Can the academy be saved? part one

Posted on by

Can it be restored as a home of free speech and free inquiry? The Open Mind conference, put on by Heterodox Academy, says yes. At the very least, I would recommend watching the video of the wrap-up session with Jonathan Haidt and Deb Mashek.

I think that the very name “heterodox” is a give-away that their prospects or success may be slim.

I have liked Wendy Kaminer for many years, ever since I read I’m Dysfunctional, You’re Dysfunctional. She recently had an op-ed on the ideological turn of the ACLU. In her panel remarks at the conference, she indicates that she is worried that she is part of a generation of liberals who is aging out of the system, to be replaced by a generation that has grown up to expect and embrace speech codes. I fear that on campus, demographics is destiny. The diversity uber alles crowd is going to drive out the truth-seeking uber alles crowd. The HxA’ers may not realize it, but they could just turn out to be a tenured version of the IDW.

5 thoughts on “Can the academy be saved? part one”

  1. 1. This post has the right tone given the subject matter.
    2. I really wish “Open Mind” had used an open platform. (And Kaminer’s op-ed on free speech isn’t free, it’s behind the WSJ paywall too, though her argument failed to really engage with the ACLU’s position – why not balance values and use good judgment to decline to allocate scarce resources to defend the indefensibe, negative-value hate speech?) Most workplaces block facebook-hosted content entirely, I don’t have a facebook account, put in some effort to block various (and ubiquitous) facebook tracking efforts on third-party websites, and don’t want to have to log in to facebook to watch a simple video. That’s inconsiderate online behavior. Fortunately, The Independent Whig created and posted transcripts (though I lament the fading of the norm of removing mere verbal pauses and unflattering tics, the ums and uhs, from transcripts, which comes across much different in print than in person or video.)
    3. I’m glad some of these people have carved out a kind of publicity and event niche for themselves, but in a way, achieving a personal success in such ventures can be counterproductive to the extent that one fails to actually expand the Overton Window and halt the march of the PC inquisition, and gives the prominent participants too much to lose by running afoul of the orthodoxy.
    4. Once again this HxA event was deeply disappointing, as Stephen Messenger said, “The overall feeling I have by the end of the day after I left there was I just sat through a day of, ‘Aren’t we great? Don’t we just get it? And aren’t we smart and aren’t we intellectual and don’t we just know what the right things are what should be done?'”

    Fundamentally, Haidt and company still refuse to actually make a concrete case for their position by taking on the specifics of the current problem, instead of making a futile generalized argument appealing to abstract ‘values’ which are not actually shared in common, an indispensable component of social capital. He’s trying to draw on the social capital joint bank account, but the funds are insufficient. (Of course, while the absolute value of social capital permits engagement with a common background of values, it doesn’t always have a positive sign – one way of buidling the absolute value again is to thoroughly succeed in eliminating the old values and replacing them with new ones. That’s what’s happening now, as we passed below the zero point some time ago.)

    Here’s what I mean. Think about it from the perspective of someone – perhaps a typical progressive academic or administrator – skeptical of Haidt’s alarmism.

    There are conferences on fundamental issues in theoretical physics all the time in every major university. Who shows up to protest? Nobody. Same goes for 99% of all events, for all subjects, on all campuses. Is there not plenty of room for debate and discussion? Are the univerities not able to fulfill their purported goals and purposes in pursuit of truth, inquiry, healthy dialectic, and progress? We aren’t just paying lip service to values of free and open inquiry, we’re true to them – just look! Are the universities not producing educated, knowledgeable, impressive, and productive graduates all the time? They are! We’re justifiably proud of them, their many successes and achievements, and our role if their cultivation and formation! Do the vast majority of invited authors and even politically-oriented speakers come and go without any fuss? They do! So, what are you really complaining about? What exactly is the problem?”

    The things you choose to complain about are revealing of your real intentions and agenda, though you try to hide behind generalities and values.

    Every single case you highlight is one in which legitimate complaints are made about hatred, bigotry, oppression, unjust or unlawful discrimination, racism, sexism, islamaphobia, homophobia, and so forth, and the fake or junk ‘science’ that fraudulent propoents try to use to normalize and spread these pernicious ideas. These are clearly and obviously outside the bounds of the kind of civil and valuable discourse the university is meant to foster and encourage, and which we do encourage, in every other context. Free speech does not include a right to harmful hate speech which is distressing and makes members of our campus feel intimidated, unsafe, and unwelcome. While of course we abhor violence and condemn violations of campus rules, the intentions of these student protesters are good, their hearts are in the right place, their grievances are real and deserve respect, and these matters should be dealtt with in consideration of those circumstances, which is to say, lightly. Why, exactly, should it be otherwise? On the contrary, I really don’t understand why your claims to the contrary – delivered it seems to me in the barely concealed code of generalization divorced from the reality of context – deserves serious consideration, and you have not explained why.

    Haidt doesn’t get into any of that because he can’t: this is the meta-level prohibition of speech that sits on top of ground-level prohibitions.

    So, yes, certainly going nowhere.

    • I’m curious, what would an effective response be to the hypothetical progressive academic/administrator?

      • Depends what you mean by ‘effective’, but if you mean ‘persuasive’, then the gloomy answer, unfortunately, is, “There isn’t one.”

  2. Academy can segment, we pick the speech codes we like. At least we get it sorted, but we then put public funding in a quandary of picking winners and losers. The group doing STEM speech codes will get all the do-re-me.

  3. It seems that the answer to the question is “no”:

    https://quillette.com/2018/07/02/through-the-looking-glass-at-concordia-university/

    BTW, this article was written by a woman of drearily conventional “progressive” views, and is replete with gratuitously annoying leftwing virtue-signalling. The writer fails to reflect, however, on the possibility that what is happening in the universities is just the working out of the implications of her own leftist principles.

Comments are closed.