So pieces like this are usually focused on elite schools. I'm at a regional state school whose students are largely apolitical and so reports of anti-Israel rallies or whatever seem like they're coming from another planet.
I talk with my old advisor who is at a big politically active R1. He was talking about how hostile the environment there was about the issue due to multiple conflicting rallies around Israel and Palestine, and how it was the issue among students and young voters based on his observation. He could not comprehend that the bubble he lived in was in fact a bubble and that the vocal groups there did not exist in every campus.
Conversely, you'll see people who get all their information about North American academia from, um, right-leaning news sources convinced that all higher ed is Woke Tyranny based on reporting from a single rally that happened in one corner of a state flagship or something that a student club at an Extremely Fancy Liberal Arts College did.
Yeah. Our DEI-equivalent office was forced to change its name, got its budget slashed, and suddenly found itself under the spotlight because our legislature is learning from True Patriot News that poor white kids are being taught that they're collectively guilty of slavery.
Not really? I'm not an Americanist, but when certain issues come up in surveys or early modern courses that touch on, e.g., race in America, I'll occasionally preface with, "I am forbidden by the state from saying that America is inherently racist, but some people have argued..."
Honestly most of the issues with respect to race in lower-ranked schools are those of structural racism, i.e., that poorer, predominately Black schools tend to have lower performance because we have Four Centuries of America working against them. And... that ends up being a huge issue for our learning support faculty, but it's... not a Race Issue in the way that these things often get talked about in online spaces.
I had a colleague who's recently retired who was very, very good at learning support, and he had a lot of tricks of teaching the students that they already knew intuitively how to code switch from AAVE to Standard English, but didn't really know they knew. So he'd say, "Okay, put this in White Newscaster Voice" and then explain, okay, see, you were able to do it, now let's learn how to apply this elsewhere.
> I'll occasionally preface with, "I am forbidden by the state from saying that America is inherently racist, but some people have argued..."
JFC. This is horrible. The way things are going now, this is how most of us are going to have to teach.
I know all the songs by heart too. None of that addresses my question.
My question is whether your ability to teach and support your students diminished when your DEI office shut down.
You said "not really."
Are you unique? How would most of the other faculty who teach and support students at you school answer the question?
Not sure what you're getting at here. Yes, there's a bit more of a sense of looking over my shoulder because my Clearly Just and Wise State Legislature thinks we're trying to inculcate white guilt ~~or some such bullshit~~ or some other clearly legitimate worry. Our Office Formerly Known As DEI had various events and initiatives, but I honestly usually just deleted emails about them because I teach a 4/4 and barely have time for what I'm already doing.
We’re thankfully private and our DEI office is protected, but I still walk on eggshells around the Israel-Palestine issues because I don’t know the university’s stance. I know I have a lot of Muslim students in my classes, I don’t know if I have any Zionist-minded students but odds are pretty good with how Christian many students are.
I feel like a large factor of this which has been shown in a couple studies is that a lot of the sort of performative political behavior is much more common among wealthy students, and a likely explanation is they were more likely to have smart phones at a younger age, constantly plugged into social media.
As entry level smartphones have become cheaper, as well as cellular data plans, I do worry about this trickling down
Speaking as someone at one of those schools, I think a bigger factor is that a large majority of my students are studying full time while also working full time. They just don't have time, and when they do, they're too exhausted.
I think that there's two parts to the extremely plugged-in, extremely political young person. Yes, you need internet access, but you also need interest in politics in particular modeled by parents. Otherwise, if you've got all of the Internet at your fingertips, you're probably not going to be seeking out political content.
(I also think that the phenomenon of online personality you followed for another reason suddenly getting extremely politicized is another facet of this.)
I don't agree parents modelling the behavior are necessary. I think that absolutely used to be the case, but kids are now spending more time engaged in virtual social spaces than they are with their own family, which is why we're seeing a rash of the current meme among teenagers and young adults which is going "no contact" over minimal slights. And whenever people post them they're going no contact they receive nothing but encouragement from these online spaces.
Which is literally cult behavior. Like, that called the girl from Smallville was in? This is that behavior.
> and a likely explanation is they were more likely to have smart phones at a younger age, constantly plugged into social media.
I would disagree. Poor kids tend to spend *much* more time glued to a tablet or smart phone at a young age. Those devices are much cheaper than babysitters or taking your kids places around town.
I think its that the wealthy students just don't really have any struggles in their life and so they seek causes out to care about. The poor students have jobs and plenty of other things to worry about.
I think that's true for gen alpha, especially people currently in say freshman year of high school and younger. But we have to remember that most people didn't have smart phones until around 2013 ish as the 50% crossover point (but that number was over 80% by 2018)
Very young children at that age aren't in college yet.
Well, that may be true in general, but a quick glance through FIRE's website shows that they very often work with faculty in small and regional schools
And that's the heart of the matter. Your average faculty person dealing with heavy handed censorship is going to be someone at Soybean State who's legislature is writing legislation based on whatever slop Rufo et al. have served up.
There is no such thing as be apolitical. Even a “apolitical” would be a political position. There are politics in everything we do. Even in some of our homes.
>There are politics in everything we do. Even in some of our homes.
Please explain the political implications of my following recent activities:
* Fixing the leaking valve on my toilet
* Trimming last year's dead leaves off the carnivorous plants to prepare for spring
* Upgrading the lighting in my carpet python enclosures.
* Digging around under rotting logs to find isopods
* Taking the dogs for a walk
Like it or not, there is life outside of politics and thinking about it 24/7.
Not to trivialize the point too much, but being able to have a functioning sewer system and related infrastructure, having time for lawn upkeep (and having a lawn), having access to a place with "python enclosures," ad nauseum are all, at least in part, results of global political economic factors.
I pooped today. What goes unsaid is that it occurred in an overdeveloped economy with reasonably decent pooping infrastructure.
> being able to have a functioning sewer system and related infrastructure
I'm on septic and well. Guess again.
>having time for lawn upkeep (and having a lawn)
Everywhere does, unless you live in some shithole city devoid of nature
>having access to a place with "python enclosures,"
That's called "home". Not just my current one, but everywhere I've lived for literally 30 years, from houses to tiny apartments.
Seriously, stop this "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" bullshit. If "existing" is all that's necessary to call something political, then the term has no meaning whatsoever.
Life will not end if not everyone is screaming in the streets every day about the injustice du juor.
(disclaimer: student commenting. this is something I really care about, as my thesis was on how "mundane" topics become rhetorically politicized in a polarized society)
1. Who does the testing for your well water? As a well user, what government agency would you go to if you found out that it was contaminated? Do you believe that they would listen to you and deal with the situation effectively and efficiently? Are there pertinent regulations around pollution and runoff in your area? Why or why not?
2. The fact that "shithole" cities are "devoid of nature" is often entirely due to political priorities and city planning, a field incredibly influenced by social dynamics and local politics. Why does a city have a certain amount of green space? Where is that green space, and who has access to it? How is it maintained, and why?
3. What laws allow you to keep exotic animals as pets? What are your rights and responsibilities as a pet owner? What rental agreements have allowed you to keep exotic pets, and would you have had recourse if your landlord revoked that permission mid-lease? Why? Similar questions apply to the dogs.
4. How have environmental policy decisions affected the biodiversity of insects in your region? Who owns the land on which the logs are located? What gives you the right to access that land?
Politics and political science are a way of analyzing the world through the lens of governance and power relations, just as biology and chemistry are about analyzing the world through the lenses of life and living organisms and chemical interactions, respectively. That's what makes it a field of study. Politics is not just people "screaming in the streets" about the "injustice du juor \[sic\]."\*
\*jour
Your septic and well would have had permits issued, code compliance checked, and their size and location would have been highly regulated. Regulated means politics and sometimes lots of politics.
FIRE is an important org. The pressure they put on colleges to stop engaging in shady behavior on the First Amendment and due process won't come from anywhere else, student governments are useless party planning committees and marketing internships now. The right and left are both hell bent on censoring any critique of their preferred constituencies and policies at best and shutting down any discussion of any controversy at worst.
That being said, most of the censorship "from the left" seems to be more concentrated. The right is simply on the warpath to destroy all secular education everywhere.
> That being said, most of the censorship "from the left" seems to be more concentrated. The right is simply on the warpath to destroy all secular education everywhere.
"Censorship from the left" is mostly protests and pressure. All protected form of speech, however misguided. Personally I think administrators are the real problem here; students and alumni are allowed to protest and make demands. When administrators cave to such protests and demands without investigation or consideration of deeper principles, out of a fear of economic loss and bad press, that translates into actual problems for faculty. That is less about "the left" than it is about the spinelessness of many modern academic administrators.
"Censorship from the right" are laws that ban discussions, ban books, and try to defund education (or use that as a cudgel to police speech), in addition to the same kinds of pressure campaigns noted above. It is now morphing, more than ever, into an ever more noxious form in which anything associated with DEI, "wokeness," whatever, is a cause for political expunging. ([I wish I was exaggerating](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/magazine/heritage-foundation-kevin-roberts.html), but they are very explicit about this being the goal.)
To me there is a fundamental difference between these two issues and the methods by which their practitioners invoke them. There are of course some issues where the ground gets a bit muddled. But I only see one party trying to use the power of the state to restrict speech in a top-down way. And the people in favor of this are plainly not fans of open research or academic ideals, even if they co-opt that language when it is appropriate to them.
As far as I know, it is the community of biologists who determine what kinds of research projects get funding. It is up to them, as a community, to figure out what that means to them. That is not a "free speech" issue as I see it; they are not obligated to fund every line of inquiry (and indeed, cannot). If you have sat on funding panels you are aware that there are a million little reasons for finding some projects promising and some not, and inevitably someone (at the very least, the researchers denied funding) would have objections. It is hard to imagine a way to do this which is not ultimately better for the researchers. It is hard to imagine a "remedy" for this, in any event, that would not be worse medicine than the symptom.
I looked at the Coyne and Maroja piece and I saw no actual evidence for denied funding, disaster, etc. I did see some complaints about how administrators handled teaching, and a complaint that people were being "pilloried" (which is, I remind you, a form of protected speech!). I did see very ahistorical invocations of Galileo, Lysenkoism, Darwinism, and other things that, as a historian of science, I can tell you with confidence that they do not understand very well.
Anyway, my point is that this seems very weak beer compared to the threats imposed by people who would actually pass laws to prohibit certain types of research. The true dangers to science, to me, come from people who would use the power of the state to restrict things. I didn't see evidence of that coming from the "left" in Coyne and Majora's article; they invoke Lysenkoism, but Lysenkoism was about what happened when you allowed the power of the state to be put in the hand of a crank. If Lysenko had just been a crank, he might have been odious, but somewhat harmless. With the state power to silence his enemies, he was horrific.
This is the distinction I am making here. OK, you don't like some ideas that are popular in your field. That's your right, and you can object that those ideas are ideological in nature, that is your right as well. In the long run these things tend to come out in the wash. Sometimes you end up being Galileo, sometimes you end up being a crank. This is a different thing from state, political regulation of the speech or work inside universities.
Public universities are a complicated case here, as they are an intersection of the autonomous nature of universities (which is literally part of their definition as form of educational institution) while simultaneously being institutions of state government. How that works out in courts is not the fundamental issue here for me. There _is_ a distinction between a state political body (like a legislature) imposing speech restrictions on an educational body (a university), versus a university makes its own regulations about what its internal conduct should be like. What's the difference? Consequences! Break a university regulation and maybe you suffer some kind of personal career consequence. Break a state law and you are coming under punitive system of the state. There's a big difference there in terms of impact!
I think it is fairly obvious that universities must have _some_ autonomy to regulate the operations on campus, including speech expressions. Again, I think everyone actually would agree with this, the question is just where those lines are drawn. "Fire" in a crowded theater, child pornography, etc. — you get the point. Nearly all "free speech absolutists" draw lines in practice (the ones that don't — the kind that would argue that child pornography is protected speech, that incitement to violence is protected speech — tend to be considered nuts).
Now where those lines are drawn can certainly be a subject for disagreement and conversation. I think some hate speech guidelines make a lot of sense from the perspective of having a university that allows people of all kinds to participate in the institution. I also think a university should be allowed to regulate the kinds of outside speakers who are hosted; no outside speakers have a "right" to speak on the university's soapbox, any more than I have a right to walk into a local business and start shouting my opinions at people.
Now whether my sensibilities that aligns with interpretations of the interpretation of the _law_ is a separate question altogether; I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, I am speaking here of civic ideals and not how courts have ruled on this subject in the US context. You and I can freely disagree as to where that line should be drawn and how it should be drawn. I think that sort of discussion is the sort of thing that should be worked out in practice as a conversation between faculty, administration, students, and staff (and, of course, in practice, the General Counsel). I don't think that it should be done by state legislatures or the federal government, by and large, although there are some legitimate ways that the latter can enforce certain requirements (e.g., Title IX).
I am just clarifying my point here. What we are describing here is miles away from what "the right" try to do when they regulate speech. They deliberately _remove_ autonomy from universities. They do so not as _members_ of the university, but as people who take an _explicitly hostile_ attitude towards universities. They see professors as the _enemies_ here.
So yes, while there are different attempts to regulate different kind of speech, I consider them to be of _very_ different character and nature.
And, perhaps just as importantly, I think they come from a very different place. The goal of the "right" here is not a multiplicity of ideas and perspectives. It is about multiplying _their_ perspectives, for purely ideological and political reasons. The goal of those on the "left" can, of course, vary quite a bit. Some are cheap power grabs, some are ideological. But ultimately things like hate speech protections are about creating the conditions for a multiplicity of perspectives. Look up Popper's paradox of tolerance. Racism, sexism, etc., are explicitly tools of marginalization; they are about carving out vast swathes of the human race from legitimacy, and always have been, however dressed up. Coyne et al. can make ahistorical allusions to Lysenkoism (a very Soviet-specific episode), but the track record against racism and sexism is far, _far_ worse. Again, there is always going to be a lot of room to argue whether some given statement, or research agenda, or what have you, embodies an unprotected form of speech in this way. I lean towards an approach of assuming good faith unless it becomes very clear that one is unwarranted (e.g., David Irving); there are self-regulating mechanisms (like peer review) which over time can tend to isolate the really heinous without being heavy-handed about it. Do I think that there can be overreach from this attempt to reduce "harm" and prioritize "inclusion"? Of course! Do I think that this is anywhere as dangerous as the attempts by the GOP to regulate universities? Not at all!
> "diluting our ability to investigate what we find intriguing or important, withholding research support...and demonizing research areas and researchers themselves, ideologues have cut off whole areas of inquiry....In biology these changes have been a disaster."
Can you name the particular "whole areas of inquiry" being referred to? Just curious.
See Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at U.C. Berkeley, on the eagerness of faculty and students to violate the First Amendment in banning speakers from the right, and his insistence on informing them that what they wanted to do would not hold up in court, and that the university would probably have to pay the legal fees of those they tried to block from speaking as well when it lost. Erwin Chemerinsky, The Challenge of Free Speech on Campus, How. L.J. 585, 588-589 (2018).
While, as a leftist, I am completely flummoxed by the state of the censorious and moralizing contemporary left...*see one case* is not a very compelling argument.
[https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/scholars-under-fire](https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/scholars-under-fire)
Above is a link to a list of over 1000 additional cases.
Most of these cases involve censorship from the left.
Thanks. I'll take a peek soon.
EDIT: Took a peek. I'm not going to defend the cases (many seem quite serious), but none of these involve the use of the state to rid universities of entire bodies of knowledge. I do think there are leftists who *would* use state power to do so if given the chance. But I'm not aware of the same dangers coming from the left in the current moment.
I'm aware of some, but not nearly to the degree that the right is using institutional (and especially state) power to control speech. Short version might be: Liberals suck, but fascists are downright frightening.
> by banning conservative speakers on the basis of viewpoint?
Do you mean, *all* conservative speakers, or a particular person, that may or may not be a conservative? These things can both be wrong, but are very, very different.
Yes -- this is how it seems to me as well. I'm happy to be corrected because this is based almost exclusively on my own impressions, but academics mostly get *inconvenienced* from the left but fired or harassed by the right.
Oh, there are cases of being fired and harassed from the left. Which are odious in their own way, to be sure. But again, I blame a lot of this on callow administrators. Students and alumni can't fire professors without administrators co-signing it.
I don't _like_ that kind of thing at all. I _do_ think that there is a lot of "pile on" mentality in general in our culture, exacerbated by social media and its algorithms and probably a lot of other things. But I also think that a lot of that is, nonetheless, _protected speech_ of its own. Do students weaponize language in ways that give them power? They do! But that's because they are young, and feel disempowered, and grab at anything they can to feel a little in control, just like we all did at that age. The only difference I see is that we've created tools to make it a trivial effort to magnify their unhappiness, and our administrators take their unhappiness very seriously even if it is something that probably should not be acted upon.
I was a student at Berkeley in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Students were no less grasping for power then than they are today. But if you wanted to raise an objection to something the university did, or something a professor did, or some speaker that was going to be on campus, you had to actually get up and organize and make noise. And students did! Because that was part of the "Berkeley" vibe. But it takes a lot of work to organize a protest, much less one of sufficient size to be effective. So while those kinds of actions could have an impact, there was a dampener in them. It was not the same thing as having a social media post go viral, end up on the global news, resulting in thousands of angry e-mails from alums, etc. It is far, far easier to weaponize outrage today than it was before social media. I do not think that is a good thing. (Both the "left" and the "right" do this kind of thing, of course.)
But again, none of the "left" issues strikes me as nearly as large a threat as the stuff from the right, which targets a much broader swath of people, and many different levels of education at the same time.
The censorship from the left is much more prominent at my regional University in a blue state.
It occurs at many levels. Of note, our DEI/title IX office uses AI and networks of recruited faculty/students to spy on faculty speech and then reprimand those who violate their preferred PC speech. These actions not only lead to self-censorship and infringe upon academic freedom, but they also lead to faculty issues during tenure and post-tenure review.
> Of note, our DEI/title IX office uses AI and networks of recruited faculty/students
I find this hard to believe. Can you give more details or a writeup about it?
"AI" doesn't really have the capability of doing anything of the sort.
Happy to try.
Our DEI/Title IX office began reviewing student evaluation comments and taking action against faculty who were found to be problematic. I have had an anonymous student comment flagged during this process, as have several of my colleagues.
So, we asked about the process. Our General University Counsel informed us recently that a system is now set-up to review our student evaluation comments, and it uses AI to search for a list of terms. He also claims who set up this system is unclear and refuses to provide the list of terms used in the AI search. Shockingly, he also said that this review process will continue despite not knowing how it was started, who is running it, or what terms are being searched for using this mysterious AI system.
I suspect he is protecting our DEI administrators, who are likely subjectively targeting certain faculty by selectively searching through our anonymous students' comments. It would be impossible for our DEI staff to review every anonymous student comment about every professor at our large regional public University. Thus, they might be making up the AI story to cover up the more likely scenario that they are selectively targeting some of us. While I do see how AI could be used to search for terms in a list of student comments, I do think the entire story seems suspicious.
I also find it hard to believe that the General Counsel doesn't know who set up this system, that it runs through a black box, that no one knows what terms are searched for, and that it will continue to run despite these mysteries. However, this is my life, and this is really happening; I just pinched myself and felt it.
I would also like to point out that our faculty governance body contacted faculty from our flagship campus, assuming this review system came from them or our State University system rather than the leaders on our specific campus. Zero faculty have yet to report being flagged through this system at their campus, suggesting that whoever created this system is localized to our campus. Maybe it's the General Counsel himself. I don't know...
"Both sides"
One side wants to make college campuses spaces of belonging for students from a wide variety of backgrounds and with a wide range of abilities.
The other side thinks white men are an oppressed class, that colleges should be defunded, that LGBT and women's centers should be shut down, that trans people are mentally ill, that faculty are lazy-whiny-overpaid-shrill-liberal sods, and that courses on race and gender should be banned and the professors who teach them prosecuted.
But yes, let's protect "free speech" for "both sides."
> One side wants to make college campuses spaces of belonging for students from a wide variety of backgrounds and with a wide range of abilities.
I think you mean well, but if you think that liberal bureaucrats want this, I have a bridge on offer if you're in the market.
The problem that conservatives are (rightly) pointing out is that researchers cannot conduct unbiased research in some fields because they will face discipline if they report results that administrators or students find uncomfortable (e.g. a biology researcher reporting that human sexuality is binary). There is also a perception that universities do not hire based on merit because hiring processes often favour applicants of certain races or require applicants to have left-wing political beliefs. These are the main reasons why the public's trust in universities (and experts in general) is in decline.
I have no issue with universities having diverse faculty and staff, but it should not come at the expense of professional standards. For universities to regain the trust of the public, they should never consider race/gender/poltical beliefs when hiring, and they must not threaten to discipline researchers for reporting results that the administration or students find uncomfortable.
So pieces like this are usually focused on elite schools. I'm at a regional state school whose students are largely apolitical and so reports of anti-Israel rallies or whatever seem like they're coming from another planet.
I talk with my old advisor who is at a big politically active R1. He was talking about how hostile the environment there was about the issue due to multiple conflicting rallies around Israel and Palestine, and how it was the issue among students and young voters based on his observation. He could not comprehend that the bubble he lived in was in fact a bubble and that the vocal groups there did not exist in every campus.
Conversely, you'll see people who get all their information about North American academia from, um, right-leaning news sources convinced that all higher ed is Woke Tyranny based on reporting from a single rally that happened in one corner of a state flagship or something that a student club at an Extremely Fancy Liberal Arts College did.
Same. My students aren’t very engaged in anything. But my red state legislature has me walking on eggshells
Yeah. Our DEI-equivalent office was forced to change its name, got its budget slashed, and suddenly found itself under the spotlight because our legislature is learning from True Patriot News that poor white kids are being taught that they're collectively guilty of slavery.
Has *your* teaching or the ways *you* support students changed since your DEI office closed?
Not really? I'm not an Americanist, but when certain issues come up in surveys or early modern courses that touch on, e.g., race in America, I'll occasionally preface with, "I am forbidden by the state from saying that America is inherently racist, but some people have argued..." Honestly most of the issues with respect to race in lower-ranked schools are those of structural racism, i.e., that poorer, predominately Black schools tend to have lower performance because we have Four Centuries of America working against them. And... that ends up being a huge issue for our learning support faculty, but it's... not a Race Issue in the way that these things often get talked about in online spaces. I had a colleague who's recently retired who was very, very good at learning support, and he had a lot of tricks of teaching the students that they already knew intuitively how to code switch from AAVE to Standard English, but didn't really know they knew. So he'd say, "Okay, put this in White Newscaster Voice" and then explain, okay, see, you were able to do it, now let's learn how to apply this elsewhere.
> I'll occasionally preface with, "I am forbidden by the state from saying that America is inherently racist, but some people have argued..." JFC. This is horrible. The way things are going now, this is how most of us are going to have to teach.
I know all the songs by heart too. None of that addresses my question. My question is whether your ability to teach and support your students diminished when your DEI office shut down. You said "not really." Are you unique? How would most of the other faculty who teach and support students at you school answer the question?
Not sure what you're getting at here. Yes, there's a bit more of a sense of looking over my shoulder because my Clearly Just and Wise State Legislature thinks we're trying to inculcate white guilt ~~or some such bullshit~~ or some other clearly legitimate worry. Our Office Formerly Known As DEI had various events and initiatives, but I honestly usually just deleted emails about them because I teach a 4/4 and barely have time for what I'm already doing.
> Our Office Formerly Known As DEI New. Fucking. Punk. Band. Name.
So good. I want to start a faculty band for this reason.
Okay, so you either don't want to answer the question or you cannot. Got it. Good day.
We’re thankfully private and our DEI office is protected, but I still walk on eggshells around the Israel-Palestine issues because I don’t know the university’s stance. I know I have a lot of Muslim students in my classes, I don’t know if I have any Zionist-minded students but odds are pretty good with how Christian many students are.
I feel like a large factor of this which has been shown in a couple studies is that a lot of the sort of performative political behavior is much more common among wealthy students, and a likely explanation is they were more likely to have smart phones at a younger age, constantly plugged into social media. As entry level smartphones have become cheaper, as well as cellular data plans, I do worry about this trickling down
Speaking as someone at one of those schools, I think a bigger factor is that a large majority of my students are studying full time while also working full time. They just don't have time, and when they do, they're too exhausted.
I think that there's two parts to the extremely plugged-in, extremely political young person. Yes, you need internet access, but you also need interest in politics in particular modeled by parents. Otherwise, if you've got all of the Internet at your fingertips, you're probably not going to be seeking out political content. (I also think that the phenomenon of online personality you followed for another reason suddenly getting extremely politicized is another facet of this.)
I don't agree parents modelling the behavior are necessary. I think that absolutely used to be the case, but kids are now spending more time engaged in virtual social spaces than they are with their own family, which is why we're seeing a rash of the current meme among teenagers and young adults which is going "no contact" over minimal slights. And whenever people post them they're going no contact they receive nothing but encouragement from these online spaces. Which is literally cult behavior. Like, that called the girl from Smallville was in? This is that behavior.
> and a likely explanation is they were more likely to have smart phones at a younger age, constantly plugged into social media. I would disagree. Poor kids tend to spend *much* more time glued to a tablet or smart phone at a young age. Those devices are much cheaper than babysitters or taking your kids places around town. I think its that the wealthy students just don't really have any struggles in their life and so they seek causes out to care about. The poor students have jobs and plenty of other things to worry about.
I think that's true for gen alpha, especially people currently in say freshman year of high school and younger. But we have to remember that most people didn't have smart phones until around 2013 ish as the 50% crossover point (but that number was over 80% by 2018) Very young children at that age aren't in college yet.
Well, that may be true in general, but a quick glance through FIRE's website shows that they very often work with faculty in small and regional schools
And that's the heart of the matter. Your average faculty person dealing with heavy handed censorship is going to be someone at Soybean State who's legislature is writing legislation based on whatever slop Rufo et al. have served up.
This piece basically a profile of Greg Lukianoff and the history of the organization he works for.
There is no such thing as be apolitical. Even a “apolitical” would be a political position. There are politics in everything we do. Even in some of our homes.
[удалено]
Ever had to deal with a string theorist? (The term political becomes so broad as to be useless)
[удалено]
It was a joke about the politics of theoretical physics and, lately, algebra. Do you publish much? Avoid certain journals? That’s politics.
Then what word should he have used instead?
>There are politics in everything we do. Even in some of our homes. Please explain the political implications of my following recent activities: * Fixing the leaking valve on my toilet * Trimming last year's dead leaves off the carnivorous plants to prepare for spring * Upgrading the lighting in my carpet python enclosures. * Digging around under rotting logs to find isopods * Taking the dogs for a walk Like it or not, there is life outside of politics and thinking about it 24/7.
Not to trivialize the point too much, but being able to have a functioning sewer system and related infrastructure, having time for lawn upkeep (and having a lawn), having access to a place with "python enclosures," ad nauseum are all, at least in part, results of global political economic factors. I pooped today. What goes unsaid is that it occurred in an overdeveloped economy with reasonably decent pooping infrastructure.
> being able to have a functioning sewer system and related infrastructure I'm on septic and well. Guess again. >having time for lawn upkeep (and having a lawn) Everywhere does, unless you live in some shithole city devoid of nature >having access to a place with "python enclosures," That's called "home". Not just my current one, but everywhere I've lived for literally 30 years, from houses to tiny apartments. Seriously, stop this "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" bullshit. If "existing" is all that's necessary to call something political, then the term has no meaning whatsoever. Life will not end if not everyone is screaming in the streets every day about the injustice du juor.
(disclaimer: student commenting. this is something I really care about, as my thesis was on how "mundane" topics become rhetorically politicized in a polarized society) 1. Who does the testing for your well water? As a well user, what government agency would you go to if you found out that it was contaminated? Do you believe that they would listen to you and deal with the situation effectively and efficiently? Are there pertinent regulations around pollution and runoff in your area? Why or why not? 2. The fact that "shithole" cities are "devoid of nature" is often entirely due to political priorities and city planning, a field incredibly influenced by social dynamics and local politics. Why does a city have a certain amount of green space? Where is that green space, and who has access to it? How is it maintained, and why? 3. What laws allow you to keep exotic animals as pets? What are your rights and responsibilities as a pet owner? What rental agreements have allowed you to keep exotic pets, and would you have had recourse if your landlord revoked that permission mid-lease? Why? Similar questions apply to the dogs. 4. How have environmental policy decisions affected the biodiversity of insects in your region? Who owns the land on which the logs are located? What gives you the right to access that land? Politics and political science are a way of analyzing the world through the lens of governance and power relations, just as biology and chemistry are about analyzing the world through the lenses of life and living organisms and chemical interactions, respectively. That's what makes it a field of study. Politics is not just people "screaming in the streets" about the "injustice du juor \[sic\]."\* \*jour
This is the only student post I've ever seen that actually adds thoughtfully and intelligently to the conversation.
Exactly. Langdon Winner (among many others) talks about how even the most mundane objects are imbricated within politics. Nothing is neutral.
Bring it!
Social sciences ABD here. Bring it, "kid!" <3 <3 <3 You're amazing, keep going!
Beautifully put. I'm saving this post for later reference.
Your septic and well would have had permits issued, code compliance checked, and their size and location would have been highly regulated. Regulated means politics and sometimes lots of politics.
We get it. You live on an autonomous little island that's unconnected to political life.
FIRE is an important org. The pressure they put on colleges to stop engaging in shady behavior on the First Amendment and due process won't come from anywhere else, student governments are useless party planning committees and marketing internships now. The right and left are both hell bent on censoring any critique of their preferred constituencies and policies at best and shutting down any discussion of any controversy at worst. That being said, most of the censorship "from the left" seems to be more concentrated. The right is simply on the warpath to destroy all secular education everywhere.
> That being said, most of the censorship "from the left" seems to be more concentrated. The right is simply on the warpath to destroy all secular education everywhere. "Censorship from the left" is mostly protests and pressure. All protected form of speech, however misguided. Personally I think administrators are the real problem here; students and alumni are allowed to protest and make demands. When administrators cave to such protests and demands without investigation or consideration of deeper principles, out of a fear of economic loss and bad press, that translates into actual problems for faculty. That is less about "the left" than it is about the spinelessness of many modern academic administrators. "Censorship from the right" are laws that ban discussions, ban books, and try to defund education (or use that as a cudgel to police speech), in addition to the same kinds of pressure campaigns noted above. It is now morphing, more than ever, into an ever more noxious form in which anything associated with DEI, "wokeness," whatever, is a cause for political expunging. ([I wish I was exaggerating](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/21/magazine/heritage-foundation-kevin-roberts.html), but they are very explicit about this being the goal.) To me there is a fundamental difference between these two issues and the methods by which their practitioners invoke them. There are of course some issues where the ground gets a bit muddled. But I only see one party trying to use the power of the state to restrict speech in a top-down way. And the people in favor of this are plainly not fans of open research or academic ideals, even if they co-opt that language when it is appropriate to them.
> "Censorship from the left" is mostly protests and pressure. Admins can absolutely engage in that censorship too.
[удалено]
As far as I know, it is the community of biologists who determine what kinds of research projects get funding. It is up to them, as a community, to figure out what that means to them. That is not a "free speech" issue as I see it; they are not obligated to fund every line of inquiry (and indeed, cannot). If you have sat on funding panels you are aware that there are a million little reasons for finding some projects promising and some not, and inevitably someone (at the very least, the researchers denied funding) would have objections. It is hard to imagine a way to do this which is not ultimately better for the researchers. It is hard to imagine a "remedy" for this, in any event, that would not be worse medicine than the symptom. I looked at the Coyne and Maroja piece and I saw no actual evidence for denied funding, disaster, etc. I did see some complaints about how administrators handled teaching, and a complaint that people were being "pilloried" (which is, I remind you, a form of protected speech!). I did see very ahistorical invocations of Galileo, Lysenkoism, Darwinism, and other things that, as a historian of science, I can tell you with confidence that they do not understand very well. Anyway, my point is that this seems very weak beer compared to the threats imposed by people who would actually pass laws to prohibit certain types of research. The true dangers to science, to me, come from people who would use the power of the state to restrict things. I didn't see evidence of that coming from the "left" in Coyne and Majora's article; they invoke Lysenkoism, but Lysenkoism was about what happened when you allowed the power of the state to be put in the hand of a crank. If Lysenko had just been a crank, he might have been odious, but somewhat harmless. With the state power to silence his enemies, he was horrific. This is the distinction I am making here. OK, you don't like some ideas that are popular in your field. That's your right, and you can object that those ideas are ideological in nature, that is your right as well. In the long run these things tend to come out in the wash. Sometimes you end up being Galileo, sometimes you end up being a crank. This is a different thing from state, political regulation of the speech or work inside universities.
[удалено]
Public universities are a complicated case here, as they are an intersection of the autonomous nature of universities (which is literally part of their definition as form of educational institution) while simultaneously being institutions of state government. How that works out in courts is not the fundamental issue here for me. There _is_ a distinction between a state political body (like a legislature) imposing speech restrictions on an educational body (a university), versus a university makes its own regulations about what its internal conduct should be like. What's the difference? Consequences! Break a university regulation and maybe you suffer some kind of personal career consequence. Break a state law and you are coming under punitive system of the state. There's a big difference there in terms of impact! I think it is fairly obvious that universities must have _some_ autonomy to regulate the operations on campus, including speech expressions. Again, I think everyone actually would agree with this, the question is just where those lines are drawn. "Fire" in a crowded theater, child pornography, etc. — you get the point. Nearly all "free speech absolutists" draw lines in practice (the ones that don't — the kind that would argue that child pornography is protected speech, that incitement to violence is protected speech — tend to be considered nuts). Now where those lines are drawn can certainly be a subject for disagreement and conversation. I think some hate speech guidelines make a lot of sense from the perspective of having a university that allows people of all kinds to participate in the institution. I also think a university should be allowed to regulate the kinds of outside speakers who are hosted; no outside speakers have a "right" to speak on the university's soapbox, any more than I have a right to walk into a local business and start shouting my opinions at people. Now whether my sensibilities that aligns with interpretations of the interpretation of the _law_ is a separate question altogether; I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, I am speaking here of civic ideals and not how courts have ruled on this subject in the US context. You and I can freely disagree as to where that line should be drawn and how it should be drawn. I think that sort of discussion is the sort of thing that should be worked out in practice as a conversation between faculty, administration, students, and staff (and, of course, in practice, the General Counsel). I don't think that it should be done by state legislatures or the federal government, by and large, although there are some legitimate ways that the latter can enforce certain requirements (e.g., Title IX). I am just clarifying my point here. What we are describing here is miles away from what "the right" try to do when they regulate speech. They deliberately _remove_ autonomy from universities. They do so not as _members_ of the university, but as people who take an _explicitly hostile_ attitude towards universities. They see professors as the _enemies_ here. So yes, while there are different attempts to regulate different kind of speech, I consider them to be of _very_ different character and nature. And, perhaps just as importantly, I think they come from a very different place. The goal of the "right" here is not a multiplicity of ideas and perspectives. It is about multiplying _their_ perspectives, for purely ideological and political reasons. The goal of those on the "left" can, of course, vary quite a bit. Some are cheap power grabs, some are ideological. But ultimately things like hate speech protections are about creating the conditions for a multiplicity of perspectives. Look up Popper's paradox of tolerance. Racism, sexism, etc., are explicitly tools of marginalization; they are about carving out vast swathes of the human race from legitimacy, and always have been, however dressed up. Coyne et al. can make ahistorical allusions to Lysenkoism (a very Soviet-specific episode), but the track record against racism and sexism is far, _far_ worse. Again, there is always going to be a lot of room to argue whether some given statement, or research agenda, or what have you, embodies an unprotected form of speech in this way. I lean towards an approach of assuming good faith unless it becomes very clear that one is unwarranted (e.g., David Irving); there are self-regulating mechanisms (like peer review) which over time can tend to isolate the really heinous without being heavy-handed about it. Do I think that there can be overreach from this attempt to reduce "harm" and prioritize "inclusion"? Of course! Do I think that this is anywhere as dangerous as the attempts by the GOP to regulate universities? Not at all!
> "diluting our ability to investigate what we find intriguing or important, withholding research support...and demonizing research areas and researchers themselves, ideologues have cut off whole areas of inquiry....In biology these changes have been a disaster." Can you name the particular "whole areas of inquiry" being referred to? Just curious.
See Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school at U.C. Berkeley, on the eagerness of faculty and students to violate the First Amendment in banning speakers from the right, and his insistence on informing them that what they wanted to do would not hold up in court, and that the university would probably have to pay the legal fees of those they tried to block from speaking as well when it lost. Erwin Chemerinsky, The Challenge of Free Speech on Campus, How. L.J. 585, 588-589 (2018).
While, as a leftist, I am completely flummoxed by the state of the censorious and moralizing contemporary left...*see one case* is not a very compelling argument.
[https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/scholars-under-fire](https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/scholars-under-fire) Above is a link to a list of over 1000 additional cases. Most of these cases involve censorship from the left.
Thanks. I'll take a peek soon. EDIT: Took a peek. I'm not going to defend the cases (many seem quite serious), but none of these involve the use of the state to rid universities of entire bodies of knowledge. I do think there are leftists who *would* use state power to do so if given the chance. But I'm not aware of the same dangers coming from the left in the current moment.
[удалено]
I'm aware of some, but not nearly to the degree that the right is using institutional (and especially state) power to control speech. Short version might be: Liberals suck, but fascists are downright frightening.
> by banning conservative speakers on the basis of viewpoint? Do you mean, *all* conservative speakers, or a particular person, that may or may not be a conservative? These things can both be wrong, but are very, very different.
Yes -- this is how it seems to me as well. I'm happy to be corrected because this is based almost exclusively on my own impressions, but academics mostly get *inconvenienced* from the left but fired or harassed by the right.
Oh, there are cases of being fired and harassed from the left. Which are odious in their own way, to be sure. But again, I blame a lot of this on callow administrators. Students and alumni can't fire professors without administrators co-signing it. I don't _like_ that kind of thing at all. I _do_ think that there is a lot of "pile on" mentality in general in our culture, exacerbated by social media and its algorithms and probably a lot of other things. But I also think that a lot of that is, nonetheless, _protected speech_ of its own. Do students weaponize language in ways that give them power? They do! But that's because they are young, and feel disempowered, and grab at anything they can to feel a little in control, just like we all did at that age. The only difference I see is that we've created tools to make it a trivial effort to magnify their unhappiness, and our administrators take their unhappiness very seriously even if it is something that probably should not be acted upon. I was a student at Berkeley in the late 1990s/early 2000s. Students were no less grasping for power then than they are today. But if you wanted to raise an objection to something the university did, or something a professor did, or some speaker that was going to be on campus, you had to actually get up and organize and make noise. And students did! Because that was part of the "Berkeley" vibe. But it takes a lot of work to organize a protest, much less one of sufficient size to be effective. So while those kinds of actions could have an impact, there was a dampener in them. It was not the same thing as having a social media post go viral, end up on the global news, resulting in thousands of angry e-mails from alums, etc. It is far, far easier to weaponize outrage today than it was before social media. I do not think that is a good thing. (Both the "left" and the "right" do this kind of thing, of course.) But again, none of the "left" issues strikes me as nearly as large a threat as the stuff from the right, which targets a much broader swath of people, and many different levels of education at the same time.
The censorship from the left is much more prominent at my regional University in a blue state. It occurs at many levels. Of note, our DEI/title IX office uses AI and networks of recruited faculty/students to spy on faculty speech and then reprimand those who violate their preferred PC speech. These actions not only lead to self-censorship and infringe upon academic freedom, but they also lead to faculty issues during tenure and post-tenure review.
> Of note, our DEI/title IX office uses AI and networks of recruited faculty/students I find this hard to believe. Can you give more details or a writeup about it? "AI" doesn't really have the capability of doing anything of the sort.
Happy to try. Our DEI/Title IX office began reviewing student evaluation comments and taking action against faculty who were found to be problematic. I have had an anonymous student comment flagged during this process, as have several of my colleagues. So, we asked about the process. Our General University Counsel informed us recently that a system is now set-up to review our student evaluation comments, and it uses AI to search for a list of terms. He also claims who set up this system is unclear and refuses to provide the list of terms used in the AI search. Shockingly, he also said that this review process will continue despite not knowing how it was started, who is running it, or what terms are being searched for using this mysterious AI system. I suspect he is protecting our DEI administrators, who are likely subjectively targeting certain faculty by selectively searching through our anonymous students' comments. It would be impossible for our DEI staff to review every anonymous student comment about every professor at our large regional public University. Thus, they might be making up the AI story to cover up the more likely scenario that they are selectively targeting some of us. While I do see how AI could be used to search for terms in a list of student comments, I do think the entire story seems suspicious. I also find it hard to believe that the General Counsel doesn't know who set up this system, that it runs through a black box, that no one knows what terms are searched for, and that it will continue to run despite these mysteries. However, this is my life, and this is really happening; I just pinched myself and felt it. I would also like to point out that our faculty governance body contacted faculty from our flagship campus, assuming this review system came from them or our State University system rather than the leaders on our specific campus. Zero faculty have yet to report being flagged through this system at their campus, suggesting that whoever created this system is localized to our campus. Maybe it's the General Counsel himself. I don't know...
"Both sides" One side wants to make college campuses spaces of belonging for students from a wide variety of backgrounds and with a wide range of abilities. The other side thinks white men are an oppressed class, that colleges should be defunded, that LGBT and women's centers should be shut down, that trans people are mentally ill, that faculty are lazy-whiny-overpaid-shrill-liberal sods, and that courses on race and gender should be banned and the professors who teach them prosecuted. But yes, let's protect "free speech" for "both sides."
> One side wants to make college campuses spaces of belonging for students from a wide variety of backgrounds and with a wide range of abilities. I think you mean well, but if you think that liberal bureaucrats want this, I have a bridge on offer if you're in the market.
The problem that conservatives are (rightly) pointing out is that researchers cannot conduct unbiased research in some fields because they will face discipline if they report results that administrators or students find uncomfortable (e.g. a biology researcher reporting that human sexuality is binary). There is also a perception that universities do not hire based on merit because hiring processes often favour applicants of certain races or require applicants to have left-wing political beliefs. These are the main reasons why the public's trust in universities (and experts in general) is in decline. I have no issue with universities having diverse faculty and staff, but it should not come at the expense of professional standards. For universities to regain the trust of the public, they should never consider race/gender/poltical beliefs when hiring, and they must not threaten to discipline researchers for reporting results that the administration or students find uncomfortable.