4 ms·

It's interesting, the concept of academic freedom is supposed to prevent individual researchers from having to in any way pay service, even lip service, to anyt

It's interesting, the concept of academic freedom is supposed to prevent individual researchers from having to in any way pay service, even lip service, to anything not directly related to their research. It is a fundamental principle of academic research, and your comment reminds me that even if as you say, people are just putting down some platitude about broader impact, it completely flies in the face of academic traditions where researchers are free to judge what is important and what is not in their work. This kind of requirement is an end run around academic freedom which exists exactly to combat any outside influence in research

free_rms 6y ago
Another way of saying it is that if a paper/technique is badly missing some interesting ethical implication, that's a great invitation for someone else to publish and set us all straight.
kaitai 6y ago
I have to fundamentally disagree, in that if "the concept of academic freedom is supposed to prevent individual researchers from having to in any way pay service, even lip service, to anything not directly related to their research" then we'd have even less teaching by professors in this country. Who the heck wants to teach linear algebra for the 47th time? or worse, precalculus? oh right, that's what pays the bills. Please be accurate about academic freedom :)
- free_rms 6y ago
  Teaching is functional. Performative adherence to other people's politics is less so.
  - kaitai 6y ago
    ... for some definitions of functional... was it really so useful for one prof I had to read the pages from the book to us and not take questions? He did nothing else.
    - free_rms 6y ago
      Sure but you're mixing apples and oranges here. Can we think about how funny it would be if someone was doing social justice rhetoric with that level of energy? "well, uhh, you see this is, uhh, problematic i guess, they weren't being an ally. cough. you see, there are a lot of, uh, intersectional and marginalized angles here, it's really complicated. lots of microaggressions. anyways, do the odd questions on page 38, see you wednesday."

free_rms 6y ago

Another way of saying it is that if a paper/technique is badly missing some interesting ethical implication, that's a great invitation for someone else to publish and set us all straight.

kaitai 6y ago

I have to fundamentally disagree, in that if "the concept of academic freedom is supposed to prevent individual researchers from having to in any way pay service, even lip service, to anything not directly related to their research" then we'd have even less teaching by professors in this country. Who the heck wants to teach linear algebra for the 47th time? or worse, precalculus? oh right, that's what pays the bills. Please be accurate about academic freedom :)

free_rms 6y ago
Teaching is functional. Performative adherence to other people's politics is less so.
- kaitai 6y ago
  ... for some definitions of functional... was it really so useful for one prof I had to read the pages from the book to us and not take questions? He did nothing else.
  - free_rms 6y ago
    Sure but you're mixing apples and oranges here. Can we think about how funny it would be if someone was doing social justice rhetoric with that level of energy? "well, uhh, you see this is, uhh, problematic i guess, they weren't being an ally. cough. you see, there are a lot of, uh, intersectional and marginalized angles here, it's really complicated. lots of microaggressions. anyways, do the odd questions on page 38, see you wednesday."