Comment Re:What a change (Score 1) 685
Academia, believe it or not, is the bastion of free speech...
One might guess that you are not talking about US universities given that many have their own censorship with explicit and implicit codes from the day they review your application for either employment or to study to the day you leave. Can you write about your truly unpopular beliefs in the "Tell us about yourself" essay section and be admitted or employed? Probably not. A recent discussion (Charlie Rose) of law and admission academics over a recent SC decision demonstrated how important they thought it was to make a class that fit well with their world views. That probably does preclude Nazis, Radical Rightists, Extreme Radical Leftists, Pediphiles, etc. Further, even if they do get in, the level of censorship at many universities is higher than even that practised at gov. offices. The ability to use slurs, racial, ethnic, gender-based, whatever is vogue to protect these days, can get you suspended or expelled. Is that free speech? Class projects, papers, works in general, are all judged by academians that can call your subjective opinion wrong if it is not the same as theirs. A chilling effect or not?
And being an employee is even worse, there are morality clauses, conduct clauses, etc. that can be and often are, inserted into contracts. Assuming you even get the interview, read the Rightists like Horowitz on how universities have chilled out conservative opinion by peer review in hiring. If your peers think you have the wrong political slant then you are wrong for the job. I haven't investigated his specific claims but frankly, having grown up around and in university faculty I would say they are not improbable. Academia, in my experience, is not about the pursuit of truth, generally speaking, anymore (if it ever was) and is now more about politics and political agendas. Education is a tool to control the political process.
Finally, for all of you who don't think about these things, let me ask you, who do you think gets published these days? In soft sciences are you more likely to get published by adding to someone else's work or by promoting a new and controversial theory? I say soft sciences because I think the burden of proof is lower but it can apply to either. I think that it is the controversial theory that gets the ink. Which might seem like it is a good argument for free speech but actually only undermines academic credibility because even then there are controversies you can talk about and those you can't. Is there ever going to be a paper on how older men marrying their adopted daughters is a good thing (a la Woody Allen)? Probably not, because even if it were true, it would be politically wrong to admit it. The last article I read in Science mag went to great lengths to distance itself from humans when discussing the viable propigation strategies used in primate rape (species bound in case you were thinking about being perverse). What should have been a science paper had gone through the chilling effect and was now politicized into a moral tale. We were no longer being told what was discovered via science we were also being told what the moral implications were. If the non-science part is now required to get published we can still call it speech but is that free speech? And if academia is all about publish or perish, well, draw your own conclusions but I would say there is less freedom there than in most afternoon talk shows where guests are appealing to the public and not their peers and, such as it is, industry.
One might guess that you are not talking about US universities given that many have their own censorship with explicit and implicit codes from the day they review your application for either employment or to study to the day you leave. Can you write about your truly unpopular beliefs in the "Tell us about yourself" essay section and be admitted or employed? Probably not. A recent discussion (Charlie Rose) of law and admission academics over a recent SC decision demonstrated how important they thought it was to make a class that fit well with their world views. That probably does preclude Nazis, Radical Rightists, Extreme Radical Leftists, Pediphiles, etc. Further, even if they do get in, the level of censorship at many universities is higher than even that practised at gov. offices. The ability to use slurs, racial, ethnic, gender-based, whatever is vogue to protect these days, can get you suspended or expelled. Is that free speech? Class projects, papers, works in general, are all judged by academians that can call your subjective opinion wrong if it is not the same as theirs. A chilling effect or not?
And being an employee is even worse, there are morality clauses, conduct clauses, etc. that can be and often are, inserted into contracts. Assuming you even get the interview, read the Rightists like Horowitz on how universities have chilled out conservative opinion by peer review in hiring. If your peers think you have the wrong political slant then you are wrong for the job. I haven't investigated his specific claims but frankly, having grown up around and in university faculty I would say they are not improbable. Academia, in my experience, is not about the pursuit of truth, generally speaking, anymore (if it ever was) and is now more about politics and political agendas. Education is a tool to control the political process.
Finally, for all of you who don't think about these things, let me ask you, who do you think gets published these days? In soft sciences are you more likely to get published by adding to someone else's work or by promoting a new and controversial theory? I say soft sciences because I think the burden of proof is lower but it can apply to either. I think that it is the controversial theory that gets the ink. Which might seem like it is a good argument for free speech but actually only undermines academic credibility because even then there are controversies you can talk about and those you can't. Is there ever going to be a paper on how older men marrying their adopted daughters is a good thing (a la Woody Allen)? Probably not, because even if it were true, it would be politically wrong to admit it. The last article I read in Science mag went to great lengths to distance itself from humans when discussing the viable propigation strategies used in primate rape (species bound in case you were thinking about being perverse). What should have been a science paper had gone through the chilling effect and was now politicized into a moral tale. We were no longer being told what was discovered via science we were also being told what the moral implications were. If the non-science part is now required to get published we can still call it speech but is that free speech? And if academia is all about publish or perish, well, draw your own conclusions but I would say there is less freedom there than in most afternoon talk shows where guests are appealing to the public and not their peers and, such as it is, industry.
