Academic censorship in the US

[Tom 1]

Schooling and higher education in the US has become an ideological battleground. The conservative right is trying to impose a blanket ban on any discussion of US history beyond the accepted Hollywood-style narrative. At the other end of the scale, the pressure to conform to an extreme liberal agenda seems increasingly bizarre:

A professor’s resignation highlights pressures within academia to conform

Censorship of this sort is hard to sympathise with - 'A professor at a University of California medical school was recently recorded apologising in an endocrinology lecture for using the term ‘pregnant women’.

But conservative attempts to shut down the mere mention of anything they don't like are equally odd.

Where will it all end up? Increased polarization and an even more divided US, or an eventual return to some kind of middle ground?

 

[Handmaid for Jesus]

Schooling and higher education in the US has become an ideological battleground. The conservative right is trying to impose a blanket ban on any discussion of US history beyond the accepted Hollywood-style narrative. At the other end of the scale, the pressure to conform to an extreme liberal agenda seems increasingly bizarre:

A professor’s resignation highlights pressures within academia to conform

Censorship of this sort is hard to sympathise with - 'A professor at a University of California medical school was recently recorded apologising in an endocrinology lecture for using the term ‘pregnant women’.

But conservative attempts to shut down the mere mention of anything they don't like are equally odd.

Where will it all end up? Increased polarization and an even more divided US, or an eventual return to some kind of middle ground?

IMHO,It is an effort to pull the wool over the eyes of the population. It is a trick of our enemy. Anything can be perpetuated on a population that has stopped thinking.

 

[spiritfilledjm]

Just like here when discussing doctrine and Christianity, few seem to be able to see the logic of the middle ground. It always has to be one side or the other.

 

[iluvatar5150]

Schooling and higher education in the US has become an ideological battleground. The conservative right is trying to impose a blanket ban on any discussion of US history beyond the accepted Hollywood-style narrative. At the other end of the scale, the pressure to conform to an extreme liberal agenda seems increasingly bizarre:

A professor’s resignation highlights pressures within academia to conform

Censorship of this sort is hard to sympathise with - 'A professor at a University of California medical school was recently recorded apologising in an endocrinology lecture for using the term ‘pregnant women’.

But conservative attempts to shut down the mere mention of anything they don't like are equally odd.

Where will it all end up? Increased polarization and an even more divided US, or an eventual return to some kind of middle ground?

The Economist is paywalled. Do you have a subscription?

Either way, did this guy quit because of censorship or because he got dinged for not conducting his Sokal Squared experiment properly?

 

[Abaxvahl]

Where will it all end up? Increased polarization and an even more divided US, or an eventual return to some kind of middle ground?

I do not expect some kind of return to a "middle," for people simply disagree and nothing can be done about that. Perhaps people will get over the drama and stop caring so much though.

 

[Tom 1]

I do not expect some kind of return to a "middle," for people simply disagree and nothing can be done about that. Perhaps people will get over the drama and stop caring so much though.

Seems like it has to go somewhere. The US political scene seems too volatile not to move towards some kind of solution, unless it’s always been like that. I didn’t pay that much attention until it turned into a reality show.

 

[Tom 1]

The Economist is paywalled. Do you have a subscription?

Either way, did this guy quit because of censorship or because he got dinged for not conducting his Sokal Squared experiment properly?

This is the crux of the part relating to the headline:

'Peter boghossian, an untenured assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University (psu), was one of the most vocal critics of post-modern ideology in the academy, until he resigned from his university on September 8th. In 2018 he and two authors tried to publish 20 fake papers, in order to expose what they saw as a willingness to publish anything that used the right jargon. Seven were published, including one on “queer performativity” in urban dog parks, and one calling astronomy imperialist and suggesting physics departments study interpretative dance'

His seems to have been a protest resignation. Then the article goes on to take a broader look:

'A report published in August by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (fire), a campaign group, has found that since 2015 the number of scholars targeted with demands for investigation, demotion, censorship, or termination reached 113 in 2020, or a total of 426 cases in five years. Some of these cases may stretch the casual observer’s sympathies. The majority, though, are “academics on the left being attacked from further left”, says Sean Stevens, one of the authors'

and

'Some on the left claim that illiberalism on campus is overblown. In an article in Liberal Currents, Adam Gurri wrote of the fire report that, “if any other problem in social life was occurring at this frequency and at this scale, we would consider it effectively solved.” That is doubtful. According to Mapping Police Violence, a website, police have killed 381 unarmed African-Americans since 2013. This is (rightly) considered a problem and a global movement exists to draw attention to it.

Part of the problem, says Bruce Gilley, one of Mr Boghossian’s supporters at psu, is the “diversity industrial complex” within college administrations, that need to justify their existence. Diversity vice-presidents at Oregon’s three public universities have an average compensation of $262,000. In 2018, Mark Perry of the University of Michigan revealed that his university had nearly 80 diversity officers at a total annual payroll cost of $10.6m.

This makes it hard for anyone who wants to challenge prevailing views, especially on issues such as race and gender, Mr Boghossian argues. “Just the threat of being called in by the diversity and inclusion office is enough to silence people.” '

It's a speculative opinion piece that doesn't really conclude anything, but in general it's not a healthy trend, I don't think, that is being discussed. Too many academics and others thinking that their opinions have some kind of absolute force of truth about them.