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PaperclipPerfector  2yr ago (text post)   33868 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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There seems to be a small movement by Republican lawmakers to put legal pressure on the excesses of woke universities.

The STEM Scott writes about several bills up for consideration in the Texas state senate:

This week, the Texas Senate will take up SB 18, a bill to ban the granting of tenure at all public universities in Texas, including UT Austin and Texas A&M. (Those of us who have tenure would retain it, for what little that’s worth.) [...]

The Texas Senate is considering two other bills this week: SB 17, which would ban all DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs, offices, and practices at public universities, and SB 16, which would require the firing of any professor if they “compel or attempt to compel a student … to adopt a belief that any race, sex, or ethnicity or social, political, or religious belief is inherently superior to any other race, sex, ethnicity, or belief.”

Florida is considering a similar bill, HB 999, that would place restrictions on DEI-related initiatives and majors at public universities. Already the effects are being felt at SLACs like the New College:

We have seven or eight tenure-track candidates coming up for tenure this year. Everyone has a positive recommendation for tenure. The next step is supposed to be the Board of Trustees, which in April will approve or deny tenure. Traditionally, the Board of Trustees just rubber-stamps the tenure based on the recommendations that are made. Now, recently, President Corcoran has met with the president of our union to recommend that the candidates withdraw their files before it’s too late. My interpretation is that Corcoran suspects there’s probably a non-negligible proportion of the trustees who want to make an example out of those people and deny them tenure. The trustees as a whole, Corcoran and DeSantis want to turn our institution into something different. And in order to do that, they need to hire new faculty. The best way for them to hire new faculty is to get rid of the faculty who they can fire without breaching contract. So that means firing the tenure-track faculty. [...]

The most likely thing to happen is that they’re going to impose some changes on the curriculum. It’s not clear exactly what form and with what faculty input, but they’re getting rid of gender studies and critical race theory—they have said that publicly many times. The law, HB 999, is hopelessly vague. There’s so many things that could fall under the umbrella of gender studies and critical race theory, and we don’t know what programs, classes or parts of a given syllabus are likely to be illegal if it passes. We don’t know if that will mean we will have to submit our syllabi to the provost or the president or the board, or what authority they will have.

I'm in a bit of an odd place with regards to these issues. I don't fit neatly onto the woke "how dare you attack our most hallowed and sacred institutions!" side, nor the anti-woke "stop teaching this pinko commie crap to our kids!" side.

I really do have an almost naive faith in free speech for all, even for my worst enemies. Despite being an avowed rightist, I not only want leftists to be able to speak, but I want them to be platformed! I want to help you get the word out! I think our public life really should play host to a diversity of viewpoints. I think the university should be a hothouse of strange and controversial ideas. By all means, keep teaching CRT and women's studies and black studies and whatever else you want. I know that leftists don't extend the same courtesy to me, but that doesn't invalidate the fundamental point that I should extend that courtesy to them. Even just beyond extending formal charity to my political outgroup, I actually enjoy a lot of this type of scholarship and I find value in it, I like Marxist literary criticism and the obscurantist mid-20th century French guys and German phenomenology and all the rest of it, and I think it should continue to be taught and studied on its own merits, even if I don't necessarily agree with the politics.

But! It really is hard sometimes. When things like this happen, when a book chapter that was, by all accounts, a completely anodyne explication of the official party ideology, whose only crime was that it didn't go far enough in advocating the abolition of all gendered pronouns, is met with public humiliation and a tarnishing of the reputation of the author... it does make my blood boil and it's hard to maintain my principles. It makes me want to go "ok, yeah screw it, ban all liberal arts programs at universities, I don't care, whatever, I just want these people to lose." I'm on their side on a lot of the key object-level issues and I still want them to lose! That's why I constantly feel like I'm of two minds on these questions.

In spite of all the problems with the modern university, I still think it's important that we have at least one institution that acts as a countervailing force to utilitarian profit-maximizing techbroism. The university as it stands now leaves a lot to be desired. But if the choice is between the university we have now, or nothing, I'll stick with the university.

I don't have an opinion on tenure, and I lean on the side of thinking that legislation ought not to interfere with the operations of even public universities to the extent of banning it. Likewise, I'm not sure that legislation ought to specifically compel firings of professors spreading odious views, including "belief that any race, sex, or ethnicity or social, political, or religious belief is inherently superior to any other race, sex, ethnicity, or belief." As described by Aaronson, the professor would have to at least attempt to "compel" this belief, but that could mean something as innocuous as stating it in class and winking, for all I know. I don't know if setting the precedent for such legislative micromanaging causes more harm than good.

But for SB17, as described by Aaronson:

The Texas Senate is considering two other bills this week: SB 17, which would ban all DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs, offices, and practices at public universities

seems like a very straightforward implementation of the first amendment religion clause. DEI is clearly a religion, a specifically and openly faith-based worldview with certain morals that follow downstream of that faith, and much like how public universities ought not push Christianity or Islam on its faculty or students, it ought not push DEI on them either. The devil's in the details, I suppose, since public universities certainly can make accommodations for religions including having services, and maybe this law might go too far. I would think that such a specific law wouldn't even be required, though, since the Constitution already covers this.

lean on the side of thinking that legislation ought not to interfere with the operations of even public universities to the extent of banning it.

Public universities are creatures of the state. Why should the legislature not supervise them?

Part of what makes a University a University and not something else is a degree of self-government. An institution that teaches a 13-16th grade curriculum determined by the politicians and/or bureaucrats in the sponsoring Education Ministry may be doing something valuable, but it isn't continuing the tradition that began with those communities of scholars in Paris, Bologna, Oxford and Cambridge in the High Middle Ages.

FWIW, I don't think that the legislature abolishing tenure (something that happened long ago in the UK without causing serious problems) or regulating non-classroom DEI initiatives gets close to the point where it turns a public University into a Even Higher School. But (for example) a law prohibiting the teaching of books by paedophiles would be pushing the boundary.

SB16 seems different, in that if it is enforced as written, it prevents the University teaching that correct social, political or religious beliefs are superior to incorrect ones. An organisation where the curriculum is subject to government sanitisation to remove controversial topics is not a University.

So the public must fund these institutions but have no say so that they can continue in the tradition of historic universities? That’s an incomplete argument especially given that we have numerous private universities.

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