidential library on the campus. Last year, Mr. Bush planned to visit fellows at the Hoover Institution before having dinner with George P. Shultz, a former secretary of state who is also a fellow. But after protests, the meeting was moved to Mr. Shultz’s home.
Another potential conflict could involve Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, a former Stanford provost and Hoover fellow. Ms. Rice, who is on leave from a tenured faculty position, has said she would be interested in returning to Stanford after leaving the Bush administration. In a letter to Stanford’s undergraduate newspaper in May, a professor wrote that she should not be welcomed back.
Pamela M. Lee, a professor of art history who helped write the petition against Mr. Rumsfeld, said she hoped her protest would send a message and prompt the university to review its relationship with the Hoover Institution.
“It’s extremely important for the Hoover to know that their appointments are not in the mainstream of the Stanford community,†Professor Lee said, “as well as to send a very clear signal to the country that this is not what Stanford is about.â€Â
Oh, the message is clear, alright — but I’m not sure it’s the message you’re hoping to send, Professor Lee. Because from here, it sounds something like this: “we have defined ourselves as the center, and from that position of mainstream authority we have positioned ourselves to decide who and what comes to count as so pernicious to the mainstream that it simply must not be tolerated.”
Evidently, having Rumsfeld doddering around near campus could lead one to inadvertently gaze upon him — at which point impressionable students paying big tuition dollars might turn into pillars of salt.
Dr Lee is just trying to protect them. For their own good.
Writes David Bernstein at Volokh:
according to Professor Lee, enforcing ideological conformity among the faculty is “what Stanford is all about.” Having one of the most distinguished public servants of the last half century–an objectively true statement, regardless of what one things of his politics–on campus three to five times (!) is not “what Stanford is all about.”
And, come to think of it, I can’t resist the contrast between the reaction to Rumsfeld at Stanford and, judging from the stories in the Columbia Spectator, the almost complete quiescence, apart from some Jewish groups, at Columbia regarding the invitation to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In fact, according to the Spectator, some of the harshest criticism received by Columbia president Lee Bollinger is that he didn’t criticize Minutemen Project found Jim Gilchrist, invited by students last years, as he has Ahmadinejad.
Up is down. Black is White. Jonah has a blow hole and likes to sup on plankton and shrimp cocktail.
(h/t Glenn)
“Hey! We don’t pay 32 grand a year to be exposed to such a debilitating influence!”
These folks are beyond parody.
I once read that one of the goals of education was to taske an empty mind and create an open one. I guess today’s modern progressive corollary would be to then fill it with crap and close it.
. . . you left off — dogs sleeping with cats, Andy is Opey, Fred is Ethel, and Lucy is Ricky . . . .
Not only can we not stand dissenting opinions, we can;t even stand looking at dissenters. Nice.
Jethro is Grandpaw, Skipper is Gilligan, Mahmood is Mohandas
The President of the United States is not welcome on campus.
Pretty much sums it up, I’d say.
Frankly, I hope to see Rummy around town here. I’d buy him a beer. Or maybe some smaller glasses.
…misery deplores company, Hannity is Colmes, I hate a parade
I wonder what is going on with alumni contributions to higher ed, anyway. I personally told Northwestern to piss up a rope years ago.
Why would an average alum – a solid member of the bourgeoisie – want to give money to a self-identified class of individuals who’d just as soon spit on him/her?
If you’re not on a full ride and looking to further your athletic career, don’t go to college. It’s over-priced and they can’t keep the kids safe. And now more of this.
Hot is cold, manly is faggoty, a rusty trombone is a dirty sanchez
Uhhh.. Jonah was swallowed by a fish… Pinnochio was swallowed by a whale… So let’s just say “Jonah was a Protogynous Hermaphrodite that liked to sup on octopus, crab and lobster thermador..” … In the interest of accuracy of course…
Why would an average alum – a solid member of the bourgeoisie – want to give money to a self-identified class of individuals who’d just as soon spit on him/her?
If they didn’t consider themselves average alumni, and perhaps they’d adopted the fashionable, progressive mindset, they can pretend to be elite, too.
If you want to be really really accurate, Jonah was swallowed by a great fish. Link.
Keep Rummy out! Get Ahmedinijihad in!
(It makes perfect sense to some people.)
It would be a lot easier on the rest of us if the academes would just publish some kind of quick look flyer so that we could immediately see and understand those views and parts of speach that are acceptable to the
collectivefaculty.Clean is dirty. Harpo is Groucho. Pauly Shore absolutely defined nuanced humor.
I think it’s a great appointment. That said, I know that there are plenty of figures whose appointment to such positions I’d think it just to protest. As long as the protest stays within the bounds of justice, I don’t see any thing wrong with it, other than that the object of the protest is a great appointment.
Let’s suppose that you not only don’t like Mr. Rumsfeld, you vehemently disagree with him and consider that his career dismissed open enquiry, running instead like a train on fixed tracks, fueled only by self-delusion and power plays.
Let’s suppose that you attend Stanford.
Let’s suppose that pubic protest and signing petitions are the only forms of political engagement that remain to you, because you know for a FACT that the last two presidential elections were stolen by the crowd to which Mr. R. belongs.
Given his appointment to an academic position on or near your campus, would it not be an abandonment of one’s responsibilities not to apply as much pressure as possible to the university to revoke the appointment? What place does a discourse of ideas have in the presence of power? Show me a pen that the sword can’t shatter! If power is THE medium of life, then crush the enemy! Grind him to powder, and use the powder for compost! What good is Shakespeare in a war? The answer to your question, professor, is my FIST! What does it matter if Jonah was in a whale or a fish? ROAST IT AND EAT IT, I SAY. It probably oppressed the little guy, anyway.
( ?? )
Sorry, forgot why I’m here. What was I saying?
T&T
Jeff,
Great title, by the way. The closing of the academic mind saddens me deeply, not that I suffer from it directly. Such a beautiful dream (see Dorothy L. Sayers’ novel, “Gaudy Night”), shattered by careless handling.
Mozart helps a bit. “Confutatis maledictis, flammis acribus addictis, Voca me cum benedictus.” Not that he wrote the lyrics, but the music – WOW! All that agony and ecstasy – and hope.
T&T
naftali:
My concern is the academic establishment mindset that sees having Ahmadinnerjacket giving a talk as “academic freedom” but sees a prominent conservative member of the Bush administration appointed by a semi-autonomous think tank as “not in the mainstream of the Stanford community,â€Â
I likee me moral relatavism!
The leftist proffesoriat: a herd of hateful hacks.
Oh, and Rocky is Bullwinkle. Boris is Natasha.
Does Stanford have a lacrosse team?
I noticed a similar dymamic at work in the media when Arafat died. It was at that time that John Ashcroft left the administration. Arafat was feted even though it was a poor secret that he stashed millions of aid in his own bank accounts, started the latest intifida which cost many lives on both sides, and left his ‘people’ with a cesspool of a territory and no statehood at all, and Ashcroft, who let a dead man’s widow win an election she had no legal recourse to , helped keep our nation from another attack, was viciuosly compared to Hitler’s gestapo henchman.
Indeed , up is down.
T&T,
What’s a “pubic protest”?
Love the sin, crap on the sinner…Karl Rove is a Gollum-like southern weasel who had a cameo in “Wedding Crashers”…Jack plays drums, suffers from “acute anxiety”, and has great cans…Meg opens whoop-ass cans on Von Bondies vocalists.
LionDude,
Oh my (blush)! Is that a simple mistake, or is something Freudian at work?
Of course, I meant “public” – or so my superego would have you believe.
;-) T&T
Rumsfeld – responsible for the defence of a nation in a time of extremism and terror.
VS
Lee, a professor of art history, who recently (2004) published a book “Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s”.
“The perception of time in the sixties (or rather, its projection) does not so much contrast with the ’70s as it instantiates it, sets it into motion. And you are right to see a connection between this project and Matta-Clark’s enterprise, although I would hesitate to call Matta-Clark a chronophobic artist. Certainly his work addressed questions of the timely and untimely as a function of the built environment: his work was an architecture of time (to borrow an expression of his father’s).”
I believe Ray Parker Jr said it best – “Who ya gonna call?”
The dream is a nightmare, a Mahmoud is Jesus and Black Holes are the brightest objects in the sky.
BJTexs,
I agree with you. I am disagreeing with Jeff’s view that the protest is objectionable on the grounds of the free exchange of ideas. I think a truly free exchange of ideas is not what we are or should be aiming to promote within the proffesoriate academy; clearly there are ideas that we wish not to grant a forum there. We say not the iranian monster; they say not the POTUS or those of like mind. The sickness that is this protest consists in the particular ideas and spokespersons they are trying to exclude not that they are trying to exclude ideas per say. Our war is, in this case, a war of ideas, not one of academic freedom. Problem is that when waging a war with the left for the supremacy of our ideas, we find that we have no one to talk to, since the left has an alternate and bizarre philosophy of knowledge.
Rumsfeld: his contribution – “three decades of experience, of incredible public service, especially in recent years as it relates to this question of ideology and terror”
Lee: her contribution – a book :Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960s
“The perception of time in the sixties (or rather, its projection) does not so much contrast with the ’70s as it instantiates it, sets it into motion. And you are right to see a connection between this project and Matta-Clark’s enterprise, although I would hesitate to call Matta-Clark a chronophobic artist. Certainly his work addressed questions of the timely and untimely as a function of the built environment: his work was an architecture of time (to borrow an expression of his father’s).”
I think Ray Parker Jr said it best: “Who ya gonna call?”
The dream is a nightmare, Mahmoud is Jesus and when I point my telescope at Cygnus X-1, the brilliance of the light pouring FROM the event horizon blinds me.
In theory, the academy is all about the unrestrained free exchange of ideas.
In practice, it is about excluding all but the worst and stupidest of ideas.
Has anyone here attempted to have a discussion with such a person recently? It’s difficult to describe the process of trying to come to accord with someone who actually appears to be able to use words, language, and even argument, but is utterly incapable of examining the worth of ideas.
It’s creepy, I tell ya.
But it’s becoming more and more clear that some form of alternative to the current systems of “education” must be developed to replace them as they rot away.
Oh, sorry, I forgot. A Ferrari 360CS is a Geo Metro, and tofu is filet.
My seven year old son hates George Bush. He has absolutely no idea who George Bush is – but he hates him.
‘Nuff said?
“Has anyone here attempted to have a discussion with such a person recently?”
Merovign, you can watch such a conversation unfolding right now at the inestimable David Thompsons’ blog – a current thread is tackling these very questions….
http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2007/09/diversity.html
The squirming and evasions of Dr Dawg are a site to behold…
“Does Stanford have a lacrosse team?”
If I was on that team, I’d be watching my back. Constantly.
Traditionally, American universities were understood to be “about” research, the propagation of knowledge, and training adults to think critically. Under this paradigm, no idea, no matter how repugnant, was considered too radioactive to be tested.
If Professor Lee is correct that Stanford is now “about” something else, something that is incompatible with the free exchange of ideas, it would be helpful if she and the others in charge of enforcing conformity to this new mission would articulate what it is, exactly.
#24: I think a truly free exchange of ideas is not what we are or should be aiming to promote within the proffesoriate academy; clearly there are ideas that we wish not to grant a forum there.
This is tricky. I agree that we should not be giving a monster like Ahmanutjob a soapbox, but I think it would be appropriate to allow him into the university in a context in which his dangerous ideology could be challenged and deconstructed, which is exactly the context in which Rumsfeld would be allowed into Hoover.
Both of these men are extremely influential in current world affairs. Perhaps Rumsfeld less so, now that he is no longer in the administration, but clearly anyone who seeks to understand the thinking of the people who have been making American foreign policy throughout this decade would benefit from understanding Rumsfeld’s worldview.
It seems absurd to me that the people and ideas actively shaping our world right now should be banned from a university that seeks to understand our world. Maybe someone on the Left could explain to me thie logic here.
Well, Thin Man, it was kind of a rhetorical question, but thanks for the link! :)
I’m not quite sure whether I’ve had too many of those discussions, but generally I find myself saying “meh” when engaged by such a buffoon.
Dr. Dawg seems to be what I used to call an “enabler” in my college days. Speaks in a measured and neutral way, claims to consider all sides, but at the end of every discussion, sides with the leftist ideologues, no matter what the events of the day.
The language of scientism, the ideology of leftism. Right down to the description of the response to the grotesqueley anti-semitic “The Israel Lobby” as “persecution” and the comparison of Rumsfield and Ahmadinejad as if they were somehow exchangeable.
A core tenet of leftism, that, the inability to distingusih between different things.
Aldo – discuss Ahmadinejad all you like, but the dickhead’s an active supporter of terrorist murder, makes no bones about it, has threatened genocide, and I’m just thinkin’ that a little fireside chat is a bit freakin’ inappropriate.
ESPECIALLY in a context that forbids people like Summers, Rumsfield, and Ward Connerly from appearing because their ideas are just too damned objectionable.
Frankly, I’m ready to defund the DOE and cut public funding for universities in general. If you can’t stop them from being retards, you can at least stop paying them for being retards.
And no, it’s not because of “this one (four) event(s)”, there are literally a million examples of why “the University system” is rapidly becoming or has already become a “more harm than good” kind of thing.
Merovign,
Rumsfield and Ahmadinejad as interchangeable?
Yep, you pretty much hit that one square between the eyes.
But then most of the people who feel this way wear Che T-Shirts and long for the day when the ranks of the “children of chomsky” are big enough that we will see Sally Field stand (a tear glistening on her cheek and her Vera Wang scintillating in the key light) at the podium and begin her state of THE union address with
“My Fellow Earthicans, Let’s stop all the fight, War is over!”
I couldn’t resist the link. I read read Thompsons blog pretty avidly, as I do this one –
By the way, Jeff, if you are reading this, for
“Such a Strange Place, Academia”
Bless you sir, I have not laughed so hard since I bought my mother-in-law a Jaguar for her birthday – it was expensive, but worth it. She opened the garage door and it bit her leg off.
Merovign,
Rumsfield and Ahmadinejad as interchangeable?
Yep, you pretty much hit that one square between the eyes.
But then most of the people who feel this way wear Che T-Shirts and long for the day when the ranks of the “children of chomsky” are big enough that we will see Sally Field stand (a tear glistening on her cheek and her Vera Wang scintillating in the key light) at the podium and begin her state of THE union address with
“My Fellow Earthicans, Let’s stop all the fight, War is over!”
By the way, Jeff, if you are reading this, for
“Such a Strange Place, Academia”
Bless you sir, I have not laughed so hard since I bought my mother-in-law a Jaguar for her birthday – it was expensive, but worth it. She opened the garage door and it bit her leg off.
I think Academia is the perfect place for Rummy. I ask only that he be required to wear a ‘Dunce’ conical headpiece while he lectures, so that the full contextual bliss of his bright, shining career may forever forge his leaden place in history.
That goes for Condi, too.
Semanticleo:
You’d have made a great Red Guard during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
And, no, that’s not a compliment.
“Red Guard”
Sorry you lost your ‘Red’ bogeyman. Do you have anyone to fill in so you can blow shit up?
This attitude appears present in the supposed pwning that some commentators are making about the President’s saying
“Mandela is dead” As Glenn Reynolds has pointed out, it’s
important to read the whole thing. He meant in light of the
problems in settling situations in Iraq; that Saddam had killed all the Mandelas, all the dissidents. Making peaceful
political action virtually impossible. One can quibble in the
way the president shorthands “Mandela” as a non violent dissident; after all the Livonia trial was about his violent
campaign to topple the South African Govt; but the point is still essentially the same. If Ghandi had faced Model(a common counterfactual example) instead the unsteady British imperial bureacracy; or more to the point, if he had lived in Saudi Arabia; his nonviolent campaign would have come to nought. Would Martin Luther King had a prayer if President
Eastland or Bull Connor had held the reigns.
Now Rumsfeld can’t win with this crew, when in 1983 he travelled to Iraq to seek regional allies against the
Iranian onslaught wearing the realist hat, he is appeasing dictators. When a generation later, he sees that alliance
was counter productive and harmful, pressing deBaathi-fication, not choosing to “Dyer” the post Baghdad protesters, to keep a light footprint, rather than all too inpractical preponderance of troops that was Weinberger and Powell’s fig leaf to the surrender in Beirut to Shiite
militancy, he gets the crazy neocon/opportunist label. Whe chooses a veteran warrior of the special forces world to replace an all too conventional infantry man with a very
pedestrian approach; it is regarded as nearly treasonous. Based on his knowledge of CIA misjudgements and outright
blind spots (secular nationalists and/or sectarian paramilitaries never cooperate) he sets up a separate analytical section; the ‘evil’ Office of Special Plans,
hell you’d think he was conjuring up Cthluthu himself. The
people he associated with this time around; Perle at the Defense Policy Board, Wolfowitz as chief deputy; had been the
real dissidents in the Reagan administrations; opposed to the Iraq deal, willing to throw over even avowedly pro American tyrants, that started to stink up the place; choosing not to privilege Palestinian resentment as the key to the Middle East. The old guard at the Middle East institute; who didn’t really that their apologias to compromised tribal princes really didn’t work after September 11th ; including perennial sycophant Joe Wilson, fought back through leaks to Hersh, Kristof (the once and former frustrated would be Arabist)They were no match for
Rumsfeld’s bureacratic maneuverings and that’s just not
right. The other tools he employed essentially updating
the long precedents of military tribunal and detention policies going back to the Civl War; had to painted as Gulag building.
Ernest T. Bass is Aunt Bee, the 6:15 to Poughkeepsie is the 20th Century Limited, ‘cleo is Locke.
“‘cleo is Locke.”
guinsPen wins the thread.
Thin Man:
Oh, look. Cleo’s mad because you dissed his t-shirt.
Meanwhile, Ethel unintenionally proves Jeff’s point.
“not in the mainstream of the Stanford community”
Would to God none were…
Cleo reminds me of some dudes I used to play rugby with…after they were concussed that is.
I don’t think Cleo’s got a head injury, nor is he stupid. It’s just that he accepts the “alternate version” of reality that is promulgated at University.
And thus, when faced with reality, he naturally gets a bit angry. Well, maybe mad is a better word.
See, I did my undergrad years and MA at Brigham Young University, which from its inception decided to uphold a set of assumptions about Truth and Reality, and if you want to teach there, you have to sign an agreement saying that you won’t question those tenets.
Everything else is open season. (And yes, they teach evolution as science. They showed us a slide of human and chimp DNA side by side and pointed out where one segment of DNA had simply been flipped over, etc.)
Is it a restriction on academic freedom? To an extent, yes, but they’re up front about it, so students and faculty know ahead of time what is verboten and what is not. And no one thinks that the other universities, where no such assumptions are upheld, are not legitimate or worthy institutions for not following our lead.
On the other hand, at elitist schools, they also have a similar set of verboten topics, but they don’t admit it. They pose as bastions of free speech while squashing it, and are even more fervent in their efforts to exclude “forbidden” topics than they are at BYU.
Because at BYU, they have clear rules about what will get you fired (oh, and no tenure, either), but elsewhere? Mine field.
I realize that the Hoover Institituion is primarily a rest home for right-wingers out of government. I think Thomas Sowell and Shelby Steele are taking their retirements there. But wouldn’t any institution reject Rumsfeld simply in terms of merit. After all, he was a monumental failure at his last job.
Exactly, Ric, because the best way to dissect his “monumental failure” is to not talk to him.
dicentra – excellent point.
By keeping what is “verboten” vague, you can change it whenever you want and punish those you disfavor any time you like.
And it adds a layer of uncertainty to the usual pressure to conform – you don’t just have to conform to set rules, you have to enthusiastically and aggressively conform, or else people might think you’re not quite sound enough…
That it is accepted is a testament to the fact that Decent People Have Better Things To Do, one of the most simultaneously encouraging and depressing principles of life.
Oops, nearly forgot:
Dumbledore is Voldemort
Liberace is Jack Bauer
Dan Rather is a Serious Journalist
Spoken like an expert at being a monumental failure.
“Sorry you lost your ‘Red’ bogeyman. Do you have anyone to fill in so you can blow shit up?”
‘Cleo, you have a gift for the non-seq. Cling to it, because it’s all you have.
But, since you brought it up…please tell us again how Reagan had nothing to do with the end of the Cold War. You know you you want to.
On topic: Anyone else chilled by the notion that universities should judge inclusion on Prof. Lee’s “mainstream” opinion? Remember that the Kostards consider themselves the center. That whole bias thing doesn’t exist if you just skew the scale.
Olbermann is Murrow. Weis is Parseghian. Wes Clark is Patton.
A possible explanation: After four years of port-side indoctrination at a number of our elite institutions, students are demonstrably stoopider than when they went in on matters civic. Is this a shock to any sensible person?
Open is closed, hot is cold, Caric is profound.
Oh and Caric?
“But wouldn’t any institution reject Rumsfeld simply in terms of merit. After all, he was a monumental failure at his last job.”
Two words: Jimmy. Carter.
Speaking of which: LINK
Jimmeh looks into the eyes of one of the jihad-crazed sociopaths that made him Iran’s bitch, cost him his presidency and declares, “He’s a reasonable fella.” Were we all coked up in 1976?
I keep forgetting.
Diet is Regular, Premium is Regular, and, of course, Constipated is Regular.
Thompson raised several good points during the diversity discussion, ideas reflecting the concern that there is no true diversity in “diversity.” I have three main problems with the entire enterprise:
1) It seems as if most heads of diversity initiatives at universities are women of color. Where’s the diversity in that?
2) Every diversity statement I have ever read relies upon simple arithmetic for its very existance. Let’s see now, 53% women, 22% African-American, 18% Hispanic, 3% Native American, etc. While the language is couched in catch words like “inclusion” and “opportunity” the only way the diveristy csars have to measure progress is the simple crunching of numbers. If the numbers don’t match the demographics then there is, obviously, an artificial societal barrier to the achieving of numerical balance. In the course of this race/gender calculus individual merit is tossed by the wayside. Certainly the formulas fail when considering “over achieving” Asians within the construct of overcoming societal barriers.
3) What is more troubling is that the calculus is further corrupted by a set of rules and regulations that seeks to not only to define a diverse environment but also to enforce said environment by the diciplining of those perceived to be speaking words against the hoped for result. It is a reasonable goal to eliminate considerations of race abd gender as barriers to opportunity but quite another thing to enforce arbitrary speech codes to secure a pre-determined socio/political mindset. Too often diversity programs seek a collective group think that the “smart ones” have determined (as Jeff would say in their “enlightened” rather than “Enlightenment” mindsets) is not only the proper but required interpersonal template. The end result is, inevitably, the beating down of discourse and the suppressionof real dialogue and thought. It is the very conflict of ideas that was so visibly played out in the sixties that allowed real Civil Rights to seed and bloom. Ultimately the racists lost the in the arena of ideas and public opinion and that was just as important and necessary as the statutes.
By extending the the diverisy initiative to include political points of view the diversity csars must staunch reasonable freedom of speech in order to control and frame the narrative. We are left with the academic equivalent of the Wahhabi Moral Police cupping their ears to discern “improper” and “unacceptable” words and opinions. Most any academic institution should reject both the simple calculus and the heavy handed censorship and replace it with a real exchange of ideas. They may just find that the arena of discourse will sort out the wheat from the chaff.
However, that is the very thing that concerns them. The csars are most afraid that that discussion may invalidate many of the cherished tenets they seek to impose.
Oh, and…
Feng Shui is interior decorating, peace is war, Barry Bonds never took a damn thing.
In the heremetically sealed minds of the professoriate not the slightest waft of anything that might disturb the iron orthodoxy that rules is permitted. At places like Stanford, where the alumni received the same brainwashing as the current undergraduates, I don’t expect any pressure brought to bear to bring disinfectant and sunshine into the environment. But the taxpayer-funded universities are another question. Why should we pay to be subverted?
BJTexs
I whole heartedly agree. It seems to me that if one is setting up anykind of enterprise, business or intellectual, then what one really wants is to staff it with the most capable people possible.
The idea that choices should be made according to a statistical template undermines the very purpose of the enterprise and builds into the institution a kind of second-ratism which is antithetical to intellectual progress by making the goal of the institution secondary to a political objective.
Jeff is Caric, Dan is Marcotte and cleo is his own inverse (and possibly his own Grandpa)
Thin Man:
The overriding characteristic is diversity as an end as well as a means to an end. Reading and hearing the bromides spouted about the the goals one is left with the idealist tenets of “greater understanding”, “peace building” and everybody’s witching word, “tolerance.” The essential irony missed by the diversity csars is the sacrifice of diverse (if difficult)ideas and speech upon the altar of non-offensiveness along with the furtherance of truth as non-essential or “relative.” They’ve plastered over the discourse with a fuzzy/feely concern for individual outrage. This is exactly the attitude that allows the justification of censorship of images and words “offensive” to Islam. The csars willfully see no disconnect between the two because the individual or corporate outrage trumps the free exchange of ideas, including those declared by academic fiat to be “offensive.” Christians, on the other hand, having “offended” the literate and educated in our own culture are fair game for “offensive” events. The power must be wrested from the faithful in order to fulfill the dream of the truly secular American, nay global western society, both political and educational.
When diversity csars talk about “understanding” they are referring to the “understanding” that their charges are to learn by rote from their well educated, more enlightened betters. If they refuse, then all manner of labels are attached, non more illustrative than the proliferation of “phobias.” Nothing denigrates the validity of an argument quicker than painting the declarer as someone suffering from a mental defect.
The Soviet Union used dissent from The Narrative™ as an legal indication of teh crazee. How’d that work out?
After all, he was a monumental failure at his last job.
The Taliban routed without our breaking a sweat, and Saddam overrun in one of the most successful, least costly campaigns ever.
For more failures like that, I’m all for setting up monuments to it.
Prof. Caric: how, exactly, might you be a success, in comparison?
Cordially…
“For more failures like that, I’m all for setting up monuments to it.”
Sledge hammer is scalpel.
Semanticlasms are bon mots.
Cordially…
……because, let’s remember, pace Rummy, that Baghdad is Stalingrad for the U.S. Army.
Cor…fukkit
Semanticleo commentary is thoughtful and in depth, Twinkies are good for you, having your 2 year old chew on a Chinese made toy is perfectly fine.
Meh. What has he done for us lately?
Communism was just a “bogeyman”?
These folks might dispute that.
If they, were, you know, alive.
Sean Penn is a philosopher.
Semanticleo is like Baghdad Bob for Stalin and Mao… which is even funnier given they’re both dead.
Wait, does that make Cleo a holocaust denier? Just, you know, on a larger scale than the neo nazis? :)
Bogeyman. Heh.
“like Baghdad Bob for Stalin and Mao… which is even funnier given they’re both dead.”
Yeah, but Mandela is alive. Ironic, ain’t it?
cleo,
Ironic, only if you respect Reuters reporters. And *that* would be simply amusing.
Cordially…
All the Kravitzes are dead for reals though. Reuters confirms.
Cleo is such a dolt. It’s pathetic.
I wrote above: I think a truly free exchange of ideas is not what we are or should be aiming to promote within the proffesoriate academy; clearly there are ideas that we wish not to grant a forum there.
To which Aldo responded: This is tricky. I agree that we should not be giving a monster like Ahmanutjob a soapbox, but I think it would be appropriate to allow him into the university in a context in which his dangerous ideology could be challenged and deconstructed, which is exactly the context in which Rumsfeld would be allowed into Hoover.
If the academy as an institution can, while remaining faithful to its raison detre, form a bias according to which to judge what ideas should be given a soap box, denied a soap box, or brought in only to be challenged and deconstructed, then the academy cannot have the free exchange of ideas as a central educating principle by definition. They can and should, of course, encourage, or at least tolerate, such an exchange throughout the student body by allowing free speech, but at the end of the day the academy is there to educate. Educating the next generation is a presumptuous duty and right to claim; it requires that one believes that he has the content the next generation needs to be taught, and it generally, if not by definition, requires that one believe that there is some content
to be excluded.
What happens when the Right and the Left disagree on the content. Just ‘argue’ it out, like some people think? The two sides don’t share a common set of axioms.
So what’s left? War is what is left. Not necessarily violent war, but war none the less. The Left; with its action alerts, protests, group loyalty and willingness to do anything to further the narrative-understands this all to well. The Right, not so much. It’s complicated, though; the side of good and truth cannot employ any method expedient without losing its identity and the war by default.
But it needs to recognize that ideological wars are not relics of the past, or the cost of having to deal with the pre-‘modern’ rest of the world.
By the way, I”m starting to believe that the attraction to labeling this issue as an affront to the defining mission of the academy rather than to confront it head on for what it is, namely, aliens with an alien ideology trying to define the content parameters of the academy(which must be defined by someone)in a way alien to what we firmly hold to be true and good-is the assumption that this line of attack holds water even according to the aliens, if they weren’t to blind or evil to see it, and as such , in the realm of the ideas themselves there is no war. But I think that assumption is dangerously fanciful in that it allows our best and brightest to avoid the sickening realization that this is a idea war that we are going to need to fight to win.
I think this is spot on. There is a problem of incommensurability here. I believe I’ve argued in comments here at PW previously that the fundamental structure of debate employed by the ‘classical liberal’ (and others) is not shared by our opponents on the ‘left.’ For example, I’m personally skeptical about the Law of the Excluded Middle, but I don’t imagine the resolution of my skepticism lies in the complete negation of Aristotelian logic. Whereas it has been my experience that the ‘left’ is eager to tear down the fundament of western philosophy and will look at any such crack in the edifice as an opportunity to do so.
What I find frightful about this state of affairs is should the dialogical basis for resolving the conflict between these two ideologies prove to be completely useless, the only option remaining is war of the violent sort. I’ve not wanted to say such a thing out loud but I see it mentioned increasingly often in comments on political blogs. What is especially confusing to me is that the ‘left’ is pissing on the structure by which it could civilly resolve conflicts with the ‘right’, thereby hastening a more profound conflict when the ‘right’ are the ones with the guns.
“should the dialogical basis for resolving the conflict between these two ideologies prove to be completely useless, the only option remaining is war of the violent sort.”
I don’t believe that. I believe that we can and will win the hearts and minds of our fellow men
if we play our cards right. The medium is the blogosphere, though we need first to effect a shift in the culture of the right side of the blogosphere. The first step is to realize that we are in fact waging a war of ideas, and then do dedicate ourselves to winning it. More on tactics later.
I am Naftali a new blogger @ Dean’s World and I will be spending more time on this site. The community here is brilliant and Jeff is the best writer on the web so far as I can tell.
Seconded.
Hey, c’mon. He teaches at Morehead. The fact that he hasn’t frozen to death in a snowbank is success of a sort.