The New York Civil Liberties Union feels compelled to weigh in on what is now known as the "Columbia University issue" brought about by the David Project. It is as I predicted: by making a stink about the convictions of the Israel-hating faculty members, it all becomes an issue of academic freedom and freedom of speech, when it should be about minimal standards of academic performance.
Still, the NYCLU letter - altogether too verbose as it is - makes some pretty silly arguments. For example:
... faculty members must retain broad latitude to think as they will and to write as they think and to suffer no recriminations, from outside the academy, for the content of their scholarship.
If "recriminations" means "criticism," isn't the NYCLU claiming that one person's freedom of speech is more valuable than another's? And if "academy" only means "Columbia University," the implication must be that we should shut down all peer review of scholarship.
There's clarification, though:
....while those outside the university community remain free to criticize academic scholarship, it is entirely inappropriate for potential donors to try to use the power of the purse to dictate the content of scholarship or the composition of a university’s faculty or one of its departments.
No, but donors are certainly allowed to spend their money as they see fit. And if they don't think that Columbia University's scholarship is worth supporting, they are perfectly within their right to not do so. And it is their right to say why they are withholding support.
The classroom is a bounded educational environment. It is not, except at the invitation of the professor, an open forum for students to express any views that they wish at any time.
The NYCLU should know that nobody is arguing that classrooms should be a free-for-all. But I think there should be a distinction between politics and scholarship in the academic environment. An introduction into the Arab-Israeli conflict should be just that, and not simply a soap box for one political perspective.
As suggested above, the claims of incivility of professors in their treatment of students seem, in this case, to be inextricably bound to the ideological disputes between certain professors and the students advancing these claims.
And this, we are led to understand, is the students' fault. The professors have every right to abuse students if they question the content of their lectures. The students must object on the basis of substance; the professors can resort to ad hominem attacks and intimidation, because this - the NYCLU believes - is essential to "academic freedom."
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