Journalist – Historian – Speaker
The other day I suggested that a person being shot at a Milo protest in Washington deserved at least as much coverage as, say, Oberlin students arguing about sandwiches … or even the property damage and action at Berkeley. Because someone was shot. Now The Chronicle of Higher Education has (paywalled, but this link might work) …
Four stories. 1) ALEC is meeting with legislators and talking about pulling funding from public colleges and universities if they don’t include more conservative views. But meanwhile, ALEC is meeting and saying: “pull funding from schools perceived to be limiting discourse.” https://t.co/zNI9e2OGYE@conor64 pic.twitter.com/OtlnTarNgL — David M. Perry (@Lollardfish) January 8, 2017 The academic freedom PC …
Thesis: The idea that your students have guns will have a vastly more chilling effect on academic freedom than people asking for trigger warnings, less offensive language, or to be thoughtful about microaggressions. Coming soon from CNN. (Update for new readers. Hi new readers! Here are some of my writing about Trigger Warnings and PC …
Being a racist is not enough to invalidate academic freedom. Jerry Hough, a Duke Professor, left a racist comment on a New York Times page. He is now reportedly on leave. Hough has denied he’s a racist. From Slate: Hough told both the local ABC and Fox affiliates that he was on leave after his comments, …
Here we go again. An incoming professor of color, Saida Gundy, made comments that were, at most, provocative. She said that white, college age males, were a problem population (that’s the provocative one). She also said that white men are responsible for slavery and its legacy in this country (that’s indisputably true). I’m not linking …
Carol Swain is a Vanderbilt University law professor and noted Islamophobe. In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, she wrote a thoroughly nasty column for The Tennessean. Protests and counter protests and accusations of censorship have followed. I wrote about related issues for The Chronicle of Higher Education a few months back, in the wake …
I had a new piece at the Chronicle yesterday about offensive speech and academic freedom. Deborah O’Connor, a Florida State lecturer, resigned after saying some really nasty things on a public Facebook page. In my piece, I compare her speech to the un-hiring of Steven Salaita, a case on which I’ve written a lot over …
For my non-academic readers, over the last week there’s been a big story about academic freedom in the age of Twitter. An arab-American professor lost a job, it seems, because he was rude about Israel on Twitter. There’s lots to say here and I am working on several essays. Here are some resources. First, on …