Free Expression of Professors and Its Prudential Limits | Hacker News Reader

Free Expression of Professors and Its Prudential Limits

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26 pointsworldvoyageur35 comments

The crucial line in the 1914 report was 'the university is, indeed, likely always to exercise a certain form of conservative influence.'

Not conservative in the political sense as I read it but in the sense of being slow moving, of having a sense of history and tradition, honoring both. And a place where creativity as well as radicalism is tempered with caution.

I don't think that's compatible either with 'disruptive innovation' or with 'cancel culture' both of which strike me as two aspects of the same phenomenon. Or with 'publish or perish' for that matter.

FTA : "The teacher ought also to be especially on his guard against taking unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own. It is not the least service which a college or university may render to those under its instruction, to habituate them to looking not only patiently but methodically on both sides, before adopting any conclusion upon controverted issues."

The above is even more important in schools, where teachers impose their ideology on even younger students, who have no concept of multiple opinions. This can only be called brainwashing.

If that's what happens, I guess so. I (once a kid) had teachers, and very few if any would do that. They were willing to explain their reasons and to leave open interpretations. They were educators not indoctrinators.

I mean the 1619 project is education as indoctrination and it's making it's way into curriculum.

The aim isn't to educate (i.e. teach how to think, explore knowledge, form and examine arguments, etc.; not what to think) but form opinion and install ideology.

By simply saying "The aim isn't to educate [...] but form opinion and install ideology" you're doing exactly what you're accusing them of, which is to make an unsubstantiated claim and expect others to believe it. Aim higher.

Can you elaborate on your concern? The authors of the 1619 project agree that it's not a neutral historical review - the lead author has consistently said that it's "reframing history", "using history and reporting to make an argument", "explicitly seeks to challenge the national narrative". It's infeasible to expect commenters to provide detailed citations for every fact they reference.

My 'concern' was clear. He was doing what he accused others of doing.

> The authors of the 1619 project agree that it's not a neutral historical review

cite?

> "reframing history"

I'm not sure what that means but link, please?

> "using history and reporting to make an argument"

What's your objection to that? Should they have used bluster and lies instead - what do you want? (and cite for that quote, pls)

> "explicitly seeks to challenge the national narrative"

If the national narrative was wrong then that's reasonable (and cite, pls)

> It's infeasible to expect commenters to provide detailed citations for every fact they reference.

Perhaps, but some backup is necessary for verification.

Respectfully, your questions can be easily answered by reading the 1619 project. For example, every article within the project contains the following insert, describing it as an activist effort and containing the quote about "reframing history":

> The 1619 Project is an ongoing initiative from The New York Times Magazine that began in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

If you want a specific link, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/blac... was the first article, but as I mentioned this insert is present in all the others.

You're presuming I'm american. I'm a brit and only heard about the 1619 project an hour ago here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24262679.

Regarding the quote, I don't entirely see the problem. I mean the consequences of slavery have not been fully appreciated (are they taught in US schools in depth?).

> "the contributions of black Americans"

In your view, have such contributions by black americans been fully recognised? Because if they are the 1619 project is redundant, if they have not then perhaps 1619 has a valid purpose.

From what you've posted, the 1619 project may be flawed but it doesn't come across as "indoctrination and "install[ing] ideology" as the original poster said in the above link.

Nikole Hannah Jones (the creator) has been pretty explicit about wanting to "control the narrative." It's activism masquerading as history, regardless of whether they claim it to be otherwise.

https://twitter.com/nhannahjones/status/1287744904526012417?...

This is why I like links (upvoted because of that). To quote in full

"The fight here is about who gets to control the national narrative, and therefore, the nation’s shared memory of itself. One group has monopolized this for too long in order to create this myth of exceptionalism. If their version is true, what do they have to fear of 1619?"

Not quite what you said. Interesting, and needs a better statement of precisely what she's trying to do, but it doesn't seem anywhere near as underhand as you imply.

"I’ve always said that the 1619 Project is not a history. It is a work of journalism that explicitly seeks to challenge the national narrative and, therefore, the national memory. The project has always been as much about the present as it is the past."

Again, she needs to be very clear of her intent, but it seems it's about un-erasing an unpleasant past, recognising it which I presume is hoped to prevent such things happening again.

I see that you haven't answered my questions BTW.

"The fight here is about who gets to control the national narrative, and therefore, the nation’s shared memory of itself."

First - she claims it's not history but clearly the entire "conversation" is about history. And history as it's practiced nowadays isn't really about controlling narratives - this is how social justice views it (vague notions - that are intentionally selected to be impossible to prove, so as to evade the necessity of producing evidence - of the system, oppression, "centering", etc.). It's about rigorous academic work reviewed and debated among peers, not hashing out social justice in classrooms.

> un-erasing an unpleasant past

It's illuminating that "un-erasing" is coming from edgy personalities elevated at the NYT and not the broader academic community.

It'd be great if they could actually demonstrate that history is erased. Historians would love to hear about it and chances are they'd have already known about it. That'd be a juicy opportunity for scholarship, but again I have low hopes because a NYT personality probably isn't likely producing original, creative content but waging a tweet war.

> this is how social justice views it

I don't know exactly what she means, and you are presuming a) that you do and b) that it is something deceitful. If you can't do facts, attack the person.

> It's illuminating that "un-erasing" is coming from edgy personalities elevated at the NYT and not the broader academic community

Again, you're throwing dirt. I'm damn sure eg. the trail of tears is well documented by academics but is it covered much in schools? Is slavery?

> because a NYT personality probably isn't likely producing original, creative content but waging a tweet war

That's a descent to mud slinging. I'm not impressed.

Again, I see that you haven't answered my questions. Why not?

Sure. I’m not saying you’re a bad person or anything. It’s just that having a productive conversation requires assuming a baseline of knowledge on the topic, so not all discussions on the 1619 project can be expected to provide citations for basic facts like “the project aims to reframe history” or “they’re not claiming a position of academic neutrality”.

How do you understand “reframing history”? Your comments indicate that you don’t like it, and that makes me think you believe the framing we’ve lived with so far is authoritative.

1619 feels like a fair and useful project to me. That’s because I am suspicious of the dominate narrative and that’s because we have lots of evidence that the stories of marginalized people are underrepresented in history, which leads to injustice. That’s a perfectly intellectually honest thread to pull on.

It's not a question of intellectual honesty. The problem is, in the OP author's words, "taking unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question". I agree with much of what the 1619 project pulls, but I don't want those threads or any of my other political beliefs incorporated into school curriculums as though they're simple facts.

"This brings us to the most serious difficulty of this problem; namely, the dangers connected with the existence in a democracy of an overwhelming and concentrated public opinion. The tendency of modern democracy is for men to think alike, to feel alike, and to speak alike. Any departure from the conventional standards is apt to be regarded with suspicion. Public opinion is at once the chief safeguard of a democracy, and the chief menace to the real liberty of the individual"

"An inviolable refuge from such tyranny should be found in the university."

So if one professor is a Marxist/capitalist, they are an asset. If all professors are either one, it is a liability to the mission of the university as a refuge of heterogeneous thought.

Yet if we select professors based only on their idiosyncratic opinions we're as likely to fill the roster with well spoken insane people as with strong independent thinkers.

I'd prefer to attend a university filled with insane but unique teachers -- who are otherwise competent in their fields -- than with a homogeneous mass who I happen to agree with. Sure, strong independent thinkers would be better, but if I could pick just one...

It sounds like you might be looking at this with a little bit of humanities tunnel vision. In science, 99% of everything one person says will be agreed on by anyone else who knows what they're talking about. Even in cases where the truth is not yet known, among reasonable people you are more likely to find "they both agree that it could go either way," than "the two sides are each convinced the other is completely wrong."

That may be true for introductory level material bu t in my experience is not true at all of research in the hard sciences. Where actual advances in the state of the art are involved, there are debates about everything from the best approach to the interpretation of results. Science as consensus is an oversimplification used by people who don't want to hear other opinions.

The debate only happens over a tiny fraction of all claims, and reasonable people don't believe that fraction until it joins the high-confidence whole. The phenomenon of disjoint ideologies does not exist in science. In the humanities, you have things like how Analytic philosophers will reject everything ever written by a Continental philosopher. In contrast, while there is such a thing as an analytic chemist there is no such thing as a Continental chemist. ;)

It sounds like you might be looking at this with a little bit of hard-sciences, logocentric tunnel vision. In humanities, 99% of all claims one makes will be actively contemplated, to see if the argument holds. Even in cases where the truth seems totally certain, among reasonable people you are more likely to find "we should remain skeptical, critical, and open-minded about unverified truth claims" than "yep, that thing that seems certainly, definitely true is completely true."

I'm aware that reasonable humanities people don't really believe anything, but it cannot be denied that ideological adherents exist. In fact, there are a lot of them and they write a lot. A great deal of work happens within ideological camps (like "marxism" or "analytic philosophy") which are not valued at all to people outside of them. Within the camp, arguments are compared, but outside of it they are seen as having no merit. Using my example again, most analytic philosophers would find Foucault's writings totally uncompelling, to the point of seeing them as epistemically equivalent to blank paper. The only place you see that in science is with the so-called "crackpots," but they are actually wrong.

I don't see this as that different compared to multiple opinions of how alzhimers functions or the multiple competing theories of many many fields of physics. There are even whole studies of mathematics that are derided by other mathematicians as illegitimate.

Your scientific examples are relatively small debates occurring on the edge of knowledge. All biologists agree on the citric acid cycle and thousands of other known biological mechanisms. All physicists agree on the standard model and general relativity, along with classical mechanics, thermodynamics, etcetera. Your math example is closer to the humanities situation, but because choice of axioms is a philosophical question, it is actually a part of the humanities situation.

Two chemists arguing over a reaction mechanism are about as different as two Trotskyists arguing over Trotsky. The difference between Friedmanites and Trotskyists, on the other hand, has absolutely no analogue in science, because it is far larger.

> Your scientific examples are relatively small debates occurring on the edge of knowledge

One of my examples was physics. Physics most distinctly is not having small debates on some edge of knowledge. This is similar for alzheimer's research. Fundamental functionings that the field rely on are still under deabte.

Don't let the label "fundamental" mislead you - String theory has no impact on our understanding of classical mechanics, because we already know classical mechanics. It is actually classical mechanics that influences string theory, because the microscopic theories have to conform to what is already known about the macroscopic world. The fundamental is not the foundational.

This is arguing semantics in the way that is being described as a humanities behavior in order to justify how science doesn't have the same or similar discussions.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying "humanities bad science good rah rah rah," this very conversation is a humanities conversation, and I clearly like the humanities enough to participate in it. All I am saying is that the phenomenon of "ideological camps," where virtually everything said by one camp is incomprehensible to or considered loony by every other camp, exists in the humanities but not in science.

String theory and loop quantum gravity are different theories, but they are not ideological camps, because the methods and conclusions of the researchers of one are all totally acceptable to researchers of the other. Likewise, believers in every proposed Alzheimers mechanism will agree with each other on the existence of proteins, prions, DNA, and metabolism.

> well spoken insane people as with strong independent thinkers.

Happily, I think these to correlate strongly. At least for my admittedly subjective definition of 'well-spoken'.

And the boundary between them is permeable. Last generation's well spoken insane person can become the next generation's strong independent thinker, and vice versa.

Where do you draw the line? Criminal insanity? Chronically breaking laws, but otherwise competent in their fields.

All of these apologies for setting limits always assume that someone wise will make wise decisions about where to draw the line. The world, though, may not have enough wise people to go around.

Interestingly, the limit the original article was talking about was limiting partisanship and superficiality, which is especially ironic given the issue today. (Remember the really dumb attempt to "cancel" Pinker?) If the original supporters of limits were around today to enforce their limits, they would spend most of their energy on the very same people that are calling for limits today.

Whether there was ever a serious attempt to "cancel Pinker" or not, his acquaintance with and support of Epstein is notable as an occasion on which Pinker has later admitted being wrong about something.

The author here isn't calling for limits to be enforced by fiat. He's calling for professors and universities to take individual responsibility for avoiding overt politicization, and acknowledging the fact that if they fail to do so external voices will inevitably swoop in to start controlling their speech.

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