He wasn't an adjunct. Some universities (or schools within universities) do five year contracts now as an alternative approach to tenure.
Precisely this. I find it appalling that an associate professor was not given tenure, because that is normally a tenured position, particularly since he'd been there 20 years
I think he was an Associate Professor of the Practice -- it's not a tenured position, but more a longer-term teaching-type appointment. It generally offers more job security and benefits than an adjunct might receive, but at many universities such a position is not (and was never) on a tenure-track line.
On the free speech front, I'll note that at the moment, the right seems to care more about it than the left, or at least it pays more respect to its dressings. Whether this changes once the power balance tips is a whole different story.
The right has certainly not defended free speech. The same people who complain about the free speech to have the right to be paid tens of thousands of dollars to criticize weaker groups complain when football players decide to kneel during a national anthem. So free speech has little to do with it. But yes, the right has deployed free speech as an effective political weapon, while the left is all over the map.
In the left's defense you have to be all over the map to defend a position. And with the right attacking on multiple fronts it makes consensus on how to respond even harder. Take global warming and climate change. You only need one person to cast doubt to cause thousands of scientists to go into whirlwind of having to defend their data.
My sister was one of the many students who signed multiple letters of defense. She leans very much to the left end of the ideological spectrum but still had nothing but amazing things to say. What a shame.
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…
>> 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
Do you have a source for this, or is this just a biased opinion?
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…
I think it’s the other way around - people at elite schools are the most likely to complain and be listened to by their fellow elites, and that goes for the Professor here too. I didn’t hear about any incidents like this at my alma mater, which is 20 miles away from Duke, probably because the elites don’t care about what we have to say. It’s one of the many things that turns me off from the “campus war” meme.
>> people at elite schools are the most likely to complain and be listened to by their fellow elites
You have no source for this and seem to have an anti-Duke bias based on your second statement. Why should we believe what you said?
No, there is nothing specific in linked docs. It seems administration decided to get rid of him, appointed two faculty members to form committee and didn't followed their own bylaws. The tiny glimpse in the doc is that there were some low student ranking in 2018 and few people had negative experience interacting with him - but nothing specific. As per the doc, no one has made any formal complaints. It's however quite…
> I think it's a clever twist of the word "authority" There is overwhelming evidence that established science is correct, and the scientists are using objectively powerful techniques to establish truth. However, the mechanisms society at large uses to test and assimilate that knowledge are exactly the same as those used for religious authority. The major difference is that rituals invoking science tend to correlate m…
I agree with the point you're trying to make, but perhaps doctors aren't the best representatives of the scientific establishment. Medical practice today is still as much art as science. There is a significant amount of underlying science but many areas are still poorly understood. So doctors rely heavily on customs, guesswork, and intuition in areas where no reliable scientific data exists.
> Earth-centered model is free speech, but it isn't worth much, because it is wrong . And yet in schools around the world people are taught that electricity flows from positive to negative, and everyone is happy. xD (slightly disingenuous, but I'd say wrong and not useful are merely correlated rather than 1-1 linked)
> And yet in schools around the world people are taught that electricity flows from positive to negative, Seriously? I have never encountered this
Anecdotally, I was taught this in lower grades and taught that it was actually the opposite in higher grades. It wouldn't surprise me if people receiving a more basic education even in the same country would never be taught how it actually is.
We have a couple of generations that haven’t been exposed to the horrors of a dictatorship. History must repeat itself. In the meantime, Duke and other such institutions will loose their appeal to those with deep and independent curiosity and to the parents who guide their children down that path. History will not favor these institutions.
You're claiming schools like Harvard, Princeton and Duke will become less appealing to students? That's pretty crazy and not at all in sync with the where the money is going. Look at the endowments of these schools, do the billions of dollars make it look like they're less appealing.
If you read his work: that religion is as epistemologically valid as the physical sciences. I assume this is why he was dismissed from the tenure track early in his career there.
That is discussed in every philosophy department. Epistemology isn't a "settled topic" and open to debate and discussion. Claiming that religion is just epistemologically valid as physical science isn't controversial. No more than saying mathematics is just as epistemologically valid as physical science. Or art is just as epistemologically valid as physical science.
Why would anyone be dismissed from a tenure track for that? Pretty much every philosophy professors argues for that position.