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If the main observable action when in power is to further the downward trend against academic freedom, why should anyone trust the claims being made? Actions speak louder than words after all.
If we want academic freedom we should make moves towards academic freedom, not be indistinguishable from the censors.
If. Notably, that is not the main observable action, since academic freedom isn't being suppressed by defunding academic organizations that violate civil liberties law or by defunding academics that support explicitly anti-academic ideologies. Even if academic freedom were being suppressed, most people don't observe academic freedom as some sort of scalar value that increases when the sum of all academics practicing their academic freedom goes up or something. These are vectors where the specifics matter, and, as such, to say that this is the "main observable action" - even presuming that it were an observable action in the first place, which it isn't - is wrong.
I don't think most people have a difficult distinguishing between the behavior of Trump and his ilk in this context and the behavior of the censors that have been running roughshod throughout academia's veins. Notably, this does make moves towards academic freedom, by punishing organizations and people who have demonstrated and/or made commitments to suppressing academic freedom. If we want academic freedom, we should punish such people so as to provide an incentive not to do it further.
And empirically, one method that has absolutely not worked at all for increasing academic freedom - in fact, it has only resulted in things getting worse and worse over time until today, when academics not being free has become so common knowledge that academia has substantially discredited itself as a source for truth - is to not punish these people when you have power.
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Yes, exactly. This is why current complaints about the lack of academic freedom cannot be taken seriously.
If Ukraine wants peace, they should make moves towards peace, not shoot missiles into Russian territory.
Do you think the only complaints about academic freedom come from the same people who were censoring before?
I hope you are aware there are tons of free speech and first amendment advocacy groups, left and right leaning libertarians, and other stuff like that who opposed left censorship before and are opposing right censorship now.
Yeah, I think most people complaining about this now were either directly participating in the censorship, approving of it, or at most not all that bothered by it.
Sure, there were some pro-free speech groups, I think FIRE is the most prominent. Libertarians are non-entities though, and it would be an odd one if they complained about government grants being cut.
I think it's also worth pointing out that even FIRE and the other libertarian groups are essentially part of the Republican coalition. Both their personnel and their legal arguments draw almost entirely from the right side of the political spectrum. They have been totally and completely frozen out of left-wing institutions, most dems outside the abundance movement refuse to have anything to do with them, and even the abundance dems are embarassed and try to downplay the relationship as much as they can to their fellows.
With the exception of now-irrelevant dinosaurs like Ira Glasser, pre-2025 calls for free speech, tolerance, and academic freedom came exclusively from the right, and even now that Trump is in power the only people maling principled arguments in that direction are still disproportionately right-wing activists.
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You can be against government grant funding as a concept and be against unconstitutional anti free speech idealogical selection in grant funds if it does exist.
I'm not sure you can. The whole point of goverent grants is fund what the market will not, and thus be distortionary, from a libertarian point of view.
And any libertarian-lite attemot at salvaging this by saying "well, as long as we have government grants, they should be assigned neutrally" runs into the problem of them not having been neutral for decades, and said libertarian not uttering a peep about it, as well as "neutrality" being hard to define in the he context.
You can not support something existing but also believe that if it does exist it should at least be done in a fair and freedom supporting manner.
Right, so if funding withdrawals exist, they should at least be done in a fair and freedom maximizing manner. How is this not what happened in the discussed case?
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The ACLU shit the bed ages ago and their top lawyer is in favor of burning books.
FIRE exists and has expanded their purview, yes. I am glad there is one organization that actually has principles.
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