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Dec. 22, 2006
Quick Takes: Bush Library Appears Headed for SMU, Furor Grows Over Holocaust Deniers Conclave, Teen Drug Use Drops, ‘Gross Clinic’ to Stay in Philly, Calls for UK Academic Freedom, Belmont’s Non-Baptist Trustees, College Embezzler Convicted
- The committee appointed by President Bush to pick the site for his presidential library announced Thursday that it was entering into final negotiations with Southern Methodist University as the site. While the announcement is not a final agreement, it suggests that SMU will emerge as the winner of the competition to be the host of the library. The other finalists were Baylor University and the University of Dallas. SMU, which counts alumna Laura Bush among its trustees, has been pushing hard for the library. But some professors have been worried about the plans, especially recent reports that the president’s aides envision a center to promote the president’s ideas and to sponsor scholarship that praises his record.
- Anger is growing at St. Francis Xavier University, in Nova Scotia, over a political science professor, Shiraz Dossa, who attended last week’s “conference” in Iran on the Holocaust — an event condemned worldwide as a platform for Holocaust deniers. More than 100 professors at St. Francis Xavier have signed a letter stating that while they uphold Dossa’s academic freedom “to espouse any views that he pleases,” they are “nevertheless profoundly embarrassed by his participation in the Holocaust-denial conference,” The Globe and Mail reported. Dossa is not responding to requests for interviews, but previously said that he is not a Holocaust denier and that he didn’t realize the conference was going to have many such people in attendance. Organizers of the letter — which does not call for any punishment of Dossa — said that they didn’t find that claim credible, given that Dossa is a political scientist and the conference and its aims were well publicized in advance.
- A national survey by the University of Michigan found continued declines in the percentages of teens reporting use of illegal drugs.
- One of the most famous portrayals of medical education, the 1875 Thomas Eakins classic “Gross Clinic,” will stay in Philadelphia. The painting shows medical instruction at Thomas Jefferson University, which has owned the painting but upset many in Philadelphia last month by announcing plans to sell the work to the National Gallery of Art and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art for $68 million. The university said that the sale would allow for improvements of its facilities and educational programs — and agreed to let Philadelphia arts institutions try to match the price. On Thursday, a coalition of philanthropic groups announced that they had raised enough money for the painting to be purchased and displayed by the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
- Sixty British academics have issued a public letter calling for a change in the law to explicitly protect academic freedom and to give complete freedom of speech to those who teach at universities, The Guardian reported. The professors cite incidents in which colleagues with controversial views have been attacked or the self-censorship of some who wish to avoid controversy. An official of the main faculty union in Britain expressed some caution about the new movement, telling the newspaper: “We should distinguish between the crucial right of an academic to question and test received wisdom and any suggestions that this is the same as an unlimited right of a university academic to express, for example, anti-Semitic, homophobic or misogynist abuse where they were using a position of authority to bully students or staff, or potentially breach the duty of care that universities have towards students or staff.”
- Belmont University, which has sought to redefine its relationship with the Tennessee Baptist Convention to limit the convention’s control over the institution, announced Thursday that it had appointed eight new trustees, including seven who are the first non-Baptists on its board. A university statement described the new board members as the “first class of trustees elected to office under Belmont’s plan to broaden representation on its board to include persons who are members of a diversity of Christian churches.”
- A California jury on Thursday convicted a former administrator at Riverside Community College of participating in a scheme with two other former college officials to use their positions to snare $1.2 million in state fundsby operating public safety classes for Riverside and another community college through a private company they operated, the Press-Enterprisereported. William O’Rafferty faces up to 10 years in prison after being convicted on 10 felony charges, including conflict of interest and grand theft, for the scheme in which they. The two other men had earlier pleaded guilty.
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Comments
Loyal Reader, On a philosophical level , I agree that there really is never such thing as “complete freedom of speech.” In fact, I don’t think that there is complete freedom of anything.
On a more practical level, the free speech debates in England are much different than they are in the US. In short: England does not have a First Amendment. England does not have the same tradition of letting all sorts of wacky ideas flourish. Therefore, I think that a demand for “complete” academic freedom needs to be looked at not in the context of American academics demanding something in the context of the First Amendment, but as what it is: British academics fighting a political battle.
As probably both of us know, it is very difficult to distinguish between a political viewpoint and an academic theory. The past 100 years have seen scientists change their position to conform with politics, and politicians change their positions to conform with ‘science.’ And this is the “hard” sciences. In fields like law, what once was a radical position becomes such a standard belief about the nature of the constitution and the nature of the proper relationship between the state and the individual, that it is tested on the bar. This occurs in less than a lifetime, and usually within the span of a career.
Larry88@mailinator.com, at 1:15 pm EST on December 22, 2006
Total Freedom of Speech?
It is a sad fact that the professoriate has its share of nutjobs and unreal whackos. Intelligence has nothing to do with it. To let these guys harangue a captive class with things like holocaust denial, 9/11 conspiracy theories, creation science etc simply shows that the academy is a little short on self preservation instincts and a lot short on ethical responsibility.
Howard, Prof, at 3:15 pm EST on December 22, 2006
To Loysal Reader: At the university at which I teach, there are no children, impressionable or otherwise. There are young adult students whose minds, I hope, are open to new, different and challenging ideas. Part of the problem with some students’ parents, is that they still see them as they were at nursery school, very impressionable and about to be manipulated by evil professors with their (shudder) “academic freedom". Parents these days, more than ever before, call university administrators about their “children’s” curricula, grades, professors’ teachings, and so on. Their interference results in calls to department chairs, college deans, and, very often, the provosts and presidents. Just like they no doubt did in school. Let go people — you survived worse — and so too will your “children” survive.
Manny, at 3:16 pm EST on December 22, 2006
“A person doesn’t get “complete freedom of speech” at any other job; why would it be given to those who teach at universities? I would not want an impressionable child being taught by a professor who has the “right” to manipulate and impose his/her views. A professor should teach discovery — the unbiased presentation of different views. This whole topic of teachers thinking they can use their position to flaunt their ideals just because they have a captive (literally) audience is absurd!"Well, perhaps people should have free speech at other jobs (in fact much management science is leading to the idea that more free speech helps, rather than harms, an organization). But I imagine one good reason why, of all places, a university should give it to its employees is that free examination of ideas is the best way of finding truth (or what you may call discovery). I wonder where this Loyal Reader would draw the line in classifying some ideas as prohibited because they are nonsense and others as still ‘in play.’ Why not let trained professionals put forward what they will and let the climate of reason and the marketplace of ideas ferret the nonsense from the sense. That climate has helped lead to the unprecedented scientific discovery of the past half century in academe, while the old dogmatic approach which was firmly in place during, say, the Dark Ages, turned out to dampen discover quite a bit, didn’t it? This is not to say that teachers should use their time to indoctrinate others in their political beliefs (they should not, and hopefully such people should have hard times getting PhD.’s and jobs), but the solution is not to let administrators indocrtrinate (by declaring some ideas off limits before hand) either. I think Loyal Reader’s real argument could be distilled to “Me no like what he say, arrgh he should no be allowed to say it!!!” Thank goodness for the sense of those who protested the conference attendee by publicly rebuking his silliness but calling for no institutional policies which would harm academic freedom.
Ken, at 5:00 pm EST on December 23, 2006
letter is a good approach
I like the approach the faculty have taken, They are engaging in a public debate that does not attempt to censor others’ speech.College students are not impressionable children, they are adults. All professors bring their perspectives to the table, as do all other kinds of humans with jobs or brains. Smart humans take this into account when analysing others’ research AND opinions.
MD, at 10:15 am EST on December 24, 2006
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A person doesn’t get “complete freedom of speech” at any other job; why would it be given to those who teach at universities? I would not want an impressionable child being taught by a professor who has the “right” to manipulate and impose his/her views. A professor should teach discovery — the unbiased presentation of different views. This whole topic of teachers thinking they can use their position to flaunt their ideals just because they have a captive (literally) audience is absurd!
Loyal Reader, at 9:50 am EST on December 22, 2006