After tabulating the votes, the winner of my first EXCESSIVELY Prestigious Award for book of the year is @jon_rauch’s Kindly Inquisitors, what I've called the most important on #freespeech of the last 50 years! 1/6 thefire.org/jonathan-rauch…
For the honor, I had @TheFIREorg’s @aaron_reese make this dope gif, explaining Rauch’s Commandments — two core tenets of liberal science! 2/6
With Rauch’s book The Constitution of Knowledge coming out in June, the timing might seem TOO convenient, but I swear on Spider-Man’s aunt May that’s just how the vote worked out! (BTW The Constitution of Knowledge is the most important book of 2021!) 2/6
ZERO TWEET: While you’re here, click the link below to check out my responses to common, bad arguments against #freespeech, or keep reading for the More Than Sufficiently Prestigious book award winners. 0/6
Two books tied for second place, my More Than Sufficiently Prestigious Award. The first is @JoHenrich’s The WEIRDest People in the World, a book so profound it actually made me hate Plato less. 3/6
The other is @mgurri’s The Revolt of the Public, a book that fundamentally changed my analysis of the trends we examined in The Coddling of the American Mind. (BIG thanks to @kmele & @wethefifth for the rec!) 4/6
Congratulations to the winners, & THANK YOU to everyone that voted! Next month I’ll be returning to my cozy, yet merely Prestigious book awards, & in 12 months we’ll see who wins the next EXCESSIVELY Prestigious award! 6/6
BONUS: @jon_rauch discussed his new book with me & @NicoPerrino on @freespeechtalk. Listen to that, or sign up to participate in Rauch’s webinar to FIRE’s Faculty Network (you don’t need to be a member to register!) 7/6
THREAD: The great @IonaItalia asked me to participate in @AreoMagazine’s #FreeSpeechFortnite, so I wrote a listicle of 12 answers to common, bad arguments against #freespeech. Here’s the short attention span version! 1/14
First there’s that XKCD comic that people trot out to justify just about any censorship. It wrongly conflates the First Amendment, which is the legal framework for free speech in the US, & free speech generally. It also doesn’t even get the 1A right! 2/14
“Free speech was invented under the false notion that speech & violence are distinct. Now we know some speech is violence.” Speech = violence is one of the oldest ideas in the world. Free speech was invented so people could sort things out without resorting to violence. 3/14
NEW Prestigious Awards: My book of the month goes to @juliagalef’s The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Clearly & Others Don’t, a book with powerful tools for fighting self-deception! 1/9
The book helps rein in the toughest self-deception: motivated reasoning, i.e. realizing when we’re weighting evidence based on what we WANT to be true.
It’s also everything popular nonfiction should be: clear, well-written, thoughtful, funny, & full of stories. 2/9
The author dispels some common misconceptions, like the fact that Abraham Lincoln’s “Team of Rivals” was effective, & that one can effectively get out of their bubble just by turning on left-wing or right-wing radio. 3/9
NEW: Catching Up With Coddling Pt 17. Hearing disturbing reports of K-12 programming with no respect for the individuality of students or the diverse points of view of students, I created a beta version of 10 principles for a healthier K-12 system. 1/12
1. No compelled speech, thought, or belief. It is usually bad to tell someone what they cannot say. It is usually far worse to tell someone what they must say, & it is always wrong to tell people what they must think or believe. 2/12
2. Respect for individuality, dissent, and the sanctity of conscience. American First Amendment law is replete with powerful statements about individual uniqueness, and respect for such uniqueness. 3/12
A new “Catching Up With ‘Coddling’”! We’re looking at the effects of bureaucratization on campus. In other words, as colleges evolve into megacorporations, what does that mean for inquiry, education, & #freespeech? 1/21
This is the TENTH part in the series where we revisit the topics in @JonHaidt & my 2018 book, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” with new data, developments, & caveats. 2/21
In describing the relationship between bureaucratization & the decisions campuses make, we consider three basic frameworks: the narrow corporatism theory, the broader corporatism theory, & the strong corporatism theory. 3/21
THREAD: The winner of my Prestigious Ashurbanipal award for February 2021 is @mgurri’s prophetic book “The Revolt of the Public,” specifically the extended 2018 edition. 1/10
Recommended to me by @kmele, it has had a profound effect on my thinking on the state of the world.
The book introduces two key concepts I’ve incorporated into my “modular argument” for #freespeech. 2/10
1st: “Gurri’s negation,” his observation that the explosion of social media & information technology has tremendous power to tear down institutions, ideas, & people (e.g. cancel culture), but, as of yet, very little ability to create or sustain. 3/10
THREAD: This week, we got an email from someone who found our Catching Up With “Coddling” (CUWC) series on thecoddling.com & asked why we stopped the series after 2 articles. Concerning, b/c we’ve published 8 of them so far! 1/12 cc: @JonHaidt
It was our fault that the articles were not as easy to find as they should have been, so we’re making navigation tweaks with the help of FIRE's great web dev @jpmerig. If YOU didn’t know about them, read on! 2/12
CUWC part 1: Introduction. It, well, introduces the series, identifying the trends we’ll update with new information we’ve learned since the book was released. 3/12