[CHE] A New Group Promises to Protect Campus Free Speech

Ilya Shapiro has decided to resign from Georgetown Law School

Why I Quit Georgetown
The university didn’t fire me, but it abandoned free speech and created a hostile environment.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-i-quit-georgetown-11654479763

 

his resignation is on the FIRE web site. Pretty much the same as the WSJ piece.

https://www.thefire.org/ilya-shapir...georgetown-university-law-center-june-6-2022/

 

I am aware of the basic controversies surrounding Amy Wax, but I am far from conversant on the specific things she might have said over time. I know for sure that some of her purely descriptive statements about her own students' academic success (or lack thereof) have been interpreted as her being an "open racist and white supremacist," and re: those particular statements I would disagree that they demonstrate any such thing.

But again, I am far from familiar with the entire range of things she has said or written over the course of her career. Her academic freedom to write or say these things over the course of her career is again a completely separate issue.

 

what makes his situation all the more untenable is that is supposed to be doing constitutional law. Hard to do that without some sort of basic reassurance that he can proceed to do that the way he chooses to do it

 

this is one of those loaded "when did you stop beating your wife" type of leading questions. Most institutions' "stated mission and values" are incredibly poorly written. There are many cases recently where institutional activities (including faculty review, punishment, and dismissal) have run DIRECTLY COUNTER to those institutions' "stated mission and values" statements as publicly asserted and voted upon by faculty legislatures etc.

So I guess you need to be WAY more specific about your question. And providing an example would really help coax a better answer out of me than this kind of too-easy "gotcha" attempt.

 

and lest I be accused of being too vague on the recent examples of institutions going against their stated values . . . many commenters have observed that the desire to institutionalize DEI statements of mission and values tends to go directly against the stated mission of "educate people" and "conduct research" that are generally at the base of most institutions' stated "mission and values."

 

and discussion of how this has played out at the University of Massachusetts Boston, with links to several other things worth looking at:

The backlash to U Mass/Boston's proposal to cease being a university in favor of becoming an "anti-racist" institution

https://leiterreports.typepad.com/b...ersity-in-favor-of-becoming-an-anti-raci.html

 

well, this is your first mistake. You are likely taking other peoples' word for it about Wax's putative "white supremacy."

Hearsay and anecdote are probably not a good basis for either hiring or termination

 

and I'll cite one of my wife's recent cases: a new hire who allegedly was "caught" espousing racist doctrines on social media.

When a thorough, non-hearsay based investigation ensued, it turned out that the individual so-accused had been quoting what he considered to be a canonical text and so well-known in his discipline that no further attribution was needed--which made sense given the forum he was in when he made the original statement.

Social media social justice warriors picked on the initial statement, played the "telephone game" with it in countless iterations, and voila this person who would be a STELLAR hire became a RACIST and WHITE SUPREMACIST. (Actually I think he became an ANTI-SEMITE, but don't quote me on that.)

The point being: there's always more to the story than what gets reported or re-reported.

 

that's fine, I appreciate learning about your opinions

 

I don't know whether she is a white supremacist or not. I have seen no convincing evidence that she is. I would like to see you provide specific statements of hers that have convinced YOU that she is a white supremacist

I am aware of the Asians comment but don't recall the specifics. I do not recall that the statement was a knock-down, 100% proof of her racism.

I'll cite another example: her fairly well-known statement that she had never seen black students graduate in the top half of a class (cued up at 49:05):



Note what this statement says and what it does NOT say. This statement is about her PERSONAL MEMORY of prominent students graduating in the top 2-3 or in the top 50 percent of a class. This is NOT a statement that tells us "blacks are incapable of graduating in the top half of a law school class."

Moreover, she adds to that her personal recollection of how many black students have excelled in her first-year class. "One or two" she tells us.

Again, this is simply an anecdote that she relays about her own personal recollection. Honestly, it's nothing more and nothing less. It is a statement about HER, and not about "black students" per se.

Instead, that statement gets described as the quintessential proof of her "racism." To cite one example, from USA Today:

Amy Wax said black students can't excel in law school. Bless her heart, we can and do.
Penn professor Amy Wax suggested black students couldn't excel. Don't let the negativity get to you. I didn't, and I became a White House legal adviser.
Michelle J. Millben
Opinion contributor

Professor Amy Wax was removed from teaching first-year courses at the University of Pennsylvania law school after she made disrespectful comments about the academic performance of black students.

Specifically, without providing any data, she said last fall that she had not seen a black student graduate at the top quarter or top half of his or her class at the law school. She went on to suggest that some black students should not attend college. In short, she promoted the concept of black academic inferiority, and without any substantiation.
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Note what this author (Millben) gets wrong. She takes an accurate descriptive statement ("she said last fall that she had not seen a black student graduate at the top quarter or top half of his or her class at the law school") and then turns that into a normative claim that Wax "promoted the concept of black academic inferiority."

I think that's a drastic over-interpretation of the tenor and tone of Wax's remarks with Glenn Loury. I think it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to draw from those comments a 100% certain conclusion that "This proves Wax is a racist."

Making these kinds of criticisms of academics who are accustomed to speaking freely will only have the long-term effect of making non-BIPOC academics shut the hell up and avoid the topics of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc., completely. That's not what academia is supposed to be about.

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