Back on September 3, I posted a letter here that I’d sent to Town Topics, a local paper in my hometown of Princeton, New Jersey, asking why the paper hadn’t covered the legal proceedings against the activists who’d been arrested this past April at a Gaza Solidarity event at Princeton University. A staff writer from the paper responded, promising coverage in the future. In the three weeks since then, three issues of Town Topics have come out–September 4th, 11th, and 18th. How well has it delivered? Continue reading
Tag Archives: academia
Hell Is Empty and All the Administrators Are Here
Cass Sunstein has a Guest Essay in today’s New York Times that argues that the First Amendment is the key to the norms that govern free speech on campus: “Only the First Amendment Can Protect Students, Campuses, and Speech.” His point is that universities should either adhere to First Amendment jurisprudence or legislate and enforce some functional equivalent of it. The First Amendment is (on this reading) supposed to be a content-neutral protector of free speech, with exceptions that Sunstein duly enumerates in the latter half of the essay.
Some of what he says seems fine, and some of it seems wrongheaded, but I was struck by the insouciant sloppiness of this particular sentence:
In a class on Shakespeare, students and professors can be instructed by administrators to discuss Shakespeare, not the presidential election.
No, they can’t. That’s not how academic freedom works, not how Shakespeare works, and not how pedagogy works. Continue reading
Defiance and Compliance in Princeton (1)
Here’s the text of a letter I sent yesterday to Town Topics, the local paper here in Princeton. The Daily Princetonian is the campus newspaper of Princeton University. Town Topics comes out every Wednesday, so I don’t know whether the letter will be printed or not. Continue reading
Michael Sugrue (1957-2024), RIP
I was pained to read of the untimely death of philosopher Michael Sugrue, most recently of Ave Maria University, but for twelve years a lecturer in political philosophy at Princeton. He was 66.
I met Sugrue sometime in 2002 when I was living in Princeton and trying, with conspicuously little success, to make ends meet and get my dissertation done. I applied in late 2001 for an adjunct job at Princeton, and got a position as teaching assistant for Sugrue’s POL 307, “The Just Society,” a standard survey course in political philosophy–the first half devoted to classic works, the second to contemporary ones. Continue reading
Force and Fraud on Campus
So much falsehood has been offered up in the last seven months that it seems futile to single out a discrete claim as a particularly egregious example that absolutely demands rebuttal. But one claim happens to combine egregiousness, absurdity, and in my case, proximity in space and time, in a way that really does demand a response.
I’m sure most readers are aware of the recent demonstrations on college campuses in defense of Palestinian rights. I happen to live in Princeton, New Jersey, not far from Princeton University, and have visited Princeton’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment a dozen times in the last six days. Two students were arrested on campus on Thursday, April 25th, and thirteen were arrested on Monday, April 29th, for a total of fifteen arrests. Continue reading
“The Future Is Being Bulldozed”
An email to me from a reader of the blog who asked to remain anonymous. As it happens, about a month ago, I wrote to two of the Times’s correspondents, Jeffrey Gettleman and Edward Wong, asking similar questions about their coverage of the West Bank. I have yet to hear back from either of them.
This report from a guest reporter to the NY Times is so different in so many ways from the dozens of other pieces, both news and opinion, that they publish. It reports from places where their own reporters never set foot, describes places and events in a specific and granular manner, directly quotes both Palestinians and settlers’ real words rather than quoting only official propaganda statements, and includes the relevant historical context of the places in the report. Continue reading
Neutrality Loathsome
Either be hot, or cold: God doth despise,
Abhorre, and spew out all Neutralities.
–Robert Herrick, “Neutrality Loathsome“
When I taught college-level philosophy, one of the biggest obstacles to teaching, and particularly to successful class discussion, was students’ fear of dealing with controversial issues in class. Despite the bragging that Americans like to do about “free speech,” American students were far more reluctant to speak candidly about anything (or handle constructive criticism) than the college students I briefly encountered in Pakistan or taught in Palestine. By comparison with students in these impoverished and highly repressive places, American students were discursively speaking afraid of their own shadows. They seemed to need “permission” to say anything beyond the safely anodyne and cliched. Continue reading
Defining “Wokeness”: Strike 1 for Robert George et al
See update at the end of the post, July 12. Second update, July 25.
One of the many problems with the “culture wars” in the United States is that almost all of the contested terms used in the debate have gone undefined. It’s common for people to speak loosely about “wokeness,” “cancellation,” “cancel culture,” “the Left,” and “Cultural Marxism,” as though these terms had some obvious meaning known by all. They don’t. In fact, in the absence of explicit definitions, all of these terms are mysterious to the point of meaninglessness. So despite contrary appearances, no one really knows what they mean. The absence of definitions of contentious terms tends to benefit people who don’t know what they’re talking about, but would like to conceal that fact from others. That might explain why so much talk on this subject has such a nonsensical quality about it, at once insular, enigmatic, and histrionic. Continue reading
Waking Up to “Woke Princeton”
If you do a Google search on the term “Woke Princeton,” you’ll find dozens of hits, in both the mainstream and conservative media, laboring to prove that Princeton University is a “woke” place dominated by “The Left.” So powerful is this dominance, it’s alleged, that Princeton’s beleagured conservatives are afraid to speak their minds on campus. The poor dears are obliged to creep their way through campus life, blending in with the ivy, habitually looking over their shoulders, fearful of cancellation or even physical assault, unable to exercise their rights of free speech, or to engage in authentic discussion of the contested issues of the day. Continue reading
Pedagogy of the Oppressors
From a statement by the National Association of Scholars, a right-wing lobbying group:
Just last week, Ohio State Senator Jerry Cirino introduced Senate Bill 83—also known as the Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act. This is one of many bills introduced across the U.S., both for K–12 and higher education, that are inspired by model legislation drafted by the National Association of Scholars and the Civics Alliance. In response to SB 83’s introduction, NAS promptly published an enthusiastic endorsement. SB 83 and our Model Higher Education Code provide a solid foundation upon which to rebuild Ohio’s colleges and universities, and to fight back against overreach by diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) activists. …
SB 83 would prohibit state-funded colleges and universities from requiring diversity statements for promotion, hire, and admissions, and would ban DEI concepts in classrooms and on campus. The bill would also mandate syllabus transparency and further commit to intellectual diversity and institutional neutrality. …
In a day and age where free speech is a nonstarter in higher education, legislation like SB 83 offers hope for the preservation of American ideals, as well as the restoration of institutional integrity and academic freedom.
Freedom isn’t free. There’s a hefty fucking fee.
Policy of Truth 