Tuesday, February 01, 2022

Change The Facts....?

Would it also have been "within the parameters of academic free speech" if, instead of complaining that a potential candidate was black, Shapiro had complained that they were Jewish? Gay? Trans? Unqualified because female? Of the “wrong” ethnicity or religion?

I'm also curious about the perimeters of academic free speech.  If a professor makes anti-Semitic or racist comments to his neighbors, not on campus or in an academic paper or conference, is it still "within the parameters of academic free speech"?  If he/she puts on a white hood and burns crosses on the weekend? (Sub-question: is what Shapiro said as bad, or not as bad, as being a Klan member? Explain your answer in at least 5 paragraphs.)  I understand the concept of academic freedom, but is it absolute?  Do the other faculty members have no recourse if they don't want to be professionally associated with a racist?

Show your work.  You have one hour.  Please use only one side of the paper.

1 comment:

  1. Tenure and "academic freedom" are powerful weapons in the hands of the vindictive. Having been the recipient of a year and half campaign by a a tenured faculty member against me and my department, I have lived that dark and nasty underside of "academic freedom". Being maligned with half truths and outright falsehoods? Academic freedom. Subject to endless bizarre emails that ran for pages and pages, sent at wee hours of the morning, so unsettling to my staff that we ended up going from an open office to key card access only (along with a recommendation from the campus police that if this person ever came to our office to not let them in can call security), academic freedom. Baseless complaints filed against you and others in your department with their state bar committees and patent office disciplinary committees to get licenses and registrations revoked and end careers? Academic freedom. Demands for multiple outside investigations, the first costing 5 figures, the second 6 figures, all of which concluded we had acted completely professionally and made the correct judgements? Academic freedom. This person writing letters to our major funding agencies implying that we had engaged in illegal behavior and therefore could be in violation of our funding agreements? Academic freedom. A requirement that we couldn't respond in anyway or comment to anyone outside of the senior administration because that would infringe this persons academic freedom? Academic freedom.

    (Eventually losing that job was both devesting and a gift)

    Too often academic freedom is invoked as an excuse to avoid accountability. It's a shield to allow for consequence free bad behavior that wouldn't be tolerated for any other job. Shapiro made racists statements. Why should he be allowed to make them with being accountable? The sad part is he is likely to continue to receive his salary even as the investigation continues. (For an example of bad behavior by law school professors and the essentially consequence free results, just look at the actions of "Tiger Mom" Amy Chua and her husband at Yale Law School. They continue to show up in the news and continue to be protected by "academic freedom")

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