Unclear on the Concept of the University

Let me 100% endorse what Alex Tabarrok has to say. A university is a social institution in which people are supposed to think and then speak without fear or favor. The University of California is not doing a good job this week:

Marginal Revolution: What is going on with the UC Regents?!!!!: First this:

In a showdown over academic freedom, a prominent legal scholar said Wednesday that the University of California, Irvine's chancellor had succumbed to conservative political pressure in rescinding his contract to head the university's new law school, a charge the chancellor vehemently denied.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a well-known liberal expert on constitutional law, said he had signed a contract Sept. 4, only to be told Tuesday by Chancellor Michael V. Drake that he was voiding their deal because Chemerinsky was too liberal and the university had underestimated "conservatives out to get me."

Now this:

After a group of UC Davis women faculty began circulating a petition, UC regents rescinded an invitation to Larry Summers, the controversial former president of Harvard University, to speak at a board dinner Wednesday night in Sacramento.

Both of these decisions are shameful.

John Stuart Mill to the white courtesy phone please...

Comments

[kid bitzer]

yeah, the chemerinsky thing is appalling. the summers thing i think is annoying, but on a much smaller scale.

but there's a non-sequitur in this part:
"A university is a social institution in which people are supposed to think and then speak without fear or favor."

from that it does not follow that a university is a social institution which should invite just anybody and everybody to speak. campus invitations are an honor. they are selective. there aren't many of them.

of course they are not equivalent to an institutional endorsement of point of view. but they are closer to an honorary degree, i.e. an institutional endorsement of significance and merit.

my point is just: i can imagine some administrator at a university inviting someone entirely ridiculous to come speak. and i can imagine the rest of the university saying: no. not a good use of our time, not a good use of our resources, not a good use of our prestige.

i mean, sure, anyone can speak their mind in any public place, even david duke, standing in the middle of harlem. university members should be able to speak their mind within their university. but those two thoughts do not entail that columbia university must invite david duke to speak on their campus, or that if an invitation does go out to him by mistake, that the university is not within its rights to retract it.

so i just think that the issues involved in inviting speakers from outside the campus are a little more complicated than is captured by saying that "a university is a place where people speak without fear or favor."

luckily, the chemerinsky case involves so many more horrendous issues--up to and including firing without cause--that we can agree about the big stuff.

[jerry]

Well not that the two can't both be appalling, but the "Summers thing" is much worse than the "Chemerinsky thing." One is indicative of a particular Dean's mindset, the another is indicative of the overreach of Modern Feminism.

I much prefer the philosophies of the Wendy Kaminers and Nadine Strossens of the ACLU that celebrates and defends speech, opinions, and ideas over the philosophies of those that believe it is acceptable to shutdown a person's speech merely because he dissents with their opinion.

Wendy Kaminer has a blog at http://thephoenix.com/TheFreeForAll/ and is a founder (?) I believe of The Fire, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

She used to write for Salon, but in recent years, Salon has gotten much more orthodox, politically correct, rigid, and mainstream in their writings on feminism, which is to say, boring and irrelevant.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

.

I can't keep score without a program, so I'm forced back on memory: Mario Savio's famous sign, "FUCK." He said it stood for "Freedom Under Clark Kerr."

Kerr was of course a liberal, a meritocrat, and a servant of the corporate order -- all the sorts of things that are very fashionable these days.

But, hmmm, doesn't that particular flower-scented path lead you to Vietnam and Iraq?



.

Apology to non-Berkeley people: Clark Kerr was the famously utilitarian President of UC Berkeley back in the late fifties or early sixties. He expanded the budget like crazy (thanks to Jerry Brown's father in large part), built what was already a great university into a bigger great university, and managed to get pretty much everything wrong as he did so.


.

[divF]

Re: Jerry's comment.

"Well not that the two can't both be appalling, but the "Summers thing" is much worse than the "Chemerinsky thing." One is indicative of a particular Dean's mindset, the another is indicative of the overreach of Modern Feminism."

Nonsense. The Chemerinsky thing is much worse - it is rescinding a high-level appointment that has been through the academic vetting process, because of political pressure from a donor. This is the nightmare scenario for many UC faculty who have been paranoid (with some reason) about the pernicious influence of big private money on the campuses.

I don't regard the Summers issue as infringing upon academic freedom, since the UC Regents don't themselves operate under academic rules. They are almost all political appointees, and with the exception of the occasional ex-officio member from the hoi polloi (the student member of the Board or the odd Democratic politician) are members of a relatively conservative elite. Furthermore, I've yet to see anyone articulate a substantive reason for Summers speaking to the Regents having to do with UC business before the Board. If they want to rub elbows with another one of their ilk, let them do it on their own time.

[Maynard Handley]

Quick and simple question:
How many of these UC Davis women faculty petioned or otherwise spoke up in favor of the supposed guilt of the Duke Lacrosse players?

[Michael McIntyre]

Neither the Chemerinsky case nor the Summers case are really free speech cases. The Chemerinsky case, seen in its kindest light, has to do with a chancellor's fear of controversy. In its harshest light, the Chemerinsky case has to do with the power of a single donor to veto a prominent appointment. In either case, academic freedom is infringed.

The Summers case has to do with a privileged forum...

[All forums are privileged forums. So this should stop here.]

[kid bitzer]

michael mcintyre--

thanks.

that's a lot like what i said, if i had said it a lot more clearly, and with actual knowledge and arguments and stuff.

[Doctor Jay]

There's some legal details in the Chemerinsky case I'd like to have clarified, but regardless of them, I consider that case far more serious, as it directly impacts academic independence.

The Board of Regents does not operate under academic rules. It was just having a dinner speaker.

So, the details I'm curious about: Chemerinsky was reported to have signed a teaching contract. Doesn't that put UCI in breach of contract? Aren't they liable for any costs incurred by Chemerinsky's reliance on the promise of his new gig, e.g., travel expenses, moving expenses, etc.? Aren't they exposed to some serious lawsuits here?

I guess it's possible that the contract wasn't valid until Chancellor Drake (or some minion) also signed the contract, and that didn't happen. Not to mention that the faculty that spent all the time and effort recruiting Chemerinsky turns out to have wasted that effort. I'll bet the Dept Chair is hopping mad. Has he resigned as Chair? How about the Dean, how does he feel about this? I don't expect him to resign, though. They never do, they are such tools.

[JK]

I'm a bit saddened that even the commentators here seem unclear on the concept of a university. No doubt one case was worse than the other. Lawyers can argue over what the rule book says about contracts.

But this bickering misses the point. It is depressing that things have come to a point when "freedom of speech" and "academic freedom" seem to be understood not as a broad spirit of enquiry but as technicalities so that we hear from Michael McIntyre "Neither the Chemerinsky case nor the Summers case are really free speech cases."

But John Stuart Mills' point was much stronger than anything about rules. He argued that even if we had the power to silence our critics we would be fools to do so. Rather we should eagerly welcome those who critise our ideas:

"That, therefore, which when absent, it is so indispensable, but so difficult, to create, how worse than absurd is it to forego, when spontaneously offering itself! If there are any persons who contest a received opinion, or who will do so if law or opinion will let them, let us thank them for it, open our minds to listen to them, and rejoice that there is some one to do for us what we otherwise ought, if we have any regard for either the certainty or the vitality of our convictions, to do with much greater labor for ourselves."

Neither the conservatives nor the feminists understand this. Instead of rejoicing they want their critics to shut up. Hence they, and those who went along with them, are fools who are unclear on the concept of a university.

[Michael Carroll]

All this is very idealistic but just to play the devils advocate- Universities go back for a couple millenia yet with a few notable (OK VERY notable) exceptions the free exchange of ideas within them is a pretty modern innovation. Universities have, do and always will exist primarily for the training of the "symbolic" class, if I can use that expression. The free exchange of ideas is just an efficient way of doing that but has always been balanced against societies requirements for the social indoctrination of the elite.

[Michael McIntyre]

Hey Brad,

You're right, this is a privileged forum. Censor me at will. But if that's what you want to do, please remove all of my comment, not just part of it.

[Steve]

I have to agree with those who say the Summers incident was worse.

Suppose the Irvine dean had been competent. Then Chemerinsky never would have been appointed in the first place. At best we have here a demonstration of administrative incompetence.

In contrast, the Davis episode demonstrates something far more dangerous. A gang of professors cowing the Regents into withdrawing an invitation to a private dinner based on explicitly political considerations, intended to punish Summers and embarrass the Regents. All this despite the fact that Summers, himself no model of courage, apologized for his comments years ago. This gives proof to the observation that the inmates are running the asylum. The Regents have no backbone.

[albatross]

The harm done by the Chemerinsky episode is much larger--denying someone a job on ideological grounds is much nastier than just denying them one speaking gig. But the underlying phenomenon seems to be the same--various powerful groups are asserting the power to keep people whose ideas offend them from teaching or speaking on campus.

[jerry]

With more sleep on the matter, I think that both Professor Chemerinsky and Larry Summers needed a good old fashioned tasering.

[no_fan_c_man]

On the subject of tasering, our universities seem to have become venues, or conduits or facilatators.
University of Florida, UCLA... which one is next?

As for shameful behaviour, what I witnessed and experienced at UCLA (where there was another tasering incident late last year) was enough to make me leave the country, literally running for my life.

[no_fan_c_man]

On the subject of tasering, our universities seem to have become venues, or conduits or facilatators.
University of Florida, UCLA... which one is next?

As for shameful behaviour, what I witnessed and experienced at UCLA (where there was another tasering incident late last year) was enough to make me leave the country, literally running for my life.