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The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

jamesgmartin.center

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Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

#11

Post by neilv »

I haven't figured out a good opinion on the controversies of trigger warnings and safe spaces. It might be a brief pendulum swing. I think that we all could stand to show more sensitivity to everyone else, and I don't know whether that would be enough.

But I've never met any 12th-grader who is so knowledgeable and wise that frosh year at a proper college shouldn't shake up their developing mind, and challenge much of what they thought they knew -- about the world, themselves, and even thinking itself.

(College is not a place to party and practice your whiteboarding theatre until you can get a FAANG job, knowing not much more than you did in high school.)

Whether it's in the humanities, social sciences, quantum physics, or even functional programming: if students are not surprised and uncomfortable at times, I'd think they're not learning enough.

Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

#12

Post by wtallis »

wpasc wrote: post #6

I believe HN has both right and left leaning individuals, but I wonder if most people would condemn the practice of professors being ousted from schools for daring to challenge their students' "safe space" notions and microagressing them? This is not an isolated event and universities skew heavily in one direction politically. Is it universally agreeable that the end of healthy debate in college is a really, really b…

Confronting controversial topics in the classroom is important, especially for a school of public policy. But I don't think it's good to assume that any debate being suppressed would have been healthy debate. in this particular case, the professor and the university are both being deliberately vague about what debate subjects were deemed to have been handled badly, and what kind of positions the professor advocated or endorsed, if any. With so little information, there's not enough evidence to rule out the possibility that the professor was bringing up important subjects but then fumbling the discussions in a way that gave some students a negative and unhelpful experience.

Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

#13

Post by [deleted] »

wpasc wrote: post #6

I believe HN has both right and left leaning individuals, but I wonder if most people would condemn the practice of professors being ousted from schools for daring to challenge their students' "safe space" notions and microagressing them? This is not an isolated event and universities skew heavily in one direction politically. Is it universally agreeable that the end of healthy debate in college is a really, really b…

[deleted]

Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

#14

Post by huehehue »

Erik816 wrote: post #8
TheOperator wrote: post #7

I think there is something to the notion that there should be schools which are inclusive to students who would struggle under teachers like this. I just don't see why that school should be Duke University. I don't understand why the most elite schools seem to be among the most likely to decide that their students need protection from harm. Polarizing teachers seem like they should be right in an elite universities w…

If you struggle with a teacher who respectfully challenges your views, you don't belong at any college.

I'd like to agree, but then we'd have an even larger uneducated and willfully ignorant mass. Perhaps we could be more tactful, or find some way of easing people into sensitive discussions. Quarantining those people, enticing as it may seem, will just make things worse.

Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

#15

Post by nradov »

TheOperator wrote: post #7

I think there is something to the notion that there should be schools which are inclusive to students who would struggle under teachers like this. I just don't see why that school should be Duke University. I don't understand why the most elite schools seem to be among the most likely to decide that their students need protection from harm. Polarizing teachers seem like they should be right in an elite universities w…

There is no need to accommodate fragile, weak minded students in higher education. They need to toughen up or be cast aside.

Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

#16

Post by Eridrus »

wpasc wrote: post #6

I believe HN has both right and left leaning individuals, but I wonder if most people would condemn the practice of professors being ousted from schools for daring to challenge their students' "safe space" notions and microagressing them? This is not an isolated event and universities skew heavily in one direction politically. Is it universally agreeable that the end of healthy debate in college is a really, really b…

The primary good universities provide to most people is not education, but signaling.

It basically doesn't matter what most students are taught since they will never have an opportunity to use it, and even if they did, they would not remember what they were taught, and even if they remembered they probably wouldn't be able to apply it outside a classroom context.

Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

#17

Post by dboreham »

edraferi wrote: post #3

It seems like there’s a gap in the market for a hard-nosed, teaching-first university. A place full of passionate professors with high standards. A place where high school valedictorians work their ass off for a B. A place where you feel your best will never be good enough because the standards are impossible... until, one day, you get an A. And that grade MEANS something. And after four years, the students walk out…

Scotland?

Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

#18

Post by rland »

I have read probably 4 or 5 of these articles, written by professors/teachers, claiming to have been punished for their speech.

2 common threads about them. The first is that they rarely discuss specifics about what positions or what opinions got them censured. The second is that the comments section is typically full of drive by commenters who aren't responding to the content of the post in particular but to the idea that a professor might be censured for [their view].

I think its fair to say that everyone believes that universities ought to be places where it's possible to explore radical ideas. But sometimes, things are just wrong. If a professor teaches a load of students that the Sun orbits the earth, they're going to be censured, and nobody would be surprised.

I can't say anything to respond to this particular post, because I have no idea what this guy in particular is even being censured for -- whether the idea itself has value enough to discuss. The fact that some students believe so is certainly not a high enough standard.

Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

#19

Post by jfoutz »

Erik816 wrote: post #8
TheOperator wrote: post #7

I think there is something to the notion that there should be schools which are inclusive to students who would struggle under teachers like this. I just don't see why that school should be Duke University. I don't understand why the most elite schools seem to be among the most likely to decide that their students need protection from harm. Polarizing teachers seem like they should be right in an elite universities w…

If you struggle with a teacher who respectfully challenges your views, you don't belong at any college.

I'm sort of up in the air about it.

Although you're more likely to change the mind of someone at university than anywhere else in the world, you're never going to change the mind of your professor. They've invested years if not decades in their opinions.

I think pulling out the dirtiest, most underhanded rhetorical tricks is fair game in college. It's up to me to pick apart the nonsense. (Thanks philosophy!)

I also think it's completely reasonable to say up front, these topics are off limits - for no reason whatsoever. It's hard to get a 17 year old to say, no discussion of X.

Another aspect is, the classic victorian phrase, "you have the advantage of me". Some key word or phrase to indicate, i'm not prepared to deal with this, and you can't hold it against me. Not just can't, but will be held in contempt by every person participating in the conversation if you press the issue.

It requires subtlety, taste and discretion. I don't think an arbitrary set of rules can actually capture the subtlety required. Can tact be a standard?

Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed

#20

Post by maxxxxx »

elamje wrote: post #10

This commentary is a subset of what is happening in the world. Free speech is not under attack as an alarmist might conclude, but is rather under review. Unfortunately , the review is being held and judged by mainstream media which tends to go the way that the author describes Sanford. At the end of the day, our social norms will be pulled towards the most sensitive people rather than the intellectually challenging o…

“the most sensitive people ”

A lot of these people are actually very insensitive to others.

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