For Shame

[conversant]

It will no longer be possible for folks in the U.K. to shake their heads at the failures of political and academic discourse in the U.S. This case is every bit as inflamed and polarizing as anything that has happened in the U.S.: "Lecturer at centre of race row takes early retirement" (Guardian Online

Comments

[pingviini]

OT, sorry... but how long are you in London for? Was wondering whether I'd catch you this time :)

[conversant]

I will be here until 27 August. Any chance you will make it this way?

[sheron]

[conversant]

Thanks for throwing out the bait. I'll bite.

I understand where you are coming from (and where Leeds University was coming from), but I think it's a mistake.

The man is/was an academic, and academe, unlike the business world, is built on research, debate, and the exchange of ideas. I vehemently object to this man's views and to the organizations he supports by lending his academic credentials to their gatherings, but (1) I never want to wake up and find that I have become a lonely voice on my side of the spectrum of ideas and that I now face the axe because my ideas offend my colleagues and/or students. (And, frankly, that could happen any day now because I work and teach at a state university in a very conservative part of the U.S

[black_dog]

I'm naive enough to think that academe should serve, at least in part, as an example to the person-in-the-street, at least as an ideal, potentially available way to arm you against your noisy uncle who advances all sorts of ignorant opinions over his fifth beer. Lots of ordinary people are susceptible to this kind of nonsense and it's not enough to huff and puff about how sophisticated people know better, even when they do. Even if it's a no-brainer, this sort of thing really needs to be answered on the record, not just repressed.

The worst part, maybe, is that by refusing to engage with Ellis in intellectual terms, Leeds is basically making themselves into another case study for the intellecual nihilism of the Right -- it just facilitates the Right's effort to persuade uneducated people that it's all about Will and not about Reason, after all.

Also, it's just lazy and complacent. /rant

[conversant]

Yes. Exactly.

What does it teach our students if we shrink from debating ideas? Especially ideas about which we hold vehement counter-views. To be silent and to suggest that the optimum response is to use institutional power to terminate anyone who disagrees with the majority (or the majority of those who have influence) -- it is cowardly; it is an abuse of power; and it is ultimately detrimental to the cause that Leeds thought it was defending. The extreme application of this tactic got a lot of intellectuals killed in the Cultural Revolution (and in Cambodia and elsewhere, elsewhen at times when historical knowledge and critical thinking skills were held by those in power to be undesirable attributes in the citizenry).

Thanks for joining the rant -- it was feeling a bit lonely!