Posted on 11/18/2022 9:50:23 PM PST by SeekAndFind
‘We can stand together for freedom!’
More than 1,000 professors across the country have signed the “Stanford Academic Freedom Declaration” that calls on universities to restore free speech, academic freedom and institutional neutrality.
The open letter calls on universities and professors to adopt and implement the “Chicago Trifecta” — the Chicago Principles on unilateral free speech, the Kalven report that requires institutional neutrality on political and social topics, and the Shils report, making “academic contribution the sole basis for hiring and promotion.”
As of Thursday the letter had 1,095 signatures, and it increases daily.
“The larger hope is to bring back academic freedom on campus and in the academic enterprise more generally,” Stanford economist and co-author John Cochrane said in an email to The College Fix. “Only with robust academic freedom, the ability to investigate ideas and bring out uncomfortable facts, does scholarship bring about new and reliable knowledge, especially on crucial issues to our society.”
The loss of academic freedom, the letter states, is tied to a leadership crisis.
Many university leaders want to uphold free speech yet “punish those who express views deemed to be incorrect and enforce ideological conformity in hiring and promotions,” it states.
Underscoring the problem is the fact that purse strings — funding resources — are tied to following the accepted narrative instead of a free exchange of ideas, Cochrane said.
“[A]cademic freedom, free speech, and the pursuit of scholarly excellence are under siege at universities, in professional societies, and in government agencies, including those that give grants,” Cochrane said. “Simple facts cannot be spoken out loud. Research that comes to conclusions that counter political narratives can’t be conducted, published, or popularized.”
The declaration signers call on their universities to implement the “Chicago Trifecta” to help resolve that problem: “Freedom is a culture, not merely a set of rules, and a culture must be nurtured.”
Cochrane, on his Grumpy Economist blog, recently pointed out that some academics are scared to sign the letter because other signatories have been labeled as “well known deplorables.”
“That reaction tells us a big part of the problem,” he wrote. “All along we have tried very hard to reach out to self-described left/liberal/democrat colleagues, who privately bemoan what’s going on but are too afraid to be seen in public. But why not fix it: if some of you sign perhaps that will give courage for more of you to sign. Take it over, get together with your friends, add lots of signatures, make this your cause, prove that we can stand together for freedom!”
UC Berkeley statistics Professor Will Fithian told the Daily Californian student newspaper via email that he signed the declaration because “I have heard from many students and colleagues that they are afraid of openly discussing controversial issues.”
“[W]e all need to foster a community that tolerates a wide range of opinions, even on difficult topics that provoke very strong feelings,” he said.
The declaration began circulating shortly before the Academic Freedom Conference held at Stanford Graduate School of Business earlier this month.
The lineup of speakers included well-known scholars who are either conservative, centrist, liberal or libertarian, but who have established themselves as leading voices against an orthodoxy strangling free speech and dissent on campuses.
“If you have a big idea for how to solve the big energy problem, don’t get too excited. The Department of Energy wants to know your plans for advice in diversity, equity and inclusion,” Anna Krylov, a University of Southern California professor who signed the letter, said at the Academic Freedom Conference. “What is the prospect for scientific enterprise if our essential institutions … replace their original mission with the critical social justice agenda?
“They are no good. That worries me. That is why we are here.”
There are over 130,000 college level professors in the United States. A little over 1000 signed this letter. Shows what we are up against.k
I interpret that somewhat oblique statement to mean that the heavy hand of the federal government and their money (i.e., OUR money) is what stifles free speech on campus.
Among other reasons, 30 years ago this:
>if our essential institutions … replace their original mission with the critical social justice agenda?
was going on in academia as such innocuous topics as the study of Shakespeare was being mandatorily supplemented by the study of black militant lesbians. 20 years ago conservatives in the humanities were a hunted species, and a decade ago the purge of ‘whiteness’ began in the hard sciences.
Today’s new graduates are products of those tenured leftists — some duckspeaking bleaters, quite a few redpilled by enduring that garbage long enough to try and make it in the real world.
To get 1000 is remarkable; people who are willing to find entirely new careers when the hammer comes down and the sickle cuts low.
What’s shocking is that in the year 2022 they even have to consider doing this.
bump
a fine school
I’m thinking that many of the 1000 are in the engineering or business departments where they don’t often have to express controversial opinions.
I just posted that article and link on Twitter on a thread complaining about scientists not doing research on UFO’s (hot topic, gets lots of views).
I just added my name. I teach at Foothill College, just down the road from Stanford.
It would help to sequester the woke courses and departments from functional real life majors.
I took a look at the list and there weren't any DEI type professors on it. I think what has happened is many professors have lain low on the DEI stuff over the years but now it is effecting them. They are being told to incorporate DEI into their courses, dumb down the grades, and etc.
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Another part of the problem with 14A is that, until patriots can vote all of the crooks out of Congress, patriots cannot expect Congress to do its 14A duty to make penal laws to discourage public university suppression of speech.
Excerpted from 14A:
"Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws [emphasis added]."
"Section 5: The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
On the other hand, note that 14A has relatively recently been successfully applied in a UC Berkeley case of speech abridgment.
UC Berkeley settles landmark free speech lawsuit, will pay $70,000 to conservative group (12.4.18)
What Congress probably needs to make sure in public university cases like Berkeley is that the university state actors who abridged someone's free speech protection for example, personally pay the settlement, not the state's taxpayers.
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