Welcome to the Heckler's Veto becoming the norm of higher education if not corporate life. This is the method of choice in almost all instances of issues surrounding race, religion, and orientation, now. Look at Intersectionality[1] for clues to why the situation has gotten out of hand. In essence there are so many levels of grievance. In effect, unless you are part of the class of people your right to discuss or rai…
The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
221–230 of 241 posts
Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your premise is flawed. Unless it's a direct incitement to violence, speech does not cause harm.
Ah, this would be the species of academic debate where a carefully referenced argument can be downvoted and rebutted with a flat unsourced statement of position?
Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
#223This "trigger warning" and "harm" thing.. I've been out of tertiary education too long to understand it. I'm sure it's not only American but it feels like an American crafted problem taken worldwide. Future leaders in minority communities need to be able to defend themselves but learning to do it by firing academics on negative feedback feels like the wrong lesson. I'd rather they did it in a real ballot box, not in…
"I'd rather they did it in a real ballot box, not in academia" You mentioned you're not american so please allow me as an american to educate you on how minorities and voting work. Minorities are systematically targeted in america to prevent voting. America, in fact, has a long and fairly recent history of attempting to prevent minories from voting or to make their votes literally worth less than others. The electora…
Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> microagressing them > Somehow I'm reminded of the debate over corporal punishment in schools, where pedagogical effectiveness takes a back seat to more primal ideas about punishment, conformity, and order. People used to be beaten for being left-handed, remember. Can you provide some context to justify comparing microagressions with beating people with sticks?
Though it doesn't entirely answer your question, several philosophers of speech have identified no metaphysical difference between speech and non-speech, and some find the justifications for a law guaranteeing freedom of speech to be ultimately unfounded[0]. The issue for them is not whether speech causes harm (it does) but whether the harms are sufficient to allow some kind of regulation on speech; there is no evide…
Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Science and religion are not comparable. A key difference is that science is stronger when people question its authority. Science does not require faith but scepticism. That is the whole point of the scientific method! Meanwhile religion requires faith. This sounds like a good question that should promote a good discussion and would probably end with a cohort of people far better equipped to argue the case for scienc…
Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
When did asking where someone is from become rudeness? It's an icebreaker question...
That has always been rude, but is especially so in today's political context. Immigrants of color know that lots of people in Western nations don't want them around. Random interrogations from random white people don't help them feel better about it. Rudeness isn't the end of the world, but we should still try to avoid it. I don't get pissed off when adults ask me about or make stupid jokes in light of my obvious phy…
Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article is not about his contract not being renewed, but about the reason for that lack of renewal. Saying someone who consistently rates amongst your top performers as having unsatisfactory performance is clearly false. Which means that not only did Duke cave in to an amount of complaints far outshone by praise, it also tried to hide this fact (circumventing its own bylaws).
Yep. I'm not disputing the injustice (at least, as his essay lays it out -- some comments on the article tell a different story of him being difficult to work with). But contracts not being renewed -- happens all the time in the "real" world. My point is just: good people don't get their contracts renewed all the time, often for silly or dumb reasons, and it's not some cosmic injustice because most people find anothe…
Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
#228More and more this safe space bullshit is infiltrating the former bastions of free-thought. It is a disturbing trend where it no longer matters if someone can convey a counter argument to any given point of view, the mere presence of a point of view contrary to the modern anti-liberal left world view - even if purely rhetorical - breaches the safe space contract and justifies censuring or even punishment. It will onl…
"Such protectiveness is motivated less by a reasonable concern for students’ mental health and more by political ideology. The complaint of a group of conservative students who felt singled out or disrespected or uncomfortable in class would be taken far less seriously. I have been on the receiving end of faculty emails making light of just such complaints. Nor would a complaint by religious students that God and Chr…
I cannot agree with this; both the left and the right are motivated to manipulate world views in order to control perception of the world and the direction of social progress.
The institution should cover the mainstream social perspectives and attempt to ascertain the motivations behind them. It should not, however, base its own perspective on any number of transient world views (at least not without transparent and reasoned analysis) - the middle line is not unbiased.
Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think this varies a bit from place to place and is misleading in some ways. I was a tenured professor who left academics for two reasons, the administrative nightmares of the university and department (to put it one way), and unrelated family reasons. The year before I left they did a survey of faculty satisfaction at the university I was at, and found that, although about 2/3-3/4 of faculty reported that they were…
Great feedback. Can you tell us more about your decision to leave? Besides the family stuff, what kind of "administrative nightmares" were you dealing with?
I think if family considerations had not entered the picture I still probably would have stayed, or at least would have stayed long enough to leave for another university, but with the ongoing problems in the university and department, it was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back.
Re: The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Who is the right that you are talking about?
Complaining is part of free speech as long as it doesn’t infringe on others right to complain back as well. If they complain because they disagree, that’s a very different thing than not defending or being hypocritical about free speech.
FWIW from my experience, the people I talk to respect players’ right to kneel even if they don’t agree with that action. That is the key to free speech I think —- to disagree peacefully but respect people’s right to express themselves.