The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has been tracking calls for sanction faced by scholars in American higher education, and tabulating these in their Scholars Under Fire database.
I generally support FIRE and its stated mission. It's filled the gap left by the ACLU's refusal to defend legal rights in a viewpoint-neutral way.
But after reading this article awhile back, I've been a little concerned with their advocacy materials and the trustworthiness of their collegiate free speech rankings. Perhaps some data quality issues to be aware of: https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-problem-with-fires-data.
Regarding the trends you're highlighting, I doubt the qualitative claims would change much.
Jason thanks for your comment and the useful link. I know the Reider case very well since he is a colleague, and the coded outcome "investigation, censorship, reinstatement" is quite accurate. The Katz case (like the Fryer case at Harvard) is tricky, there is a plausible argument to be made that the treatment was especially severe because of the speech, in comparison for example to the treatment received by John Comaroff and others over the course of their careers. Take a look at the Judith Butler entry for another example, and to this:
Conservativism not originating from the christian alt-right is still conservatism & isn't leftism by sense of the word as the third paragraph makes it seem.
Furthermore, a number of scholars mentioned, not only deviated from the general academic consensus but willingly fed to networks of conspiracy theorists during one of the most feared periods of human history, exacerbating mistrust in civil institutions in a volatile time.
In the third para I was just describing how the incident was coded in the data. I agree that the motivation (based on religious orthodoxy) was in a very real sense conservative. That’s why my earlier post on the Hamline incident mentioned the Taliban. At the same time, many activists making the case for speech suppression on these grounds see themselves as leftists, adopt the language of harm, and follow a tradition of thought that echoes some classics of critical race theory. So the coding in the data is understandable.
Regarding the scholars, I disagree with your characterization. Take a look at the individual entries for the incidents (the database is searchable). My view is that their suppression did more to promote conspiracy theories than the speech itself.
Firstly I grateful that you decided to engage with my comment.
I agree with your first hypothesis, I think since the modern american right had abandoned (according to Oren Cass) or never promoted communitarianism & protectionism, a significant portion of the new & more importantly, immigrant conservatives (who are generally more communitarian) began supporting the american left, this created a situation were neo-conservatives were left-coding their views. The alt-right was simply able to plug this gaping hole in the voter base.
The second point is of course a very nuanced view of the situation, the problem here is the same as the problem with the nobel prize in economic sciences.
Governments & Political Institutions generally are more hierarchical & partisan than the academic community, work to resolve situations with the least friction, which often means the imposition of more powerful perspectives & suppression of internal dissidents, a problem in interdisciplinary fields like public health.
I generally support FIRE and its stated mission. It's filled the gap left by the ACLU's refusal to defend legal rights in a viewpoint-neutral way.
But after reading this article awhile back, I've been a little concerned with their advocacy materials and the trustworthiness of their collegiate free speech rankings. Perhaps some data quality issues to be aware of: https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-problem-with-fires-data.
Regarding the trends you're highlighting, I doubt the qualitative claims would change much.
Jason thanks for your comment and the useful link. I know the Reider case very well since he is a colleague, and the coded outcome "investigation, censorship, reinstatement" is quite accurate. The Katz case (like the Fryer case at Harvard) is tricky, there is a plausible argument to be made that the treatment was especially severe because of the speech, in comparison for example to the treatment received by John Comaroff and others over the course of their careers. Take a look at the Judith Butler entry for another example, and to this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/nyregion/sexual-harassment-nyu-female-professor.html
Still there are typos and some classification decisions one could contest. I agree that the qualitative claims in my post are likely robust.
I will have a look at those cases. I rarely follow specific incidents closely myself, so I appreciate your flagging these.
Conservativism not originating from the christian alt-right is still conservatism & isn't leftism by sense of the word as the third paragraph makes it seem.
Furthermore, a number of scholars mentioned, not only deviated from the general academic consensus but willingly fed to networks of conspiracy theorists during one of the most feared periods of human history, exacerbating mistrust in civil institutions in a volatile time.
In the third para I was just describing how the incident was coded in the data. I agree that the motivation (based on religious orthodoxy) was in a very real sense conservative. That’s why my earlier post on the Hamline incident mentioned the Taliban. At the same time, many activists making the case for speech suppression on these grounds see themselves as leftists, adopt the language of harm, and follow a tradition of thought that echoes some classics of critical race theory. So the coding in the data is understandable.
Regarding the scholars, I disagree with your characterization. Take a look at the individual entries for the incidents (the database is searchable). My view is that their suppression did more to promote conspiracy theories than the speech itself.
Firstly I grateful that you decided to engage with my comment.
I agree with your first hypothesis, I think since the modern american right had abandoned (according to Oren Cass) or never promoted communitarianism & protectionism, a significant portion of the new & more importantly, immigrant conservatives (who are generally more communitarian) began supporting the american left, this created a situation were neo-conservatives were left-coding their views. The alt-right was simply able to plug this gaping hole in the voter base.
The second point is of course a very nuanced view of the situation, the problem here is the same as the problem with the nobel prize in economic sciences.
Governments & Political Institutions generally are more hierarchical & partisan than the academic community, work to resolve situations with the least friction, which often means the imposition of more powerful perspectives & suppression of internal dissidents, a problem in interdisciplinary fields like public health.
Thanks Rajiv for this valuable piece of analysis.
Thanks for reading Glenn. I have updated the post (last footnote) to link to our very interesting conversation on these issues.