Tag: academic freedom

Grievance Studies: What to Do?

By Kephalithos

I am a mustachioed bas-relief sculpture wearing some sort of bivalve as a hat. I used to spend my days (and nights) glowering at the n’er-do-wells who shuffled, handcuffed, into Fremont, Ohio’s jail. But the jail closed long ago, so I now glower at n'er-do-wells of a very different sort — the bureaucrats. Just kidding. I am, in fact, a newly minted Hillsdale graduate with hopes of becoming an architectural historian. (Post)modernity is my foe; the archaic, my muse… [more]

| August 26, 2019

30 COMMENTS

Like a great many conservatives, I spend too much time pondering the decay of academia. (I’m trapped in it. Forgive me.) As much as anyone else, I’d like to see more ideologically diverse universities. But that desire is a qualified one.

Were I made university president for a day, I’d be tempted to borrow a page from Viktor Orbán’s playbook and dissolve all “[insert nom de jour] studies” departments. Immediately (and ironically), the halls of academe would erupt with volcanic fury. I’d be accused of threatening freedom of inquiry and suppressing free speech. The modern-day augurs who populate the endangered departments would send out a volley of op-eds calling for my resignation.

I’d sympathize with them, certainly. I understand the inclination to assume that what I care about must be valuable because even I have felt it. Still, I submit that the “studies” disciplines are fundamentally different from academia’s other offerings. They don’t belong in the university. If they’re to be pursued, they should be pursued somewhere else. Here’s why:

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By Peter Bonilla

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Peter Bonilla

Peter Bonilla has worked with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a national nonprofit defending the free speech rights of university students and faculty, since 2008. Currently Peter serves as FIRE's Vice President of Programs, overseeing a variety of research and outreach initiatives. Peter has authored numerous columns for outside publications, commented frequently for radio, print, and television media, and lectured to students and faculty at conferences around the co… [more]

| March 21, 2019

0 COMMENTS

A brief note from FIRE to any college faculty Ricochet readers out there: FIRE is currently taking proposals from faculty interested in presenting at our fall academic conference. The conference will be held this year from October 31-November 2 in Boston, Massachusetts. As with previous iterations of the conference held in 2017 and 2018, we’re […]

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Penn Law’s Amy Wax on Being Ousted from Her First-Year Class

By Ben Weingarten

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Ben Weingarten

Ben Weingarten is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research. He writes on national security and foreign policy, economics, and politics for publications including The Federalist, where he is a senior contributor, as well as City Journal, Conservative Review and PJ Media. Ben is the founder and CEO of ChangeUp Media, a media consulting and production company dedicated to advancing conservative principles. He is also a 2015 Publius Fellow of the Claremont Institute. You can find his… [more]

| June 20, 2018

5 COMMENTS

Amy Wax is the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, where she specializes in social welfare law and policy as well as the relationship of the family, the workplace, and labor markets.

Professor Wax has become a controversial figure because of her politically incorrect comments advocating in favor of bourgeois values and the WASP culture from which they stem, and in her claims that black students had generally performed at lower levels than other students in her classes in context of a conversation about the downsides of affirmative action — comments that got her ousted from teaching the first year civil procedure class for which she had previously won an award for “teaching excellence.”

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Conservatives Can, and Must, Win the Fight for Free Speech

By JennaStocker

Member

JennaStocker

Left a DC research job to be a Marine Corps Officer. Now I’m back home where four rescue dogs have the run of the house. Wife of a USCG veteran. Baseball enthusiast & still believes in the virtue of First Principles.

| March 21, 2018

23 COMMENTS

George Orwell said, “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Admittedly I tend to have a slightly dour outlook on the current state of the culture and politics, the side effect of being sucked into my own personal negative news cycle. My husband calls me a Negative Nellie, I tell him I’m simply a realist, which makes him laugh. Starting with an Orwell quote may not dissuade anyone from agreeing I have negative tendencies, but what if this quote is a signal of the impending doom of liberty in America, not in 1984, but now?

In universities and on college campuses across America, a recent and growing trend of suppression of speech is making headlines. The Heckler’s Veto (a situation in which a person who disagrees with a speaker’s message is able to unilaterally silence that speaker) has become the main tool of this suppression. The students leading the protests and interruptions claim people such as Ben Shapiro, Christina Hoff Summers, and Charles Murray are fascists spewing hate speech. Students are unwilling to hear any idea that strays from their leftist viewpoint; they cannot afford the opportunity for anyone to hear the speakers’ words. If you don’t have the right opinion, you aren’t entitled to an opinion- or worse, your opinion is wrong or hateful. This results in a serious problem in the intellectual development of our youth. A person who travels through life insulated from different ideas and perspectives than their own will never have the ability to articulate his own thoughts and beliefs. John Stuart Mill writes in his 1859 work, “On Liberty”, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.” The longer this behavior is allowed to continue, the more we will see the end of free speech and free exchange of ideas on our college campuses. We will graduate a generation of young people not only unwilling to listen to different ideas, but find them offensive. In his March 10 essay, “The Psychology of Progressive Hostility” Matthew Blackwell writes “People get angry at what they don’t understand, and an all-progressive education ensures that they don’t understand.” Anger in response to disagreement is not discourse. Self-reflection and intellectual curiosity may be difficult. It is human nature to dislike admitting one is wrong (speaking of arguments between me and my husband). But growing pains beget growth- intellectually, spiritually, and psychologically. We learn from our mistakes when we admit them.

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Intimidation in the Academy

By Paul A. Rahe

Contributor

Paul A. Rahe

Paul A. Rahe is Professor of History at Hillsdale College, where he holds an endowed chair, and last year he was a National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He is author of Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (1992) and of Against Throne and Altar: Machiavelli and Political Theory under the English Republic (2008), Montesquieu and the Logic of Liberty: War, Religion, Commerce, Climate, Terrain, Technology, Uneasiness of Mind, the … [more]

| October 12, 2017

16 COMMENTS

Thirty-four years ago, I set off for Istanbul and the eastern Mediterranean on a two-year fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs (ICWA). Not long after I returned, I joined the outfit’s governing board, and later, for something like five years, I chaired that board.

One summer, ICWA’s executive director, who had been a fellow in Africa in the 1950s, organized a symposium on Africa in which the six or seven surviving former fellows who had done tours of duty on that continent in the 1950s and 1960s returned to discuss the post-independence trajectory of the countries in which they had then resided. All had once been enthusiasts who anticipated African independence and the end of colonialism with eagerness and joy. Not one of them, however, had a good word to say about the years that followed. Attending the conference was a bit like attending a funeral. It was clear that nearly all of the countries of Africa that were then independent had been better off when governed by the powers of Europe.

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At Marquette, Expect the Inquisition

By Peter Bonilla

Contributor

Peter Bonilla

| April 1, 2016

26 COMMENTS

Prof. John McAdams of Marquette University

Ricochet readers familiar with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s (FIRE’s) work may have taken note of the long and drawn-out battle Marquette University professor John McAdams has been waging to keep his tenure—a battle that Marquette seems dead set on making him lose.

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By Daniel Turner

Inactive

Daniel Turner

Daniel Turner works at the American Legislative Exchange Council, serving as a research analyst for the Center to Protect Free Speech. He previously earned his MA in politics at Hillsdale College's Graduate School of Statesmanship and his BA in government at Patrick Henry College.

| January 12, 2016

4 COMMENTS

Students at Yale and the University of Missouri have been exercising their First Amendment free speech right to protest—well—the right of others to exercise their right to free speech. Textbook irony. Free speech should be enjoyed and exercised by all, not just small groups on campuses trying to insulate themselves from intellectually-challenging ideas. It is […]

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By Jennifer Johnson

Inactive

Jennifer Johnson

The push for gender-neutrality reminds me of that famous Apple commercial from 1984: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zfqw8nhUwA " ...always listen very carefully when somebody is telling you to shut up... What they're telling you is that 'this idea is so weak it cannot be subjected to the normal, vigorous debate of free society.'" Mark Steyn “And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make… [more]

| November 10, 2015

26 COMMENTS

Dr. Robert Oscar Lopez is a friend of mine and is a professor at CSUN. You may recall that last month I spoke at a conference that he organized in Paris. It was the second annual conference for his organization, the International Children’s Rights Institute. Here is a photo of us at the conference. He […]

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Standing Up for Global Academic Freedom

By Greg Lukianoff

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Greg Lukianoff

Greg Lukianoff is the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) and has been with FIRE since 2001, when he was hired to be the organization's first director of legal and public advocacy. Greg is a member of the State Bar of California and the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States. Greg is the author of both Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate and Freedom From Speech. @glukianoff

| June 26, 2015

4 COMMENTS

Next week, I head off to the United Kingdom to talk about global threats to free speech and academic freedom. As the Index on Censorship describes in its latest issue, there are many threats to academic freedom and free speech worldwide. However, as I write in my newest piece at The Huffington Post, it’s important to remember that these freedoms are also in trouble here at home in the United States.

College and university administrators are punishing professors’ freedom of expression left and right, even when it’s off-campus speech on their personal blogs or social media accounts. For instance, my organization, FIRE, has been closely following one major ongoing case at Marquette University, where a professor is facing termination for publicly criticizing a graduate student instructor who told a student not to oppose same-sex marriage in a philosophy class discussion.

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Do You Think “Liberals Are Stifling Intellectual Diversity on Campus?”

By Greg Lukianoff

Contributor

Greg Lukianoff

| February 20, 2015

22 COMMENTS

Ricochet readers, I’d like your help. Next week, I’m doing my first ever Intelligence Squared U.S. debate defending the following resolution: Liberals Are Stifling Intellectual Diversity on Campus. This may strike some readers as a little surprising, as you all know FIRE not only defends people all across the spectrum, but also employs people across the spectrum (not to mention I myself identify as a political liberal, as does my debating partner Kirsten Powers). But, I have also never hidden the fact if you’re going to be censored on campus these days, it’s far more likely that you’ll be censored from your left.

Ricochet readers in the D.C. area should come in person. Those who can’t attend should tune in online. The winner is determined by how many people decide to change his or her vote, and given that I’ll be doing this debate at George Washington University, I wonder how many will be willing to do that!

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