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from the debating-whether-something's-debatable dept.
It looks like anybody can be against academic censorship, as this opinion piece in the Washington Post shows:
Wisconsin's Supreme Court can soon right a flagrant wrong stemming from events set in motion in 2014 at Milwaukee's Marquette University by Cheryl Abbate. Although just a graduate student, she already had a precocious aptitude for academic nastiness.
On Oct. 28, in an undergraduate course she was teaching on ethics, when the subject of same-sex marriage arose, there was no debate, because, a student said, Abbate insisted that there could be no defensible opposition to this. (Marquette is a Jesuit school.) After class, the student told her that he opposed same-sex marriage and her discouraging of debate about it. She replied (he recorded their interaction) that "there are some opinions that are not appropriate that are harmful [...]
[...] McAdams, a tenured professor then in his 41st year at Marquette and a conservative who blogs about the school's news, emailed Abbate seeking her version of the episode. Without responding to him, she immediately forwarded his email to some professors. She has called McAdams "the ringleader" of "extreme white [sic] wing, hateful people," a "moron," "a flaming bigot, sexist and homophobic idiot" and a "creepy homophobic person with bad argumentation skills."
Because there is almost no Wisconsin case law concerning academic freedom that could have guided the circuit court, McAdams is asking the state supreme court to bypass the appeals court and perform its function as the state's "law-developing court." He is also asking the court to be cognizant of the cultural context: Nationwide, colleges and universities "are under pressure" — all of it from within the institutions — "to enact or implement speech codes or otherwise restrict speech in various ways."
[Post-publishing edit: An A/C below helpfully provides the following far more neutral reportage by Inside higher Ed titled Ethics Lesson which explains the situation with more light and less head. Thanks A/C - Ed. (FP)]
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:32AM (14 children)
Why post actual information when you can post inflammatory clickbait? Seriously, all the facts were removed and all the inflammatory garbage was left in. Even by SN standards this is a truly terrible summary.
According to the article, John McAdams, a tenured professor, was fired after refusing to apologize for writing that gay marriage is an issue that should be open for debate. Because Marquette University has a clause in its employment prohibiting any punishment for academic speech (which is pretty much what tenure means), McAdams is suing for breach of contract.
It doesn't seem appropriate to me for this case to go directly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. It seems like a very straightforward contract dispute, in which, if the article is correct, McAdams has a good chance of success. It seems more likely that McAdams is doing this in order to make news - which seems to be working.
Cheryl Abbate, other than being a major part of the dispute that led to McAdams' original statement, isn't involved in the lawsuit. She's not even with the university any more.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday January 09 2018, @12:54PM
Your version makes much more sense.
I just looked at the website of Marquette University, and they are indeed Jesuits like Pope Francis.
I've NEVER heard of a Jesuit that shuns debate or academic speech so this McAdams seems 100% in the spirit of his employer's mission statement.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 09 2018, @01:12PM
There's another reason he's trying to bypass the appeals court besides publicity: Judge shopping.
Specifically, the Wisconsin Supreme Court is a fairly conservative body elected on a state-wide basis, while the appeals court is a fairly liberal body elected by the citizens of metro Milwaukee. He's already lost in trial court - otherwise, he wouldn't have to appeal at all - which he can probably succeed in blaming on "activist judges". But in order for the an appellate court to even take his case, he needs to convince them that the trial court made some kind of legal error, which the Wisconsin Supreme Court is much more likely to do than the appeals court.
So it makes sense as not-legally-focused legal strategy.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Tuesday January 09 2018, @02:03PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday January 09 2018, @02:42PM (6 children)
I found it rather difficult to summarize the article in such a way that the interesting bits were still the focus. It was my intent to make sure anybody arguing the facts was arguing all the facts, which requires a lot of context. I initially included more of the facts, but pared it down because it doubled the size of the summary, choosing instead to require the reader to click into TFA to get the full story. It also would have copied more than half of the original article, which is ethically and legally dubious. Furthermore, the parts of the original article that contain the facts are also unfortunately sprinkled with much of the most inflammatory unqualified opinions in the whole piece, which I definitely did not want to include in the summary.
That doesn't mean I admit to no mistakes. I post on SoylentNews to learn to communicate better, and in this case you and at least 5 others seem to believe I've failed. With the difficulties mentioned above, what would you suggest I could have done better? Would you like to take a stab at writing a better summary?
In order to make a concise summary which includes more of the facts and less clickbait, I would have needed to substantially rewrite the article. I chose not to do so because the style of SoylentNews entries is usually a direct block quote. Would writing an original summary have been the right choice?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:02PM (4 children)
In the future, can you minimise the invasiveness of your edits. Less can actually be more. Feel free to select whole paragraphs to be in or out, but often if you're editing within paragraphs it's harder for us to claim it's a quote of the original. (Every "[...]" is needed, and if that starts making the paragraph unreadable, then elision is doing more harm than good.)
Additionally, finding other sources for the story and including URLs is a great benefit. Sometimes you come across a rendering of the tale that's so superior to the original one you simply scrap the original! I should have done that, but it was late, and I was in a rush - the queue was empty!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Insightful) by meustrus on Tuesday January 09 2018, @04:07PM (1 child)
There are only two "[...]"s, and they are at the end and beginning of paragraphs. I opted to "select whole paragraphs" and that, combined with the poor structure of TFA, seems to be why the summary turned out poorly.
Funny thing - I was so surprised to see this side of the argument coming from the Washington Post that I forgot my normal skepticism. I should say I do not necessarily agree with the tone of TFA that I found, but thought the people here would agree more.
Personally, I support gay rights, and am really bothered by this situation because Abbate opted for anti-free-speech rhetoric, squashing a perfect opportunity for academic debate to change the mind of someone with apparently paper-thin reasoning, and encouraging the student in question to see the issue in terms of orthodoxy and loyalty instead of based on its actual merits.
In short, regardless of the issue at hand, the teacher is just bad at rational thought. That was the story I thought I was posting, with the sort of right-wing window dressing that I also thought was preferred around here.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 10 2018, @02:16AM
> In short, regardless of the issue at hand, the teacher is just bad at rational thought. That was the story I thought I was posting, with the sort of right-wing window dressing that I also thought was preferred around here.
Hey now, this is *not* a right-wing site! Sure, we have some right-wing nuts like TMB and Runaway1234, but we also have left-wing nuts like aristarchus and moderate lefties & righties in between. I would consider myself a moderate-to-strong leftie, for example.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday January 09 2018, @04:15PM (1 child)
...nevermind my previous comment about the [...]s. I did not realize that the summary above is not the one that I wrote. Shows how good my memory is. I can't seem to find any discussion about edits to the summary before it was posted; maybe this is only visible to editors.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 09 2018, @06:01PM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:05PM
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday January 09 2018, @02:53PM (2 children)
Check the original submission. By the time I got to it, there was already an editor's comment saying ~"we can't post this as it stands, it's been too heavily edited". I had to add stuff back. Notice in particular that I changed "story" to "opinion piece" - that should have been a clue that it would be not neutrally presented, and that there would be more heat than light in the piece as a whole.
Could you have done better? Your first attempt lacks in background what the summary lacks in current events, neither's perfect. The summary's job is to introduce you to the story, and inform your decision whether you want to read more about it, and provide links to follow if so.
And finally, the submission queue was empty, it was 3am on a work night, and we needed stories out quickly. *And* I was editing on my phone where I couldn't even see the full width of the text entry box I was editing in.
Feel free to volunteer to assist with editing. However, given that you can't even be bothered to sign up and post under a pseudonym, I'm guessing your dedication to SN as a community really isn't that great.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @03:30PM
Take any beating like a man and do go for useless ad hominems next time.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Tuesday January 09 2018, @04:10PM
I find this to be a serious problem as well. Mainly I'm annoyed that my phone insists on setting an unusable zoom level while I'm typing, but the only real solution is to change SoylentNews for mobile. Do we have any open issues to make that happen? I could take a stab at some responsive CSS if nobody else is available.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday January 09 2018, @07:55PM
Maybe so. But I got this very nice message from an ed about my very balanced, clearly based on reality submission.
Now compared to this Fine Article,
I as starting to think that my submission is just too fair and balanced, and maybe I should try for a bit more anti-intellectual, pro-conservative affirmative action submissions.
Well, at least I put it in the COMMENTS. (When did "comments" become all caps?)