7 ms·

I have read probably 4 or 5 of these articles, written by professors/teachers, claiming to have been punished for their speech. 2 common threads about them. Th

• garmaine 7y ago
  Why should specifics of what is said matter if the point is free speech?
  • rland 7y ago
    Free speech is necessary, but not sufficient. It isn't simply that the speech has to be free; it also must be worth exploring. To use my analogy, the Earth-centered model is free speech, but it isn't worth much, because it is wrong.
    • Ntrails 7y ago
      > Earth-centered model is free speech, but it isn't worth much, because it is wrong. And yet in schools around the world people are taught that electricity flows from positive to negative, and everyone is happy. xD (slightly disingenuous, but I'd say wrong and not useful are merely correlated rather than 1-1 linked)
      • gumby 7y ago
        > And yet in schools around the world people are taught that electricity flows from positive to negative, Seriously? I have never encountered this
        • krageon 7y ago
          Anecdotally, I was taught this in lower grades and taught that it was actually the opposite in higher grades. It wouldn't surprise me if people receiving a more basic education even in the same country would never be taught how it actually is.
      • colinhb 7y ago
        Understanding that current is a convention because it doesn’t matter if you have positive or negative charge carriers in many applications is not wrong in any way. Given the nature of electric charge (not to mention specific applications like semiconductors) even if you align the direction of conventional current and flow of electrons, it will still be a convention. That’s the cost of having an abstraction for net change in electric charge (which is a useful and insightful abstraction). Don’t believe schools are teaching anything different than this.
    • whokal 7y ago
      Before people learned that the geocentric model is wrong, how do you suppose they discuss, learn, and share ideas to arrive at the truth? How do they know what is “worth exploring” and who decides that? Furthermore, once the facts are established, I personally believe it’s important for people to express their ideas even if it’s out of ignorance because then we can know to edify. Not everyone will be willing to listen, learn, and change but without free speech and exchange of ideas I find it hard to see how people will grow effectively.
    • basetop 7y ago
      Actually discussing things that are wrong is just as important as discussing things that are right. Going through what's wrong is one of the ways to get to the what's right. "It must be worth exploring" is the dangerous authoritarian ideology that is the basis of censorship. It's why free speech is a right. Not the "right to explore those worth exploring". "What is worth exploring" is entirely subjective. If we applied your logic, then things like LGBT rights, civil rights, physics, biology, etc are all left to the whims of authority. If people truly thought like you, then heliocentrism wouldn't have been explored because "it wasn't worth exploring" 500 years ago. Actually, it was blasphemy. You do realize that "everything worth exploring" was pretty much banned, taboo or attacked throughout history? It's why the founders enshrined free speech into the constitution. Things that are wrong are just as important to discuss as things that are right. It's part of the learning process and part of progress.
  • 314 7y ago
    Because his position is not one in which free speech is the aim. It is a means to an end, and that end is teaching. The specifics of what he said, and in which context he said it, allow discussion about the quality of his teaching - which is relevant to whether or not his contract should have been renewed.
  • jccalhoun 7y ago
    He is claiming that this is a free speech issue. That doesn't make it true. He alludes to the complaints of a few students but we don't know what that complaint actually is. It could be free speech or it could be that he is an asshole. We don't know.
• etrautmann 7y ago
  his research publications help to provide a fuller picture: https://sites.duke.edu/evancharney/files/2014/09/Liberal-bias-and-the-five-factor-model.pdf https://sites.duke.edu/evancharney/files/2014/09/Liberal-bia...
  • ptah 7y ago
    lovely how he tries to smuggle superstition into modern discourse
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• StreamBright 7y ago
  What radical idea he was teaching?
  • titanix2 7y ago
    Probably something like the existence of only two sexes.
  • gumby 7y ago
    If you read his work: that religion is as epistemologically valid as the physical sciences. I assume this is why he was dismissed from the tenure track early in his career there.
    • basetop 7y ago
      That is discussed in every philosophy department. Epistemology isn't a "settled topic" and open to debate and discussion. Claiming that religion is just epistemologically valid as physical science isn't controversial. No more than saying mathematics is just as epistemologically valid as physical science. Or art is just as epistemologically valid as physical science. Why would anyone be dismissed from a tenure track for that? Pretty much every philosophy professors argues for that position.
    • swebs 7y ago
      That's not what he said at all. From the paper linked above: https://sites.duke.edu/evancharney/files/2014/09/Liberal-bias-and-the-five-factor-model.pdf https://sites.duke.edu/evancharney/files/2014/09/Liberal-bia... Statement 1 of the "open to experience" section of a popular personality test is the following: >1. I believe that we should look to our religious authorities for decisions on moral issues. (Agree: Openness score goes down) He claimed this introduced a political bias, stating: >Statement 1 reflects a liberal ideological bias against religion. Is reliance upon scientific authorities, for example, close-minded? Granted, the question concerns moral decisions (so let us assume that science cannot resolve questions of right and wrong). Why, then, is reliance upon religious authorities as opposed, for example, to philosophical or ethical authorities or, simply, moral experts, singled out as an instance of close-mindedness? Academics often rely upon authorities when making decisions on moral issues (e.g., the authority of John Rawls when considering matters of distributive justice), although they would likely be uncomfortable characterizing this as reliance upon an authority (even if it is)
• emmelaich 7y ago
  Did you read the linked docs? They're pretty compelling. You cannot say it doesn't discuss specifics.
  • valleyer 7y ago
    Can you perhaps be more specific about which document you think answers the question: what position or opinion caused Charney to be censured? I've taken an admittedly brief look through them and, while I see some hints as to the general subject of discussion, I haven't yet found specific details about what got him in trouble.
    • roenxi 7y ago
      In itself that seems to be one of Charney's complaints - that he had difficulty figuring out what the administrators didn't like. Very hard to defend yourself when nobody is quite sure what the attack is. And particularly in ethics where students really aren't learning anything unless they are a bit bothered and uncomfortable about having untested beliefs tested - although for a compulsory course the expectations are a bit different and that might not be appropriate. Not being specific is a really nasty trick. All the more so because it makes it impossible to say if the problem is one of malicious intent or blinkered thinking from either of the two involved parties. But, critically, if the waters are muddy then the bureaucracy is going to win.
  • sytelus 7y ago
    No, there is nothing specific in linked docs. It seems administration decided to get rid of him, appointed two faculty members to form committee and didn't followed their own bylaws. The tiny glimpse in the doc is that there were some low student ranking in 2018 and few people had negative experience interacting with him - but nothing specific. As per the doc, no one has made any formal complaints. It's however quite apparent that Prof Charney had issues with liberalism. He, for example, asks why people bowing down to "scientific authorities" are considered open-minded but people bowing down to religious authority are considered closed minded. I think it's a clever twist of the word "authority" in to forcing people to think that religion and science are the same thing. If this is his "research", I don't feel too bad for him.
• akhilcacharya 7y ago
  I share your observations and raise it with another one - has anybody noticed that these sorts of things only happen at elite institutions? I never hear about this sort of thing (about “chilled free speech”) at my alma mater
  • kgwgk 7y ago
    https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion-article/meanwhile-free-expression-at-nc-state-is-too-much/ https://www.carolinajournal.com/opinion-article/meanwhile-fr...
  • yardie 7y ago
    These sorts of things only happen at elite universities because they can drive headlines. As a graduate of a mid tier university over a decade ago, I assure you they were suppressing faculty speech even more and with a whole lot less fanfare.
  • arcturus17 7y ago
    You didn't follow the Evergreen scandal [1]? Bret Weinstein, who is as progressive as they come, was driven out of the university because he ventured to say that having a day where whites were to be excluded from attending school was a bad idea. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College#2017_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College#2017_p...
    • akhilcacharya 7y ago
      I see your point but Evergreen isn't exactly a mainstream institution for this sort of thing.
• bradleyjg 7y ago
  In the student letter published to defend him, there's a couple of paragraphs that at least allude to what appears to have been the underlying controversy: https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2018/05/in-defense-of-professor-evan-charney https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2018/05/in-defense-of-... "Because of this, Professor Charney often takes on positions that are not his own in order to illustrate perspectives from across the spectrum. For example, in 2016 during the peak of the Allen building protests, he spent a whole class discussing the motivations and tactics of the protestors and challenging his students to argue cogently in favor of or against the movement. Though in some cases this put the burden on protesters in his class to justify their actions, it also exposed the unsavory and borderline racist opinions of others. His rationale is clear: without confronting new ideas, students go through Duke unchallenged and are unable to evaluate the merits of competing claims. To be sure, Charney’s courses elicit a discomfort inherent to any situation that requires students to re-evaluate their most deeply held convictions. In presenting differing perspectives on sensitive topics, some are concerned that his class reproduces systems and structures of inequality involving notions of class, privilege and power. The concern here is that, in the name of “diversity of opinion,” the class becomes a staging ground for perspectives that reinforce the negative racial, class, and gender power dynamics that exist in society and on this campus. In recognition of this, he makes sincere and intentional efforts to reach out to students who might feel hurt or offended by the class discussions. In these cases, he seeks to address the offense and listens genuinely to recommended changes to the ways in which he teaches sensitive subject matter." (While searching for that, I also came across this: https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2017/04/student-conduct-case-raises-questions-about-fairness-of-the-process https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2017/04/student-conduc... which is unrelated, but also fairly unflattering.)
  • jessaustin 7y ago
    That second link doesn't flatter anyone at Duke. The former professor displays the unwavering certainty of the completely ignorant, but the whole process is capricious. If you want to administer a quiz, then administer a quiz. Duke can afford computer labs, or if not they can afford paper. ("Electronic Blue Book" salesmen wouldn't be kicking back those sweet bribes to administrators for paper quizzes, though...) This BS with hacking students' laptops so they theoretically can't search for answers using their browsers was certain to lead to a situation like that. Given the suspension rates described, it probably has done many times already. Presumably those students weren't wealthy enough to afford lawyers and multiple summer journeys to Duke in order to defend their innocence, so fuck them.
• basetop 7y ago
  If you've read 4 or 5 articles already, maybe it signifies a trend? Another common theme in these threads are comments attempting to dismiss and marginalize these victims because it doesn't align with one's political ideologies. I'm surprised you didn't mention that. If you've read these threads, I'm sure you've noticed the support for censorship and the sneaky attempts to justify censorship for political ideology. Yes, you are right, if a professor teaches that the sun orbits the earth, that should be questioned. And if it was that blatant, then we would know about it already. But what if a professor teaches that biological sex exists? Should they be censured? What if a professor says there aren't anything such as biological sex? Should they be censured? How many of these censorships are because a physics professors claimed that the sun orbits the earth? None. If you've really paid attention to this issue, you know that most of these censorship are due to political reasons - whether it is Evergreen professors or the CERN scientist and everyone in between. I can understand the support for censorship in the media, but I can't understand any support for it on a hacker news site. Even for ideological reasons.