9/4/2016 update: Greg Lukianoff of The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education points out the fallacies in Jim Sleeper’s NYT op-ed: Of course, this isn’t the only thing that Sleeper gets wrong. As he has done before, Sleeper attempts to present FIRE as part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, conveniently…
UO Matters
NBC reports that Colin Kaepernick’s NFL movement is spreading. Will any Duck players take a knee at today’s UC-Davis game, for “O’er the land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave”? Two years ago two of Dana Altman’s Duck basketball players tried a Black Lives Matter protest during his national anthem. Altman chewed out…
Makes sense, he’ll hold some sort of campus conversation in October and whichever way this goes it shouldn’t be done in the dead of summer. Schill’s letter, with an analysis of the Historians’ Report, is posted here. Technically these are recommendations to the Board, which meets Sept 8-9. Full text: Deady and…
That’s the rumor down at the Faculty Club tonight. The logic is that we’ve all learned a lot about Oregon’s racist history from the public debates and discussion over the Deady Hall denaming, and we want to make sure that no new class of freshman, or new faculty, ever forget. So Deady’s…
Unfortunately our VP for Student Affairs has a bigger budget, and will pay an $8K premium for someone who’s willing to talk the talk, rather than walk the walk. Which job do you think will do more for UO’s students? Job A: 8/30/2016: LCB seeks Academic Adviser and Diversity Initiatives Specialist Lundquist College of…
Jeff Manning has the latest on just one of the many clean energy scandals, in the Oregonian here: An energy consultant involved in a controversial state solar power project at two Oregon universities has been indicted on forgery charges, after an investigation prompted by The Oregonian/OregonLive’s reporting. …
Buzzfeed has a good summary of events at UK so far: … According to 122 pages of investigation documents that were leaked to the student paper, the independently run Kentucky Kernel, Harwood violated school sexual assault policies by “fondling” the two students at two conferences in 2012 and 2013. He…
Gated if you’re off the campus network, link here. A snippet from a long report by Brad Wolverton: … The Chronicle spoke with people who run cheating companies and those who do the cheating. The demand has been around for decades. But the industry is in rapid transition. Just as…
8/27/2016:
For years the UO administration has harassed me over this blog’s policy of honoring Ben Franklin’s Silence Dogood’s precedent of anonymous criticism. But our new leadership is actually encouraging people to submit comments to the Blustain report on IT reorganization anonymously.
However, while the New-England Courant put Ms Dogood’s letters and responses out there for everyone to see, two-hundred and ninety-four years later that is still a bit too revolutionary for the University of Oregon. The comments you submit will only be seen by authorized persons. So if you do use their google form, you might consider also pasting your ideas into the comments anonymously here too, so that your colleagues can see them and respond. I’ll pass it all on to the House of Lords.
Official release of the Blustain report here:
More, and anonymous reporting form here:
8/12/2016: Blustain’s comments on “The Oregon Way” leak out:
Back in 2011, former VPFA Frances Dyke paid consultants from Huron $1.789M to write a report on the VPR’s office that included this definition of “The Oregon Way”:
8/26/2016 update: Coach Helfrich has now declared the player guilty, and in doing so has committed a flagrant violation of Klinger’s interpretation of the accused’s FERPA rights. The Salem Statesman Journal reports: “[The student-athlete] has been suspended indefinitely for a violation of University and Department of Athletics codes of conduct,” Oregon coach Mark…
Scott Jaschik in InsideHigherEd:
Looking for safe spaces on campus or trigger warnings on a syllabus?
Incoming students at the University of Chicago have been warned they won’t find either in Hyde Park.
They all received a letter recently from John Ellison, dean of students, which went beyond the usual platitudes of such letters and made several points about what he called one of Chicago’s “defining characteristics,” which he said was “our commitment to freedom of inquiry and expression.” Ellison said civility and respect are “vital to all of us,” and people should never be harassed. But he added, “You will find that we expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion and even disagreement. At times this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.”
To that end, he wrote, “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”
The letter referred to a website where Chicago maintains a report on academic freedom and its centrality to the university. …
Chicago has been getting a lot of free publicity for their defense of free speech lately, while UO has been hyping the Olympics.
The truth is that UO actually has better policies than Chicago – but our administration’s history of implementing them is weak, and as a result the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education gives our prospective students a “Red Light” warning. More here and here:
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has a press release here on Chicago’s free speech efforts:
University of Chicago Reforms All Speech Codes, Earns FIRE’s Highest Free Speech Rating
CHICAGO, April 26, 2016—The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is excited to announce the latest university to earn its highest, “green light” rating for free speech: the University of Chicago (UC). In cooperation with FIRE, UC revised all of its speech codes to join an elite group of colleges and universities that maintain policies respecting student and faculty free expression rights and meeting First Amendment standards. …
Here’s my take – sorry, long story:
In January 2015 Chicago announced the Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression, chaired by Geoffrey R. Stone, Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law. The full text of his windy and self-congratulatory report is here. The gist:
From its very founding, the University of Chicago has dedicated itself to the preservation and celebration of the freedom of expression as an essential element of the University’s culture. In 1902, in his address marking the University’s decennial, President William Rainey Harper declared that “the principle of complete freedom of speech on all subjects has from the beginning been regarded as fundamental in the University of Chicago” and that “this principle can neither now nor at any future time be called in question.” Thirty years later, a student organization invited William Z. Foster, the Communist Party’s candidate for President, to lecture on campus. This triggered a storm of protest from critics both on and off campus. …, …, …
In a word, the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed. It is for the individual members of the University community, not for the University as an institution, to make those judgments for themselves, and to act on those judgments not by seeking to suppress speech, but by openly and vigorously contesting the ideas that they oppose. Indeed, fostering the ability of members of the University community to engage in such debate and deliberation in an effective and responsible manner is an essential part of the University’s educational mission. …, …, …
Actually, that’s a lot of words. The University of Oregon Senate and President Richard Lariviere said it less pompously, more forcefully, and five years earlier in UO’s 2010 Freedom of Speech and Inquiry Policy. The full text:
Video here. I’d comment, but Craig Pintens and his team of Duck strategic communicators have said everything that needs to be said: EUGENE, Ore. – In the latest cutting-edge facility to open at the University of Oregon, science and sport converge to put student-athlete wellness first. In uniquely Oregon style, the…
Professor Srivastava’s syllabus is here. Max Thornberry has more in the Emerald here. The word down at Falling Sky is that he’s a tough grader. I do like his research though.
Vanderbilt denames Confederate Hall, and what I learned about my 7th grade Virginia history textbook
Vanderbilt University has just repaid the Daughters of the Confederacy their $50K 1935 donation, plus $1.15M in interest, and has denamed their “Confederate Hall”. On the topic of what denaming controversies like UO’s over Deady Hall teach us, here’s what I’ve learned, starting with an illustration and quote from my 7th grade Virginia…
In the Daily Emerald: … There are plenty of people who disagree with me, and that’s fine — as long as they did their civic duty to research, debate and weigh the facts. It’s one thing to respond with a personal decision about Dunn and Deady’s morality; I personally felt…