Why Academic Freedom Matters (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Why Academic Freedom Matters (2021)

ravenmagazine.org

32 pointsTomte104 comments

I feel like academic freedom matters a lot less than it used to. Academia used to be a place where intellectuals lived in relative austerity in return for the freedom to pursue intellectual pursuits.

That made sense to me. Academic freedom in that context mattered.

Academia is now a political race, rife with fraud to gain advantage, odd conflicts-of-interest, and extreme biases. You get tenure by sucking up so you have strong letters. From there, the elites are extremely over-capitalized, which leads to financial fraud too (my alma mater has an endowment of around $30M per faculty member). NDAs and non-disparage agreements are used to shut people up (at least below tenured-faculty level) who step out-of-line and to cover up fraud.

In most modern elite academia, I don't really see a case for academic freedom. If there was something I'd want, it's more oversight and checks-and-balances.

I do see it as important in K-12 education, community colleges, and some state schools (someone mentioned UMass; that's a good example). Indeed, providing real academic freedom is just about the best thing we could do for free to improve K-12 education.

> I do see it as important in K-12 education

Academic freedom of teachers teaching a 2nd or 3rd grader how to read? Or of teachers of 6th graders learning geography.

This is where we get into politics and agendas. What happens when teachers want to introduce political ideas / ideologies to impressionable minds without them realizing it (they are kids)? What happens when parents disagree with those ideologies?

If everyone involved is free thinking and capable of evaluating things it's one thing. That's something that's possible at the college level. Dealing with young children is entirely different.

>> I do see it as important in K-12 education

> Academic freedom of teachers teaching a 2nd or 3rd grader how to read? Or of teachers of 6th graders learning geography.

I share your concerns, but I'll take the difficult position here.

Before CRT bogeyman there was the Common Core bogeyman. Tucker Carlson has Strong Opinions on how to teach math. I shit you not.

Every time I flew through MCI I had someone in the terminal or on the lane strike up conversation (midwest is like that) and learn that I'm in a math-heavy field. They would then say some inane shit about math education. I would ask the last math course they took. The highest answer I ever got was Calc or Linear Algebra, and 90% of the answers were "I don't remember" or "algebra in high school".

So, yeah. Third grade teachers need cover. Because even http://www.corestandards.org/Math was politicized by cable news talking heads. Go read it, not knowing what it is, and explain to me why someone who hasn't thought about math in 20 years would reasonably have any sort of opinion that's not motivated by a cable news talking head telling you that the reason you don't understand fifth grade probability theory is not that you were woefully failed by the American education system and your kid is already outstripping you, but because Obama Socialist Math makes no sense.

My experience with young children and college student is different than yours. We stereotype young children as being dumb and naive, but starting around 3rd or 4th grade, they're pretty smart. They just know less. It's around teenage years that they become arrogant and impressionable. Woke started as a college student phenomenon. The way you continue to develop critical thinking skills is by having those difficult discussions.

But that's beside the point.

If you want smart, competent, thoughtful teachers, we need to start giving room for people who are smart, competent, and thoughtful in the profession. Most of the teachers in my local school district are idiots, and that's in part because of how the district treats them. I'd love to teach, but not there.

What happens when teachers indoctrinate students? That's already happening. School districts are grounded in municipal politics, and my local curriculum is grounded in ideology and doctrine. Teachers don't want to diverge from that, but if they wanted to, they couldn't. It's not clear top-down indoctrination is any better than bottom-up. In other words, I'm not sure your proposed solution addresses the problem.

> Academia is now a political race, rife with fraud to gain advantage, odd conflicts-of-interest, and extreme biases. You get tenure by sucking up so you have strong letters. From there, the elites are extremely over-capitalized, which leads to financial fraud too (my alma mater has an endowment of around $30M per faculty member). NDAs and non-disparage agreements are used to shut people up (at least below tenured-faculty level) who step out-of-line and to cover up fraud.

That all seems like an argument for academic freedom. Protect people who speak out against the system or politics. Just because academic freedom has deteriorated does not mean is should be given up on.

My humble take here is that we need more academic freedom AND ALSO fewer academics who are obsessed with culture wars or partisan national politics.

We need more scientists who have a small bucket of money to work on what they think is important, without answering to a funding agency every year. More CAREER awards and endowed professorships. THAT is what I always thought was meant by academic freedom! At least the type of freedom I would want to see more of & think society would benefit from. The freedom to do scholarship and talk about their area of expertise as they see fit.

I think 80+% of professors who decry the need for more academic freedom would use that freedom to talk about the most inane and stupid things on Twitter. Or complain in committee meetings and trigger 20 year olds in intro classes. instead of, y'know, doing their job and taking big research risks that are supposed to be enabled by academic freedom.

The political type of academic freedom doesn't seem particularly socially valuable and I can't really bring myself to care about professors having more political speech protections than anyone else. Why are physics or math professors so much more important than Bob from Accounting on culture war BS?

An old mathematician saying women aren't good at math isn't a particularly interesting use of a mathematician's academic freedom. Or whatever word policing is in vogue these days from the other end of the spectrum. Like, how the fuck is that "academic freedom" at all, other than that the complainer is an academic and wants more freedom to say whatever they want? It has nothing to do with their research field. It's not academic freedom. It's just bizarro entitlement.

Anecdotally? It's usually the folks who actually do have tons of real academic freedom to do whatever they want with their research time who find themselves complaining that they can't collect a salary to wage stochastic culture wars in Calc 101 classrooms and committee meetings about course schedules or whatever.

Academic freedom should be about academics -- research and teaching. That doesn't include going on bizarre unrelated culture war rants in math/science classes or saying stupid shit about a politician on twitter.

Anecdotally, I was in college for 95-99, and I think we are in a much better place, free-speech-wise, than back then. I think perhaps a LOT of people underestimate the extent to which a lot of the biases that e.g. people of color discuss today were so pervasive that one could not even bring them up without reprisal back then.

And by reprisal I mean the following: if I were to merely discuss --as in, not advocate for, but merely discuss as a concept -- reparations, I'd immediately be dismissed and generally forever known as the angry black guy.

Of course, not to purely blame white people I suppose, that was just the "way things were." In retrospect, the line someone like me had to walk was far narrower back then.

We do have problems today, but I do not see a huge gap between those then and now.

Your example has nothing to do with academic freedom whatsoever.

The ability to engage with unfashionable topics in an academic context has nothing to do with academic freedom?

There is no academic context here in the parent comment, only social context. This example would fit the topic if it were about writing a thesis on reparations that was rejected or if the author was actively dissuaded from writing it.

If we exclude the social context in which academic discussions occur from "academic context" then I guess there won't be very many cases where academic freedom is infringed upon.

The original commenter did not mention being banned from any academic discussions -- his freedom was not infringed. It is the other people's freedom to ignore him that he wanted to infringe. He wanted to force other people to engage with him. That's the opposite of freedom.

And now for a case of real infringement of academic freedom:

https://quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-p...

No, I just wanted to paint a broad picture. Maybe I failed in that regard for you specifically, but I think other people got it.

The broad picture you painted is that society nowadays is somehow more free because less people disagree with your views. That's absolutely incorrect and has nothing to do with the concept of academic freedom to boot. I'm getting tired of reiterating.

You started with an argument-free assertion and your point seems to rely (as far as I can tell) on a pretty specific meaning of "academic freedom," which you've only defined by telling us that various aspects which one might expect to fall under "academic freedom" don't quite qualify. So it isn't that surprising that you've had to "reiterate" a bit.

I think we'll probably all agree that the juice isn't really worth the squeeze here, though.

Academic freedom is a relatively well-defined term, and requiring other people to acknowledge you and your ideas is not a part of it. Forcing your ideas onto others is fascist and the opposite of freedom.

It has everything to do with academic freedom because "academic freedom" is never in a vacuum. You're just showing that you're insulated from it. Be smarter, please.

What am I insulated from? Academic freedom? Vacuum? Social derision? Mayhap I am indeed dumb, but I don't follow your line of reasoning. What your original comment distills to is that you were socially shunned for holding certain opinions -- and yes, this has nothing to do with academic freedom. You were not censored or cancelled -- that's what's important. And you can't just force others to accept your views. Trying to is fascist.

> if I were to merely discuss --as in, not advocate for, but merely discuss as a concept -- reparations, I'd immediately be dismissed and generally forever known as the angry black guy.

So people would dismiss you? Did they do anything else?

Did they try to get you punished? Did they try to get you kicked out of school? Did they try to shout you down or pull fire alarms to prevent others from hearing what you had to say? Did they physically attack you?

Even if people merely socially alienated him for placing an idea into consideration, that's a restriction on freedom of speech, particularly as academia is supposed to be a place where people can freely consider and debate ideas without worry of reprisals.

What would your alternative be? Force me to listen to someone I disagree with? Aren't you now limiting my freedom? Freedom of speech doesn't mean you're guaranteed an audience.

In the context of a university classroom... yes?

I support government subsidies (either explicit or through beneficial taxable status) of academic institutions in the hopes that they can create a liberal culture where any and all ideas are open for consideration. If as institutions they don't want to create a place where freedom of thought is paramount, that's fine; but at that point I don't see any particular reason they should be eligible for subsidies.

As for you, you should feel free to attend or not, but I'm not interested in subsidizing you sitting in a classroom but only hearing ideas that never challenge you.

Lol. Bruh, I'm from "The Bell Curve" era. Yeah, you're gonna have to listen to people you disagree with. And I fully believe this goes both/all ways.

Say what? People should be allowed to disagree with you and even ignore you, that's what freedom of speech is about, be it in academia or wherever. What you imply should be the norm is a "safe space" -- which is the opposite of freedom of speech, because in a "safe space" you are only allowed to say "nice" things, "nicety" being evaluated by an authority. That's kindergarten, not academia.

There's a difference between being allowed to disagree with someone--that's not merely acceptable but desired--and facing social repercussions for making an argument.

If you are talking about being ignored as a social repercussion, you are wrong -- nobody is entitled to force opinions onto others. If they don't like you, they can ignore you as much as they want, that's freedom. What you propose is fascism.

I'm not trying to complain on behalf of myself; I'm trying to paint you all a picture of "what it was like." Social and cultural spaces were different back then.

What you're doing is trying to isolate and relate what I was going through, but through your own lens and you can't much do it that way.

For example, I was fortunate to go to an Ivy League school and as a black person that felt like a huge privilege, one that I damn sure was going to stay within a certain set of behaviors to keep. You can't measure "academic freedom" without that kind of context.

Again, maybe I/we misread and perhaps had more room to speak than we thought. Probably did. But again, just painting the picture for you.

There is no way you'd had faced formal repercussions for just discussing it in the late 90s. While I can't prove this, I would be stunned if you got much more than a few eye rolls and the like, essentially all in private. It is conceivable that some faculty member may decline writing a letter of recommendation, which could be significant. I am speaking about good Canadian schools and American ivies.

The suppression today involves professionally disasterous public things like firings, censures, formal censorship, pressure to sign petitions, reputational destruction, doxing, physically threatening pressure and screaming and possibly violence, etc. If only it were eye rolls.

You are correct that it wouldn't be formal. You are WAY OFF in thinking that informal isn't just as, if not more important.

Specifically, you're missing how then, e.g. white conservative majority power didn't need formality to suppress. That's how majority power works. It can just good-ol-boy network its way to suppression. (And note how it doesn't need to be precise when it's like that. It doesn't have to "make an argument," it can, e.g. just deny tenure to the loud black lady on some random grounds.)

Formality is usually what the WEAKER side must resort to. Now I think there's a reasonable argument that that process is much stronger in a negative way today -- but context.

> And by reprisal I mean the following: if I were to merely discuss --as in, not advocate for, but merely discuss as a concept -- reparations, I'd immediately be dismissed and generally forever known as the angry black guy.

As someone who was in college at roughly the same time, this doesn't sound like what I remember. Google scholar shows lots of academic discussion around reparations at that time (I'm assuming you mean for slavery, so I searched specifically for that) [0]

I'm sure it depends on what institution you were at and who you spoke to, but I don't think it was at all a taboo concept generally speaking in American academia.

Edit: Further googling found that there were even state legislatures creating legislation or resolutions in favor of reparations in the 1990s[1]: "In 1990, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed a resolution in support of reparations. In 1991, legislation was introduced in the Massachusetts Senate providing for the payment of reparations for slavery, the slave trade, and individual discrimination against the people of African descent born or residing in the commonwealth of Massachusetts."

[0]: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=reparations+for+slavery... [1]: https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/reparations-has-the...

This is the difficulty of trying to get someone else to see through your eyes, right? The fact that it shows up in books/papers can be a universe away from the actual space of a classroom.

Sure. I can definitely believe that in a given classroom setting being the advocate for reparations was uncomfortable. But even as that has become more acceptable, being an advocate for other things that would have been considered mainstream in the late 90s has now become uncomfortable. The acceptable range of discourse in college classrooms has shifted, but I'm not sure it has grown.

In any case, those scenarios are different from academic freedom in what I think of as the more typical sense, in terms of scholars being allowed to pursue and publish on whatever research topics they like. Reparations were not (I believe) outside the realm of academic freedom in the 1990s that sense.

I agree, it hasn't grown and there are problems to consider. But ngl, from my point of view the discussions (inside the realm of "academia," i.e. purely in the papers) have gotten far less stupid.

But that doesnt infringe of academic freedom. It infringes when you have some mechanism that removes it. Such as censorship or punishment.

Your (and others) use of "mechanism" is telling; your mind is likely pointing to something visible, formal and therefore publicly addressable, and what I'm trying to get at is that the oppression we dealt with is none of those things. Majority type power can oppress without that.

Once again -- this has nothing to do with academic freedom. Are you trying to derail the topic on purpose?

You appear to be under the absolutely ridiculous illusion that "academia" as a space for discussion is a self-evident isolated bubble of safety. I wish it were that, and I literally work most days to try to make it that way, but it ain't that way.

You keep saying words that appear to make sense but actually don't in the context of this post. Pretty much like politicians do. What is your point exactly? You said that academia is more free now than in the 90s -- is that your point? If so, this point is incorrect, because in the 90s there were no political witch hunts against academics that are prevalent and widespread nowadays.

And I'm telling you that even though there were no visible witch hunts, there absolutely were forces that suppressed certain types of thought, only they weren't framed that way. It was simple racism/sexism/homophobia etc.

Simple metric. Look at the makeup of "tenured faculties" back then. Overwhelmingly white and very male. Do you seriously believe that such a make up could nonetheless provide a diverse cross-section of thought?

To me diversity in itself has no intrinsic value. Such make up means white males were more rigorous in their pursuits, that's all. Also, I don't think your numbers are even accurate -- a quick google shows that 44% of tenured are female.

If you define it that way then people with non liberal views have an even stronger case. I agree completely that social expectations have a large ramifications, such as self-censorship, which is artificially propping up liberal ideaology in the Universities.

For the first day of class, I asked my students to read both essays along with the original Cotton op-ed, and write on the following question: Do you think the New York Times should have published Cotton’s essay? Why or why not?

We are woefully lacking in the ability to respond to anything with something other than cheering or frothing hatred. I don't know if the problem is actually getting worse or if it's just more visible these days, but I feel like I used to be able to see someone be called a fool without also calling for his crucifixion. Instead of criticizing and mocking we attack and attempt to destroy. If we fail we make an enemy into a worse enemy and when we succeed we make an enemy into a martyr. Fear is the wrong tool to use in the shifting of public opinion.

My concern is it seems we are no longer able to see big decisions in terms of tradeoffs. We say X is good but don't acknowledge the downsides. The other side says Y is good without doing the same.

To put it differently, we feel rather than think.

Because the dialectic is a remarkably powerful tool of social division and coercion.

Dialectics teaches about unity of opposites so I don't see how it fits here.

Synthesis does not equal unity.

Well, Wikipedia article on the concept is titled "Unity of opposites". Anyway, I just don't understand how dialectics has anything to do with what is being discussed. Division is opposite of both unity and synthesis.

Groupthink has (or should I say had) an evolutionary advantage. And the modern world seems to be bent on exploiting those atavisms rather than helping abolish them. Knowledge is power, that's why I believe that applied psychology should be a mandatory subject in schools.

Academic freedom for Amherst faculty is important to the college's mission. Their students will inherit the leadership of large institutions or storied family businesses and will need to know how to navigate these topics with poise and care. Understanding how to message to an increasingly diverse stock of labor supply is crucial to the good stewardship and continued accumulation of generational wealth.

For those blissfully unaware: Amherst has a $3.8B endowment and 1745 students, or $2,177,650 per student (endowment income: $87K/student/year at a 4% withdraw). In addition to that $2M/student from the endowment, they also charge $61K/year in tuition. Amherst is a undergraduate-only teaching college, so unlike R1 these funds aren't e.g. funding a giant amount of R1 research labs or anything like that. They really do just have $90K/student per year in safe endowment withdrawal and then also charge $61K/yr in tuition.

Academia has a lot of exhaustingly bullshit inter-personal stuff in general, but I have no idea how I would sit through the faculty meetings described in this post without exercising an excessive amount of academic freedom... UMass next door does infinitely more for all of these stated goals by just... not being a finishing school for the wealthy elite.

(I don't have anything against Amherst per se. It's just a bit insufferable how few faculty at places like this understand that they are running finishing schools for the economic elite.)

No, you’re absolutely right. Amherst exists for a completely different utility than any public university. It’s ironic how much of the “academic freedom” discussion on campus, much like the “mental health” discussion we’ve seen in the past 5 years, has led to so many of these sorts of haughty backgrounds now making their mental illness their identity or making their purported “freedom” yet another reason to love the Amherst brand.

This discussion of free speech makes one of the most common mistakes people make on this topic: It conflates not supporting speech with stifling speech.

This actually turns the idea of free speech on its head: If your actions (which should be considered speech) are forced to support others' speech, then that's not free speech. That's forced speech. Most individuals, and non-government funded institutions, should be free to choose which speech they actively support, and which speech they simply ignore.

Too often, proponents of free speech are actually promoting forced speech. They claim that not actively distributing, repeating, or hosting certain speech "suppresses" that speech, when, in fact, the lack of support is simply just that -- a lack of support. To force the support/disemmination of speech is antithetical to free speech.

Not allowing college professors to choose what readings they want to assign in class is, in fact, stifling free speech.

The essay is advocating against "forced" speech in terms of only allowing consideration of one point of view and refusing to even provide/offer other points of view.

Restricting "freedom of speech" to simply the ability to function in an environment with no intrapersonal or governmental violence gives us at best a faded facsimile of it.

Most "totalitarian" countries don't function by literally throwing people in prison or beating them for saying Bad Things: that's far too expensive to be total and widespread. It functions by removing people from positions of media exposure; by denying them access to physical or network media; by ascribing implicit or explicit social credit scores that governs access to resources. None of those things are violent and rarely even explicitly ordered by the State. In fact, "no one has the right to a platform to hurt society/the nation" is how those totalitarian regimes typically justify their repression. And they're still every bit as much a restriction on freedom of speech.

> Most "totalitarian" countries don't function by literally throwing people in prison or beating them for saying Bad Things

Yes, they absolutely do, and the threat of either state or political violence keeps most people in line.

> that's far too expensive to be total and widespread.

That's true for all criminal acts, everywhere. The US doesn't even clear the majority of its violent crime. Law enforcement of all types and in all cases works via deterrence rather than perfect enforcement.

> Yes, they absolutely do,

They do, but that's not the primary enforcement mechanism.

Deterrence is the primary enforcement mechanism. Which is also true for every other type of crime. Again, the US doesn't even clear the majority of its violent crime. The rule of law everywhere is primarily achieved by deterrence rather than perfect enforcement.

> Most "totalitarian" countries don't function by literally throwing people in prison or beating them for saying Bad Things

This is demonstrably false.

More recent examples: In Russia, they jailed a lawmaker for being anti-war. They jailed many thousands of protesters for the same thing. In China, almost any criticism of the government comes with the threat of being jailed. (More recently, they've jailed many pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.) In Myanmar they recently executed pro-democracy activists.

I'm sure you can easily find similar examples throughout every totalitarian regime -- assuming that people are not too afraid to make them public. Violence/jail, it turns out, is an effective deterrence.

Since I'm myself Russian and residing in Russia, I'd be glad to verify your statements as you weren't kind enough to provide prooflinks.

> They jailed many thousands of protesters for the same thing.

The same thing being "being anti-war". Well, this one is veritably incorrect, in fact, the opposite is true -- I haven't heard of a single person being jailed for being anti-war. There was a woman who showed an anti-war banner on national television during prime-time, she was fined about $500, Marina Ovsyannikova. So, what's your source?

> In Russia, they jailed a lawmaker for being anti-war.

Care to share the source here as well? What's his name?

They just arrested Marina Ovsyannikova for "discrediting the actions of the army of Russia"

> https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-ovsyannikova-yashin-ukraine/3...

The politician jailed for opposing the war:

> https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/25/vladimir-...

Many thousands of protesters have been detained:

> https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/06/world/europe/police-russi...

> https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/15/what-happened-to-ru...

> https://ovdinfo.org/

If you have any doubts, go ahead and protest for a week straight. Just invoice me for the $500 fine. Nothing to worry about, right?

Ovsyannikova and Kara-Murza are not jailed, they are detained and their fate is going to be determined in court. And they are not detained for being anti-war as you said -- they are detained for spreading misinformation -- repeatedly. Yep, just like they would be in the glorious free USA.

As for the thousands of protesters being jailed -- you make the same (deliberate?) mistake again -- they are detained, not jailed. And then released with a fine. And again -- they are detained not because they are anti-war but because their protests are illegitimate -- they are not properly registered with the authorities. And guess what? It works the same way in the USA!

Makes your comment look in a totally different light now, doesn't it?

Oh, and if you didn't know, RFERL is directly sponsored by the US government while WaPo and NYT are covert fronts for the Democratic Party so anything you post from them should be taken with a truckload of salt.

The situation in Russia right now in regards of Ukraine war is very simple -- everybody has rallied around Putin and against the West, everybody knows that this war is a proxy war against USA ands Ukraine is just an unlucky puppet. If you see some media telling you otherwise, you should know outright that it lies.

> The situation in Russia right now in regards of Ukraine war is very simple -- everybody has rallied around Putin and against the West, everybody knows that this war is a proxy war against USA ands Ukraine is just an unlucky puppet. If you see some media telling you otherwise, you should know outright that it lies.

This isn’t a war against the west, it’s a war of aggression waged by Russia that is killing, torturing and raping civilians. This is a war of survival for Ukraine, if they lose they cease to exist.

The Russians have repeatedly said that Ukraine isn’t a real country.

The only way that this is a war against the west is that the west is supplying Ukraine against the genocidal Russian army.

Thank you for the insight into Russian thinking. What are your thoughts in terms of how the war started?

I would point you to the excellent lecture of John Mearsheimer on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4

But the whole conundrum started much earlier, in my understanding, when western elites realized that Putin is not going to dance to their tune as readily as Eltsin did and wants Russia to be truly sovereign. The timeline of proxy warfare would start with 2003 Rose revolution in Georgia, then 2004 Orange revolution in Ukraine, then Putin's Munich speech in 2007, then Ukraine coup in 2014 and subsequent retaliation of Russia by taking Crimea and then today. In the interim Russia also meddled with Syria but that's far enough from Russian border to disregard as irrelevant to the Ukraine situation where Ukraine is right on the border of Russia. It's the second Cuban crisis basically. USA created a puppet state on Russian border and Russia obviously doesn't want that. Ideas that Russia wants to conquer Europe or restore USSR are idiotic and paranoid. What Russia wants is for US/NATO to get the heck away from its borders -- as was promised when USSR dissolved.

https://www.vox.com/22900113/nato-ukraine-russia-crisis-clin...

Interesting. Do most Russians believe this? Are they concerned at all about the mass atrocities committed by Russian in Ukraine?

Everybody in my circle does. I am not aware of any real non-staged (like Bucha) atrocities commited by Russian forces while I do know of such perpetrated by Ukrainians -- at least three instances of torturing and killing POWs and the literally daily shelling of Donetsk and surrounding area. If you are, do enlighten me.

Oh, and Ovsyannikova was fined again this week for ~$800, that's the extent of "anti-war oppression" in Russia.

I find it rather suspicious that you did not mention the lecture in your reply -- have you watched the video? Any thoughts?

> then Ukraine coup in 2014

You mean when the pro Russian puppet was ousted for going back on joining the EU and ran away to his masters in Russia?.

> Ideas that Russia wants to conquer Europe or restore USSR are idiotic and paranoid.

Then the Russians are idiotic and paranoid because it’s pretty much the exact rhetoric that they are putting out.

They keep saying they can take Poland if they want to and that Poland is next, if that’s not about the USSR what is it about?.

> What Russia wants is for US/NATO to get the heck away from its borders -- as was promised when USSR dissolved.

This was a promise that was never made.

> This discussion of free speech makes one of the most common mistakes people make on this topic: It conflates not supporting speech with stifling speech.

The example in the article is not letting professors choose works such as those that refute the claim of structural racism. So its absolutely stifling academic freedom, which you seem to be conflating with free speech.

Two major problems with academic freedom right now (which you find yourself wondering, were the liberal-claiming professorate only respecting academic freedom when they were opinions they agreed with?):

1. There is an increasing belief in "the right to not be offended" which is something that if you want to live in a society with free speech rights, you must nip in the bud. Anyone can be offended about anything, including things that are true. This cannot be the standard for censorship.

2. "Racism" and censorship based on "racism" is sinking its teeth into everything and extending its scope to include discussion of facts and policies that plainly have to do with race. Pointing out blatant facts that have correlations with race is becoming taboo. I put racism in quotes, because what racism means is being expanded, including to cause anyone offense with facts having to do with race.

The more the above 2 factors are allowed to take hold in an organization, school, society, and people get shouted down for daring to raise such points -- then the more legitimate opinions and discussion relating to these 2 areas will simply be pushed underground and only privately held in people's minds, and unable to be talked about publicly.

And then, people who claimed they were all for free speech, non-censorship, will be surprised when people, in the privacy of the voting booth, actually express their opinions and show that they did not agree the entire time and are not on board with the ideas that the one side thought everyone was on board with.

I'm glad the OP article touched on these points.

> "the right to not be offended"

Sadly, I think this understates it. In the case of the article, it is disallowing "speech that causes identity-based harm." Instead of treating these people as offended, they are treated as if they were assaulted.

I generally agree with what the author is trying to say, as I like my reasoned takes on free speech, but I found this particular paragraph sticking itself up my craw:

>When we act to silence white nationalists because we believe their views are false, we undercut our ability to justify our belief that their views are false, by preventing our reasons for believing so from being weighed against their reasons for holding those views, and thus we undermine our justification for the very act of silencing them. And this problem is not unique to the act of silencing white nationalist views. No matter the content of an opinion or the character of its proponent, the act of silencing it is self-undermining.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, consider what white nationalists explicitly want to do. They want to prosecute a culture war, up to and including the marginalization, expulsion, or genocide of left-wingers, non-whites, Jews, Muslims, gays, the mentally ill, and generally anyone not perceived as part of their in-group[0].

I don't even need to go as far as to say free speech is an instrumental goal of something else like anti-racism. Even if you think free speech is itself the final goal, white nationalists are still harmful to you, because censorship is specifically a foundational plank in the platform. This is the sort of thing where the ardent free speech supporter needs to think a few steps ahead and consider what maximizes total freedom at the end of the game rather than the first move.

I'll give you that frequent accusations of being a Nazi are mind-numbing. In fact, Nazis use that to their benefit. But at the same time, free speech supporters should not jump to their defense if those accusations are true.

[0] Notably, what is actually considered the in-group - the "whiteness" to be protected - has no real logic to it; so this list will change all the time based on who swears fealty to whom. American nativists wanted to kill and eat the Irish, Hitler had underlings that wanted to replace Christianity with the old gods, etc.

That sounds like all the more reason to keep the arguments against them sharp. There's a recurring pattern that happens when you have a clash of two ideas, one of them so dominant that its supporters have forgotten how to argue. When Milton Friedman used to debate people about more-vs-less-free markets, his own position ("much more free, please") was so unpopular in academia that it gave him a huge rhetorical advantage. He knew his opponents' positions and had looked for good counterarguments, but his opponents had mostly not given much serious thought to the matter -- it seemed so obvious! -- and so they would be caught off-guard trying to refute unfamiliar points they'd never considered. He got to do most of his debates on easy mode.

Bringing it back to race stuff, there's a common story you hear from people on certain parts of the internet: they saw one side that had what looked like a lot of calm, compelling scientific arguments, and they saw another side that never responded with anything more substantial than "you're a bunch of horrible racists whose opinions should be suppressed," and so they decided, welp, looks like these "human biodiversity" people have Important Hidden Truth. And from there some of them can be recruited to white nationalism, which has a similar rhetorical advantage. For anyone who's not a white nationalist, this should be at least a bit worrisome.

Exactly. This is something that a lot of comments seem to be missing about this article and Mill's larger point.

Free speech, as Mill views it, always helps individuals better understand why they hold views in the first place as well as why others hold seemingly unsavory views as well. If you want to successfully combat those unsavory views in the political sphere, it is necessary to understand the other side; censoring them pre-emptively is ineffective both for your own understanding and in terms of politically opposing them (see also from the other side: bans on teaching anything related to CRT).

Especially in a democratic country like the US that is highly polarized and divided into very different political geographies, supporting free speech is necessary if you want to understand where the other side is coming from better. (See this article about how both sides, but liberals in particular, misunderstand the other: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...)

> Please, for the love of all that is holy, consider what white nationalists explicitly want to do.

This raises a related, but much tougher, issue.

Does free speech include false speech? Does it include misleading speech? White nationalists are not known for telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Does free speech allow them to make up claims about raping children? Should someone be allowed to make those claims in a college classroom? Should someone be allowed to present photos of child rapists, but only people of one race, without even acknowledging the existence of the other child rapists? This quickly becomes the dominant issue when you go down this road. I find the naive "pro-free speech" stance to be unsatisfying.

What about reading black nationalists? I think there's plenty of value in reading the Black Panthers' and Nation of Islam's writings despite their often-abhorrent views. Same with the "Weather Underground" manifestos, the speeches of Osama Bin Ladin, the writings of Mao, etc.

Keep in mind too that many on the right would view a lot of what the left says on various contemporary issues to be "false" and "misleading." Should a professor be allowed to say that all white students are inherently racist? That communism is the best system of government? And is there a difference between exposing students to these ideas vs. requiring students to parrot them back on assignments?

The AAUP drew a pretty good line in terms of setting the limits on "free speech" that I think would address the kind of hypotheticals mentioned: "Teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject...The intent of this statement is not to discourage what is “controversial.” Controversy is at the heart of the free academic inquiry which the entire statement is designed to foster. The passage serves to underscore the need for teachers to avoid persistently intruding material which has no relation to their subject."

"I think there's plenty of value in reading the Black Panthers' and Nation of Islam's writings despite their often-abhorrent views" is different from allowing one of them to stand on a stage and falsely claim someone is a child rapist.

> Should a professor be allowed to say that all white students are inherently racist?

That's an opinion. Very different from singling out a white student and saying they are a child rapist.

> Controversy is at the heart of the free academic inquiry which the entire statement is designed to foster.

I don't disagree with that statement. The problem is that lies are not controversial, they are lies.[1]

[1] MW defines controversy as "a discussion marked especially by the expression of opposing views".

> Does free speech include false speech?

This is actually the primary issue in the article.

If it was, I must have read a different article. I read lots of arguments about opinions considered to be wrong. I didn't see anything about someone making up lies.

> I didn't see anything about someone making up lies.

That is covered by what Mills calls a "false opinion."

> It is necessary to consider separately these two hypotheses, each of which has a distinct branch of the argument corresponding to it. We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavouring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still.

And here is some more of the reasoning about this:

> When we silence an opinion, Mill says, our reason, at least in part, is that we are certain it is false. But in taking our certainty of its falsity as a reason for silencing an opinion, we are treating our subjective certainty as absolute certainty, which is tantamount to assuming we are infallible about the truth of our belief. But of course, we are not infallible beings; therefore we are not justified in silencing an opinion on the grounds of being certain it is false.

Note that "someone making up lies" is someone's opinion that you have determined to be a lie. If you don't recognize this you are doing what Mills has so pointedly warned and pointed out - assuming infallibility

> Please, for the love of all that is holy, consider what white nationalists explicitly want to do.

You've missed the point. Removing the speech of white nationalists begets more white nationalism.

We badly need strong cultural norms against ostracizing people for what they say, short of speech that breaks the law.

People should meet bad arguments with counter-arguments, or if they wish, disassociate from those that make bad arguments, but organizing someone's personal or professional destruction for speech they disagree with has been, throughout history, nothing other than a naked exercise of power and a wellspring of bloody social conflict.

I think the current state of affairs is that everyone in academia has 100% perfect and total academic freedom. However, they don't have basic rights of due process, so it becomes quite easy to remove someone who's opinions are not 'allowed' via a spurious, sometimes decades old, accusation and evaluating those accusations via a process which does not value truth.

A quote from the Lt. Gov of Texas, who is also leader of the Texas state Senate.

"“During the upcoming 88th Legislative Session, one of my priorities will be eliminating tenure at all public universities in Texas. To address already-tenured professors, we will change tenure reviews from every 6 years to annually,” Patrick said.

“Additionally, we will define teaching Critical Race Theory in statute as a cause for a tenured professor to be dismissed,” he added."

There is too much hand-wringing amongst the liberals, accusing each other of being anti free speech; when in reality, as always, the people who are actually anti-speech are the supposed conservatives.

Witness conservatives use the power of government to un-Constitutionally suppress speech by banning books from libraries, to requiring professors to register their political affiliation (in Florida), to banning what students can or can't learn or even hear about in class.

I'm trying to be fair and think of an instance where American liberals used their legislative power to outright ban ideas, and I can't think of a singular instance.

I suppose this is what it means to be an outgroup, unprotected by the 1st Amendment, yet still bound by anti-speech codes at the State/local level (currently).

> by banning books from libraries

Does anyone genuinely believe this is a threat to free speech though? I only see this projected onto people who argue for free speech, like you are doing. But people who argue for free speech don't also argue that we should push all information on children. Sex, how to murder someone, curse words, etc. It's not that they are hypocrites, its that you're oversimplifying someone else's perspective until it appears to be a contradiction.

I wonder why these type of op-eds see to always defend the speech of racists or those in favour of the beliefs of old billionaires, or the importance of publishing racist (etc) speech in private newspapers with editorial control, while the speech of hardcore Nazis, Hardcore leftists, Taliban sympathisants, radical equality movements, speech that is about sex and link and things that give offense to the prudes amongst us etc. does not get the same defense.

Or speaking less blithely: Freedom of speech does not mean a right to be heard, it means the state can't stop you or punish you for speaking. Likewise, academic freedom does not necessarily mean everyone gets to say what they want. I don't think administrators deciding what should or should not be allowed to be said by faculty is good. But at the same time I don't see the problem of a society deciding that they don't want those endowed with a voice to amplify messages that are obsolete and/or regressive. As long as the hurdles for creating alternative newspapers and universities and...are low enough, I see no problem in faculty and staff lobbying for political stances out in the open - otherwise we'd have hidden political stances anyway.

Another non-partisan example: should academics have free speech to publish opinions they have clearly been paid to promote as if they were research? https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/12/uber-paid-acade...

I think "academics" who sell the reputation of their university to Uber on the cheap have very little to do with academic freedoms. This example seems a bit too obvious to me.

That's academic fraud, a different thing.

> I wonder why these type of op-eds [seem] to always defend the speech of racists or those in favour of the beliefs of old billionaires, or the importance of publishing racist (etc) speech ...

It might help to consider that these beliefs are widely held and therefore more commonly encountered. I don't see why the argument can't be extended to the other classes of speech you mentioned.

> Freedom of speech does not mean a right to be heard ...

I feel like if that's the argument you're making, then you misunderstood the argument that was made. I don't think a person I disagree with has a right to be heard but I'd love to hear what our disagreement is. An important point to understand is that it's more likely for me to have a better understanding of my own opinion (rather than having it changed) specifically because I listened to and considered the dissenting opinion. It seems that it can only help me understand where the disagreement is.

Perhaps more to the point: that it's speech being suppressed not by a government but rather a private entity doesn't mean that I would (or should) agree with said suppression. You can disagree but, indeed, that can only happen after you've heard me out.

To the first: you are free to seek the information elsewhere. That's the whole point of my argument, the whole "the person who loses when X is silenced is not the speaker but the listener" doesn't work when you can go to 100 websites and make your voice heard, possibly earning lots of money while complaining about being silenced. And bans on teaching critical race theory is being called for by similar groups that are decrying the death of free speech when racists get criticized.

To the second: The thing is, if I'm a student paying tuition, or a colleague who's implicated by you, can I push for official sanctioning and/or dissociation once you make your speech? I'd argue yes. It's private institutions which can make their own rules (public institutions are more complicated, but are often held to a standard of "public pressure is okay, state pressure isn't" in my country)

As long as we have a healthy media and educational system of diversity , these debates and issues are not about free speech, they are about people exercising their free speech, then getting a bunch of other people using their free speech to react to it and calling for consequences and the initial speakers wanting indemnity. Those who complain about silence tend to be quite audible. I'd say, let them do like those who founded https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_University_of_Berlin instead of trying to evade consequences in cushy, well paid jobs

It seems that you missed the point behind this statement: You can disagree but, indeed, that can only happen after you've heard me out.

The argument being made in TFA (and by John Stuart Mill) is that an opinion can only be rationally disagreed with after its been heard and understood. I'm all for an argument against that point but you should consider how much you're talking around that point rather than to it.

You can think the way you do all you want but you're misunderstanding if you think John Stuart Mill's argument is anything other than that it is irrational to do so.

These arguments have been heard a lot though, so why do we have to keep giving them platforms?

If free speech doesn't apply to people you dislike then you aren't in favor of free speech.

Again: it does apply. But free speech does not mean no consequences, or the right to a platform. And the ones where it does not apply are generally not the ones featured in the mass media as a response to being "silenced"

But is the University's job to find truth or be a platform for a certain world view?

Obligatory link to FIRE: https://rankings.thefire.org/

I was a supporter of the ACLU back in the day. But when they changed from defending free speech, to working against it, I was not sure what to do. FIRE is now what the ACLU used to be, and I am so happy to have a organization fighting for this.

The issue is that a freedom is only a freedom for those who can afford it, afford escaping from the consequences of it in the case of freedom of speech. A person of color from the deepest recesses of the Bible belt can go to Harvard, can...

Academic freedom does matter, yes, but Academia isn't an ivory tower of neutrality. It shouldn't be. First because it should not be shielded from the consequences of its output, second because it should help advance mankind -- a political aim in more than a few regards.

Economics for instance has shown in multiple occasions that it is biased, toxic, and lacking diversity, pushing on towards ideology [1]. Academic Freedom does matter, but freedom appears vacuous when it only grants -- quite literally in terms of research -- the same ideas, the same people, the same social groups the whole spotlight.

[1] https://youtu.be/mwojD0iHS4U

> “deepest recesses”, “advance mankind”, “toxic”

This language is so explicitly ideological itself that it’s hard for me to draw out what position you’re actually taking here. Can you elaborate?

It is not ideological to say that academia should be held responsible for its output, especially in fields that can drive policy (for instance, in economics it is well known that one of the key studies that tipped the scale in favor of austerity was erroneous, but it was not checked because it was in the academic zeitgeist [1]).

I do not think it is ideological either to say that the purpose of research is to help develop people and nations. Whether it comes from hard science or soft science (a contentious categorization).

All in all, I think my point is fairly clear. Neutrality in academia, especially political science, economics, etc. is non-existent and that the developments and recommendations coming out of those departments should never escape a wide scrutiny and criticism. The way the article frames it is that criticism, when it leads to retractation in Cotton's case or that of polsci/humanities, is bad. I profoundly disagree. Calling for freedom of speech in academia, like the article does, does not mean that every one is heard, only that the already entrenched and tenured remains unchallenged.

[1] https://theconversation.com/economists-an-excel-error-and-th...

You are being irrational and ideological. It is unreasonable to hold academics accountable for policy decisions. We should instead demand that our elected leaders not set policy based on generally low-quality academic fields such as economics, at least not until research results have been independently replicated multiple times.

When one of the stated goals of a discipline like Economics is to help drive economic decisions, i.e. policy, it is not an unwarranted expectation that the milieu that led to them be held accountable. Science is not performed in a vacuum.

Science should be performed in a vacuum, that's the whole point. Its applications, on the other hand, are not to be performed in a vacuum.

It's not achievable, and likely never will. Even research in physics or mathematics is embedded in internal department politics and financing issues that influenced what is researched, who does the research, and ultimately who gets the rewards.

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