Yesterday, we discussed the effort to remove one of the country’s most distinguished economists from his position because Harald Uhlig, the senior editor of the Journal of Political Economy, criticized Black Lives Matter and the Defund The Police movement. Now, Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson is reportedly facing demands that he be fired because he wrote a blog about the Black Lives Matter movement. Jacobson is the founder of the conservative website Legal Insurrection. My concerns were magnified by a letter from his colleagues that would label virtually any criticism of BLM or the protests as presumptively racist. The letter is a chilling reminder of the rapid loss of free speech values on campuses around the United States.
Twenty-one colleagues at Cornell signed a June 9, a letter denouncing unnamed “commentators… attached to Ivy League Institutions” as calls were made to the Dean to have Jacobson fired. The professors lashed out against academic commentators who criticize the looting as effectively racists:
“These commentators express rage over the sporadic looting that has taken place amidst the largely peaceful protests, calling for organized manhunts to track down those responsible. Theirs is a form of racism that gives cover to those police who use their batons and tear gas and rubber bullets and fists to silence and maim their critics.
These commentators are the defenders of institutionalized racism and violence. They are entitled to their viewpoints. We do not name them, so as to deprive them of a larger platform for their racist speech.”
The letter is signed by a huge number of clinicians (Professors Zohra Ahmed, Sandra Babcock, Briana Beltran, Celia Bigoness, John Blume, Elizabeth Brundige, Angela Cornell, Sujata Gibson, Mark H. Jackson, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Jaclyn Kelley-Widmer, Cortelyou Kenney, Sital Kalantry, Ian M. Kysel, Mallory J. Livingston, Delphine Lourtau, Beth Lyon, Estelle McKee, Keir Weyble, Carlton E. Williams, and Stephen Yale-Loehr).
Not a word about academic freedom or free of speech; not a suggestion that critics of these protests could have anything other than racist motivations. It is the antipathy of the intellectual foundations for higher education. Rather than address the merits of arguments, you attack those with opposing views personally and viciously. That has become a standard approach to critics on our campuses. Unless you agree with the actions of the movement, you are per se racist. It is a mantra that is all too familiar historically: if you are not part of the resistance, you are reactionary … or, in this period, racist.
It is rather bizarre that these professors would focus on “commentators attached to Ivy League Institutions.” First, it confines the objection to Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Yale University. Second, it is strikingly elitist. It would suggest that somehow these schools are the only important measure — or at least those schools matter the most. From anything other than an elitist (even privileged) perspective, the focus on ivy league schools exclusively is far from self-evident since most of those schools are ranked behind non-Ivy League schools in U.S. News & World Report, including Cornell which is ranked 17th among universities. Finally, it suggests that the presence of conservative (which they seem to view as synonymous with racist) scholars have no place at such schools. That last point is unfortunately the view of many faculty at top schools which are overwhelmingly if not exclusively liberal.
The professors, of course, have every right to to denounce writers for what they believe are racist elements or messaging in their writings. However, they specifically go after scholars who they believe defend “institutionalized racism and violence” and “express rage over the sporadic looting that has taken place.” That would encompass what they describe as seemingly “informed commentary” supporting institutions of a racist society. It is an all-too-familiar attack on campuses against speakers and academics. What is most striking for me is the inclusion of Professors Mark H. Jackson and Cortelyou Kenney, who teach in the Cornell First Amendment Clinic. They are in fact the Director and Associate Director of the First Amendment Clinic, which is presumably committed to the value of free speech even at private institutions. So these professors teach free speech and just signed a letter that people who question the BLM movement or denounce the looting are per se or at least presumptive racists. It is reflection of how free speech is being redefined to exclude protections with those who hold opposing views.
Jacobson wrote two posts he wrote about the Black Lives Matter movement, including one the “hands up don’t shoot” mantra and another on what he viewed as the movement’s destructive politics.
The language is sweeping and insulting of the BLM movement:
“The goal is to destroy capitalism, and to seek revenge. The Black Lives Matter movement, founded based on fraudulent narratives of the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases, is led by anti-American, anti-capitalist activists. They have concocted a false narrative of mass murder of Blacks at the hands of police, when the statistics show otherwise. They will exploit George Floyd’s death mercilessly to drive that agenda. And they will have some success, because all the institutions listed above are behind them.”
I am unfamiliar with Jacobson’s writings. Once again, however, the merits of such arguments are immaterial. What is disturbing is the effort to silence Jacobson because he holds such opposing views. This letter coincides with what Jacobson says is an effort to get him fired. That would not be unexpected. Conservative and libertarian academics are increasingly being subject to discipline or harassed by their Administrations in the hope of getting them to leave faculties. Moreover, many in the BLM movement use equally inflammatory language but are rarely called out by Administrators, students, or faculty. Why cannot both views we treated as enriching the debate on a campus, allowing sharply different values to be heard in a pluralistic academic environment?
A petition of Cornell alumni calls for Jacobson to be fired (specifically, “to end its association with Professor Jacobson and publicly condemn [his] views.”). The petition begins with the objection that Jacobson has “written frequently and critically of Black Lives Matter on his blog and, more recently, has written a number of articles concerning the murder of George Floyd and the ensuing protests.” The school has indeed condemned his view and the clinical letter pledges to pursue all those engaging in commentary deemed as advancing unacceptable views or ends.
The message for other faculty by these Cornell clinicians is both clear and intimidating. Disagree with the BLM movement or the protests and you will be labeled a racist. Indeed, the letter ends on a menacing note: “And we will continue to expose and respond to racism masquerading as informed commentary.” Thus, if you attempt “informed commentary” on the costs of looting and the need for great law enforcement, you are a per se racist.
I have previously discussed how college protesters are increasingly denouncing free speech and the foundations for liberal democracies. Some protesters reject classic liberalism and the belief in free speech as part of the oppression on campus. We have been discussing the rising intolerance and violence on college campuses, particularly against conservative speakers. (here and here and here and here). Berkeley has been the focus of much concern over mob rule on our campuses as violent protesters have succeeded in silencing speakers, even including a few speakers like an ACLU official. Both students and some faculty have maintained the position that they have a right to silence those with whom they disagree and even student newspapers have declared opposing speech to be outside of the protections of free speech. At another University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. In the meantime, academics and deans have said that there is no free speech protection for offensive or “disingenuous” speech. CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,” Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech.
The recent protests have served as a catalyst for the rising intolerance on our campus. There is an enforced orthodoxy that is captured in the Cornell letter. These letters are successful in creating a chilling effect on academics who are intimidated by these threats. To be labelled as a racist is devastating to an academic career and these professors know that. Now, even “informed commentary” will be denounced as racist if a professor raises a dissenting view. It is not just the death of free speech but our intellectual mission on university and college campuses.
How is Critical Race Theory not being shown/reported as the ideology that underlies BLM, the riots, and the upheaval? We need to stop calling it Social Justice or Systemic Racism, or White Privilege or Woke. These are just linguistic tricks that mask what it really is and what is really going on. It’s is an overarching philosophy (being force fed as fact) called Critical Race Theory. It has nothing to do with, nor is it remotely similar to traditional leftist political beliefs.
SJW’s and BLM are all followers of Critical Race Theory. This is the root of all the turmoil. You are describing the results but never explaining why. This turmoil is the result of 3 decades of radical professors teaching the vile racist ideology of Critical Race Theory to vulnerable impressionable young students. How else could the most privileged young people in the history of the world be claiming they are oppressed. They are nothing more than CRT indoctrinated students and bandwagon influencers.
The definition of BLM to me is: – Black Lives Matter = Black Lives Matter. I agree with this.
The definition of BLM to the founders of BLM is: – Black Lives Matter = Critical Race Theory. I don’t agree with Critical Race Theory. The entire theory is literally the definition of racism.
Please write a detailed article about this. People over 30 have never heard of it. They think these are typical Marxists or Socialists. They aren’t. I sincerely believe once Americans find out how this postmodernist offshoot called Critical Race Theory is creating an entire new generation of brainwashed Racists they will push back. Learning this was my light-bulb moment.
Call it – The Black Lives Matter Movement aka The Critical Race Theory Movement
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/06/reasons-critical-race-theory-terrible-dealing-racism/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IKpU6lyZKws
#ExposeCriticalRaceTheory
Your list of the “clinical professors” shows how the academia in The States has become so diluted. In European Universities they would have no standing whatsoever. One should not expect them to utter any pearls of wisdom.
I suggest you compare the number of British universities today with the number there were in 1965, compare the institutional purpose as manifest in course offerings then and now, and compare the share of each birth cohort they capture for a time, then and now (and compared to American higher education, then and now). You might also look at how European universities compare to their American counterparts on international rankings. I’ll give them a couple of points: the extensive use of impersonal examinations, blindly graded, and the lack of distribution requirements.
The ranking system for universities is usually based on the research level. BUT many so called “professors ” in the US system would only be junior lecturers in the European system, and would soon disappear from the scene. The top senior professors in the US system are completely on par with the European system. The ones who the esteemed JT mentions are completely irrelevant amd thier education is sorely laking.
Depends on the field. US professors in STEM are typically better than those in Europe for the simple reason that the salaries are much higher. (This goes for Canada too, which tends to match US salaries). There are, of course, excellent professors in Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Japan, and other countries, but on average the talent gravitates towards higher salaries and sources of funding/grants.
Whether they are good teachers is another matter, and whether this holds of more subjective areas like gender studies is questionable.
Bumper sticker: Their violence is ‘speech’. Our speech is ‘violence’.
1950s: You are either with us, or you are with the communists.
2000s: You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists.
2020s: You are either with us, or you are with the racists.
What, no ANTIFA? I expect nothing less than 10 references please.
Darren Smith, could you kindly look into just why Squeeky Fromm cannot post on the blog just now? I suppose that it is some sort of glitch.
Thank you.
Dr. Benson, I presume?
How are you doing? Long time no talk. I see you pop up from time to time in various places. Small world.
OneWhiteEye! Long time.
I am passable, but certainly noticing that I am pushing 80.
Peace be with you.
And peace to you. I wish you many more comfortable and vigorous years!
May be her racist comments had her banned? Or she is gone to Kenya to look for the birth certificate.
Perhaps the intolerance and attempts to intimidate and silence different voices and views, is less about injustice than fear that these voices, once heard, are persuasive, even compelling.
I’m also really looking forward to Prof. Turley’s thoughts on the abjectly illiberal “Silence=Violence” bumper sticker.
Love to see careers destroyed by defending a racist like William Jacobson.
History will not erase your racist screeds. Not ever.
What makes you think William Jacobson is a racist. That he disagrees with you? The First Amendment is very clear about the right to free speech. Keep in mind as you threaten Mr. Jacobson’s right to free speech by threatening his employment, that one day the shoe could be on the other foot. Your views may fall out of favor, and it is your employment that could be threatened. Free speech benefits all. We get to hear both sides and make a decision. To squelch one side, left or right, is the path to dictatorship. or perhaps that is the path you prefer. As long as you get to be the dictator.
And I can assure you that he is not worried about history erasing his comments.
First Amendment does not apply to private institutions. Go start your own institutions if you want and then start your racists screeds.
Vlad, Glad to see you reveal yourself to be the good communist apparatchik that you are. Like good communists everywhere, no one is allowed to hold an opinion different than yours, and if they do, evidently they should be appropriately punished by losing their job. When do you plan to start the re-education camps, like the Soviets, Chinese, NK, etc?
Universities use to be places where different points of view could be freely explored and debated, but you seem quite content for Universities to now be places of indoctrination.
Just out of curiosity, exactly what was racist about my comment? Specifically, what makes you think William Jacobson is racist?
Can you engage with Jacobson’s points? Or are you only able to try to defuse then by personal insults?
A hint: calling someone a “racist” (or a “sexist” or “four-eyes”) doesn’t address the content of her argument at all; it just reveals the weakness of yours.
Apparently not, the individual in question scurried away without providing a single argument. Such is the state of ‘education’ these days, it’s a wonder that anyone still cares about it.
Actually, the first amendment applies specifically to all institutions of higher education (and public education too) in the concept of tenure. This allows for the free exchange of ideas, both popular and especially not popular, without fear of retribution from administrators who might disagree with the views of an educator. It’s a shame so many so-called educators have forgotten the history of the free speech movement in the ’60s when the shoe was on the other foot with the conservatives trying to silence the left-leaning liberals. If universities won’t protect the free exchange of ideas, they have abandoned their role of education in favor of indoctrination and might as well shut down, because students won’t actually be challenged to think for themselves.
You don’t get the professoriate. Half of them are high school mean girls and the other half are capons who let the mean girls have their way.
What, precisely, did Jacobson say that you disagree with or find inaccurate?
You’re race card has been rejected. Please try another ad hominum attack.
I’m glad to see Prof. Turley’s commentary on yet another attempt to shut down debate through public shaming and threats against people’s livelihoods. On the one hand, I am especially glad to see such commentary coming from the Left side of the political spectrum, suggesting that the country isn’t yet completely irredeemable. But on the other hand, I wish he’d acknowledge (maybe even *point out*!) that these attacks on and infringements of Constitutional rights uniformly *come from* the Left side of the spectrum these days.
That side takes those rights for granted, as it should, but only for its own adherents. Meanwhile it enumerates a bunch of other “rights” (free health care, free housing, free college) and weirdly declares that anyone who fails to acknowledge those *new* entitlement proposals as *rights* is not deserving – not DESERVING! – of their actual Constitutional rights, on the basis of their retrograde ideas. Prof. Turley cannot have missed this pattern. Obviously he recognizes the danger of it – otherwise he wouldn’t comment in such forceful terms against it, knowing that his own side is going to push back against him. Yet he stays on the Left.
I suppose I’m glad of that too, a little, since it means that maybe someone on the Left will actually read what he says, think about it, realize he’s correct, and consider changing allegiances from the side that uses the word “rights” when it means “entitlements” to the side that doesn’t try to curtail speech even when we absolutely despise what’s being said. Since today’s vocal Left is so hyped on thinking and saying the appropriate and non-problematic things, it’s a foregone conclusion that if Prof. Turley himself changed sides, he’d lose all influence over them (instead of just losing most of it by dint of sometimes standing up to his side’s arbiters of problematic-ness).
” these attacks on and infringements of Constitutional rights uniformly *come from* the Left side of the spectrum these days.”
It’s fairly simple. The left is in power these days, particularly the ‘new left’ that focuses on race, culture, sexuality, etc. Oddly enough the old left that focused on class and economic disparities is completely missing, and I would argue that’s by design. The new left works hand in hand with major corporations, elite wall street bankers, and international financiers, with nary a hint of any concern for economic disparities. As long as Nike or Monsanto approve of gender neutral bathrooms, the looting of middle America by Wall Street and the abuse of the patent system by Monsanto are perfectly fine.
The left was all for free speech when they were dissidents and the dominant culture in the USA was white and Christian. Now that the culture is dominated by left wing Jews (who are completely dominant in academia, particularly at places like Yale), free speech is now a form of hate.
And now the Fed has jumped on the bandwagon. Uhlig didn’t say anything “racist” in criticizing “Defund Police” as a bridge too far.
“One Flew Over the Cuckoo‘s Nest,”
How did patriots allow komrades to take over the Ed system ?
President Trump’s first act on reelection is to eliminate all federal funding of non-STEM higher education. If they want to support these bilious leftists, let them do so with something other than MY tax money.
STEM is also getting influenced by grievance studies. Did you miss “Shut down STEM” 2 days ago?
Privatize universities. Defund them COMPLETELY. Let the departments fight each other over earnings when people pay them out of their pocket for something that’s actually valuable.
This is exactly why progressives want free college tuition. Colleges have become a witches brew of indoctrination and brainwashing that is fundamentally warping the current college generation. To be sure, some superstar conservatives are squeaking through but they are increasing being marginalized by the mob.
Just Making Stuff Up.
No, the utter domination of the left wing in colleges has been documented in peer reviewed studies and in non-peer reviewed surveys (e.g., Pew). Most college faculties vote left to the tune of 90%+, which is abominable given that the general population is not skewed to that degree.
Why should non-left wingers be forced to support state colleges through taxation when those colleges try to purge anyone with non-left wing views from employment (whether faculty, adjuncts, administrators or even grad students)?