Our Idea of Tolerant Isnt, from The Chronicle of Higher Education (original) (raw)
Related papers
Tolerance as an imperative for higher education and democracy
South African journal of higher education, 2019
Beyond the noise and din of the numerous #FeesMustFall campaigns, there arose deeper concerns of the lack of regard on display not only between protesters and institutional authorities, but between protesting and non-protesting students. Of course, protests by their nature are manifestations of perceivably unheard and unrecognised demands and plights, which make the flaring of tempers inevitable. But, perhaps, what defined the student protests most distinctly were not the impassioned calls for economic accessibility, transformation, and decolonisation, but its volatility, and, at times, sheer contempt. The concern of this article is to offer a conceptual consideration of tolerance as an educational imperative within higher education, and democracy. That is, if higher education is to fulfil its responsibility in relation to the public good, then it has to espouse those virtues that are most likely to contribute to peaceful and harmonious coexistence .
When Hate Circulates On Campus To Uphold Free Speech
Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 80, 2019
On Inauguration Day 2017, Milo Yiannopoulos gave a talk sponsored by the University of Washington College Republicans entitled "Cyberbullying Isn't Real." This chapter is based on participant-observation conducted in the crowd outside the venue that night and analyzes the violence that occurs when the blurring of the boundaries between "free" and "hate" speech is enacted on the ground. This ethnographic examination rethinks relationships between law, bodies, and infrastructure as it considers debates over free speech on college campuses from the perspectives of legal and public policy, as well as those who supported and protested Yiannopoulos's right to speak at the University of Washington. First, this analysis uses ethnographic research to critique the absolutist free speech argument presented by the legal scholars Erwin Chemerinsky and Howard Gillman. Second, this essay uses the theoretical work of Judith Butler and Sara Ahmed to make claims concerning relationships between speech, vulnerability, and violence. In so doing, this chapter argues that debates over free speech rights on college campuses need to be situated by processes of neoliberalization in higher education and reconsidered in light of the ways in which an absolutist position disproportionately protects certain people at the expense of certain others.
Harassment, Bias, and the Evolving Politics of Free Speech on Campus
Journal of Social Philosophy, 2019
Academic freedom has been an important force for progressive social change since its articulation as the reason for independence from church orthodoxy in the middle ages. The cause of freedom of speech and inquiry took an important institutional step forward with the founding of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in 1915 by philosophers Arthur O. Lovejoy and John Dewey. Their goal was to create a collective voice to help protect academic freedom in universities after several incidents in which professors were fired for expressing their views on various political, economic, and social issues. 1 The AAUP has been a primary force for academic freedom and the protection of tenure, as articulated in the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure 2 and subsequent commentary and interpretation of that important document. The AAUP has mainly been a force for progressive ideas, although its zealous support of all tenured faculty against any charge of misconduct at times conflicts with that. But the debate over academic freedom and free speech in the academy has taken a strange turn in recent decades. Consider some of the major events in the history of the academic freedom debate in the twentieth century: In the 1930s, professors were fired for being suspected communists and for supporting labor unions. This censorship of the professoriate (and other cultural creators) reached a crescendo in the 1950s with the House Un-American Activities Committee led by Joseph McCarthy. These struggles centered on the right of professors to express views contrary to that of the government. Students protesting the Vietnam War and for Civil Rights dominated the debates in the 1960s and '70s, with students often being suppressed, sometimes violently by both their universities and the government. Their exercise of speech and protest was fundamentally about the right to be heard, to have a voice in university governance regarding important matters like supporting an immoral war or racial discrimination. In the 1980s and 1990s, women faculty were introducing feminism and the history of women's writing and thought into the canon. They were then sometimes denied tenure or promotion on grounds
Academic Freedom in the Age of Political Correctness
Academic Freedom in the Age of Political Correctness, 2016
Academic freedom--the right to seek the truth without fear of retribution—is an enigmatic concept in the modern American university. One perspective with long historical roots defines it as a natural right; another view interprets it as a set of mutable guidelines that exist to serve the public interest, whatever that may be at the time. Others entirely reject academic freedom rights. Tensions often exist between the many various interests on campuses that hold a stake in how academic freedom is defined Until recently, the AAUP’s very expansive view of faculty speech has largely gone unchallenged by other stakeholders in higher education. Today, however, the need for redefinition is becoming clear as other interests push back. Contentious new issues include the limiting of free speech through campus speech codes, the right of religious students to form campus organizations that exclude according to belief, and the right of students to not be indoctrinated in class. This report argues that the health of the modern American university depends on deciding the proper limits, checks, and balances of scholarly inquiry, teaching, and commentary in academia. It reviews several methods that may empower administrators, students, and other higher education stakeholders. Legal action—in which all interests involved have an opportunity to present their cases—may be the best, most impartial means to balance the rights of faculty against other interest
“Very Fine People on Both Sides:” Diverse Viewpoints, Truth, and Free Speech on Campus
Educational Studies, 2021
Reflecting a larger context of profound political polarization, controversies and protests around campus speakers have exposed deep social fractures, highlighting an important normative question for campus leaders and educators: how should we make decisions about what views are reasonable and thus merit debate on campus? Although it may be received wisdom that institutions of higher learning in a democratic society are obligated to provide forums for the unfettered, open exchange of ideas, that sense is built on the assumption that the ideas put forward for consideration are reasonable and defensible. Should any and all perspectives always be up for debate? Must campus communities provide forums for viewpoints that democratic societies regard as patently untrue or beyond the pale of what is right and good? In this article, I make the case that, because their missions center discovery and knowledge production, grounded in academic freedom, colleges and universities are far from space...
A Dangerous Place to Be: Identity, Conflict, and Trauma in Higher Education
Routledge, 2018
Over the past several decades, colleges and universities in the United States and United Kingdom have made significant commitments to increasing diversity, most notably with regard to race and gender. The result has not, however, been an amelioration of conflict over matters of difference. Instead, there has been continuing, if not increasing, conflict and strife in universities, often reflecting conflict in the larger society. While we might presume that university students and faculty are replicating and reacting to social conflicts of a larger scale, a closer examination of actions taken (and not taken) on university campuses suggests that the matter is more complex. Indeed, near-daily reports of protests, controversial decisions, firings, strikes, and other conflictual events on university campuses may tell us more about the emotional struggles of young individuals, and about institutional responses to those struggles, than about the politics of race, gender, sexuality, and identity in civil society. In this book we explore the idea that conflicts in colleges and universities express the way that students, teachers, administrators, and organizations are managing disturbances arising in the process of identity formation. We suggest that conflict over identity in learning institutions is rooted in what Donald Winnicott refers to as the struggle between creativity and adaptation, as manifested in the course of identity development. This struggle involves the individual's need to navigate the pressures and demands of families and identity-groups in such a way as to establish a safe place to be. Specifically, we investigate a number of recent, widely-publicized, and hotly debated events on university campuses, including vociferous protests of discriminatory treatment, calls for the resignation of university officials for failing to 'respond adequately' to social crises occurring both on and off campus, criticism of university spaces as being intolerably 'dangerous' and corollary demands for 'safe spaces,' rejections of 'free speech' as a norm governing campus interactions, the development of training programs to regulate everything from classroom misconduct to 'microaggressions' and debates over the inclusion of 'trigger warnings' on course-related material deemed likely to generate post-traumatic symptoms among students.
Academic Questions, 2011
To the O'Brien family and to Kristin O'Brien, whose untimely death puts these Ivory Tower issues in perspective vii Contents LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi