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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: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 09 2018, @08:49PM (3 children)
The problem with purging heretics and blasphemers, dear J-Mo, is that at some point YOU are the blaspheming heretic. I realize this never did and, indeed, cannot possibly, occur to you, but i'll leave it here for posterity.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:06PM (2 children)
WTF? Are you really this dense? The official State Religion of the United States is Cultural Marxism / Progressivism. I wake up every single day knowing I'm a blaspheming heretic. That is what this is all about, me and mine trying to overthrow your successful coup. To restore reason and learning to the universities, knowing it almost certainly means burning them down and building anew.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09 2018, @09:18PM
Come, now, jmorris! The fear that possesses you is obvious to all and sundry! Brainwashing. The ChiComs in NK used to -do this, right? All's it takes if for some freedom loving partiotic American to be exposed to some actual ideas, and poof! Brainwashed! This is why conservatives, and the not so smart-anymore conservatives that still call themselves Republicans, think that Universities are bad for the USA, think that science is just someone's libtard opinion, and that Trump is working for them. Must suck to be so afraid.
(BTW, in the addendum to our Fine Summary, the ed points to another source " explains the situation with more light and less head." I can only expect that jmorris, and Milo, are disappointed there will be "less head". Simple typo, or Freudian Slip? Read Pascal's Provincial Letters Jesuits!)
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday January 09 2018, @10:34PM
Only someone so completely up his own asshole he could see the cheeseburger his daddy had at the 1968 Memorial Day barbecue could say that. Jesus motocrossing Christ, you don't even know what the fuck half those words fucking *mean!* I bet you even think Marx was a postmodernist.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...