- Joined
- Apr 20, 2018
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Part I of II
On multiple occasions, I've seen people here gripe about collegians being unable, on campus, to say whatever suits them. Just as parents draw a line about what of their guidance is open for debate, college students face constraints on what they can and cannot say in an academic context. To wit, the experience and insights I impart to my kids aren't by them things to question. When they have the life experience, intellectual knowledge and acuity to make their own marks in the world and not depend on the ones I've made for their sufficiency, I will have achieved my goal of raising them, and at that point all of my input will for them be reduced to suggestion status, whereupon they become free to conduct their affairs as they see fit, free to express themselves as they desire, and free to raise their own kids as I raised them or differently.
The same concept applies in higher education settings. When students reach the point that they have original ideas that withstand rigorous scrutiny, the discipuli will have then earned the right to speak freely on topics that capture their interest and that fall within the scope of their expertise. Until then, however, they need to sit down, take notes and, where/when fitting, ask intelligent questions.
Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these values is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matters of fact and inference right. The operative commonplace is "following the evidence wherever it leads." One can’t do that if one's sources are suspect or nonexistent; one can’t do that if one only considers evidence favorable to one's preferred predicates; one can’t do that if one's evidence is far afield and hasn’t been persuasively connected to the instant matter of fact.
Nor can one follow the evidence wherever it leads if what guides one be a desire that inquiry reach a conclusion sympathetic to one's political views. If free speech is not an academic value because it is not the value guiding inquiry, free political speech becomes antithetical to inquiry: it skews inquiry in advance, one achieves one's end from the get-go.
Speech is political if, when answering questions, one believes it is one's task to answer normatively rather than dialectically. Any number of topics taken up in a classroom will contain moral and political issues, issues like discrimination, inequality, institutional racism. Those issues should be studied, analyzed, and historicized, but they shouldn’t, in the classroom, be debated with a view to forming and prosecuting a remedial agenda.
The academic interrogation of an issue leads to comprehension of its complexity; it does not (nor should it) lead to joining a party or marching down Main Street. That is what I mean by saying that the issue shouldn’t be taken normatively; taking it that way would require following its paths and byways to the point where one embarks upon a course of action; taking it academically requires that one stop short of action and remain in the realm of deliberation so long as the academic context is in session; action, if it comes, comes later or after class.
(continued due to character limit)
On multiple occasions, I've seen people here gripe about collegians being unable, on campus, to say whatever suits them. Just as parents draw a line about what of their guidance is open for debate, college students face constraints on what they can and cannot say in an academic context. To wit, the experience and insights I impart to my kids aren't by them things to question. When they have the life experience, intellectual knowledge and acuity to make their own marks in the world and not depend on the ones I've made for their sufficiency, I will have achieved my goal of raising them, and at that point all of my input will for them be reduced to suggestion status, whereupon they become free to conduct their affairs as they see fit, free to express themselves as they desire, and free to raise their own kids as I raised them or differently.
The same concept applies in higher education settings. When students reach the point that they have original ideas that withstand rigorous scrutiny, the discipuli will have then earned the right to speak freely on topics that capture their interest and that fall within the scope of their expertise. Until then, however, they need to sit down, take notes and, where/when fitting, ask intelligent questions.
Freedom of speech is not an academic value. Accuracy of speech is an academic value; completeness of speech is an academic value; relevance of speech is an academic value. Each of these values is directly related to the goal of academic inquiry: getting a matters of fact and inference right. The operative commonplace is "following the evidence wherever it leads." One can’t do that if one's sources are suspect or nonexistent; one can’t do that if one only considers evidence favorable to one's preferred predicates; one can’t do that if one's evidence is far afield and hasn’t been persuasively connected to the instant matter of fact.
Nor can one follow the evidence wherever it leads if what guides one be a desire that inquiry reach a conclusion sympathetic to one's political views. If free speech is not an academic value because it is not the value guiding inquiry, free political speech becomes antithetical to inquiry: it skews inquiry in advance, one achieves one's end from the get-go.
Speech is political if, when answering questions, one believes it is one's task to answer normatively rather than dialectically. Any number of topics taken up in a classroom will contain moral and political issues, issues like discrimination, inequality, institutional racism. Those issues should be studied, analyzed, and historicized, but they shouldn’t, in the classroom, be debated with a view to forming and prosecuting a remedial agenda.
The academic interrogation of an issue leads to comprehension of its complexity; it does not (nor should it) lead to joining a party or marching down Main Street. That is what I mean by saying that the issue shouldn’t be taken normatively; taking it that way would require following its paths and byways to the point where one embarks upon a course of action; taking it academically requires that one stop short of action and remain in the realm of deliberation so long as the academic context is in session; action, if it comes, comes later or after class.
(continued due to character limit)