#academic freedom

[allthecanadianpolitics]

From the exam-marking trenches to the ivory tower executive suites, Premier Danielle Smith has injected nervousness throughout Alberta's post-secondary sector. It initially seemed her Bill 18, the Provincial Priorities Act, was intended to make her government play checkstop or gatekeeper whenever the federal government and mayors made deals without provincial involvement. Then it became apparent that Smith's government would apply the same scrutiny to the higher-learning sector, and the premier's remarks made it clear she had federal research grants and notions of ideological "balance" in her targets. "When the government of Alberta states that it wants to align research funding with provincial priorities, it risks colouring research coming from Alberta post-secondary institutions as propaganda," wrote Gordon Swaters, a University of Alberta mathematics professor and academic staff association president. 

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland @abpoli

#Alberta #censorship #Academic Freedom #UCP #danielle smith #cdnpoli #canada #canadian politics

[gwydionmisha]

#South Dakota #Kristi Noem #Pronoun Ban #Drag Ban #Universities #News #Academic Freedom

[jstor]

Surprise!

For the last day of our Barbie Week, we offer you... a set of interesting documents regarding J. Robert Oppenheimer!

In the mid-1950s, during the height of the McCarthy Red Scare years (and just a few years before the introduction of the Barbie doll!), the president of the University of Washington blocked the appointment of Oppenheimer as a lecturer at the school supposedly because a Communist could not engage in free inquiry due to their ideology.

The University of Washington is sharing on JSTOR some fascinating correspondence from Alfred J. Schweppe, then dean of the University of Washington School of Law, defending the decision; a statement from the American Association of University Professors condemning it—albeit with some dissenters; and a more consistent objection from the University's student committee. We wonder which side lawyer Barbie would have taken...

#barbenheimer #oppenbarbie #barbie week #red scare #j robert oppenheimer #oppenheimer #american history #academic freedom #academic life #freedom of mind #research #academic research #jstor

[2bpoliticallycurious]

This is truly frightening. If DeSantis gets away with this, it will spread from Florida to other red states. And if DeSantis (or another Republican gets to the White House in 2024) he will undoubtedly attempt to impose his educational vision on all US universities that take any federal funding (i.e., all of them). Unfortunately, at this point, I have little faith in the conservative Supreme Court to declare this sort of bill unconstitutional.

House Bill 999 bars Florida’s public colleges and universities from offering gender studies majors or minors, as well as majors or minors in critical race theory or “intersectionality,” or in any subject that “engenders beliefs” in those concepts. The bill prohibits the promotion or support of any campus activities that “espouse diversity, equity and inclusion or critical race theory rhetoric.” This goes far beyond simply ending D.E.I. programming, and could make many campus speakers, as well as student organizations like Black student unions, verboten.

There’s more. Under House Bill 999, general education core courses couldn’t present a view of American history “contrary to the creation of a new nation based on universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence,” creating obvious limits on the teaching of subjects like slavery and the Native American genocide. The bill also says that general education courses shouldn’t be based on “unproven, theoretical or exploratory content,” without defining what that means. “State officials would have unfettered discretion to determine which views are ‘theoretical’ and banned from general education courses,” says a statement by the libertarian-leaning Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Finally, the bill centralizes political control over hiring by allowing faculty to be cut out of the process. Right now, some boards of trustees have the power to veto hiring recommendations made by faculty and administrators, though Young says they rarely use it. Under House Bill 999, rather than an up-or-down vote on candidates vetted by university bodies, trustees could just hire whomever they want. “They don’t even have to hire someone who applied through the regular process,” said Young. “They can just say, ‘Here’s my friend Joe, he’s going to be the new history professor.’”

This is pure neofascism. 

If the far right controls what young people learn, they can control the country.

The article above is a gift link, so even if you do not subscribe to The New York Times, you can read the entire article. I encourage you to do so.

#ron desantis #florida #higher education #academic freedom #sexism #racism #homophobia #transphobia #censorship #michelle goldberg #the new york times #house bill 999

[contemplatingoutlander]

The above is a gift link 🎁 for this excellent report/commentary by Michelle Goldberg about what is happening at the New College of Florida under Ron DeSantis. If you click on the link, you can read the entire article, even if you do not subscribe to The New York Times.

DeSantis has replaced the president of the college and the board of governors with right-wing partisans (including the far right culture warrior Chris Rufo), who want to remake this small, highly-ranked, public liberal arts college into a copy of the private, Christian, conservative Hillsdale College. 

Given the above, one of my primary questions is how can a state college be allowed to be turned into a “Christian” college? 

It’s like DeSantis thinks it is fine to just completely ignore the First Amendment’s Establishment clause, not to mention ignoring the First Amendment’s free speech protections (by attempting to limit what can be discussed/ taught at public colleges and universities).

Below are some excerpts from the article:

When I spoke to [Chris] Rufo in early January, he said that New College would look very different in the following 120 days. Nearly four months later, that hasn’t entirely come to pass, but it’s clear where things are headed.

The new trustees fired the school’s president, replacing her with Richard Corcoran, the Republican former speaker of the Florida House. They fired its chief diversity officer and dismantled the diversity, equity and inclusion office. As I was writing this on Friday, several people sent me photographs of gender-neutral signage scraped off school bathrooms. [...] Whatever New College’s administration does, this will likely be the last year classes like the ones [student Sam] Sharf is taking are offered, because a bill making its way through the Florida Legislature requires the review of curriculums “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States.” The sense of dread on campus, however, goes beyond what’s happening in Tallahassee.

Eliana Salzhauer, whose 17-year-old son is a New College economics student, compared the seemingly inexorable transformation of the school to Twitter under Elon Musk: It looked the same at first, even as it gradually degraded into a completely different experience. “They are turning a top-rated academic institution into a third-rate athletic facility,” she said.

Salzhauer was referring, in part, to the hiring of Mariano Jimenez, who previously worked at Speir’s Inspiration Academy, as athletic director and head baseball coach, even though there’s no baseball diamond on campus. In the past, New College hasn’t had traditional sports teams, but the administration is now recruiting student athletes, and Corcoran has said he wants to establish fraternities and sororities, likely creating a culture clash with New College’s artsy queer kids, activists and autodidacts. Before Wednesday’s board meeting, about 75 people held a protest outside. “We’re Nerds & Geeks, not Jocks & Greeks,” said one sign.

[See more under the cut.]

For many, the board of trustees meeting was the clearest sign yet that this is the last semester of New College as they know it. The pivot point was the trustees’ decision to override the typical tenure process. New College hired a large number of new faculty five years ago, and this year was the first that any of them could apply for tenure. [...] Corcoran, however, had asked all the professors up for tenure this year to withdraw their applications because of the tumult at the school. Two of the seven agreed. The rest — three of them professors in the hard sciences — held out for the board’s vote. This was widely seen as a referendum not just on the individual candidates, but on faculty independence.

Fifty-four people registered to speak at the meeting. All but one of them either implored the trustees to grant the professors tenure or lambasted them for their designs on the school. Parents were particularly impassioned; many of them had been profoundly relieved to find an affordable school where their eccentric kids could thrive. Some tried to speak the language of conservatism: “You’re violating my parental rights regarding our school choice,” said Pam Pare, the mother of a biology major. One student, a second-year wrapped in a pink and blue trans flag, was escorted out of the meeting after cursing at Corcoran, but most tried to earnestly and calmly convey how much the professors up for tenure had taught them.

It was all futile. A majority of the trustees voted down each of the candidates in turn as the crowd chanted, “Shame on you!” That’s when [faculty chair Matthew] Lepinski quit, walking out of the room to cheers. [...] “Some faculty members have started to leave already, and obviously some students are thinking about what their future looks like,” Lepinski said right after quitting. A few days later, we spoke again. “There’s a grieving process for the New College that was, which is passing away,” he said. “I really loved the New College that was, but I am at peace that it’s gone now.”

Rufo couldn’t attend Wednesday’s meeting in person, because he’d been delayed coming home from Hungary, where he had a fellowship at a right-wing think tank closely tied to Viktor Orban’s government. (This seemed fitting, since Orban’s Hungary created the template for Rufo and Desantis’s educational crusade.) Instead, he Zoomed in, his face projected on a movie screen behind the other trustees.

After Lepinski quit, Rufo tweeted that “any faculty that prefer the old system of unfettered left-wing activism and a rubber-stamp board are free to self-select out.” Turnover, he added, “is to be expected — even welcomed. But we are making rapid, significant progress.” He and his allies haven’t built anything new at New College yet. They are succeeding, however, in tearing something down.

It makes sense that Chris Rufo, the activist who spearheaded the right-wing anti-CRT crusade, has recently been taking notes on how to create a very conservative college based on a “template” from the neofascist Viktor Orban’s Hungary.

I hope that lawsuits will be filed against DeSantis and the New College president and board of governors for their assault on First Amendment freedom of speech protections and the Establishment clause by Florida’s attempts to turn New College into a state funded conservative “Christian” liberal arts college.

#new college of florida #ron desantis #christopher rufo #gop takeover of higher education #separation of church and state #academic freedom #freedom of speech #michelle goldberg #the new york times #gift link

[metalheadsforblacklivesmatter]

HB 999 outlines a system for the Board of Governors to ���provide direction to each constituent university on removing from its programs any major or minor in Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, or Intersectionality.”

...

Should HB 999 be passed, the hiring process would change completely. Faculty would not be involved in the search process as the Board of Trustees would be in charge of the vetting process for the candidates.

...

The bill provides instruction on general education courses and standards that promote civic literacy without mentioning diversity. Brown said that without diverse education, students would not have the experience and knowledge for the workforce.

What is academic freedom? In the American context, it means: — Faculty and students at public universities are free to investigate, study, and teach without fear of government censorship. — The state, in the person of elected politicians, administrators, and political appointees, does not determine hiring, evaluation, or curriculum content.

— Faculty determine the curriculum, hire faculty, and evaluate the performance of students and faculty.

Here's a petition to sign.

-faw

#black lives matter #blm #black lives still matter #women's studies #critical race theory #academic freedom

[schraubd]

The Conservative Experiment at New College is Failing on Easy Mode

[Hey -- I recently found out that my cross-posting trigger wasn't putting up new posts. I won't be able to give you everything you missed (check out The Debate Link if you want to scan my posts from the last few weeks), but I'll manually upload the most recent ones]

I'll admit: when Ron DeSantis and Christopher Rufo announced their intention to convert the New College of Florida into a conservative indoctrination camp, I thought they might succeed. Not just in the enshrining conservative orthodoxy part, but in doing so while maintaining or increasing New College's numbers along traditional metrics of academic excellence.

Simply put, the New College is a small place (fewer than 700 students). And so my logic was straight-forward: are there 700 young conservatives with reasonably good test scores who are eager to devote their college experience to a crusade in owning the libs? Probably! Especially given the largesse that undoubtedly would be funneled to them by the DeSantis administration in support! And given the high profile of DeSantis' and Rufo's machinations, it would be easy to attract that sort of young right-wing zealot to the New College campus. Any right-wing culture warrior who would find this sort of endeavor appealing no doubt would have heard of the New College and what's being done there, and would quickly put it at the top of their application list.

The problem, I thought, was always going to be one of scalability. Sure there may be 700 such students who could make the New College experiment into a "success". But are there 10,000? 100,000? The factors which would make the New College experiment work could not be replicated across the education sector as a whole. Try this at the University of Florida and you'd just have the academic wrecking ball of mass faculty departures and an enraged student body, and nothing to show for it. So my prediction would be that some of the "cream of the crop" currently going to Liberty or Patrick Henry might redirect themselves to the New College, thus giving a false impression that there was untapped demand for the product Rufo was selling, and then we'd have to explain that redistributing the small set of baby conservative crusaders is not actually evidence of a plan that can work at scale.

But it turns out I was still giving Rufo and DeSantis too much credit. Because the early returns are in, and while they've certainly done a number in terms of destroying the New College's academic reputation and standing (over a third of the faculty have departed, alongside dozens of transferring students), the new crop of students coming in are actually less impressive than those the college attracted before the takeover.

Rufo speaks a lot about academic excellence and the virtues of a classical liberal education. But as Steven Walker of The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported in a damning July story, the incoming class recruited by the new administration has lower average grades, SAT scores and ACT scores than last year’s class. “Much of the drop in average scores can be attributed to incoming student-athletes who, despite scoring worse on average, have earned a disproportionate number of the school’s $10,000-per-year merit-based scholarships,” wrote Walker.

With all the publicity, and all the conservative cheerleading, and all the momentum of the right's latest culture war, the New College couldn't even attract a few hundred talented right-wing youth to create the impression of a successful reform? Hilarious.

And it gets better. Rufo defends the recruitment of underperforming athletes on the grounds that -- wait for it -- there are too many ladies at the New College.

Rather than reviving some traditional model of academic excellence, then, it looks as though New College leaders are simply trying to replace a culture they find politically hostile with one meant to be more congenial. The end of gender studies and the special treatment given to incoming athletes are part of the same project, masculinizing a place that had been heavily feminist, artsy and queer. When I spoke to Rufo last weekend, he offered several explanations for New College’s new emphasis on sports, including the classical idea that a healthy body sustains a healthy mind. But an important part of the investment in athletics, he said, is that it is a way to make New College more male and, by extension, less left wing.

In the past, about two-thirds of New College’s students were women. “This is a wildly out-of-balance student population, and it caused all sorts of cultural problems,” said Rufo. Having so many more women than men, he said, turned New College into “what many have called a social justice ghetto.” The new leadership, he said, is “rebalancing the ratio of students” in the hopes of ultimately achieving gender parity.

But gender parity is not necessarily compatible with a pure academic meritocracy, which Rufo claims to prize. Women are outpacing men in education in many parts of the world, including Saudi Arabia and Iran. In Hungary, nearly 55 percent of university students are women, leading the government to warn about the “feminization” of higher education. Selective American colleges tend to have more female than male applicants; to maintain something approaching a gender balance, some have adopted lower standards for men. In other words, it often takes deliberate intervention — one might call it affirmative action — to create a student body in which women don’t predominate. New College isn’t jettisoning gender ideology. It’s just adopting a different one.

Oh buddy, I hope upon hope someone sues the New College for sex discrimination based on these passages. 

It's entirely appropriate to call Rufo's endeavors an affirmative action program for men. And while the SSFA opinion is about race-based affirmative action, even before that case conservative lower courts had been reflexively applying their affirmative action skepticism to sex-based programs (for example, in Vitolo v. Guzman, the 6th Circuit struck down preferences for women in COVID relief programs using essentially identical analysis to why it struck down race-based preferences). The logic of SSFA should, if fairly applied (I know, I know: that's one hell of a caveat), cover a case like this as well.

But even absent SSFA, the sex discrimination here is worse than a standard affirmative action case.Not only does the quoted language from Rufo suggest that the New College's decisions were taken "because of, not in spite of", the effect they'd have on women, they also demonstrate that explicit hostility to women -- a belief that too many women leads to "a social justice ghetto" and creates "cultural problems" -- was a motivating factor in the decision. This is far more powerful evidence of discriminatory intent than one would find in, say, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology case (where race-neutral changes to admissions policies were alleged to be motivated by discriminatory animus against Asians). Even defenders of affirmative action have never agreed that an affirmative action program could be justified by disdain for the overrepresented class. And one would struggle to find a more overt admission of misogynistic motivations than what one has here -- all in the service of further degrading the New College's academic quality in service of an ideological indoctrination effort.

There's still time for Rufo to, er, "right ship". If you dump enough money and resources into the New College, it will attract students no matter how bad its academic reputation gets. A lavishly funded subsidy program for right-wing kids really should be able to find an audience even if it's being run by incompetents.

But for now, this is just delightfully embarrassing. What a joke.

#affirmative action #women #misogyny #florida #academic freedom

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

“Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate.” -- Carl Sagan

#Carl Sagan #science #academic freedom #freedom of speech #free speech #what science is #religion is a mental illness

[eretzyisrael]

Both Puar and Larson have signed an online manifesto, Palestine & Praxis, in which they publicly assert and commit themselves to advancing a specific political ideology. As our letter to Eisgruber explains, signers are “committed to a particular political agenda.” Signers of the manifesto affirm that all their work, in the classroom and on campus centers the goals of the manifesto, to:

—Never “conduct research in Palestine or on Palestinians without a clear component of political commitment;

—Ensure that Palestinians are “sources of authority ”simply by virtue of being Palestinians;

—Advance the claim that “Israel’s sovereignty over its territory is founded on belief in the racial supremacy of Jewish-Zionist nationals”;

—Commit to “pressuring the academic institutions with which they are associated for the Boycott of Israel” and “center” the accounts of people because of who they are and not because of the validity of their analysis.

Many defenders of the course, the book and the professor, including President Eisgruber, have thrown on the sheltering cloak of “academic freedom” to justify their refusal to do anything about Larson’s course and Puar’s book. What this defense misses is that what Puar has written, and what Larson is providing to her students is not entitled to the shield of academic freedom because it is not “academic” at all: It is blatantly political.

In addition to the abandonment of truth as a goal, as a source, or as an inspiration, the activity of this professor and the use of this book violates the Internal Revenue Service Code section governing tax-exempt entities such as Princeton. IRS regulations, rephrased and enshrined by Princeton’s own internal rules, make clear that at all tax-exempt non-profit corporations, of which Princeton is one, “Studies which in and of themselves might be bona fide academic research might also be designed for partisan political purposes. The University’s resources cannot be used for such work nor to advance other causes not directly related to the mission of the University, unless it is paid for from non-University funds and at the regular rate plus the standard surcharge applicable to such work.”

#princeton university #jasbir puar #academic freedom #satyel larson #decolonizing trauma studies #the right to maim

[daloy-politsey]

#academic freedom #zionism #jewish antizionism

[gwydionmisha]

This terrifies me.

#Florida #Ron DeSantis #Academic Freedom #Censorship #News

[imtallandbuff]

09.21.23

Day 1 of 5 days of productivity

Yeah thats right you gays— our goal isnt 100 days of productivity goddamn it, it’s 5.

You think I can keep track?? Of 100?? Whole days??

Laughable, really.

Anyways I took some notes and sat on the floor. My goal is just to pass these classes ok im SCARED THIS IS THE BEST I CAN DO.

#academic aesthetic #aesthetic #study inspo #study notes #studyblr #studyspo #adhd studyblr #academic trauma #academic failure #academic freedom #guys i needed to submit an appeal bc i didnt pass enough classes but its ok we can do this

[protoslacker]

What Kramer is essentially calling for is population control by starvation.

Felix de Rosen quoted in an article by Katherine M. Savarese in The Harvard Crimson (Feb. 2010). Weatherhead Fellow Incites Controversy

I am finding Facebook really awful these days.

One troubling part of it is that I look at posts there primarily by people I know. Before "People You May Know" seemed to be people I plausibly know. Now the suggestions are not people I know or know about or can imagine any plausible connection.

More to the point, the persistant Israel propaganda really rubs me the wrong way. I'm old, there's a history to my distress. There's so much I don't notice, but my sense is that USA political propaganda shifted prior to the Gulf War. And then went into overdrive in the lead up to the Iraq War.

I'm no scholar and don't even follow the news well, but with Martin Kramer there ought not be any controversy.

#israel #genocide #academic freedom

[contemplatingoutlander]

Make no mistake about this. This is a white nationalist attack not only on any sort of affirmative action (even for low income people of ANY race or ethnicity) but also an attempt to prohibit discussions of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. on university campuses. The United Daughters of the Confederacy who pushed the “Lost Cause” whitewash of the Civil War in textbooks in the early 1900s would be thrilled at the kind of legislation that DeSantis has been able to pass in Florida. What is truly frightening is if he makes it to the White House, he will try to pass the same kind of legislation nationally.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

Florida’s new law prohibits public colleges from spending state or federal money on DEI efforts. These programs often assist colleges in increasing student and faculty diversity, which can apply to race and ethnicity, as well as sexual orientation, religion and socioeconomic status.

The law also forbids public colleges from offering general education courses — those that are part of a required curriculum for all college students — that “distort significant historical events,” teach “identity politics,” or are “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, or economic inequities.”

The Florida legislation has been met with backlash at both the state and national level, where higher education experts and First Amendment advocates say the state is trampling on academic freedom. “It’s basically state-mandated censorship, which has no place in a democracy,” Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, said in a recent interview with The Washington Post.

[emphasis added]

#censorship #academic freedom #ron desantis #florida #sb 266 #gop #dei #anti-crt legislation #racism #whitewashing history #the washington post

[bruce-morrow]

I used quotes gosh darn it, 2024

Photo: Bruce Morrow

#brucemorrow #themomentthat #billackman #nerioxman #nerioxmanquotes #iusedquotes #iusedquotesgoshdarnit #quoteoftheday #plagarism #claudinegay #harvard #dei #academicfreedom #freedomofspeech

#bruce morrow #brucemorrow #bruce-morrow #digital art #the moment that #my art #myart #themomentthat #neri oxman #claudine gay #harvard #pershing square #bill ackman #plagiarism #the mistakes are simply a function of my humanity.” #DEI #quoteoftheday #quotes #academic freedom #I used quotes

[schraubd]

Jewish Protests at Berkeley a Follow Up and Victory Lap

UC-Berkeley Political Science professor Ron Hassner has ended his sleep-in protest, stating that the university administration has agreed to all of his requests. In particular he flagged the following: (1) First, he asked that "all students, even the ones wearing Stars of David, should be free to pass through [Sather Gate] unobstructed. The right of protestors to express their views must be defended. It does not extend to blocking or threatening fellow students." The university has since "posted observers from the Division of Student Affairs to monitor bullying at the gate. These are not the passive yellow-vested security personnel who have stood around Sproul in prior weeks. The Student Affairs representatives are there to actively document bullying, abuse, blocking, or intrusion on personal space." (2) The second request was for the Chancellor to "'uphold this university’s venerable free speech tradition' by inviting back any speaker whose talk has been interrupted or canceled. The chancellor did so gladly and confidently. The speaker who was attacked by a violent mob three weeks ago spoke to an even larger crowd this Monday." (3) The third request was to fund and implement "mandatory Islamophobia and anti-Semitism training on campus". This has also apparently been arranged. I give Ron a lot of credit. First, he's not dunking on the administration here, in fact, he gives them a lot of credit: "It is my belief that campus leaders would have fulfilled all these requests of their own accord even in the absence of my sleep-in.... At best, our sleep-in reinforced the university’s determination to act and accelerated the process somewhat."  Second, it's important to emphasize that Ron's protest did not ask or come close to asking that Berkeley silence anyone else's speech, including that of the protesters at Sather Gate. While they should not be able to obstruct Jewish students seeking to travel to campus, they have the right to present their views as well as anyone. It is not a concession but an acknowledgment of the proper role of the university administration that he did not press for them to end the protests outright. Third, one might notice that Hassner's last demand was for antisemitism and Islamophobia training to be implemented on campus. In recent years, it has become almost cliched to hear certain putative anti-antisemitism warriors express fury whenever the fight against antisemitism is paired with the fight against Islamophobia, racism, or other forms of bigotry. They call it "All Lives Mattering" (although, when these coalitions against hate form and antisemitism isn't included in the collective, they call it "Jews Don't Count"). I've long thought that this was an abuse of the "All Lives Matter" concept, and it is notable that Hassner -- who not only has a ground-level perspective but who is actually putting his money where his mouth is in terms of combatting antisemitism -- doesn't see the pairing as a distraction or diminishment of what he's been fighting for but as an asset. More people could stand to take note. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/JP2DVb9

#academia #academic freedom #anti-semitism #Berkeley #free speech #Islamophobia #protests