It's About Liberty: A Conservative Forum
Topics => The "Educators" => Topic started by: Glock32 on February 26, 2014, 02:11:41 PM
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I imagine you have heard about an opinion piece recently published by a senior at Harvard, wherein she calls outright for the abandonment of free speech and academic freedom because those things are hostile to the correct (i.e. Leftist) ideology.
It reads like absurd parody, but it is all too real. It is expertly picked apart here: http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2014/02/elsewhere-112.html (http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2014/02/elsewhere-112.html)
And Peter Wood (http://www.mindingthecampus.com/forum/2014/02/academic_justice_and_intellect.html) on Sandra Korn and the inversion of meaning:
On Monday, February 17, Ms Korn, a Harvard senior, published an essay in the Harvard Crimson, titled The Doctrine of Academic Freedom, with the explosive sub-head, “Let’s give up on academic freedom in favour of justice.” Korn’s argument is simply summarised: The freedom of faculty members to pursue research and to teach has some value, but these activities always and everywhere reflect political considerations. A university community rightly has its own political values and when a faculty member violates them, he should be silenced. “Academic justice” is more important than academic freedom.[…]
Academic freedom, as the idea developed historically, recognised the need to insulate scholars from the politically-minded outsiders who saw scholarship as threatening. Today, members of the professoriate are often politically-minded and the doctrine of “academic freedom” is often inverted in an attempt to insulate them from genuine scholarly standards… To put it concisely: academic freedom once meant protection from politics; now it means protection for politics.
The kind of politics being protected scarcely needs pointing out. Ms Korn, the student who objects to academic freedom (for others, that is), lists her interests as (http://davidthompson.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451675669e201a73d7e3726970d-pi) “socialism, being angry about gender” and “occupying things.” She also tells us that “dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” Though again, that’s her dissent, not yours. And so she asks the question (http://www.thecrimson.com/column/the-red-line/article/2014/2/18/academic-freedom-justice/), “Why should we put up with research that counters our goals?” You see, finding things out must be entirely subordinate to certain, rather fashionable political assumptions. Which is to say, her assumptions. It’s exactly the quality one hopes for in a modern intellectual.
Update:
In the comments, Darleen points us to Bruce Bawer’s thorough parsing (http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/bruce-bawer/harvards-rebel-without-a-clue/) of Ms Korn’s background, activities and cartoonish opinions. It’s well worth reading in full. He notes that despite Harvard’s prestige (and annual tuition of around $60,000), Ms Korn seems full of boilerplate and air, rather than knowledge or curiosity: “There’s no sign that she’s been educated at all, in any sense of the term – no sign that she’s learned anything of significance about, say, history or economics... No sign that she grasps the concept of challenging one’s own assumptions by taking in unfamiliar facts and grappling with ideas different from one’s own.” But although barely educated in any meaningful sense, her narcissism and arrogance have been harnessed and put to use, of a kind. Ms Korn seems quite sure of her own intellectual destiny as a corrector of others, a fearless challenger of WrongThought™. Like so many of her peers (http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2013/01/our-brightest-minds.html), she has been thoroughly processed. She’ll no doubt fit in nicely (http://davidthompson.typepad.com/davidthompson/2010/10/dissident-academic-feels-the-warmth-of-social-justice-.html), as all conformists should.
One of the commenters reduced it down to its core, proof once again of the Left's immunity to all forms of cognitive dissonance:
"when a faculty member violates them, he should be silenced"
"dissent is the highest form of patriotism."
Coherent worldviews. Overrated in my opinion.
(http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Sandra_Korn.jpg)
The lovely Miss Korn. She would like to put you in a mass grave.
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Two words - Preemptive strike.
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"Justice" is not part of an education. Miss. Korn is an idiot.
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Yeah Hon. Try spouting your mouth off like that AFTER the collapse. PLEASE. Pretty Please.
I am sure you will have dozens of people ready to "correct" you...
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No way the crap lives anywhere but in libiot central...probably trampled to death in the first hour...