I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of “academic justice.” When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue.
The power to enforce academic justice comes from students, faculty, and workers organizing together to make our universities look as we want them to do. Two years ago, when former summer school instructor Subramanian Swamy published hateful commentary about Muslims in India, the Harvard community organized to ensure that he would not return to teach on campus. I consider that sort of organizing both appropriate and commendable. Perhaps it should even be applied more broadly.
Can. Not. Unsee.
They could use the blasphemy laws in Pakistan as a template for their system of correctness.
These leftist student activists are like Mao’s Red Guards.
I read the article and a fair bit of the “best” comments. Oddly, the word debate never comes up. Quite telling.
The Orwellian sounding term academic justice is a complete twisting of the word justice. Justice implies a just prosecution of someone who has broken the law and harmed another person in some way. Giving an opinion, no matter how stupid or appalling, should not be against the law. An opinion itself does no harm to anyone. Justice also assumes a structured, objective hearing of facts from both sides before being found guilty and being punished. A jury of your peers decides on the validity of the case. What they are talking about is vigilante justice, mob justice, twitter justice.
I remember one of the criticisms against Palin was that she didn’t hold an Ivy League degree. The argument was that we needed leaders who were better than the rest of us and certain universities were some sort of guarantee certifying an advanced understanding of everything; morality. foreign affairs, the law, economics. I fail to see any evidence that this assertion is true. If anything it’s the exact opposite. They seem to only produce an abundance of students who are arrogant, authoritarian and intolerant.
University, where the young are taught what not to think.
Behead those who say Academic Justice is violent.
Letting school get in the way of education.
I’ve been pondering what to do with this link for a while:
Oreskes agreed that more training is needed by scientists and said that many have to change their view that dealing with the press is a chore to get past so they can get back to their “real work.” That attitude, she said, denies today’s reality that dealing with the press and with politicians is critical if science is to have a societywide impact.
The underpinnings of the anti-climate change movement have given it political resonance, Naomi Oreskes, a history of science professor at Harvard said, because of ties to cultural traditions of independence, self-reliance, and small government.
Harvard prof Naomi Oreskes want’s everyone to agree with HER outlook. She plans to have scientists “educated” properly so they do her bidding.
The only people who wish to stifle and censure others with differing viewpoints are those who, deep down inside, know that their position is not defensible.
academic justice…….WTF???
The institutional left owns the culture and virtually all public education. As long as conservatives support public education, the backslide into tyranny will not change. Support for public funding via vouchers might suffice if it were universal and no educational establishment received any direct funding from the political and bureaucratic process IOW, a mechanical process excluding the state from accreditation etc. No politician should be entrusted with anything as important as education.
Admittedly, Harvard is a sewer for the brainless Left, but this sort of thing is ubiquitous.
It would seem that Victor Hanson and I have travelled the same path from
the same beginning to the same destination: http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=6894#more-6894
I loved university when I first entered it. I can’t speak for Victor
Hanson but it is probably true for him too. His descriptions of the
reenactments of Greek battles suggests great enthusiasm (as well as
willingness to sweat: Greek body armour was heavy).
There are distinctions to be made, of course. The US funding system is
very different from the Canadian, where almost all universities are
publicly funded to greater or lesser extent. The publish-or-perish
practice both in the US and in Canada assures at least minimal
competence.
However, publish-or-perish has its own vices, extreme narrowness being
one. This reflects itself in education as well as research competence. I
was recently shocked to learn that my darling younger colleagues are
no longer teaching the Kepler problem in intermediate mechanics –
a staple probably since Newton, and one of the few exactly soluble
problems available in classical mechanics.
And then there is the issue of moral corruption. Our students are
certainly not innocent when they come to us – every kid from a
rural hamlet knows about sex, and the weekly or so delivery of drugs.
Many start serious drinking at age 12 or so. They do not need a
concentrated course!
Much of this is relatively new. My former colleagues, of 30 years ago,
were certainly more concerned with their students and put themselves out
for them, as indeed did my profs when I was an undergraduate. Now the
glories of research excuse every moral lapse and failing.
So, it is time to pack it all up.
The central part of the old university was its library. There is a shift
to ebooks which is rendering that superfluous, and already our journals
are provided electronically, to the great relief
of librarians who were faced with hard copy journals collections that
were growing faster than space could be found for them. So distance
education is now possible for most of the undergraduate
degree. That is true even to some extent for undergrad laboratories – I
took part in developing a computerised studio-mode first-year physics
course (MIT has done much more since), and
there is no reason why such a course could not be given through distance education. All that the student would need would be a kit of interfaces
and sensors. Of course an occasional visit to a mercifully much-reduced
campus would be necessary, and necessary for graduate work.
A library (the old ones cost very very much money BTW) would still be
necessary – today they act as archives for older books, hold ebooks,
and are business agents for our access to ejournals and indexing
services (a full-function university will need about 3000 subscriptions,
and Elsevier alone has about 1700 journals in its portfolio). The
staffing requirements would be much reduced, the physical structures
also would be reduced (essentially a big warehouse, climate controlled).
A distance-education chemistry program would be more difficult because
of safety issues, but probably not impossible.
But still, `tis a consummation to be wished!
As far as the Humanities are concerned, the campus is completely
unnecessary. My colleague M.G. in Education (the only person in our
Education faculty who is worth talking to) twelve years ago pioneered
distance education in his courses – chat rooms are as good as or better
than face-to-face discussions.
Almost everything I read today about North American universities sickens
and disgusts me. Time to shut them down.
Having written this, I am going over to the student centre for a cup
of coffee. On the way I will be subject to a barrage of posters, and
perhaps live sloganeers, advocating every left-wing cause you have ever
heard of and some you probably haven’t.
I would like to propose that Sandra Y.L. Korn be tarred, feathered and ridden out of town on a rail because she wrote this article. Because “Academic Justice” = Soviet thought control. IMHO, anyway.
Does tarring and feathering an academic for voicing an opinion seem like a good idea for a free country to embrace? Maybe we should bring back the horse whip too, as the Russians did in Sochi yesterday.
The Stocks seem more appropriate.
Then we would know where this idiot actually is and at temperatures below zero one could consider her as deserving of respect as a memorial to our troops is to the proggs.
All claims of justice by these types are basic progressive speak.
It is not justice, it is Just Us.
I would consider retributive justice a proper response to their activities.
Exile from the benefits of the work of those she despises.
There is a section in “The Red Violin” showing a People’s Court in
operation. In Canada we are probably worse because so many of us attempt
to internalise “virtuous thought.”
I think that when the dust clears, if it ever does, the Left in North
America will be found to have been more destructive than the Bolsheviks
and the Communist Chinese. Both Russia and China have backgrounds of
authoritarian government, and people who know how to keep their heads
down but think their own thoughts. It probably hails back to their
strongly hierarchical societies – the peasants knew that they had to
obey their lords but often didn’t like it, and knew that much of what
passed for public discourse was propaganda.
Again, foreign occupation can do that. In France, in the `50s, memories
of the Nazi occupation were strong, and few people believed what they
read in the newspapers. They relied on word of mouth. A case in point
was the official admiration for Charles de Gaulle, and the decidedly
more moderate popular view of him.
What is needed to deal with such idiocy is to require everyone who is admitted to university to pass a test in logic. The self-defined “oppression” that is to be managed by oppression is a logical fallacy. Only an ignorant sow who assumes that her emotions are the sole arbiter of what takes place in the world would write a POS like the article referenced.
There was a time, in the 1970’s, when the “social sciences” were seen as a source of hot women that science majors could easily convince to couple with them. Now, these same nebulous disciplines are a place for the morbidly obese misandrysts to gather. What is needed is:
(a) elimination of useless university programs which only produce barrista’s with an attitude and
(b) more hot women in science and engineering programs
(c) fitness criteria for admission to university in addition to logical skills
This is a quote often attributed to Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes: “There is no justice either in or out of court”. In part of course that means that we have a system of LAWS which sometimes seem like justice but sometimes not too.
When people start talking about JUSTICE I advise you to be very wary because justice is an entirely subjective concept and can be very changeable depending upon who is administering it. Me, I’ll take my chances with laws.
Ms Korn clearly likes HER views on justice…….
Love the tagline at the end:
“a joint history of science and studies of women, gender and sexuality concentrator”