Scathing Online Schoolmarm has a column up at her branch campus, Inside Higher Ed, this morning. It’s a close reading of a letter the provost at Brandeis wrote to a faculty member not long ago.
Keep in mind that The Volokh Conspiracy, a high-profile legal blog, has been following in great detail this important free speech story (scroll down).
And FIRE has gotten involved. Thank goodness.
January 24th, 2008 at 11:02AM
Great post at the alternate campus, UD. Although you violated your own rules and made it clear that you were pissed.
Sunshine IS the best disinfectant.
Ciao,
Bonzo
January 24th, 2008 at 12:05PM
One thing you zero in on with great accuracy is the way that some administrators (as well as middle managers in private industry) adopt what they imagine to be a lawyer-like language or rhetoric at moments like this, even when what they’re communicating is anything but a genuinely legal procedure.
January 24th, 2008 at 12:26PM
I think SOS does a great job of showing just how sinister such cold, bureaucratic language can be, and the power-tripping it can both disguise and license. But as someone on the verge of becoming a professor, it was this from the Brandeis Hoot that I found the most chilling:
"Despite her complaints, Jane said she may take another course with Hindley, because ‘I won’t have to do work.’ When asked about the penalty decided upon by the Administration, Jane felt that while anti-discriminatory training was appropriate, she felt Assistant Provost Richard Silberman only needed to attend one class per week."
UD probably knows this line from Jake’s Thing: "If there’s one word that sums up everything that’s gone wrong since the War, it’s Workshop. After Youth, that is." Well, this story has its Workshop and its Youth, but my vote for the word that sums up everything that’s gone wrong here is "feel", used as a substitute for "think".
January 24th, 2008 at 1:28PM
Thank you, Tim and Peter W — and Peter — I missed the bit where Jane helpfully suggests once a week attendance for the speech monitor. That’s very good.
Bonzo: You are absolutely right. That thought occurred to me while writing the thing — SOS: You’re breaking Rule #1. But what the hell.
January 24th, 2008 at 3:24PM
Brandeis really ought to start filtering its internet access, too, like China and Saudi Arabia. The kids might be listening to people like Tom Lehrer, and who knows where that would lead:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIlJ8ZCs4jY