Author Topic: "Campuses stifle free thought"  (Read 3820 times)

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Offline Sal Atticum

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"Campuses stifle free thought"
« on: January 12, 2010, 11:06:03 AM »
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Campuses stifle free thought

By: John Calvert, Fargo

Is there any place in this free land of ours so hostile to free thought as our university campuses?

The latest assault on the mind comes from the University of Minnesota, whose College of Education recently floated a Mao-style proposal to screen students for incorrect social views and then re-educate them in something called “cultural competence.”

Though the U of M has now disavowed the program (after exposure by civil rights watchers), the idea was to sensitize future teachers to an ever-growing list of “oppressed” groups by immersing them in a curriculum whose “overarching framework” would be race, class and gender. Students would also write forced confessions – “autoethnographies” – to expose their own stereotypes and bigotries. After graduation, tests and workshops would continue to ferret out unbelievers in the workplace. Those who failed to see that America is a horror of “white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, heteronormativity, and internalized oppression” would be deemed unqualified as teachers.

Like most campus crackdowns, this one was inspired by the multiculturalist dogma, which romanticizes victimhood and proclaims a duty to squelch any idea that some member of some oppressed group, somewhere, sometime, might conceivably find offensive, or pretend to.

But shameful as it is, multiculturalism with its culture of censorship is only one aspect of a broader malady, which is the campuses’ general fascination with causes. These days, they’re tilting against every evil from Walmart to American imperialism. They’re boycotting Israel, the military, sweatshops, polluters and a host of other villains. They’re installing bureaucracies for diversity, green construction, grief and whatnot. They’re promoting local economic growth and pressuring American firms abroad to pay higher wages. Lincoln University in Oxford, Pa., wants to combat obesity by denying diplomas to its overweight seniors.

Read their mission statements and you’ll find the same messiah complex everywhere.

Typical is my alma mater (the University of North Dakota) whose social work department aims “to empower vulnerable, oppressed, and disadvantaged populations,” to “promote … respect for diversity,” and to “act on social justice issues.”

Whether these causes are worthy in themselves is irrelevant. The question is whether they are the proper concerns of academic institutions. Most certainly, they are not. In his recent book, “Save the World on Your Own Time,” professor Stanley Fish argues that when campuses devote academic resources to political goals they “deform … the true task of academic work: the search for truth and the dissemination of it through teaching.”

How is social justice achieved? Plato famously answered: By minding your own business.

Do what you do best and don’t do what others do better. Academics are very good at teaching and research, but they are not equipped to conduct statecraft any more than statesmen are equipped to teach math. The surest way for higher education to improve the world is by cultivating students who are thoughtful rather than programmed.

Indeed, in an address at Columbia University during the Great Depression, Walter Lippmann wondered whether the scholar “can do a greater work for his nation in this grave moment … than to (refuse) to let himself be absorbed by its distractions.” The world, he said, “will go on somehow, and more crises will follow. It will go on best, however, if among us there are men who have stood apart, who refused to be too anxious or too much concerned, who were cool and inquiring, and had their eyes on a longer past and a longer future.”

Calvert is a retired university teacher and contributor to The Forum’s commentary pages. E-mail [email protected]

I don't want to take a lot of time on this right now, but I would suggest that Calvert is making a hasty generalization about not only specific classes in a university setting but the universities themselves.  What do you think?
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Offline pmp6nl

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Re: "Campuses stifle free thought"
« Reply #1 on: January 12, 2010, 02:55:26 PM »
I suppose he may be making a hasty generalization, but of course maybe he has done his research and knows some things others dont know.  I suppose we could ask what is the purpose of the university?  Are they there to educate us in the typical ways (math, sciences, writing, etc.) or should they be educating us to not only become knowledgeable but productive members of society?  Should the universities be using funds to build diversity centers or classrooms or hire more professors... or each of these things?

Where do you draw the line between all of these factors?

I do not agree with:
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to screen students for incorrect social views and then re-educate them in something called “cultural competence.”

... unless it allows the students to express their views in a learning environment that is not hostile to anyone's views... aren't we suppose to learn from others and at least hear them out?  I was always taught that.

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this one was inspired by the multiculturalist dogma, which romanticizes victimhood and proclaims a duty to squelch any idea that some member of some oppressed group, somewhere, sometime, might conceivably find offensive, or pretend to.

This is true, at least in my experience in higher education.  If it might offend someone we just cant do it.  We always have to think about others, and if we might offend them.  Does this stiffle higher education, does it help us learn more, does it inhibit or enhance this or that??

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Lincoln University in Oxford, Pa., wants to combat obesity by denying diplomas to its overweight seniors.

Now that is truly ridiculous.

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Typical is my alma mater (the University of North Dakota) whose social work department aims “to empower vulnerable, oppressed, and disadvantaged populations,” to “promote … respect for diversity,” and to “act on social justice issues.”

By empowering vulnerable, oppressed, and disadvantaged populations, are they creating other vulnerable, oppressed, and disadvantaged populations... and are they seeing and meeting their needs?  I dont know, I am just posing the question.

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when campuses devote academic resources to political goals they “deform … the true task of academic work: the search for truth and the dissemination of it through teaching.”

Is that the goal of the university today?

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The surest way for higher education to improve the world is by cultivating students who are thoughtful rather than programmed.

:icon_thumright:

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The world, he said, “will go on somehow, and more crises will follow. It will go on best, however, if among us there are men who have stood apart, who refused to be too anxious or too much concerned, who were cool and inquiring, and had their eyes on a longer past and a longer future.”
CampusDakota.com

 

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