Category: college professors acting badly

Williams College melts down in a big way

May 8, 2019 • 9:45 am

Williams College is truly going the way of Evergreen State, and the trouble is happening today on three fronts. The College administration has lost control of the both the students and the faculty, and a student sit-in will happen this week. Here are the issues:

1.) Campus Security Officer pushes back against unfounded student complaints about university security. In a poignant letter addressed to students in the campus newspaper the Williams Record, Nancy MacCauley, a campus safety and security (CSS) officer, who happens to be black, has chastised the students for claiming that her office isn’t doing their job and is making the students unsafe. This comes from the customary accusations leveled against campus security and police  when students feel they are victimized and unsafe. (My theory, which is mine, is that when students are unsettled, they blame the cops and campus security for their insecurities and grievances. Perhaps that’s because of the name “campus security.” )  In fact, as far as I know, Williams CSS is doing a good job and has not been found culpable of anything. (We see the same criticism of the campus police by students at the University of Chicago.) One of the student demands in the CARENow list (the list compiled by the Aggrieved, Offended, and Entitled Students) is this:

9. Fund a thorough external independent investigation into the practices and interactions CSS has with students, namely minority students.

Here’s part of MacCauley’s letter (my emphasis):

Dear Williams Students,

I see you, I hear you, I have helped many of you and I have been here for you. Therefore, I feel the need to share how disheartened I am about the recent article in the Record [JAC: I believe she’s referring to this article, which makes a lot of accusations against CSS but gives no specifics] and the negative perception about Campus Safety and Security. Not sure how this all happened, this change in perception. I have lived in Williamstown and walked on this campus since 1957. This college has brought me so much joy.

Since I was 10 years old, the students at this campus have had my attention. I witnessed the Hopkins Hall takeover. There have been so many new student faces, decades of history, and conversations which have always been about giving you the tools to change the future.

The allegations made against the men and women who work hard to keep you safe from yourselves and outside the purple bubble [JAC: Purple is the official college “color”.] saddens me deeply.

We didn’t ask to be a part of your struggle. You put us in it because it was easier to blame us. You didn’t work to make change in a productive manner that this college stands for. You fail to communicate.

I was raised, as a Black woman, to communicate my frustration and work for solutions. You choose to blame and not see it worthy to come to the table and meet us as people. You say, “why do I have to, we shouldn’t have to.”

I would suggest that you look at yourselves and history. Talk to those of us who have experienced racism, fear, struggles and injustice so that you can learn. It’s a journey. We’ve all taken it. . .

. . .Disappointed, saddened I am for you…
Respectfully,
Nancy Macauley
Campus Safety and Security

I’ve omitted some in the interest of conserving space. Note that MacCauley says “it was easier to blame us”, supporing my theory that campus security is somehow responsible for soothing sooth student anxiety. I have to add that MacCaulay is brave for doing this. Even though she’s an African-American woman, she’s now going to be demonized for telling the students that they are both wrong and overreacting. Her job might even be on the line. But she could hold her tongue no longer. Kudos to this woman (this information is on the CSS public page:

2.) Two English professors have a big public fight about racism.  This is documented in both the article below, by the paper’s editors, as well as a letter in the newspaper from two students (Jamie Kasulis and Emily Zheng) who witnessed the altercation. The altercation involved a white English professor, Katie Kent, and a “woman of color” professor, Dorothy Wang, who is Asian. Once again it involves so-called “violent practices” and “structural racism” in the college. The fight broke out when Wang asked Kent if they were going to discuss these issues at a faculty meeting vis-à-vis another English professor, Kimberley Love, who took medical leave because of “structural racism”.  The altercation is almost humorous in the extremity of the claims made, except this is not at all good publicity for Williams. From the article by the paper’s editors:

On April 17, two students saw Chair and Professor of English Katie Kent behave aggressively toward Professor of American Studies Dorothy Wang, a woman of color, in an approximately 15-minute verbal confrontation in Hollander Hall.

Wang, a former faculty affiliate in English, had approached Kent on her way to a departmental meeting to ask Kent if the meeting would discuss the recent leave of Assistant Professor of English Kimberly Love. Love had cited the College’s “violent practices” as a reason for her departure at the beginning of the spring semester. Wang had previously expressed concerns about the cancellation of recent English department meetings. For her, they were reflective of the department’s unwillingness to discuss what she sees as its longstanding history of hostility toward faculty of color (FoC) – a concern that had compelled Wang to disaffiliate from the department several weeks ago.

The two students who witnessed the event – Jamie Kasulis ’20 and Emily L. Zheng ’20 – have met with Dean of the Faculty Denise Buell and President of the College Maud Mandel about Kent’s behavior. The two have called for Kent’s resignation, citing her role in what they perceive to be issues of structural racism in the department. Kent wrote notes of apology to Wang, Kasulis and Zheng, but all three found the apologies insufficient and disingenuous.

The incident is then described for a second time in the same article:

According to Wang, Kasulis and Zheng, Kent reacted immediately and negatively, saying that sufficient conversations around Love had already been held.

“Professor Kent got immediately irritated,” Kasulis said. “She took a defensive posture. She raised her voice.” When Wang mentioned the particular relevance of Love’s departure for the English department, given Love’s critiques of feeling unsafe and unwelcome, Wang said that Kent responded, saying, “‘She was talking about the College, Dorothy. She wasn’t talking about the department; she was talking about the College.’”

For Wang, that statement was emblematic of what she sees as the English department’s continual inability to reconcile with its historical and present-day manifestations of racism.

Kent briefly left after making that statement, and Wang said to Kasulis, “This is why I disaffiliated from English.” Upon hearing Wang’s comment, according to Wang, Kasulis and Zheng, Kent immediately turned around and made an incensed statement closely resembling, “Are you talking shit about me to your students?”

“She was literally yelling in the hallway,” Kasulis said. At that point, Zheng, who had been listening from a chair across the hallway, walked up to Wang and Kasulis.

“I came over as soon as I heard her run back into the hallway and yell profanities,” Zheng said. “I didn’t really want to intrude … but I did so only after she started raising her voice, because that was alarming. I stood up because I couldn’t just sit there while she verbally attacked my friend and my professor.”

Zheng said Kent’s tone and physical posture made her fear for the safety of Wang and Kasulis.

If there were a National Enquirer for colleges, this would belong in it.

Kent is not going to resign: the dean asked her to write an apology and she did. I would love to have been a fly on that wall. The issue of Kimberly Love has already been settled—she’s taken paid medical leave for the semester—but Wang won’t let it rest. My best inquiries and investigations have not led me to find evidence for any structural racism in either the college or the department. In my view, this is an issue of unhinged faculty and of entitled students who want to be offended.

There’s a lot more in the article, but the upshot is that the students won’t accept Kent’s apology: they want her GONE. And the students are arguing that this yelling by professor Kent is an example of the “violence of the institution” and the “toxic culture” of the English Department. Meanwhile, the students are now going to have a sit-in about this. This should be interesting:

Students have organized a protest, “Love and Accountability: Occupy Hollander for FoC,” for Friday from 12:30–1:30 p.m., calling for recognition of what the organizers call “violent racism” in the College’s treatment of FoC [Faculty of Color]. Students have also invited the community to express gratitude and support for FoC, and have called for Mandel and administrators to address issues of racism at the College against people of color (PoC).

3.) Williams students refuse to recognize a pro-Israel student organization though they’ve already recognized a pro-Palestinian one. The college gives the pro-Israel group secondary status, probably without perks. 

Meanwhile, as I reported a few days ago, the Williams College Council (the student governmental body) refused to recognize as a registered student organization (RSO) the group Williams Initiative for Israel (WIFI), even though they had recognized the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as an RSO. As I said, this is manifestly unfair, constituting viewpoint discrimination. I also reported that President Maud Mandel made nice noises about approving the existence of WIFI, but didn’t demand that the students give it equal status to SJP. Mandel said this (my emphasis):

We’ve always expected the Council to follow its own processes and bylaws. I’m disappointed that that didn’t happen in this instance. College leaders have communicated to the organizers of Williams Initiative for Israel that the club can continue to exist and operate without being a CC-approved RSO. This is not a special exception. It’s an option that has been open to any student group operating within the college’s code of conduct. Even without CC approval, WIFI or any other non-CC organization can still access most services available to student groups, including use of college spaces for meetings and events. I see the communication of this fact to WIFI as a basic matter of fairness and people’s right to express diverse views. Differences over such views are legitimate grounds for debate, but not for exercising the power to approve or reject a student group.

Mandel’s tepid response has been called out by both The College Fix, which points out that the only guiding principle of WIFI is that Israel has a right to exist, and by The Algemeiner in the article below, which quotes a statement from the college rabbi:

Rabbi Seth Wax, Jewish chaplain at Williams College, told The Algemeiner on Thursday that while he is concerned about the CC’s decision, “by and large, it will not affect how the group functions.”

“WIFI organizers have been meeting with me, faculty, staff, and administrators since the decision last week,” he said. “Stakeholders at the college have made it abundantly clear that the club can exist without being an RSO, and I can assure you that it continues to do so.”

“The group can access almost any service available on campus, including campus spaces for meetings and events, even without RSO status,” Wax added.

He expressed particular gratitude to the college administration for supporting WIFI’s existence, and “viewing it as a matter of fairness and the students’ right to express their views.”

Gratitude to Mandel for allowing WIFI to exist, even with secondary status? This is like Jews in a ghetto licking the hand that gives them inferior rations. A group not recognized by the College Council, I’ve discovered, has no ability to request money from the College Council. Thanks for nothing, President Mandel, and thanks to you and Rabbi Wax for pretending that every group is equal (but some groups are more equal than others.)

Williams College Student Leaders Deny Recognition to ‘Pro-Israel’ Group, Prompting Calls for Inquiry

I wrote Rabbi Wax (my letter is below the fold) politely expressing my dissatisfaction with his tepid words, but of course I haven’t heard back from him. The biggest issue is whether the second-class status conferred with sweet words by Mandel on WIFI denies them the financial support offered to registered student organizations like SJP. The College Fix reports that “Williams has not answered College Fix queries about what benefits are only available to ‘registered student organizations.'”

The pro-Israel organization Stand With Us wrote a strong letter to President Mandel, also protesting the unequal treatment of WIFI versus SJP, and saying that this hypocrisy violates Williams’s own non-discrimination policy, its code of conduct, and the Student Council’s own protocols. And they’re right. What Williams is tolerating here is discrimination against a pro-Israel organization in favor of a pro-Palestinian one. That’s in line with Authoritarian Leftist sentiments, but not with fundamental principles of justice, equality and decency. All groups should be treated equally.

Yet some students are objecting in the other direction: they don’t want WIFI recognized at all. The letter below from three students, which just appeared in the student paper, tries to justify why SJP is okay but WIFI is not. This straining at gnats is laughable:

Although it is the first time a club has been denied in years, it is also the first time someone has attempted to start a nationalist club. Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) organizes around issues related to Israel-Palestine; however, they are not interested in defending the interests of some hypothetical Palestinian state. [JAC: Hypothetical? That’s what SJP is pushing for!] Instead, SJP takes a human rights-based approach to the conflict; it is deeply troubling that WIFI could not commit to doing the same. It is this inability to take a human rights approach to the conflict that factored heavily into WIFI’s request for recognition being denied.

Failures of Mandel’s WIFI statement: How her words are being weaponized against students

Clearly, Williams is melting down on multiple fronts, and everyone is to blame from the President and the administration, to the professors, and to the students, who are becoming unhinged and are not being reined in by faculty or administration.

If Williams doesn’t want its reputation to vanish the way Evergreen State’s has, they need to act now. President Mandel needs to stand up to unreasonable student demands and emphasize that there is no evidence for structural racism or violence at Williams. And if the administration finds no malfeasance on the part of Campus Security, they need to publicize that and tell the students to shut up about it (in nice words, of course). Finally, Williams needs to stop discriminating against the pro-Israel organization in favor of the pro-Palestinian one, and give them equal status and equal access to the perks allow for all registered student organizations. Unless the administration stops catering to this whining mob of entitled students, Williams will no longer be a place where parents will want to send their kids. After all, parents want their kids to get an education, not a course in grievance studies.

My letter to Rabbi Wax (of lesser interest) is below the fold:

Continue reading “Williams College melts down in a big way” →

Free speech continues to die at Middlebury College

April 30, 2019 • 9:00 am

As I reported recently, Middlebury College in Vermont, scene of an Outrage Brigade protest against Charles Murray in 2017 (the student riots injured one of his hosts on the Middlebury Faculty), just had another free-speech kerfuffle. This time it was over Ryszard Legutko, a right-wing Polish professor scheduled to talk at Middlebury about his recent book The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Tendencies in Free Societies. Shortly before Legutko was to arrive at Middlebury, he was informed by the administration that the university had canceled his talk. The reason, said an email issued by the Provost and Dean of Students, was this:

 “In the interest of ensuring the safety of students, faculty, staff and community members, the lecture by Ryszard Legutko scheduled for later today will not take place. The decision was not taken lightly. It was based on an assessment of our ability to respond effectively to potential security and safety risks for both the lecture and the event students had planned in response.”

A few days later,  an audio recording (long version here) of aggrieved students accosting three administrators became public. It was horrifying to hear how outraged the students were simply because a right-wing speaker had been invited, and how vehemently they demanded apologies from the administrators. What’s even scarier is to hear the administrators abase and debase themselves, apologizing profusely as they affirm the students’ outrage and promise that Middlebury would “do better.” It’s a prime specimen of college authorities groveling to aggrieved students.

As the Quillette article below reveals (the author is the brave Middlebury undergraduate Dominic Aiello), those administrators were Sujata Moorti, incoming dean of the faculty, Baishakhi Taylor, Dean of Students, and Renee Wells, director of education for equity and inclusion.  Aiello adds his own take on the shameful behavior by both students and faculty:

As my recording of the event shows, it was a call-and-response performance starring outraged protestors and three highly sympathetic administration members—two of them being both deans and gender studies professors. The whole thing resembled a modern day Struggle Session, with kids literally weeping over the “violence” that supposedly had been brought to campus through the vessel of Legutko. The response of the administrators was an endless expression of sympathy and guilt, as well as pledges to make things right. The students actually demanded that the administrators take notes. And like an obedient underling, one of the professors whipped out her phone to record every demand (all of which were subsequently published in manifesto form).

The three faculty members spoke openly about their desire to block speakers with certain viewpoints from coming to campus, and discussed plans for an extensive background-check scheme that would allow Middlebury officials to systematically analyze speakers beforehand. I recorded all of this because I’m passionate about free speech—and I felt it was my duty to show other students that members of their own administration were explicitly advocating for a system that would allow them to restrict speech on campus in accordance with their own privately held biases.

After about an hour, three more college officials entered the room, and students again jumped up to the whiteboard to list their demands. At this point, I felt I had seen enough and decided to go home, where I listened to the 40 minutes of audio I’d recorded. I was stunned by the realization that the school was no longer run according to any coherent set of ideas set down by the administration, but rather by the knee-jerk diktats of a small group of radicalized students operating in open alliance with like-minded staffers.

Read the rest below (click on screenshot); it’s even worse than that. The letter I wrote the other day to the President, Provost, and Dean of Middlebury has of course gone unanswered.

And now (this is getting to be the normal drill), the Student Senate, the students’ governing association, has produced a list of 13 demands (well, “proposals”, though the blackmail threat outlined below takes them into the realm of demands) in the Middlebury Campus, the student newspaper:


Note that who is supposed to get “healed” here is not the community, but the offended students.

There are the usual calls for structural changes in the college, but the one below struck me especially hard. While it does not explicitly ban “offensive” speakers, it requires that all speakers be vetted by filling out a “due diligence form” to determine whether a speaker’s views “align with Middlebury’s community standards”. It also requires that academic departments publicize invited speakers a month an advance so they can be vetted by the student body. (My emphases in these demands). I quote:

  • Any organization or academic department that invites a speaker to campus will be required to fill out a due diligence form created by the Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in coordination with the SGA Institutional Diversity Committee. These questions should be created to determine whether a speaker’s beliefs align with Middlebury’s community standards, removing the burden of researching speakers from the student body.
    1. Additionally, administrators will ask Faculty Council to require all academic departments to have Student Advisory Boards which will have access to a list of speakers invited by the department at least a month in advance. The Student Advisory Boards’ purpose will be to ask the student body for potential community input when necessary.

This is absurd. What are, exactly, Middlebury’s “community standards”? Presumably they align with those of the Authoritarian Left: no questioning of things like affirmative action, abortion, blank-slate-ism, Leftism, and so on. You know the kind of speakers this is designed to get rid of: those like Charles Murray, Ben Shapiro, Christina Hoff Sommers, Heather Mac Donald, Legutko, and all Republicans.  In other words, they are pressuring the University to invite only speakers who conform to approved campus ideology.  This is just short of a ban, and certainly has a chilling effect on inviting controversial speakers.

One more demand. I myself would try to learn and use preferred pronouns of students (although in a class of 100+, it’s really hard to remember names, much less pronouns), but the following “demand,” especially the ideologically-themed required and recurrent “bias training”—and the McCarthy-esque publication of names of those who refuse that training—smacks of pure Stalinism.

Recurrent bias training will be provided to all hired staff, faculty, administrators, as well as all students, with implementation beginning in the 2019-2020 school year. The names of any faculty, staff, or administration members who do not participate in bias training should be publicly available to students so that they can make informed decisions on courses and interactions.

  1. In this bias training, participants must learn about the importance of preferred gender pronouns. All faculty must ask students’ names and pronouns on the first day of each new semester, and preferred names and pronouns must be respected.

What makes these demands rather than requests is the blackmail described below: the student government will resign en masse if these requests are not implemented and a town hall meeting with the President not convened by today. Therefore, they are demands. 

These proposals were created in consultation with the student body and we expect each to be fulfilled as stated. We would like to give the administration time to consider adequate ways to address our proposals. As such, we ask the President to address students at a town hall on Tuesday, April 30. If tangible plans to implement these proposals are not released, a majority of SGA Senators will resign such that the SGA Senate will no longer be able to make quorum, effectively dissolving the body. More importantly, students will witness again the continued inaction of the current administration.

We await the administration’s response.
SGA Senate

My view about this is: LET THE STUDENTS RESIGN! Perhaps their seats will be filled by those less demanding and more conciliatory. (There are 18 senators in total.)

Here’s the article in the student newspaper about the threat (click on screenshot); note that the article characterizes the “proposals” as “demands.”

SGA Senators Threaten Mass Resignation If Administration Doesn’t Meet Demands

Were I a parent, I wouldn’t send any of my kids to Middlebury, a place where studying apparently takes back seat to social engineering. I now anoint Middlebury and Williams as joint holders of the title “Evergreen State of the East.”

Finally, in a section of his weekly New York Magazine column, “Free Speech at Middlebury, Part Two,” Andrew Sullivan, who is gay, defends Legutko’s right to speak at Middlebury despite the speaker’s apparent homophobia. Sullivan also faults the administration more than the students, as apparently many students didn’t want Legutko’s talk to be canceled, but they did want to protest his appearance. (Note that the students in the audio recording above, however, did want Legutko to be disinvited and for such a thing to never happen again.) Counter-protest, of course, is the students’ absolute right, and perhaps the cancelation of the talk on “safety grounds” may have been an excuse cooked up by the administration to avoid the whole controversy. However, it takes only a handful of violence-prone students to destroy a talk.

Sullivan also draws unflattering parallels between Middlebury and the Polish Communist government:

After Legutko’s invite, the administration convened an emergency meeting with students. And in another encouraging sign, a rebel student secretly recorded it. Check out his video here and here. You can hear PC students arguing that gay students are too fragile to engage arguments against homosexuality, so distraught by even the idea of it that they could not study anything at all. Seriously. All those pioneering activists for gay equality, who risked their lives and careers for their cause and brought their arguments directly to the face of their opponents, should shudder at the insult.

Legutko, of course, is no stranger to having his speech threatened. In Poland, the Communists did it, with the power of the state. Communist students would berate professors in class with the same arguments against a liberal education that today’s “social justice” activists make. Legutko remembers them: “Why teach Aristotle who despised women and defended slavery? Why teach Plato whom Lenin derided as the author of ‘super-stupid metaphysics of ideas’? Why teach Saint Thomas Aquinas, who was propagating anti-scientific superstition? Why teach Descartes who in his notion of cogito completely ignored the class struggle?”

In America, with the First Amendment, he is far freer. But it’s quite clear that college administrators, following critical race, gender, and queer theory, did all they could to silence him, just as the Polish Communists did. In the same samizdat tape, one professor, responding to the outrage at even inviting Legutko to speak, told the students: “You should be outraged and we should acknowledge that and apologize for it.”

I disagree with Andrew on one point here: he sees the Middlebury students’ claim that they were not demanding the censorship of Legutko as a positive sign: a pushback against the Authoritarianism that’s effacing free speech on American campuses. I am not so hopeful or so sanguine. Given the students’ behavior with respect to Murray, there may well have been the threat of violence, one perceived by the administration when they canceled Legutko’s talk. That, of course, is spineless and shameful: their job is to allow the talk to proceed and provide sufficient security so that Legutko could talk without being shut down. The administration was also, I think, acting out of fear of its own reputation: another Murray-like demonstration would further besmirch Middlebury’s appearance.  So I can’t agree with Sullivan when he says this, though I’d like to:

I’ve long believed that at some point students would rebel against their new ideological overlords, like students always have. The desire to learn by engaging uncomfortable arguments rationally has been a deep one in the human psyche, since Socrates was executed for it. It is the root of liberal democracy. It is what universities are for. More and more are deciding to back the Chicago Principles, which guarantee that no speech can be suppressed on campus, within First Amendment limits. Sixty-two other institutions of higher learning have now adopted this principle, and the list is growing. If you’re a student denied a free education by the social-justice fanatics, ask your college administrators if they would agree to sign on.

As I used to say: know hope.

I know what hope is, but I don’t entertain it with respect to the college Zeitgeist, at least with respect to freedom of expression.

h/t: Simon

Williams College considers ways to water down free speech

April 23, 2019 • 10:30 am

As Professor Luana Maroja wrote on this site some time ago, Williams College (where she teaches) is embroiled in a debate about whether to adopt the Chicago Principles of Free Expression, a university policy outlining First Amendment guidelines for free speech on campus, and one that has been adopted by over fifty American colleges.

Unfortunately, Williams College, as I’ve documented several times (e.g., here, here and here), is rapidly become the Evergreen State College of the East, with many students and faculty openly rejecting the Chicago Principles and, indeed, free speech itself.  Along with this comes the usual demands, not for a change in American society, but for improvements in the lives of the students themselves: a change in the curriculum incorporating more “ethnicity” courses, the hiring of more mental-health counselors, free weekend trips to Boston and New York, and housing segregated by race (euphemistically called “affinity housing”).

An article in today’s Insider Higher Ed (“IHE“; click on screenshot below) documents this student pushback (supported by some pusillanimous faculty) and describes the halfhearted attempt of Williams, in the face of aggrieved and offended students, to enact some kind of speech code.

Originally, as the article describes, about half the Williams faculty signed a petition favoring adoption of the Chicago Principles, and then met to discuss the issue. (They weren’t voting on it, just talking about it.) That’s when the student pushback against free speech began:

[Maroja] said a group of about 20 students showed up, some carrying signs proclaiming “free speech harms” and other similar sentiments. Maroja said the students were disruptive and eventually started yelling at white, male professors to sit down and “acknowledge their privilege.” Maroja said she attempted to engage the students — as a Hispanic woman, she said she understood prejudice — and told them that shutting down speech they find offensive would only invigorate bigoted speakers.

The students were unpersuaded.

“Students were just screaming that we were trying to ‘kill them,’” Maroja said.

The students had put together and brought with them a lengthy statement, which has since morphed into a counterpetition, that argued the Chicago principles — and more broadly, unfettered free speech — harms minority students. [JAC: The “counterpetition” seems to be unavailable.]

These claims that free speech is violence, or “kills” people, are ridiculous hyperbole.  What these students want is for everyone to shut up and listen to them, and then enact their demands. This, and their claims that even discussing the idea of speech as violence itself constitute violence, is a form of intimidation. And it’s worked for, the Williams administration, despite having formed a committee to examine free speech, is already saying that the committee should balance freedom of expression with the “harm” that such expression could cause to minority students.

This is part of a larger movement that wants to water down free speech because they consider it inimical to “diversity and inclusion”. As the article notes,

Those who disagree with basing policies on the Chicago principles don’t dispute the importance of free expression, especially in academe. But these critics say that reliance on the principles alone can ignore the role of a college in promoting inclusivity and diversity.

Well, if that’s the case, then the First Amendment is inimical to the equality guaranteed Americans by the Constitution!

Such dilution of the First Amendment, of course, goes against every interpretation that the courts have made of the Constitution. Speech, say the courts unanimously, cannot be censored by the government just because it offends people, even if it offends them deeply. (The only exceptions to freedom of speech are speech that causes imminent harm that cannot be prevented by non-censorious means, slander and libel, personal harassment, false advertisements. And, of course, private institutions can enact their own policy: the First Amendment is about government restrictions.) I won’t go over the arguments again for not censoring “hate speech”, you can read a fuller discussion in Nadine Strossen’s new book Hate: Why We Should Resist it with Free Speech, Not Censorship (Strossen is former head of the American Civil Liberties Union), or listen to Christopher Hitchens’s powerful defense of First-Amendmen-style free speech.

Of course Williams is a private college and so can make what rules it likes, but I see no good argument for a private college carving out exceptions to the kind of free speech mandated at public universities. But that is what many students at Williams want, and so they made their own rebuttal to the free-speech petition. IHE reports further:

In their rebuttal, the students, who called themselves the Coalition Against Racist Education Now, or CARE, wrote that the faculty petition “prioritizes the protection of ideas over the protection of people and fails to recognize that behind every idea is a person with a particular subjectivity. Our beliefs, and the consequences of our actions, are choices we make. Any claim to the ‘protection of ideas’ that is not founded in the insurance of people’s safety poses a real threat — one which targets most pointedly marginalized people. An ideology of free speech absolutism that prioritizes ideas over people, giving ‘deeply offensive’ language a platform at this institution, will inevitably imperil marginalized students.”

The student group did not respond to requests for comment. But in an opinion piece in the student newspaper, The Record,CARE representatives wrote that they had no interest in the “free speech debate.” They said these issues come down to trust among students, professors and administrators. The students called the free speech argument a “discursive cover.”

“For this reason, we refuse to accept the terms of this debate. Instead, let’s see the faculty petition for what it is: an institutional manifestation of a national anxiety towards a more diverse student and faculty population, not an invitation to a dialogue,” they wrote. “Prejudice cannot be talked away; more ‘dialogue’ is not the answer. Oppression can’t be fixed with rational debate because oppression is not rational.”

Welcome to Stalin’s Russia (or Mao’s Cultural Revolution): a land of doublespeak. Oppression must be fixed with censorship!

These students are benighted, for they fail to realize that the protection of people and minorities has occurred because of free speech, and also that there already exist rules, both university and government ones, that prevent racism and bigotry. What CARE wants is the censorship of “offensive” language that, it’s said, will “inevitably imperil marginalized students.”

It won’t. What it will do is occasionally offend marginalized students, but will also offend non-marginalized students. But as Van Jones said in this powerful video filmed at the University of Chicago (required watching!),

“Learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym. That’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym. You can’t live on a campus where people say stuff you don’t like? . . . . This is ridiculous b.s., liberals. . . I want you to be offended every single day on this campus. I want you to be deeply aggrieved, and offended, and upset, and then learn to speak back. Because that’s what we need from you in these communities.”

Well, many at Williams are aggrieved, offended and upset, largely about phantoms in their own head, but they want to shut up others instead of speaking back. It’s just takes too much emotional energy for them to speak back.

And so Williams is trying to balance free speech against offended students—a losing proposition, as we learned from the fate of Evergreen State. I predict that the Williams “free speech code”, if there ever is one, won’t even come close to the Chicago Principles. For listen to what the chairperson of the committee has to say. At first it sounds good, but you can see that she is trying to actually chill free speech by warning people that some speech is not recommended and may cause harm:

The committee on free speech that President Mandel formed is due to make its recommendations in about a month, said Jana Sawicki, its chairwoman and a philosophy and rhetoric professor. My emphases in the following:

[President Maud] Mandel charged the committee with developing policies and an overarching philosophy about campus speakers and free expression, but Sawicki said she views the group’s mission more broadly, including to rework the institution’s approach toward inclusivity. Committee members have met with alumni, professors and students and have read students’ answers to an online survey on free speech. Sawicki said about 530 students responded to the survey.

Sawicki said the committee is close to drafting recommendations. The goal is to not restrict who can speak on campus but to prompt the students who invite those guests to consider whether they have academic value and whether individual speakers’ views would offend minority students or make them feel harmed, she said, adding that speakers brought on campus by student groups are generally the most controversial.

One idea the committee floated was involving faculty advisers to student clubs in more of the discussions about which speakers to invite to the campus, Sawicki said. If a student group wanted to host a controversial speaker, the adviser could talk with the club members about whether they’d thought through how the speaker’s views would affect their peers, she said. The advisers, who currently are not involved in club operations, would never stop the students from hosting a speaker they wanted, Sawicki said.

How patronizing! They can’t stop the students from inviting speakers, but they can ask them to “consider the harm it would cause”. No pressure there!

Sawicki said she initially signed the faculty petition to support the Chicago principles — a no-brainer, she thought — but rescinded her name when she saw the students’ reaction.

“What needs to be bolstered here is trust in the institution, and the institution needs to deserve that,” Sawicki said.

What an invertebrate! She withdraws her support of free speech when some aggrieved students oppose such speech. “Trust in the institution”, which apparently means “nobody gets offended”, appears to be a higher priority than freedom of expression. This is the way to destroy a college.

 

A Sarah Lawrence professor describes the cowardice of his fellow faculty

March 20, 2019 • 12:30 pm

About a week ago I described the situation of Samuel J. Abrams, a professor of politics at the swanky and expensive Sarah Lawrence College in Yonkers, New York. Abrams, a conservative, had penned an op-ed in the New York Times giving the results of his survey of the political leanings of 900 American college administrators. He found that they were overwhelmingly on the Left (12:1 liberal:conservative), more so than college faculty (6:1) and even more so than incoming college students (2:1). Abrams decried this trend as eroding “viewpoint diversity” and leading to programs that indoctrinated college students with Leftist ideology. People have questioned the rigor of Abrams’s survey, but nobody doubts that the trend he descried is real.

The editorial is pretty tame, but of course Abrams was vilified. As I wrote, a group called the Diaspora Coalition immediately took the opportunity to issue a list of demands, some of them reasonable but most unattainable, impractical, or fatuous (the latter includes free detergent and water softener for students to use).

But the most invidious demand was for a review of Abrams’s tenure, even though he’s already tenured:

In the article below from the Spectator (click on screenshot), Abrams described further defamation as well as threats to him and family and nasty signs put on his door (the same thing happened recently at Williams College, which is going down the Evergreen State/Sarah Lawrence road to perdition). Here are some of the signs:

I ask you: what kind of twisted ideologue would put up signs like that, calling a professor an “asshole” and demanding that he quit? This kind of entitled and unforgiving attitude is spreading on American, Canadian, and UK campuses; read Abrams’s editorial if you want to see how disproportionate and unhinged the students are.

And Abrams, expecting some support from his fellow faculty, didn’t get much. Click below:

Because an earlier survey by Abrams showed that 93% of professors supported freedom of academic inquiry, Abrams expected some support against the tsunami of hatred. Instead, he got tepid support. As he describes,

While the college president eventually issued a perfunctory statement noting that I had ‘every right, and the full support of the college, to pursue and publish this work,’ the faculty’s support was minimal.

The college’s faculty ‘Committee on the Conditions on Teaching’ attempted to draft a strong declaration supporting the right of all faculty to free speech, but it was eventually watered down to into a weak message that simply supported the official statement that had already been issued by the president. Only 27 members of the faculty community signed the document, roughly 7 percent of the total faculty. Thus, to my shock, a proclamation in defense of academic freedom, freedom of speech and mutual respect clearly was deemed controversial and not overwhelmingly supported by my own colleagues.

Now, six months later, with the Diaspora Coalition’s latest attempt to attack academic freedom, the Sarah Lawrence faculty could have redeemed themselves and been galvanized to support free expression. Instead, they opted for silence — and, what’s worse, many of them were supportive of the student protesters’ demands.

As of this writing, 40 professors signed on and endorsed the Diaspora Coalition’s demand list. While not a huge percentage, 12 percent of the faculty — more than the number who supported the general statement about free speech back in October — endorsed the students’ demand to challenge my tenure and my right to free speech and the expression of ideas. All this, mind you, because I wrote an opinion piece based on original survey data, which was vetted and published by the New York Times.

What shocked me here is that only 27 faculty members signed a free-speech document tacitly supporting Abrams’s right to say what he wanted, but 40 of them signed onto the Diaspora Coalition’s list of demands, which include a tenure review for Abrams conducted by the Diaspora Coalition itself and at least three faculty of color. Talk about a Star Chamber!

If you’re a student or professor at Sarah Lawrence, and you haven’t defended Abrams’s right to say whatever he wanted (and yes, you are welcome to criticize what he said: that’s what free speech is also about), then you are derelict in your duty.  Too many professors and students are becoming cowed and afraid to speak because they fear repercussions of the type Abrams experienced. It’s shameful.

The coercive power of truth: An attack on and a defense of the Chicago Principles of free speech

December 21, 2018 • 12:00 pm

Ten days ago Segal Ben-Porath, a professor in the Literacy, Culture, and International Education Division of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, published a critique in Inside Higher Education (IHE) of the University of Chicago’s “Statement on Principles of Free Expression,” a set of free-speech guidelines now adopted by over 60 American universities. Click on the screenshot below if you want to know “where’s her beef?”:

Ben-Porath’s main complaint, which, according to her c.v., seems to be her preoccupation over the last few years, has been that allowing free speech on campuses erases marginalized groups and enables “hate speech”—in other words, the usual arguments against freedom of speech.  She gussies them up a bit, as do professors at Williams College, by saying that the Chicago Principles lack nuance; in her case, they “offer false assurance” because they don’t give universities guidance about what to do when free speech clashes with student sentiments:

If a group of young female aspiring scientists are raising concerns about statements that faculty members are making in their classes and labs, the institutional response should depend on whether those students are at, say, Bryn Mawr, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or Utah State University. If African American students express opposition to a campus group’s invitation to an anti-Black Lives Matter speaker, their paths for legitimate protest are paved by the college’s history, its student body makeup and the willingness of the college leadership to work with them and help them make their voices heard (rather than restricting them to a “free speech zone”).

The Chicago principles would provide little guidance in such cases. An administration that endorsed them may be expressing its commitment to protect the professor and the invited speakers, but would that suffice as a response? It does nothing to satisfy the concerns of the students nor helps the college fulfill its mission to not only advance research but also educate all of its students. Free speech will be protected, but some students will find it harder to benefit from their education; they may be effectively silenced, which may be permissible but is surely undesirable. The invitation to speak their minds in response does little to help create an environment conducive to learning if they feel as though they are shouting into a void; in some states, protesting can lead to disciplinary action. . .

Today, the endorsement of the Chicago principles comes at the expense of the reasonable demands from people on campuses who argue that free speech that protects the expression of biased views creates an unequal burden that they are made to carry — especially as free speech today is too often used as a political tool by the right. If an institutional endorsement of the principles is the end of the conversation about free speech, it undermines the ability of that college or university to fulfill its teaching mission.

The words she writes are weasel words, because while Ben-Porath pays lip service to free speech, she really seems to want it limited when it offends minority students (though women, of course, are now in the majority on American campuses). For example, look at this, which purports to favor free speech but really doesn’t:

The current state of free speech will not be resolved by making better rules or endorsing any set of principles, no matter how well crafted. Policies are necessary to ensure equal treatment, but preserving free speech on campuses requires a redoubling of our efforts to include all of our students in a community of free inquiry. That requires a continuing commitment to listening and responding to the legitimate demands of students who feel excluded, while helping them grow and recognize their agency and power.

Well, some of the “legitimate demands of the students who feel excluded” include curbing speech that is “undesirable” and “effectively silences” them. Creating the environment that Ben-Porath says she wants means curtailing some speech, for there’s no other way she suggests that could restore the benefits that free speech supposedly subtracts from the education of marginalized students.

Ben-Porath further argues that free speech is basically a tool used by the Right to protect their own. It’s not, for free speech is classically the purview of the Left. And sadly, the curbing of free speech is being used by some Leftist students (and professors) to censor the Right. But, as Christopher Hitchens pointed out incessantly, who will get the power to decide whom to censor? The only reasonable answer is that of the Chicago Principles: nobody gets that power, not so long as the speech at issue is the kind protected by the First Amendment.

Ben-Porath is further misguided because the Chicago Principles aren’t meant to guide colleges about what to do when free speech upset students. The Principles simply establish freedom of speech as an overarching principle of discourse on campus, to wit (this is from the Principles):

Because the University is committed to free and open inquiry in all matters, it guarantees all members of the University community the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn. Except insofar as limitations on that freedom are necessary to the functioning of the University, the University of Chicago fully respects and supports the freedom of all students, faculty and staff “to discuss any problem that presents itself,” free of interference.

This is not to say that this freedom is absolute. In narrowly-defined circumstances, the University may properly restrict expression, for example, that violates the law, is threatening, harassing, or defamatory, or invades substantial privacy or confidentiality interests. Moreover, the University may reasonably regulate the time, place and manner of expression to ensure that it does not disrupt the ordinary activities of the University.

Fundamentally, however, the University is committed to the principle that it may not restrict debate or deliberation because the ideas put forth are thought to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the members of the University community to make those judgments for themselves.

As a corollary to this commitment, members of the University community must also act in conformity with this principle. Although faculty, students and staff are free to criticize, contest and condemn the views expressed on campus, they may not obstruct, disrupt, or otherwise interfere with the freedom of others to express views they reject or even loathe.

If students get upset, well, the University of Chicago is free to (and should) address their concerns—but not at the expense of diluting the Principles. When you hear calls for “nuance” when employing or considering the Chicago Principles, it’s invariably a call to limit or dilute those principles.

Fortunately, there’s a counter-piece today in IHE by Michael Poliakoff, formerly a classical studies scholar and now President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, characterized as “an independent, non-profit organization committed to academic freedom, excellence, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities.” Click on the screenshot:

He pretty much takes Ben-Porath apart, though in a scholarly and inoffensive way:

Ben-Porath expresses two major concerns with the Chicago principles: 1) that they are not a one-size-fits-all solution to the free speech debate and 2) that the Chicago principles, and free speech more widely, can come at the cost of silencing minorities — whether religious, ethnic, racial or sexual.

Ben-Porath is correct that endorsing the Chicago principles is not a silver bullet that ensures freedom of expression, a point that the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education recently concurred with. But that is not what endorsing the principles is meant to accomplish. The Chicago principles constitute a statement of intent that a university can use to guide it in fostering the free exchange of ideas. If a university is so committed, it will align its bylaws, student code of conduct, faculty handbook and programming to reflect that commitment.

For example, after Purdue University endorsed the Chicago principles, it instituted a freshman orientation that focused on the importance of free speech. Other institutions translate the Chicago principles into action in other ways. Just as the Declaration of Independence has no legal power and cannot ensure that all men are treated with the respect due to being created equal, it articulates a sacred American value with profound effect.

Re point 2:

Ben-Porath’s second point is that the demand for free speech is itself problematic, arguably even destructive of academic values. That assertion bears the marks of ideological prejudice in its portrayal of the concern to protect free speech not as a categorical value of higher education but as a means of protecting conservatism.

. . . Ben-Porath claims that free speech “comes at the expense of the reasonable demands” from those burdened by the free speech that protects biased views. But what is bias to one person may reasonably be seen as truth by another: that is precisely why the free exchange of ideas alone can further understanding. Perhaps Ben-Porath is right that proving biased views to be incorrect is a burden, but it is a responsibility that comes with leading an examined life and a valuable educational exercise in and of itself. To protect students from this activity would weaken the academic experience.

It is, moreover, all too short a step from that to Herbert Marcuse’s theory that tolerance of viewpoints that diverge from liberalism is itself repressive, and from there to the contemporary meme that speech that departs from the perceived interests of the oppressed is a form of violence that justifies physical violence to counter it. At institutions including the University of California, Berkeley, and Middlebury College, the fruit of that ideology has stained the reputation of higher education.

Well said—though it shouldn’t need to be said. But people like Dr. Ben-Porath are becoming increasingly vocal on campuses, for their social-justice mission takes precedence over free speech—another clash of liberal values that’s resolved in the wrong way. Given the importance of free and open discourse not just on campus, but in society as a whole, it would require something extraordinary to curb the kind of speech that the Chicago Principles are meant to protect. I can’t even imagine what that would be.

And we should always remember that even if free speech protects expression of conservative or even hateful views, it’s also been responsible for the remarkable progress in equality and morality discussed by Steve Pinker in his last two books. Poliakoff knows this, and ends his excellent essay with an unassailable point:

The worst irony of all is that the world of higher education, which should be eager for vigorous debate and challenge, often lags behind the diverse leaders who embrace free speech as the engine of progress. U.S. congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis asserted, “Without freedom of speech and the right to dissent, the civil rights movement would have been a bird without wings.” And, in a more recent struggle, Jonathan Rauch, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and LGBTQ advocate, observed, “Not long ago, gays were pariahs. We had no real political power, only the force of our arguments. In a society where free exchange is the rule, that was enough. We had the coercive power of truth.”

The integrity of higher education, too, rests on the uncompromising protection of the powerful truth that those who struggle for minority rights know so well.

Amen, brother!

 

h/t: Luana

Princeton’s course on how marginalized scientists can produce “different ways of knowing”

December 5, 2018 • 10:45 am

The class below, found on the Princeton University course website, asks two questions:

1.) Is science gendered, racialized, ableist, and classist?

and

2.) Does the presence or absence of women (and other marginalized individuals) lead to the production of different kinds of scientific knowledge?

 

Do any of you doubt for a moment that the answer to both questions is “yes”? (My answers to both would be “no”, since while some scientists may be bigots, science itself cannot be, as it’s simply a method for producing knowledge.) And I’d argue against anyone who claims that different sexes or ethnic groups will produce “different kinds of scientific knowledge”. Maybe they’ll ask different questions, and if that’s what Catherine Taylor means, fine, but there are already plenty of women scientists who ask exactly the same type of questions, in the same way, as do men scientists. Check out Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Charpentier’s work on CRISPR/Cas9, which builds on work by a whole community of scientists of different sex and nationality. Doudna and Charpentier approach molecular biology in exactly the way everyone else does.

In fact, if the answers to the course’s questions were “no”, there would be no need for such a course. What we have here is a semester-long exercise in confirmation bias.

Evelyn Fox Keller, in her biography of Barbara McClintock, A Feeling for the Organism, argued that McClintock, in finding mobile genetic elements, was expressing a female quality of empathy, of letting the organism (in her case corn) tell you what’s going on (see here for a precis of that thesis).  I did not find Keller’s thesis convincing, as I have never seen—nor did I see in McClintock—a distinctively female way of approaching research. (Note that Keller is an editor of one of the course’s texts.)

That is not, of course, to claim that science is a male-oriented way of doing research, despite the fact that science was, because of sexism that limited the opportunities of women, developed largely by men. The tools that produce truth—hypothesis testing, criticism, interrogating nature, and falsification, and so on—have been developed over the centuries by trial and error: seeing what techniques give us reliable knowledge. Those methods aren’t, and cannot be, limited to or characteristic of one sex. We use what works, not what flatters particular sexes, ethnicities, or classes.

But I digress. The course above is an embarrassment for a school of Princeton’s reputation. It is simply social-justice propaganda that will distort science for ideological ends. It’s dubious scholarship, a waste of the students’ tuition money, and unlikely itself to produce new knowledge. It will produce clones that parrot Clune-Taylor’s ideology.

It’s taught by Catherine Clune-Taylor, a postdoctoral research associate in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Princeton. (In general, I don’t favor courses being taught entirely by postdocs.) Her thesis at the University of Alberta was ““From Intersex to DSD: A Foucauldian Analysis of the Science, Ethics and Politics of the Medical Production of Cisgendered Lives.” Enough said.

University of Michigan President, faculty, and administration go on record opposing faculty who refuse to write recommendations for students for political reasons

September 28, 2018 • 12:45 pm

There’s good news from state universities today:

I reported recently that John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor in the Department of American Culture at the University of Michigan (UM), refused to write a letter of recommendation for a student because she was applying to study in Israel. (Cheney-Lippold adheres to the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement [BDS] against Israel).

Cheney-Lippold had originally agreed to write the student a letter, and then changed his mind when he found out the student wanted to go to Israel, so his “letter deplatforming” wasn’t a refusal based on poor qualifications. In fact, he offered to write her letters for non-Israeli programs. He just didn’t want to help her study in a country he despised.

That struck me as an unconscionable dereliction of academic duty: the injection of personal sentiments into student mentorship in a way that actually hurt the student. So I wrote a letter to the President of the University of Michigan, to Cheney-Lippold’s chairperson (copied to him), and to all the trustees of the University of Michigan. I’ve had a few responses from University officials, but the one that meant the most came just a while ago. It was from a representative of UM’s Office of Public Affairs. I won’t name the person as it’s not necessary, but the response is kosher.

The upshot is that both the UM President and the Faculty Senate have, within the last ten days, issued three statements decrying the injection of political views into student letters of recommendation. I suspect this means that Cheney-Lippold and others like him can no longer refuse to write letters for students wanting to work in one or another place that the professor doesn’t like. Of course, professors can just give a blanket refusal without tendering a reason, which is surely what will happen.

Anyway, here’s part of the letter I got from the UM representative. The emphases are mine:

At the University of Michigan, we believe that injecting personal views into a decision regarding support for our students is counter to our values and expectations as an institution. In this particular situation, the student has asked that we respect this as a private matter.

President Schlissel underscored this position during a public Board of Regents meeting Sept. 20 when he said, clearly and emphatically, “The University of Michigan strongly opposes a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.”

“The academic aspirations of our students – and their academic freedom – are fundamental to the University of Michigan, and our teaching and research missions,” the president said. “We are committed as an institution to support our students’ academic growth.

“The regents, executive officers and I have been deeply engaged in this matter. We will be taking appropriate steps to address this issue and the broader questions it has raised.”

The University of Michigan, like other institutions and employers, keeps personnel matters private. But I want to assure you that we take issues related to support for our students with the utmost seriousness.

Also, earlier this week the executive arm of our Faculty Senate approved a “Statement on Letters of Reference,” stating, in part, that “faculty should let a student’s merit be the primary guide for determining how and whether to provide such a letter.” You can read more about this action here.

The university has consistently opposed any boycott of Israeli institutions of higher education. No academic department or any other unit at the University of Michigan has taken a stance that departs from this long-held university position.

President Schlissel’s full statement on this matter as well as previous university statements opposing any boycott of Israeli academic institutions can be found on the university’s website here.

The President’s statement and the UM’s position are given below (click on screenshot if you want to go to the page):

UM has long refused to engage in academic boycotts, so the last half of the letter is old news. But the first bit about “support for students” (read: letters of recommendation) is new. And the President’s letter is clearly aimed directly at Cheney-Lippold.

As the representative mentioned, a further resolution on this issue was approved last Monday by a faculty committee; this is reported by the University Record, a UM news site, in the following article (click on screenshot):

And the new resolution (my emphasis):

The Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs approved a resolution Monday declaring faculty should let a student’s merit be the primary guide for determining how and when to provide letters of recommendation.

The resolution came out of SACUA’s discussion of a U-M faculty member’s recent refusal to provide a previously promised letter of recommendation for a student because she was seeking to study abroad in Israel.

The discussion took place in executive session.

President Mark Schlissel said last week that the faculty member’s view does not reflect the position of U-M nor any department or unit on campus, and he reiterated the university strongly opposes a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

In SACUA’s statement on letters of reference, which was unanimously approved, SACUA affirmed its commitment to the American Association of University Professors’ Statement of Professional Ethics, noting the following section related to a professor’s educational responsibilities:

“As teachers, professors encourage the free pursuit of learning in their students,” the section reads. “They hold before them the best scholarly and ethical standards of their discipline. Professors demonstrate respect for students as individuals and adhere to their proper roles as intellectual guides and counselors. Professors make every reasonable effort to foster honest academic conduct and to ensure that their evaluations of students reflect each student’s true merit.

“They respect the confidential nature of the relationship between professor and student. They avoid any exploitation, harassment, or discriminatory treatment of students. They acknowledge significant academic or scholarly assistance from them. They protect their academic freedom.”

In their resolution, SACUA members said, “Within the guidelines set forth by the American Association of University Professors, and ‘demonstrate(ing) respect for students,’ faculty should let a student’s merit be the primary guide for determining how and whether to provide such a letter.”

SACUA is the nine-member executive arm of the university’s central faculty governance system, which also includes the Senate Assembly and the Faculty Senate.

So now we have a policy where there was none before. And it’s a good one.

I know that several readers of this site wrote letters or called the University, and that the school had also gotten some negative publicity in the press over Cheney-Lippold’s actions. I don’t know if our letters had any influence on the policy, but surely all the negative press publicity did. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, and realize that letters can sometimes make a difference. I suspect Cheney-Lippold’s tuchas is smarting a bit this week!