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Academic Freedom

Science writer Matt Ridley shares concern re climate wars

Further to churches getting sucked into the politicized climate change controversy, chewed up, and spit out: English science journalist Matt Ridley assesses the damage done to science by the frankly political climate science wars here at Quadrant: For much of my life I have been a science writer. That means I eavesdrop on what’s going on in laboratories so I can tell interesting stories. It’s analogous to the way art critics write about art, but with a difference: we “science critics” rarely criticise. If we think a scientific paper is dumb, we just ignore it. There’s too much good stuff coming out of science to waste time knocking the bad stuff. Sure, we occasionally take a swipe at pseudoscience—homeopathy, astrology, claims Read More ›

Question for today’s break: Cash strapped U’s

… can afford so many administrators and pump up grades? And the problem of burgeoning bureaucracy helps explain some worrying trends, foremost being a perceptible decline in academic standards over time (it’s evident in grade inflation; there are three times as many Oxford Firsts now as there were 30 years ago) and — a lesser problem — the way private donors to the university are losing the run of themselves. You don’t have to dig deep to find academics enraged at how administration flourishes while faculties are cash-strapped. That also explains why students with no sympathy for academic or intellectual freedom just want to be educrats, not indebted baristas. That’s where the action is today in academic life. Prediction: It’ll Read More ›

Liberal prof terrified by students?

Here: So it’s not just that students refuse to countenance uncomfortable ideas -they refuse to engage them, period. Engagement is considered unnecessary, as the immediate, emotional reactions of students contain all the analysis and judgment that sensitive issues demand. Yes. We know. Maybe it is time we had this conversation. They have no experience with, interest in, or tendency to support intellectual freedom. Greg Lukianoff of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) has pointed out that generally, students today do not support students who question the establishment. They want to be educrats, not baristas. And that’s all they want. Prof, you raised them. You own them. You suck it up. We have suffered enough. And we have definitely had Read More ›

A friend sent this: Dawkins asks for help for “openly secular” families

Every so often, we get to the bottom of the In Bin. It’s how we know Earth has a centre, for sure. Anyway… Openly secular? Which means what, exactly? Chopping down the municipal Christmas tree? All the trouble today comes to people who just want to follow their faith in peace, but can’t. Meanwhile, she makes people who don’t go to church sound like the Nepal earthquake. No wonder our friend said, do these people know how they come off? Follow UD News at Twitter! Search Uncommon Descent for similar topics, under the Donate button.

Censorship of dissident ideas in an age of science

Science, like all disciplines today, is coming under heavy demands for censorship. People who used to be called dissenters or dissidents are now “denialists.” In short there is One Right Answer, to which no research not sponsored by an Establishment can add. But the history of science progress feature a grand parade of witnesses called by Counsel for the Defense. As a matter of fact, the likely outcome of the current mood is stagnation. Most new insights that proved valid were hotly contested, along with a lot of stuff that fell by the wayside. But very often no one knows for sure.* Paul Driessen writes, Brandeis disinvited Ayan Hirsi Ali, because her views on women’s rights might offend some Muslim Read More ›

Tenured Nazarene U prof laid off, supporting evolution

In the context, “evolution” typically means Darwinism, survival of the fittest. Anyway here: President David Alexander of Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) sent a letter to the campus over the weekend, defending the decision to lay off tenured theology professor Thomas Jay Oord. Alexander said budget cuts necessitated the move. A professor in the school’s counseling department was also affected by the layoffs. Oord was notified of his firing by email while on break, which Alexander said lacked compassion. “I want to publicly apologize to Dr. Tom Oord for the way in which he learned of the change,” said Alexander in his email. “Discussions occurred via mail and email due to spring break and the March 31st notification deadline. That was Read More ›

A case for shutting down liberal arts programs

Here: As Scruton notes: “Moral relativism clears the ground for a new kind of absolutism. The emerging curriculum in the humanities is in fact far more censorious, in crucial matters, than the one that it strives to replace.” But this isn’t just about the handful of protests the student clubs get up to. The problem has leaked into all of the humanities – the once sacred home for all forms of inquiry. It’s about dismantling anything connected to the past, anything that suggests we can learn from the people who came before us: “The Marxist theory of ideology, or some feminist, poststructuralist, or Foucauldian descendent of it, will be summoned in proof of the view that the precious achievements of Read More ›

If this is true generally about universities…

Universities entice potential students with all sorts of easy loan packages, hip orientations, and perks like high-tech recreation centers and upscale dorms. On the backside of graduation, such bait-and-switch attention vanishes when it is time to help departing students find jobs. College often turns into a six-year experience. The unemployment rate of college graduates is at near-record levels. Universities have either failed to convinced employers that English or history majors make ideal job candidates, or they have failed to ensure that such bedrock majors can, in fact, speak, write and reason well. The collective debt of college students and graduates is more than $1 trillion. Such loans result from astronomical tuition costs that for decades have spiked more rapidly than Read More ›

Off topic: Jerry Coyne gets something right

He likes Ayaan Hirsi Ali Yeah, yeah, that guy, still selling Darwin’s used cars [!]. But never mind, get this—he likes Ayaan Hirsi Ali: Below is Hirsi Ali’s interview with Megyn Kelly on Fox News. Kelly did a far better job than Jon Stewart, who tried to argue that Islam is no worse than any other faith, and that even without Islam and other religions, people would still be doing exactly the same amount of bad stuff. It’s a shame that it’s mainly the right-wing interviewers who give Hirsi Ali (and criticism of Islam) a fair shake, for I intensely dislike being in bed with conservatives. (Unlike Stewart, Kelly at least lets Hirsi Ali put forth her ideas.) The contrast Read More ›

John West at Heritage Foundation on science used to curtail freedoms

In his first inaugural address, President Obama pledged to “restore science to its rightful place.” But has the Obama Administration restored science or abused it? In this talk based on the expanded paperback edition of his book Darwin Day in America (ISI Books, 2015), political scientist John G. West will examine how the Obama Administration has illegitimately invoked “science” to curtail basic freedoms, undercut ethical protections, and circumvent democratic accountability. He also will explore how during the Obama years free speech is being increasingly restricted in the name of science and how science is being misused to attack religion, especially in educational institutions. West will argue that science has produced great blessings, but its current abuse is bad for both Read More ›

Advice for Students Taking Classes from Darwinists

I spend a bit of time teaching and talking to junior-high and high-schoolers, especially homeschool students. One of the things that I try to teach them is how to approach teachers who are Darwinists when they get to college. Anyway, I though some readers might be students and might appreciate the advice. Obviously, this is not gospel-truth, but it might give you a place to start from.
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Yes, academic freedom is indeed under threat

Otherwise, how to explain this?: There are a few university administrations that still seem committed to making academic freedom a leading value, even though it is a distinctly difficult value to monetize (and is indeed one that may be a consistent money-loser). For instance, the University of Chicago recently issued a strong statement on academic freedom. But that effort, headed by University of Chicago law professor and former provost Geoffrey Stone, seems increasingly to be the exception rather than the rule. What are we to do? Well, I believe we as university-based researchers should at least be quite concerned when academics have to worry about being “off-brand.” We should, I think, be pretty agitated when a university professor has to Read More ›

Universities are not governed by Constitutional freedom of speech?

On Saturdays (not the usual day science news is broken), the News desk sometimes focuses on public trends that impact our issues, including the ongoing campus war on freedom of speech—in the United States, it typically surfaces as the war of the First Amendment to the Constitution: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. It’s no secret that the governing classes today don’t like the First Amendment and want to chip away at it. One recent new tool has been “trigger warnings”—the Read More ›

John West on treating dissent in science as heresy

From Darwin Day in America (with Afterword): The very issue Holdren was testifying about—climate change—provides a disturbing example of the growing effort to treat scientific dissent as heresy. One of America’s leading daily newspapers, the Los Angeles Times, announced in 2013 it would no longer publish letters to the editor that expressed skepticism about the human role in climate change. Since one of the original purposes of printing letters to the editor was to air community viewpoints that might differ from a newspaper’s official position, the Times’s decision represented a dramatic departure from historic journalistic standards. Others go much further, calling for the criminal prosecution of global warming skeptics. In 2014 Professor Lawrence Torcello at the Rochester Institute of Technology Read More ›

Robert Marks, answering a facet of the War between Science and [Christian] Religion thesis

Video, well worth watching: [youtube hdNNNJMZJ_c] (–> also cf the audio by John Lennox here. The Worldviews 101 here on may also be of help.) Full presentation (v. fat download). PDF, with notes. Abstract: The New Atheism claims being a scientist and a Christian is like being a vegan butcher. But both today and in history, many scientists, Mathematicians and engineers are motivated in their work by the uncovering of precise orderliness, underlying simplicity, and inherent beauty of God’s creations. Many not only study the creation., but have pursued the identity of the creator and have found Him in the foundational tenets of Christianity. Some of these scientists are: o Isaac Newton – the father of classical physics and co-creator Read More ›