I remember how it was -- JR
Yes, an Academic Free-Speech Conference Needed Protection from the Mob
Jumping to conclusions is sometimes a big mistake. I recently became puzzled and mildly infuriated when I read that Stanford University was going to have a conference on freedom of expression and academic freedom—but was admitting only invitees, allowing no press or other interested persons to attend. That sounded like limiting expression and dissent to me.
Then I read the news accounts further and realized that Stanford’s graduate business school was making a prudent decision.
More specifically, the school’s Classical Liberal Initiative was inviting a blue-chip group of serious scholars, entrepreneurs, and free-speech activists for what looked like a stellar conference. It aimed “to identify ways to restore academic freedom, open inquiry, and freedom of speech and expression on campus and in the larger culture.”
If the school had opened the conference to a large audience, a disruptive melee would have occurred.
The inclusion of entrepreneur Peter Thiel, coauthor of The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus, set the tone for the conference. Heavyweight scholars included, among others, Penn attorney Amy Wax, George Mason economist Tyler Cowen, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, Stanford historian Niall Ferguson and physician Jay Bhattacharya, and NYU climate scientist Steve Koonin.
Free-speech activists included Greg Lukianoff, CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression; NYU’s Jonathan Haidt, co-founder of the Heterodox Academy; and Nadine Strossen, past president of the American Civil Liberties Union. Prominent victims of successful efforts to suppress legitimate expression were there, too—for example, former Princeton classics scholar Joshua Katz and former Georgetown law professor Ilya Shapiro.
All in all, this was a group of very distinguished individuals whose only offense, as far as I could see, is that they are all outspoken and (in many cases) have views inconsistent with the dominant woke ideology dominating the tonier colleges and universities.
If the business school had decided to have the conference before a large audience in a big lecture hall or auditorium, the odds are near 100 percent that a disruptive melee would have occurred, as quasi-terrorists masquerading as “students” or “faculty” would have “canceled” the proceedings.
Opening the meeting to a larger audience in the spirit of free expression would, effectively, have prevented it from happening. Hence the decision to have an invitation-only event.
Predictably, dozens of professors protested the conference in a letter, claiming that it was “a hermetically-sealed event, safe from any and all meaningful debate ... filled with self-affirmation and self-congratulation ... where racism is given shelter and immunity.” (I wonder how participants like Niall Ferguson feel when called “racist,” particularly since he is married to a black woman, the very distinguished Ayaan Hirsi Ali.)
The protesters further argued that “this deeply cynical instrumentalization of ‘academic freedom’ to protect racist lies and other mistruths is an offense to the very concept that forms the bedrock of the university.”
The Stanford protesters presumed they should have the right to do what has been done at other campuses.
The protesters were particularly galled by the presence of Penn Law Professor Wax, who serves with me on the board of the National Association of Scholars: a formidable intellect who has multiple degrees, including an M.D. from Harvard and other degrees from Oxford, Yale, and Columbia. She frequently, and refreshingly, tells “inconvenient truths,” asserting, for example, that, on average, black students at Penn Law do less well than others, which the woke protesters (not to mention Penn Law’s dean, Ted Ruger) believe is unacceptable. Never mind that there is a literature (e.g. Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor’s Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help) highly consistent with that perspective.
The Stanford protesters presumed they should have the right to do what has been done at other campuses (e.g, the “cancellations” of Charles Murray at Middlebury College, Heather Mac Donald at Claremont McKenna, and, most recently, Ann Coulter at Cornell): namely, to disrupt proceedings and prevent speakers’ right to speak—the “my way or the highway” approach to so-called academic inquiry.
To blunt criticism of not being open to the public, the conference organizers decided to livestream the event, enabling the public to listen and, if so moved, even to put on counter events and conferences, but not to disturb the proceedings at Stanford. This seemed like an excellent solution to the problem. And Stanford administration seemed to handle the brouhaha reasonably well, a rarity among leaders of top universities these days.
That brings me to a fundamental point. Universities themselves should be viewed as places where members of an academic community gather to discuss ideas of the day. They should generally not take stands on issues. The opinion of the president of XYZ University should not be construed as representing the policy position of the institution, since universities are comprised of many individuals with diverse viewpoints, each of which should be heard. University presidents and deans should keep quiet as a rule on public policy matters.
To be sure, if Russia ordered a successful nuclear missile strike on New York City, it probably would be appropriate for university presidents to condemn the event. But it is better to err in the direction of remaining neutral than to make institutional policy pronouncements on behalf of a diverse campus community. In short, universities should be true “marketplaces of ideas,” not moral or political arbiters on issues of the day.
In a perfect world, where people showed civility and respect for spirited scholarly discourse, we could have an academic-freedom conference where perhaps one-third of the speakers were free-speech advocates; one-third took a more authoritarian, woke position, suggesting that certain ideas should not be given currency on campus on moral grounds; and one-third were persons in the middle, finding some merit in both perspectives.
Audience members could be told that they could applaud or boo in moderation, but that more aggressive disruptive behaviors designed to stifle the airing of certain perspectives would lead to arrest, dismissal from school, or other sanctions.
The problem, of course, is that, in contemporary America, we increasingly deviate from a perfect world. The rules that constrain violence and disruptive behavior are increasingly ignored; the Ten Commandments are routinely violated, not to mention our laws. The rule of law and tolerance for alternative perspectives are under attack, not only in our broader society, as evidenced by urban rioting every time a perceived injustice is created, but also in the academic villages that we call colleges and universities.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14355
*********************************************Oklahoma Decision Could Pave the Way for Religious Charter Schools Nationwide
A newly released opinion in Oklahoma could open the door to tuition-free religious schools, funded by the public, across the country.
The state’s attorney general says Oklahoma has no grounds to prohibit religious charter schools, paving the way for what could be the nation’s first Catholic charter school.
The opinion advises the Statewide Virtual Charter School Board not to enforce a prohibition against licensing religious charter schools because the “U.S. Supreme Court would likely hold these restrictions unconstitutional,” the attorney general, John O’Connor, said.
The opinion comes in response to a query from the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City, which last November told the SVCSB it intends to apply for a charter. The board then requested the opinion of the attorney general on the matter, a representative of the SVCSB said.
The executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, Brett Farley, called the opinion “a watershed moment for the school choice movement.
“It’s a major crack in the dam that ultimately we think is going to open up and allow quite a bit more access to quality education across the board, not just in Oklahoma,” Mr. Farley told the Sun.
If Mr. O’Connor’s arguments hold up in federal court, it would allow millions of religious families to send their children to religious schools — without tuition payments, like all charter schools.
Charter schools are publicly funded schools operated and maintained by private bodies — with operating licenses from the state. They educate more than 3 million students in 44 states across the union, all of which prohibit sectarian instruction.
Oklahoma’s current law requires that charter schools be “nonsectarian in … programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations.” Charter-granting institutions “may not authorize a charter school or program that is affiliated with a nonpublic sectarian school or religious institution.”
The state attorney general said both of these stipulations would likely fail to meet the “strict scrutiny” of the highest court, citing a spate of recent Supreme Court cases prohibiting discrimination against religious schools when it comes to public benefits, including, most recently, Carson v. Makin.
In Carson, the Supreme Court ruled that a Maine voucher program was unconstitutional because families could not apply funds to religious schools solely on the basis of their religious affiliation. Chief Justice Roberts described such a prohibition as “discrimination against religion” and a violation of the First Amendment.
The case for religious charter schools, the opinion noted, may be trickier than for the inclusion of religious schools in voucher programs because of charter schools’ status as public schools — with significant autonomy. Mr. O’Connor cited a decision by the riders of the Ninth Circuit that charter schools are not “state actors,” at least when it comes to employment law.
There is, however, a circuit split on the question, following a decision this past spring by the Fourth Circuit against a North Carolina charter school’s uniform policy. The question of whether charter schools are indeed state actors may be taken up by the Supreme Court if it agrees to hear an appeal on the Fourth Circuit ruling.
“The opinion does not have the force of law,” a law professor at Notre Dame, Nicole Garnett, said, but the opinion signals that the attorney general would defend the permissibility of religious charters in a lawsuit.
Ms. Garnett is a longtime advocate for the possibility of religious charters and was cited in Mr. O’Connor’s opinion.
“I think if a religious charter school is authorized anywhere, there will be a lawsuit saying it violates the Establishment Clause,” Ms. Garnett told the Sun. Many of the relevant questions, she adds, will only be established and settled through litigation.
The statute in question remains on the books, but Republican majorities in the Oklahoma legislature could overturn it if the political will exists. Members of the education committee in the state senate did not return requests for comment.
The Republican governor of the Sooner State, Kevin Stitt, praised the opinion, which he said “rightfully defends parents, education freedom, and religious liberty in Oklahoma.”
The archdiocese hopes to open a virtual charter school — joining the six charters in Oklahoma that currently offer exclusively online classroom instruction.
Archbishop Paul Coakley wrote to the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board last November. In the letter, he laid out a constitutional argument in favor of allowing religious charter schools.
“The Archdiocese is enthusiastic about sponsoring a virtual charter school to improve educational opportunities for children and families in the state,” Archbishop Coakley wrote. “Yet we cannot ignore the reality that, regrettably, the discriminatory and unlawful exclusion of religious schools remains at least formally on the books of the state’s Charter School Act.”
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‘Book ban’ angers academics amid claims University of Tasmania ‘in crisis’ due to ‘all powerful’ VC and management ‘cadre’
A war on tall bookshelves?? Bureaucracy gone mad. As you would expect of a retired academic, I have tall bookshelves at home. Am I in danger? Would I be welcome in Tasmania?
University of Tasmania academics say they have been ordered to remove books from shelves and throw away their “life’s work”, all in the name of “safer spaces”.
A parliamentary inquiry on Wednesday heard senior academics allege UTAS was in “crisis” and had “lost its direction” due to an erosion of academic influence by a rampant “management cadre”.
“What we’ve been seeing in recent times is the growth in the management level and them assuming more of a role in directing academic activities,” UTAS Emeritus Professor Stuart McLean told the Legislative Council inquiry. “As an example, an edict came around recently that books were to be removed from shelves in … academic offices.”
Outside the inquiry, several academics confirmed to The Australian they had been ordered to remove books above shoulder-height, as well as all records that will not be used in the next year.
“You can’t have anything left in the office – it is deeply puzzling, and quite bizarre,” said one academic, on condition of anonymity. “Most academic offices are lined with books … and dumping much of your life’s work in the bin is hard to do.”
Academics said some had dodged the safety auditors, retaining ceiling-high books; others had been allowed to keep some above shoulder-height as long as they had an “industrially-rated step ladder”.
UTAS safety and wellbeing director Chris Arnold said any actions were about “keeping our people safe”. “Throughout 2020 and 2021, we ran a series of safety-focused clean-up days in all areas of the university, which resulted in cleaner, safer spaces for our staff and students,” Mr Arnold said.
“Some of the advice we provided included ensuring workspaces were not cluttered in ways that inhibited access or created fire and trip hazards, and that heavy items – like large books or boxes of equipment and items like glass sample slides – were not kept on shelves above shoulder height.”
The LegCo is inquiring into UTAS’ governance under state law, with peak bodies hoping it will lead to a model to restore academic freedom at universities nationally.
Senior academics are pushing for an increase in elected academic representation on key bodies.
Distinguished Professor Jamie Kirkpatrick told the inquiry even UTAS’ academic senate, of which he was until recently a member, was dominated by managers.
“So the majority of people on the academic senate are in upper level management positions and a minority are elected from the academics,” Professor Kirkpatrick told the inquiry.
“It’s not really giving an academic perspective on the courses and on the teaching programs. It’s a perspective that’s dominated by the people who are managing the university.”
Distinguished Professor Jeff Malpas told the inquiry UTAS was “in crisis” and “looking like a third or fourth rate” institution, due to the “McKinsey-ite” management model of Vice Chancellor Rufus Black.
“The governance structure has fallen into complete decay as a result of a centralised approach that concentrates effectively all power in the VC – and that’s a sure-fire recipe for disaster,” Professor Malpas said.
Former UTAS chancellor Michael Field has defended the current UTAS council as having the “right balance” and dismissed the reform push as a “harking back” by “retired academics”.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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