Month: February 2017

The Importance Of Freedom Of Ideas And The Expression Of Them On American Universities…

Following is an excerpt from a speech John Etchemendy made before the Stanford Board of Trustees. Etchemendy is the former Provost. His views ought to be listened to because academic political correctness, which is what he is talking about, does the student, our society and our democratic republic no good.

Institutions of higher learning should encourage different viewpoints to be considered and debated. Even ones the institution’s administration finds disagreeable. Censorship of ideas or people because of pressure by peers is never a good and it and almost always ends badly.

But I’m actually more worried about the threat from within. Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country – not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines – there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves.

This results in a kind of intellectual blindness that will, in the long run, be more damaging to universities than cuts in federal funding or ill-conceived constraints on immigration. It will be more damaging because we won’t even see it: We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid, rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about this institution we serve.

It will not be easy to resist this current. As an institution, we are continually pressed by faculty and students to take political stands, and any failure to do so is perceived as a lack of courage. But at universities today, the easiest thing to do is to succumb to that pressure. What requires real courage is to resist it. Yet when those making the demands can only imagine ignorance and stupidity on the other side, any resistance will be similarly impugned.

The university is not a megaphone to amplify this or that political view, and when it does it violates a core mission. Universities must remain open forums for contentious debate, and they cannot do so while officially espousing one side of that debate.

Read entire talk HERE.

A Divided America…

America is a divided nation. Deeply divided. The political/ideology divisions that exist today started a half century ago.  Donald J. Trump is simply the ultimate end to that which was set in motion in 1968.

Division has gradually made our government institutions less effective in resolving important issues,  government has become less representative of the people, party has become more important than country,  and fabrication has become more important than truth. Party and party agenda, as determined by the ideologues in power, now drives whatever might remain of the mythical American  dream.

Journalists and the press are now under almost daily attack by an administration more concerned with its leader’s own self image than with truth. Trump’s methodology is rather common to an authoritarian leader.  He is repeatedly and  methodically denigrating the credible media to convince the American people it presents fake news so a large share of the public will summarily dismiss everything it says. Especially anything thing negative about him.

We’re reminded of two well known phrases, Divide and conquer and United we stand, divided we fall. For the last half century there has been an increasing focus on, and shift towards the former rather than the later.

Near absolute power is the sought after crown jewel in politics. The party most effective at  controlling the machinations of the  power structure reap the reward of almost total power. Power to force their agenda and enact law enforcing it. Since 1968 the republican party and conservative movement have, by and large, been the party and ideology shaping the national political landscape. The result of this was the election of Donald J. Trump to the most powerful office in the land and across the globe. Division provided the results desired by the conservatives and the GOP.

The Trump presidency exists in a bubble, an article in The Washington Post today highlights the issue of division in our country in the present.