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Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
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4 Jan, 4 tweets, 2 min read
I missed it over the holidays, but apparently MRU has fired Frances Widdowson. It's unclear precisely what happened (everyone is keeping quiet b/c the union is taking it to arbitration), but apparently MRU is saying she created a toxic work environment.
Obviously "toxic work environment" can constitute just cause for termination, but it's also a loophole admins use all the time to discipline faculty for offensive but protected speech. Hopefully the union and @CAUT_ACPPU are watching this one closely.
@CAUT_ACPPU Here's how @mountroyal4u's collective agreement defines academic freedom. Under any plain reading of the text, there would be no grounds for disciplining faculty for their research, tweets, articles, or whatever.
@CAUT_ACPPU @mountroyal4u Again, I really hope @CAUT_ACPPU, along with other Canadian academics and the media, are watching this one closely to see what went down.

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More from @JeffreyASachs

Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
29 Dec 21
It’s a little thing, but she has him dead to rights and he doesn’t even see it. Why not? He’s a smart guy and it’s not complicated. But contempt can make a smart person dumb.
People like GG and Taibbi are okay in my book. They do more good than harm and there are plenty of other people I’d like to see disappear first. But their only way of dealing with a critic is to attack and it’s made them so sloppy. GG especially (Taibbi less so).
Also, on the actual underlying issue, please bear in mind that one of the most powerful activist groups in the country on this stuff has some very extreme beliefs.
Read 4 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
28 Dec 21
ICYMI: Education gag orders (aka "anti-CRT bills") around the country increasingly include a private right of action. In eight separate bills, as well as one law(!), private citizens have the right to sue a school for discussing race or sex the wrong way.

pen.org/stop-woke-act-…
Some of the bills limit suits to parties directly "injured" by a school. In others, any resident of a state or even the country would be eligible to sue. And the amount of money that courts would be permitted to award can be staggering.
All of which creates some very perverse incentives. After New Hampshire passed its education gag order last June, the conservative group Moms for Liberty announced it would pay a $500 bounty for information leading to a successful suit.

nhpr.org/nh-news/2021-1…
Read 7 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
28 Dec 21
I have a lack of political imagination, and it’s hobbled how I make sense of the education culture war. I simply cannot reconcile the anger and frustration over this…
…with general lack of interest in this, and things like it. It just does not compute, and I’m sincere when I say this is a genuine failing for me!

You couldn’t dream up a more pure and unforced expression of PMC contempt than that. Whatever the woke version of is, you can be sure if a leftie said it, this site would go nuclear. But that’s the power of framing and narrative. Of political imagination. I just don’t get it.
Read 4 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
14 Dec 21
In recent days, there's been a flurry of articles by cons seeking to set some guardrails on how states go about banning "CRT" and related books. They support the bans in principle, but for strategic reasons, worry that they might be going too far.

They are right to be worried.
E.g. Max Eden dismisses leftwing critics of these bills as witless hysterics, but then concedes that Tennessee's law, which bans the *inclusion* of certain concepts, might be a smidge of an over-reaction.

aei.org/research-produ…
He can add Oklahoma's to that list too, since it has the exact same defect. Also ND's, which was signed into law last month. Maybe not such witless hysterics after all.

If only someone had tried to warn them way back in June that this might be a problem!

arcdigital.media/p/laws-aimed-a…
Read 14 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
14 Dec 21
Kurtz is right. The book bans are a terrible look for the anti-CRT crowd and a potential political liability. But they'll also be hard to stop. That's why you don't partner with bigots or zealots. It's why you use careful and moderate language. Oops.

nationalreview.com/corner/dont-ba…
Maybe I'll be proved wrong about this, but I doubt there's going to be any easy way to get this genie back in the bottle. And on top of the book bans, some of the legislation coming down the pike take a sledgehammer to academic freedom. It's bad.
Whatever control Kurtz, Rufo, etc. think they have over this process, they're wrong. Too many state legislators have too strong an incentive to race toward the craziest extreme. It's popular. That's all there really is to it.
Read 4 tweets
Jeffrey Sachs Profile picture
12 Dec 21
People regularly overestimate the extent of legal accountability for Germans after the war, in Nuremberg or just in general. The vast majority at all ranks went unpunished. They got away with it.
Justice was the exception.
In rare circumstances, but the real reason is much worse. Most prosecutable under GDR or FRG law lived out there days in Germany, unmolested and unconcerned. Cases from victims usually faced massive official resistance.
Read 6 tweets

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