Don Moynihan Profile picture
Nov 8, 2021 7 tweets 5 min read Read on X
With David Brooks new column, the NY Times has featured five pieces, plus multiple reader's letters about Dorian Abbot being disinvited from giving a talk.
A professor who got fired at the behest of local politicians for political speech: zero hits thefire.org/lawsuit-fired-…
Put another way, NY Times readers have heard more about one professor being disinvited (and then reinvited) from a talk at MIT than the story about U Florida blocking multiple professors from testifying in lawsuits against the state government.
Why is the NY Times more focused on the Abbot case, rather than the U Florida censorship case, a story it broke? The simple answer is the opinion page, which has continued to push the case as an example of university failures, but can't find the same outrage for the Florida case.
So, even in the ostensibly liberal space of the NY Times: *some attacks on free speech are covered as news, some are not
*attacks on what are seen on conservative speech are more likely to migrate to the opinion page, where writers present them in calamitous terms
The problem is not new. Here is a review of NYT campus speech coverage in 16/17.
The coverage pushes readers to conclude that speech is primarily under attack from the left. As the mismatch of coverage on Abbot/Florida/Burnett cases show, it actually reflects an editorial choice.
Of course, its not just the NY Times: former NY Times editors who have been pushing the one-sided "woke mob" narrative are now setting themselves up to empty the pockets of rich donors who they have persuaded that the university is thoroughly corrupt.
Here is another piece on the imbalance in coverage of campus speech issues at the Times from @ParkerMolloy. Lets just be honest this isn't really about academic freedom of free speech principles generally, but about protecting and elevating certain views.
mediamatters.org/new-york-times…

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More from @donmoyn

Sep 22, 2023
The connections are pretty clear. Leonard Leo of the Federalist Society helped bankroll the work of Ginni Thomas. He also arranged for Clarence Thomas to attend Koch fundraisers.
propublica.org/article/claren…

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The shared purpose of Leonard Leo, Ginni Thomas, Clarence Thomas and the Koch network was to put right-wing judges on the court. And Clarence Thomas used his public position on the court to raise money for that. Image
Clarence Thomas used to support the Chevron doctrine, which allows delegation to administrative expertise. But the people who fund the Koch network can't buy off administrators, so they want to remove their influence from the process. Now Thomas agrees with the donors.
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Read 4 tweets
Sep 12, 2023
Holy shit, its the original Avocado Toast guy!
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Also this guy: young people today can't afford a house because they occasionally buy new clothes
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If the people @FinancialReview care for free speech at all, they will do the decent thing and allow replies to this tweet, allowing a full and frank exchange of views. Image
Read 4 tweets
Aug 28, 2023
America has 22 times the firearm homicide rates as the European Union.
We are less safe and less free because of how available guns are in this country.
healthdata.org/news-events/in…
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America makes up about 15% of gun homicides, and together with five other countries constitutes half of gun homicides in the world. vox.com/2018/8/29/1779…
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The reason more people in America are dying from guns is because there are more guns in America.
America is the only country with more guns than people. cnn.com/2021/11/26/wor…
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Read 5 tweets
Aug 17, 2023
New, from me: I wrote about how the emerging debacle at New College (one-third of faculty gone, students can't find classes, housed in airport hotels) reflects the incompetence of populists like DeSantis. Image
Competence, the ability to perform organizational core tasks, is an underrated quality. It is an especially overlooked quality by people who value other things, like ideological goals, or believe that existing institutions are corrupt, or who have never actually run things. Image
Fuck Around (left, celebrating the firing of a faculty who criticized the Regents)
and
Find Out: (right, soliciting faculty applications because you don't have enough to teach classes - one-third have left for some reason).
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Read 6 tweets
Aug 16, 2023
The DeSantis takeover of New College was meant to offer a model of a conservative-run higher ed.

The result is chaos, which is what happens when incompetent people who don't actually care about organizational mission take over public services. insidehighered.com/news/students/…
The NY Times recently featured Chris Rufo to explain how DEI was undermining liberal education.

You know what actually undermines a liberal education?
Losing one-third of faculty.
Not offering core classes to students.
Raging incompetence and blind indifference.
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Rufo is seeking to personally recruit replacements. Which is completely at odds with what university trustees are supposed to do. No way that could go wrong, right? Image
Read 4 tweets
Aug 3, 2023
Update: Kathleen McElroy receives a settlement of $1M from Texas A&M, who had offered her a senior tenured position, and then pulled that offer.

From the internal Texas A&M reports: it was A&M Regents who signaled their opposition to McElroy, at which point the university figured out they would not tenure her.
Seems like the Regents cost A&M $1M. Nice job.
: ... tamus.edu/wp-content/up
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Not great when a university President is saying "I'm assuming all texts were deleted" and then tells faculty she was not involved in hiring process. (She has since resigned).
Read 8 tweets

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