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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   33038 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.

Tenure is a bit of a strange institution, and honestly seems a bit useless in today's world. Why bother firing a professor when you can just allow students/activists to harass them in the classroom, at their houses, or in all online spaces? Some professors probably wish the university would fire them just so their would be a valid target for a lawsuit. Unless you have Robin Hanson levels of not giving a fuck (he has survived at least three attempted cancellations that I know of), tenure isn't much of a protection.

I actually think all the various leftist dominated fields are the source of the problem. I don't think banning them all will fix the problem. The activists already exist in large numbers in fields that wont get banned, like English departments. And the power of these departments comes through Gen-Ed requirements. That is the only way they can plausibly justify the size of their departments.

I would like to see state legislatures take a more interesting approach to handicapping university activists:

Destroy the traditional 4 year degree. Force universities to offer a-la-carte options for education. A "general education" degree for gen eds. None of which can be required to take classes in a specific college within the university. Allow testing out of entry level classes. Make it possible to speedrun an engineering degree in a year or two.

Many universities have switched from relying on endowments to relying on tuition and housing payments from existing students.

Politically make it about protecting students from predatory practices by universities. After all, its a business model that relies on getting gullible teenagers to buy a product via peer pressure, and then makes them spend a decade of their life (one of the best decades of their life) paying it off.

Of course tenure is useful. It is a carrot for academics to accept lower pay and general disrespect for that sweet promise of making it to the top. It is also one of the big incentives for research output. Without tenure, I expect academia would be much less popular.

Cancellation, especially in academic contexts, is overrated. The median tenure-track professor has no expectation of attracting a Twitter mob. He or she does expect to be dragged out of the lab every semester or two for an undergrad class. In this much more common situation, tenure is actually useful.

It is a very odd incentive structure. Show us you can produce lots of research, and we will reward you with a position where you ... don't have to produce anything. The lazy ones that need tenue shouldn't get it. The high producers that should get it, don't need it. The other case where you might want it controversy. But you just pointed out that this isn't a concern for most professors.

Show us you can produce lots of research, and we will reward you with a position where you ... don't have to produce anything.

I don't think this is actually a problem or that odd at all. If you demonstrate that you're someone who can and does do a lot of high quality research, you get given more trust and a position that lets you really focus and work on something even if it doesn't lead to commercial viability within half a year. That, along with the ability to go against social trends without losing livelihood, is my working understanding of the reasons behind tenure - and I think they're pretty good, all things considered.

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