Stanford equity dean Tirien Steinbach gets a pink slip after inciting law students to disrupt a speaker

July 21, 2023 • 11:30 am

Tirien Steinbach was the associate dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Stanford Law School (SLS), and became infamous for egging on the schools’s students to attack visiting speaker Judge Kyle Duncan, who’s on the Court of Appeals of the Fifth Circuit. I posted on her actions here and their fallout here. Short take; Steinbach more or less urged students to deplatform the Judge’s talk (he’s a conservative), both before and during the talk, when she interrupted the Judge to lecture him about how his actions had “harmed” the students.

The dean of the law school, Jenny Martinez, wrote a letter of apology to the Stanford community for the demonstrations (you can see it here). In response, the obstreperous SLS students demonstrated in Martinez’s class, and shortly thereafter Dean Steinbach was put on leave.

On March 10, FIRE wrote a letter to Stanford’s President (now replaced after allegations of scientific misconduct), which ended this way:

When the university allows speakers like Judge Duncan to be silenced, it sends the message to all in the Stanford community that those who engage in unlawful, disruptive conduct have the power to dictate which voices and views may be heard on campus. If reports about last night’s disruption are accurate, Stanford must take immediate steps to reaffirm its commitment to n expressive rights for all. Failure to do so quickly and clearly will be to Stanford’s lasting shame.

Given the urgent nature of this matter, we request a substantive response to this letter by Tuesday, March, 14.

I don’t know if FIRE ever got a response, much less a substantive one, but it was announced by Martinez (and put in a tweet by a FIRE attorney), that Steinbach will be “leaving her post.” Ten to one she was fired.

Stanford Law Dean Jenny Martinez: "Associate Dean Steinbach and I both hope that SLS can move forward as a community from the divisions caused by the March 9 event."

— Alex Morey (@1AMorey) July 20, 2023

Here’s the statement, which you can click to enlarge. It’s written as if Steinbach decided to “pursue another opportunity,” but I bet what happened is that she was given the choice of leaving or of being fired. Stay tuned for more (I’ve asked FIRE).

Finally, below is a new emailed statement from FIRE’s Director of Campus Rights Advocacy Alex Morey:

The Stanford Law shoutdown made everyone question whether Stanford really cared about free expression. What set the event apart was DEI dean Tirien Steinbach, who, for all intents and purposes, facilitated the shoutdown when she should’ve been enforcing the rules.

Stanford recommitted strongly to free speech in the weeks that followed. Today’s announcement that Steinbach will leave her post is hopefully another signal that Stanford intends to adopt a no-tolerance policy on viewpoint discrimination.

Stanford’s brand new interim president, Richard Saller, has some solid free speech bona fides, including coming from ultra-speech-friendly UChicago, and having previously been on record about the importance of academic freedom.

We’re hopeful that after some administrative house cleaning over the last 48-hours, today represents a promising new day for higher ed best practices at Stanford.

I wonder if the SLS students have learned anything from this whole dismal affair. This just underscores the need for all serious universities in America to have a section on “freedom of speech” during student orientation.

One of New Zealand’s “Satanic Seven” describes efforts to create a free speech policy at the University of Auckland

July 20, 2023 • 9:30 am

Kendall Clements is a biologist at New Zealand’s Auckland University who works on the evolution of fish. He was also a signer of the “Listener Letter,” in which seven Auckland Uni professors (two now deceased), published an article in a popular magazine arguing that mātauranga Māori (MM), or Māori “ways of knowing”, while of educational value, was not coequal to modern science. As the Wikipedia article describes,

In response to a 2021 report from a Government NCEA working group which proposed changes to the Māori school curriculum to ensure mātauranga Māori’s parity with Western epistemologies, seven University of Auckland senior academics Kendall Clements, Garth Cooper, Michael Corballis, Doug Elliffe, Robert Nola, Elizabeth Rata, and John Werry penned a letter that was published in the 31 July issue of the New Zealand Listener expressing disagreement with two of the report’s assertions:

That science has been used to support the domination of Eurocentric views including colonialism and the suppression of Māori knowledge.

The notion that science is a Western European invention and itself evidence of domination over Māori and other indigenous peoples.

The authors argued that science was universal to humanity with origins in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, ancient Greece, and India. They also noted the Muslim world‘s significant contributions to mathematics, astronomy, and physics; which later passed onto Europe and North America. The authors also asserted that science was neutral rather than a tool of colonialism, highlighting its contributions to tackling global issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, pollution, biodiversity loss, and environmental degradation.

All seven contributors were deluged with considerable opprobrium, and two, members of the Royal Society of New Zealand, were investigated (and cleared), but the rest remain demonized, and, in general, academic discussion, of this issue in particular, was stifled. Academics in New Zealand who agree with the sentiments of the Listener letter generally stay silent, fearing for their jobs. A survey earlier this year revealed that only 31% of professors surveyed at five of New Zealand’s eight universities agreed that they were free to state controversial or unpopular opinions. One other note:

University of Auckland vice-chancellor Dawn Freshwater said the letter “caused considerable hurt and dismay among our staff, students and alumni” and that “the institution had respect for mātauranga Māori as a valuable knowledge system, and that it was not at odds with Western empirical science and did not need to compete.”

Freshwater, in thrall to indigenous knowledge, later backed off a bit, but she then promised a free discussion in which MM would be debated vis-à vis its parity with modern science, saying this:

In the first quarter of 2022 we will be holding a symposium in which the different viewpoints on this issue can be discussed and debated calmly, constructively and respectfully. I envisage a high-quality intellectual discourse with representation from all viewpoints: mātauranga Māori, science, the humanities, Pacific knowledge systems and others.

Do I need to add that that debate never took place? Freshwater was making promises she knew she wouldn’t keep.

Some Auckland University professors then decided that their school needed a written policy about free speech and academic freedom, and are formulating one now (in fact they’ve already formulated a nine-point document, but right now are only voting on whether they need such a policy.) My prediction is that despite overwhelming support for such a policyh (see below), it will either never get adopted or will be heavily watered down with prohibitions on speech that’s considered “offensive.” Some of that pushback to free speech by other Auckland Uni academics is described in the podcast below.

In this 40-minute podcast by New Zealand’s Free Speech Union, Kendall Clements, talks about his experience after signing the Listener letter and the attempts to develop a free speech document with his colleagues in the University Senate.

Discussion of MM, its relation to modern science, and the reaction to the Listener letter, starts at 13:10. Note that Clements does note empirical aspects of MM that can be considered as “empirical knowledge,” i.e., part of science, but also notes MM claims that aren’t scientifically credible.

At 25:30 Clements describes the arguments made by some of his opponents against freedom of expression. (One is that free speech could cause “harm” or damage relationships.) Do note that most of this debate is about speech relevant to the “ways of knowing” of the Māori, not other political issues like which political party is the most worthy. But Clements thinks that the free speech problems are due largely to the “culture wars” and social media as opposed to MM itself. These have caused “echo chambers” or “epistemic bubbles” at Auckland that create that attitude, “If you don’t agree with me, you’re a racist.” He argues that this doesn’t come directly from MM or its advocates, but is a general feature of the tribalism involved in the culture wars, a tribalism similar to what’s going on in America. (One could conclude that it just happens that New Zealand tribalism just happens to involve Māori issues, and the culture wars everywhere are about power.)

In the end, the Auckland Uni Senate’s anonymous vote to create a policy for freedom of expression and academic freedom was 80% positive and 16% negative. (In contrast, only 49% of the faculty surveyed, and 38% of the academic staff, felt able to respectfully voice their views without fear of negative impact.) As Clements says, “There’s clearly a freedom of expression problem at the University of Auckland.”

The upshot: the overwhelming majority of Auckland’s faculty senate voted that they need a policy of free speech and academic freedom. But will they get one? Given the opposition of the higher-ups (the Provost, for example, thinks the University should be able to make official statements on political issues), I’m not optimistic. But can you imagine New Zealand’s premier university lacking any policy on freedom of expression or institutional neutrality?

Click below to hear the podcast. Here’s the site’s summary:

Free speech across our universities is under fire- but many academics are also working to address this. After 3 years, a working group established at the University of Auckland to consider how to preserve academic freedom and free speech has reported back, making a bold stand in a hostile environment. Free Speech Union member and UoA Professor, Kendall Clements, sits down with Jonathan to give an insider’s view to why free speech is under fire, and what needs to be done about it.

The National Academies post a position statement on affirmative action, followed by an email exchange between Steven Pinker and NA President Marcia McNutt

July 17, 2023 • 11:00 am

Note: This post originally was to include both Steve Pinker’s emails to National Academies President Marcia McNutt as well as her responses to Pinker (two from each), but in the end she decided that she did not want her emails reproduced here. (Both she and Pinker were sent my introduction given below.) Pinker, however, gave me permission to reproduce his. You can try to infer McNutt’s response from Steve’s second email.

Steve sent the first email in response to the “National Academies Presidents Statement on Affirmative Action” below.

*******************

Intro (by JAC):

On June 30, the Presidents of our three National Academies issued a joint statement on the Supreme Court decision handed down the day before, the decision that found race-based admissions in universities unconstitutional. Affirmative action, at least as we’d known it for six decades, was dead.

In response to this decision, Marcia McNutt, President of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), John L. Anderson, President of the National Academy of Engineering, and Victor J. Dzau, President, National Academy of Medicine, issued the statement below. Because it’s on the home page of the National Academies website, was co-signed by all three presidents, is labeled “National Academies’ Presidents’ Statement” rather than “Opinion,” and lacks the standard disclaimer that the views expressed are those of the writers and not the organization, it’s natural to read it as an official position. I thus take it as an official position of the Academies and not just a personal expression of the Presidents’ sentiments.

National Academies Presidents’ Statement on Affirmative Action

Statement | June 30, 2023

Yesterday the Supreme Court issued a ruling to restrict affirmative action that will present challenges to efforts to diversify the nation’s colleges and universities. We strongly believe that the nation should remain committed to these efforts and find solutions that address racial inequities, including past and current racial discrimination and structural, systemic, and institutional racism in education.

A 2011 National Academies report stated that policies that have included affirmative action are fundamentally important to increasing the participation of members of historically underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups at the postsecondary level across all fields (NASEM, 2011, p. 100). The report further states that increasing their participation and success contributes to the health of the nation by expanding the science and engineering talent pool, enhancing innovation, and improving the nation’s global economic leadership (NASEM, 2011, p. 3). A National Academies report issued in February 2023 recommends that leaders of organizations, including colleges and universities, take action to redress both individual bias and discrimination as well as review their own processes to determine whether they perpetuate negative outcomes for people from underrepresented racial and ethnic minority groups at critical points of access and advancement (NASEM, 2023, pp. 14-15).

It is essential that our nation extend the opportunity for a college education to all, enhance diverse learning experiences for all students, and create equitable pathways to grow a highly skilled workforce and to solve our most complex problems. Diversity is crucial to the success of our society and our economy.

We must also remain committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts within our own institution. We will continue to examine the implications of the decision for our staff and our work as an institution, our relationships with partners and volunteers, and our essential work of providing evidence-based advice to the nation on issues related to science, engineering, and medicine.

Marcia McNutt
President, National Academy of Sciences

John L. Anderson
President, National Academy of Engineering

Victor J. Dzau
President, National Academy of Medicine

This statement could not be issued by my own school, the University of Chicago, as it violates the position of institutional neutrality laid out by our 1967 Kalven Report, which forbids our school from making official statements about politics, ideology, and morality unless they are essential to bolstering the university’s function: teaching, learning, and researching. (Our own five-line statement supporting equal opportunity and access for minority groups, while saying that we’re committed to affirmative action, says nothing about the Supreme Court decision, nor have we issued a statement about it.) The Kalven Report was issued because official statements by University officials or departments could be seen as chilling the speech of those who disagree with these positions. (Unofficial and personal statements, of course, are encouraged as free speech, but official statements impede free speech.)

The National Academies’ (NAs’) statement violates institutional neutrality in several ways. First, it is clearly a response to the Supreme Court decision, and to any reasonable individual says “that decision was wrong”. The first two paragraphs lay out why it was wrong, including the NAS’s belief that the Court’s decision presents “challenges” to the NAs’ policy to address and rectify “racial inequities”, and notes the NAs’ previous claim that affirmative action was “fundamentally important” in rectifying these inequities.

Another reason why this political statement couldn’t pass muster at Chicago is because it asserts as fact tendentious propositions like the value of affirmative action and the causation of minority underrepresentation as “past and current racial discrimination and structural, systemic, and institutional racism in education.” Again, this statement can be debated, particularly the part about existing structural, systemic, and institutional racism.

Further, the last paragraph urges people—I presume members of the NA—to engage in advancing “diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts within our own institution.” That now-familiar phrase does not, of course, refer to the abstract goals of diversity, inclusion, and equity per se, which are unexceptionable, but to a specific set of policies employed in many universities and other institutions that include affirmative action, reporting of data on racial composition, and race-conscious orientation and training sessions.

As such, this call for action again establishes an official policy, which is especially problematic because NA members are being adjured to advance “equity” in the recent sense of representation of groups in proportion to their presence in the American population. Given other causes of deviations from the population average besides bigotry (e.g., differences in preference or education), it’s debatable whether “equity” in the statistical sense is what we should be striving for instead of equal opportunity. Either way, what we have here is apparently an official endorsement of a particular political position: affirmative action was right; the Supreme Court was wrong; all discrepancies from population statistics are caused by bias; and we must keep striving to match institutional racial proportions to national ones. In taking a particular moral position—and note that both Steve Pinker and I agree with more limited ways to boost ethnic diversity, but disagree with institutional statements about such issues—the NAS is violating institutional neutrality. The Academies were created and tasked (and are still tasked) not with taking sides on ideological issues, but, as Steve notes below, to provide “independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology”.

Finally, note the assertion that “diversity” is crucial to the success of colleges, our economy and society. What kind of diversity? The only kind mentioned is diversity of “racial and ethnic minority groups.” But other kinds of diversity may be even more important to the advancement of science, particularly diversity of viewpoints (the members of a given ethnic group, of course, don’t all share a single viewpoint!), political orientation, religion, and socioeconomic status. Again, the Supreme Court made this point in its decision:

A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.

This joint statement, then, makes a number of tendentious points that, in toto, would chill the speech of NA members who disagree. This violates any institutional neutrality that the National Academies have—or should have based on its mission statement, which says that the job of the NAS is not to promote ideological positions but to provide scientific advice to the government.

And, as Steve points out below, taking political positions like this (again, a position that both Steve and I agree with to some extent) runs the danger of alienating the public, whether those statements be Left- or Right-wing. I recently posted about a survey in Nature showing that the magazine’s political endorsement of Biden for U.S. President (a one-off endorsement) led Republicans to be more distrustful not just of the journal, but of science in general.

It is for these reasons that scientific journals and organizations should remain as far away as possible from ideological, moral, and political statements. While editors and scientists may feel compelled to inject their opinions into official venues, they are best made in statements clearly labeled as “opinion” (and distinguished from official positions of the organization), as their overall effect on science is negative—both in chilling the speech of scientists and eroding public trust in science. While I encourage scientists to express their own views on these issues, it should always be done in personal-opinion statements that don’t carry the imprimatur of institutions like the NAS.

In response to the statement above, Steven Pinker, a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, had an email exchange with Marcia McNutt, the NAS President (His emails were copied to the Presidents of the other two Academies as well.)

There were two back-and-forths between Pinker and McNutt. Steve gave permission to put up his emails here, but Dr. McNutt decided not to have her emails published.

Although it will become clear that I agree with Steve’s point of view in this exchange (after all, I’ve been defending the Kalven Report for years), I am posting this material to begin a discussion about diversity, about affirmative action, and about institutional neutrality. I invite readers to go through this post and give their opinions in the comments. All I can say now is that McNutt and Pinker were in unanimity about some matters, but differed strongly about others.

Pinker’s emails:

From: Pinker, Steven <pinker@wjh.harvard.edu>
Sent: Monday, July 10, 2023 11:20 AM
To: McNutt, Marcia K. [JAC: I’ve omitted the NAS Presidents’ email addresses]
Cc: Anderson and Dzau
Subject: NAS Statement on Affirmative Action

Dear Marcia,

I would like to express my disquiet at the recent NAS Statement on Affirmative Action. The desirability of racial preferences in university admissions is not a scientific issue but a political and moral one. It involves tradeoffs such as maintaining the proportion of African Americans in elite universities at the expense of fairness to qualified applicants who are rejected because of their race, including other racial minorities such as Asian Americans. Moreover it is a highly politicized policy, almost exclusively associated with the left, and one that majorities of Americans of all races oppose.

It’s not clear to me how endorsing one side of a politically polarizing, nonscientific issue is compatible with the Academy’s stated mission “providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology”.

The problem is worse than being incompatible with the Academy’s mission; it could substantially harm the Academy’s goal of promoting politicians’ and the public’s acceptance of science. Extensive research has shown that rejection of the scientific consensus on evolution, anthropogenic climate change, and other scientific topics is uncorrelated with scientific literacy but predictable from political orientation: the farther to the right, the greater the rejection of evolution and climate change.

In this regard, for the nation’s foremost scientific organization to identify itself with the political left is to all but guarantee that a substantial proportion, perhaps a majority, of politicians and the public will reject science as just another partisan faction with which they have no sympathy. This strikes me as unwise.

I wonder whether these considerations entered into the decision to issue the statement, and the Presidents decided to proceed nonetheless. Perhaps you considered the downsides and decided that the benefits outweighed the costs. Or, am I bringing up something that the Presidents did not even consider? If the latter, I urge you to at least take it into consideration in the Academies’ public communications, and other activities, in the future.

Sincerely,
Steven Pinker
Member, National Academy of Sciences
Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology
Harvard University

Dr. McNutt teplied that day, and the next day Pinker wrote the following in response:

On Jul 11, 2023, at 11:15 AM, Pinker, Steven <pinker@wjh.harvard.edu> wrote:

Thank you, Marcia, for your swift reply. My concerns, though, have not been allayed.

First, if your goal in issuing the statement was not to criticize the Supreme Court decision, I believe you did not succeed. Nowhere did the statement distinguish legal from scientific issues, the first two sentences are:

“Yesterday the Supreme Court issued a ruling to restrict affirmative action that will present challenges to efforts to diversify the nation’s colleges and universities. We strongly believe that the nation should remain committed to these efforts …”

I don’t think any reader of the letter could read that as anything but a criticism. If the Presidents’ goal was to issue a statement that was not perceived as criticizing the Supreme court or defending affirmative action, was a draft shown to politically diverse commentators (that is, including ones who are not on the political left) to ascertain whether it would be understood that way?

It’s also hard to understand how the statement did not “defend the approach to diversifying the student bodies that was struck down by the courts.” The third sentence approvingly says, “A 2011 National Academies report stated that policies that have included affirmative action are fundamentally important….” But it is exactly the policy of affirmative action that the court struck down. Even more puzzlingly, the 2011 report in fact says little about affirmative action, does not review research on its effects on innovation or global economic leadership, and does not list it among its six “Recommendations” or two “Priorities.” The citation on p. 100 merely lists it among a range of policies it deems “fundamentally important.”

Even more concerning, the statement could have been lifted out of the pages of any recent left-wing opinion magazine, since it reiterates the current conviction that racial inequities are primarily due to “past and current racial discrimination and structural, systemic, and institutional racism in education” and to “individual bias and discrimination.” Entirely unmentioned are other potential causes of racial discrepancies, including poverty, school quality, family structure, and cultural norms. It is surprising to see a scientific organization attribute a complex sociological outcome to a single cause.

Finally, the statement, and your letter, equate diversity of ideas with diversity of race. The advantages of intellectual diversity are obvious (though I have not seen any statements from the Academy addressing the shrinking political diversity among science faculty, nor the increasing campaigns that punish or cancel scientists who express politically unpopular views). The assumption that racial diversity is the same as intellectual diversity was exactly what the Supreme Court decision singled out and struck down, since it carries with it the racist assumptions that black students think alike, and that their role in universities is to present their race-specific views to their classmates.

Of course, citing rigorous empirical research that is relevant to the issues facing the court or guiding admissions policies going forward would be a highly appropriate role for the Academies. These might include comparisons of the outcomes of racial versus socioeconomic preferences, the effects of standardized test-based admissions policies on student success, and the implications for scientific quality at institutions like UC Berkeley and the University of Michigan of mandates to eliminate racial preferences. But simply extolling the ambiguous word “diversity” would seem to be beneath the intellectual standards we expect of a scientific academy.

Our goals are the same: to enhance the progress and political and public acceptance of science. In that regard I urge the three of you to give more consideration to the way that communications from the Academies signal solidarity with a political faction rather than “providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology.”

Best,
Steve

Dr. McNutt replied soon thereafter, but the response is redacted at her request.

NYT claims that a course on “The Problem of Whiteness” tests the University of Chicago’s commitment to free speech

July 3, 2023 • 12:20 pm

What we have in this NYT story is an outraged conservative being peeved after finding out that there was going to be a University of Chicago anthropology course on “The Problem of Whiteness”. The student put information about the course, including publicly available information on the instructor’s photo and email address, on social media. It of course went viral among a certain set of The Easily Offended that does not include me.

Naturally, the instructor was harassed big time. She complained to the University about it—twice. While one dean characterized the social-media onslaught as “cyberbullying,” eventually the University dismissed the instructor’s complaints. She postponed the course one quarter (she not on tenure-track here, but a teaching instructor and a new Ph.D. looking for a job). Then, with University’s security and support, she taught the course twice.

The student who “doxxed” the instructor was not punished or sanctioned in any way. The University took this affair as a pure matter of freedom of speech, with no First Amendment violations committed by anyone. Of course we’re a private university and don’t have to abide by the First Amendment, but our well known Principles of Freedom of Expression (adopted by about 80 other universities) ensure that we do.

Click below, or find the article archived here.

A few details:

Rebecca Journey, a lecturer at the University of Chicago, thought little of calling her new undergraduate seminar “The Problem of Whiteness.” Though provocatively titled, the anthropology course covered familiar academic territory: how the racial category “white” has changed over time.

She was surprised, then, when her inbox exploded in November with vitriolic messages from dozens of strangers. One wrote that she was “deeply evil.” Another: “Blow your head clean off.”

The instigator was Daniel Schmidt, a sophomore and conservative activist with tens of thousands of social media followers. He tweeted, “Anti-white hatred is now mainstream academic inquiry,” along with the course description and Dr. Journey’s photo and university email address.

Spooked, Dr. Journey, a newly minted Ph.D. preparing to hit the academic job market, postponed her class to the spring. Then she filed complaints with the university, accusing Mr. Schmidt of doxxing and harassing her.

Mr. Schmidt, 19, denied encouraging anyone to harass her. And university officials dismissed her claims. As far as they knew, they said, Mr. Schmidt did not personally send her any abusive emails. And under the university’s longstanding, much-hailed commitment to academic freedom, speech was restricted only when it “constitutes a genuine threat or harassment.”

Schmidt sounds like a bad piece of work, but Journey’s photo and email address are freely available on the Internet, so he didn’t do anything but disseminate publicly available information. Not that I think the course is great, but if the University approved it, we can’t really beef. Nor can we say that Schmidt violated our principles of free expression.

Mr. Schmidt has found himself in adversarial roles before.

Over the last year or so, he actively supported Kanye West, the artist now known as Ye, for president — work that he promoted with Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier. Mr. Schmidt declined to comment on his political activism or his dealings with Mr. Fuentes.

In his first year at the university, Mr. Schmidt was fired from The Chicago Maroon, the student newspaper, after his editors said that he had repeatedly antagonized another columnist on Instagram, and encouraged others to spam her. Mr. Schmidt said he was simply “calling out a public figure.”

After he was also fired from a conservative campus publication, Mr. Schmidt turned to his own website, College Dissident, which featured articles like “Time to Fight Anti-White Hatred on Campus.”

His activism has helped fuel an industry dedicated to accusing universities of liberal orthodoxy. Websites like Campus Reform and The College Fix have for years trained students to report on campus controversies, hoping that conservative news outlets like Fox News, Breitbart and The Daily Caller will whip out their own stories.

All three publications ended up writing about Dr. Journey’s class.

And after the course catalog said the class was canceled for the winter, Mr. Schmidt celebrated. “This is a huge victory,” he tweeted.”

What we seem to have is a professional kvetcher who comes down on liberals, but again—he didn’t do anything that violated the law or accepted university principles of free speech.

And here’s the support that Dr. Journey got from the University, which is important, and something that (as Greg notes below) the NYT didn’t make a big deal about. But that is the important part of the story since so many colleges refuse to defend their instructors attacked on social media (remember Hamline University and the Muhammad paintings?):

Administrators had already amped up security. They had moved Dr. Journey’s class to a building that required key-card access and did not publicly list the location. Dr. Journey said the university beefed up security patrols.

Officials also took key steps that supporters of academic freedom say many colleges fail to do: They affirmed Dr. Journey’s right to teach the class and did not distance the institution from her.

I sure as hell wouldn’t do what what Schmidt did, though in the past I have occasionally put up contact information for what I see as egregious circumstances. But a course doesn’t fit that description; it’s a course, and even if it be woke, I can write about it; but it’s rude and bad form to sic a bunch of angry conservatives on a new Ph.D. looking for a job.

I think that Geof Stone of the Law School, one of our big free-speech advocates, has the right take on this situation:

Professor Stone, who wrote the Chicago statement [of Free Expression], agreed that the student’s actions could have a “chilling effect” on speech. But, he asked, who determines the difference between, say, a newspaper reporting on an individual and Mr. Schmidt’s actions? Both can result in hate mail and threats, he said.

The university, as a private institution, could change its policies to say that students, staff and faculty cannot post material that is intended to be intimidating, Professor Stone said.

But such a move — which he does not recommend — would run afoul of the First Amendment if the university were public, and would bring its own complications, he said.

“It’s very hard for either law or institutions to monitor those sorts of things,” he said. “Your administrators may be biased in terms of who they go after, and who they don’t go after.”

And while a strong case could be made that Mr. Schmidt’s intent was to intimidate, Professor Stone said, “Do you really want to get into the business of trying to figure out what the purpose was?”

Finally, here’s Greg Mayer’s take on the whole business, quoted with permission.

Complaining about the class is fine, including identifying the instructor. If Schmidt did tweet out her email address, that’s unkind and uncalled for, and someone should talk to him about etiquette. It would also clearly NOT fall under one of the exceptions to the First Amendment, though: as Jerry noted to me, there was no call for imminent lawless action. Schmidt probably, though, hoped to generate a Twitter mob, which I guess he did.

Political ads that call for people to harass a politician are standard these days. (“Joe Biden wants to take away your Medicare. Call Joe Biden now and tell him to keep the government out of Medicare! Call xxx-xxx-xxxx now!”)

The University could have rules that are more restrictive than the First Amendment. But fashioning them could be difficult– what would cross the University’s (as opposed to the First Amendment’s) line? Name-calling? Incivility? But how to define these?

The U of C did stand by the instructor, which I think is the key here: the institution resisted the Twitter mob. Policing individuals is tough, in part because of the problem of defining where the “line” is; and there are so many individual miscreants one could go after. But having those in charge stand up for the academic freedom of the instructor is a rarity these days, and is the real story, which the Times barely mentions.

The course sounds like a real stinker– an exercise in the cultural typological essentialism which is sort of the guiding principle of neo-racism. But, as Voltaire didn’t say, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

JAC: I agree with everything Greg says, except that if someone “talks to Schmidt about etiquette”, it should be one of his friends, not a University official. The University has no business chilling speech through “a talk about etiquette.”

Professor loses job offer at UCLA after grad students object to his views about DEI statements

June 29, 2023 • 9:15 am

I’m not sure why the Chronicle of Higher Education wrote such a long story about this issue, but probably because it instantiates an ongoing controversy in higher education. Actually four controversies, the last of which isn’t mentioned in the article:

1.) Should candidates be required to submit “DEI statements” when they apply for a job at a university?

2.) Should those statements be vetted against a given “correct” ideological position by the university or department?

3.) Should the candidate be denied a job if their DEI statements aren’t ideologically correct?

4.) Is it legal to require these statements (especially at a state university) since they may violate the Constitution by being loyalty oaths and subject to “viewpoint discrimination?”

In the case of psychologist Yoel Inbar, a professor at the Unversity of Toronto who applied for a joint hire with his partner at UCLA’S Department of Psychology, UCLA’s answer to the first three questions was, respectively, yes, yes, and yes. He didn’t get the job. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), however, thinks the answer to #4 is “no,” and is investigating the issue.

Click to read:

There are a lot of twists and turns here, and I won’t describe them, as they’re in the article. The short take is that Inbar was probably going to be offered the job, but lost it after a bunch of grad students in the department objected to his take on DEI—a take expressed in a five-year-old podcast. From CHI:

A psychologist spoke out this week about what critics see as a job offer gone awry over an ideological spat about diversity statements.

Yoel Inbar, an associate professor at the University of Toronto, was up for a job at the University of California at Los Angeles. But the psychology department there decided not to proceed after more than 60 graduate students in the department signed an open letter urging the university not to hire him.

At issue, the students wrote, were Inbar’s comments on his podcast expressing skepticism about the use of diversity statements in hiring, as well as about other efforts intended to make the academy more inclusive.

In the letter, which circulated on Twitter, the students wrote that Inbar’s hiring “would threaten ongoing efforts to protect and uplift individuals of marginalized backgrounds” and that Inbar “prioritizes advocating for those he classifies as political minorities in academia” over fostering inclusivity. In a meeting with graduate students, the letter continues, Inbar’s answers to questions about diversity, equity, and inclusion were in some cases “outright disconcerting.” (Inbar shared his account on a podcast episode released on Tuesday, and spoke with The Chronicle on Wednesday.)

You can also see students’ letter here. This was one of those incidents that go viral on Twitter, though since I’m told that (or am sent tweets), I haven’t verified that for myself.

But what’s clear is that Inbar is a liberal, and that he’s not against departments promoting diversity. His objection was to mandatory DEI statements, an objection that repelled the students. There’s also another twist; the students think that, as a psychologist studying “moral and political ideology”, Inbar’s work wasn’t sufficiently imbued with issues of race, gender, and other work about discrimination. In other words, they objected as much to his lack of ideologically-infused research as to his objection to DEI statements, statements that he considers aren’t efficacious but which serve only to flaunt virtue. From CHI:

The story began, Inbar said Tuesday on the podcast Very Bad Wizards, when his partner received a job offer from the UCLA psychology department. When she inquired about the possibility of bringing Inbar on as a partner hire, the department was receptive, Inbar said. During a campus visit in late January, faculty members seemed enthusiastic about him as a candidate.

But he told the hosts of Very Bad Wizards that his meeting with the diversity-issues committee was one of several “strange things” that happened while he was on campus. At the end of the meeting, in which the committee asked standard questions about his approach to diversity in his teaching and research, Inbar said he had been asked about a December 2018 episode of Two Psychologists Four Beers.

In that episode, Inbar said that diversity statements “sort of seem like administrator virtue-signaling,” questioned how they would be used in a hiring process, and suggested “it’s not clear that they lead to better outcomes for underrepresented groups.”

The committee asked: Was he prepared to defend those comments now?

“To be honest, I wasn’t, because this episode is like, four and a half years old,” Inbar said on Very Bad Wizards. But he explained his current stance: “The very short version is, I think that the goals are good, but I don’t know if the diversity statements necessarily accomplish the goals.” (One host of Very Bad Wizards, David A. Pizarro, a professor of psychology at Cornell University, said he’d let Inbar’s comments on the podcast speak for themselves.)

So Inbar is in favor of promoting diversity, but said that he didn’t think that DEI statements were the way to do that; that they are “virtue-signaling”. I agree with Inbar, and diversity statements are not allowed at the University of Chicago precisely because, I believe, they violate freedom of speech and are a form of compelled speech when vetted compared to desired “rubrics.”

Here are the graduate students objecting not just to his views on DEI statements (it’s not enough that he’s in favor of the statements’ goals), but also to the insufficiently “minoritized” character of his academic work:

Then Inbar met with some of the graduate students. Both parties recalled the meeting as unusual. The students wrote in their letter that Inbar had told them that his “work does not really deal with identity,” which they found problematic. Inbar studies morality and political ideology, the students wrote, so “it was deeply troubling to hear that he does not believe identity (i.e., individual background as it pertains to race, gender, sexuality, class, or ability) has bearing on these research questions.”

But Inbar said the graduate students had never asked him directly about the podcast episodes mentioned in their letter. “To be honest, it wasn’t entirely clear what they were getting at” in the meeting, Inbar told The Chronicle; if they had asked more-direct questions about, for instance, his approach to mentoring students from diverse backgrounds, he said he could have answered them.

It seems to me that calling for Inbar not to be hired because his work isn’t centered on “identity” constitutes a violation of his academic freedom. Inbar is a highly respected scholar, and here we have students saying “you’re working on the wrong thing” when in fact they offer no critique at all of his research.

In the end the department, rattled by the graduate students’ statement, convened an unusual special committee to re-evaluate Inbar’s application. The committee went along with the students and Inbar he didn’t get the job.

I think FIRE’s take on what happened seems accurate (read the students’ letter):

Meanwhile, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has requested from UCLA documents related to Inbar’s case, including the committee’s report; the university denied that request in March and an appeal this month. Alex Morey, director of campus rights advocacy at FIRE, told The Chronicle that her organization is preparing a second appeal, arguing that the records are a matter of public interest.

“What we suspect may be happening here is that because Professor Inbar allegedly did not parrot the correct views on DEI and some students objected to that, he may have been discriminated against because of his views in the hiring process,” Morey said. That’s not allowed at a public university, she said: “They can hold faculty to viewpoint-neutral type of criteria, objective standards, but they can’t say, ‘If you don’t pledge allegiance to our particular view on diversity, you can’t have a job.’”

They’re right: there is strong evidence here for viewpoint discrimination. What’s odd is that the very views held by Inbar—that the goal of increasing diversity is good but mandatory DEI statements for applicants are not—is the very goal of schools like the University of Chicago, which tries to preserve freedom of speech and academic freedom while seeking a diverse student body. DEI statements should not be required for application, and if that’s the case then questions #2 and #3 above become superfluous.

In 1972, the University of Chicago issued the Shils Report, which lays out the criteria for hiring, retention, and promotion within the University. Here are the four criteria listed in the report (my bold):

Any appointive body must have a standard by which it assesses the merits of the alternative candidates before it. Academic appointive bodies in general, and at The University of Chicago in particular, must have clearly perceived standards which they seek to apply to particular cases. They must seek to choose candidates who can conform most closely with these standards in their most exigent application. The standards to be applied by any appointive body should be those which assess the quality of performance in (1) research; (2) teaching and training, including the supervision of graduate students; (3) contribution to intellectual community; and (4) services. Distinguished performance in any one of these categories does not automatically entail distinguished performance in the others. For this reason, weighting of the various criteria cannot be avoided by appointive bodies. The Committee thinks that the criterion of distinction in research should be given the greatest weight.

It’s understood that “services” means “services to the University,” like serving on committees and the like. You’d be hard pressed to shoehorn “correct ideology towards diversity in there,” and, as I understand it, the powers that be here have decided that requiring DEI statements violates the Shils criteria. (This is my interpretation from what I’ve heard, so don’t take it as an official policy of the university.) At the same time, the University is dedicated to maintaining diversity, including diversity of thought. We have a strong policy to that effect. It seems to me that our own policy, which promotes diversity while insisting on freedom of expression and academic freedom, expresses the very views that cost Inbar his job.

This is not a “cancelation,” but only the failure to offer a job, and Inbar is being sanguine about it:

Meanwhile, Inbar is not asking for sympathy. His partner received a one-year extension of her job offer from UCLA, which he told The Chronicle was “spectacular,” and the couple may consider moving to Los Angeles if Inbar can find a job in the area. “I don’t want people to cry over this for me,” he said on Very Bad Wizards.

In the past, he added, he’s urged faculty members to speak up about potentially controversial topics they believe in. His recent experience has changed his mind.

“Is there a cost to opening your mouth about this stuff? Absolutely, there is,” he said. “Would I advise a junior person to take any sort of heterodox position on this publicly? Absolutely not, because you only need to piss off a few people. It just takes one or two to sink you. Just stay out of it.”

That last paragraph shows how institutional policies requiring or promoting a specific ideology (in this case, one construal of DEI) can chill speech. And that’s why we don’t have such policies.

A few tweets. Below is Matt Yglesias laying out what happened, and then Sean Carroll apparently misunderstanding Yglesias’s tweet, which includes part of the students’ statement and a link to it. The actual beliefs at issue are, in fact, part of what Yglesias said.

Jesse Singal then weighs in, saying that Carroll apparently missed what Yglesias was writing about.

You're doing the same thing! You're abstracting this, as though Yglesias (or anyone) is arguing that there are no beliefs that would render someone unhireworthy. Defenders of Inbar are making a very specific argument you're ignoring entirely.

— Jesse Singal (@jessesingal) June 28, 2023

FIRE has been trying to get UCLA’s records about the Inbar decision, records that should be public since UCLA is a state school. They have a series of ten tweets about it; I’ve put three below. I doubt that this will lead to a lawsuit against UCLA, but it’s time that required DEI statements be adjudicated as possible violations of the First Amendment.

Something odd is going on at @UCLA, given it’s been dodging our public records requests on professor Inbar’s case since March!

What are they hiding over there?

FIRE’s determined to find out. https://t.co/2SZO3qqDHj

— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) June 28, 2023

9/ The First Amendment prohibits public colleges from forcing faculty to pledge allegiance to any ideology — from Communism, to patriotism, to DEI — in order to get or keep a job. We’re working to find out if this unlawful practice is taking place at UCLA. https://t.co/gIeQuMctSw

— FIRE (@TheFIREorg) June 28, 2023

Have we reached peak woke?

June 26, 2023 • 9:30 am

This article from The Liberal Patriot Substack has been making the rounds, perhaps because it argues, using data, that—regardless of efforts from both the Right and Left to quash free speech and academic freedom— higher education “seems to have turned a corner” on wokeness. (If you don’t like the word, suggest another.) The university culture, says Musa Al-Gharbi, is getting less woke.

Click to read:

As for whether it’s “too late”—that is, have universities and their bureaucracies established wokeness so entrenched that it can’t be reversed, Al-Gharbi thinks not: it’s “not too little, not too late.” (He is, by the way, a graduate student and Paul F. Lazarsfeld Fellow in Sociology at Columbia University.) Note that he blames both the GOP and Democrats (or leftists) for the problem, but also worries that if it’s fixed from within, the GOP will get unearned credit.

First, some of the unwelcome developments Al-Gharbi limns:

Rather than serving as bastions of free exchange of ideas or rollicking debate, most campuses remain significantly more inhibited expressive environments than most other places in society—and have only grown less free in recent decades.

Aspirants who decline to color within the lines can still get admitted to grad school or hired and promoted as faculty (case in point!), but there is evidence that they often face discrimination in committees and as a result often get placed lower on the prestige totem-pole than their comparably qualified peers.

Work that diverges from institutionally-dominant views can be published. It often faces bigger hurdles with respect to institutional review boards, peer review, and garnering citations from other academics, while work that is useful for advancing the preferred narrative often faces insufficient scrutiny. What’s more, there are sometimes politicized calls for retraction when inconvenient findings are published. Meanwhile, there are demonstrable systematic biases published social scientific research analyzing the types of people who are less present in colleges and universities—i.e., the poor and working class, devoutly religious people, rural folks, and Trump voters, among others.

These are very real problems. They undermine the quality and impact of teaching and research. However, they are also longstanding structural issues. The kinds of policies advocated by Republicans today—such as slashing university budgets or banning Critical Race Theory, Gender Studies, and DEI programming—would do precisely nothing to address any of the problems described above. Proposed bids to eliminate or weaken tenure protections would probably make many of these problems worse.

. . .It wasn’t just students who grew more radical, though. Faculty and administrators got in on the action, too.

Alongside the student unrest came significant changes in institutional structure and culture. There was a rapid growth in university administrators who often sought to justify their roles by meddling in research and teaching, imposing and enforcing myriad new restrictions on what people could do and say on campus, and significantly undermining academic freedom and faculty governance in the process.

Sex bureaucracies surveilling and policing sexual relations between consenting adults proliferated, often punishing people with little evidence or due process. Bias Response Teams sprouted up, allowing people to anonymously spur investigations against anyone without any substantiation at all. Faculty and students began hijacking these apparatuses to sink competitors, punish exes, settle personal vendettas, and much else besides.

So what are the data showing that wokeness has peaking and is heading down? Here are a few graphs.

However, a range of empirical data suggest that the post-2010 “Great Awokening” may be winding down. For instance, Heterodox Academy recently released the results of its 2022 Campus Expression Survey. It shows that students today feel more comfortable sharing their perspectives across a range of topics than they did in previous years.

But look at the data above (there are no error bars or indications of statistical significance. Between 2021 and 2022, reluctance to discuss has dropped only 0.8% for gender (and is higher than in 2019), has risen 1.2% for politics, dropped 4.9% for race, dropped 3.2% for religion, dropped 1.4% for sexual orientation, and dropped 1.6% for “non-controversial topics”. These are small changes, though they may reflect the beginning of a trend. But beyond the one year, no general trend is evident over time except that general reluctance to discuss controversial topics is higher since 2019. There is a general trend to be more willing to discuss “non-controversial topics,” so any decreases in the other areas might reflect a more general trend, perhaps a willingness to discuss anything.

Nevertheless, the chilling of speech is obvious, as the bars are much higher for the five topics on the left than for “non-controversial topics.” This reflects a general reluctance to speak freely on touchy subjects, something that we should surely be worried about. It will take a few more years, though, to see if this reluctance is really dropping rather than the 2021-2022 data being a fluke.

The data below on sanctions imposed on academics is a bit more convincing, as several forms of professorial sanctions have dropped over the last two years, and all dropped in between 2021 and 2022. But they’re still a LOT higher than in 2000.

It may be that contemporary students feel less need to self-censor because the objective conditions have changed at colleges and universities. You can see this, for instance, in data on “cancel culture” events. Incident trackers compiled by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) show marked declines in attempts to punish scholars for their speech or views across all measures (the drop in “targeting incidents” is particularly large—over 30%.

Below are data from three sources on cancel culture incidents. The sources differ considerably in what they count as such an incident, but two of the three sources show a fairly large drop over the two years (2020-2022), though the National Association of Scholars (NAS) show a drop lasting only one year, with incidents rising between 2020 and 2021.

FIRE’s data is not an outlier. We see apparent declines in attempts to censor uncomfortable speech on campus across a range of datasets.

Finally “woke scholarship” is shown below.

And professors, too, seem like they’ve calmed down a bit. The intense scholarly focus on identity-based bias and discrimination seems to have cooled, for instance.

The drop, however, has only occurred over a year in two of the four areas. Again, we see something that is suggestive, but the data aren’t taken over a long enough period to see if we’re on a long-term downhill (i.e. ideologically “uphill”) slide.

Al-Gharbi concludes first that there’s a big ideological gulf between academics and “the rest of America”:

The sociological and ideological distance between academics and the rest of America has always been wide. Since 2010, however, the gulf between highly-educated Americans and everyone else grew much larger—primarily due to asymmetric polarization within the educated class itself. These differences also grew more salient as radicalized professors, students, and college-educated Americans aggressively sought to impose their values and priorities on everyone else and confront, denigrate, marginalize, or sanction those who refused to get with the program.

One core consequence of this radicalization has been reduced public trust in higher ed. Most Republicans today believe that universities, on balance, do more harm than good. A majority of Americans across partisan lines believe higher ed is moving in the wrong direction, and most believe that what they get from attending colleges and universities may not be worth the cost. This is not idle sentiment: enrollment in colleges and universities dropped precipitously during COVID and has not recovered.

Thus the authoritarian Left has, says Al-Gharbi, given Republicans some big impetus to raise funding and win elections (e.g. the governorship of Virginia) by summoning the specter of rising wokeness”. And even if academic is reforming itself, as Al-Gharbi thinks we are (I don’t really see it), Republicans will take credit for any changes like those described above. This worries him (he seems to be a Leftist), but the first thing to do is admit that a problem exists. Those of us who call attention to it, however, are described as “alt-righters”, racists, or other unsavory names. There are reasons why academics keep their heads down about this. Al-Gharbi:

Colleges and universities are not just capable of reforming themselves; they are already reforming themselves. Positive trends should be recognized, and ongoing efforts should be encouraged and supported.

But doing so would require more in academia and on the left to explicitly admit that there are real problems of bias and parochialism in institutions of higher learning. It undermines our own credibility to dismiss concerns about the culture and operations of educational institutions as an empty moral panic. Ordinary people can see with their own eyes that that’s not the case, and no one will trust us to effectively fix a problem if we won’t even acknowledge it exists. We can’t talk about progress while insisting there’s nothing wrong.

“Nothing to see here” is a non-starter. “There’s something to see here, and it’s a positive trend” is much more promising. Let’s run with that.

Yes, I see the “this is an empty moral panic” stuff constantly coming from those who are woke, but if you look at what’s happened in the last 20 years, and if you value free expression and academic freedom, it’s not in the least “empty”. Something bad has happened to the atmosphere in colleges and universities, something inimical to the very purpose of those institutions.

All it will take to reverse any trends that do exist, however, is one triggering incident—something like the murder of George Floyd. Right now, I’m not that optimistic that we’ve reached “peak woke”, but I generally go by the principle, “a pessimist is never disappointed.” Stay tuned.

Why universities should remain viewpoint neutral

June 16, 2023 • 12:16 pm

The Atlantic, which used to be pretty woke, is getting more and more sensible. The article below, which you can access for free by clicking on the screenshot (I also found it archived here), explains why universities and their departments should should not make official pronouncements about morality, ideology, or politics. This has been one of the foundational principles of the University of Chicago since the famous Kalven report of 1967, but it was an informal practice well before that. I’ve written about it many times (see collection here).

And it’s been enforced, even in the last few years when deans and departments were falling all over themselves to issue statements of political fealty. The administration made those statements disappear. In short, the reason why administrators, departments, and the University cannot take official stands on public issues is to keep speech free. If, say, a department takes a political stand on something like the perniciousness of Donald Trump (something I absolutely agree with), it might chill the speech of students, faculty (especially untenured ones) or other members of the university, people who don’t want to get demonized by disagreeing with what seem to be University-endorsed issues. Since official positions might change over time depending on the political climate and who runs the university and its departments, it’s best just to not make any statements “official”.

This policy should be enforced as widely as the Chicago Principles of Free Speech, which have now been adopted by over 80 colleges. But as far as I know, only one other school has formally adopted the principle of institutional neutrality: the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Ceiling Cat bless them!). There are some exceptions allowed for us: our university can take official stands when those stands are necessary to enforce our own goals and principles. We endorsed DACA, for example, because it goes against policy to report students who came here illegally, and we also don’t want to lose the academic advantages that such students give us.

I should add that individual faculty are welcome to speak about anything on their own behalf, even using their title, so long as they make clear that they’re speaking for themselves. (It goes without saying that statements by top administrators like the President and Provost might blur the lines between public and private utterances, and so they generally keep mum.)

Now Robert P. George, a professor at Princeton, a legal scholar and philosopher, and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions (a conservative program) has written a piece in the Atlantic which explicitly explains and endorses Kalven:

Princeton itself sometimes violates the Kalven Principles, for they’re not official policy there. Here’s an example, one that wouldn’t stand at the University of Chicago:

After the Supreme Court of the United States handed down its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization early last summer, Princeton University’s Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies issued a statement fiercely condemning the ruling. The director stated that the program stood “in solidarity” with the people whose rights had been allegedly stripped away by five conservative justices doing the “racist” and “sexist” bidding of the “Christian Right,” causing women to endure “forced pregnancies,” and waging an “unprecedented attack on democracy.”

It might have been unanimous, but it doesn’t matter, for it could chill the speech of any opponent who would join that department, or even the University. George gives an example of what would happen if conservatives or pro-lifers controlled a department. (I fully agree with the statement above, but I would fight hard to keep it from becoming an official policy statement of my university.)

I am myself the director of an academic program at Princeton—the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. A majority of those associated with the Madison Program believe that elective abortion violates the rights of unborn children. So: Would it have been appropriate for the program to put out the following statement?

The James Madison Program of Princeton University applauds the Supreme Court of the United States for rectifying a long-standing constitutional and moral atrocity. The so-called constitutional right to abortion, which had been imposed on the nation by the Supreme Court nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade, lacked any basis in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the Constitution of the United States. It was “an act of raw judicial power,” to quote Justice Byron White’s dissent in Roe, which deprived the American people of their right to work through constitutionally prescribed democratic procedures to protect innocent children in the womb from the lethal violence of abortion. The Supreme Court has, finally, relegated a tragic error to the ash heap of history alongside such similarly unjust and ignominious decisions as Dred Scott v. Sanford, Plessy v. Ferguson, Buck v. Bell, and Korematsu v. U.S.

The Madison Program put out no such statement. Nor did I, as director, consider even for a moment issuing such a statement or asking my colleagues to do so. My understanding of what is proper was and is that, although I may certainly speak for myself, and identify myself as a Princeton faculty member while doing so, it would be wrong for me and my colleagues to identify the university or one of its units with a view of the rightness or wrongness of the Dobbs decision, or to make sweeping pronouncements on the justice or injustice of abortion.

George clearly realizes the reasons why such statements should be forbidden, and it’s beyond me why any public college or university that claims to promote free speech hasn’t adopted Kalven. (Religious schools, which require fealty to certain moral or religious views, might be exempted.)

A few more quotes from George, for I am weary with duck rescuing and have run out of steam:

No one in the university or any of its departments should be made to feel like an “insider” or “outsider” depending on his or her views about abortion or the moral status of unborn human life. No one should be counted as “orthodox” or “heretical” in the Madison Program or in any other department or program of the university for his or her views—whatever they happen to be. We are, after all, a university—an academic institution—not a political party, or a church, or the secular ideological equivalent of a church. And especially in a moment when American society is deeply polarized and people of different political perspectives are more likely to demonize than to engage one another, universities like Princeton must provide a model for a healthy community where people of different viewpoints can engage each other in a civil manner and coexist.

And then he quotes Kalven. I really think more people need to learn about this principle, for it really undergirds the principle of free expression by freeing people from the fear of punishment if they say “unapproved things”:

To my mind, the University of Chicago arrived at the right answer more than 50 years ago, when it adopted, in the midst of the Vietnam War controversy and other matters of contention, the report of a committee chaired by the law professor Harry Kalven. The Kalven Report committed the university and its various units to institutional neutrality on political questions, encapsulating its rationale in the helpful dictum: “The University is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” The Kalven Report did not forbid faculty, students, or staff in their individual capacities from stating their opinions publicly, or even from identifying themselves by their academic titles and affiliations when doing so. It did, however, generally forbid anyone from committing the university or its departments and offices to particular points of view on controversial political questions.

The Kalven Report embodied a particular understanding of the role of the nonsectarian university and of the conditions required for it to play that role. The university and its departments serve the cause of truth-seeking by providing a forum for members of the community to have full, fair, and open debates on fundamental issues without any institutional influence. Political tribes or sects can form within the university and its departments, but no tribe or sect may take control and make itself, in effect, the established religion on campus.

It is also a strong argument against committing the university and its units to a particular position unless doing so is absolutely necessary. (That would be a rare occurrence, perhaps a state law forbidding universities from hiring people who hold certain views or banning, say, the promotion—or “teaching”—of certain ideas. It would not extend to such matters as the Israel-Palestine dispute; the Ukraine War; abortion; the death penalty; how a jury ought to decide, or ought to have decided, in a criminal or civil trial; marriage and sexual morality; fracking; or whether to defund the police, legalize drugs, move to a single-payer health-care system, or abolish the FBI, etc.—all issues on which departments at Princeton or other nonsectarian institutions have released statements in recent years.)

You get the point, and I guess The Atlantic does, too. If you are in any position to suggest that your university adopt a principle of institutional neutrality (with limited exceptions as outlined above), and you agree with the principle, don’t just sit there: suggest it to the Powers that Be!

Oh, and you might want to read Geof Stone‘s person story about Kalven when he dean at at our Law School, “Darfur and the Kalven Report: A Personal Journey.” (Geof later became Provost, but now is back at the Law School.)

New director of academic freedom for England’s office for students commits a bit of plagiarism

June 9, 2023 • 10:15 am

UPDATE: Dr. Ahmed was appalled to realize that he’d unconsciously used the words of the Kalven Report, and tried to get the Times to note that in its printed piece. But the Times says it usually doesn’t add stuff like that, so Ahmed has asked me to add the following note to this site; I’m glad to comply.

******

Prof. Coyne is quite right that the first two sentences of this article include words used in the Kalven Report of the University of Chicago. This was completely unconscious on my part but I am happy to acknowledge it. I’d like to thank him very much for pointing this out.

I also wish to take this opportunity to mention that the third sentence, ‘It is not a seminary’, of course expresses a common idea that many others have expressed in these or similar terms, notably John Henry Newman.

*****

Reader Jez sent me some news from England, which seems pretty good, but I found a bug in the ointment. First, Jez’s news, highlighted in a piece he wrote for The Times of London (first link):

Just in case you’re interested, Arif Ahmed was recently appointed the director for freedom of speech and academic freedom for the Office for Students in England. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Cambridge and seems to be a good choice.

Indeed, Ahmed is not only an MBE, but, more important, is described this way in Wikipedia:

At Cambridge he has been an advocate for tolerance of diverse political views, in reaction to the university administration’s cancellation of an invitation to the politically conservative academic Jordan Peterson.

But reading the archived Times article in the first link, something struck me as sounding familiar. Ahmed’s piece starts this way:

A university is not a club. It is not a political lobby. It is not a seminary. It is not a “brand”. It exists to seek and speak truth, whatever it costs and whoever it upsets. Therefore, without freedom to explore controversial or “offensive” ideas, a university is nothing.

Well, that made me go back to the University of Chicago’s Kalven Report of 1967—the University’s declaration that it will officially adhere to political, moral, and ideological neutrality save in circumstances directly affecting the University’s real mission: to disseminate and produce knowledge.

And in that Kalven report you’ll find these stirring words:

A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.

Now these words aren’t identical to Ahmed’s, but I find it hard to believe that he didn’t lift the phrases “it is not a club” and “it is not a lobby”—succinct and eloquent phrases—from our Kalven report. And if that’s the case, then he should have given credit to Kalven and his colleagues.

Lifting phrases like this, which to me is plagiarism, is not a good way to begin one’s tenure as a director of freedom of speech and academic freedom. For what you are not free to do is pass off other people’s prose as yours.

Granted, these are small phrases, and the copying may have been unconscious, but had I written this, I would have referenced the quote or used my own words.

Otherwise, it’s a very good editorial, and a good harbinger of more free speech and academic freedom in British universities.

Impediments to speaking freely in New Zealand academia

May 28, 2023 • 12:45 pm

The article below, published in NZ’s Stuff magazine, summarizes a big yearly survey taken by the country’s Free Speech Unions (find the big survey here or here, click the FSU icon below, or ask for a pdf). The upshot is that Kiwi academics often have difficulty saying what’s on their mind for fear of ostracism or reprisal—something we’ve long known from hearing academics beef privately, or from the reprisals visited on those who say what’s “politically incorrect”—people like the Satanic Seven (two have since died) who signed the Listener letter in 2021 and got demonized for it.

Click the first screenshot below for the short take-home lesson, or the image below that for the full report. The author of the Stuff piece is the head of the FSU:

So here’s a summary (note that I haven’t compared the data here to that in America, but perhaps some reader should. At any rate, from what I recall the degree of self-censorship is at least as great in NZ as in the U.S.

First, the a list of the questions that were asked (452 people were polled in April):

The FSU report (click to read, or ask me for a pdf).

A summary from Stuff:

The second annual survey on academic freedom by the Free Speech Union is an eye-opening read for those of us who value ideas and solutions being openly debated in Kiwi universities.

. . . Concerningly, this report shows that a majority of academics who responded at five of our eight universities disagreed that they were free to state controversial or unpopular opinions, even though this is one of the specific features of academic freedom as defined in the Education and Training Act 2020.

Across all eight universities, only 46% of academics agreed they felt free to question received wisdom and state controversial and unpopular opinions.

The rest disagreed. Men in particular, (59%), believed they were not free to voice these views.

Claims that those who were more senior (and therefore supposedly more secure) in roles, such as professors, were freer to speak on controversial subjects did not play out.

In fact, only 31% of professors agreed that they were free to state controversial or unpopular opinions. If those who have dedicated their careers to exploring specific subjects feel unfree to voice their views if they are unpopular or controversial, how can these conversations move forward?

Not surprisingly, the degree of self-censorship was correlated with political affiliation: the Left is, of course, on the side of “indigenizing” education in the country, and wokeness sets the agenda for “acceptable” speech:

Problematically, it is clear that the flow of political persuasion mapped almost directly onto whether academics felt free. About two-thirds (64%) of academics who identified as “very left” and 70% of those who identified as “left” felt free to state controversial or unpopular opinions.

It decreased from less than half (46%) of those who are “slightly left” to one-third (34%) of those who are “centrist” down to one-quarter (26%) of those who are “slightly right” to 18% for those who are “right”. No academic who responded as “very right wing” agreed with the statement (admittedly, there was a small sample size for this group).

This, in the context of an academy that we already know has a left-leaning bent (the respondents to our survey reflect this disposition), is frightening for intellectual diversity.

Academics were asked about six specific subjects which might be controversial; a majority of academics felt comfortable discussing only three: religion, politics, and sexual orientation.

The topics that made people most uncomfortable were, as you see above, sex and gender, the Treaty of Waitangi and colonization, and race. Not surprising.

Some 59% of academics did not feel comfortable discussing the Treaty of Waitangi and colonialism, with at least one-third (30%) of academics at every single university feeling “not at all comfortable” (45% of academics from Otago were “not at all comfortable”).

Otago is one of the most Māori-centri unviersities in New Zealand. Finally, Māori self-censor far less than do European descendants, which is also not surprising since Māori are seen as the victims.

Interestingly, Māori academics were much more likely to feel comfortable discussing this issue (54% felt “very comfortable”), while almost two-thirds (61%) of European academics did not feel comfortable (44% “very uncomfortable”).

This is more or less what I expected, but I wonder if the Kiwis themselves think these figures are disturbing (I do). Ideally, except for those who are pathologically shy, academics should at least feel free to broach the topics mentioned above.

The authors drew five themes from the survey. I’ll just mention them in the authors’ words and give their take on one: the Māori-related issues (like the Treaty, or Mātauranga Māori) that are more or less taboo to discuss. We’ve talked about MM before, and the government’s attempt to stick it into the science curriculum as a form of “indigenous science”, so it’s worth a special look.

Academic freedom is under threat and there is a climate of fear
Freedom to do research is constrained by the ability to attract funding, or to do certain types of research
Certain issues are off-limits for debate. [JAC: see below]
Universities themselves are not always upholding academic freedom
Trends in universities reflect wider societal trends

This is what you read under #3:

The survey asked people to say how they comfortable they felt discussing a number of issues at their institution. Many of the comments made related to those topics, with people elaborating on what they perceived as the difficulties in discussing those issues. There were very few comments on issues such as politics, religion or sexual orientation – these were also the issues that fewer people in the main survey said they felt uncomfortable discussing. Comments were more likely to be made about the Treaty of Waitangi and colonialism, race, or sex and gender. There were a few comments on topics not asked about in the survey, such as climate change. Respondents who commented on these issues often described them as being out of bounds or not up for debate. Fear of being misinterpreted or being called racist or phobic, as well as the impacts on job security and promotion mentioned in Theme 1, resulted in many people saying they had decided that it is best to say nothing at all on these topics.

I have the impression that saying anything around race, gender, the Treaty of Waitangi, sexual orientation, or what political structures lead to the best outcomes for society, or what the best outcomes for society are, would be fraught with career danger.

The pressure to be ‘PC’ and ‘woke’ is enormous – and my views are pretty PC and woke! But I feel the most gentle, careful questioning of ideas around issues such as trans rights or mātauranga Māori would result in ostracism by staff and negative feedback from students (at best).

Treaty of Waitangi/biculturalism/Māori/race-related issues featured particularly, in relation to teaching and assessment, course content, research, promotion and general discourse and debate. This was especially the case in institutions that were moving to becoming ‘Te Tiriti-led’. [JAC: “Te Tiriti” refers to the Treaty of Waitanga.]

The greatest challenge to academic freedom relates to Treaty of Waitangi and race issues where there is no ability to speak without dire consequences for academics.

There is definitely a chilling effect on academics when it comes to debate on topics such as colonisation and racism for fear of being labelled racist.

Our university has a host of pre-ordained positions on things, especially Te Tiriti, race, colonialism and rainbow topics. I don’t know what would happen to someone if they spoke out in disagreement with these positions because no one ever does. I think everyone knows not to touch these issues and not to try to explain any nuance or slight disagreement on their part, as we know it will likely end badly.

Many respondents emphasised that their comments should not be seen as dismissing concepts such as mātauranga Māori, or the role of the Treaty in informing the university’s work. However, they wanted to be able to ask questions, discuss and not compromise on quality.

I teach a science and while I am happy to include cultural examples of that science as appropriate, my priority is making sure the students learn the science. I am feeling pressured to include cultural constructs at the expense of the science. I strongly believe in the value of affirmative action and changing our language to be more inclusive. At the moment, I feel excluded from the discussion.

This all jibes pretty well with what I hear from New Zealand academics who write me privately. Of course, you might say that I’m only going to hear from the disaffected ones, but you’d think that I’d also get emails from those who disagree with my opposing the hegemony of Mātauranga Māori in secondary-school science classes. Yet I’ve never heard from one correspondent who disagreed with me about that. In contrast, I get all kinds of comments and emails from creationists who deplore my acceptance and popularization of evolution.

The problem with this self-censorship about the fulminating indigenization of New Zealand is that, even more than minorities do in America, Māori bear the “authority of the sacred victim,” so that opposing initiatives like putting MM in science class is not only going to get you called a racist, but may well get you fired.

Open debate is essential if New Zealand isn’t going to be wokified to death, and taking science down with it; but open debate, particularly on item #3, is precisely what is taboo.

Case in point: in December, 2021, I discussed the demonization of the Satanic Seven by the University of Auckland’s Vice-Chancellor Dawn Freshwater. Freshwater had previously issued a statement explicitly criticizing The Listener letter and its seven signers, but backed off when she realized she was violating academic freedom. She then got all kumbaya-y and said this (bolding is mine):

The debate that initially started as about the relationship between mātauranga Māori and science in the secondary school curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand has intensified and extended over recent weeks, with a number of overseas commentators adding their opinions.

Unfortunately, the debate has descended into personal attacks, entrenched positions and deliberate misrepresentations of other people’s views, including my own. This important and topical debate deserves better than that.

I am calling for a return to a more respectful, open-minded, fact-based exchange of views on the relationship between mātauranga Māori and science, and I am committing the University to action on this.

In the first quarter of 2022 we will be holding a symposium in which the different viewpoints on this issue can be discussed and debated calmly, constructively and respectfully. I envisage a high-quality intellectual discourse with representation from all viewpoints: mātauranga Māori, science, the humanities, Pacific knowledge systems and others.

Well, that debate has never taken place, and there are no signs that it will. Freshwater’s words were just cant: a way of placating those concerned about free expression.

The AAUP rebukes Hamline University for academic mistreatment of a professor

May 24, 2023 • 11:45 am

I’ve discussed “Muhammadgate” at Hamline University quite a few times before, and, at any rate, the details are given in the update below from the American Association of University Professors (AAUP; click on screenshot) and especially in the AAUP’s report here and pdf here.

In short, in June, 2022, an adjunct professor of art history, Erika López Prater, was giving a class on World Art that included two sessions on Muslim art. Those sessions included showing two images of the prophet Muhammad from famous paintings. In one his face was visible, in the other it was blotted out. López Prater had given the students a “trigger warning” in the syllabus and also right before the online class, so they knew what they were going to see, and had the opportunity to leave. (The warning came because some Muslims, but not all, consider showing an image of Muhammad to be blasphemy.) López Prater also vetted the syllabus and its warning to the administration and the chair of the Art and Digital Media department, who had no problem with it.

The class went forward, and shortly thereafter a student, Aram Wedatalla, who was also president of the school’s Muslim Student Association, was outraged, and reported the incident to President Fayneese Miller and Dean Marcela Kostihova. Wedatalla also expressed her dissatisfaction to López Prater.

Read this summary by clicking on the link, but I especially recommend the AAUP report to show you what happened next: a perfect storm of outrage that led to the total violation of López Prater’s academic freedom

This ensued:

1.) López Prater met twice with the dean about the complaints.

2.) Her Department chair suggested that López Prater tender an apology to the student body and her art class. But the apology that she wrote was just for the offense she caused; López Prater deliberately did not apologize for showing the images, which would have been ludicrous given the context.

3.) The University Vice President then issued a fulsome and apologetic statement about the Islamophobia supposedly caused by López Prater’s showing the paintings. It was almost a direct rebuke to the faculty member.

4.) López Prater was informed that she would no longer be teaching in the school. Effectively, as an adjunct, she was fired.

5.) The university held a “community conversation” that was clearly meant to reinforce the dastardly Islamophobia of López Prater. The topic was in fact “Islamophobia,” the panel of students were all black women (Muslims, I suspect), and a professor who tried to speak in defense of López Prater was told to shut up.

6.) The story had now become national news with a New York Times article devoting a front-page story to it on January 8 of this year. Other people wrote in defending López Prater.

7.) The administration, realizing it had embarrassed itself and violated academic freedom, walked back its statements on January 17. The President and Chair issued this statement:

“Hamline University is the epicenter of a public conversation about academic freedom and students with diverse religious beliefs,” the statement began, and “many communications, articles, and opinion pieces . . . have caused us to review and re-examine our actions.” It continued, “Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep. In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term ‘Islamophobic’ was therefore flawed.” The statement ends with a retraction: “It was never our intent to suggest that academic freedom is of lower concern or value than our students—care does not ‘supersede’ academic freedom, the two coexist. Faculty have the right to choose what and how they teach.”

8.) “That same day Professor López Prater filed suit against the university in Ramsey County District Court, seeking damages for violations of Minnesota’s Human Rights Act, breach of contract, promissory estoppel, defamation, and “intentional infliction of emotional distress.”

8.) Meanwhile, the regular faculty met and overwhelmingly gave a vote of no confidence to President Miller.

9.) President Miller resigned.

I’ll reproduce just two documents that were part of this kerfuffle. First, López Prater’s “trigger warning” on her syllabus (again, she also gave a verbal one right before class):

I aim to affirm students of all religious observances and beliefs in the content of the course. Additionally, this course will introduce students to several religious traditions and the visual cultures they have produced historically. This includes showing and discussing both representational and non-representational depictions of holy figures (for example, the Prophet Muhammad, Jesus Christ, and the Buddha). If you have any questions or concerns about either missing class for a religious observance or the visual content that will be presented, please do not hesitate to contact me.

That’s pretty good, right? Nobody could object to being blindsided by being shown the two paintings, which I reproduce here.

And here is the damning statement that the school’s Vice President issued, which was then shared with the student body by the Dean of Students:

Several weeks ago, Hamline administration was made aware of an incident that occurred in an online class. Certain actions taken in that class were undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful, and Islamophobic. While the intent behind these actions may not have been to cause harm, it came at the expense of Hamline’s Muslim community members. While much work has been done to address the issue in question since it occurred, the act itself was unacceptable. . . . I want to make clear: isolated incidents such as we have seen define neither Hamline nor its ethos. They clearly do not meet community standards or expectations for behavior. We will utilize all means at our disposal, up to and including the conduct process, to ensure the emotional health, security, and well-being of all members of our community.

It makes my blood boil to read this even now. There was NO Islamophobia, no disrespect, no harm, and certainly lots of consideration. This, more than anything else, I think, brought down the AAUP’s wrath on Hamline.

Oh, one other comment. The reports says this, which may account for why the school’s reaction was so strong:

In 2019, a new strategic plan set a goal of increasing enrollment by diversifying the demographic makeup of the student body and improving student retention. According to faculty members who worked on the plan, an unstated goal was to recruit more students from the growing population of East African Muslims in the Twin Cities.

What did the AAUP do about this? I haven’t read the longer pdf file of the report, but I’m not sure that the AAUP can really do anything to Hamline University save censure and embarrass it. Further, the faculty have already spoken in opposition to the President, Dean’s, and Chair’s mishigass, and the President is toast. Nevertheless, the AAUP’s judgment will stand as a warning to other schools. The last half of the report censures Hamline for doing these things:

a. Retracting López Prater’s teaching assignments.

b. Not affording López Prater academic due process. There was no formal procedure used to assess what she did before they got rid of her.

c. Denying López Prater her academic freedom to teach what she wanted (courts have ruled that so long as material like these pictures serve a didactic purpose, they are protected by academic freedom.

d. Relying largely on part-time appointments, meaning that faculty like López Prater get low pay, not many benefits, and huge workloads. This practice is increasing in American Universities, and it must stop, as it’s a form of indentured servitude.

e. Not creating a climate of academic freedom at the school. As the AAUP report notes:

The implications for academic freedom in art and art history of the events recounted in this report are clear. If a Muslim student can prevent the display of an image of the Prophet Muhammad, why cannot an evangelical Christian student seek to censor a work like the controversial Piss Christ by Andres Serrano or a devout Hindu student object to studying the work of Indian artist M. F. Husain? But art history is not the only field of study potentially at risk. Indeed, as Professor López Prater wrote the committee, “My situation presents a slippery slope not only for the discipline of art history, but for all of academia.”

They do praise the University’s governing board for acting rapidly and forcing the University to retract the charge of Islamophobia. They probably also asked Miller to resign, though it’s not clear.

Finally, the AAUP made a number of conclusions and recommendations, which I’ll put below the fold as this is getting too long. Click “read more” below to see them:

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