The fate of Harvard’s president is the latest
evidence of a deep crisis in American academia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/books/review/claudine-gay-harvard-resignation-letter.html
A.O. Scott:
Higher learning is plagued by opaque admissions policies; runaway tuition costs; administrative bloat; grade inflation; helicopter parents; cancel culture…
“These last weeks,” Dr. Gay writes, “have helped make clear the work we need to do to build that future — to combat bias and hate in all its forms, to create a learning environment in which we respect each other’s dignity and treat one another with compassion, and to affirm our enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth.” …
The real question, though, is how one institution can be for all of it. Is this work the university is really equipped to do? Combating bias may involve constraining open inquiry; free expression is not always respectful or compassionate. The pursuit of truth may outrun everything else. This cascade of noble imperatives can be read descriptively, as a diagnosis of the causes of campus turmoil. What is presented as a list of unimpeachable virtues and laudable goals is in practice a web of contradictions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/books/review/claudine-gay-harvard-resignation-letter.html
A.O. Scott:
Higher learning is plagued by opaque admissions policies; runaway tuition costs; administrative bloat; grade inflation; helicopter parents; cancel culture…
“These last weeks,” Dr. Gay writes, “have helped make clear the work we need to do to build that future — to combat bias and hate in all its forms, to create a learning environment in which we respect each other’s dignity and treat one another with compassion, and to affirm our enduring commitment to open inquiry and free expression in the pursuit of truth.” …
The real question, though, is how one institution can be for all of it. Is this work the university is really equipped to do? Combating bias may involve constraining open inquiry; free expression is not always respectful or compassionate. The pursuit of truth may outrun everything else. This cascade of noble imperatives can be read descriptively, as a diagnosis of the causes of campus turmoil. What is presented as a list of unimpeachable virtues and laudable goals is in practice a web of contradictions.
Claudine Gay and the Limits of Social Engineering
at Harvard
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/opinion/harvard-claudine-gay-resignation.html
BRET STEPHENS:
People admire, and will strive for, excellence — both for its own sake and for the status it confers. But status without excellence is a rapidly wasting asset, especially when it comes with an exorbitant price. That’s the position of much of American academia today. Two hundred thousand dollars or more is a lot to pay for lessons in how to be an anti-racist.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/opinion/harvard-claudine-gay-resignation.html
BRET STEPHENS:
People admire, and will strive for, excellence — both for its own sake and for the status it confers. But status without excellence is a rapidly wasting asset, especially when it comes with an exorbitant price. That’s the position of much of American academia today. Two hundred thousand dollars or more is a lot to pay for lessons in how to be an anti-racist.
Harvard Couldn’t Save Both Claudine Gay and Itself
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/opinion/claudine-gay-harvard.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/03/opinion/claudine-gay-harvard.html
Universities and corporations should have the right
to remain silent
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/03/silence-universities-2024-free-speech/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/01/03/silence-universities-2024-free-speech/
Academic Administrators Should Keep Their Politics to Themselves
https://www.chronicle.com/article/everyone-just-shut-up-already
Stanley Fish:
The bottom line, then, is that academic freedom is not a general license to say whatever you like on any topic under the sun. It is a limited freedom to follow where the evidence pertaining to an academic question leads. It certainly does not include the freedom to advocate for your political views or turn (or try to turn) your students into social-justice warriors or anti-social-justice warriors. You and they are jointly engaged in an intellectual effort to understand something, and that engagement is, or should be, intensely focused and has no legitimate room for activities that belong to other enterprises.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/everyone-just-shut-up-already
Stanley Fish:
The bottom line, then, is that academic freedom is not a general license to say whatever you like on any topic under the sun. It is a limited freedom to follow where the evidence pertaining to an academic question leads. It certainly does not include the freedom to advocate for your political views or turn (or try to turn) your students into social-justice warriors or anti-social-justice warriors. You and they are jointly engaged in an intellectual effort to understand something, and that engagement is, or should be, intensely focused and has no legitimate room for activities that belong to other enterprises.