Hey free speech folks, I have a question. I know I've read articles that frame the Chicago Statement as a form of pre-commitment. That admins should adopt it so that when they're under pressure, they can point to the policy and say "My hands are tied!" Where is that case made?
@glukianoff@JoeatFIRE@adamsteinbaugh@sarahemclaugh For some. But it could also be an expression of values. The point of the original argument is that even weak admins who have only a lukewarm commitment to free speech might choose to adopt the policy as a kind of alibi for when the shit hits the fan.
Nobody on this website hates college educated blue check libs more than college educated blue check libs five inches to their Right.
The working class is lucky to have those college educated blue check libs five inches to the Right of the other college educated blue check libs on their side and ready to speak on their behalf. They really have their best interests at heart.
Someone needs to write an @olivertraldi-style tear down of these folks and their desperate status jockeying.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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!