an excellent article. Here's an observation and a question. you correctly point out that people should encourage campus debates on contentious issues. Totally agree and that would be awesome. My observation is that what occurs though is that "controversial" speakers often have a campaign directed at them well ahead of the planned appearance in order to demonize them and create agitation. This occurs with flyers with things taken out of context, and often out of context at best and dishonest critiques at worst. These are the tools used to drive the emotion and create the censorious mob that later interrupts this protests.
How can the schools take action against this? Seems like they need to either have extreme penalties (like suspension?) for interrupting a speaker or something extreme (like expulsion for pulling a fire alarm to interrupt a speaker).
Because otherwise it is asymmetrical warfare and these tactics will continue to be tolerated wink wink nudge nudge by administrators and this will continue to result in a narrow list of "acceptable" campus speakers.
Everyone who says they are "progressive" will also say they believe in free speech and yet they will also deploy these tactics.
What can schools do to change this culture? seems like many steps are required to change the culture to make this happen. curious how you would propose fixing this...
Lee, there are some good ideas here, a few bad ones, and a few that should be added:
1. Supporting scholars who have been deplatformed/cancelled needs to be made a priority. The best way to do this is to create a website/data base like FIRE's where their censored work either as a poster, paper or recorded talk is not only made available to all, but is specifically highlighted for discussion. This would disincentivize cancel cultures attempts and insure that heterodox ideas are not lost.
2. Scholars/institutions that engage in cancel culture should be called out and identified by name and subject to a boycott of invitations/presentations etc. for a period lasting 3 times the length of their own efforts to cancel other scholars.
3. The 4 holidays idea is flawed as Juneteenth is an artificial holiday with no actual freedom merit to it. Native Americans, as sovereign nations, continued to hold slaves after Juneteenth.
You know, as currently written, this thematic point is no longer correct:
Today’s taboos are developed and enforced not by outsiders but students, professors, and bureaucracies within higher education.
Plenty coming down from the Trump admin. Of course, we wrote the book before that, but this probably could be phrased in a manner that is true to the book without being outnout wrong. Something like:
For most of the last 20 years, taboos were developed and enforced not by outsiders, but by students, professors and bureaucracies within higher education.
an excellent article. Here's an observation and a question. you correctly point out that people should encourage campus debates on contentious issues. Totally agree and that would be awesome. My observation is that what occurs though is that "controversial" speakers often have a campaign directed at them well ahead of the planned appearance in order to demonize them and create agitation. This occurs with flyers with things taken out of context, and often out of context at best and dishonest critiques at worst. These are the tools used to drive the emotion and create the censorious mob that later interrupts this protests.
How can the schools take action against this? Seems like they need to either have extreme penalties (like suspension?) for interrupting a speaker or something extreme (like expulsion for pulling a fire alarm to interrupt a speaker).
Because otherwise it is asymmetrical warfare and these tactics will continue to be tolerated wink wink nudge nudge by administrators and this will continue to result in a narrow list of "acceptable" campus speakers.
Everyone who says they are "progressive" will also say they believe in free speech and yet they will also deploy these tactics.
What can schools do to change this culture? seems like many steps are required to change the culture to make this happen. curious how you would propose fixing this...
Lee, there are some good ideas here, a few bad ones, and a few that should be added:
1. Supporting scholars who have been deplatformed/cancelled needs to be made a priority. The best way to do this is to create a website/data base like FIRE's where their censored work either as a poster, paper or recorded talk is not only made available to all, but is specifically highlighted for discussion. This would disincentivize cancel cultures attempts and insure that heterodox ideas are not lost.
2. Scholars/institutions that engage in cancel culture should be called out and identified by name and subject to a boycott of invitations/presentations etc. for a period lasting 3 times the length of their own efforts to cancel other scholars.
3. The 4 holidays idea is flawed as Juneteenth is an artificial holiday with no actual freedom merit to it. Native Americans, as sovereign nations, continued to hold slaves after Juneteenth.
Hope this helps!
of course I love it
You know, as currently written, this thematic point is no longer correct:
Today’s taboos are developed and enforced not by outsiders but students, professors, and bureaucracies within higher education.
Plenty coming down from the Trump admin. Of course, we wrote the book before that, but this probably could be phrased in a manner that is true to the book without being outnout wrong. Something like:
For most of the last 20 years, taboos were developed and enforced not by outsiders, but by students, professors and bureaucracies within higher education.
But now it is coming from the outside....