Intellectual Freedom

[thebluewhale]

Okay, so here's the deal

Comments

[softshoulders]

One of the things that your entry made me think about is the role that individual universities play in hiring professors that fall under categories like liberal or conservative. I am shocked that the government could order a university (hell, especially a private university) to hire specific types of people. Our 40 thou a year going towards profs picked by Bush's cronies?--I don't think so. But what scares me about this is that maybe there really is a possibility that universities will be seriously segregated in terms of politics in 20 years or so. And I'm not talking about segregation in the way that NYU is a predominately liberal school--there is still a good handful of people who don't fall under that category here. I mean, that there could be entire schools that teach ONE specific political agenda (or base it around ANY agenda at all) in all the courses that they offer...and that all the people who go to that school think the same way and believe the same things. Maybe this bill in Florida is attempting to prevent exactly

Interesting

[eliblues]

I completely agree the government should not intervene into universities. A politician doing something stupid, who knew? But this just another step in a long line of intrusions. My favorite example is Title IX and the unfair standard to which universities were supposed to be held concerning women's sports. Instead of saying that if a group of enough women to fill a team stated they wanted to have in a sport you give them funding and a place at a university for that sport, they set up this rule that whatever the percentage of women are at a school has to be the percentage of sports. This of course is insane because it's just a matter of fact that women are a majority in college campuses but are a minority in college athletics. It just is. So I guess I can't say I'm shocked or surprised or appalled anymore than I was beforehand. And I know there's been developments about this law so I know someone's going to react in some way. I don't know if they made things more reasonable or the oh-so-hard-to-believe possiblity that they fucked it up

Re: Interesting

[eliblues]

*Enforced. I hate typos.

[eliblues]

::slaps forehead in dismay:: Then again, I'm still not surprised.