Wednesday, August 15, 2007

PESSIMISTIC VIEWS ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM

[It is a sad business, but with the decline in numbers of tenured faculty and vast increase in part-time teaching, academic freedom on any number of topics is severely restricted. A department chair elected at Brooklyn College recently was forced to forego the job because someone turned up a blog in which he had been critical of religion. Others have been hit because they have offered criticisms of the Israeli occupation. Criticisms of the policies of the Bush administration and right wingers generally can put one at risk of vicious ad hominem attacks which needless to say can carry over into tenure and promotion actions which are generally confidential. Having been on both sides of the fence in the past as an academic, I can only imagine the caution with which vulnerable people may be expressing themselves -- at the very least forced to follow the cheap media game rules of 'on the one hand and on the other hand' in instances where there is only one right 'opinion' -- the one that accords with the facts as we can best know them.

In a a way I am glad that I am out of there and into full time blogging now -- free either of putting myself or more importantly my colleagues at risk through speaking the truth as I best can discover it. But I worry about the future health of the nation if increasing numbers of academics fear exposing lies, injustices, and deceptions wherever they may find them. Ed Kent]

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PESSIMISTIC VIEWS ON ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Social scientists are more worried now than during McCarthy
era, survey finds. Sociologists consider why and what to do
about it.
http://insidehighered.com/news/2007/08/15/freedom
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy cited by Machiavelli)
--
Ed Kent 212-665-8535 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CollegeConversation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PeaceEfforts
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EndingPoverty
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/440neighborhood
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/StudentConcerns
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AcademicFreedom
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivacyRights
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Israel_Palestine
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FindingHumaneJobs
http://BlogByEdKent.blogspot.com/
http://www.bloggernews.net

posted by Ed Kent at 6:42 AM

1 Comments:

Blogger orneryswife said...

I stumbled (?) across your blog this morning, and probably shouldn't comment, but since I like to read comments, I thought I'd share mine here.

As a non-academic, but as a parent and a Christian, I have always been concerned with sending my children to a public university because of the very things you seem to be agreeable to. From my perspective, I would like to have educators teach how to think, not what to think, and rather than malign students for holding values opposing to those held by the teacher, I'd like for them to encourage students to seek truth.

Yet, in many ways, the academic world seems as corrupt as the medical field. We go to the doctor for a cure, and get "treated" in a manner that creates more problems than what we started out with. We send our students to college to learn how to think, make a living, and cope in the world, and they come out with a completely different set of values and a different world view than what we thought they would have when we forked over the big bucks to send them.

With a doctor, a person has the chance to seek a second or third opinion, opt for natural remedies, or whatever other option they may choose. The brief time a medication takes to make an impact may indicate a different course of action is necessary, and a person has time to readjust their treatment plan.

Unfortunately, the same is not true of the academic world. The damage is well and truly done before most parents even have an inkling there is a problem. I understand that professional educators feel they have the right, even the responsibility to impart their version of 'truth' to their students, but as a parent, I have invested a good many years in instilling my version of truth in my children. I want them to understand the world and the current events and what role they play in it, but I don't feel it is right or fair that my money goes to pay for salaries of people who have embraced social or doctrinal issues that are opposed to mine, and think it is their responsibility to "enlighten" their students, undermining their faith, their values and their intentions.

So, while you may feel that academic freedom is being threatened, not all knowledge is necessary to impart, nor is it all "good" to know. Right now the focus is on the mid-east situation, but there has always been some social crisis that has helped to keep freedom from some group or another.

What most people fail to grasp is that true freedom only works when each person is responsible for the greater good of all. When students are taught, "if it feels good, do it," without also being taught, "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," they lose the sense of community that is required for a peaceful existence in the world. When the theory of evolution is taught as fact, students who were taught about creation lose their moral anchor and foundation for faith. When "unnatural" lifestyles are touted as acceptable and "natural" even though medical proof abounds to the contrary, and people who try to stand against such lifestyles are labeled radical or hate motivated, there is something very wrong with the system.

Perhaps freedom isn't always a good thing: Like when it is not accompanied by responsibility and a vision for the greater good.
Respectfully,
T Miller

7:41 AM  

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