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You didn't read past the first paragaph, or you simply ignored what the article was really about, and how it relates to "academic freedom" and free speech on campuses This is exactly what it's about. (And by the way, First Amendment concerns ARE triggered when the administrations of state universities take action to stifle speech).
...
There is NEVER anything "succinct" or "clear" about your posts, and that's by design, as I've pointed out. You still haven't answered the question. All you did here is dodge it yet again with your standard vague wall of words.For some reason and despite the succinctness and clarity of their presentation
-- Xelor
...
It's not as though I evaded the questions I answered. I didn't response to Hershaw's subsequent inquiry about the "HV" because the content (explicit and linked) had already provided my position -- with regard to both the positive aspects O'Neil and Kalven noted and the normative aspect Haiman suggested -- on that matter.
-- Xelor
Bull****. It's a simple question that you simply refuse to answer. By the way, you tip your hand here, because if one has connect dots between posts and ferret out an "answer" by "context" between posts, as you say should be done here, then you're not giving a "succinct" or "clear" answer.
Your attestation to the contrary doesn't alter the fact that I directly answered your question (the other one you asked in the same post was inane to begin with, which is why I ignored it). That you don't realize as much is on you, not me.If it has not value to you on an academic campus, and you would be against defending it on a campus, where would you ardently raise a defense of Free Speech?
-- Hershaw
I have stated in multiple posts, including my introduction of myself, that I am not an academic. I am a retired management consulting principal.
Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these values is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matters of fact and inference right. The operative commonplace is "following the evidence wherever it leads." One can’t do that if one's sources are suspect or nonexistent; one can’t do that if one only considers evidence favorable to one's preferred predicates; one can’t do that if one's evidence is far afield and hasn’t been persuasively connected to the instant matter of fact.
Nor can one follow the evidence wherever it leads if what guides one be a desire that inquiry reach a conclusion sympathetic to one's political views. If free speech is not an academic value because it is not the value guiding inquiry, free political speech becomes antithetical to inquiry: it skews inquiry in advance, one achieves one's end from the get-go.
Can you please explain your cognition that led you to arrive at your stated conclusion about what you think I've, by the indicated passage, implied?Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these values is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matters of fact and inference right. The operative commonplace is "following the evidence wherever it leads." One can’t do that if one's sources are suspect or nonexistent; one can’t do that if one only considers evidence favorable to one's preferred predicates; one can’t do that if one's evidence is far afield and hasn’t been persuasively connected to the instant matter of fact.
Nor can one follow the evidence wherever it leads if what guides one be a desire that inquiry reach a conclusion sympathetic to one's political views. If free speech is not an academic value because it is not the value guiding inquiry, free political speech becomes antithetical to inquiry: it skews inquiry in advance, one achieves one's end from the get-go.
-- Xelor
Here, I think, is where your claim is going to fall far, far short; you seem to imply here that there are those who do not come to questions with preconceived ideas, that the same worldview which impacts one's politics will not of course impact their expectations elsewhere, and that those in charge of current large academic institutions are inherently protected from political groupthink. Nothing could be further for the truth. The reason we need free speech isn't because we are willing to risk bias. It's because we need bias to check the bias that is already here in us. "We must not allow research to be informed by political considerations" quickly becomes "We must not have research that could be politically advantageous to causes we disagree with. That research which we find politically advantageous to causes we agree with, we are naturally less inclined to question, and therefore must be more academically pure, due to our reduced disagreement."
Pink + Red:For what it's worth, I fully support free speech of ideas. And the best approach to tackling misinformation and factually inaccurate speech is to challenge it. I've seen both sides of the political isle want to stop dissenting views. This has to end. Open up to hear the other side, and denounce it when it is factually inaccurate. But denounce the inaccuracy and not the person.
That said, I hear a lot of garbage from students today and few want to be challenged and often consider a challenge sign of bias from the instructor. and while I support teachers being challenged as well, it must be with reason and evidence and not mere belief.
I hope that makes sense.
Valid:
[/INDENT]
Consider former NY governor Eliot Spitzer who, a wiretap revealed, arranged to hire a prostitute for $4,300. Because this behavior ran counter to Spitzer’s anti-corruption platform, his willingness to be party to prostitution could rationally compromise his position regarding the enforcement of prostitution proscriptions, thus preventing Spitzer from, at least with regard to that aspect of law enforcement and legislation, governing successfully; thus, criticizing this aspect of his character is, to a degree, valid.
Could his involvement in prostitution be used to validly denigrate his ability to govern with regard to managing a natural disaster's effects? No. The context of the offense and the aspect of governance (disaster management) are unrelated. For Spitzer's prostitution participation to be germane/valid for that line of disparagement, one'd have to show somehow that Spitzer would give unduly favorable disaster relief treatment to prostitution industry sellers/buyers and deny or delay the same to non-prostitution industry actors.
Tan:
Yes. A key theme of the OP is that the "garbage," the unsound/uncogent rhetoric, must, because it is "garbage," remain unpresented. The burden for thus keeping mum rests on the would-be speaker, and part of the way s/he honors that onus is by recognizing when one's conception of a matter is subpar and, in turn, not belching out one's absurd objection (or approbation) merely because notions of free speech allow one to do so. Adhering to such principled discourse is to exhibit an academic value, and it is not a squelching of free speech.
Green:
Well, there is a difference between didactic challenges and repartee in the classroom and ill-/uninformed effluvium spewn forth in the public sphere.
The lecture that I used as my example didn't occur during the conduct of a class session. It was an event in which a speaker had been invited to express his ideas in the public sphere.
Just as context determines the in-/validity of a personal attack, so too does it determine the legitimacy and aptness of one's openly sharing one's thoughts. For everything there is a time and a place, and it's a speaker's duty, it's an academic value, to suss when is and is not that time and place to express one's thoughts.
In the Middlebury example I presented in my OP, it was the students, not Murray, who deserved to be silenced....silenced not to curtail their free speech rights, but because they hadn't anything of merit to say. They effected the heckler's veto to squelch Murray, rather than, as the values of academia require, one or some of them presenting rigorous, sound/cogent objections to the substance of his remarks. Quite simply, lacking a strong counter-argument, the students should have remained quiet.
I participate more often in classroom.
But lets talk about your example concerning attacking the person. Character concerns are important when discussing the importance of character or the role character will play on an issue. I might well argue that Trump's lack of character is a concern and that those who espoused to the idea that character was important but ignore that to support him have in fact demonstrated that those values didn't really matter to them. And it is fair to call this out. It would however not be proper to merely call them names and attack them as people. I say this largely due to purpose of such discussions. who you insult rarely listens to you. This works with an audience as well. If your purpose is to counter a hateful and inaccurate speaker, shouting them down largely gives them more followers and not less. A well reason and rational argument is largely more effective, even today.
Back to the classroom. The younger the student and the earlier in the process the less capable students are to formulate well reasoned argument Their young and that's their fault (old song reference), but the point is they have to learn. The politics of the day, what's going on at home, on social media and from our leaders has them ready to pounce on and at different views. This is harmful. In college, we have to teach them to engage, to reason, to not be sheltered, but to develop tools to resist "garbage." You can't do that by creating a safe space where they don't confront irrationality with reason.
Yes, I read what you wrote and in some spots I echo it, but I think it is the respectful discourse that I want to emphasize. Students should not shout down a speaker, but engage the speaker in pointed discourse. Protests are acceptable, but not during the discourse. As you said, a time and place.
And a speaker who won't engage a student with a different view marks him or herself as well.
Red:
Well, yes. There does have to be a valid case presented along with the aspersion and/or character impeachment.
Blue:
True. I think concessions need to be made -- on the students' part and on that of their betters -- for minors. That said, and as I noted, discourse in the didactic context of the classroom setting is quite different from exchanges in the public area.
Of course, the kids at Middlebury weren't minors. Indeed, they're supposed to be among the country's best and brightest. Accordingly, they are, IMO, rightly held to a higher standard, both in and out of the classroom.
Pink:
I think you and I are on the same page.
Tan:
Having been a lecturer and a panelist/speaker at a few symposia, albeit not one who got heckler vetoed, I welcome thoughtful retorts, remarks and refutations/rebuttals. On the other hand, the "garbage" remarks are just that, and, frankly, little but distractions. Of course, such situations are public and one can't summarily and rudely dismiss the participants who manage to air their "peanut gallery" thoughts.
Having briefly been a college instructor (I was, for several years, a graduate teaching assistant), during class/office hours, of course, I welcomed even the "peanut gallery" questions and comments because their airings made for organically presented teaching opportunities. But therein is part of the difference between a classroom and a lecture/symposium/seminar. (Did I mislead you with the term "lecture?" I didn't mean lecture in the sense of an instructor's classroom lecture, which is a fine time for students to raise their topically germane questions, be they soliciting clarification of or expansion on the ideas being taught.)
My classroom lectures (economics) were a mix. Most of the time I simply taught the content in a straightforward way, standing at the front of the classroom and explaining the concepts and analytical techniques. Once every couple weeks, usually two or three classroom sessions ahead of an exam (I figured that was a good time and far enough in advance of an exam, for them to discover whether they actually grasped the concepts, which ones pertained to which situations, which among several deserved more and/or less weight in a given situation, etc.), I led interactive/socratic discussions focused on applying the concepts I'd previously taught. But that was for a principles-level course.Likely, lecture is someone different for me I suppose, though my lectures are structured as conversations. I try to challenge thinking. But it's harder to pull off than it used to be.
I have stated in multiple posts, including my introduction of myself, that I am not an academic. I am a retired management consulting principal.
I was, for several years, a graduate teaching assistant
My classroom lectures (economics) were a mix. Most of the time I simply taught the content in a straightforward way, standing at the front of the classroom and explaining the concepts and analytical techniques. Once every couple weeks, usually two or three classroom sessions ahead of an exam (I figured that was a good time and far enough in advance of an exam, for them to discover whether they actually grasped the concepts, which ones pertained to which situations, which among several deserved more and/or less weight in a given situation, etc.), I led interactive/socratic discussions focused on applying the concepts I'd previously taught. But that was for a principles-level course.
For the intermediate-level course I taught, the classroom sessions were more heavily interactive; however, at that level, the expectation on the student is greater...They arrive in the class having already take the prerequisites, so my instruction assumes they've mastered that content. Occasionally a student would have a question about performing a specific technical operation, and, of course, I'd address it. Mostly, however, my classroom lectures were geared toward getting the students to think about the technical elements and apply them in analyzing "real world" situations. It was only on the exams (or quizzes) and in papers that they were required to demonstrate their facility with actually performing the mathematical operations attendant to the concepts.
There again, however, it was college not school. The students are adults and they were there because they'd willfully decided to be in college and they chosen the class they were in. Unlike in K-12, it's a collegian's "job" to be outstanding at learning the material more so than it is the instructor's job to be outstanding at teaching it.
Off-topic:Do you use the Harkness method?
Red:I withdraw my post #29, based on your post #37.
I knew you were associated with the academic world. I've worked with many in that area and your posts have all too familiar similarities. How dishonest to deny it based on a literal definition of academia.
Part I of II
On multiple occasions, I've seen people here gripe about collegians being unable, on campus, to say whatever suits them. Just as parents draw a line about what of their guidance is open for debate, college students face constraints on what they can and cannot say in an academic context. To wit, the experience and insights I impart to my kids aren't by them things to question. When they have the life experience, intellectual knowledge and acuity to make their own marks in the world and not depend on the ones I've made for their sufficiency, I will have achieved my goal of raising them, and at that point all of my input will for them be reduced to suggestion status, whereupon they become free to conduct their affairs as they see fit, free to express themselves as they desire, and free to raise their own kids as I raised them or differently.
The same concept applies in higher education settings. When students reach the point that they have original ideas that withstand rigorous scrutiny, the discipuli will have then earned the right to speak freely on topics that capture their interest and that fall within the scope of their expertise. Until then, however, they need to sit down, take notes and, where/when fitting, ask intelligent questions.
Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these values is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matters of fact and inference right. The operative commonplace is "following the evidence wherever it leads." One can’t do that if one's sources are suspect or nonexistent; one can’t do that if one only considers evidence favorable to one's preferred predicates; one can’t do that if one's evidence is far afield and hasn’t been persuasively connected to the instant matter of fact.
Nor can one follow the evidence wherever it leads if what guides one be a desire that inquiry reach a conclusion sympathetic to one's political views. If free speech is not an academic value because it is not the value guiding inquiry, free political speech becomes antithetical to inquiry: it skews inquiry in advance, one achieves one's end from the get-go.
Speech is political if, when answering questions, one believes it is one's task to answer normatively rather than dialectically. Any number of topics taken up in a classroom will contain moral and political issues, issues like discrimination, inequality, institutional racism. Those issues should be studied, analyzed, and historicized, but they shouldn’t, in the classroom, be debated with a view to forming and prosecuting a remedial agenda.
The academic interrogation of an issue leads to comprehension of its complexity; it does not (nor should it) lead to joining a party or marching down Main Street. That is what I mean by saying that the issue shouldn’t be taken normatively; taking it that way would require following its paths and byways to the point where one embarks upon a course of action; taking it academically requires that one stop short of action and remain in the realm of deliberation so long as the academic context is in session; action, if it comes, comes later or after class.
(continued due to character limit)
The biggest problems facing modern college kids are created and developed by teachers trying to instill in them that truth is relative and bends to majority opinion.
The questions my children and parents alike like least: How? How so? Why? Why so?
-- Xelor
Red:
Perhaps....Having long since obtained my degrees and having but four kids of my own, I haven't enough exposure to what's said in the classroom to know whether the phenomenon you note is preponderant or exceptional.
To be sure, there does appear to be a cultural phenomenon whereof the truth's existentiality can be democratically determined. The pedagogical etiology of that happenstance isn't "settled science" in my mind. Have you any empirical data that supports your assertion's causal underpinning? I'd be quite interested in reading research on the matter.
FWIW, you may find the following interesting to read:
- Social Influence and the Collective Dynamics of Opinion Formation
- The claim "That's just your opinion" is pernicious and should be consigned to the flames
Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.
-- Carl Sagan
Academia in America seems to be suffering from an unhealthy view of the absolute nature of truth. I said truth is to many modern members of the intelligentsia more a matter of relativity rather than of absolutes. You asked me to provide support. This is from the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal:
Why College Graduates Still Can't Think, by Rob Jenkins, Mar 23, 2017.
...The result is that, although faculty in the humanities and social sciences claim to be teaching critical thinking, often they're not. Instead, they're teaching students to"deconstruct" - to privilege their own subjective emotions or experiences over empirical evidence in the false belief that objective truth is relative, or at least unknowable.
https:The James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal —
My classroom lectures (economics) were a mix. Most of the time I simply taught the content in a straightforward way, standing at the front of the classroom and explaining the concepts and analytical techniques. Once every couple weeks, usually two or three classroom sessions ahead of an exam (I figured that was a good time and far enough in advance of an exam, for them to discover whether they actually grasped the concepts, which ones pertained to which situations, which among several deserved more and/or less weight in a given situation, etc.), I led interactive/socratic discussions focused on applying the concepts I'd previously taught. But that was for a principles-level course.
For the intermediate-level course I taught, the classroom sessions were more heavily interactive; however, at that level, the expectation on the student is greater...They arrive in the class having already take the prerequisites, so my instruction assumes they've mastered that content. Occasionally a student would have a question about performing a specific technical operation, and, of course, I'd address it. Mostly, however, my classroom lectures were geared toward getting the students to think about the technical elements and apply them in analyzing "real world" situations. It was only on the exams (or quizzes) and in papers that they were required to demonstrate their facility with actually performing the mathematical operations attendant to the concepts.
There again, however, it was college not school. The students are adults and they were there because they'd willfully decided to be in college and they chosen the class they were in. Unlike in K-12, it's a collegian's "job" to be outstanding at learning the material more so than it is the instructor's job to be outstanding at teaching it.
Off-topic:Do you use the Harkness method?
Part I of II
When they have the life experience, intellectual knowledge and acuity to make their own marks in the world and not depend on the ones I've made for their sufficiency, I will have achieved my goal of raising them, and at that point all of my input will for them be reduced to suggestion status, whereupon they become free to conduct their affairs as they see fit, free to express themselves as they desire, and free to raise their own kids as I raised them or differently.
The same concept applies in higher education settings. When students reach the point that they have original ideas that withstand rigorous scrutiny, the discipuli will have then earned the right to speak freely on topics that capture their interest and that fall within the scope of their expertise. Until then, however, they need to sit down, take notes and, where/when fitting, ask intelligent questions.
Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these values is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matters of fact and inference right. The operative commonplace is "following the evidence wherever it leads." One can’t do that if one's sources are suspect or nonexistent; one can’t do that if one only considers evidence favorable to one's preferred predicates; one can’t do that if one's evidence is far afield and hasn’t been persuasively connected to the instant matter of fact.
Nor can one follow the evidence wherever it leads if what guides one be a desire that inquiry reach a conclusion sympathetic to one's political views. If free speech is not an academic value because it is not the value guiding inquiry, free political speech becomes antithetical to inquiry: it skews inquiry in advance, one achieves one's end from the get-go.
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