Posted on 02/10/2005 11:08:16 AM PST by doug from upland
The Thought Police Strike Nevada By Richard Lake Las Vegas Review-Journal | February 9, 2005
University of Nevada-Las Vegas (UNLV) professor under fire for comments he made about homosexuals during a class lecture last year demanded Friday that the university stop threatening to punish him.
"I have done absolutely nothing wrong," said the professor, Hans Hoppe, a conservative libertarian economist with almost 20 years teaching experience at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, on Hoppe's behalf, sent a letter to UNLV officials alleging that the university violated Hoppe's free speech rights and his right to academic freedom.
"The charge against professor Hoppe is totally specious and without merit," reads the letter from ACLU attorney Allen Lichtenstein.
He said they would sue the university if necessary, though they hope to avoid it.
UNLV officials would not comment on the case, saying they cannot talk publicly about personnel matters.
Hoppe, 55, a world-renowned economist, author and speaker, said he was giving a lecture to his money and banking class in March when the incident occurred.
The subject of the lecture was economic planning for the future. Hoppe said he gave several examples to the class of about 30 upper-level undergraduate students on groups who tend to plan for the future and groups who do not.
Very young and very old people, for example, tend not to plan for the future, he said. Couples with children tend to plan more than couples without.
As in all social sciences, he said, he was speaking in generalities.
Another example he gave the class was that homosexuals tend to plan less for the future than heterosexuals.
Reasons for the phenomenon include the fact that homosexuals tend not to have children, he said. They also tend to live riskier lifestyles than heterosexuals, Hoppe said.
He said there is a belief among some economists that one of the 20th century's most influential economists, John Maynard Keynes, was influenced in his beliefs by his homosexuality. Keynes espoused a "spend it now" philosophy to keep an economy strong, much as President Bush did after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Hoppe said the portion of the lecture on homosexuals lasted perhaps 90 seconds, while the entire lecture took up his 75-minute class.
There were no questions or any discussion from the students about the homosexual comments, he said.
"I have given lectures like this for 18 years," said Hoppe, a native of Germany who joined UNLV's faculty in 1986. "I have given this lecture all over the world and never had any complaints about it."
But within days of the lecture, he was notified by school officials that a student had lodged an informal complaint. The student said Hoppe's comments offended him.
A series of formal hearings ensued.
Hoppe said that, at the request of university officials, he clarified in his next class that he was speaking in generalities only and did not mean to offend anyone.
As an example of what he meant, he offered this: Italians tend to eat more spaghetti than Germans, and Germans tend to eat more sauerkraut than Italians. It is not universally true, he said, but it is generally true.
The student then filed a formal complaint, Hoppe said, alleging that Hoppe did not take the complaint seriously.
He said university officials first said they would issue him a letter of reprimand and dock him a week's pay.
That option was rejected by Hoppe's dean and by the university provost, Hoppe said.
More hearings ensued, he said. In the end, the university gave him until Friday to accept its latest offer of punishment: It would issue him a letter of reprimand and he would give up his next pay increase.
Hoppe, a tenured full professor, contacted the ACLU on the recommendation of an attorney friend of his. Hoppe is now their client.
"I felt like I was the victim," he said, "not the student."
ACLU officials said the validity of Hoppe's economic theories does not matter. It is his right to espouse them in class.
"We don't subscribe to Hans' theories and certainly understand why some students find them offensive," said Gary Peck, the ACLU of Nevada's executive director.
"But academic freedom means nothing if it doesn't protect the right of professors to present scholarly ideas that are relevant to their curricula, even if they are controversial and rub people the wrong way."
Hoppe said he is dumbfounded by the university's response to the student's complaint. It is not his job, he said, to consider how a student might feel about economic theories.
"Our task is to teach what we consider to be right," he said. The offended student, he said, should have been told to "grow up."
Hoppe protested that university officials declined to speak to other students in the class to find out what actually happened and even rejected letters he solicited from a half-dozen students.
UNLV's general counsel, Richard Linstrom, would not talk about Hoppe's case, but said the university values free speech.
"The administration of UNLV is fully committed to academic freedom in all respects," he said. Linstrom said he was in a Board of Regents meeting most of Friday and had not seen the ACLU's letter.
Lichtenstein, the ACLU lawyer, said the university's response to Hoppe's situation might stifle free speech on the campus.
"If he can be silenced, that's going to create self-censorship among other faculty members who won't say anything controversial," he said. "Who's going to lose in all this? The students."
What a dumbass! He should have stuck to something safe like besmirching 9-11 victims by comparing them to Nazis.
Do my eyes deceive me or is the ACLU siding with an individual who's allegedly made disparaging remarks about deviant behavior?
I prefer this lecture to Churchill's one calling New Yorkers Nazis who deserved to die on 9-11.
I once got in a little trouble for suggesting in a class that on average men are taller than women. Seriously.
Gay sex is of particular concern because among homosexuals, promiscuity is more the rule than the exception. For example, the December, 1989 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine refers to a Los Angeles report that gay males averaged over 20 sex partners annually. Some studies show that those in supposedly ''steady'' relationships are even more promiscuous, engaging in dozens of trysts a year outside the relationship.
A 1998 study that appeared in Psychological Reports used four databases to investigate the life spans of gays versus heterosexuals. It concluded that the homosexual lifestyle sliced 20 to 30 years from practitioners' life expectancy. Supporting this was a 1994 obituary investigation in the Omega Journal of Death and Dying, which determined that the median age of death for gay males was 42 and for lesbians 49.
The school choice movement needs to be expanded to the college level. Create a bunch of Grove City style colleges and universities where professors like this can speak the "Truth" and students can learn. Charge a Grove City-like tuition, and eventually starve these liberal indoctrination clinics.
I had to blink twice to make sure I was reading what I was reading.
Years ago I taught real estate law and real estate economics at the college level. We were discussing loan and bank fraud in real estate, and a student asked about a hot topic -- Madison Guaranty. I explained to them how the Clintons did it. I didn't get in trouble.
bump!
and I am amazed to see the ACLU doing something valid for a change
I don't know, people. I must have led a sheltered life, attending college in Texas back in the 70s. It's really getting weird out there.
NO. No. But read closer...the [without]A CLU did plenty of backfilling, hemming and hawing about how they don't AGREE with the good professor but....
Nope...same bunch.
Sorry, all the neocommunist protectors of civil rights are kissing Churchill's butt; this schmuck will have to fend for himself!
UNLV Regents Chairman: Hoppe Should Not Be Disciplined
In an exclusive interview with UNLV Board of Regents Chairman, Dr. Stavros S. Anthony, Dr. Anthony told EconomicsDaily.com that his awareness of the Hoppe Controversy was based on newspaper reports, but what he has seen in newspaper reports leads him to believe that Hoppe was stating valid economic theory.
"If what he is stating is valid economic theory, then he should not be disciplined."
Dr. Anthony went on to say that if Hoppe is disciplined, there is an appeals process that could result in the matter ending up before the Board of Regents.
High Time Preference
Many have emailed to ask for a definition of high time preference, since it is part of the Hoppe controversy. This is how Mark Thornton explains it:
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Mature people have a low time preference, a longer time horizon. They have high rates of saving and capital accumulation and practice healthier lifestyles. People with high time preference tend to live for the moment, spend more than they earn, and engage in risky activities and unhealthy lifestyles. Policies that promote free enterprise and individual responsibility have the positive effect of reducing time preferences while government nannyism, like the welfare state itself, increases time preference and exacerbates the problems of irresponsibility.
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