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> Which part of her response do you take issue with? Not GP, but what I found most objectionable about the situation is that Harvard has not stood up for acade
by gnicholas 3y ago
> Which part of her response do you take issue with?
Not GP, but what I found most objectionable about the situation is that Harvard has not stood up for academic freedom/free speech in recent years, but now they want to pretend that it's the value they hold the most dear. This rings hollow, and makes it look like they are fair-weather fans that use the banner of free speech to protect their favored groups and bludgeon the disfavored ones.
A Harvard professor put it this way:
> “The problem with the university presidents saying that calls for genocide are not punishable is that they have such a risible record of defending free speech in the past that they don’t have a leg to stand on,” Dr. Pinker said in an interview.
- dekhn 3y agoYes, liberal academia worked itself into a position that it's going to be hard to argue itself out of. The blade of a knife is sharp both ways.
- shermantanktop 3y agoIs there a major institution (public, private, education, government, business, you name it) out there that operates exclusively on principle? And is immune to accusations of hypocrisy as a result? I can't think of one.
- gnicholas 3y agoNo institution lives up to all of its principles. But Chicago is pretty well-known for its adherence to academic freedom, and I don't think it has had any major scandals recently. Stanford also stood up for academic freedom last year when the SLS incident went down. The SLS dean who led the administration's response was then elevated to interim provost, which shows the university/board supports that approach. (Of course, Stanford has had it's share of criticism over the outgoing president's issues, but that wasn't about hypocrisy, I don't think.)