education

(Un)banning the Bible in Utah

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged books censorship education religion on by

The Davis school district in Utah has reversed an earlier decision removing the Bible from middle and elementary schools. Few people thought it should be banned; the challenge to it was supposed to be a reductio ad absurdum of the policies that led to the removal of other books. Unfortunately, the appeal committee and the district officials missed the point. They said that “the Bible has significant, serious value for minors which outweighs the violent or vulgar content it contains.” Of course it does. The point is, so do many other books. Violence and vulgarity, even outright immorality, aren’t a sufficient reason to exclude books from school libraries.

The Bible is a horrible book. The Old Testament presents a sadistic, murderous God who drowns nearly the entire world population, firebombs cities, orders the extermination of every man, woman, and child in other cities, and decrees death penalties for many kinds of actions. In the New Testament, this sadist comes to us, not to beg for forgiveness for his crimes, but to say that he’ll forgive us, on the condition that we believe he turned himself into a human in order to be executed. People who don’t believe that claim will be tortured forever.
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CUNY misrepresents American freedoms

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary and tagged censorship education law on by

The bogus claim that there’s a “hate speech” exception to the First Amendment of the US Constitution usually comes from a left-wing position, but anyone can use it. The Board of Trustees of the City University of New York claimed that the speech made by student Fatima Mousa Mohammed at the May 12 Law School commencement constituted “hate speech.” The statement asserts that “hate speech … should not be confused with free speech and has no place on our campuses or in our city, our state or our nation.” Presumably the university plans or has already engaged in some action penalizing the speaker, though I haven’t been able to find out what it did or is going to do.

This case is particularly interesting because it doesn’t follow the usual script of people holding a left-wing view claiming that positions they don’t like are unprotected “hate speech.” According to an article on FIRE’s website, Ms. Mohammed “accused Israel of ‘indiscriminately raining bullets and bombs’ on Palestinians, criticized CUNY for working with the ‘fascist’ New York City Police Department and military, and expressed disdain for ‘capitalism, racism, imperialism and Zionism.'” Those sound more like the positions of someone who’d fling “hate speech” accusations rather than being on the receiving end.
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Ignorance is not strength

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged books censorship education Stanford on by

“Protected Identity Harm” sounds like revealing that Clark Kent is Superman. At Stanford, it means anything that offends somebody. An associate dean and another person filed a report of “Protected Identity Harm,” the harmful incident being a Snapchat picture of a student reading Mein Kampf. In making their complaint, they urged students to turn in others whom they see engaging in similar “harm.”

It’s not clear whether the supposed harm came from reading the book or from showing it being read on a social media site. Fortunately, Stanford did not punish anyone. A Stanford spokesperson said, “At the request of the student organization, we have been engaged in conversation with a number of students, seeking to provide support and foster communication. However, there has been no requirement that any student meet with or report to a university official to discuss the matter.” It could have been worse, but the university’s response still was not good. It should have just told the complainers to get a life and not given any of them “support.” The biggest share of the blame goes to the dean who decided it was fun to make life a little more unpleasant for a student.
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The pointlessness of trigger warnings 3

This entry was posted in Commentary and tagged education ethics on by

There’s a widespread notion that warning people about impending discussions of distressing topics is a necessary and desirable way of saving them from being “triggered.” Recently, for example, the Student Assembly at Cornell University passed a resolution urging the university to require trigger warnings on a broad range of “traumatic content” in teaching materials. The university quite appropriately rejected this recommendation.

Do these warnings do more good than harm? What kind of “triggering” are they supposed to present? What will their effect be? More and more people are agreeing that on the whole, these warnings aren’t helpful. They can lead to the suppression of discussion of important topics.
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Religious authoritarianism at San Francisco State

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged censorship education religion on by

It’s not just Hamline University. A professor at San Francisco State University is being investigated for failing to comply with the rules of some conservative branches of Islam. The Office of Equity Programs and Compliance has launched an investigation of him. 14th century Islamic art showing Muhammad receiving Quranic revelation from the angel Gabriel

San Francisco State University is, as the name implies, a government-run institution. It has no business requiring its faculty to comply with religious rules. Maybe the investigators think they can require compliance with a Muslim law because the professor was born in Tehran. It doesn’t work that way. The First Amendment protects him in the United States regardless of what country he came from or what ethnic group he belongs to.
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More bowdlerization — this time, in educational materials

This entry was posted in Publishing and tagged bowdlerization education publishing on by

The sanitized version of Roald Dahl’s books removed a reference to black tractors, apparently because it was deemed racially offensive. That’s problematic, but wiping relevant racial information out of factual material is much worse. An educational pamphlet produced by Studies Weekly was revised to omit any reference to racial issues in a capsule discussion of Rosa Parks.

The revised text says: “Rosa Parks showed courage. One day, she rode the bus. She was told to move to a different seat. She did not. She did what she believed was right.” There’s no mention of why she was told to move. A child reading that today might think she had sat in a seat reserved for handicapped passengers.
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Fayneese Miller’s obsession 3

This entry was posted in Censorship Writing and tagged censorship education Hamline religion on by

The situation at Hamline University, which I blogged about a few days ago, has gotten stranger. President Fayneese Miller’s recent statements suggest that the non-renewal of the contract of a lecturer for including Islamic art in an art course is the manifestation of some strange obsession.

The lowliness of the lecturer plays an important role in Miller’s raving. She emphasizes repeatedly that the lecturer was a mere “adjunct instruction” and insists that “the adjunct instructor chosen to teach the course in art history did not ‘lose her job.'” Easy for a university president to say. Not so easy to hear when you’re told you aren’t coming back next term. Miller adds that “the decision not to offer her another class was made at the unit level and in no way reflects on her ability to adequately teach the class.” That’s exactly the issue. A fully competent lecturer isn’t coming back, not because of any problems with her teaching, but because she didn’t follow the commandments of a conservative branch of a religion. But defending a lowly lecturer against a university president’s wrath is, says the university president, a “privileged reaction.”
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Book review: Retaking College Hill

This entry was posted in Book discussion and tagged books education fiction Objectivism on by

Walter Donway
Retaking College Hill: The Adults Are Back
Paperback or e-book, Amazon.com

Cover, Retaking College HillRetaking College Hill is a novel of both action and ideas. It deals with a topic which is an excellent source of dramatic conflict but hasn’t been used in literature as much as it should. That topic is the battle for academic freedom, for making universities a place for teaching and controversy without fear of retaliation.
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