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I feel like academic freedom matters a lot less than it used to. Academia used to be a place where intellectuals lived in relative austerity in return for the f

I feel like academic freedom matters a lot less than it used to. Academia used to be a place where intellectuals lived in relative austerity in return for the freedom to pursue intellectual pursuits. That made sense to me. Academic freedom in that context mattered. Academia is now a political race, rife with fraud to gain advantage, odd conflicts-of-interest, and extreme biases. You get tenure by sucking up so you have strong letters. From there, the elites are extremely over-capitalized, which leads to financial fraud too (my alma mater has an endowment of around $30M per faculty member). NDAs and non-disparage agreements are used to shut people up (at least below tenured-faculty level) who step out-of-line and to cover up fraud. In most modern elite academia, I don't really see a case for academic freedom. If there was something I'd want, it's more oversight and checks-and-balances. I do see it as important in K-12 education, community colleges, and some state schools (someone mentioned UMass; that's a good example). Indeed, providing real academic freedom is just about the best thing we could do for free to improve K-12 education.

mfer 4y ago
> I do see it as important in K-12 education Academic freedom of teachers teaching a 2nd or 3rd grader how to read? Or of teachers of 6th graders learning geography. This is where we get into politics and agendas. What happens when teachers want to introduce political ideas / ideologies to impressionable minds without them realizing it (they are kids)? What happens when parents disagree with those ideologies? If everyone involved is free thinking and capable of evaluating things it's one thing. That's something that's possible at the college level. Dealing with young children is entirely different.
- freedomtogripe 4y ago
  >> I do see it as important in K-12 education > Academic freedom of teachers teaching a 2nd or 3rd grader how to read? Or of teachers of 6th graders learning geography. I share your concerns, but I'll take the difficult position here. Before CRT bogeyman there was the Common Core bogeyman. Tucker Carlson has Strong Opinions on how to teach math. I shit you not. Every time I flew through MCI I had someone in the terminal or on the lane strike up conversation (midwest is like that) and learn that I'm in a math-heavy field. They would then say some inane shit about math education. I would ask the last math course they took. The highest answer I ever got was Calc or Linear Algebra, and 90% of the answers were "I don't remember" or "algebra in high school". So, yeah. Third grade teachers need cover. Because even http://www.corestandards.org/Math http://www.corestandards.org/Math was politicized by cable news talking heads. Go read it, not knowing what it is, and explain to me why someone who hasn't thought about math in 20 years would reasonably have any sort of opinion that's not motivated by a cable news talking head telling you that the reason you don't understand fifth grade probability theory is not that you were woefully failed by the American education system and your kid is already outstripping you, but because Obama Socialist Math makes no sense.
- frognumber 4y ago
  My experience with young children and college student is different than yours. We stereotype young children as being dumb and naive, but starting around 3rd or 4th grade, they're pretty smart. They just know less. It's around teenage years that they become arrogant and impressionable. Woke started as a college student phenomenon. The way you continue to develop critical thinking skills is by having those difficult discussions. But that's beside the point. If you want smart, competent, thoughtful teachers, we need to start giving room for people who are smart, competent, and thoughtful in the profession. Most of the teachers in my local school district are idiots, and that's in part because of how the district treats them. I'd love to teach, but not there. What happens when teachers indoctrinate students? That's already happening. School districts are grounded in municipal politics, and my local curriculum is grounded in ideology and doctrine. Teachers don't want to diverge from that, but if they wanted to, they couldn't. It's not clear top-down indoctrination is any better than bottom-up. In other words, I'm not sure your proposed solution addresses the problem.
celeritascelery 4y ago
> Academia is now a political race, rife with fraud to gain advantage, odd conflicts-of-interest, and extreme biases. You get tenure by sucking up so you have strong letters. From there, the elites are extremely over-capitalized, which leads to financial fraud too (my alma mater has an endowment of around $30M per faculty member). NDAs and non-disparage agreements are used to shut people up (at least below tenured-faculty level) who step out-of-line and to cover up fraud. That all seems like an argument for academic freedom. Protect people who speak out against the system or politics. Just because academic freedom has deteriorated does not mean is should be given up on.
- freedomtogripe 4y ago
  My humble take here is that we need more academic freedom AND ALSO fewer academics who are obsessed with culture wars or partisan national politics. We need more scientists who have a small bucket of money to work on what they think is important, without answering to a funding agency every year. More CAREER awards and endowed professorships. THAT is what I always thought was meant by academic freedom! At least the type of freedom I would want to see more of & think society would benefit from. The freedom to do scholarship and talk about their area of expertise as they see fit. I think 80+% of professors who decry the need for more academic freedom would use that freedom to talk about the most inane and stupid things on Twitter. Or complain in committee meetings and trigger 20 year olds in intro classes. instead of, y'know, doing their job and taking big research risks that are supposed to be enabled by academic freedom. The political type of academic freedom doesn't seem particularly socially valuable and I can't really bring myself to care about professors having more political speech protections than anyone else. Why are physics or math professors so much more important than Bob from Accounting on culture war BS? An old mathematician saying women aren't good at math isn't a particularly interesting use of a mathematician's academic freedom. Or whatever word policing is in vogue these days from the other end of the spectrum. Like, how the fuck is that "academic freedom" at all, other than that the complainer is an academic and wants more freedom to say whatever they want? It has nothing to do with their research field. It's not academic freedom. It's just bizarro entitlement. Anecdotally? It's usually the folks who actually do have tons of real academic freedom to do whatever they want with their research time who find themselves complaining that they can't collect a salary to wage stochastic culture wars in Calc 101 classrooms and committee meetings about course schedules or whatever. Academic freedom should be about academics -- research and teaching. That doesn't include going on bizarre unrelated culture war rants in math/science classes or saying stupid shit about a politician on twitter.

mfer 4y ago

> I do see it as important in K-12 education Academic freedom of teachers teaching a 2nd or 3rd grader how to read? Or of teachers of 6th graders learning geography. This is where we get into politics and agendas. What happens when teachers want to introduce political ideas / ideologies to impressionable minds without them realizing it (they are kids)? What happens when parents disagree with those ideologies? If everyone involved is free thinking and capable of evaluating things it's one thing. That's something that's possible at the college level. Dealing with young children is entirely different.

freedomtogripe 4y ago
>> I do see it as important in K-12 education > Academic freedom of teachers teaching a 2nd or 3rd grader how to read? Or of teachers of 6th graders learning geography. I share your concerns, but I'll take the difficult position here. Before CRT bogeyman there was the Common Core bogeyman. Tucker Carlson has Strong Opinions on how to teach math. I shit you not. Every time I flew through MCI I had someone in the terminal or on the lane strike up conversation (midwest is like that) and learn that I'm in a math-heavy field. They would then say some inane shit about math education. I would ask the last math course they took. The highest answer I ever got was Calc or Linear Algebra, and 90% of the answers were "I don't remember" or "algebra in high school". So, yeah. Third grade teachers need cover. Because even http://www.corestandards.org/Math http://www.corestandards.org/Math was politicized by cable news talking heads. Go read it, not knowing what it is, and explain to me why someone who hasn't thought about math in 20 years would reasonably have any sort of opinion that's not motivated by a cable news talking head telling you that the reason you don't understand fifth grade probability theory is not that you were woefully failed by the American education system and your kid is already outstripping you, but because Obama Socialist Math makes no sense.
frognumber 4y ago
My experience with young children and college student is different than yours. We stereotype young children as being dumb and naive, but starting around 3rd or 4th grade, they're pretty smart. They just know less. It's around teenage years that they become arrogant and impressionable. Woke started as a college student phenomenon. The way you continue to develop critical thinking skills is by having those difficult discussions. But that's beside the point. If you want smart, competent, thoughtful teachers, we need to start giving room for people who are smart, competent, and thoughtful in the profession. Most of the teachers in my local school district are idiots, and that's in part because of how the district treats them. I'd love to teach, but not there. What happens when teachers indoctrinate students? That's already happening. School districts are grounded in municipal politics, and my local curriculum is grounded in ideology and doctrine. Teachers don't want to diverge from that, but if they wanted to, they couldn't. It's not clear top-down indoctrination is any better than bottom-up. In other words, I'm not sure your proposed solution addresses the problem.

celeritascelery 4y ago

> Academia is now a political race, rife with fraud to gain advantage, odd conflicts-of-interest, and extreme biases. You get tenure by sucking up so you have strong letters. From there, the elites are extremely over-capitalized, which leads to financial fraud too (my alma mater has an endowment of around $30M per faculty member). NDAs and non-disparage agreements are used to shut people up (at least below tenured-faculty level) who step out-of-line and to cover up fraud. That all seems like an argument for academic freedom. Protect people who speak out against the system or politics. Just because academic freedom has deteriorated does not mean is should be given up on.

freedomtogripe 4y ago
My humble take here is that we need more academic freedom AND ALSO fewer academics who are obsessed with culture wars or partisan national politics. We need more scientists who have a small bucket of money to work on what they think is important, without answering to a funding agency every year. More CAREER awards and endowed professorships. THAT is what I always thought was meant by academic freedom! At least the type of freedom I would want to see more of & think society would benefit from. The freedom to do scholarship and talk about their area of expertise as they see fit. I think 80+% of professors who decry the need for more academic freedom would use that freedom to talk about the most inane and stupid things on Twitter. Or complain in committee meetings and trigger 20 year olds in intro classes. instead of, y'know, doing their job and taking big research risks that are supposed to be enabled by academic freedom. The political type of academic freedom doesn't seem particularly socially valuable and I can't really bring myself to care about professors having more political speech protections than anyone else. Why are physics or math professors so much more important than Bob from Accounting on culture war BS? An old mathematician saying women aren't good at math isn't a particularly interesting use of a mathematician's academic freedom. Or whatever word policing is in vogue these days from the other end of the spectrum. Like, how the fuck is that "academic freedom" at all, other than that the complainer is an academic and wants more freedom to say whatever they want? It has nothing to do with their research field. It's not academic freedom. It's just bizarro entitlement. Anecdotally? It's usually the folks who actually do have tons of real academic freedom to do whatever they want with their research time who find themselves complaining that they can't collect a salary to wage stochastic culture wars in Calc 101 classrooms and committee meetings about course schedules or whatever. Academic freedom should be about academics -- research and teaching. That doesn't include going on bizarre unrelated culture war rants in math/science classes or saying stupid shit about a politician on twitter.