In “The Indispensable Right,” I discuss how academics are now leading an anti-free speech movement on campuses that challenges the centrality (or even the necessity) of free speech protections in higher education. The latest such argument appeared this month in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Two Arizona State University professors — Richard Amesbury and Catherine O’Donnell — wrote that free speech concerns yield too much to the “right wing” and that free speech should not be given the protection currently afforded by universities and colleges. Indeed, they argue that free speech may be harming higher education by fostering “unworthy” ideas.
Amesbury teaches religious studies and O’Donnell teaches history at ASU. They wrote an article titled “Dear Administrators: Enough with the Free Speech Rhetoric! It Concedes Too Much to the Right-Wing Agenda.”
The two academics challenge the long-held view of the centrality of free speech and intellectual diversity to higher education. Notably, many of us have been alarmed by the erosion of both values on our campuses, but Amesbury and O’Donnell seem to worry that there is still too much protection for opposing views. Worse yet, they suggest that the free speech objections are often part of a right-wing funded agenda.
In fairness, to the two professors, they do not reject the overall value of free speech and refer to free speech as among the important values to be balanced in the academic setting. While referring to free speech as “essential,” we clearly differ on what that means. They are less supportive of intellectual diversity.
The authors challenge “the assumptions that free speech is a cardinal virtue of higher education, and that colleges should aspire to a diversity of opinions.” They insist that higher education is about finding truth and that means that false ideas are inimical to our mission as educators. Indeed, they question the need for “intellectual diversity”:
Our contention is that calls for greater freedom of speech on campuses, however well-intentioned, risk undermining colleges’ central purpose, namely, the production of expert knowledge and understanding, in the sense of disciplinarily warranted opinion. Expertise requires freedom of speech, but it is the result of a process of winnowing and refinement that is premised on the understanding that not all opinions are equally valid. Efforts to “democratize” opinion are antithetical to the role colleges play in educating the public and informing democratic debate. We urge administrators toward caution before uncritically endorsing calls for intellectual diversity in place of academic expertise…
A diversity of opinion — “intellectual diversity” — isn’t itself the goal; rather, it is of value only insofar as it serves the goal of producing knowledge. On most unanswered questions, there is, at least initially, a range of plausible opinions, but answering questions requires the vetting of opinions. As some opinions are found wanting, the range of opinion deserving of continued consideration narrows.
We have already seen faculties purged of conservative and libertarian colleagues. We previously discussed how surveys at universities show a virtual purging of conservative and Republican faculty members. For example, last year, the Harvard Crimson noted that the university had virtually eliminated Republicans from most departments but that the lack of diversity was not a problem. Now, a new survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson shows that more than three-quarters of Harvard Arts and Sciences and School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty respondents identify as “liberal” or “very liberal.” Only 2.5% identified as “conservative,” and only 0.4% as “very conservative.”
Likewise, a study by Georgetown University’s Kevin Tobia and MIT’s Eric Martinez found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools. Notably, a 2017 study found 15 percent of faculties were conservative. Another study found that 33 out of 65 departments lacked a single conservative faculty member.
Compare that to a recent Gallup poll stating, “roughly equal proportions of U.S. adults identified as conservative (36%) and moderate (35%) in Gallup polling throughout 2022, while about a quarter identified as liberal (26%).”
Even with this purging of departments, Amesbury and O’Donnell still worry that intellectual diversity could be maintained as a goal in higher education. They are not alone in this view. As we have previously discussed, some professors reject the notion that campuses should protect the free speech rights of those who are . . . well . . . wrong.
For example, after many of us expressed disgust at the treatment of a federal judge shouted down by Stanford law students, Professor Jennifer Ruth wrote a column in the Chronicle of Higher Education heralding their actions. It is an extension of her book It’s Not Free Speech: Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom (with Penn State Music Professor Michael Bérubé) declaring certain views as advancing “theories of white supremacy” and thus having “no intellectual legitimacy whatsoever.” Once declared as harmful, it is no longer free speech and therefore worthy of censorship or cancellation. It is that easy.
These academics reject the long-held view that higher education rests on the preservation of intellectual diversity, as discussed in the famous Kalven Report.
In 1967, the University of Chicago assembled a committee to study academic freedom and free speech that would become one of the most important projects in modern higher education. It became known as the “Kalven Committee” after its chair, the great law scholar Harry Kalven, Jr. The report contained an eloquent and profound defense of diversity of thought and expression that seems utterly abandoned by many today. It was cited by the Stanford Law Dean in her letter to the law students and stated in part:
“From time to time instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.”
Amesbury and O’Donnell reject the precept that departments should foster intellectual diversity since “accepting this role for the humanities and social sciences, however, means that their faculties risk losing the ability to judge any ideas (or proposed curricula or public programming) unworthy of sponsorship.”
It is a rationalization for the current echo chamber of higher education. Of course, many of these academics would be outraged if conservatives were to take hold of faculties and start to exclude their views as “unworthy.” Indeed, that was once the response to far left professors like critical legal scholars and socialists. Now, however, the left has control of these departments and has declared opposing views to be unworthy of protection.
One can certainly understand the appeal of this argument to many faculty and publications like the Journal of Higher Education. By simply declaring opposing views “unworthy” or wrong, you relieve yourself of any obligation to allow such opposing views on faculties or in publications.
We saw the impact of this orthodoxy during the pandemic.
For example, the media, academic departments, and government agencies allied to treat anyone raising a lab theory as one of three possibilities: conspiracy theorist or racists or racist conspiracy theorists. Academics joined this chorus in marginalizing anyone raising the theory. One study cited the theory as an example of “anti-Chinese racism” and “toxic white masculinity.”
As late as May 2021, the New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory as “racist.” Conversely, one former New York Times science editor Nicholas Wade chastised his former colleagues for ignoring the obvious evidence supporting a lab theory as well as Chinese efforts to arrest scientists and destroy evidence that could establish the origin.
Others in academia quickly joined the bandwagon to assure the public that there is no scientific basis for their theory, leaving only racism or politics as the motivation behind the theory. In early 2020, with little available evidence, two op-eds in The Lancet in February and Nature Medicine went all-in on the denial front.
The Lancet op-ed stated, “We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that Covid-19 does not have a natural origin.”
No reference to the lab theory was to be tolerated. When Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) merely mentioned the possibility in 2020, he was set upon by the usual flash media mob. The Washington Post ridiculed him for repeating a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.”
In September 2020, Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a virologist and former postdoctoral fellow at the University of Hong Kong, dared to repeat the theory on Fox News, saying, “I can present solid scientific evidence . . . [that] it is a man-made virus created in the lab.” The left-leaning PolitiFact slammed her and gave her a “pants on fire rating.”
Academics were stripped of their positions on leading boards and suspended from social media, including professors who co-authored the Great Barrington Declaration. The Declaration advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now recognizing the basis for those views and questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdowns as well as the efficacy of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Federal agencies now accept the lab origin theory. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a couple years ago and their views were deemed “unworthy” by many for schools or publications.
The problem with rejecting or devaluing intellectual diversity in higher education is that it fosters orthodoxy and ignorance. Rejecting opposing views certainly can advance careers. There are more opportunities for the compliant or the orthodox. Professors face less challenge or contradiction in their own writings. Promotions, speaking engagements, and publishing opportunities are certainly enhanced with the elimination of colleagues with opposing views.
However, the result is the gradual death of higher education. It is evident in the rising intolerance shown on our campuses for opposing views and increasing demands for censorship and blacklisting. It is the triumph of the majority, but it looks more like an academic mob. Once all of the “unworthy” thoughts and faculty are purged, what is left appears more like indoctrination than education.
Update:
Professor O’Donnell has responded to this column and I appreciate her willingness engage us on the blog. I would that all of our readers will show the same civility and respect as does Professor O’Donnell. I also wanted to share a response to her arguments.
Here is her comment:
“I appreciate your attention to the piece Richard and I recently wrote. Our argument is not that free speech is unimportant. Nor do we argue against a diversity of ideas. And we certainly never suggest that ideas should go unquestioned: to the contrary, we make the same point that you do, which is that ideas must face scrutiny, competition, and skepticism if knowledge is to advance. Our argument is two-fold. First, that universities should have a more modest sense of their role in society. Free speech is important, we argue, for a vibrant public sphere. The distinguishing value of higher education, however, is academic freedom – the freedom to participate without hindrance in the disciplinary processes by means of which knowledge can be sifted from mere opinion.
This means that rather than seeking to be an all-encompassing speech forum, universities should instead embrace their limited role as places of scholarship, learning, and teaching, with the pursuit of truth at their core. Second, we argue that “free speech” and “intellectual diversity” – exactly because one is so easily chastised for questioning them – have become gates through which unexamined orthodoxies, buoyed by government or donor influence, enter universities and take root. Imperfect as academia is, we’ve found that our critics come up with examples of how, when disciplinary processes are pursued, knowledge does advance. You observed that legal theories that were once absent from academia entered the mainstream; new legal theories will emerge to displace those now at center stage if disciplines undertake their role of questioning and vetting. That displacement can’t happen if their adherents can simply appeal to “intellectual diversity” for their protection. Another critic pointed out that eugenics was once important to some university departments. Precisely, we say. Scholarship informed by the tragic moral understanding that followed WWII, eventually displaced eugenic pseudoscience. Eugenics could now be reinserted into universities under the banner of free speech or intellectual diversity. We can all surely agree that this is not desirable. And if we agree to that, perhaps we can move past the assertion that the mere invocation of free speech and intellectual diversity must always capture the moral and intellectual high ground.”
I must confess that I remain skeptical. Professor O’Donnell explains that “[t]his means that rather than seeking to be an all-encompassing speech forum, universities should instead embrace their limited role as places of scholarship, learning, and teaching, with the pursuit of truth at their core.”
This is a common defense against academic diversity. No one is seriously questioning the role of universities as places of scholarship or learning. The issue is the dramatic reduction of conservative, libertarian, or even dissenting faculty at many schools. While raising such concerns can be dismissed as “a right-wing agenda,” there are a host of polls and surveys showing students and faculty are reporting a lack of tolerance or diversity of thought in classrooms. When these concerns are raised, the mantra is that we have not hired conservative or libertarian scholars because their views lack merit or intellectual vigor.
For example, Above the Law Senior Editor Joe Patrice defended “predominantly liberal faculties” and argued that hiring a conservative professor is akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism to teach.
Professor O’Donnell also notes that “we argue that ‘free speech’ and ‘intellectual diversity’ … have become gates through which unexamined orthodoxies, buoyed by government or donor influence, enter universities and take root.” The dominance of the left found in these surveys is not due to “unexamined orthodoxies.” It is due to the dismissal of opposing views as “unworthy” and not “intellectually rigorous.” That rationale has been used to purge faculties of most conservatives. Most faculties run from the left to the far left. There is no explanation other than to claim that no sufficiently qualified conservative, libertarian, or dissenting candidates applied. Years go by for many schools without a single qualified candidate with conservative or dissenting views on major issues. In the meantime, states are expected to continue to fund schools that often exclude the values and views of the majority of the taxpayers.
The disconnect defies logic. For example, half of the judges and roughly half of the populace hold fairly conservative views on constitutional issues. Half of Congress hold such views. However, only a small percentage of conservative faculty (if any) can be found at most law schools. That is not due to these views being “unexamined.” Likewise, it is relatively rare to have opposing views on gender identity, climate control, abortion, social justice issues found on many campuses. Indeed, faculty with such views have been subject to cancel campaigns and university investigations.
Professor O’Donnell adds that “You observed that legal theories that were once absent from academia entered the mainstream; new legal theories will emerge to displace those now at center stage if disciplines undertake their role of questioning and vetting.” However, this blog is full of accounts of dissenting faculty being removed from publications, societies, and faculties. The political orthodoxy that has taken hold of our campuses has made it far less likely that such views can be fairly presented.
None of this is, as claimed, is offered to use of free speech or intellectual diversity to push a “right-wing agenda.” These are questions that have long been raised and remain, even after this column, unanswered.
Second update:
I was distressed to hear from the authors that they have been subject to hateful messages. While other sites also covered this story, I hope that our discussion has not fueled such disgraceful conduct. This is a free speech forum that values a diversity of opinions, including those of these authors who are thoughtful academics. I have been the subject of threats against myself and my family for years. I would not want to contribute to such attacks against others. This column is discussing a fundamental debate on the essential elements to higher education. It is a worthy debate to have in a civil and respectful manner. For those who use this as a license to vent their rage, this is not the blog for you.
Dear Administrators: Enough with the Free Speech Rhetoric! It Concedes Too Much to the Right-Wing Agenda.”
Catherine O’Donnell has written, according to her CV, on luminaries such as Archbishop John Carroll and Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton. Abp Carroll was a Jesuit, was the first Catholic bishop in America for the first Catholic diocese in America (Baltimore – Boston – Philly- NY), founded Georgetown University and ran in the same circles as members of the early Continental Congress considering his cousin was a delegate. Abp. Carroll and Ben Franklin were peers.
It is surreal that O’Donnell, a PhD level historian, would demonstrate such polemics considering Abp John Carroll and St Elizabeth Ann Seton all encountered visceral polemics precisely because they were staunch Catholics, aka “right wing” in today’s political polarization.
Then I read a piece by O’Donnell on St Elizabeth Ann Seton that explained her deep animus towards people different from her, nay her animus towards God. To wit,
Guest Post: Elizabeth Seton and Me: Or, How I Almost Wrote a Book about a Saint Without Mentioning God
But Seton’s raw need for a sense of God’s presence? Her belief that loving God taught her the skill of loving others? Only after more than a year of drafting did I begin to write about those things. One reason I finally did so was that Sisters’ and Daughters’ generations of social labor were clearly animated by Seton’s spirituality; unless I wrote about Seton’s experience of faith, I could not write meaningfully about the institutions she created. There was a starker reason I at last wrote what a friend of mine calls “the God-y bits”: they were in the sources. Reading letters and journals, holding delicate, two-hundred-year-old sketches up to the light, going through financial receipts from the sisterhood at Emmitsburg, I saw a life and a world that was incomprehensible if I refused to explore Seton’s complicated and passionate relationship with God. As an historian I feared writing about the experience and texture of faith. As an historian, I had to.
https://earlyamericanists.com/2018/09/07/guest-post-elizabeth-seton-and-me-or-how-i-almost-wrote-a-book-about-a-saint-without-mentioning-god/
My Jesuit high school teachers and college professors entertained all types of input from students and also from atheist visiting speakers, even if the Early Church Fathers, Saint Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas et al, had proven the existence of God.
Shame on you O’Donnell. You really do not understand history nor for that matter your professed CV subject matter of St Elizabeth Ann Seton, Abp. Carroll nor the Jesuits.
Hello, Mr. Estovir. I appreciate that you admire some of the same people I do, and it sounds like your knowledge runs deeper than mine in some regards. I just want to make one thing clear. In the passage you quote, I was explaining that I hesitated to write about Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton’s faith not because I thought it was unimportant, but because I had some imperfect sense of just how important it was. My own skills are just as an historian, not as a spiritual person, and I also had enormous respect for the people who kept Seton’s archive and who were and are also motivated by faith. It’s impossible to express how humbling that is and how much I hesitated to describe this kind of faith. But, as I wrote, her life makes no sense without her faith and so I eventually did the best I could.
I hope you feel free to reply or contact me. I don’t mind being misunderstood (and our piece on education was not actually a polemic, but a call for universities to have a more modest sense of their role in society and to avoid setting themselves up as the ultimate free speech arena, when there are many other arenas and we should focus on scholarship and teaching). But I would be truly sorry to think that anything I’d written left you with the impression that I do not respect people I wrote about and the people who helped me to write.
If I may but in, Prof O’Donnell, I wish to respond to your comment to Prof. Turley. You seem to see your role as an academic as erecting barriers to the introduction into Colleges “wrong orthodoxies” such as eugenics. But you know this is a straw man argument. I know of no conservatives now, or even earlier, who pushed eugenics. Conservatives have been excluded from universities because they oppose: identity politics, or critical race theory, or the idea that men can become women and vice versa, or that there is such a thing as “white supremacy”, or that capitalism has been harmful to mankind, or that “global warming” is established science, or Americans should feel shame in their country’s role in history, etc. This is where the real dividing line between Left and Right in our time exists. The door to the academy is barred to potential applicants who dissent on THESE established left-wing orthodoxies. And, if someone with unkosher opinions slips through your safety net, he/she will be found out and then denounced and harassed ouf of the college. That is the reality that Prof Turley has documented over and over again. Your role is simply to crush dissent, as all censors in the past have done.
Edwardmahl, your comment was thoughtful, intelligent, right on point, impossible to rebut and just…perfect,
My career is in medicine and medical research, principally on immigrants and the uninsured poor, in the setting of HIV Cardiology. I meet people in clinic at their worst moments in life, and it never ever crosses my mind to assess them before seeing them face to face in clinic as left wing, right wing, Muslim, Christian, black, white, etc. They are people, as St Mother Teresa of Calcutta put it, they are the suffering Christ. Are they mistaken about some topics? Are they Imperfect? Hard headed? Aren’t we all? Every morning I spend time in mystical prayer as the Jesuits teach, and I walk away with the same 2 truths: give thanks to God for my many blessings and be a pencil in God’s hands to write on peoples hearts. St Elizabeth Ann Seton did not follow her path out of a whim but rather under the same conviction that drove Abp John Carroll, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, St Ignatius of Loyola founder of the Jesuits, St Katharine Drexel (founder of schools of Native Americans and Blacks) and millions of forgotten people. You can not write about the history of these individuals if you do not write about their first love.
We are a terribly polarized nation. Anita Bryant, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Swalwell, Jim Bakker, the “Moral Majority” of the 1970/80s were judgmental, holier than thou figures, hypocrites who are rivaled today by the Left wing judgmental, holier than thou figures, hypocrites. An eye for an eye had made us blind to each other. Better to follow the example of historical figures like Abp. Carroll and St Elizabeth Ann Seton
If you are unfamiliar with the history of St Katharine Drexel, you might want to read about her. Her life was as privileged, pristine, lily white as they come. And yet she launched the first religious order to care for Native Americans and Blacks by establishing schools for these groups.
https://www.katharinedrexel.org/st_katharine_drexel_overview/
I hope you and yours have a safe and memorable holiday
Video of St Katharine Drexel
You expect a different thought process from the minds of brainwashed and manipulated professors, as they go about brainwashing and manipulating their students?
It is disingenuous to make free speech partisan. The two professors argue for a controlled environment where expertise and validated knowledge are prioritized, but my case emphasizes the broader principle of free speech as a fundamental right, especially regarding public advocacy and raising awareness about issues of public concern. Their approach would stifle my rights to raise the issue I raised in my petition: https://www.change.org/p/good-healthcare-workers-need-your-help
I’m currently facing a SLAPP threat for my writings made on a public university campus.
There is a “Freedom from Religion” foundation. Profs. Amesbury and O’Donnell should put their ideas to work by establishing a “Freedom from Free Speech” organization on campus. After success in stifling free speech, they can then begin to suppress freedom of thought. The Chinese Communist Party must love this stuff.
An “unworthy idea”, by whose standard? Give a man a fish so he can eat, Versus teach a man to fish so he can eat: which is the unworthy idea? Should technology have been developed to benefit premature babies? Should the value of human life be appraised or measured by socio-political ideology? Should government policy help all people to flourish, or restrict them? Equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome? How to ensure equality of outcome when people’s will and skill sets are so different and their aptitudes range all over the radar? Irrational.
They can and have done a hop-skip-jump to “unworthy people” after arbitrarily identifying those who produce said ideas. Look at Medical Ethics today and you’ll see it. Should the arbitrarily assumed “unproductive” or disabled life without arbitrary conditions of “quality” be sent to euthanasia?
It’s apparent to even anyone with one eye, half sense and a third grade education that much of life is making choices; by its very nature, that means there is more than one possibility or idea; there are options and we should know what they are. Decision-making depends upon it. We must see the alternatives and options clearly to decide. Otherwise, our decisions are driven by those outside of us whose motives are unknown and who want us to conform to their worldview and decisions. Enforced Group-Think is destructive and greedy for Power and authority. When contending to BE a worthy idea, there must be active persuasion proving the validity and the benefits; not blunt force repitition, enforcement, manipulation, or deception. Not only will we never develop intellectually, we’ll always make the wrong decisions and choices this way.
Very eloquent Beverly. Well done!
Starting with the absurd in a leftists head!
He can claim that he’s a she by moving the S.
That white is dominating over all other colors.
Thinking the World’s weather can be controlled by humans.
Speech should be monitored and controlled.
Collective is more important than individual.
Adolescence can reason.
Truth is superior to fact.
Money grows on trees.
Debt doesn’t matter.
And finally:???
Ah, the Governor of New York is such a caring leader. She wants to protect the citizens in her state, our country and throughout the world. What a peach. So come on social media companies. Pay no attention to that cringe-worthy 1st amendment and help her regulate their online content. It’s for the kiddos after all.
You must provide adequate staffing and resources for teams working on trust and safety, content moderation, information integrity, and human rights protections. It is concerning that many social media and technology companies have reduced the resources provided for this work over the past year.
https://www.governor.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2023-11/Governor-Hochul-letter-to-social-media-companies-Nov-2023.pdf
https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/following-significant-uptick-anti-muslim-and-antisemitic-rhetoric-social-media-governor-hochul
“Nah, nah, nah, you didn’t read the article. They’re just telling us all the protocol that academics have used throughout time for arriving at the “truth”.
———————Svelass
Oh, so they’re not marxists, they just love wasting people’s time….
“Persecution for the expression of opinions seems to me perfectly logical. If you have no doubt of your premises or your power and want a certain result with all your heart you naturally express your wishes in law and sweep away all opposition. To allow opposition by speech seems to indicate that you think the speech impotent, as when a man says that he has squared the circle, or that you do not care whole heartedly for the result, or that you doubt either your power or your premises. But when men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas-that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment. Every year if not every day we have to wager our salvation upon some prophecy based upon imperfect knowledge.
Abrams v. United States 250 U.S. 616 (1919)
Justice Holmes, dissenting:
I’ll bet these so-called “educators” believe (and practice” free speech in the classes they “teach.” Their instruction on religion and history undoubtedly include lots of lefty progressivism and, recently, some anti-Semitism thrown in.
Expertise requires freedom of speech, but it is the result of a process of winnowing and refinement that is premised on the understanding that not all opinions are equally valid.
Efforts to “democratize” opinion are antithetical to the role colleges play in educating the public and informing democratic debate. We urge administrators toward caution before uncritically endorsing calls for intellectual diversity in place of academic expertise…
These two statements seem to be at odds with each other. In the former, they advocate for freedom of speech in the process of refining opinions to those that prove valid. In the latter, they oppose the very diversity of opinion that would necessarily feed that refinement of opinion process. Also, is the “urge administrators” comment regarding faculty or students? Or both?
These two would fit quite well in the federal bureaucracy that is populated, especially at the higher echelons, with an abundance of really stupid smart people. Legends in their own mind. They are the “experts” and diverse opinions that conflict with their expertise is bogging down their process of creating experts in their own image.
“These two statements seem to be at odds with each other.”
That is true. Except they reject your idea (a proper one) that universities should present competing ideas.
Their premise (which is widely held by Leftist academics) is that they are the “experts,” and therefore deserve free speech protection (the first paragraph). Those academics who disagree with them are *not* experts, and therefore do not deserve free speech protections (the second one).
Instead of anointing themselves as High Priests, they anoint themselves as “experts.” Those who dissent, they degrade as non-experts. In brief, their premise amounts to: Don’t you know who we are? Given that, the two paragraphs are perfectly consistent. Wicked, but consistent.
I actually agree with the professors. I think we should censor those that do not agree with the truth. I also think we should start with those two professors and any other one that believes in censoring speech. It is truly American to disagree and it is our birthright.
I wonder how they would react to being censored themselves. I bet not well.
The hardest part of free speech is defending the speech you hate the most. Yet, unpopular speech is essential to a free society.
“Professors: Free Speech is Not Essential to Higher Education”
– Professor Turley
____________________
Free speech is essential, period.
Do you follow the cases brought by Alex Berenson against Twitter, Joe Biden, etc., and the Censorship_Against_COVID_Questioners folks?
The continued assault of Speech reminds me of a joke of long ago.
A ventriloquist was travelling on a seldom used Highway and hadn’t seen a sole in many miles and was getting bored. He topped a hill and came upon a Sheep Herder and thought he’d stop and talk with him. He made acquaintance asking question about the weather and general social talk, but then thought he’d pull a joke on the herder asking him if he’d mind if he talked to his Dog. The herder said that’s find but Dog’s don’t talk. The ventriloquist asked the dog if the herder treated him good, and the dog responded he does. The ventriloquist then asked the horse the same question and the horse said she’s fed and happy. The herder was just flabbergasted saying the horses don’t talk. The herder and ventriloquist talked awhile longer before he asked if he could ask the sheep a few questions where upon the herder said, Sheep no talk Sheep lie!
The moral of the joke: “there are tricksters everywhere”!
My sister made up a joke when she was about three years old. A horse and a pig are asleep in bed. After a while the pig says, roll over. So the horse rolls over and they go back to sleep for another while. Then the horse says, roll over. Now the pig says, shut up, horses canna know how to talk!
(Of course, these two professors are like the pig.)
Pigs can not only talk, they can stand on their hind legs.
I hope you can eat like a horse tomorrow.
I just saw this exchange on another thread and wanted to bring it to the top as another example of someone who’s opinion is “not worthy” and should be stamped out.
Svelaz says—
Upstatefarmer,
“Hillary Clinton, who still claims the election was stolen from her, says democracy will end if Trump is re-elected.”
Really?”
Hillary Clinton does not claim the election was stolen from her. She’s never claimed it was stolen. She conceded shortly after the election. Lying doesn’t suit you upstatefarmer.
Upstate says—-
“I think it’s also critical to understand that, as I’ve been telling candidates who have come to see me, you can run the best campaign, you can even become the nominee, and you can have the election stolen from you,”
– H Clinton, May 5, 2019
Get bent you worthless POS.
You are evil of the worst kind with your attempts to justify grooming children.
You and your kind need to be fought against at every turn for the evil you are.
Svelass goes on to deny that Clinton was talking about herself retrospectively. She claims Clinton was talking about the future. LMAO based on what, if not the past???
This Svelass character is a piece of work. If we followed her philosophy, she wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a keyboard and internet.
Just makin’ sh!t up, like Dennis, Gigi and bug breath
The academy is way too full of itself. Richard Feynman once said that in the search for truth “the first rule is to not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
These academicians spend their days fooling themselves.
Hello, Professor Turley. I appreciate your attention to the piece Richard and I recently wrote. Our argument is not that free speech is unimportant. Nor do we argue against a diversity of ideas. And we certainly never suggest that ideas should go unquestioned: to the contrary, we make the same point that you do, which is that ideas must face scrutiny, competition, and skepticism if knowledge is to advance. Our argument is two-fold. First, that universities should have a more modest sense of their role in society. Free speech is important, we argue, for a vibrant public sphere. The distinguishing value of higher education, however, is academic freedom – the freedom to participate without hindrance in the disciplinary processes by means of which knowledge can be sifted from mere opinion.
This means that rather than seeking to be an all-encompassing speech forum, universities should instead embrace their limited role as places of scholarship, learning, and teaching, with the pursuit of truth at their core. Second, we argue that “free speech” and “intellectual diversity” – exactly because one is so easily chastised for questioning them – have become gates through which unexamined orthodoxies, buoyed by government or donor influence, enter universities and take root. Imperfect as academia is, we’ve found that our critics come up with examples of how, when disciplinary processes are pursued, knowledge does advance. You observed that legal theories that were once absent from academia entered the mainstream; new legal theories will emerge to displace those now at center stage if disciplines undertake their role of questioning and vetting. That displacement can’t happen if their adherents can simply appeal to “intellectual diversity” for their protection. Another critic pointed out that eugenics was once important to some university departments. Precisely, we say. Scholarship informed by the tragic moral understanding that followed WWII, eventually displaced eugenic pseudoscience. Eugenics could now be reinserted into universities under the banner of free speech or intellectual diversity. We can all surely agree that this is not desirable. And if we agree to that, perhaps we can move past the assertion that the mere invocation of free speech and intellectual diversity must always capture the moral and intellectual high ground.
Thanks again and we look forward to others reading the piece.
“Eugenics could now be reinserted into universities under the banner of free speech or intellectual diversity. We can all surely agree that this is not desirable”
Or maybe if we allow too much of that free speech stuff, people will start thinking the sun moves around the earth again!!! Or that a black person is only half a man! Or that there are only two “genders”!!
Oh, the humanity!!
LMAO
The free speech that you allegedly support in the market place will cease to exist once you have produced an army of automatons that will obey whatever the various ministries will decree. Just we proles will remain.
As a former teacher, I am appalled at the state of modern academia. We once fought for free speech on campus – now you deny it.
Read Holmes dissent in Abrams, that is if you dare.
Dear Ms. O’Donnell:
I’m amused that you speak of the superiority of “disciplines undertak[ing] their role of questioning and vetting,” while entitling your publication as “Enough with the Free Speech Rhetoric! It Concedes Too Much to the Right-Wing Agenda.”
I believe you would have garnered more mainstream interest in “others reading the piece” if you would not have alienated half of prospective readers by self-stigmatizing your piece as conclusory dictamen instead of intellectual proposition.
Was this your idea of “universities should have a more modest sense of their role in society?” (Of course, the danger of “unexamined orthodoxies, buoyed by government or donor influence, enter[ing] universities and tak[ing root” runs both ways, n’est ce pas?)
Personally, I would argue that the role of professorship in higher education is akin to creating a dialectic forum for the time-tested Hegelian role of “educating” through presenting to students thesis and antithesis in “expert” thinking/hypotheses (a priori subjects include math; humanities and social sciences demand a posteriori consideration cognitively weighted by students, forcing critical thinking and cerebral development through dialectic exchange).
Ideally, this is followed by encouragement of SOCRATIC DEBATE with the students in an effort toward development of an acceptable synthesis– FORMED BY STUDENTS, not by any indoctrinating dicta. (Of course, errors in students’ construct or context should be identified by instructors, but keep the political ideology to yourself, thank you ma’am. )
Thanks for listening.
Respectfully, lin.
Lin,
Well said.
Lin,
What are your thoughts on Karl Popper’s clear critique of Hegelian dialectics as a basis for scientific inquiry? In fact, in 1937, he – I think aptly – argued that the dialetical method’s willingness to put up with “contradictions” renders mutually exclusive with the pursuit of scientific knowledge. “The whole development of dialectic should be a warning against the dangers inherent in philosophical system-building. It should remind us that philosophy should not be made a basis for any sort of scientific system and that philosophers should be much more modest in their claims.”
Popper went as far as to claim that Hegel’s dialectics is to some degree responsible for the rise of fascism in Europe by encouraging and justifying irrationalism and encouraging totalitarian modes of thought.
While I personally think the latter claim is a stretch, I think he has a point with respect to the hard sciences. The scientific method and Hegelian dialectics are mutually exclusive, although it can have value in the social sciences.
I have no memory (or maybe even knowledge?) of Karl Popper’s critique of Hegel as it relates to scientific knowledge.
I DO remember Popper’s “falsification” paradigm for scientific methodology (which favors deductive approach over inductive), and I do not disagree with that general premise.
I relate more generally to Hegel’s development of dialectics in NON-science disciplines, and the whole structure of thesis/antithesis/synthesis, but you must admit, it is a paradigm actually used today in science, with uncontroverted value.
Therefore, although I agree with your last paragraph regarding blame for totalitarianism, I respectfully disagree with the statement of mutual exclusivity of scientific method and Hegelian dialectics.
Interestingly, both Hegel and Popper have suffered criticism from their fellow philosophers. Aren’t you glad that we were exposed to the ideas of both (and others) instead of being indoctrinated with exposure to a favored son?
I think there are certain disciplines, in which there is a right and wrong answer, and the Hegelian dualism elevates irrational thought to some false equivalence with reasoned thought.
I am glad that, for the most part, I was taught the Earth isn’t flat, that gravity is scientific law, etc.
But growing up in Florida, in high school biology, I was forced to consider intelligent design and Creationism as “alternative theories” to evolution. This, to me, was a Hegelian dialectical approach that elevated Christian origin stories and Christian pseudoscience to the same level as evolution. It has no basis for consideration as a rational idea. Exposure to it only had minimal non-scientific value (i.e., to know what idiots conjured up to justify their religious beliefs).
Therefore, I am hesitant to agree that such a dialectical approach has value outside of the social sciences. There is no reason – other than political – that Christian concepts of evolution should be taught instead of any other religion’s origin story. None of them are based in scientific reasoning.
Lin, a trained PhD research scientist peer at my university recently gave a public lecture on x. When discussing how a young mother passes her antibodies to the young newborn infant, during breast feeding, the prof made a deep pause, apologized profusely, then switched to “chest feeding”, while laughing uncontrollably. For the remaining lecture the prof used the phrase again and again, “chest feeding”, followed by laughter. At one point the prof looked at me in the audience, I shook my head in disbelief, then looked away quickly.
Both Hegel and Popper would have been embarrassed. Science is not what it used to be.
“It should remind us that philosophy should not be made a basis for . . .”
That is mind-numbingly ignorant and intellectually dishonest. Why? Because it equates Hegel with philosophy, as such.
Apparently, neither you (nor Popper) know (or wish to evade) the fact that there are other philosophic systems in the history of philosophy, e.g., Plato, Aristotle, Kant.
If you wish to be an “expert,” start with knowledge. W.T. Jones’ history of philosophy is a good start.
“The distinguishing value of higher education, however, is academic freedom . . .”
That is pure hooey.
When it’s their ox being gored, Leftist academics trot out “academic freedom.” When it’s a dissenter’s ox, they’re deaf, dumb, and silent.
“Eugenics could now be reinserted into universities under the banner of free speech or intellectual diversity.”
Nice straw man.
And the fact is that eugenics should be *taught* in universities, in, say, a history of science course.
I was under the belief that academic tenure was to ensure intellectual independence. If not, what is the purpose of tenure?
ogd
The latest “truth” is that man made climate change is killing the planet (SOON) and fossil fuels must be ended immediately to save us all. Please note that these experts NEVER give coal burning China any problem. Notice that the leftist fools and scam artists never give worry about China building COAL plants. Notice they never protest in front of an Iranian embassy. Notice that they only want to harm America.
The climate “truth” is just a combination of grifters, people like Sec Granholm, who has made millions, and other scam artists that pay Democrats millions to get government billions, young foolish people like Greta the Jew hating monster, and millions of students being lied to by ideological professors, and paid fools and operatives working for China.
When John Kerry has 7 homes, a fleet of SUVS and private jets he isn’t really worried about the planet being destroyed.
When Obama flies private and has TWO coastal mansions he isn’t worried about his kids not having a planet to live on.
When Prince Harry flies private….
When the fools demanding all electric cars don’t worry about China having the materials needed or the energy used to make and charge batteries they aren’t really worried.
Governor Newsome promulgated a bill mandated all electric cars by 2030 and the same week asked people to NOT charge their cars during the day due to an energy shortage. Oh heck, you mean electric cars run on energy???? Not unicorns.
The Soviets created the Nuke Freeze Movement in the 80s and opportunists like Ed Markey got rich and made his career with it. Today Markey is using the Green New Steal to keep a young candidate from opposing him in liberal MA.
IT IS ALL A SCAM AND A CHINESE POWER PLAY AND GRIFTERS FOOLS AND IDEOLOGUES ARE FALLING FOR IT OR USING IT.