The Mass Media: Polluters of the Human Soul?

I've just re-read Ortega's Mission of the University. Interesting stuff, like everything he wrote, but the best part is the last page, which is a blistering attack on the press -- or what we today would call "the mainstream media." When his colleagues at El Sol, a paper for which he wrote, saw it, they wrote a collective editorial bashing him for it. What's most disturbing is how close to the truth it still is today -- probably much closer than it was in 1930, when he wrote it.

Here we are in the midst of a primary election campaign, and there is a huge amount of reporting on who is going to win (though it's fairly obvious who will win), little reporting on the candidates' positions on the issues, and almost non on the issues themselves. That is exactly the sort of "inversion" Ortega talks about below.

Anyway, here is the passage. Scroll down to get my quickie translation:

[H]oy no existe en la vida pública más “poder espiritual” que la Prensa. La vida pública, que es la verdaderamente histórica, necesita siempre ser regida, quiérase o no. Ella, por si, es anónima y ciega, sin dirección autónoma. Ahora bien: a estas fechas han desaparecido los antiguos “poderes espirituales”: la Iglesia, porque ha abandonado el presente, y la vida pública es siempre actualisima; el Estado, porque, triunfante la democracia, no dirige ya a ésta, sino al revés, es gobernado por la opinión pública. En tal situación, la vida pública se ha entregado a la única fuerza espiritual que por oficio se ocupa de la actualidad: la Prensa.

Yo no quisiera molestar en dosis apreciable a los periodistas. Entre otros motivos, porque tal vez yo no sea otra cosa que un periodista. Pero es ilusorio cerrarse a la evidencia con que se presenta la jerarquía de las realidades espirituales. En ella ocupa el periodismo el rango inferior. Y acaece que la
conciencia pública no recibe hoy otra presión ni otro mando que los que le llegan de esa espiritualidad ínfima rezumada por las columnas del periódico. Tan ínfima es a menudo, que casi no llega a ser espiritualidad; que en cierto modo es antiespiritualidad. Por dejación de otros poderes, ha quedado encargado de alimentar y dirigir el alma pública el periodista, que es no sólo una de las clases menos cultas de la sociedad presente, sino que, por causas, espero, transitorias, admite en su gremio a pseudointelectuales chafados, llenos de resentimiento y de odio hacia el verdadero espíritu. Ya su profesión los lleva a entender por realidad del tiempo lo que momentáneamente mete ruido, sea lo
que sea, sin perspectiva ni arquitectura.

La vida real es de cierto pura actualidad; pero la visión periodística deforma esta verdad reduciendo lo actual a lo instantáneo y lo instantáneo a lo resonante. De aquí que en la conciencia pública aparezca hoy el mundo bajo una imagen rigorosamente invertida. Cuanto más importancia sustantiva y perdurante tenga una cosa o persona, menos hablarán de ella los periódicos, y en cambio, destacarán en sus páginas lo que agota su esencia con ser un “suceso” y dar lugar a una noticia. Habrían de no obrar sobre los periódicos los intereses, muchas veces inconfesables, de sus empresas; habría de mantenerse el dinero castamente alejado de influir en la doctrina de los diarios, y bastaría a la Prensa abandonarse a su propia misión para pintar el mundo del revés. No poco del vuelco grotesco que hoy padecen las cosas -Europa camina desde hace tiempo con la cabeza para abajo y los pies pirueteando en lo alto- se debe a ese imperio indiviso de la Prensa, único “poder espiritual”. Es, pues, cuestión de vida o muerte para Europa rectificar tan ridícula situación. Para ello tiene la Universidad que intervenir en la actualidad como tal Universidad, tratando los grandes temas del día desde su punto de vista propio -cultural, profesional o científico.

[T]oday, there is no “spiritual power” in public life, other than the press. Public life, which is the truly historical life, always needs to be governed, like it or not. It is, in itself, anonymous and blind, without autonomous direction. Well, then, in these days the old “spiritual powers” have disappeared: the Church, because it has abandoned the present, and public life is always superlatively current; the State, because, with democracy triumphant, the state does not direct it, but the reverse, as the state is governed by the opinions of the public. In such a situation, public life has handed itself over to the only spiritual power still functioning at present: the press.

I have no great desire to abuse the journalists. Among other reasons, there is the possibility that I am no more than a journalist myself. But to close oneself off to the obvious fact that the spiritual powers present themselves as a hierarchy is to delude oneself. In this hierarchy, journalism occupies the lowest rank. And so it comes to pass that the public consciousness today receives no other pressure nor command than those that arrive from that debased spirituality that drips from the columns of newspapers.

So degraded is it that it often does not attain the level of spirituality at all, being in a certain manner a form of anti-spirituality. Due to the abdication of the other powers, the one left with the charge to nourish and direct the public spirit is the journalist, who is not only one of the least cultivated classes that society presents, but who, for reasons I hope are transitory, admits to his profession unkempt pseudo-intellectuals full of resentment and hatred for the true realm of the spirit. With no sense of perspective or architecture, they take for the reality of the times whatever makes a momentary noise.

Real life is characterized by a certain pure currentness. But journalistic vision deforms this truth, reducing the current to the instantaneous, and the instantaneous to the sensational. Hence the world appears to public consciousness by way of an image rigorously inverted. The more substantial and enduring importance a thing has, the less they speak of it in the press while, on the other hand, they highlight in their pages whatever will be a “success” and bring notoriety. Even if they were freed from motives that in many cases are unspeakable, even if money were to remain chastely aloof from infuencing the opinions of the dailies, they would nonetheless pursue their mission of depicting the world inside-out. No little of the grotesque inversion we see today – for some time now, Europe has been going along with its head below and its feet pirouetting above – is owing to the undivided power of the press, the sole “spiritual power.” It is a matter of life and death that Europe should rectify such an absurd situation. To that end, the university must intervene in current affairs. It must do so as the university, treating the great themes of the day from its proper points of view, cultural, professional, or scientific.

Mixed Feelings about the Kochs and Florida State University

So there is another kerfuffle about the Koch brothers. (Charles Koch pictured here.) They have donated $1.5 million to Florida State University to (here it gets fuzzy - the screechy "reporting" I have managed to find does not treat these sorts of details as important) fund an academic position with a string attached: Though the economics department will make the final hiring decision, a representative of the Koch Foundation will in effect have a veto power over candidates.

The academic left is enraged, while others, like libertarian James S. Taylor, defend the arrangement. I guess I have to say, boring as this might be, that my own response is mixed. On the one hand, I can't think of another arrangement in which a donor has this sort of influence over hiring decisions. On the other, I think Taylor is right in claiming that this is not a threat to academic freedom.

Both FSU and its econ department have freely agreed to this arrangement. How can this violate their freedom? Rather it is the people who are pressuring them to cancel the deal that are attempting to violate someone's freedom.

That's on the one hand. On the other hand, I think there is a principle involved that is one of the elements of academic freedom (though I also think it is useful to distinguish it from academic freedom itself). I think it of as "the principle of disciplinary autonomy." It is the idea that decisions about departmental matters that are based on principles and ideas that are internal to the discipline (eg., what is a proper methodology for the study of X-ology? may it have an ideological coloring and if so what sort might it have? etc.) must be made by the department itself. External agents such as deans, divisional committees, etc. must oversee departmental decisions (eg., in hiring and promotion) but their decisions must be based on considerations that are external to the discipline, in that they apply equally to all disciplines: mainly, such considerations as professional competence and area coverage (eg., does the philosophy department really need another person in ancient?). If they think that some trends in X-ology are promising while others are a passing fad and a waste of time, they must not interfere with departmental decisions based on such considerations. The only people who should be deciding which trends in X-ology ought to be pursued by the department are the people in the department.

Accepting an endowment that has ideological strings or external ideologically motivated oversight attached seems to compromise this principle. I think this is why most departments would reject a gift of this sort. They do not want donors to have this sort of influence.

And yet I don't mind what FSU and the Kochs are doing here. Why not? Mainly because the picture I have just painted, of donors who put money into a process in which their own ideological preferences play no role, is, if you will pardon my French, almost complete bullshit. Leftist donors can easily fund positions that promote their own ideology. All they have to do is endow a chair in environmental ethics, women's studies, or any other discipline with the word "studies" in its title. There is no doubt in anyone's mind about the point of view that they will be promoting by doing so. The principle of disciplinary autonomy offers freedom of choice to leftist donors, while offering non-leftists the pretense of a liberty that they do not possess.

The principle of disciplinary autonomy covers this situation with an appearance of legitimacy that is not completely honest.

The libertarian Koch brothers are trying to beat a system that is rigged against them and in favor of others. Part of me says "good! -- it's a system that deserves an occasional beating."

School is Prison

I found this on Youtube, posted by someone who calls him/herself RjWeapon. Speaks for itself.

When I was a student at Lottie Grunsky Grammar School back in the fifties, I often noticed a chain-link fence topped topped with barbed wire separating the school grounds from the sidewalk on E. Harding Way. At the time I thought the barbed wire was there to keep bad guys from climbing the fence to perform unspeakable enormities on our tender little bodies. Years later I realized that, of course, it was there to keep us in.

I was slow, but I did catch on eventually.

So You Want to Go to Law School!

It's the time of year when a millions of seniors are thinking about whether to apply to law school, to some other sort of school, or simply to hope they will be one of the lucky few who can find a job in this economy.

Here is the last post I wrote about this vexing issue. I am tempted to just repost it here, but maybe a link to the wise is sufficient.

A while ago I got a grant and spent a year sitting in on law classes and reading a lot of cases. I did it because I have enormous respect and admiration for the legal systems that evolved out of the English common law, and for the centuries of brilliant people whose tireless work created this great framework for civilization. It soon became very obvious that I was absolutely the only person there who had this attitude, or any attitude that resembles it.

One prof, since deceased, described to me a case he was working on in his private practice. It was a boundary dispute between two guys who owned some vacation property in northern Wisconsin. It had been going for years, swallowing time and money as it crept along at virtually Dickensian pace. Something about my reaction -- honest, I was trying to be polite! -- caused him to look down, a little shamefaced, and say: "Yes, lot of the work we do is as warriors fighting for people who hate each other."

Update! This just in: Law Student Asks for a Refund.

"Common Reading" and Liberal Bias

There used to be a saying in the world of journalism: "Dog Bites Man" is not news. "Man Bites Dog" -- now that's news!

The National Association of Scholars recently published a report choices made by all of the 290 colleges and universities that have "common reading" programs. That's where someone picks out one book that everyone is supposed to read, so that, in this age on no core curriculum, they have some common topic they can all talk about. The authors of the report find that the book choices reflect the aspirations and world-view of today's academic liberal, and are apt to seem pretty quirky to someone (like me) who does not share this Weltanschauung.

To me, that's a real dog-bites-man story if ever there was. What's amazing to me is that as recounted in this Fox story there seem to be plenty of academics who vehemently, even angrily deny this. (Scroll to the middle of the story.)

It's hard to see your world-view as a view at all: for the most part all we see is -- the world!

You can find the report here and a complete list of all the books assigned here. The report is (surprise!) a lot more nuanced and multi-dimensional than Fox makes it sound. I recommend reading it. The list is especially interesting reading. It is a peek into the claustrophobic world of people who get all their news from NPR, whose idea of an interesting author is Barbara Kingsolver, who are sure that global warming is the most serious emergency we now face, and who don't seem to be aware of the global sovereign debt crisis. That's right. It's the world of the typical humanities professor.

I think some of the urge to deny the NAS charge stems from a failure to understand it. Blogger John Wilson (who I think can fairly be described as a PC denialist) wonders how a list of books can reflect liberal bias when so few of them are political books. As if the NAS complaint is that the list is packed with "liberal books," which ought to be balanced with "conservative books." That's not the point at all. They are saying that the choices reflects what academic liberals think is interesting or important or true, and ignore what the rest of us think is interesting or important or true. Indeed, anyone who is not a PC liberal can immediately detect the PC ethos just by browsing through the assigned book titles. We can smell it, like a choking whiff of sweet incense.

One thing that jumps out at the authors of the report is the enormous emphasis on things non-European. Books on Africa outnumber books on Europe nearly six to one. Frankenstein is the only European literary classic "from Homer to Dostoyevsky" assigned by any of these 290 institutions. (This last is a little misleading, as it might suggest that Dostoyevsky was assigned. He wasn't).

The report interprets this as a sign of a alienation from, perhaps even hostility to, European civilization itself.

I see it somewhat differently. I think there are actually two profoundly different views of what higher education is all about here. In one view, that of the NAS, what we are supposed to be doing in the university is to learn where we come from. The purest expression of this idea is probably Ortega y Gasset's The Mission of the University. What we should be doing is presenting students with an overview of what has been learned so far, an account that is, Ortega tells us, "systematic and synthetic." To introduce the spirit of novelty, of research and criticism, into the process too early is to explode the foundations on which novelty is built.

Of course there is another view, which is just as ancient as the Ortegean/NAS view. This other view holds that what we are supposed to be doing is to explore the new, the different, the other. Admittedly, there's a big difference between Plato's idea that you should think critically in order to get in touch with eternal truth, and the PC view that you should learn about people with a different skin color from your own, but they are members of one family of views.

I think both these views (suitably formulated) are true and the only real issue is about emphasis, ordering, and ranking. What we seem to see in these "common reading" choices is an academic establishment that is tipping over toward one of these views and pretty far away from the other.
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Full disclosure: I am an on-again, off-again member of the NAS, with which I've had a complex relationship for some 16 years. I am currently Vice President of the Wisconsin Association of Scholars.

The Irvine Muslim Student's Union and the Heckler's Veto

According to this news story, officials at the U. C. Irvine have recommended that the university's Muslim Students Union be suspended for a year and placed on probation for a year after that. The reason:

The school revealed this week that it had recommended suspending the Muslim group after 11 students were arrested in February for repeatedly disrupting a speech by Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren [pictured here], who was repeatedly interrupted and called "murderer" and "war criminal" by pro-Palestinian students as he gave a talk on the Middle East peace process.

An editorial in the L. A. Times described the incident like this:

Oren had been invited to deliver an address on U.S.-Israeli relations. But each time he tried to speak, he was interrupted by students who stood up to shout anti- Israel slogans. ... According to a university report released Monday, e-mails intercepted from members of the Muslim Student Union showed that it had not only planned the protest, but that its members had also subsequently conspired to deny the group's involvement. It was the group's alleged fabrications, along with its disruption of university activities, that prompted the suspension recommendation.

What interests me is comments people have made that suggest that these students were merely exercising their free speech rights. The above-linked news story quotes an "attorney and activist" speaking for the MSU, who

declined to say whether legal action is being planned in the event of an unsuccessful appeal. But she said students were "outraged" and "disappointed" with the university's decision. "It's unprecedented a university would ever do this," she said, adding that the suspension would "create a really dangerous precedent for shutting down dissent."

The Times, in defending the U's decision said that the MSU's "members need to learn that their freedom of speech does not trump that of other people."

This expresses the same idea from the opposite side: yes, the hecklers were exercising free speech, but their speech is not more important than that of the speaker.

As a free speech absolutist, and someone who does not believe in conflicts of (genuine) rights, I have always found the "heckler's veto" troubling. Isn't the heckler just exercising his or her free speech? And if I favor coercively stopping them from doing so, am I not opposing free speech in one of its forms?

Here's the best answer I've come up with so far.

No and no. The reason is that the heckler's offense in these cases is not speech at all. Note that we're not talking about someone who yells an objection during a speech ("You lie!"). That may be rude, but that sort of heckler should not be gagged, cuffed, or dragged from the hall. We're talking disrupting, not interrupting: ie., hecklers who by shouting repeatedly or by drowning the speaker out make it impossible for them to be heard.

It's true that the vetoing heckler is doing what they do by speaking, but their speech has this effect, not as speech, but as noise. The same effect can be accomplished by blowing plastic horns like the ones that caused so much unpleasantness at the World Cup games.

I once heard black conservative Ward Connerly drowned out here at the University of Wisconsin by leftist students in the audience making a loud humming sound. Wasn't that the same thing? Was that speech?

The same point can be made about the supposed counterexample of yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. ("See? There are exceptions to the freedom speech!") The offense here is intentionally or negligently bringing about a dangerous stampede by causing a panic." In this case the cause happens to be brought about by speech, but the same effect can be caused by setting off a fire alarm or igniting a smoke bomb.

On the other hand, someone who offers historical arguments that the Holocaust never happened, or scriptural arguments that homosexuality is evil, is doing something that can only be done by means of human speech. That is one reason why what they are doing is free speech, while the heckler's veto is not.

How Not to Give a Commencement Address

The above speech begins as a sort of PC version of a perfectly normal commencement speech: ie., an address consisting mainly of inoffensive bromides. If you scroll to 45, however, you will see it suddenly go terribly wrong.

Here we all are, celebrating the achievements of the last four years and looking forward to the rest of our lives, and this verbal bomb thrower, Prof. Sandra Soto, lobs one into our midst, blasting us into clashing, angry factions. This is the last memory we will have of our college days: some boor choosing our commencement as the venue for a controversial, purely ideological speech. Thanks a lot, whoever invited her!

There is a good reason why commencement speeches are packed with cliches. A wise man once told me that every culture must have some institutions that bring people together, but that in a free society things can only bring us together if they have little or no intellectual content.

Why is baseball important? Who cares which of us is best at hitting a ball with a stick? Baseball is empty! But its emptiness is its point. A horsehide-wrapped ball isn't about anything. That's why we can all agree about it. Sports are empty. Good food is empty. Partying and dancing are empty. The witless antics of the "celebrities" that fill the tabloids are all empty. The law and the constitution are empty frameworks to be filled with whatever actions we choose.

At commencement we gather to celebrate some of the very few things we do have in common: the ideals embodied in the practice of advanced learning itself. To perform this function, a commencement speech has to come as close as it can to intellectual emptiness. In speech, the nearest approach to emptiness is the bromide, the cliche. It consists of ideas that are obviously true, or at least obviously plausible, to everyone.

There certainly is a place for abrasive, offensive political harangues, but it is elsewhere.

Texas Texbook Battle

As reported in the New York Times:

After three days of turbulent meetings, the Texas Board of Education on Friday approved a social studies curriculum that will put a conservative stamp on history and economics textbooks, stressing the superiority of American capitalism, questioning the Founding Fathers’ commitment to a purely secular government and presenting Republican political philosophies in a more positive light.

The members of the Board, all elected officials, met to ammend a long list of guidelines for social studies textbooks that had earlier been drafted by teachers. Tempers ran hot:

Efforts by Hispanic board members to include more Latino figures as role models for the state’s large Hispanic population were consistently defeated, prompting one member, Mary Helen Berlanga, [NYT photo, above] to storm out of a meeting late Thursday night, saying, “They can just pretend this is a white America and Hispanics don’t exist.”

Among the Boards more dubious changes, from my point of view:

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

There are those who say "let's just tell history like it actually happened." Perhaps this approach can resolve issues like whether Thomas Aquinas was a greater direct influence on the age of democratic revolutions than Thomas Jeffersonn (after all, Aquinas did earnestly defend the death penalty for heretics), but there are plenty of issues that cannot be so easily dodged.

The study of American history reveals injustices and atrocities. (Take another look at Ms. Berlanga's picture, above. Click to enlarge.) Everyone can agree they should be discussed. But how much attention should they get, compared to certain positive aspects of the American past?

There is no way to answer such questions of relative importance without applying ethical, political, economic, and, yes, religious principles (if we understand this last to include ideas like secularism and atheism). The facts of history by themselves will not do it.

The problem here is not the conservatives on the school board. The liberals do exactly the same thing when they are in the majority. They have to.

The problem is the system itself: the monolithic state monopoly in K-12 education. Here is a single, winner-take-all prize: the state's power to mold the minds (so they think) of future generations. Putting liberals and conservatives together in a system like this is putting cats and dogs in a sealed container. They are doomed to scrap it out. History allows no neutral, Joe Friday ("just the facts, ma'am") ground to which they can retreat.

Philosophy is the Major for You! (Maybe!)

As you probably know, given that you are here at all, I teach philosophy. For that reason, I was very interested when my son Nat, a philosophy major (No, really? What a coincidence!) sent me a link to this New York Times article last Sunday.

The stunning piece of news they are reporting: that the number of philosophy majors is on the rise. Throughout this great republic, the demand for philosophy courses exceeds supply. The Rutgers philosophy department will graduate a hundred majors this year.

What's going on? The main explanation they give, as I understand it, is that young Americans on the one hand and academic philosophers on the other are becoming more alike. On the one hand, students are becoming more and more interested in big questions about the world at large, such as the ethics of preemptive war. (This I suppose is yet another way in which the Iraq War era resembles the Vietnam War era.) On the other hand, philosophy is becoming more concrete and applied, focusing less and less on pondering ancient texts.

Academic philosophy has changed a lot since I got into it. I can't complain about these changes -- after I, I did participate in bringing them about! -- but I do want to put in one good word for studying ancient texts, a practice that I hope doesn't die out entirely. The mutual fund maestro Peter Lynch used to say that the strongest single influence on his investment wizardry was his philosophy major at Boston College. The idea was that in order to anticipate where, say, George Berkeley's argument is going it may do no good at all to look to what (you think) is true -- you need to find the thread and follow it. It's a matter of grasping the principle of a parallel universe and, wacky as it might seem, following that principle. Similarly, if you as an investor are going to outperform the market, you need to know where it is going next. In doing so, looking to what (you think) is true may be a distraction at best and at worst a prelude to disaster. You need to enter its sometimes weird little world and function there.

This can be a very useful skill to have when dealing with human beings. In general, studying philosophy can give you a whole range of skills that are transferable to other realms -- including the ability to analyze problems, write clearly, and argue a case. (For this reason, I've always said it is a much better pre-law-school major than political science, which for some reason is the usual choice.*) This in fact is simply the traditional, pre-twentieth century defense of a classical education. I think it works much better as a defense of studying philosophy than it did as a defense of studying Greek poetry.

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* Clearly, what people are thinking when they make this common mistake is that the one thing you need before you go to law school is to find out something about the subject matter of law school -- i.e., the law. Actuallhy, this is the one thing you obviously do not need. Law schools are very, very good at teaching you that stuff, and you will start getting it as soon as you arrive there, beginning on day one. What they are not so good at communicating (from day one) are the basic mental skills that are presupposed by what you will be doing there. For that, go to a discipline like philosophy.

New Assaults on Free Discussion in the University

Here is an excellent essay by Kurt Anderson (with whom I don't often agree) about the current wave of attempts to end discussion and silence disagreement. He says, inter alia:

Some of these episodes were trivial, some significant. Some were about trying to prevent speech (Ahmadinejad, Summers, NARAL), some only about stupendously overreacting to it (O’Reilly, MoveOn). But they all reflect a common temperament: an instinct to repress the disagreeable or the impolitic. Almost any argument about race, gender, Israel, or the war is now apt to be infected by a spirit of self-righteous grievance and demonization.

One thing I like about his essay is that it clearly recognizes the pervasiveness of this curious phenomenon. It comes from all parts of the political spectrum, left, right, and center.

Over the years, I've noticed that these things do, as I've just suggested, come in waves.

During the nineties, hundreds of universities across the land enacted speech codes to protect various races, ethnicities, and life-style groups from language that is "hurtful," "demeaning," or "degrading," but usually not otherwise clearly defined. Most of them by far are still on the books.

Currently, there is a wave of angry controversies over the very idea of allowing some guest speaker or other the use of a university forum.

For several years there has been another wave, one that is still rolling on as I write. Anderson does not mention it, probably because he does not see it as part of the same phenomenon. I have in mind a series of incidents in which there are moves against faculty members who are, so to speak, not clearly enough "on the right side" of the War on Terror. Ward Churchill is detenured and fired for reasons that would probably apply to others who are not being molested. Norman Finkelstein is denied tenure at de Paul, under suspicious circumstances. The summer before last, a Wisconsin state legislator hears a university instructor espousing his 9/11 conspiracy theories on talk radio, and demands he be fired. He nearly succeeds.

I am very sorry to say that almost none of the people who resisted the speech codes of the nineties have uttered a single objection to this last, obviously most vicious, series of moves against academic freedom. Last year, when some of us at UW circulated a letter urging that the 9/11 conspiracy theorist not be fired (see link above), we could not find a single political conservative who would sign the letter. (That is, to the best of my memory. If someone shows me I am wrong about this I will gladly publish a retraction.) Nat Hentoff said it years ago in the title of a book: Free Speech for Me, But Not for Thee.

Should we just figure that there is a division of labor here and leave it at that? The right will defend the speech rights of its pet violators (racists, homophobes, etc.) while the left will defend those of its own favored offensive ones (left-wing anti-Semites, people who appear to be soft on terrorism, etc.). I don't think such an arrangement would be stable in the long run, because it would fail to fully recognize the basic principles at stake. One such is to be found in the wise words of William Allen White: "Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others." Those who will not defend the other fellow's freedom stand to lose their own.
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PS: For a brand-new case of the speech-code type, see Gene Volokh's blog for today. (Be sure to look at the linked news story at the end to see the suspended professor's defense. Some of the commenters didn't, and probably ended up thinking his behavior is much more odd than it was.) For an abundance of material on this case, see Barry Dank's Dankprofessor blog, link in the panel at the left. PPS: The graphic above is from the Mises Blog. Go there! Gain enlightenment!

University of St. Thomas Disinvites Tutu

As many of you know, the administration of the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis has revoked an invitation to former Archbishop Desmond Tutu to speak there next year. In a possibly unrelated development, the chair of the department that invited him has been removed as chair. Here is the story. (Hat-tip to Ruchira Paul for alerting me to it.)

I can't resist pointing out that the things the administration, and those sympathetic with its decision, said in defense of that decision were right out of the lexicon of "political correctness." That he has said things that are "offensive," things that are "hurtful" to Jews. Critics of their decision claim that he was disinvited simply for being critical of Israel. I'll post about this later.

Added later: I just want say two things about this. 1.) I doubt that it was just for criticizing Israel that he was disinvited. For many years, many Jews have found comments he has made offensive, and I don't think it is unreasonable to find them so. 2.) Nonetheless, he should not have been disinvited.

1.) The Wikipedia article about him says in part:

When lobbying for divestment at a 2002 conference in Boston, Tutu stated, "My heart aches. I say why are our memories so short. Have our Jewish sisters and brothers forgotten their humiliation? Have they forgotten the collective punishment, the home demolitions, in their own history so soon? Have they turned their backs on their profound and noble religious traditions? Have they forgotten that God cares deeply about the downtrodden?" He continued by saying, "People are scared in this country [the US], to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful - very powerful. Well, so what? For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosevic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust." ... Tutu's comment about a "Jewish lobby " [in the print version of the speech, Tutu wisely changed the phrase to "pro-Israel lobby" -- LH], as well as some prior remarks, caused some offense, including by some who believed he was making a direct comparison of it to Hitler. Speaking in a Connecticut church in 1984, Tutu said that "the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God; Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings." In the same speech, he compared the features of the Temple in Jeursalem, Israel's holiest site, to the features of the apartheid system. In conversations during the 1980s with the Israeli ambassador to South Africa, Eliahu Lankin, Tutu "refused to call Israel by its name, he kept referring to it as Palestine," Lankin recalled. In 1988, he rejected the charge of antisemitism, saying that criticism of the Israeli government is "immediately dubbed anti-semitic as if the Palestinians were not Semitic" by some.

One thing that is potentially offensive about some of these comments, and things he has said elsewhere, is his habit of indulging in sloppy moral equivalences: the Israelis' treatment of the Palestinians is like the Nazis' treatment of them, Zionism is like racism, Israeli policy is morally evil in just the same way that Apartheid was, Israelis knocking a man's house down is like the same man blowing up Israelis with a bomb. Surely, there are different degrees of evil and injustice, and in all these cases there are obvious and profound differences that he does not seem to to care about very much.

Particularly annoying is his persistent tsk! for goodness sake! dismissiveness when Jews are offended by his comments. He seems to be a man who is so convinced of his own virtue that he literally can't believe it when others seem to find something about him morally objectionable. It must be the "Jewish" lobby! This guy would not survive as an assistant professor in a modern American university, with its speech codes and its atmosphere of heightened linguistic sensitivity. In my world, you might be forgiven for offending members of some protected group of people, but you had better show that you understand why they were offended by what you said!

Offensive in a different way is the following, also from the Wikipedia article:

During a 1989 trip to Israel's Yad Vashem museum, Tutu said, "We pray for those who made it happen, help us to forgive them and help us so that we in our turn will not make others suffer."

Now, I am sure that as a Christian clergyman he often has to advise somebody to forgive some past wrong and get over it. You should forgive the professor who gave you a B when you deserved an A. You should forgive your wife for having an affair with her tennis instructor. That is often very good advice. But to apply this to the Holocaust, and to say it to people who survived its horrors ... how many different things are wrong with that? (I leave this question as an exercise for the reader.)

2.) About Tutu I have somewhat the same problem that I had with Rumsfeld and Ahmedinejad: If I were voting on whether to bring him to my university, I would ask, rather skeptically, why we should expect him to say something that would advance the discussion of some subject that we find interesting or important. But of course St. Thomas is not Wisconsin. They would no doubt have different views from mine about who would be a good contributor in the academic forum. Fine. By inviting him in the first place, they have as an institution decided that he is a qualified contributor. In that context, to disinvite him can only mean that he is being barred on account of his having made comments like the ones quoted above.

My own view -- of course! -- is that none of these are reasons why someone should be barred from a university campus. He has said things that would be offensive to many (probably not all) of the Jews I have known. But that sort of thing is always true in free speech cases. No one was ever censored for giving no one cause to be angry.

Further, as I do with university speech codes, I doubt that the disinvitation was a good thing for the people who were supposed to be "protected" by it. I happen to know Jews who live in Minneapolis, and I bet they are rather uncomfortable right now, knowing that it was for their sake that this man was barred from St. Thomas. It's not a position I would want to be in, at all!
________________________
Added still later: Maybe I should point out that I have said nothing about the one issue that most people are arguing about here -- whether Tutu is an anti-Semite. I think this issue is a red herring. For one thing, the St. Thomas administration was careful to avoid accusing Tutu of being an anti-Semite. In addition, the evidence I have seen so far suggests that the charge of anti-Semitism may represent the same sort of sloppy use of language of which he himself is chronically guilty. There is no smoking gun on this question. However, a case can be made that he indulges in the sort of behavior that can get a person into big trouble under a typical university speech code: chronic, targeted, unrepenting linguistic insensitivity toward a historically oppressed or persecuted group of people. In other words, the leftists who are attacking St. Thomas' decision (rightly, in my view!) ought to be against speech codes as well.

Who Should Speak on Campus?

Two furors involving speech at American universities erupted over the last couple of weeks. An invitation to to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, current President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, to speak at Columbia University eventually resulted in a demonstration by people outside the hall. The demonstrators were objecting to his having been invited to speak. On the other coast, an offer of a one-year fellowship at the Hoover Institution for the Study of War, Revolution, and Peace to Donald Rumsfeld, former US Secretary of Defense resulted in a petition signed by 2,300 Stanford faculty and students, calling for the appointment to be revoked. If it is not revoked, it will require Rumsfeld to come to campus five times during the year and may involve his giving some lectures.

These protests raise some thorny issues. In a way, I guess I would deny that "who should speak on campus?" -- despite the title of this post -- is one of them. In a free society, this question can have no clear meaning. What campus? Who owns it? What is its mission? If the question is whether the Pope should speak, then if this is a Catholic institution the mere fact that he is the Pope is a good enough reason for him to speak here. At another sort of institution, it might not be. Even given the institution and its mission, the question of whether a given person should or should not be invited to speak may be purely a matter of taste and personal preference.

There is a closely related question, though, that I think does have a fairly clear meaning. It is: When, if ever, is it right to protest and demonstrate against someone's being invited to speak at all?

Note that such a protest is not a contribution to the dialog that would take place if they do come to campus. It is an attempt to prevent that dialog from occurring in the first place.

Now those who know me probably think they know what I am going to say next. No one should ever try to prevent any dialog from occurring. Well, not quite.

I can think of three legitimate reasons for inviting someone to come and speak on a university campus. (1) The speaker may possess information relevant to some topic worth discussing, and we may have reason to trust their claims to disclose such information to us. (2) They may possess superior abilities (due to superior reasoning abilities, theoretical knowledge, or moral character) to process this information and come up with new ideas about such a topic, ideas that are worth discussing. (3) Their statements may themselves be useful as data in our ongoing dialog on issues that are worth discussing.

In case (3) leaves you wondering what I am talking about, here is an example. Suppose we are profs in the department of criminology. We may want to invite Joe Blow, a confessed murderer, to come and address us. As a criminal, Mr. Blow's word might not be very trustworthy, but the mere fact that he says it may have some value. It may be distasteful, but studying people like him him is our job and by God we've got to do it.

It seems to me that only reason (3), the weakest of the three, clearly applies to these two speakers. One is a head of state and the other has long worked in close association with heads of state. As such, they are the sort of person who routinely takes the right of free speech away from the rest of us. Both have misled, deceived, or deliberately lied to the public in the past. In neither case does their word have clear and obvious value, except as data.

Do I want to say that neither should have been invited to speak? Well, I'm not entirely sure. I suppose the honest thing to say is that I am not completely without sympathy for the people who are objecting to their being invited to speak, in either case. And it would be pretty hard to feel sorry for either of these guys, in the event that they are denied access to any one academic forum. They've both had opportunities to express their views that are beyond your wildest dreams -- and while they were putting gags, handcuffs, and straightjackets on their fellow human beings.

On the other hand, I think the reasons the objectors give for their objections are often without much merit. At Stanford, Professor Philip Zimbardo, a distinguished psychologist, said that Rumsfeld should not have been invited on the grounds that he "created the conditions" that led to the abuse of prisoners at Abu Graib. "It is unacceptable" he said, "to have someone who represents the values that Rumsfeld has portrayed, in an academic setting."This is, to say the very best of it, just plain silly. The mere fact that someone did something wrong in the past does not mean that they should not take part in an academic discussion. And the idea that whether you should speak in an academic setting should depend on what "values" you have "portrayed" is about as pernicious a principle as one can easily imagine. It would mean that you have to pass a morality test before you can speak.

With somewhat greater plausibility, protesters at Columbia have said that Ahmedinejad should not have been invited because "he is a hatemonger." I don't think this quite makes it as a good reason either. That he is a hatemonger just means that his ideas are obnoxious and offensive in a certain sort of way. But ideas can be obnoxious or offensive and still be worth discussing. More important, shutting an idea out of the dialog, just because of what the idea is, is always a bad idea. Setting up a dialog that in principle will discuss any idea whatsoever is the best way we have of combating obnoxious ideas -- and of deciding which ones are obnoxious in the first place.

An Associated Press article poses the question of whether colleges should allow "extremists" to speak. To say that an idea is "extremist" only means that it is relatively far from the average, the typical, the ordinary. Understood in that way, the question answers itself, doesn't it?

I personally would not have protested against either of these speakers. But if I had been on the committee deciding whether to invite them ... I probably would have voted against both. In both cases, inviting him to speak looks too much like inviting a politician just because he is a politician. Is that a good enough reason to invite someone? If we were entomologists, which would be more informative: attending a lecture by a leading entomologist, or looking at one more bug?

Law Schools are Brain-Toilets

Law schools are like giant toilets into which we flush perfectly good human brains. I see it every year, and it breaks my heart. Humanities majors who don't want to pursue their major, their true love, in graduate school and then have a degree that won't get them a job ... smart people who are afraid of math ... people who are very good at math but are too unambitious or too timid to enter the more exacting world of the sciences. Law schools attract great hordes of people for reasons that are extraneous to their personal destinies and to the needs of society.

There are three kinds of reasons why this is a bad thing: personal, legal, and social.

The personal reason is obvious. If you choose a career path that violates your basic character you will live a warped, stunted life. As Thoreau said, "Follow your genius!" If you don't, your genius will exact its revenge on you.

(Business schools are also a haven for students who are just trying to be "practical," but, oddly enough, business students seldom seem to me to be people who really belong somewhere else. Maybe the difference is that everyone knows what business is, so enrolling students know pretty much what they are in for. But it is far from obvious what law is, and new students can be in for a whole series of unpleasant surprises.)

Then there is the legal reason. You might think that the law school brain-magnet is good for the legal system, since all it does is draw resources into it and away from other parts of society. But no, it's actually bad for the legal system as well.

The problem is that it attracts a lot of brains that are really not suited to it. The humanities students who are sucked into the law school pipeline tend to have the same left-of-center world view that most humanities students have. Law has many features that this sort of mind-set finds repellent. It contains many rules. These split humanity into separate groups, those who follow the rules and those who break them. Humanity should not be split at all, but united! It has many constraints. These are things you can't do, even if they would advance your noble intentions. It is hierarchical. Someone gets to tell others what the right answer is. We are not equal at all, not here. It is cold, unfeeling, judgmental.

Above all, it rests on force. Oddly, leftists are generally averse to force. I say "oddly" because all their favorite policies must of course be enacted at the point of a gun. (Try crossing the will of the regulator or the tax-collector. You will soon meet the gun-wielding legions who always stand behind them.) And yet, the one thing they really hate is -- guns! With them, "force" is the real F-word, the one you don't want to deal with. The trouble is, in the law you can't ignore it. In every criminal trial there is one person who does not want to be there. And there is an armed person present, gun plainly visible, to make sure that they do not run away. Every torts case is about whether someone will have things taken away from them or not. The young humanist must feel that there is something brutal in this.

I have seen leftist law students, and they are often unhappy. I don't blame them! They don't belong there. What becomes of them? To some extent, I am sure, the law changes them. The power of the law to acculturate people, to suck them into the true spirit of legality, is awe-inspiring. It is one of its god-like characteristics (and there are others!). But I am also sure that to some extent they change the law. They go out into the legal profession with a mind-set that is bound to thwart and undermine it. The rule of law is only possible if people in the legal system accept the basic principles of legality. If they scorn these principles and prefer their own tender feelings, their idealism, or their noble purposes, then the system will not survive. That is the ultimate legal catastrophe.

I think law is one of the very greatest of human achievements, greater even than the invention of the symphony, the novel, the algebraic formula. In fundamental importance, it is almost equal, as an achievement, to the creation of intelligent speech. For that reason alone, it is a catastrophe that law schools attract students independently of whether they have any real appreciation for the law or sympathy for its aims and methods.

Then there is the social reason for regretting the brain-sucking power that law schools have. It is not that lawyers are bad and have a bad effect on the world, per se. Law is essential to social life, and it cannot function in its most complex forms without lawyers. But it is possible to have enough of them. When we do, we have to look at the other things that people could have been: scientist, engineer, artist, scholar. Many law students are people who wanted to be one of these other things, and gave up on it. In some cases, they shouldn't have. Imagine a world with plenty of patent attorneys to help us protect our rights to our inventions -- but nothing worthwhile has been invented. In which there are plenty of people who have studied property law and know all the different ways in which title to land can be held or transmitted -- but because there are no farmers and no builders, land has no value and is not worth owning. In which there are tort lawyers who will get just compensation if you are injured -- except that no one has produced any wealth and there is nothing to seize. There is a point at which we have enough law students, and the considerable talents of the excess ones would be more usefully employed somewhere else.

Why You Should Take Notes

In my recent post on students who don't take notes in class I seem to have hit a nerve. One commenter casually referred to my claim, that failure to take notes is (as my high school teachers would have called it back in the sixties) a bad study habit, as "outrageous." There seems to be a huge gap between me and a lot of other people on this issue.

Before I say more, just one autobiographical comment on where I am coming from here. I am making the following comments, not as a teacher, but as a student. Over the years, I have sat in on courses in a number of other departments in the university, in several cases taking all the quizzes and exams, or handing in a seminar paper. For every semester of the past ten years, I have been an MATC student. I play second violin in the Madison Community Orchestra, which technically is an MATC class. And more than just technically, since a conductor is a sort of teacher and an orchestra really is a community of learners (=class). This is why I sound like a know-it-all about being a student. I've been one since the first Eisenhower/Stevenson election, and will remain one until I am too old to get around anymore.

What is the point of taking notes? One of the commenters decries the "Medieval" practice of expecting each of the eighty students in a class to hand-make their own copy of what the prof says, when the instructor (if not too lazy) could make one electronic set of notes and mass-produce them, saving the student a lot of pointless low-tech busywork.

If that were the point of taking notes, I would be against it too. (At least if you have a nice prof who will do it for you.) Well, what is the point? Actually, there is one, and the Medieval handicraft theory misses about half of it.

One of the best things about Madison's Cinematheque series is the opportunity it sometimes gives me to watch a movie in the company of the celebrated David Bordwell. David is one of the founders of UW's fine film studies program and has for a long time had a strong and healthful influence on film studies people throughout the English-speaking parts of the world. (Added later: I just found out that David has a blog on film. Way cool! See blogroll on at left.) The first time I sat next to him, I noticed that (you probably guessed where I was going with this) he was taking notes on these Budd Boetticher westerns we were watching. I should say that he was taking notes with one hand, because with the other hand he was operating a mechanism for counting the shots in the movie. I was sure that if he could have figured out a way to use his feet in watching the film, he would have been operating foot-pedals as well! He was completely, actively involved in watching that movie!

The way David watches a movie is completely different from the way most people do: they sit passively, letting the experience wash over them, or (to switch metaphors) plugging into the artist's dream-world as a superior substitute for their own. The reason for the difference is obvious: for David, film is an academic subject, which he is learning. The normal way of watching a movie is perfectly okay, provided that it is not a subject you are trying to learn.

There are at least two major functions to taking notes. One is to make a record of what you are experiencing at the moment, so that you can consult it later. The product of the note-taking process is a prosthetic memory. This function can of course be fulfilled by a ready-made, prof-written set of notes. (But I would add that if you have a "lazy" prof who, like me, won't provide ready made notes, you have to, have to make your own!)

The other function of taking notes cannot be carried out by prof-supplied notes. This function is fulfilled, not by the product, but by the process of note-taking itself. Everyone who has learned a foreign language knows that the more sense modalities you involve in learning a new word, the better. Just hearing it cannot be enough. You must also say it. And see it, written down. And write it. In addition to involving more senses, this approach also has the great virtue of making you more active, less passive. Learning is an activity. This is the most important single fact about it. It is not a "passivity," a sitting there and being-filled-up with True Dogma.

This is the main reason I am opposed to prof-written notes. The people who do this are encouraging the students to sit there like the normal movie-goer, passively absorbing the experience. This to me is pedagogical suicide. The only sort of subject where this could possibly be appropriate is one that can be taught dogmatically. Here is the truth, shut up and learn it! If there are any such subjects, I guess they would probably be elementary courses in the hard sciences. Even in those fields, though, as soon as you go beyond the elementary level, you must become a scientist and practice science yourself.

But in no case can learning ever be passive. Don't just sit there! Think! Write! Speak! Act!!

One of the virtues of the second, process-based, function of note-taking is that it helps you to focus. One of the anonymous commenters said that if a lecturer is disorganized, note-taking can be distracting and counter-productive. I have found, on the other hand, that note-taking helps me to find the structure in a lecture. When I take notes, I indent subordinate points, creating an outline-like visual structure. The activity of doing this while listening helps to bring out whatever structure (if any!) that there is in a talk. It is like looking at something with a magnifying glass, as opposed to using your naked eyes.

Of course, the fact remains that Anonymous does not have this same experience. S/he also says that s/he is either a thinking machine or a writing machine, not both at once. I have heard this same claim many times over the years.

I answer both these points with an analogy. When you play in an orchestra, you are often told to look up at the conductor. But you find that if you take your eyes off the music on your stand you can't see the notes you are supposed to play -- and may even lose your place! Its a fight between your brain and your fingers for control of your eyes. You can't look at the conductor -- to see changes in dynamics, tempo, and expression -- and also play the right notes!

Is this an argument against watching the conductor? No. It is an argument for practicing, and learning the notes so that you can play and watch at the same time.

My theory about this is that the often heard complaint, I can't think and write at the same time, can be remedied with more practice. For years I felt the same conflict between following the lecturer and taking notes on my laptop. I could handwright-and-think, but I couldn't keyboard-and-think. Recently, I broke through this barrier, and now I find that lap-top note-taking is even more consciousness-raising than the other kind. So if you come to a philosophy department colloquium, you will see me taking notes on my laptop. But it took me a while to get there!

The reason note-taking is important is not the authoritarian one that everyone should write out the precious words of the possessor of True Dogma. Jesus of Nazareth only had four people writing his words. Why should I have eighty? The real reason, or part of it, is the anti-authoritarian idea that learning is not the same thing as passively being taught. Teaching is an activity, true enough. But so is learning.

Footnote: Take a look at the Thomas Eakins painting at the top of this page. It shows Prof. Gross lecturing to the doctors of the future. Behind him are two people. One is taking notes. The other is not. Would you like to have your brain your heart cut into by someone who did not believe in taking notes in med school? ("Let's see, where was that artery, anyway?")


The Root of the Problem: Bad Study Habits!

A student emailed me yesterday saying that, reading over the reports of the recent flap about Len Kaplan's legal process class, the first thing that struck him, with the wildly conflicting reports of what Len said, was "the absolute crappiness" of the notes that people must have been taking in that class. This I think was a very astute comment, pointing up an aspect of the case that had escaped everyone else's notice. It was even more astute than he could have realized. One of the two eye-witness student accounts of the now-notorious lecture casually mentions that no one in the class, a class of over twenty people, was taking any notes at all! If they all had been taking notes, this whole you-said-this, no-I-didn't controversy might never have happened. The cause of it all may have been, not so much racism, as what my highschool teachers used to call "bad study habits." If the people there could have consulted their notes, there may have been nothing to argue about.

The student account goes on to explain that the reason that no one was taking any notes was the "informal" nature of the class.

The first thing I want to say to this is: Huh?

I don't see how a class could be that informal. This was, after all, a class. In a university. It had no point other than to change your thinking (in a good way) in the future. This is something it can't do unless you can remember it. And you know that you will forget 99% of what is happening at any moment unless you record it somehow. So everybody was treating the class as if they would have no need to remember what happened there. And yet.... Sorry. Does not compute.

My students know that this is one of my pet peeves. Why is it that so many students do not take notes any longer? Has something happened to render such behavior rational? What on earth could it be? It isn't that people have discovered some new, better way of remembering things, other than writing them down. There isn't one. So what gives?

Prof. Kaplan Explains Himself

At last, after two weeks of angry mass meetings, bizarre accusations, and very embarrassing world-wide media coverage, Leonard Kaplan has issued his own account of what he said and what he meant. You can read it here. I will add a comment of my own about it, below, later on.

Added Later: I guess the first thing to say is that I, for one, find his account substantially very believable. Admittedly, he has a motive to make what he said sound good, but it is also true that he would likely be better at remembering what he said than anyone else present because -- he was the one who said it! Also, if you look at the two known ear-witness accounts (both of which can be found on this blog) and the second-hand report in Ms. Moua's email, you can see how these other accounts could indeed represent impressions, mis-impressions, and distorted rumors of what he said, even if what he said is exactly as he represents it here.

In the article in yesterday's Badger Herald on Kaplan's statement, the only one of his accusers who could be reached for comment said that they were "disappointed" with it. What is the nature of this disappointment, I wonder? Probably, they wanted him to agree that he had said the absurd things that had been attributed to him, and apologize for having done so. If you think someone has said something that you find offensive, and they say that they didn't say it and don't agree with it, why isn't that the end of the matter? If the statement was not an epithet or a personal insult, why would they be lying about it? Do you think David Duke ever denied having anti-black or antisemitic opinions? What for? He thinks those opinions are true! I don't understand.

One more thing. Prof. Kaplan says in his statement that his case does not involve academic freedom, because he has been misunderstood. I disagree with the underlying principle here, which seems to be that academic freedom would only be involved here if he actually were a racist. Being misunderstood is not censorship, and he has merely been misunderstood.

I think he is wrong about that. Throughout history, attempts at suppressing expressions of opinion often take the form of "misunderstandings." In the old Soviet Union, people who were put away for weird, impossible crimes like "Trotskyite-fascist conspiracy" were actually "guilty" of much less serious offenses, such as telling a joke making fun of Comrade Stalin's policies. The weird charges relieved the Communist authorities of the necessity of actually discussing those policies in public. If you say something that offends me, and I give an exaggerated account of it, I no longer have to do the work of dealing with what you actually said. This is true, even if the exaggeration is unconscious and, in a way, perfectly sincere. The present case could very well be an academic freedom case if the accusations are motivated (if only unconsciously) by real offense at what he actually did say. Or if they tend to deflect people in the future from saying anything that could lead to the same sort of misunderstanding.

Comments on the "Open Letter on the Leonard Kaplan Case"

There are two aspects of the "open letter" that I should say something about.

First, it says nothing about the facts of the case itself. It only talks in very abstract terms about a certain "philosophical" aspect of it. As a result it, is rather bland. No bite to it. This is unfortunate, but inevitable under the circumstances. Earlier drafts did have comments on the facts themselves, but as we (the signers) argued about it, we gradually took every one of them out. The main reason was simple. To date, Len Kaplan has not come forth and given his account of the situation in public. In my view, this has become one of the most regrettable aspects of this case, and it is ticking a lot of people off. But it's what we have to work with. It made it imp0ssible for us as a group to comment on the rights and wrongs of the case in detail.

Second, the letter says very little about the obligations of faculty to conduct themselves in a way that is respectful and not insulting. As I have said, here, this is of course the other half of the equation. The letter focuses on the don't-try-to-intimidate-and-silence-the-faculty side of the issue, rather than the facutly-should-take-care-not-to-gratuitously-offend side of it. Obsessing about one side of these issues is what CAFAR does. You might say, it's our job, to be obsessed, just as it is the job of the student activists to emphasize the other side of the situation. This is as it should be, as long as the people on each side listen to those on the other and try, in their daily lives, to embody both sorts of values as well as they can.

Open Letter on the Leonard Kaplan Case

What follows is a letter to the university community and the world beyond from a campus group to which I belong, the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights (CAFAR). I will add a comment about it later, when I get time.

The Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has followed with deepening concern the process and news coverage surrounding the accusations by some students against Professor Leonard Kaplan of the Law School. Given that Professor Kaplan has not publicly commented on what he said in class, we refrain from commenting on any other details of the case at this time. That said, it is important to comment on a fundamental principle that is at the heart of the controversy. Namely, academic freedom.

There is a distinct possibility that the emotion and pressures surrounding this case—especially after the public meeting at the law school the evening of March 1—will have a chilling effect on honest and good faith discussion of racial and cultural issues in class and on campus. While good teaching requires that students be treated with respect, undue sensitivity and fear of accusations can cause professors and instructors to steer clear of controversy or uncomfortable truths that need to be discussed and faced if we are to improve as a society. Such pursuit of truth is the university's special charter and reason for existence.

Nothing in this statement is intended to justify the use of gratuitous offense or personal insult as an element of public discussion, whether inside or outside the classroom, and whether directed from faculty members to students or from students to members of the faculty. The university must be a place in which no member of the community has reason to fear expressing his or her ideas and feelings honestly and sincerely, within the bounds of civil discourse, very broadly defined. The university cannot accept efforts by any members of its community to silence others through intimidation, just as the university cannot accept the use of personal insult or denigrating stereotypes in the presentation of arguments.

There is a fundamental distinction between causing offense gratuitously and invidiously, and causing offense as the by-product of the fair-minded pursuit of truth or constructive criticism. A university of the caliber of UW-Madison, with its long history and tradition of protecting academic freedom in the "fearless sifting and winnowing of ideas" for the pursuit of truth, must take this distinction seriously, lest it surrenders its intellectual integrity.

We fear, however, that the crucial distinction between gratuitous offense and provocative argument has been lost in the public furor over the Kaplan case. We are dismayed at the Law School’s public response to this dispute, as it has addressed only the school's commitment to sensitivity and diversity, while saying nothing about that institution's fiduciary obligation to train minds to grapple with various sides of controversial and difficult issues. Without serious consideration of the importance and meaning of academic freedom on campus among the members of the university community, how can freedom prevail in the face of pressures from both left and right to make universities conform to one or another model of political correctness? We urge that the principles of academic freedom and fairness be a serious part of our community's response to the allegations that have been made concerning Professor Kaplan.

Signed by members of the Committee for Academic Freedom and Rights, UW-Madison

Ann Althouse, Mary Anderson, Anatole Beck, Michael Chamberlain, Donald Downs (President), Michael Fox, Robert Frykenberg, Lee Hansen, Lester Hunt, Larry Kahan, Anatoly Khazanov, Kenneth Mayer, Marshall Onellion, Dietram Scheufelle, Howard Schweber, John Sharpless, Kenneth Thomas, Steven Underwood (Legal Counsel)

I Stand Corrected on the Leonard Kaplan Case

First of all, I would like to thank the people who posted on the comments page of my original post on L'Affaire Kaplan. Though they vigorously disagreed, they expressed themselves with civility and made some good points. One person, writing anonymously, said something I think I should put in the foreground by featuring it here. The reason is that it requires that I qualify or take back some of the things I said. Here is what anonymous said.

FYI, the students did not first go public with their complaints. They sent a letter to the Dean. The Dean asked their permission to share the letter with Professor Kaplan, which they granted. Once shown the letter, Kaplan then spoke with the students but, in that exchange, appears to have left them more upset rather than less upset. It was only after these events took place that the students chose to organize a Wednesday night meeting, which is the first time that this matter went public. It seems a shame that the private conversation between Professor Kaplan and the students was not managed in a way that led to this being settled at that time. Even with all of that, the students have never called for censorship or discipline of Professor Kaplan. They have consistently sought a venue to teach the law school community about today's Hmong community.

In "Thing Two" in my original post, I said that KaShia Moua (and by implication the other students who initiated this public discussion) should have figured (as I did and do) that there must be some sort of misunderstanding here. Now of course it appears that they did talk to Prof. Kaplan and for whatever reason were not satisfied with what he said to them. This makes it difficult, if not impossible, (for me, at the moment) to second-guess what they did in going public with the "racism" charge. If they did some checking and still believed what they said, it's pretty hard to say that they shouldn't have acted on it.

It also makes me a good deal less sure (Things Four and Five) that Dean Davis failed to handle this well. He did try to start a productive dialogue, and I applaud that. I just wish he had said something publicly about the importance of freedom of speech and academic freedom at some point.

I am tempted to go back to my original statements and silently revise them, but that would be a little too George Orwell, wouldn't it? (Down the memory hole! Never happened!) I hope this correction is good enough.

There is a meeting at the Law School about this incident this evening at 7:00. I will attend at least part of it and try to find time to blog about it afterward.

Written later: I later heard that this meeting would just be another meeting between university representatives and students, this time to arrange some sort of meeting with the Hmong community outside the university. Figuring that this would not be an informational meeting, I missed it. (Actually, I went home, exhausted after the work I'd done for a talk by Lawrence Harrison, fell asleep, woke up at midnight to get ready for class, ... it was a busy day is what I'm saying.) But now it sounds, from one of the comments on this post (see below), like some new information might have come out at this meeting after all.

Another @#!&%*# Speech Case at UW!

First, if you haven't already heard about it, you need to read the article, "Professor Accused of Racial Slurs," from last Thursday's Capital Times. It tells of a recent firestorm sparked when a UW student alleged in effect that a Prof. Leonard Kaplan went all Michael Richards during a lecture on inter-ethnic relations.

Next, here are excerpts from a statement, placed on interesting page of the Badger Herald web site, by Nam Dao, a UW student who is enrolled in Kaplan's legal process class and, unlike a lot of people who have weighed in on this issue, was actually present at the now-notorious lecture:

... Though I was not offended by Kaplan’s use of the Hmong stereotypes, I felt a bit uncomfortable mainly due to the delivery of the stereotypes, which were shrouded in Kaplan’s trademark style of humor that can be quite polarizing. Yet at the same time, I realize that law school is not about being in your comfort zone all the time. Many times, we discuss delicate issues that affect everyone including gender, race, and sexual orientation.

... The subject matter in our Legal Process class was about the role of cultural values in formulating law. Kaplan used Hmong stereotypes, particularly the dowry system and the gang problem, to illustrate two points. With regards to the dowry system, if a women does not consent to sex, the man will be charged with rape in America. However, in criminal cases involving ethnic minorities, there exists the cultural defense argument—essentially, “in my culture this is not a crime.” Kaplan noted that the cultural defense argument is used by people from other cultures as well, such as Muslims. Regarding the gang problem among the Hmong population, Kaplan used it to illustrate the point that the state of Wisconsin is not doing a good job of providing educational opportunities and job training to the Hmong. Thus, the state of Wisconsin is not doing a good job of embracing cultural differences and helping a section of the Hmong to assimilate into mainstream culture. Kaplan noted that the second generation of immigrant groups usually contain a criminal element, using Meyer Lansky, who was Jewish, to illustrate that point.

I think it is clear that Kaplan is not a racist, but nonetheless some of my friends and classmates were offended by his use of Hmong stereotypes to illustrate an academic point. ... I feel that the classroom is a place to discuss stereotypes, especially in law school. Society does not have too many forums where we can discuss stereotypes openly. Kaplan, I think thought that these stereotypes were based on empirical observations. I don't think that Kaplan was trying to make a value-judgment about Hmong people. I think a reason why people were offended was because of his unconventional style, and couple that with the fact that the Hmong are under the microscope in WI and we have the volatile situation we see here. I think this incident can be a springboard to promote thoughtful and productive dialogue about race consistent with the teachings of Grutter. ...

I was not there and have not heard Prof. Kaplan's own account of what he said, so I will just say six things about this already-sorry tale. Keep in mind that all six are offered from the I-wasn't-there perspective:

Thing one: I have known Len Kaplan for over twenty years, and if I thought I heard him say some of the bizarre things alleged in law student Kashia Moua's defamatory email about him -- eg., that young Hmong men have no talent for anything but to commit murder -- I would sooner believe that I was hallucinating than that Len said and meant them. He is not a racist. As Hume said, in a conflict like this, always reject the greater miracle.

Thing two: As odd as this might seem, I think Moua should have thought something like that as well. It's more likely that there is a misunderstanding here than that a highly educated person who has spent a lifetime thinking about these matters would say such utterly wacked-out things as expressions of his/her own opinions. Get a grip, people!

Thing three: In some incidents like this one, including possibly this incident itself, people show a very poor grasp of what analytic philosophers call the use/mention distinction. If I quote someone else using the N-word, I am not using the word. I am mentioning it. This is a big difference. Shakespeare did not say "Life is a tale told by an idiot." MacBeth said it. Mark Twain did not say "Give a nigger an inch and he'll take an ell." Huck Finn said it. If I use a word, that supports your making some direct inferences about my beliefs and feelings. If I only mention it, matters are more complex. Shakespeare and Clemens did not agree with the the statements their characters were making. Their motives in constructing these sentences were rather more complicated and roundabout than direct self-expression. What were their motives? This is where you have to be complex yourself, and do some interpreting. The trouble is, today we are getting to be so sensitive to the power of certain words and locutions, that this complexity is becoming impossible. Mentioning them at all tends to be somewhat unsafe. This is not a good thing. We have to be able to mention them in order the rationally check and improve our opinions.

Thing four: From all the accounts I have seen, it looks like Dean Davis of the Law School has handled this incident very badly, from the point of view of the need to maintain a climate of rational discourse at the university. He has repeatedly apologized in Kaplan's behalf, expressed disapproval of him, and never said one word, as far as I know, that reflect an appreciation of Kaplan's rights of free speech and academic freedom. It looks like his only concern throughout has been to soothe the angry, and to assure them that at all events they should not be angry at the law school or at him. If that is indeed true, he should do something to correct this situation, right away.

Thing five: Professors and deans should think of incidents like this as "teachable moments," as opportunities to get the message across that, in any conversation, you have an obligation to make a good-faith effort to understand what the other person is saying. This is one of the most profound life-lessons you can get from a liberal education. It looks like this was very far indeed from what the Dean was thinking in this case.

Thing six: Some people who have weighed in on this have said that whether comments are racist need not depend at all on the speaker's intent. The impact of the comments, or the speakers lack of care about their impact, can be sufficient. I think this is a very serious error. The only thing that can ever give meaning to any comment is speaker-intent, the human thought behind the sounds. Impact can be ethically very important, but it is important in a completely different way. To say the impact alone can give meaning, is to say that you can can grasp meaning without bothering to interpret your fellow human beings. It is to say that your anger over the impact is a good-enough substitute for understanding.