The New York Times published an article about a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Amy Wax, who has frequently made statements that are racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, the whole range of prejudices, not what you expect of someone who supposedly teaches students that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.
Amy Wax, a law professor, has said publicly that “on average, Blacks have lower cognitive ability than whites,” that the country is “better off with fewer Asians” as long as they tend to vote for Democrats, and that non-Western people feel a “tremendous amount of resentment and shame.”
At the University of Pennsylvania, where she has tenure, she invited a white nationalist to speak to her class. And a Black law student who had attended UPenn and Yale said that the professor told her she “had only become a double Ivy ‘because of affirmative action,’” according to the administration.
Professor Wax has denied saying anything belittling or racist to students, and her supporters see her as a truth teller about affirmative action, immigration and race. They agree with her argument that she is the target of censorship and “wokeism” because of her conservative views.
All of which poses a conundrum for the University of Pennsylvania: Should it fire Amy Wax?
The university is now moving closer to answering just that question. After long resisting the call of students, the dean of the law school, Theodore W. Ruger, has taken a rare step: He has filed a complaint and requested a faculty hearing to consider imposing a “major sanction” on the professor…
For years, Mr. Ruger wrote in his 12-page complaint, Professor Wax has shown “callous and flagrant disregard” for students, faculty and staff, subjecting them to “intentional and incessant racist, sexist, xenophobic and homophobic actions and statements.”
The complaint said she has violated the university’s nondiscrimination policies and “standards of professional competence.”
The article goes on to cite the many times that Professor Wax has offended women, Blacks, gays, foreign students, or anyone else who does not agree with her idyllic view of the culture of the 1950s. Implicitly she means an era when Blacks were subservient, women were compliant wives, gays were in the closet, and foreigners were tourists.
What should the university do?
…many free speech groups, including the Academic Freedom Alliance, PEN America and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, have criticized the dean and said that Professor Wax should not be fired because of her public statements.
My view: She should not be fired. Perhaps she should be admonished for behavior that is insulting to students, but her academic freedom and tenure protect her job.
Academic freedom protects not just the views that one likes, not just the views of the majority, but the views you hate. I might wish that Professor Wax were open-minded and wish that she had a keener sense of humanity, but I defend her right to be offensive, inconsiderate, and obnoxious. Students are not required to take her courses. Those who take her courses should challenge her views if they disagree.
But academic freedom must prevail.
Voltaire: “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When does speech pass from from the realm of opinion to abuse? I assume that someone accused of being verbally abusive might face sanctions of some sort. How did this woman even get tenure?
Would your view change if she were a software engineer or an account manager rather than a professor?
Professor Wax has tenure. Tenure protects free speech. At-will employees don’t have the same protections. An employee who said the things she said would be disruptive and demoralize the work force. No student, so far as I know, is compelled to take her class.
So it’s just a matter of what contractual protections are in place?
If the software engineer had an iron clad contract with protections equal to Wax’s, then the engineer should not be fired? Whereas a clerk at a grocery store making $12 an hour should be fired for saying these things?
Anyone without contractual protections could be fired for racist or sexist speech. I don’t know if any workplace that offers tenure to employees. Other than colleges and universities.
My point, which I could have made clearer, was that the question posed was whether the employee “should” be fired, but it seems like you’re conflating that with the question of whether the employee “could” be fired.
On the “should” question, I probably agree with you about Wax, but there’s still something that doesn’t sit right with me about the educated and relatively affluent getting a privilege that regular working people never get. But of course the world isn’t fair.
Tenure protects academic freedom and speech.
If not for tenure, teachers would be fired for any wacky reason without merit. Older teachers would be fired for younger teachers to save money. Why do teachers get tenure? They fought for it. In other non-teaching jobs, unions fight for their workers who have been unfairly fired or are being harassed on the job. However, the unionization rate is very low in this country and so workers can be bounced for any reason or no reason in non-union jobs. Non tenure teachers can be fired for almost any reason.
The rightwing has fought tenure for decades. DeFascist opposes tenure and will probably abolish it in Florida.
“there’s still something that doesn’t sit right with me about the educated and relatively affluent getting a privilege that regular working people never get.”
That privilege has very little to do with tenure or unions. Anyone who has ever had a private business (like a law firm!) that employs lots of educated and affluent workers is advised by their lawyers to jump through quite a few hoops before firing them. And in almost all cases, the company would prefer to pay them a fairly generous severence package to prevent a lawsuit.
Tenure and unions give teachers and professors the protections that lawyers at law firms and bankers and corporate execs get. If you want to fire them, you will also have to pay them. I think Elon Musk is learning that, too.
FLERP!,
What is your view as to whether Amy Wax should be fired?
Why do you keep challenging Diane Ravitch without explaining what YOU believe is the correct thing?
FLERP!, is your view that Amy Wax should be fired? (And please explain why). Is your view that a software engineer should be fired? Is your view that a software engineer with “iron clad contract with protections equal to Wax’s” should be fired? Or should they not be fired for doing what Wax did?
Should an account manager be fired? Should an account manager with “iron clad contract with protections equal to Wax’s” be fired?
Why not defend your own views for a change?
^^Never mind, I cross-posted and I see that flerp! did state that Amy Wax should NOT be fired. Not sure why he kept challenging Diane Ravitch to defend a view that he agrees with.
Diane Ravitch, please read the ENTIRETY of my comment to see if I ever called flerp! any name while he did not extend the same courtesy.
But if I am being censored from ever posting a perfectly reasonable question to a person who constantly insults and offends, then I don’t need to be here.
I don’t believe your blog should censor people from politely challenging comments that other people make just because those people either don’t want to defend their comment or are too sensitive to criticism. If that is your philosophy, then I don’t belong here.
I do believe you have a right to ban people like flerp! who hurls insults instead of simply defending his non-position.
People challenge what I write all the time, and I don’t respond by calling them “tiresome twits” even if I know that I am not the only one who believes that. People challenge what Linda writes, and she doesn’t call them “tiresome twits”. No doubt lots of us may think other people who comment here are “tiresome twits”, but we either choose to engage with them or not. Thankfully, if we all simply hurled insults because we didn’t agree with what some other person wrote, this blog would become unreadable.
But most of us are able to engage with people, even when the argument gets heated and we disagree with their views.
I would hate to see other people empowered to do what flerp! does – imagine Linda or CBK simply calling one another “tiresome twits” instead of engaging in debate.
They defend their views. They don’t demand that they be allowed to post and certain people who challenge them be banned from responding because they don’t like having to defend their views from that person.
NYCPSP, you are valued here. Any name calling is a sign of weakness.
Diane,
Thank you and thank you very much for removing flerp!’s name-calling.
You’re kind of missing the point of tenure. In a sense it creates an insular world where professors can speak freely, that’s the whole point. Sure you could compare a tenured professor to a supermarket clerk and ask the same question, but it really doesn’t advance much. The question isn’t really, “Should a person be fired?” the question is, “How far should tenure protect somebody?”
This woman is an embarrassment to U Penn. The university has plenty of money, and it can well afford to offer this 70 year old professor a retirement incentive that could entice her to leave without the bad publicity and distraction that direct confrontation would foment. Then, Wax would be free to spend her time on lucrative speaking engagements for rightwing extremist groups and media. U Penn can avoid a prolonged circus and save face.
cx: right wing extremist (Freudian slip)
If the university does decide to proceed with a hearing, it should abide by the terms of the university contract. Prof. Wax should still get due process the same as any other tenured professor, IMO.
Not sure if this fits in, but wanted to get it out in the open for all to read. https://www.laprogressive.com/education-reform/freedom-in-an-authoritarian-age?utm_source=LA+Progressive+NEW&utm_campaign=7e6d01243f-LAP+News+–+%288%29+18+NOVEMBER+2022_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_61288e16ef-7e6d01243f-287054155&ct=t(EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_11_17_2022_10_46_COPY_01)&mc_cid=7e6d01243f&mc_eid=8e62663b73
The cartoonists picked up on Rhonda Santis’s Nancy Sinatra white go-go boots! That’s awesome.
I see this as a conundrum similar to the rules of modern warfare that most of the world has agreed to through the UN.
Some countries have never agreed to some, most, or all of those rules of modern warfare designed to protect the civilian population. Russia and the United States are on that short list.
When two countries are at war and one side abides by those humane rules of warfare and the other one doesn’t, who benefits or suffers the most?
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/28/621112394/the-rules-of-war-are-being-broken-what-exactly-are-they
https://www.icrc.org/en/resource-centre/result?r%5B0%5D=document_type%3A%22Article%22&sort=date+desc
Voltaire: “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
The United States is in a cold war between RED and BLUE, that sometimes gets hot like what happened on January 6, 2021, and mass killing by extreme right lunatics.
If Amy Wax is fired, we lose.
We also lose, when an elected DA, educators and librarians in Red states like Florida lose their jobs because they won’t Kowtow to fascist’s like Dangerously Deranged Despot DeSantis.
I have a suggestion:
Instead of firing Amy Wax, she should be required, as part of her job, to defend her racist/fascist views in a televised debate once every year with CSPAN covering the debates. These debates would come with a three strike clause, meaning if Wax violated the rules of debate three times in one debate, she loses her job.
How about these rules “condensed from Competitive Debate: Rules and Techniques by George McCoy Musgrave. New York: H.W. Wilson, 1957”?
http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/debate1.htm
Anyone interested in the mendacious, bigoted career of Amy Wax would do well to read the articles on her written by Paul Campos and Scott Lemieux over at the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog (lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com). A strong stomach is needed.
Wax is almost a cartoon version of upper class bigotry, so beyond the pale is she. She’s also turned herself into another right wing grifter: Despite being worth at least a million dollars (a likely very low estimate) between her and her husband’s combined salaries (he also teaches at Penn), she has been crowdfunding for her “legal defense”, bringing in over $150,000 at last count.
She also has been barred from teaching any first year classes at Penn Law School, because students have no choice in who teaches these requirements. And there are many students at Penn Law who despise her.
Almost makes one question the value of tenure.
Where did Voltaire write that? I know it is quoted quite a bit, but did he really write that?
I saw the attribution to Voltaire in The New Yorker, which is hyper vigilant about fact-checking. On googling, I saw an article in The Guardian that attributes the saying to a Voltaire biographer. https://amp.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2015/jan/18/beginners-guide-voltaire-philosopher-free-speech-tolerance
The article includes this memorable line:
Voltaire argues in favour of toleration of religious belief, while reserving the right to argue strenuously against it, and denouncing religious fanaticism of all stripes. “Tolerance has never provoked a civil war; intolerance has covered the Earth in carnage.”
I think it’s rather simple: every reference, to the source of such discomfort, that is printed, published, hosted, posted and otherwise distributed, professionally, by the offended institution, should come with a WARNING STICKER featuring a blurb, detailing the problem and clearly establishing the distance the institution prefers to put between itself and the source of discomfort. In other words: the source of discomfort should be heavily ASTERISKED. I think it’s the most balanced approach to such a problöem, because it leaves room for the asterisks to be recanted in such cases that the offending person(s) has merely fallen afoul of a fad. I don’t believe this particular professor has fallen afoul of a fad, but the possibility is always there that a fish swimming against the current is not wrong to do so. Again: I think this particular professor will probably not be proven to have been Galileo all along, but for thorns in the side, in general, there should always be a chance given. I write this as someone who was horrified at the peremptory shutting down on ALL DEBATE, regarding certain sacred positions of the very near past. I have never in my life felt so near to living in a certain country in 1936…
Surprised by your response here, Diane. I like the idea of academic tenure to protect unpopular positions, sure, but not hateful racist stuff like this that we all know promotes violence against the groups targeted. She should be fired. She thinks America would be better off with fewer Asians and Democrats. I think America would be better off with fewer stupid bigots like Professor Wax and Republicans.
“She thinks America would be better off with fewer Asians and Democrats.”
Oh, she hates LOTS more people than that.
I agree with you that America would be better off without bigots but we do have them in great numbers. If she is fired, other universities will fire liberal professors solely for their views. A slippery slope. She teaches no required courses. I can’t imagine signing up for one knowing how bigoted and opinionated she is.
Having read the New Yorker profile of Justice Sam Alito, who wrote the Dobbs decision, I learned how he hid his views for decades. People thought he was a moderate conservative. He is not. He’s a rabid conservative who wants to turn the clock back. He’s angry because he can’t.
Where’s the outrage (and, a blog post ) about Prof. Adrian Vermuele at Harvard who said Catholics should be given preference in immigration? He’s been called the nation’s most dangerous critic of liberalism. He’s a political influencer, teaches Constitutional law.
Wax’s profile is limited to teaching at a private Ivy League school. A student who goes there shouldn’t be surprised at expressions of society’s prejudices against people without the advantages of the ruling class. Amy Barrett taught at the private, Catholic University of Notre Dame. A person there has no reason to think that he/she will not have to listen to defenses of discrimination against women and gays nor, to expect avoidance of experiences in overt discrimination, across the campus, from classrooms to extracurriculars?
Shouldn’t the people at a religious school anticipate condemnation of other faiths in favor of the sect who owns the school?
As a SCOTUS jurist, Amy Barrett took away women’s reproductive rights.
And, she exempted religious schools from civil rights employment law.
Is Wax or Barrett worse for a pluralistic, democratic society’s advancement? My vote, Barrett.
Is there a rationale that would allow for the firing (or, hiring) of Nick Fuentes if the job was at Yale vs. the Catholic school, Georgetown?
Anyone who fails to recognize the fertile grounds for pogroms should be reviewing the bio’s and statements of judges (and, politicians).
I’m curious, Linda. What is your history with the Catholic church?
Bravo !!!!
Don’t get me wrong. I am a proud card carrying member of Americans United Against Church and State. My wife got sentimental and said lets have a Passover Seder . I replied the ham is in the freezer.
Linda is a bit over the top. They are all dangerous “when in power ” She has to share the wealth a bit more.
More to the point, is anything that Linda writes above — or the many times she documents and explains — that is wrong? I think the point if it were Fuentes instead of Wax is quite a good one and on point. Why do documented facts of disproportionate influence that the Catholic Church has on American governing scare or intimidate people from denying the obvious? Why are people scared of publicly stating the obvious effects the infiltration of an ultra-reactionary religious mindset that has now dominated the Supreme Court majority? More to the point, why does it matter if one has a history of the Catholic Church or not in order to point out realities and hypocrites? These are determined by deeds, actions, and intent. And they are documented, not made up out of thin prejudices. Google: Diane Ravitch Catholic parochial and note the many times these truths are enunciated by people other than Linda. But in those cases, they are largely used as isolated examples. Add them together and Linda’s comments aren’t far out of the realm of consistent logic as the justifications to question her intent.
The history matters a great deal. The church pillaged its way through millennia, leaving behind it rivers of blood. But some of its worst influences have been more subtle. It ensured groveling allegiance by teaching that only via the church could one achieve heaven–the only goal that matters because everything Earthly is impure, fallen. The consequences of this sick teaching have been really pernicious–leading people to seek to perfect life here, now, on this Earth but to accept woe and misery and inequity because there will be pie in the sky when we die. And the denial of Earth and the body, the making of these into something ugly and fallen, has had subtle psychological effects, leading to the exact opposite of human flourishing–to people living lives that are narrow and mean and twisted. Its Contemptus Mundi is one of its worst legacies. And then there is this: There isn’t room in the mind for clear thinking AND superstition, and the church peddles superstition.
So, I can understand people being sick to death of the Church. I am as well. And I am horrified by the fact that the most reactionary, most medieval of its representatives are now the majority on the supreme court of our land.
Still, I am curious. I really do wonder what the story is there.
The consequences of this teaching have been pernicious, leading people NOT to seek to improve/perfect life here, on Earth, now, but to . . .
We should also be wary of the Catholic church’s influence on the judiciary, personified by Scalia and Alito. (Full disclosure: I was raised Catholic, but left the church at age 15 and never looked back. I also believe that religion is the most malign force in history.)
Six of the justices of the Supreme Court are Catholics. That’s two-thirds of the Court. Scalia, Alito and Thomas are members of Opus Dei. And those are only the ones we know about.
Bob-
I won’t be cowered by intimidation which is evident in the charges that I am anti-Catholic. It’s obvious that the technique succeeds and has traction with others, not me.
Why isn’t your question about the primacy of scrutiny for the source of right wing politicking? Why can’t it be understood that two issues are separate? Answer, the Koch-funded construct?
Connected relevance between individuals who select an a la carte menu of practices and beliefs, and, regardless of stated Church doctrine, label themselves adherents to a specific religious sect and, an institution’s funding of the right wing are separate topics. The conflation of politics and religion, for which Koch-funded Paul Weyrich is largely responsible, doesn’t mean you, I or others should buy-in.
Media’s deliberate omission of the Catholic church in articles about school privatization, abortion, conversion therapy, etc. demands that people speak up. For one of what are hundreds, if not thousands of examples of media’s omission, read Mary C. Curtis’ Roll Call article last year about the e-mails between Ginni Thomas and Mark Meadows related to the conflation of religion and politics. The public interprets Christian nationalism as protestant. Similarly, the nomenclature of Christian schools and Catholic schools corroborates a distinction.
Sister Barbara Battista (Sisters of Providence, St. Mary of the Woods-Indiana) spoke out in a recent interview at Raw Story/ Riverfront Times about the Church’s resources used against gay rights. She has a conscience (but, her order likely has a negligible amount of influence and money compared to the Bishop’s USCCB and state Catholic Conferences.)
It’s unconscionable that members of an institution who claim not to subscribe to the views advanced by the institution’s politicking, fail to find platforms to stop the institution’s wins. Many, deliberately, omit discussion of the role of their institution in undermining democracy and try to silence those who attempt to expose it.
I respect your knowledge about Biblical stories and how they lead to rejection of modernism and the compassion of equality. And, I acknowledge your courage in telling readers about your views.
I do hope that you do not think that I was attempting to intimidate you in some way. I just notice that this is a theme with you, and I wonder why. Feel free not to answer if you consider this too personal a question.
Those stories are, of course, to use Callisto’s apt phrase, “Bronze Age superstition.” Two that I find particularly appalling are our first parents’ being forbidden to eat of “The Tree of Knowledge” and the most horrific of all stories–the one in which we are supposed to honor Abraham’s willingness to murder his son to suit God’s capricious whim. Don’t seek knowledge. Do whatever thing, however ghastly, the all-powerful Daddy in the Sky tells you to do. Sickening. Primitive.
Antiintellectualism and blind obedience. No wonder these ancient myths appeal so much to contemporary Repugnicans, thousands of years later. Talk about turning back the clock!
Can’t speak for Linda, but if her intentions are like mine, it’s all very simple. I have no hate for Catholics as a religion and respect every individual from having their own way of observing it. In fact, I encourage it this that is what people really believe. I never really thought much about the influence that some organized Catholic interests have on how Americans live and think until Linda brought it to my intention. It is not a conspiracism to point out the influence (or justifications used) of these interests. The impact of Leonard Leo and present state of the Supreme Court is enough. The other stuff just adds to it. What bothers me is the attempt to both separate and combine personal faith with obvious, proven, organizational interests that overtly or quietly rely on the approval of a critical mass of support. We do the same with privatizers, white nationalists, unions, teachers, you name it. The mere fact that they can use or discard the cloak of Catholicism at convenience does not obscure this fact. I would hope that we can point out realities without having to explain whey we do so. Being American and concerned about our present and future seems to me to be enough.
You make excellent points, Greg.
Oy, my inability to proofread and avoid WordPress spellcheck!
I always cringe AFTER I hit the Send button. Really, I should discipline myself to proofread first!!!
Thanks, Bob, on both counts. As much as I may pontificate be despondent, I still have civic fantasies about this American thing.
…or be… Sheesh.
And now, from our utter bs department:
Or this guy:
Greg-
An analogy- Pew has two operations – one is the Pew Charitable Trust which lobbies for the interests of the wealthy e.g. the campaign with John Arnold against public pensions. And, secondly, there are the Pew research operations which claim to serve society with publication of results that are objective.
It concerns me that there are people at this blog who would be unable to understand the separation between the two Pews since they can’t separate the right wing lobbying of the Catholic church from its worship stuff.
Yes, you and I have similar views about religion, To Bob, I’ve got no baggage about religion.
I’ve been crystal clear that my opposition is to the advancement of the right wing in the public square by the Church. I’ve been crystal clear, with evidence, that the most politically powerful sect in its sector, is the Catholic church. I’ve provided evidence that the Church gets a pass from media and influencers which I have provided as explanation for why I single its politicking out.
If I criticized Pew Charitable Trust because it was the most substantial influencer among its peers, I assume people at this blog would call me anti-Pew. They would demand I applaud “good” Pew research and either ignore Pew’s politicking for the rich or trot out some minor player with little influence to provide “balance.”
You are more willing than I, on many occasions, to rehash the obvious to those whose brain cells can’t expand to understand. I appreciate your willingness.
This all makes sense to me, Linda.
I often rely on the Pew Research Center publications. Fascinating stuff. Their Religion in America studies are invaluable.
My mother in Indiana tells me that her local television stations are delivering barrages of television commercials from the Catholic Church, ones with a “Come back home” message. LOL. Dishwashing soap. Mars bars. Jesus.
Besides, aren’t they recruiting “educators” like this in Florida?
She would be recruited by DeFascist to be a college president. Exactly right for Florida.
“Voltaire: “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” I would only agree that we have this “right”. in SOME PLACES and not in a place of authority where the person is still in power over students or is given a giant platform because of the supposed Status of her position. The lie about black people and intelligence /cognitive for example should not be preached in a law school… or given some authoritative voice because of the position that she holds.
https://www.ft.com/content/5c615d7d-3b1a-47a2-86ab-34c7db363fe4 I can’t use Evelyn Waugh as some literary excuse for this guy….
Nothing opened.
I agree with Diane, a person has a right to an opinion, no matter how abhorrent. Free speech may not mean you can cry “fire” in a theater, but it must mean you can advocate it.
That said, others have an equal right to call out vigorously the falsehoods of her assertions. She sounds like she likes controversial stature. She deserves as much controversy as she stirs. A pie in the face or a retaliatory demonstration is not assault. It is a confrontation.
This would make sense if tenure protected the employee absolutely. However like many anti-union politicos like to spout, tenure does not mean a person cannot ever be terminated. That is a false explanation of tenure that gains ground in the rhetoric behind the anti-tenure rants of those who oppose unions.
When examining the philosophical concept of tenure, I always come back to this: One cannot be fired for frivolous reasons, yet one can engage in what the profession clearly calls academic freedom without immediate termination.
However, tenure does not protect an academic employee from being terminated in every situation. If my belief as a teacher is that all black children should be treated as if they are cognitively impaired, I would be brought up on tenure charges and a hearing would ensue. Asserting a false trope that harms students would be enough grounds for losing tenure and my position after the act of due process finds I am in violation of my certification and guilty of hate crimes.
The fact that tenure does not protect absolutely is exactly why she should be brought up on tenure charges and then summarily fired.
Tenure protects an academic from being harmed for political reasons. Tenure guarantees due process and gives the right of the employer to investigate the charges. Tenure does not protect an academic who harms their charges.
LG, you make a good point. We will see where Penn goes with this.
They’ve always backed her in the past.
Amen, LG.
I just read the 2022 Pulitzer, The Netanyahus, by Joshua Cohen. B.B.’s dad was a violent terrorist — and a professor. That was an example of the questionable. The way I see it, discussing academic ideas is protected free speech, as long as violence is not being incited. I agree with you, Diane.
Penn is a private university. It is not subject to the First Amendment.
In this context, it means academic speech is protected only so far as Penn wants to make it protected.
I agree, but “wants to”
and “should” are two different things.
And I don’t know what rules, rights and protocols Penn has.
The AAUP’s red book- it’s the national standard
Go to 4:42 for a very, very good argument.
Greg,
I don’t know how you have time to find these clips.
Friends who know my interests forward me stuff plus ADHD.
Yet, they still tried to shut her down for saying what everyone with a brain has been saying: These laws aren’t good enough to stop the violence. Thanks for the clip.
Trump, the common man, supposed victim of the ivy leagues went to UPenn, an Ivy League. He used his privilege over a lifetime to live like a king, while avoiding the taxes that the rest of us pay.
Whatever Trump had, he bought, probably including his admission to Penn.
Amy Wax is a useful foil.
I had a professor, years ago, who told our class of what he called his “nuts in the Hershey bar” theory of literature. The idea is that you need something rough to keep the thing from being cloying.
I would rather live in a world in which people react against the likes of Charles Murray and Amy Wax and Jordan Peterson than one of some imagined benign totalitarianism in which snowflakes of the left or right are protected from hearing anything they find disturbing. There are practical reasons for this, obvious ones.
I find these three revolting, appalling. And I welcome any opportunity to take on their idiocies.
Perhaps she should open a hair removal spa at a local strip mall and call it, “Professor Wax.”
To answer the posed question: NO!
Academic freedom – already weakened by conformists and I cowards from both the left and the right, must be protected.
Good stuff about Catholic conservatism in academia. Part of the FedSoc conspiracy already embedded in the so-called “Deep State,” right? But must say defending Wax’s right to spew her hate speech as “academic speech” or as a labor union protection (tenure) is not very convincing and at least partly why academia and unions have been held in suspicion at times in American history as segregationist clubs.
“Unions held in suspicion”-
Far, far more dangerous to inclusion- the non-union sector, review the demographics of top management in business, of White, right wing churches (their congregants are about 40% of the population contrasted with much smaller numbers in Black churches) and, of elected political positions.
The attack against funding for municipal and state government and against the employees’ public pensions disproportionately harmed/s Black people.
Well, I do not think academic freedom allows you (or should allow you) to miseducate the students in your class. It’s one thing what you are allowed to say as a private citizen, and it’s a different matter what you can say in class as an authority figure, because whatever you say influences students in things which may absolutely nothing to do with education.
Tenure is supposed to protect scientific and artistic truth from outside influence (like influence of politicians, administrators, businesses), but not private political opinion. Imo.
Freedom of speech in classes is not “absolute”, allowing students or teachers say anything they want. Students have greater freedom, since their opinion usually just comes across just an opinion, but teachers’ opinion may end up brainwashing or frightening some students. Education should do neither.
You can ask “Where does one draw the line?” In my opinion some general guidelines can be written in the faculty handbook, and then incidents can be examined on a case by case basis.
At the very least, the university’s admins should examine the case very seriously.
Mate, I hope the administrators are thoughtful in handling this case. I fear that a decision against will lead to a massive ouster of liberal professors in red state universities. You are in one of the reddest states. I hope you are tenured.
Yes, Diane, I am tenured. But the tenure system is in danger. The percentage of tenured professors has been steadily declining. According to the American Association of University professors
The number of tenured faculty within the academic labor force has declined to about 21 percent. Thus, the number of teachers and researchers who are protected when speaking in the classroom or publishing research on controversial topics is declining.
https://www.aaup.org/issues/tenure
Most faculty are adjunct. No protection.
“Voltaire: “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.””
Well, I doubt Voltaire really meant this. It sounds heroic, dramatic, but his stance makes no sense to me in a general sense. If, for example, somebody claims that women are inferior to men, then I value life (my life) much more than giving it up in defending such people on their soap box. And this example is very mild compared to what we hear lately on the news. I am not going to defend QAnon’s right to publish their dangerous stuff.
Concur with your opinion.
However, on the statement widely misattributed to Voltaire:
The 18th century Enlightenment era French writer/philosopher François-Marie Arouet, whose nom de plume was Voltaire, never wrote the line widely misattributed to him.
Instead, it was biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who wrote the line often misattributed to him in her 1906 work “The Friends of Voltaire,” which was published pseudonymously under her own nom de plume of S.G. Tallentyre.
Burdette Kinne of Columbia University published an article in the November 1943 edition of Modern Language Notes, Volume 58, Number 7, which included a May 9, 1939 letter to her from Ms. Hall, in which she wrote that — despite her use of quotation marks in that phrase — “The phrase … is my own expression.”
In context, Ms. Hall was writing about Voltaire’s reaction to news of the French Parliament’s condemnation and burning of a 1758 book by fellow philosopher & friend Claude-Adrien Helvétius, and was not particularly impressed with “De l’esprit” (“On the Mind”), though exceedingly perturbed by the French government’s actions.
Earlier in a 1919 publication of Voltaire’s letters which Ms. Hall had translated, she wrote that the saying was a “Voltairean principle” which she included in her commentary about the two men’s relationship.
Thank you! In m y search, I noted that Voltaire’s biographer invented the quote. What if everything we think we know is untrue?
What if, indeed!
Perhaps current events could be a “preview of things to come,” which is to say that the acknowledgement of the abundance of horrors and injustices committed by United States governments, Federal & State, and the far-right’s denial of them, as evidenced by their prolific efforts of legislation forbidding this, that, and the other, i.e., FL’s “Don’t say ‘gay'” law, TN’s anti-drag law, an activist legislative SCOTUS which overturns settled law with abandon, denial of wholesale genocidal efforts & racist legislation aimed toward indigenous peoples & African-Americans, etc.
It’s difficult to come to terms with the wretchedness of our own past, and for the GOP, the best way to deal with it, aside from denialism, is to forbid speech about it, in the hopes that somehow, it will magically disappear.
It is, in effect, a continuation and perpetuation of the immoral, intolerable, and anti-Constitutional.