Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Who Will Fill The UW Villain Void?
Kevin Barrett won't be coming back to the UW next semester. No surprise there. That leaves us with a Villain Void in The System. Who will fill it?
I teach Communication Studies (First Amendment, Classical Rhetoric, Civic Engagement, Rhetoric of Rock Music) at UW Oshkosh. Served two terms on Oshkosh City Council. Originally from Brooklyn, NY.
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6 comments:
Tony I think you could be the next big embarassment for the University. You need to work harder though and wear socks with sandels like Barrett, or you'll never cut it as a "nut job"
Barrett is only the latest of many. He was a nice, easy target.
We have been attacked over backup jobs, felons, due process, misuse of sick leave, you name it. . .
It won't take long for UW haters to come up with a new reason to go after us.
It is just that we gave them the gift of Barrett.
The Barrett Affair has left us with a much more dangerous and serious legacy. Instructional academic staff, for whom academic freedom was not protected even before Barrett, now have to be that much more careful about saying anything in their classes or even off campus that upsets the self-appointed guardians of what is true, good, and scholarly.
No UW Hater could do as much damage to us as we have done to ourselves in the last 3 or 4 months in our hyper sensitive response to Barrett. An academic system that sacrifices its core principles in the name of public relations is not one that can, in the long term, inspire the confidence of citizens or even those legislators that make us tremble. We have shown that we can be easily bullied, meaning we will be bullied some more in the next legislative session.
Monday's print edition of the Capital Times contained a message from a Madison woman who received a phone call (at work mind you) from her daughter who attends UW-Oshkosh. Daughter was extremely angered that her teacher at UWO was promoting creationism as fact. Who might that instructor be? Anyone care to comment?
Tony,
I know I should let it go, but as I remember, Barrett came to campus, gave a talk and left again. How exactly is that sacrificing our "core principles?"
I criticized the decision of the greens to invite him, the chancellor organized a few other talks around his visit.
Our "core principles" involved not criticizing anyone who comes to campus to speak?
How was anything sacrificed in this? I have spent plenty of time criticizing creationists and christianists; have I sacrificed our core values by doing that?
The opposition to Barrett's visit, from the beginning, was motivated by a fear of "UW Haters" in the legislature. (If it were motivated by opposition to speakers who employ suspect research methods, then we ought to see opposition to quite a few of the speakers who come to campus.).
The moment we are motivated by fear of legislators, business executives, priests, or anyone/anything else other than pursuit of truth, we have sacrificed THE core principle of academia that in the West goes back at least to Socrates.
I think Professor Maguire's presentation at the academic freedom panel was the most eloquent statement of what we have lost in this affair. He said:
The question that we have to ask ourselves is whether we believe in academic freedom in fact or merely as a convenient way of shielding ourselves from criticism.
The test has to be whether we conduct ourselves in a way that is consistent with the claims and the statements about academic freedom that our found in the institutions’ governing documents.
If we look in Chapter One of the Faculty Handbook, we see this statement:
“To be free, a university must encourage a full examination of all viewpoints, but to remain free, the institution must avoid actions which advocate a particular viewpoint.”
I don’t see how what we are doing on this panel, and the one two weeks ago on “Why People Believe Weird Things” can be squared with that statement.
Rather than encourage a full examination of Kevin Barrett’s point of view, it seems to me that we are trying to overshadow and crowd out his appearance on campus. And in doing that we are advocating a particular viewpoint about his legitimacy. Here's a link to his full statement:
http://www.tonypalmeri.com/maguireonacfreedom.htm
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