The End of Being a Duke Professor and What It Means for the Future of Higher Ed
jamesgmartin.center
jamesgmartin.center
It will only lead to a greater chilling effect as time goes on, and whereas great universities once taught the ability to critically consider the available information, they are rapidly reaching the point where they only serve to push people towards grossly limited and increasingly dogmatic world views.
In an increasingly polarised society it terrifies me that both of the the left and the right seem to consider liberty an enemy.
Whether this changes once the power balance tips is a whole different story.
The right is also more likely to conflate free speech with some kind of "unchallenge privilege" - the idea that people using their speech to complain about your speech is somehow bad. The giveaway for this is people going on television and writing in the national newspapers to complain about how they are "silenced". If they were really silenced I wouldn't be hearing about it through those channels but through some kind of samizdat.
But they are still failing in their self-proclaimed mission as cathedrals of knowledge and discourse if they engage in ideological purges. And really, anyone who makes hiring and firing decisions out of resentment and spite should really think about who they are and who they want to be.
Are you sure you didn't you mean "left" here? Though I don't think either party has a monopoly on this behavior.
Specifically the "using their speech to complain about your speech is somehow bad". The left seems to constantly describe opposing speech as violence/bigoted/racist/hateful and claims any criticism is "silencing" them, while asserting anyone who isn't in the intersectionality disadvantaged groups has no right to speak on those issues.
For example, when Chelsea Clinton (on the left) criticized Ilhan Omar's statements about Israel, others on the left accused her of anti-muslim sentiment, and said she was responsible for the New Zealand terrorist attacks. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/16/new-...
Similarly, when Ilhan Omar made her recent comments that included describing 9/11 as "some people did something" (yes, that wasn't her main point, etc.) and was roundly criticized by the right for minimizing the terrorist attack, the left rallied 'round to defend her, saying anyone who criticized her comment was driven by anti-muslim bigotry.
Rashida Tlaib even invoked the complaint about being silenced by not being defended enough - so the Democrats are silencing these prominent new minority congresswomen by not defending them enough:
"They put us in photos when they want to show our party is diverse. However, when we ask to be at the table, or speak up about issues that impact who we are, what we fight for & why we ran in the first place, we are ignored. To truly honor our diversity is to never silence us."
Read all about it in the national press...
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/16/us/politics/ilhan-omar-de... https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rashida-tlaib-democrats-silen...
Who is the right that you are talking about?
Complaining is part of free speech as long as it doesn’t infringe on others right to complain back as well. If they complain because they disagree, that’s a very different thing than not defending or being hypocritical about free speech.
FWIW from my experience, the people I talk to respect players’ right to kneel even if they don’t agree with that action. That is the key to free speech I think —- to disagree peacefully but respect people’s right to express themselves.
Nor would a complaint by religious students that God and Christianity were mocked by their professor have much purchase. And I have never heard that Sanford’s “safe space” is a welcome refuge for the (generally reviled) minority of “open” Trump supporters on campus, nor have I heard of “trigger warnings” for depictions of disrespect to the American flag or harm to the unborn."
It seems clear to me this professor believes the institution has a left-leaning bias.
If it's true, it would have to be detrimental in the long run. The institution should be straight down the middle.
I cannot agree with this; both the left and the right are motivated to manipulate world views in order to control perception of the world and the direction of social progress.
The institution should cover the mainstream social perspectives and attempt to ascertain the motivations behind them. It should not, however, base its own perspective on any number of transient world views (at least not without transparent and reasoned analysis) - the middle line is not unbiased.
Responding to an article about Duke with this conclusion is rich. Duke is a hyper-wealthy institution that is hardly apolitical. Their neatly-manicured campus right next to impoverished portions of Durham and their decision to destroy a decades-long battle for light-rail by changing their mind last-minute doesn't strike me as an example to hold up for your argument.
Duke isn't some bastion of progressivism - is what I'm trying to say here.
(veered off track a little, but this hits close to home - sorry)
Also, what "safe space bullshit" are you referring to? Seriously, the article is pretty loose with the details.
> It is a disturbing trend where it no longer matters if someone can convey a counter argument to any given point of view
We're not really getting the whole story from the article, but I'm guessing there were some lines crossed. Generally, these sorts of things don't just happen overnight.
> It will only lead to a greater chilling effect ... they are rapidly reaching the point where they only serve to push people towards grossly limited and increasingly dogmatic world views.
This isn't actually happening. I'm sure it seems, logically, that it would happen. But people also have their own minds and make their own decisions. Universities aren't brainwashing anyone - I promise. You dropped Occam's Razor.
> In an increasingly polarised society it terrifies me that both of the the left and the right seem to consider liberty an enemy.
It's not as polarized as the internet and pundits would make it seem. Talking to folks face-to-face, you can find some common ground - even if they're on the opposite end of whatever spectrum.
You seem a bit anxious about this whole ordeal. The world isn't that frightening and people are pretty nice.
That's precisely the point and the problem - the University is there to make money, and the students are the customers. This conceptualization of the goal of the institution had risen on lockstep with the growth of the administration-class in universities, and is at odds with the purported purpose of the academy - to holistically educate students and open minds.
The administration obviously thinks this negative PR is lesser than whatever fallout it would receive from the _sealed_ complaints of a minority of students.
Look at Intersectionality[1] for clues to why the situation has gotten out of hand. In essence there are so many levels of grievance. In effect, unless you are part of the class of people your right to discuss or raise an issue is called into question and by default denied.
In the corporate world people are fired or let go for silly reasons or non-reasons all the time: that's at-will employment. But for people in most fields they just find another job and move on; the problem here is there aren't many opportunities to teach at a prestigious university, at least not at anything resembling a living wage.
Years ago I was working for this one tech company who terminated a guy in his late 50s who'd been there over 30 years. I ran into him crying in the bathroom -- he asked me at his age, what was he going to do?
Two wrongs don't make a right -- but making people unfireable (tenure) doesn't seem fair either.
Hope Professor Charney finds another gig but I don't know if it's the outrage he presents it as here.
Saying someone who consistently rates amongst your top performers as having unsatisfactory performance is clearly false.
Which means that not only did Duke cave in to an amount of complaints far outshone by praise, it also tried to hide this fact (circumventing its own bylaws).
But contracts not being renewed -- happens all the time in the "real" world. My point is just: good people don't get their contracts renewed all the time, often for silly or dumb reasons, and it's not some cosmic injustice because most people find another job.
The fact that finding one of these jobs is so difficult should not change the basic risk/reward stature of at-will employment.
The reward is not having to work with that person. Probably not a good enough reward to justify the downsides, but still a reward.
I really wish there was a bit of a balance here in the US but I think the at-will stuff (along with stagnant wage growth) is why companies have such a hard time keeping people. Most of my working career has been (about 15 years discounting part-time work in high school) has been one in which I've worked with other people that very clearly knew or experienced that there was no such thing as stability in the modern workplace and you can be out on the street on a whim.
At least in the Duke professor's case, there was a process and a means of appeals it seems. There has to be a more human way for us to do this that balances the needs of people (and their faults) with that of a business.
Professors are often exactly the kind of person who loves to work night and day on a topic of their interest. People also tend to judge the job for profs with tenure. The vast majority of professionals in academia are either pursuing PhDs, post Docs or untenured professors. Doctors have great job satisfaction once they are established too. But similar to profs the road to get there is among the most grueling.
The whole idea of tenure, is that the university expects the professor to be self motivated enough to warrant zero supervision or threat of losing their job.
A professors job is great for someone who is suited for a professors job. The traditional person who values other things may not find it to be as nice.
I was a tenured professor who left academics for two reasons, the administrative nightmares of the university and department (to put it one way), and unrelated family reasons.
The year before I left they did a survey of faculty satisfaction at the university I was at, and found that, although about 2/3-3/4 of faculty reported that they were generally satisfied with their jobs, about 1/2-2/3 seriously wanted to leave (following an actual trend of faculty leaving in exodus). So these satisfaction surveys can be misleading and paradoxical, because the stresses are like that: you're acutely aware of the freedom and security you have, but also have very little recourse if things go awry.
As jobs go there is a lot of flexibility in some ways as a tenured professor (time, schedule), but absolutely none in other ways. It's difficult to move (although not impossible) and if you do you have very little choice in terms of geography or location. If you have family, you might be asking them to make huge sacrifices for you if they have better opportunities elsewhere, or can't move to be near you. Increasingly you're at the whims of fads in the field and among students: if you step back from doing what everyone else is doing for a bit, you get labeled as decreasing in productivity (note that I'm not talking about doing nothing, just referring to the fact that it's easy to churn out more papers or grants on things that are currently part of a trend, and where you can share work and credit; as a result, if papers or grant counts are your products, you will necessarily be less productive if you try something off the beaten path); if you challenge students (as did the author of the piece did) you get pushback from them. Increasingly I felt like academics was/is becoming full of bullshit in a way that no one wants to admit. It's fine to work in a field full of bullshit; the problems are when people lie to themselves and the public about it. The incentives are not to produce good, solid, insightful, replicable work, it seems to be to attract attention and entertain the maximal number of students.
My sense as a senior professor was that people in the same field in the non-academic sector were making significantly more money, and had more flexibility. So although they had to worry more about losing their job, if a department starting falling apart, or other conflicts arose, it was much easier to leave and move on to somewhere else where they wanted to be. Tenure is great if you're at a good institution, or if it works out for your family. If you're at a bad institution, or things go sour, and it's not good for your family, it is horrible.
I think if family considerations had not entered the picture I still probably would have stayed, or at least would have stayed long enough to leave for another university, but with the ongoing problems in the university and department, it was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back.
Higher ed was never a legit opportunity in the first place. It's all gate-keeping by the establishment.
In this professor's case, they seemed to mistake experience with value. Turns out, you can use a slave-laborer (grad student) to teach classes much more efficiently. The market value of a college professor is apparently 0.
I’m not so sure about this. I went to a school that is not very well known outside my state/neighboring states. Even though it was the 2nd largest school in Georgia at the time.
The teacher teaching HTML/CSS in dreamweaver was making $95k. 2 professor getting PhDs in security were making $120k and likely much more after their PhD. The department head was making $150k and the old head was making much more until she got a million dollar grant. This was 6 years ago so they likely make a lot more now.
2 common threads about them. The first is that they rarely discuss specifics about what positions or what opinions got them censured. The second is that the comments section is typically full of drive by commenters who aren't responding to the content of the post in particular but to the idea that a professor might be censured for [their view].
I think its fair to say that everyone believes that universities ought to be places where it's possible to explore radical ideas. But sometimes, things are just wrong. If a professor teaches a load of students that the Sun orbits the earth, they're going to be censured, and nobody would be surprised.
I can't say anything to respond to this particular post, because I have no idea what this guy in particular is even being censured for -- whether the idea itself has value enough to discuss. The fact that some students believe so is certainly not a high enough standard.
To use my analogy, the Earth-centered model is free speech, but it isn't worth much, because it is wrong.
And yet in schools around the world people are taught that electricity flows from positive to negative, and everyone is happy. xD
(slightly disingenuous, but I'd say wrong and not useful are merely correlated rather than 1-1 linked)
Seriously? I have never encountered this
Furthermore, once the facts are established, I personally believe it’s important for people to express their ideas even if it’s out of ignorance because then we can know to edify. Not everyone will be willing to listen, learn, and change but without free speech and exchange of ideas I find it hard to see how people will grow effectively.
"It must be worth exploring" is the dangerous authoritarian ideology that is the basis of censorship. It's why free speech is a right. Not the "right to explore those worth exploring".
"What is worth exploring" is entirely subjective.
If we applied your logic, then things like LGBT rights, civil rights, physics, biology, etc are all left to the whims of authority. If people truly thought like you, then heliocentrism wouldn't have been explored because "it wasn't worth exploring" 500 years ago. Actually, it was blasphemy.
You do realize that "everything worth exploring" was pretty much banned, taboo or attacked throughout history? It's why the founders enshrined free speech into the constitution.
Things that are wrong are just as important to discuss as things that are right. It's part of the learning process and part of progress.
https://sites.duke.edu/evancharney/files/2014/09/Liberal-bia...
I assume this is why he was dismissed from the tenure track early in his career there.
Why would anyone be dismissed from a tenure track for that? Pretty much every philosophy professors argues for that position.
https://sites.duke.edu/evancharney/files/2014/09/Liberal-bia...
Statement 1 of the "open to experience" section of a popular personality test is the following:
>1. I believe that we should look to our religious authorities for decisions on moral issues. (Agree: Openness score goes down)
He claimed this introduced a political bias, stating:
>Statement 1 reflects a liberal ideological bias against religion. Is reliance upon scientific authorities, for example, close-minded? Granted, the question concerns moral decisions (so let us assume that science cannot resolve questions of right and wrong). Why, then, is reliance upon religious authorities as opposed, for example, to philosophical or ethical authorities or, simply, moral experts, singled out as an instance of close-mindedness? Academics often rely upon authorities when making decisions on moral issues (e.g., the authority of John Rawls when considering matters of distributive justice), although they would likely be uncomfortable characterizing this as reliance upon an authority (even if it is)
And in fact it’s a false dichotomy as the term “authority” in religious contexts (catholic and Protestant Christianity, non-orthodox Judaism, hinduism, Islam and Buddhism at least and likely others)has an assertive meaning utterly different from the same term used for scientists (not that such a term is particularly used in the sciences anyway)
I don’t know enough to say whether dropping his contract might be legit or not, I was simply answering the op question.
Given how conservative his employer is, there are quite likely more problems than he alluded to.
You cannot say it doesn't discuss specifics.
I've taken an admittedly brief look through them and, while I see some hints as to the general subject of discussion, I haven't yet found specific details about what got him in trouble.
Not being specific is a really nasty trick. All the more so because it makes it impossible to say if the problem is one of malicious intent or blinkered thinking from either of the two involved parties. But, critically, if the waters are muddy then the bureaucracy is going to win.
It's however quite apparent that Prof Charney had issues with liberalism. He, for example, asks why people bowing down to "scientific authorities" are considered open-minded but people bowing down to religious authority are considered closed minded. I think it's a clever twist of the word "authority" in to forcing people to think that religion and science are the same thing. If this is his "research", I don't feel too bad for him.
There is overwhelming evidence that established science is correct, and the scientists are using objectively powerful techniques to establish truth.
However, the mechanisms society at large uses to test and assimilate that knowledge are exactly the same as those used for religious authority. The major difference is that rituals invoking science tend to correlate much more closely with getting the outcome we expect than rituals invoking the gods.
Picking on doctors as representatives of the scientific establishment, there isn't much difference from an average person's perspective going to a doctor or a faith healer. Person has a problem, they go to an authority figure, things they don't understand happen, and then hopefully they get a good outcome - no guarantee though. From the perspective of the patient's decision making process, there is no difference.
What is different is the advice from the social network will (hopefully) be 'don't see the faith healer; see the doctor'. That is the only difference in practice between the two decisions.
Monitoring and criticising how the underlying mechanisms work is a perfectly reasonable line of inquiry and place to dissent. There are interesting ethical questions here about who needs to do what to fulfill their ethical requirements between what the patient's responsibilities are given their limited understanding, the social network's responsibility given their third-party status and the authority figure's role in how to represent themselves.
So the effect of the ritual of seeing the doctor and undergoing treatment has increased in strength, possibly as people have grown to trust doctors more.
The literary authority claims that the poem is about the poetic art, while a mathematician would think it is about a Fourier transform (noncommutative, see the "groups of water", SL(2)?).
Here is the translation of the poem Ion Barbu, Din ceas dedus:
From the clock, down the depth of this calm peak,
Passed through the mirror into blessed azure,
Tailoring on the crushing of the aggressive herds
In groups of water a second, purer game.
Latent nadir! The poet raises the sum
Of spreading harps lost into reversed flight.
The song exhausts: as deep as the sea bears
Its jellies, from under the green bells.
This sounds like a good question that should promote a good discussion and would probably end with a cohort of people far better equipped to argue the case for science in a way that shows how the science vs religion debate is not even worth having rather than people who engage pointlessly in a a faith based discussion.
These questions were, of course, picked for discussion by the author himself, but as they are apparently 50% of the questions evaluating the Values facet of the Openness trait, I do not have to accept the author's claim, that the rest are like it, to think that at least this facet is not being well evaluated.
If you’re some kind of dogmatic zealot who blindly believes scientists (because how could the scientists possibly be wrong), you’re as closed-minded as the deeply religious who cite the Bible as infallible truth
Religion and science are not the same thing ( thought social science is far closer to religion than science ), but authoritarianism and appeal to authority are the same thing.
After all, "scientific authority" was the basis of white supremacy and nazism ( social darwinism ). It was "settled science" not too long ago supported by every scientific authority that white people were superior and non-whites are inferior.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism
You should feel bad for anyone who is a victim of censorship. Being happy that someone is oppressed because they don't align with your political ideology isn't any better than enjoying seeing someone suffer because they aren't part of your race.
And if you are a true "liberal", then you should be against "bowing down" to any form of authority.
Bret Weinstein, who is as progressive as they come, was driven out of the university because he ventured to say that having a day where whites were to be excluded from attending school was a bad idea.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College#2017_p...
"Because of this, Professor Charney often takes on positions that are not his own in order to illustrate perspectives from across the spectrum. For example, in 2016 during the peak of the Allen building protests, he spent a whole class discussing the motivations and tactics of the protestors and challenging his students to argue cogently in favor of or against the movement. Though in some cases this put the burden on protesters in his class to justify their actions, it also exposed the unsavory and borderline racist opinions of others. His rationale is clear: without confronting new ideas, students go through Duke unchallenged and are unable to evaluate the merits of competing claims.
To be sure, Charney’s courses elicit a discomfort inherent to any situation that requires students to re-evaluate their most deeply held convictions. In presenting differing perspectives on sensitive topics, some are concerned that his class reproduces systems and structures of inequality involving notions of class, privilege and power. The concern here is that, in the name of “diversity of opinion,” the class becomes a staging ground for perspectives that reinforce the negative racial, class, and gender power dynamics that exist in society and on this campus. In recognition of this, he makes sincere and intentional efforts to reach out to students who might feel hurt or offended by the class discussions. In these cases, he seeks to address the offense and listens genuinely to recommended changes to the ways in which he teaches sensitive subject matter."
(While searching for that, I also came across this: https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2017/04/student-conduc... which is unrelated, but also fairly unflattering.)
Another common theme in these threads are comments attempting to dismiss and marginalize these victims because it doesn't align with one's political ideologies. I'm surprised you didn't mention that. If you've read these threads, I'm sure you've noticed the support for censorship and the sneaky attempts to justify censorship for political ideology.
Yes, you are right, if a professor teaches that the sun orbits the earth, that should be questioned. And if it was that blatant, then we would know about it already. But what if a professor teaches that biological sex exists? Should they be censured? What if a professor says there aren't anything such as biological sex? Should they be censured?
How many of these censorships are because a physics professors claimed that the sun orbits the earth? None. If you've really paid attention to this issue, you know that most of these censorship are due to political reasons - whether it is Evergreen professors or the CERN scientist and everyone in between.
I can understand the support for censorship in the media, but I can't understand any support for it on a hacker news site. Even for ideological reasons.
But I've never met any 12th-grader who is so knowledgeable and wise that frosh year at a proper college shouldn't shake up their developing mind, and challenge much of what they thought they knew -- about the world, themselves, and even thinking itself.
(College is not a place to party and practice your whiteboarding theatre until you can get a FAANG job, knowing not much more than you did in high school.)
Whether it's in the humanities, social sciences, quantum physics, or even functional programming: if students are not surprised and uncomfortable at times, I'd think they're not learning enough.
Would you want to pay money to faculty who challenges the consumer's assumptions, or do you want to build a strong lifestyle brand, which in turn drives future "donations", sports income. Every other corporation is giving us information tailored to our desires, so why would a university want to risk the corporate enterprise on antagonistic professors with differing opinions? That just devalues the brand.
Note that the OP has been a "professor" at Duke for 20 years, but has essentially no job security. He's basically an independent contractor in the gig economy. That's kinda common in the community college level, but it looks like it's finally made its way to the elite schools too. We used to have secretaries for professors, but now the colleges have secretaries for the deputy assistant administrators.
So to me the trigger warning, safe space culture wars are only a symptom of the problem that our universities have become mirrors of the large corporations.
I've talked with some tenured professors who hire adjuncts, and they feel bad about the situation, but those individual professors had no say over it. Perhaps if entire faculties came together and petitioned, at least at the wealthier places, universities might spring for all instructors being tenure-track professors (assisted by grad students).
Not sure. But we're seeing more pushback on fat acceptance.[1]
[1] https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/01/16/army-recruits...
This is not an isolated event and universities skew heavily in one direction politically. Is it universally agreeable that the end of healthy debate in college is a really, really bad thing?
It basically doesn't matter what most students are taught since they will never have an opportunity to use it, and even if they did, they would not remember what they were taught, and even if they remembered they probably wouldn't be able to apply it outside a classroom context.
"Trigger" originally referred specifically to PTSD. There is a small number of students, such as women who have experienced sexual assault, for whom the subject is more than merely upsetting, it causes flashbacks and significant risk to short term mental health. They asked that they not be exposed to this material without warning. (Not that the material not be taught, nor even that it not be taught to them, but that they be informed in advance about the course content in order to mentally prepare for it)
> healthy debate
Healthy debate for whom? Do we need a debate about what constitutes a healthy and effective debate? Do we need to consider the validity of different modes of interaction? "Traditional" debate assumes a sort of weightlessness, that the issues involved are at a distance from the people having the debate. For things like sexual assault or abortion, or the racialisation of intelligence, it's people's actual experiences - well, for people other than the traditional professor class.
> microagressing them
Somehow I'm reminded of the debate over corporal punishment in schools, where pedagogical effectiveness takes a back seat to more primal ideas about punishment, conformity, and order. People used to be beaten for being left-handed, remember.
First-hand experience gives you unique perspective that you can share with others, but doesn't make you a final authority on the matter. Once you shared your information with others (and assuming there's no trust issues involved), you're on equal grounds as to what to conclude from it.
2) One of the things that people keep starting "free speech controversies" over is the idea that some groups are intrinsically less intelligent or apt than others. When, as a member of such a minority group, you are confronted with this idea, what can you conclude from the suggestion that you are intrinsically less intelligent than your classmates?
- the instructor is right, and you should drop out?
- the instructor is prejudiced, so you will receive unfair marks?
- the instructor is wrong about this, and likely to be wrong about everything else?
Do you have any specific examples? I am aware of controversies about some groups being on average more or less intelligent or more or less apt, but that has little to do with a) whether the variance is intrinsic or b) the capacities of any particular individual.
If the instructor is right about variance between groups, why does it follow that an individual should drop out? I wouldn't drop out of school upon hearing that on average Jews and people of Asian-descent are more intelligent than members of my ethnic group -- it is both true and irrelevant to my academic abilities or status, or whether the instructor is bigoted (they may or may not be, but making a true statement isn't evidence either way).
Also, what exactly "intrinsically less intelligent" means? For example, I'm statistically more likely to be less intelligent than people of some ethnic background, but this effect is slight enough so that every time I'm compared to a person from this group (and he has to be randomly chosen, and I have to have no other information about him/her other than his ethnicity for this whole premise to work, btw), it's like 55%/45% in his favour, not 100%/0% - not a reason to drop out either.
EDIT: NB In case it is not clear I personally don't think that there are meaningful e.g. IQ differences between the (in my opinion totally arbitrary) groups of humans that people divide other people into where those groups are based on external characteristics.
Funnily enough when this idea is called "diversity" it's much less popular.
The hordes of people without PTSD that have appropriated the language and our collective sympathy for those that suffer from it to further their own ideological agendas ought to be ashamed of themselves.
> Somehow I'm reminded of the debate over corporal punishment in schools, where pedagogical effectiveness takes a back seat to more primal ideas about punishment, conformity, and order. People used to be beaten for being left-handed, remember.
Can you provide some context to justify comparing microagressions with beating people with sticks?
[0] https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Bris...
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2696265?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...
[2] Sue, Derald Wing. Microaggressions and marginality: Manifestation, dynamics, and impact. John Wiley & Sons, 2010.
Terrifying
We can see even in this thread people talking about the need to "toughen" up students.
Some people who think that any form of physical hurt would be completely unacceptable still seem to think that emotional hurt is completely fictional and it's totally OK to inflict arbitrary amounts of it on people, then refuse to believe their own accounts of the hurt.
No, you're comparing physical aggression with verbal aggression. Sure, the latter might hurt, but I think many (most?) people would agree that it's not just a difference "of scale".
> But the intent to hurt is common.
No, "microaggressions" are often accused even when there's no intent to hurt. E.g. asking a foreign-looking student "Where are you from?" - which is most often likely asked with genuine curiosity, and no ill intent whatsoever - even if you don't assume the person is a foreigner!
I admit that society has been impoverished when rudeness is reframed as "microaggression", but that doesn't excuse the rudeness.
Rudeness isn't the end of the world, but we should still try to avoid it. I don't get pissed off when adults ask me about or make stupid jokes in light of my obvious physical handicap, but I would still prefer that they not do that. Young children get a free pass, because I don't expect them to know any better.
The whole concept of "icebreaker" seems dubious. If you don't feel comfortable around strangers, that's your thing. It's silly to assume that anyone treasures your company enough that they want to become familiar.
A healthy debate around PTSD might include listening to professionals that treats PTSD and follow their recommendations.
I guess when education becomes a business, you have to place the customers - the students - satisfaction over, you know, the education
The issue was not what Professor Charney discussed but how he handled discussion of difficult and emotional issues with and among students. Professor Charney perhaps could have made more effort to learn to manage classroom discussion of difficult topics in a manner that would have left all students feeling fully heard and respected."[1]
In short, not everyone felt warm and fuzzy when discussing difficult issues - something which I believe to be a near impossibility - not when we live in a world where even presenting a dissenting opinion can be considered offensive -- indeed letting the discussion go where it may, would probably make many people feel uncomfortable.
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qrGaqKye_5hJxEAFYmTrzNYLJeX...
Being the free speech guy / gal in charge of a classroom is a risky endeavor and requires the same amount of talent, calm, tact, neutrality, and wit that, say, a standup comic needs when trying to get people to laugh at a tough subject, and I can easily imagine an earnest but less than talented (in this specific way) educator losing their cool in a room full of jacked up and emotional undergrads debating Trump, abortion, I/P, pick your hot button issue.
"Could've made students feel more fully heard" could indeed be "sensitive undergrads whining", but it could also be "guy proclaims himself mischievous contrarian view-challenger but reveals himself to be pedantic narcissist / unhinged / aggressive / insert pretty unattractive trait or behavior here".
I see that emphasis on how he handled it and I wonder if if isn't the latter. Commanding a room is a difficult thing with way more art and god-given ability involved than people think, especially when the emotion in said room is running high. There's a reason diplomacy, marriage counseling, and the like aren't easy.
Like I said, who knows from the quote, but I've been in both kinds of room as a student. Neither would surprise me and I think we'd all do well to consider both possibilities.
> What matters now is whether someone feels you as doing harm
Can you briefly explain what you believe the differences between those statements are, as I can very easily imagine a position where I would say that those are arguably the same.
I just don't see why that school should be Duke University. I don't understand why the most elite schools seem to be among the most likely to decide that their students need protection from harm. Polarizing teachers seem like they should be right in an elite universities wheelhouse.
Remember, the guiding principle of science (and pursuit of knowledge in general) is skepticism.
Although you're more likely to change the mind of someone at university than anywhere else in the world, you're never going to change the mind of your professor. They've invested years if not decades in their opinions.
I think pulling out the dirtiest, most underhanded rhetorical tricks is fair game in college. It's up to me to pick apart the nonsense. (Thanks philosophy!)
I also think it's completely reasonable to say up front, these topics are off limits - for no reason whatsoever. It's hard to get a 17 year old to say, no discussion of X.
Another aspect is, the classic victorian phrase, "you have the advantage of me". Some key word or phrase to indicate, i'm not prepared to deal with this, and you can't hold it against me. Not just can't, but will be held in contempt by every person participating in the conversation if you press the issue.
It requires subtlety, taste and discretion. I don't think an arbitrary set of rules can actually capture the subtlety required. Can tact be a standard?
I believe higher education should be that PARTIALLY. However lots of students can get value from school without being put into a class which has difficult discussions about sensitive polarizing charged issues.
You shouldn't just cast them aside though like the parent comment suggested.
I didn’t hear about any incidents like this at my alma mater, which is 20 miles away from Duke, probably because the elites don’t care about what we have to say. It’s one of the many things that turns me off from the “campus war” meme.
You have no source for this and seem to have an anti-Duke bias based on your second statement. Why should we believe what you said?
I’d rather have a society that listens to the grievances of everyone than one that focuses exclusively on the top 1% at a very specific age.
Do you have a source for this, or is this just a biased opinion?
Somebody get $100M and start recruiting all these great professors academia can’t handle....
1. brilliant professors and peers were inspirational and encouraged ambitious and creative thinking
2. >90% of education is self-education
3. very little of what I learned in class prepared me for the real world and among my classmates there has been relatively little correlation between academic success and real world success
Anecdotally, one of my friends did a work term for the Dean of Science (and pure mathematics professor) at another university (which shall remain nameless) and she said the stuff we've been doing in first year isn't covered until 3rd/4th year at that school. Heck, her old high school AP calculus teacher couldn't do assignment 1 from our first year calc 1 course.
The experience is effectively the same at any tier 1 university in the US. Some even have special names[2].
[1] https://www.studocu.com/en/course/university-of-waterloo/cal...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditions_of_the_Georgia_Inst...
Anyone who can get into Harvard/Stanford/MIT is already in the tiniest elite of the elite in this hemisphere. That's all anyone that goes to those schools is signalling to their future employers.
I am learning a lot and enjoying the challenging course work so far. As I get closer to graduation, I'll see whether my GPA improves enough to consider grad school. Otherwise, I'll be relying on Waterloo's excellent co-op program to get my foot in the door with employers.
So my guess is the places you describe already exist and they're about to be better known within a few years as trust in US universities erodes.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2016/03/15/there-fear-...
I’d recommend if only for the convenience and price!
Again I feel like a lot of people on HN are privileged by a childhood of high achievement..I didn’t have that and could never get into a Duke-like institution (or Duke either for that matter).
The problem is that people seem to believe that research is osmotic: that students in the same institution as some research is happening will learn more. Hence the most prestigious universities are those with high-status research programmes.
Many, many people on my course dropped out in the first year. Over half! I really do feel like it's 'hard-nosed', as you say. Not only that, but I feel like it's not even uncommon.
Some people have suggested, and it might be true, that this is related to studying STEM subjects at uni, with a much easier sense of right or wrong. However, anecdotally, I know many people who are spending many many late nights and long weeks working on art or writing reports in other subjects as well.
In universities, you are encouraged to take work home, to practically be working all the time. Leisure time of course exists, but fully expect to feel or be made to feel guilty for taking that friday evening off to enjoy yourself, even far from any important deadline.
This isn't to say that you're wrong, but "one day, you get an A. And that grade MEANS something. And after four years, the students walk out into the wide world and kick ass up and down the street." seems like a pretty apt description of the way higher education works. I haven't seen anybody just cruising through life getting good grades in university in the way one might at high school, because unlike high school you literally don't get handed the majority of the learning required. You actually have to put in the hours for success, right now.
> As a woman of color, I write to bring attention to an aspect of Charney’s teaching that will be as missed as much as it is needed in today’s political climate…The climate at Duke reflects the polarization of the country at large. Conversations are halted before they can even begin. Instead of listening, instead of understanding or trying to understand, people on both sides are combative and dismissive…Charney taught us how to have those conversations, how to navigate race relations, how to empathize.
So, there is ample evidence suggesting that the students who complained merely heard something they found disagreeable and construed that as harm. Other definitions of harm are not consistent with the evidence available.
The article says it started from a "discussion" in a classroom settings
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First, the complaint of a handful of students concerning the events of a single class in which we discussed racism at Duke
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I guess it could have a been a visual display, a movie, soundbite? "Hearing" might not have been precise but not sure if splitting hairs helps the topic here. "Exposed to" maybe would be more general...
Also note that the harm was also "alleged" harm. They don't actually assert the student was harmed:
> Professor Charney’s tendency to provoke negative reactions, and perhaps harm, among some
But maybe that's enough. Overall I think it's a private school so they can have a lot of leeway in who they hire and fire. So barring some negative PR, which they can probably get around, they are free to fire him. Speaking of PR though, they probably learned a valuable lesson of not including the real reason for firing in any written form in the future. It should be something like "cultural incompatibility" or "restructuring".
It's interesting to discuss wither they were actually harmed and felt that way and what kind of upbringing or circumstances might lead to that. Or, that they saw an opportunity to get a ahead and exert power over someone by pretending they were harmed.
It can be a gray area as well. They might have felt uncomfortable say a 5 on a 1-10 scale. But then also realized they could turn it around and fire this person.
I tried expound on that a bit in another comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745288
I am not saying the professor in this article wasnt wrongly fired, but I wish there was a bit more discretion in the comments because this article was a.) a multi party account written by one person and b.) written to push a perspective that puts him in a positive light. I think there may be more to the story here.
Future leaders in minority communities need to be able to defend themselves but learning to do it by firing academics on negative feedback feels like the wrong lesson. I'd rather they did it in a real ballot box, not in academia. The guy may be a complete dick, but I don't get the feeling he's David Duke or John Birch society stooge.
You mentioned you're not american so please allow me as an american to educate you on how minorities and voting work. Minorities are systematically targeted in america to prevent voting. America, in fact, has a long and fairly recent history of attempting to prevent minories from voting or to make their votes literally worth less than others. The electoral college, for example, is a system that allows rural white communities to by and large have votes that are worth more than the votes of urbanites, which are often more diverse and have more people of color. Areas with significant people of color voting populations have historically had laws in place or new policies being pushed to make it more difficult to vote (see: voting is on a weekday, voting booths are hard to get to and lines are long due to lack of voting booth number, the disallowance of mail in voting or the outright throwing away of mail in votes.)
That is to say, this sentiment is all well and nice, and I agree with this sentiment. But in America it is unrealistic to say minorities should stop using what benefits they can and should continue operating under systems that devalue them.
That means that we can't compare paying for college to paying for a normal good, say a car. If there was a way for drivers to give a car poor ratings and that affected the car company negatively, that's great! The market works. But college is about more than just skills transfer, and that's why having student feedback is important but can't trump other considerations. That's also why most universities have some state aid (either direct in terms of cash from the treasury, or indirect in terms of being a non profit).
I don't know how to solve this, though.
The issue with treating a car like a normal good is that there are positive externalities. Sot he customer (the one buying the car) doesn't capture all the good that is provided. There's value in having electric cars, cars which have better MPG that pollute less, cars with safety features that prevent crashes (even a single vehicle crash in a populated area massively slows down traffic), cars with safety features that protect passengers who weren't the customer, cars that are less likely to injure people who will have to depend on government provided healthcare if injured.
I could apply this to a book, a video game, a tv, a computer, a smart phone, an internet connection, a bicycle, clothing, food, and even housing.
Exercising free speech is one thing. Challenging student views is fine. Using a required course as a trolling arena and being a pain in the ass to work with is, huge surprise, a great way not to get your contract renewed.
This is actually the most important point of this case in my opinion. Dont screw over students by going off topic in mandatory courses. Stick to the course material, your ego is not more important then putting an entire course of students at a disadvantage. Mandatory courses are mandatory for a reason, its so the students learn the basic foundation of their field of study. You dont get academic freedom on your mandatory lectures, as your day doesnt consist of only mandatory lectures. Create an elective course on the topic if its interessting to you. Profs who do this are the perfect example for why tenure is a problematic idea. Getting rid of a Professor who is sabotaging required courses is a monstrous task and generations of students have to suffer under the ego of one person.
You always hear from these folks how their ideas are being suppressed etc. But they have a very powerful platform.
At this point, the only solution is to start demanding that all teachers at universities either have tenure or don't teach.
University is a place of learning as they say. An important thing to learn is how to exert power over those around you. One way of doing that is to leverage the irrationality of large institutions in your favor.
Large institutions, including whole countries, buy into different ideologies at different times. And so, to exert power over someone you just have to denounce them as not falling in line with the current ideology. You can then bet on the system "crushing" them so to speak without you lifting a finger.
In a communist totalitarian country, if you didn't like your neighbor's haircut, just tell the police they engaged in propaganda against the workers' party, and there is a good change their livelihood could get considerably worse. It just takes one phone call.
Want ruin someone's life in US today? Call child protective services and tell them you saw their kids playing unsupervised outside and you're "very worried" and hang up. Then watch them get house and work visits for quite a while.
Going back to the article at hand, I suspect there is a similar process happening in some of these cases. For every student actually feeling harmed by a professor like this, there is a student who realizes they can claim they are harmed, and then they can both eliminate the professor, and gain social standing points for "standing up" and "fighting against the system". Two birds with one stone so to speak. That is indeed a very important and valuable lesson to learn.
> Last April, I was informed that my contract would expire in one year—and was then assigned to teach two classes of the very same required Sanford course, one in the fall and one this spring, in which I supposedly had a tendency to harm students. If Sanford actually believed their own rhetoric, they would be guilty of knowingly endangering their students.
This is beautiful. Pure ideology at work. You can tell because of the ridiculous contradiction at play. Everyone in the game knows that the professor didn't harm anyone, otherwise why the heck would they ask him to teach another class. But they also know that they will suffer a similar fate if they don't fall in line.
At the end of the day, our social norms will be pulled towards the most sensitive people rather than the intellectually challenging ones.
A lot of these people are actually very insensitive to others.