The Decaying Evolution of Education...

[Denton]

I mostly spend time on this website to look at pictures of hats, but I have been following this thread from time to time since it started, and I would like to contribute a few thoughts.

Lizzie is absolutely right to point out that the letter from the dean at the University of Chicago is addressed to students but apparently intended to be read by wealthy donors. I would add that the language of trigger warnings and safe spaces comes from the same place -- the dean's office and the class of professional administrators one would expect to encounter in a human resources department in the corporate world. This language has a few different motivations: development is one, as Lizzie said; another is to protect grant money; and another is to keep from being sued. At best, these motives have an uneasy relationship to the work of research and teaching.

The letter from the Chicago dean implies that faculty are not allowed to issue trigger warnings or create safe spaces. (I am not sure if that is what the Chicago dean intended, but that would be a plausible interpretation of the letter.) In other words, the dean might be trying to make decisions about the curriculum on behalf of faculty. A much better statement of the history and value of free inquiry is the following essay by Geoffrey Stone from the Chronicle Review:

http://www.chronicle.com/article/Free-Expression-in-Peril/237568

Stone was also one of the authors of the Chicago "Report on Freedom of Expression" (which is also excellent but a little dry and not as energetic and rah-rah as the above essay):

http://provost.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/documents/reports/FOECommitteeReport.pdf

Like Sheeplady, I work in a school, and, for me, the practical meaning of academic freedom is that I set the curriculum in the courses I teach. The dean shouldn't try to restrict the content of my courses or my research publications. If students demand that the dean try to enforce such restrictions, the dean should refuse. If I invite a speaker to deliver a public lecture in my department, the topic of the speech is related to my own teaching and research. If I don't get to hear the lecture because a group of student activists "no-platforms" the speaker by disrupting the lecture or because a group of donors writes to the dean demanding that the budget for my department's lecture series be allocated differently, then my teaching and research could suffer. If a student group demands that I be sanctioned for one of my publications, the demand alone could have a chilling effect on my future research.

Everything I wrote in the last paragraph has happened at schools in the United States in the past year. (Some people who lost their jobs in these controversies were deans, which, I have to admit, makes me smile.) This is a real problem, although, yes, it has been sensationalized in the media.

Finally, I am skeptical of reports that the current generation of students are unusually fragile, coddled, psychologically damaged, etc. Like Lizzie and Sheeplady, I think students should be treated as human beings. Some student groups are making a mistake if they think that their demands are compatible with the value of free inquiry.

 

[sheeplady]

I think your post brings up an interesting thought, Denton, in that these undergraduates are often portrayed as "ruling the roost" so to speak in most of these situations.

Undergraduates are pretty low on the food chain at the Research 1 I work at. Oh, there's a lot of talk about the "undergraduate experience" and "attracting the best and brightest young people." But the goal of that isn't *actually* to recruit undergraduates; it is to recruit an undergraduate class that looks good to donors or that will "grow" alumni/parent donors; be they corporate or private, current or future.

Undergraduates have no direct power. What can they do, un-enroll? Refuse to pay their tuition and get kicked out? I've seen undergraduates expelled for creating a facebook group with no recourse. Individually, they are powerless.

Much of the recent hub-bubs have not been that undergraduates are protesting. U.S. undergraduates have protested pretty much since the beginning of universities in the U.S. The difference is, thanks to dispersive media, is that more people can find out about it, and therefore donors can find out about it. And donors are sensitive about such things.

And I'll say this: Donors have the right not to support any cause for any reason they see fit. If they don't like a hire, a fire, a speaker, the paint color on the administration building... they can choose to not donate.

Perhaps rather than looking at the protesting students as a problem, or the donors as the problem, we should be asking ourselves if the problem really is the universities' constant need for money- and their willingness to do anything to get it.

 

[MisterCairo]

I've never seen students disrupt a speech. Ever.

I'll probably be banned for posting this, but this is a list from the first web page of a search "university speech protest":



http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=7528


http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/0...n-lecture-at-u-south-florida-harass-speakers/


https://www.thefire.org/san-francisco-state-student-protesters-disrupt-speech-by-jerusalem-mayor/


http://thevarsity.ca/2016/01/18/u-of-t-divest-event-disrupted-by-jewish-defense-league/


http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/19/opinion/la-oe-hassett-colleges-muzzle-conservatives-20130519


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ann-coulters-speech-in-ottawa-cancelled/article4352616/


Anecdotal evidence ("I've never seen students disrupt a speech"). Reminds me of people who say "How could so and so have won the election? No one I KNOW voted for them!"

Coulter was prevented from speaking in Ottawa BEFORE she arrived.

Free speech on campus? Not bloody likely...

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's interesting to note that Coulter's Ottawa speech was not to have been sponsored by or presented by the college itself, or under the auspices of any college class. It was an outside event promoted by political organizations in harmony with her beliefs, with the college simply serving as a rented hall for the occasion.

One of the organizations, the "International Free Speech Society," is a European-based group which despite its wide-ranging name is primarily a mouthpiece for the so-called "counter-jihadist movement," a loose connection of extreme ethno-nationalist, anti-Islamic organizations, publications, and individuals known for deliberately provocative behavior in support of their goals, and occasionally, for violence. Possibly the University felt that having such a group with such ties on campus was too great a risk to take. You won't read about this in any of the above-cited links, but it doesn't take much research to realize that there's more to the story than the spin.

Interestingly, we had an incident of attempted speech supression at the theatre a few years ago. A local organization rented the building to present a lecture by the U. S. correpsondent for Al-Jazeera. Word got out online among the counter-jihadist movement and there were attempts -- and threats -- made in an attempt to shut down the lecture, to the point where we had to bring in uniformed and plainclothes police to ensure the safety of the speaker and the audience that had paid for tickets to hear him speak. It didn't help the tension when one of our staff members overheard one of the protestors talking about how much he'd like to "kill a few muzzlims tonight."

(And yes, we've also been rented out over the years by speakers on the other side of the spectrum without any incidents whatsoever, including our own Governor Paul LePage, about whom you might have read a few things in the news over the past week.)

 

[Fading Fast]

I've observed enough protests / marches / speeches / rallies / movements in twenty plus years in NYC (for five years I lived a few blocks from the UN and right across the street from an open plaza that was sanctioned for protests - on many days I had to go through a police barricade and show ID just to get to my apartment building) to say that there are fringe elements on the left and on the right that insight violence, want to shut down opposing views, will make obnoxious, hateful comments like the one Lizzie pointed out about ethnicities and nationalities usually associated with one of the other political side and will go beyond passionate non-violent support (either through acts of violence or calling for them) that for either the left or right to deny their existence is insulting.

Neither side of the divide is pure of that, I've seen it with my own eyes for years. And, having lived near the UN, if you think our politics are ugly and, at times, violent or calling for violence, the hatred in some other countries either between groups within one country or between countries is at least equally ugly.

Liberal / conservative, left / right, climate change / climate "denier," pro-Israel / pro-Palestinians and on and on all have fringe elements that act violently or call for violence and that want to shut down opposing views by many means. I am extremely careful with my statements on these pages (and everywhere) as I know they will be challenged by smart, passionate people - but I say the above as someone who has witnessed everything stated here with my own eyes many times over many years. No side is free of fringe elements that act in ways that, now this is an opinion, besmirch the name of the majority in the movement who don't want to act that way.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The question then becomes, if you're a campus or the operator of a hall, what do you do when an extremist-oriented speaker wants to use your facility? Do you (1) rent the hall, grit your teeth, and deal with the consequences in the name of "free speech" or (2) consider the potential risk to the audience and facilities if the event gets out of hand and turn them away? No matter what you do, one side or the other is going to go on the internet and scream about how their rights have been violated, and whip up their followers into a froth of manipulated outrage.

Turning away a controversial speaker under such circumstances is not "McCarthyism" or "suppression of free speech" no matter how hard some might try to draw the false analogy. McCarthyism is losing your job because someone once heard that you looked at a copy of the "Daily Worker" on the subway, or being hounded to suicide in the pages of the Hearst press because you signed a petition for Russian war relief in 1942. Suppression of free speech is police with blackjacks and tear gas guns coming at you and dragging you off the platform when you're trying to speak and throwing you in the jug. I've yet to read of any such incidents happening on today's campuses.

 

[MisterCairo]

t's interesting to note that Coulter's Ottawa speech was not to have been sponsored by or presented by the college itself, or under the auspices of any college class. It was an outside event promoted by political organizations in harmony with her beliefs, with the college simply serving as a rented hall for the occasion.

I'm not an apologist for Coulter or any "side" or view in this debate. The question is whether or not speeches (and I wasn't aware we were limited to university or class sponsored talks, and I note you picked just one of the several links I provided, which were but a sprinkling of the DOZENS I came across) are protested on campus.

They have been, are, and will continue to be.

Also (again, not a Coulter fan, just saying) the very point of freedom of speech is that views, however odious YOU OR I may find them, may be presented openly.

If you say restrictions based on sponsors' motives and ideology are acceptable, then you don't believe in free speech, only speech you agree with.

As for "spin", here's a quote from the Globe and Mail (if that is a racist rag, I'll eat the next Saturday edition). What say you about this approach from a "university - bastion of thought and reason":


"In an unusual move, the University of Ottawa had sent her a warning before her speech, cautioning Ms. Coulter to watch her words lest she face criminal charges for promoting hatred in Canada.

"I hereby encourage you to educate yourself, if need be, as to what is acceptable in Canada and to do so before your planned visit here," University of Ottawa academic vice-president François Houle wrote.

"Promoting hatred against any identifiable group would not only be considered inappropriate, but could in fact lead to criminal charges."


What's the name of the film where criminals are arrested BEFORE they act? And what genre does it belong to?

Science fiction, wasn't it?

 

[LizzieMaine]

Doesn't change a thing that I can see. I don't know what Canada's hate speech laws are, but if Coulter's speech might be expected to violate them -- and I wouldn't be shocked if she made a deliberate point of making sure that it did so, knowing how she rolls -- then the school warning her of this beforehand simply smacks of legal due-diligence, not oppression.

There's no such thing as absolute "free speech." Speech restrictions are everywhere. It's illegal to threaten the person of the President of the United States or other high officials. It's illegal to threaten to kill your neighbor because his dog peed on your lawn. It's illegal to "incite to riot." It's illegal to spray-paint a swastika on the side of a shul. It's illegal to produce, promote, or possess certain forms of pornography. It's illegal to broadcast tobacco advertising on radio or television. It's illegal to shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre. Those are all restrictions on speech, and most people acknowledge that they're necessary restrictions where the right of the individual must give way to the protection of society.

If I'm the operator of a venue, be it a campus auditorium or a hotel ballroom or a VFW hall, and I have reasonable cause to think that a particular speaker might incite violence or cause damage to the facility, then my responsibility is to the security of the venue and the safety of the audience, not to the speaker. The speaker is not being denied his ability to speak. Freedom of speech doesn't mean that he's entitled by law to speak anywhere he chooses under whatever conditions he might dictate. The responsibility of finding a soapbox to stand on is entirely his own.

If you can't get a hall, rent a sound car and drive thru the streets talking thru a horn, if you're really that passionate about what you have to say. Unless all you really want to do is generate publicity for yourself by screaming to your followers about how your "free speech rights are being oppressed." It's kind of hilarious to me to hear a woman whose books are piled high in every bookstore's remainder carts, who is ubiquitous on cable television, who has a widely-syndicated newspaper column, and who floods the Internet complaining about her free speech being suppressed. Poor little snowflake.

 

[ChiTownScion]

There's no such thing as absolute "free speech." .... It's illegal to shout "Fire" in a crowded theatre. Those are all restrictions on speech, and most people acknowledge that they're necessary restrictions where the right of the individual must give way to the protection of society.

Schenck v. United States. 249 U.S. 47,63 L. Ed. 470 (1919) Nearly a century later that standard of Mr. Justice Holmes still rings true:

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

For someone who never set foot into a school of journalism, I must note, ma'am, that you grasp that essential far better than many who have.

 

[Harp]

Schenck v. United States. 249 U.S. 47,63 L. Ed. 470 (1919).

Res judicata Schenck; granted, though bench landmark, the Yankee from Olympus never meant his wisdom to extinguish freedom's fire on campus.

 

[Denton]

Turning away a controversial speaker under such circumstances is not "McCarthyism" or "suppression of free speech" no matter how hard some might try to draw the false analogy. McCarthyism is losing your job because someone once heard that you looked at a copy of the "Daily Worker" on the subway, or being hounded to suicide in the pages of the Hearst press because you signed a petition for Russian war relief in 1942. Suppression of free speech is police with blackjacks and tear gas guns coming at you and dragging you off the platform when you're trying to speak and throwing you in the jug. I've yet to read of any such incidents happening on today's campuses.

I agree that McCarthyism is pretty special.

There's a further turn of the screw. Attempts at suppression of speech rarely succeed. They predictably have the opposite effect. To take an extreme example, the Inquisition burned Giordano Bruno's books and then burned Bruno at the stake. This violent suppression stopped Bruno from writing more books, but it ensured a place in the history of philosophy for his ideas, which previously had been unpopular.

To take another extreme example, the emperor Julian wrote a number of books which the early Christians tried to suppress. To some degree they succeeded -- the books are no longer extant. However, it is possible to reconstruct some of Julian's treatises on paganism from quotations embedded in Christian polemics against paganism.

One could make a similar point about a creature like Coulter, who depends on her political enemies to publicize her ideas.

I would suggest two lessons. 1) Activists who don't like certain ideas are much more likely to succeed by talking to the people who have the ideas. They will only publicize the bad ideas by trying to get them out of the public world. 2) Bruno's anti-Aristotelian lectures at French schools were sometimes interrupted by shouts from Aristotelians (who also sometimes beat him with clubs). Such tactics might be appropriate in a system of education based on dogma and rote memorization. They have no place in a modern research university, where the goal is to produce new knowledge, and no research question should be ruled out of bounds by politicians, school administrators, students, or other researchers.

 

[LizzieMaine]

2) Bruno's anti-Aristotelian lectures at French schools were sometimes interrupted by shouts from Aristotelians (who also sometimes beat him with clubs). Such tactics might be appropriate in a system of education based on dogma and rote memorization. They have no place in a modern research university, where the goal is to produce new knowledge, and no research question should be ruled out of bounds by politicians, school administrators, students, or other researchers.

In a world where there was such a thing as a pure research institution, that would certainly be the ideal situation -- but we all know no such place exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist as long as educational institutions are dominated by questions of finance, which are in turn tied inexorably to matters of politics.

Higher education in our society is a commodity -- a product to be dispensed and distributed according to what the market will bear. And as long as that's the case, the consumers of the product, as well as the distributors and the stockholders, will insist on having a say in its ultimate form. You might call that the ultimate preparation for life in the Real World.

 

[Harp]

I agree that McCarthyism is pretty special.

There's a further turn of the screw. Attempts at suppression of speech rarely succeed... To take an extreme example, the Inquisition burned Giordano Bruno's books and then burned Bruno at the stake.

... Bruno's anti-Aristotelian lectures at French schools were sometimes interrupted by shouts from Aristotelians ... Such tactics might be appropriate in a system of education based on dogma and rote memorization. They have no place in a modern research university, where the goal is to produce new knowledge, and no research question should be ruled out of bounds by politicians, school administrators, students, or other researchers.

Bruno's persecution for criticism of Aristotelian physics, monistic espousal inquiry free from theological bind etc. serve reminder for our present time; most notably terrorism directed
against the free press, recalcitrant authors, or the Orient feud with the Occident and its tradition of religious freedom and moral values. Academic freedom of speech is an essential prerequisite
for any college or university. To speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.

 

[sheeplady]

Anecdotal evidence ("I've never seen students disrupt a speech"). Reminds me of people who say "How could so and so have won the election? No one I KNOW voted for them!"

Well, a couple points:

1) The observations you pointed out are no less valid than my observations on a surface level. If I codified every speech I have attended that has not resulted in disruptions and listed those, that could be evidence that disruptions are uncommon, since I have never seen one; just like if someone happened to attend as many speeches and saw many disruptions could be used as evidence that disruptions are common. However, you'll notice in both cases we are collecting a *sample* of speeches and seeing how many disruptions are observed across that sample; not only pulling out cases of disruptions and non-disruptions and basing our ideas on this. And given my sample lends towards 500+ speeches, often contentious, it is a decent sample. Now is it representative or random sampling? No. But let's call a spade a spade; they are all anecdotal experiences, even your web search.

2) A bunch of news links are not empirical evidence that disruptions are on the upswing; that they occur all the time, etc. A google search isn't a representative sample, and doesn't prove your point. It provides no historical context. There's no data beyond observations. It is, as you say, anecdotal evidence. It has no contextual background.

3) Your search doesn't indicate specificity. When I looked through the links you provided, there is a large range of "disruption." Some included canceling the speech, some were a few individuals heckling, some were organizations writing letters of protest. That's a broad range of behavior, and is too non-specific to mean anything.

4) It's obviously not politically biased, as many seem to think. Several of the events do not cut as a conservative speaker bring interrupted by a liberal group.

5) Specificity matters. I said I had never seen a speech disrupted. I never claimed that my knowledge was representative expect for my experience (which has a large and fundamental role in shaping my opinion, as it should) AND you have no idea my definition of "disrupted." (See 3.)

 

[sheeplady]

I would suggest two lessons. 1) Activists who don't like certain ideas are much more likely to succeed by talking to the people who have the ideas. They will only publicize the bad ideas by trying to get them out of the public world. 2) Bruno's anti-Aristotelian lectures at French schools were sometimes interrupted by shouts from Aristotelians (who also sometimes beat him with clubs). Such tactics might be appropriate in a system of education based on dogma and rote memorization. They have no place in a modern research university, where the goal is to produce new knowledge, and no research question should be ruled out of bounds by politicians, school administrators, students, or other researchers.

Just like Coulter knows that her enemies do her advertising work for her, I am sure that many sides know that the best way to bolster their side is to drum up the opposition, by any means necessary. History has shown us enough informants and covert agitators to know a few (sometimes very vocal) activists are not passionately committed to the "cause."

 

[Denton]

While alive to the dangers of the systemic corruption of school by commerce, I don't think it's fair to say that school has become a business. There are plenty of administrators who dream of running schools more like commercial enterprises, but, thankfully, they are not in charge of everything.

In a world where there was such a thing as a pure research institution, that would certainly be the ideal situation -- but we all know no such place exists, has ever existed, or will ever exist as long as educational institutions are dominated by questions of finance, which are in turn tied inexorably to matters of politics.

Higher education in our society is a commodity -- a product to be dispensed and distributed according to what the market will bear. And as long as that's the case, the consumers of the product, as well as the distributors and the stockholders, will insist on having a say in its ultimate form. You might call that the ultimate preparation for life in the Real World.

It just wouldn't do for me to take a cynical attitude toward a matter of professional ethics. And, Lizzie, it pains me to hear such cynicism coming from a poster on this website who has been a big part of my own continuing education.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I don't think of myself as cynical at all. I'm a pure-bred dyed in the wool 1930s New Deal idealist -- which is precisely why I'm so cynical about the impact of big-money commercial considerations on not just education, but on American society in general. Arthur Kallet, George Seldes, Vance Packard, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, each in their own way, were right.

 

[Harp]

.... Arthur Kallet, George Seldes, Vance Packard, and Dwight D. Eisenhower, each in their own way, were right.

...and Izzy Stone, a journalist in the finest, truest sense of common sense, conviction, factual exactitude, and truth.
And his classic, The Trial of Socrates should be required law school One-L reading.

 

[2jakes]

... and a nod to Jane Addams.
(September 6, 1860 - May 21, 1935)

 

[Harp]

...and another nod to Leo Durocher-Chicago Cubs manager-advocate of physical and psychological intimidation of the opponent team.