The Wisdom of the Kalven Report

Should Universities (and businesses, sports teams, professional associations) take public positions on hot issues of the day? Or should they leave expression on those issues at the discretion of their individual employees and members?

From the Chronicle of Higher Education: "Now Is the Time for Administrators to Embrace Neutrality: The Israel-Hamas war might finally show colleges the virtues of the Kalven Report.". An excerpt:

The extent to which college leaders should, in addition to their administrative roles, express institutional positions on contestable social and political issues is a matter of legitimate dispute. At one pole are the sentiments expressed in the 1967 Kalven Committee report of the University of Chicago, which argues for “a heavy presumption against the university taking collective action or expressing opinions on the political or social issues of the day ... not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity … but out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.” Exceptions should be made only for situations that “threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry”

Excerpt from the Kalven Report:

The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic. It is, to go back once again to the classic phrase, a community of scholars. To perform its mission in the society, a university must sustain an extraordinary environment of freedom of inquiry and maintain an independence from political fashions, passions, and pressures. A university, if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest diversity of views within its own community. It is a community but only for the limited, albeit great, purposes of teaching and research. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.

Since the university is a community only for these limited and distinctive purposes, it is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness. There is no mechanism by which it can reach a collective position without inhibiting that full freedom of dissent on which it thrives. It cannot insist that all of its members favor a given view of social policy; if it takes collective action, therefore, it does so at the price of censuring any minority who do not agree with the view adopted. In brief, it is a community which cannot resort to majority vote to reach positions on public issues.

The neutrality of the university as an institution arises then not from a lack of courage nor out of indifference and insensitivity. It arises out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints. And this neutrality as an institution has its complement in the fullest freedom for its faculty and students as individuals to participate in political action and social protest. It finds its complement, too, in the obligation of the university to provide a forum for the most searching and candid discussion of public issues.

  

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Conference Panel Discussion on Importance of Biological Sex Cancelled Because of Harm it Would Cause to LBGTQI

From Elizabeth Weiss, Anthropology Professor:

September 25, 2023, my fellow panelists and I received a letter from the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) informing us that our conference panel, “Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology”, which had been accepted, is being removed from the program due to the “harm” it will cause the “Trans and LGBTQI community”. We’ve responded to their accusation.

Here is the excuse for the cancellation for the organizers:

Dear panelists, We write to inform you that at the request of numerous members the respective executive boards of AAA and CASCA reviewed the panel submission “Let's Talk about Sex Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology” and reached a decision to remove the session from the AAA/CASCA 2023 conference program(me). This decision was based on extensive consultation and was reached in the spirit of respect for our values, the safety and dignity of our members, and the scientific integrity of the program(me).

The reason the session deserved further scrutiny was that the ideas were advanced in such a way as to cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large. While there were those who disagree with this decision, we would hope they know their voice was heard and was very much a part of the conversation. It is our hope that we continue to work together so that we become stronger and more unified within each of our associations. Going forward, we will undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings and will include our leadership in that discussion

Here is an excerpt from the response from the cancelled panelists.

Your suggestion that our panel would somehow compromise “…the scientific integrity of the programme” seems to us particularly egregious, as the decision to anathematize our panel looks very much like an anti-science response to a politicized lobbying campaign. Had our panel been allowed to go forward, we can assure you that lively contestation would have been welcomed by the panelists and may even have occurred between us, as our own political commitments are diverse. Instead, your letter expresses the alarming hope that the AAA and CASCA will become “more unified within each of our associations” to avoid future debates. Most disturbingly, following other organizations, such as the Society for American Archaeology, the AAA and CASCA have promised that “Going forward, we will undertake a major review of the processes associated with vetting sessions at our annual meetings and will include our leadership in that discussion.” Anthropologists around the world will quite rightly find chilling this declaration of war on dissent and on scholarly controversy. It is a profound betrayal of the AAA’s principle of “advancing human understanding and applying this understanding to the world’s most pressing problems”.

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RFK, Jr. Threatened with Assassination: Biden Refuses to Offer Secret Service Protection. Corporate “News” Silent

As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. states: "I am the first presidential candidate in history to whom the White House has denied a request for protection."

As a whole, the comment thread to this Tweet by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. expresses my personal outrage. What causes me to be angry? The fact that someone tried to assassinate RFK, Jr.? No, most of my outrage is provoked by powerful unnamed people who have decided that RFK, Jr. does not deserve Secret Service Protection. IMO, Joe Biden is not calling the shots. He is merely the skeletal outline of someone who serves as the mascot for the people who pull the levers of power, those who have decided that RFK, Jr. is a political threat to re-electing Joe Biden and thus expendable. The fact that RFK,Jr's uncle and father were both assassinated, makes this lack of Secret Service protection surreal. The other cause for my anger is that a serious candidate for U.S. President has been threatened with murder, yet the corporate "news" media is completely silent. As of Sept 16, 2023 12:30 pm CT, none of the following "news" outlets have reported anything about this incident: NYT, WaPo, NPR, CNN or MSNBC. This is clearly a coordinated effort.

As with much of the flow of information these days, Joe Biden is the answer and everything else is reverse engineering.

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LA Times Clings to the Progressive Narrative re FIRE

LA Times today: "FIRE, a group that claims to advocate for free speech on college campuses — except when the speakers don’t share its political views." It would have taken literally two minutes for the LA Times to review FIRE's slate of litigation to see that this claim is untrue.

For further, see the Newsdesk of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

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