koine2002 wrote:As a professor, I cannot second your lament of the bureaucratic nonsense that happens at colleges and universities. It used to be that the faculty were the schools and the fundamental governing body. However, the USDE, through requirements hoisted upon the recognized accreditors (to keep their USDE recognition), have placed levels upon levels of non-academic bureaucracy over the last 40 years.
While we, as a guild, are known for being leftists nuts, I can guarantee you that is not the case. It's just they are the loudest. There are plenty of gun loving profs out there. If faculty were still the primary governing body of colleges and universities, I can almost guarantee you that there would be very few GFZs on campuses.
There's actually a bit of a revival of Libertarian type thinking, at least in the non-economic areas, among academics in the US. We are quite alarmed at what is happening in the UK and Canada in terms of government censorship and speech as it has implications for our academic freedom (the freedom to pursue any line of inquiry regardless of where it may lead). It began, ironically, with Mr. Marxist, Noam Chomsky, himself in his protest of fellow academics being jailed in Europe for merely asking the question about the accuracy of Holocaust numbers. Many are now applying their newly acquired libertarianesque thinking to other areas such as self-defense. You won't find this published (as it would be academic suicide at this point), but I've found this in conversations with colleagues all around the country at symposia, society meetings, and other types of "tweed and bow tie" gatherings.
I assume you meant CAN second your lament.
It warms the cockles of my heart to read what you've written. I've been wondering for some time now where the champions of free speech were with all the speech codes and attempted suppression of speech going on these days, especially on college campuses. Maybe there's hope for us yet.
I would do something like that; he probably won't.
