Saturday, June 04, 2005

UNIVERSITIES IN DECLINE

(Review of Donald Alexander Downs: Restoring Free Speech and Liberty on Campus)

Our universities are ailing. Many, including most of our elite universities, have abandoned the notion that a liberal arts education is constituted by a solid core, that is, a basic knowledge of the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences that all educated people should possess. Furthermore, for all their earnest words about the beauty and necessity of multicultural education, university administrators and faculty preside over a curriculum that routinely permits students to graduate without acquiring reading, writing, and speaking fluency in any foreign language, let alone competence in Chinese, the language of the most populous country in the world; Hindi, the most widely spoken language in the world's largest democracy; or Arabic, the language of Islam, a religion that commands an estimated 1.4 billion adherents worldwide. And perhaps most alarmingly, those who lead our universities have done little to oppose - often they have caved in to - fellow administrators and faculty who would sacrifice free and open inquiry to tender sensibilities and partisan politics. Unfortunately, an institution that lacks an ideal of an educated person, that fails to teach its students more than platitudes about the world beyond America's shores, and that punishes those who express hypotheses disagreeable to campus majorities makes a mockery of the idea of higher education. Such an institution may confer prestige and ensure handsome incomes after graduation, it may serve as an effective credentialing mechanism for future employers, and it may provide an attractive site for the charitable giving of wealthy alums, but it is hardly worthy of the name university.

Donald Alexander Downs, professor of political science, law, and journalism at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is particularly concerned about the damage that has been done to American universities over the past 20 years by the universities' own assault, in the name of diversity, on free speech and liberty. Grounded in case studies of Columbia, Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin (where he played a major role in the ultimately successful movement to abolish speech codes), Downs's book is all the more devastating for the measure and scrupulousness with which he makes his case. Proceeding from an exploration of the ideas underlying the new anti-discrimination and harassment codes, Downs exposes rampant administration self-righteousness and faculty fecklessness in the face of university disciplinary proceedings that dispense with or trample on the most basic elements of procedural fairness. But his tale is also an inspiring one, chronicling the power of a few brave faculty members and students to stand up to the censors, to mobilize support on campus and off, and to defeat the forces that threaten the university from within. Downs's case studies also show that outside our universities free speech sentiment is strong and can serve as a vital resource for those who will continue the struggle in the coming years to teach our disordered universities what our universities should be teaching students and exemplifying for the nation.

Downs is not a First Amendment absolutist or a civil liberties zealot. Nor is he a conservative crusader against the forces of political correctness. He has long studied the question of free speech and has come to his opinions the hard way, by testing them in practice and reflecting on the unexpected and unjust results. As a young scholar in the 1980s, Downs was the author of a book arguing that First Amendment protection should not have covered the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, where they were targeting Holocaust survivors and those whose families and friends had been murdered by the Nazis. And initially he was "firmly committed" to the codes governing students and faculty established in the late 1980s at the University of Wisconsin under then-Chancellor Donna Shalala to promote diversity and to combat race and sex discrimination. Although proponents insisted that these codes governed conduct and not speech, students could be punished "[f]or racist or discriminatory comments, epithets, or other expressive behavior directed at an individual or on separate occasions at different individuals" if such "expressive behavior" was intentional. The code governing faculty turned out to be even broader, not restricting its prohibition to harm intentionally inflicted. It did not take Downs long to grow alarmed by the high-handed manner in which both codes were enforced. The university proved willing to prosecute the expression of opinion, to suspend the most basic requirements of fundamental fairness, and to destroy reputations built up over decades by throwing its full weight behind the prosecution of comments that were clearly neither racist nor discriminatory. But it was not just the abuse of the codes that turned Downs against them. Concessions on free speech in situations not involving direct incitement to physical harm or violence, he concluded, were inimical to the university's central mission, the transmission of knowledge and the pursuit of truth.

What forces have driven universities to clamp down on the free play of ideas and to collaborate in the vilification of moral and political opinions that depart from campus orthodoxies? One factor involves a transformation in the idea of the university. The last 25 years have witnessed the return of what Downs calls the "proprietary university," which sees its central mission not as the transmission of knowledge and the pursuit of truth but rather as the inculcation of a specific - in this case ostensibly progressive - moral and political agenda. Another involves a transformation in the progressive sensibility itself. As late as the mid-1960s, the dominant opinion on the left was that free speech and due process were essential to the creation of a more inclusive and just society. But belief in the progressive character of liberal principles has been under intense attack by influential scholars since the glory days of Martin Luther King Jr. Radical feminists such as Catharine MacKinnon argue that the oppression of women is itself a product of liberal commitments to fair process (notwithstanding that never in history have women enjoyed the freedom and equality achieved in contemporary liberal democracies). Critical legal theorists maintain the same about the oppression of the poor, and critical race theorists press the claim concerning the oppression of minorities (notwithstanding the reduction in the number and poverty of the poor and the unprecedented inclusion of minorities in public life in liberal democracies). At the same time, many campus theorists drew inspiration from Algerian social critic Frantz Fanon, whose The Wretched of the Earth argued that sympathy with those who suffer is a higher priority than respect for individual rights (even though respect for individual rights has proven over time the most successful means for alleviating suffering). Meanwhile, postmodern critics, believing themselves to be following Nietzsche, argued that individual rights were fictions invented by the strong to control the weak (never mind that Nietzsche decried modern liberalism as an invention of the weak to tyrannize the strong). Taken together, these opinions encouraged the idea of "progressive censorship," the policing of speech to ensure that it conformed to standards deemed necessary to lift up and liberate the oppressed.....

Not since A. Bartlett Giamatti stepped down from the presidency of Yale in the mid-1980s has the leader of a major American college or university seen it as part of his or her responsibility to educate students, faculty, and the nation about the true mission of the university. As our understanding of what universities should stand for fades, our need for such leaders to make the case for the university grows more urgent. Liberal democracy depends on citizens who can respect others in their amazing diversity and in their common humanity, who can intelligently question today's conventional wisdom thanks to what they have learned from the past and been inspired to imagine for the future, and who can use their reason both to distinguish justice from injustice and to recognize the ease with which our passions and interests impel us to confuse the two.

The university contributes its part to forming such citizens by opening students' eyes to the treasures (and flaws) of Western civilization and to the treasures (and flaws) of non-Western civilizations. Not the least of the lessons of a well-formed liberal arts education is that our universities can play their crucial political role only by staunchly refusing to politicize the transmission of knowledge and the pursuit of truth.

More here




Bake sales or Bombers? Our schools need both!

Post lifted from the Locker Room

Remember the 1980's hippie slogan that read: "Wouldn't it be great if the schools had all the money they needed and the Pentagon had to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber?"

More money, buckets of it, that's what they claim will fix our public schools. The message hasn't changed and is bleated each year with more emotion. The Wake County School Board knows the routine.

Some Wake County residents claim they would pay a little more if the money went straight to the classroom, but therein lies the root of the problem. If the money is obviously not making it to the classroom, where is it going? Clearly we all know the answer, but no one wants to lasso that elephant in the room. Instead we keep throwing it more peanuts and try to give it a pedicure.

It's unfortunate that these citizens, despite their reservations, blindly support and accept a bloated system that becomes more cumbersome each year. A public school monopoly has forced them into a corner.

Given more information and choices, I have to believe that these respondents would have answered the reporter differently. If the News and Observer contacts me, I'm ready with my answer, "Let's hold a bake sale, 'cause the public schools have all the money they need and it's gonna take a bomber to clean that house."




BRAIN-DEAD LEFTIST STUDENTS AT UNC

From Mike Adams

University administrators, professors, and student newspapers are becoming so detached from reality that one can hardly write satire about university life. Nor can one muster the sarcasm necessary to give these people the ridicule they deserve. For example, I recently mocked the editors of UNC-Wilmington's student newspaper, The Seahawk, for wanting Christian organizations to sign a non-discrimination clause that would clearly trump constitutionally protected freedoms of religious expression. I jokingly suggested that the paper believes that "students who believe that rape and pedophilia are good must be allowed to join, vote, and hold office in a Christian fraternity."

Unfortunately, The Seahawk missed the sarcasm and gave this serious two-word answer: "They should." They even explained their position: "The one incontrovertible legal point at the center of the Alpha Iota Omega debate is that AIO is an official student organization, funded by student fees. And, thank God - no pun intended - it's University policy that organizations funded by student fees should be open to all students, without discrimination of any kind. End of story."

The quote you just read shows why a university without a journalism school or a law school should not publish a student newspaper offering legal opinions. In the lawsuit filed by AIO against UNC, the Christians won an injunction against the school, just weeks before the Seahawk editorial was published. So much for that "one incontrovertible legal point." The reason the lawsuit is going badly for UNC probably lies in the fact that those student fees came from the students in the first place. In this lawsuit, the federal judge clearly recognizes that the university's policy would require Christians who oppose rape and pedophilia to; first, pay mandatory student fees (another name for tax) to a government-run school, and then, second, agree to allow rapists and pedophiles (or anyone else) to join the group as a condition of getting the money back. Thankfully the federal judge, unlike the UNC administration and these top-notch Seahawk reporters, understands that such a policy is absurd, not to mention totalitarian.

In addition to being bad journalists with a bad sense of humor, the Seahawk writers don't know much about history. This is shown in the following quote: "The bigger question (is): How paranoid do you have to be to believe that a group of neo-Nazis is going to take over your Christian fraternity? Clearly, if the university allows any student to join AIO, it will soon be overrun by baby-eating street thugs who (sic) vote out the Christian leadership."

That statement is problematic for two reasons. The first problem is one of historical ignorance. In 1956, the United States Supreme Court rejected a demand by the State of Alabama that the NAACP make its membership lists public. In its first case to explicitly establish the "freedom of association," the Supreme Court declared: "It is beyond debate that freedom to engage in association for the advancement of beliefs and ideas is an inseparable aspect of the 'liberty' assured by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which embraces freedom of speech."

This case was necessitated by the efforts of white racists (with beliefs similar to neo-Nazis) to invade and control the NAACP. But now, the "liberal" student newspapers and administrators are on the side of those white racists and segregationists. They are now fighting to undo the work of the Warren Court and the NAACP. Is it possible that they have gone so far left that they are now far right?

But there is a second problem with the position of the UNC system and the Seahawk. The problem is logical, rather than historical. By saying that someone has to be paranoid to believe that anyone hostile to Christianity would ever want to join a Christian group, one is making the best possible case against the non-discrimination clause. Put simply, this is the same as saying that the policy is good because it will never actually have to be implemented. To say that the best idea is the one which has the least application to reality is to understand the source of the problem. It shows that these students are merely parroting the ideas of their professors. Professors like to keep their ideas as far removed from reality as possible.

If that statement seems far-fetched, just image the headlines these students would have to run if they actually tried to eliminate every form of discrimination, rather than merely saying that they oppose every form of discrimination:

"UNC-Wilmington Discriminates Against Whites in Student Admissions"

"UNC-Greensboro Discriminates Against Sex Offenders, Fires Convicted Pedophile"

"Study Shows Athletic Department Discriminates Against the Obese"

"Extra! Extra! Read All About it! Phi Beta Kappa May be Excluding Dummies"

"Dwarves Systematically Overlooked in Basketball Try-outs, Read Our Exclusive Story!"

"Discrimination Against the Handicapped Persists: Blind Bus Driver Fired for Failing Physical"

"Time to Protest University Use of SAT and GPA to Exclude College Applicants!"

"How Grades Discriminate Against the Drunk and Lazy"

Will university liberals ever seek a "solution" to any of these "problems"? Of course not. Today's university liberal is as apathetic about the consequences of his ideas as he is ignorant of their historical origins. But none of that matters to him. In his heart, he knows he's still right.

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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