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25 Feb, 8 tweets, 3 min read
Collin College has fired Professor Lora Burnett. This entire story is outrageous. Burnett criticized her university's re-opening plan (a plan that cost one employee her life), and for that crime, she has been fired. Shame on @collincollege.
But that's not all. The more immediate impetus was a tweet she sent out slamming Mike Pence. Private speech, outside the classroom, etc. But Collin's president didn't care and hauled her in for a dressing down.
Turns out a state legislator had contacted the president about shutting Burnett up. But which? After a good deal of work from @adamsteinbaugh, plus $14k in wasted legal fees by Collin College, the truth came out.

thefire.org/after-four-mon…
His name is Jeff Leach, one of those conservative nitwits who will wax poetic about free speech for guys in Camp Auschwitz shirts, but don't you DARE say a bad word about Mike Pence.

dallasobserver.com/news/collin-co…
Leach got caught. Collin's president got caught. That should have been the end of it. Instead, Collin's chose to fire Burnett for the high crime and misdemeanor of speaking her mind, outside of the classroom and on her own time.
A tragedy for Burnett and a setback for academic freedom, but just another Thursday at @collincollege, which oh hey by the way fired two OTHER profs earlier this month for criticizing university admins.

keranews.org/education/2021…
State politicians pose a much, much greater threat to academic freedom and campus free speech than I think most people appreciate. And it's getting worse.

arcdigital.media/campus-free-sp…
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More from @JeffreyASachs

Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
27 Feb
I can't tell if Rufo is misinformed or simply using words differently that I do, but honestly who cares? I'm just going to post two bills below. I'll supply a few prompts, but you read them and make up your own mind.
First, Arkansas HB 1218, a bill entitle... You know what? The title is way too long for a single tweet. Here's a screenshot instead.

arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/FTPDocum… Image
Read the bill carefully. Note what is covered and what is not. It does carve out exceptions (Sec 1.f), but pay close attention to their limits.

Now ask yourself, were this bill to pass, could a professor endorse race-based affirmative action in the classroom?
Read 8 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
26 Feb
New from me at @ArcDigi: There's a war being waged right now on left-wing speech. In state houses across the country, GOP legislators are voting on bills that would muzzle professors, censor students, and destroy academic freedom.

arcdigital.media/the-new-war-on…
Some of these bills were described in this excellent piece by @michelleinbklyn. But there are so many more.

nytimes.com/2021/02/26/opi…
In Georgia, a state rep has ordered universities to report back to him with a list of every course in which faculty discuss concepts like "privilege" or "oppression". Profs say it's already having a chilling effect.

ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/edu…
Read 14 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
26 Feb
Good piece here on the political effects of a college education. Believe it or not, getting a higher ed degree makes people more economically *conservative*, not liberal. So much for the Myth of Campus Socialism.

bostonglobe.com/2021/02/24/opi…
It's not the professors, by the way. It's the peer groups. That generalizes to pretty much ever political change a student might experience in college. It's the peer groups.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.111…
Same thing in Europe.

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…
Read 5 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
9 Feb
New legislative session, new assault on academic freedom and campus free speech.

In Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, and Mississippi, GOP reps have introduced bills that punish public schools and universities for teaching anything from the 1619 Project.

edweek.org/teaching-learn…
These laws are vaguely written, but that's by design. For example, the Iowa bill would withhold funding from any school that utilizes "in whole or in part" the 1619 Project "or any similarly developed curriculum". Gee, I wonder what that means.

legis.iowa.gov/legislation/Bi…
It's clear the issue isn't over the Project's factual accuracy, but rather its interpretation of the past. Hence, the MS and AR bills accuse it of promoting “a racially divisive and revisionist account" and the IA bill cites the state's interest in creating "patriotic citizens".
Read 19 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
8 Feb
Been thinking this morning about whether there is a tension between critiques of the concept cultural appropriation (eg all cultures appropriate, adapt, evolve) and moderate nationalist @epkaufm-esque arguments against immigration (eg US culture is changing too fast/too much).
These positions don’t have to be in tension, but in practice I think they often are. Both turn (at least in part) on the idea of “feeling at home”, on the claim that one has a right to feel part of a community, or even the right to have one’s community persist over time.
I’m not saying these things are equally just, equally right, etc. And to put my cards in the table, while I have qualified sympathy for cul. app. concerns, I have zero for cultural nationalism. Still, I’m interested in whether, to a certain extent, these distinct ideas rhyme.
Read 4 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
29 Jan
I’m going to break my rule of no longer retweeting this asshat because these needs to be exposed and called out. You don’t blame Jews for anti-Semitism. Image
Holy hell. Look how this Orban shill wastes precisely zero time climbing into the anti-Semitic mud with Lindsay, so great is his partisan hatred for the Left.

She’s absolutely right.
Read 4 tweets

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