Was it illegal to say "We don't know" when public health officials didn't know? Instead, they showed hubris when they should have admitted ignorance, hurting millions of people, killing some of them and setting children backwards in their education, by imposing a nationwide lockdown. Here's an example of how they "followed the science."
In February, FIRE announced its model legislation that would prohibit all political litmus tests by universities, including DEI statements. I am fully in support. Here is a link to the Model Legislation. What follows is an excerpt from FIRE's announcement:
FIRE warned in a statement last year that the First Amendment “prohibits public universities from compelling faculty to assent to specific ideological views or to embed those views in academic activities.” But colleges have not stopped imposing political litmus tests on students and faculty in the guise of furthering DEI efforts.
Vague or ideologically motivated DEI statement policies can too easily function as litmus tests for adherence to prevailing ideological views on DEI.
[In February, 2023 FIRE introduced model legislation that] prohibits the use of political litmus tests in college admissions, hiring, and promotion decisions. Legislation is strong medicine, but our work demonstrates the seriousness of the threat. While the current threat involves coercion to support DEI ideology, efforts to coerce opposition to DEI ideology would be just as objectionable. Attempts to require fealty to any given ideology or political commitment — whether “patriotism” or “social justice” — must be likewise rejected.
To that end, because we are cognizant of the endless swing of the partisan pendulum, FIRE’s legislative approach bans all loyalty oaths and litmus tests, without regard to viewpoint or ideology. In an effort to avoid exchanging one set of constitutional problems for another, our model legislation prohibits demanding support for or opposition to a particular political or ideological view. We believe this approach is constitutionally sound and most broadly protective of student and faculty rights, both now and in the future.
FIRE strongly believes that loyalty oaths and political litmus tests have no place in our nation’s public universities. Given the pernicious threat to freedom of conscience and academic freedom we have seen on campus after campus over the past several years, legislative remedies are worthy of thoughtful consideration. We look forward to further discussion with both supporters and critics about how best to ensure that our nation’s public colleges and universities remain the havens for intellectual freedom they must be.
The White House is craving even more war. Even a higher risk of nuclear annihilation. The Ukraine war is simply not enough to satisfy U.S. bloodlust. Noam Chomsky describes the situation in a way you will never hear it described in corporate media.
Matt Orfalea points out the problem and the CDC "solution."
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I will now summarize the CDC position: We are so absolutely certain that unvaccinated deaths will ALWAYS be higher than unvaccinated deaths, that we are going to stop collecting this data.
Last week Bret Stephens gave a talk on the culture of free speech at the University of Chicago. I often don't agree with Stephens, but I think he's on target with this commentary Here is an excerpt:
I hope you do, whether you choose to lead a private or a public life. And I hope you do so by writing your own version of “The Joy of Argument” — which is like a similarly titled book from 50 years ago, updated for an era that has become curiously and depressingly afraid of both. The joy of argument is not about “owning” or “destroying” or otherwise trying to disparage, caricature or humiliate your opponent. On the contrary, it should be about opposition and mutuality, friction and delight, the loosening of inhibitions and the heightening of concentration, playfulness and seriousness, and, sometimes even, a truly generative act.
Yes, I am comparing great arguments to great sex. But the analogy bears a brief follow-through because, in the last analysis, the only way in which we are going to create institutions in which independent thought and free expression flourish isn’t through a declaration of principles, however well constructed it may be — at best, those principles can only lay the ground for what we are trying to achieve. Nor can it be on account of some worthy but abstract goal, like the health of democracy — which, again, is wonderful, but rarely motivates people to action.
We are going to succeed at the task only when we persuade others, and ourselves, that these things you’ve all been doing at the University of Chicago for the past few years — discussing and debating and interrogating and doubting and laughing and thinking harder and better than you ever did before — aren’t the antithesis of fun. They are the essence of it. They make up the uniquely joyful experience of being authentically and expressively and unashamedly yourself and, at the same time, having a form of honest and intimate contact with others who, in their own ways, are being authentically and expressively and unashamedly themselves.
He is well aware that many of us don't speak up. Why? He lists four reasons:
1. "First, the problem isn’t that people aren’t smart. It’s that they are scared."
2. Some arguments that sound persuasive are severely defective. "Will you be able to notice the underlying flaw in an idea when the arguments for it sound so persuasive?
3. It's pleasurable to bask in the emotional warmth of one's tribe: "They go along to get along, because the usual emotional companion to intellectual independence isn’t pride or self-confidence. It’s loneliness and sometimes crippling self-doubt. Is that a price you are willing to pay?"
4. Our culture fails to protect those willing to earnestly participate in wide-open conversations: "Does the culture of a society, or of an institution, encourage us to stand out or to fit in; to speak up or to bury our doubts? Does it serve as a conduit to groupthink, or as an obstacle to it?"