[E]ven if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but...the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience
--John Stuart Mill
Do you remember the U of Colorado's Ward Churchill? He got into hot water for expressing some unpopular views re 9-11.
Looks like, now, he'll be fired.
See this morning's New York Times: Chancellor Advises Firing Author.
Some excerpts from the Times article:
The interim chancellor at the University of Colorado said on Monday that Prof. Ward L. Churchill, whose comments about the victims of Sept. 11 prompted a national debate about the limits of free speech, should be fired for academic misconduct.
...The chancellor, Phil DiStefano, emphasized in a news conference at the university's Boulder campus that Professor Churchill's essay about Sept. 11, in which he compared some World Trade Center victims to the Nazi henchman Adolf Eichmann, had nothing to do with the recommendation to dismiss him.
...Professor Churchill's lawyer, David Lane, said that the professor's ultimate dismissal was now inevitable, and that retribution for politically unpopular speech was the real reason. A lawsuit against the university alleging violations of the professor's First Amendment rights is also inevitable, Mr. Lane said.
Evidently, Churchill has been accused of plagiarism, among other sins. I have no idea if he is guilty of those failings.
But something tells me that, in any case, Academic Freedom ain't what it used to be.
4 comments:
C'mon, Chunk.
You certainly know the principles of academic freedom should never be put forth to shield substandard scholarship and fraudulent assertions of ancestry for the sake of credibility.
In today's climate, political correctness will always enter the debate and whatever fate Churchhill receives will determine whether it's the "right wing" or "left wing" division.
Dear Anonymous (8:46): a few brief thoughts
My point was that, whether or not Churchill deserves his job, his losing it likely reflects, not his substandard scholarship (if such is the case), but pressures to dump an academic known to have and to expound extremely unpopular views.
What happened to Churchill could happen to a great proportion of academics, even those with sterling records. Surely you know that.
Re Churchill: the first thing I did when the Churchill brouhaha occurred was read the fellow's essay. It's pretty good. I found it worth reading. I suspect that, if everyone had read the essay before weighing in on whether Churchill should be allowed to continue at the U of C, his fate would have been very different. Because they did not read it, it could be "sound bited" to death.
The idea of Academic Freedom is to protect free inquiry by protecting unpopular research and scholarship. One cannot have free inquiry unless one protects obnoxious inquiry.
Whatever the truth might be, finally, concerning Ward Churchill, it seems clear to me that our society is in the slow but sure process of dumping the very idea of Academic Freedom, replacing it with some consumer satisfaction model.
And that is frightening.
What's with Fuentes' shirt?
hey - it's Patrick...
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