National Association of Scholars Pushes Back on Cancel Culture

The National Association of Scholars was founded and funded by conservatives back in 1987, long before Trump hijacked what was left of the traditional conservative movement. Despite its conservative origins and leanings, the Mission Statement of NAS is one that I can generally support. I don't consider myself to be a "conversative" or "liberal."  I consider my positions on each political issue separately, a la carte. Party politics has no bearing on what I think about an issue. I am writing about NAS because I believe it is offering important information and narratives to the public.  In this article, NAS expresses its grave concern that Cancel Culture is chilling speech at the academy, which clashes with what is arguably the prime directive of education.

NAS has taken a strong stance in opposition to Cancel Culture and in favor of open and vigorous discussion of issues at universities. NAS is also compiling a chart of numerous incidents involving teachers who have been disciplined or fired for expressing their opinions (and sometimes for expressing facts) both in the classroom and outside of the classroom.  This list includes summaries of the incidents. I have reviewed independent detailed reports about some of these cases, so that I know that some of the NAS summaries seem fair, but I do not claim to be independently informed about the facts of most of the cases on the list.

All organizations that stand up for the importance of free speech recognize that protected speech is not always easy to protect. For instance consider the position of the ACLU, which famously represented nazis on a free speech in the Skokie case:

Protecting free speech means protecting a free press, the democratic process, diversity of thought, and so much more. The ACLU has worked since 1920 to ensure that freedom of speech is protected for everyone.

It is important to protect speech for the greater long-term good, even when some infringements involve speech that is unpopular, wrong-headed or seemingly deplorable. NAS makes this explicitly clear:

To be sure, some of the aforementioned statements are unsavory and may be worthy of institutional discipline. But the vast majority are not. And yet, woke higher education bureaucrats show an eager willingness to placate the angry students and professors insisting that “justice” be served. Meanwhile, “cancelees” have their professional reputations permanently sullied and, in many cases, ruined.

Here are the stated aims of NAS:

Our Mission The National Association of Scholars upholds the standards of a liberal arts education that fosters intellectual freedom, searches for the truth, and promotes virtuous citizenship.

Our Ideals The standards of a liberal arts education that the NAS upholds include reasoned scholarship and civil debate in America’s colleges and universities; and individual merit in academic and scholarly endeavor. We expect that ideas be judged on their merits; that scholars engage in the disinterested pursuit of the truth; and that colleges and universities provide for fair and judicial examination of contending views.

We expect colleges to offer coherent curricula and programs of study. We uphold a view of institutional integrity that includes financial probity as well as transparency in the curriculum and classroom. We uphold the principles of academic freedom that include faculty members’ and students’ freedom to pursue academic research; their freedom to question and to think for themselves; and their freedom from ideological imposition.

We expect colleges and universities to prioritize education as academia’s main purpose. And we understand education in our time and place to entail providing students with a breadth of understanding of core subjects including Western civilization and American history. We recognize that the vitality of American education arises in large part out of the freedom of colleges and universities to experiment and to offer diverse curricula. That robust diversity, however, must be anchored in respect for the abiding ideals of the pursuit of the truth and the cultivation of virtuous citizenship.

I invite you to Google the facts of some of these cases on the NAS list to see whether you are also concerned that speech is being chilled in classroom such that the overall mission of colleges and universities is being threatened.

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Fairy Tale Week

Last week I found a big book of Grimm's Fairy Tales in my basement. Out of curiosity, I've been reading a few Grimm's Fairy tales each day for the past several days. More than a few of these stories involve people being desperately hungry or poor. On a regular basis, the wonderful ending is that the people end up with a comfortable house that includes a magic pantry that never runs out of food. These stories must have been written in desperate times. Reading them has reminded me how lucky most of us are that we are not chronically hungry and homeless.

Many of these fairy tales also seem bizarre, involving men actively coveting other mens wives, women treated like property, and families putting their kids to cruel tests. Reading these tales has reminded me that one of my daughters attended a Waldorf School in St. Louis County about 15 years ago. The teachers repeatedly told me that the ONLY thing I should ever read to my daughters, at least until 3rd grade, was Grimm's Fairy Tales. I refused to follow that advice. It strikes me as bizarre today as it did back then, and it was a factor in pulling her out of that school and enrolling her in a much better school. I suspect that they were expecting us to cherry pick for better quality fairy tales, avoiding the bizarre and pointless stories. Cherry picking is common, of course. I'm reminded of the many people who have insisted that I should read the Bible, focusing on the "good parts," not on the bizarre stories, such as the time God sent bears to kill 42 children for making fun of Elisha because he was bald. (2 Kings 2:23-25).

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The Catastrophic Story-Telling Failure of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

When they stop celebrating “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” I’ll pause my efforts to reframe this story as having one of the worst endings in the history of story-telling.

Just when the Whos of the Who Village almost learned an extremely important lesson, just when they were having an epiphany that all of that Christmas kitsch and all those baubles actually corrupted the holiday and distracted from the meaning of the celebration, that’s when the Grinch got three times more evil that day.

A proper way to end the story would be for the Grinch to confidently dump all of that glittery tinselly crap into the abyss high above the village. He would then triumphantly ride down into the Who Village to be welcomed as a hero. They would sing odes praising the Grinch for conducting his dramatic intervention. They would deeply embrace the idea that Christmas would proceed in a more pristine and sincere form because the materialistic cravings--those jingtinglers, whohoopers and glumbloopas--had been exorcised from the process. The Whos might even celebrate that the Grinch was channeling the Jesus who drove the money-changers out of the temple. Instead of singing the “Twelve Days or Christmas,” the Whos would compose a new carol called “O Little Town Where Less is More.”

The actual story ending is a sad one, however. Because the Grinch allowed schmaltzy emotion to prevail over principle, he decided that Christmas should NOT become like traditional Thanksgiving (before the concept of Black Friday). He decided that the celebration needed thousands of materialistic distractions after all. The Whos, glitch-addicts that they were, put up no resistance. The story ending consisted of a lesson almost learned. No denouement here—that metaphorical sleigh just couldn’t quite get over the crest of the hill. This kind of almost-story could inspire a remake of “A Christmas Story” where Scrooge almost learned his lesson. In that revised ending, post-nightmare Scrooge would march back to the Cratchit house and spray paint anti-Cratchit graffiti on the walls.

Damn. The story of the Grinch was almost such a great story. See you next year for more of the same.

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Bill Nye on the foolish concept of race

I completely agree with Bill Nye on the issue of "race." We should all reject the concept of "race." It is wholly and completely unscientific. We are all of the same species: We are all human beings. Yes, we humans come with different skin colors and we have various features that differ based on our ancestry, but we are all human. In rejecting the concept of "race," I would urge that we maintain and vigorously enforce laws that protect people from other people who foolishly continue to believe in "race" and act on that foolish belief. If we keep clinging to unscientific unsupported notions of "race," though, we will FOREVER be divided for an idiotic reason, regardless of how well-intentioned our belief in "race." Unfortunately, the belief in "race" has long been widespread; and it has long been institutionalized and repeatedly used as a tool for oppression, power and financial gain. Rooting it out of every little corner of the planet will be an immense task requiring that people listen closely to those who do careful science on this issue, and then do their utmost to recognize that every person is of the same species. Nye does not reject that there are such things as social tribes but warns that they can be destructive: "There have always been tribes . . .but what we have to appreciate now is that we live in a global community. Tribal loyalties are fun when it comes to the Superbowl but they are not relevant when it comes to our future. We are all in this together.” We can fully recognize the need to protect people from racism and racialism while rejecting the concept of race. In my view, we should all be fighting a two front war. Deny the existence of race while at the same time protecting people from the ravages of racism. To anticipate objections to this post, yes, race is social construct that is as real as any social construct. But it is inevitably and ultimately a destructive social construct. It's time to dismantle it while carefully protecting people from bigots. We can fully recognize the need to protect people from racism and racialism while rejecting the concept of race. In my view, we should all be fighting a two front war. Deny the existence of race while at the same time protecting people from the ravages of racism. I thought I made this clear. Yes, race is social construct that is as real as any social construct. It is an ultimately destructive social construct. Time to dismantle it while protecting people from bigots. I'm too impatient to wait for those who embrace "race" to wear each other out with insults, wounds and killings. I'm certainly not willing to wait for an interplanetary diaspora. I want the stupidity (and consequent mistreatment of innocent human beings) to stop NOW. There is no need to wait any longer. We can get entirely rid of the notion of race while yet embracing friendships, communities, extended families and extended ancestry, as well as 80,000 types of diversity rooted in real life things. And let's keep in mind that ALL of us have ancestry that undeniably extends to the same place: Africa. We are all ultimately African. Starting now, let's seek diversity only in meaningful things, such as the content of our character. It will take many people immense effort to break out of the racialist matrix. One of my early steps out was reading about Star-Bellied Sneetches, a book demonstrating that even young children understand the problem. The concept of race is poisonous--used for mischief wherever it is used What I propose is that we embrace people while rejecting race. this topic really frustrates me because we are all victims of this "race" scam yet we all continue to cling to this empty dangerous concept that you can use a smattering of physical characteristics to judge an entire person. And why is it that a President who has a "white" mother and a "black" father end up being called "black" or "African American"? Are we that low on brain wattage that we oversimplify like this? Why do so many of us cling to race? Ask cui bono, to whom does it benefit? It benefits many in many ways. For some it provides evidence-free victimhood. For others, an instant community. For others, evidence free scapegoats. And for most of us, "race" is a concept born out of laziness - we don't want to do the hard work of really getting to know each other -- Addendum 9-8-15 Path dependence plays into this issue big time. If people had been getting along, oblivious to skin color or other trivial physical characteristics we associate with "race," and if someone came along and suggested, "Hey, let's start generalizing about what kind of person we are dealing with on the basis of 'race," a totally unscientific and incoherent concept that I have invented based on trivial physical characteristics of humans. As people with geographically correlated trivial characteristics intermarry over time, it will become more and more absurd to determine who is of what race. I propose in fact, that a President who has a "white" mother and a "black" father will be deemed "black," and this will invite people to treat him/her with unwarranted presumptions as to what kind of person he/she is." If someone had made that proposal in this hypothetical scenario, it would (or at least, in an intelligent world) SHOULD be immediately rejected as absurd, divisive and dangerous. My conclusion: the only reason we continue to divide people by "race" is because ignorant people from long ago started doing so, and they did it for horrible reasons related to power-mongering and economic advantage.

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