Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

can't these kids just go start a commune/punk house?

And when the revolution came it was led by the grant writers

" i'm sure the administration took some of that input into account when making their decisions."

much love but lol

honestly you're probably right but they did listen to students opinion and they created an opportunity for them to interact with the faculty. that should probably be the limits of student involvement w/ faculty hires.

"decision-making power" would seem to indicate something closer to direct hiring ability. The student committee section of the demands definitely includes the ability to fire faculty, which I doubt is something any university will ever grant a group of 15 students.

yeah every american university I've been involved with, as student or as faculty, has involved students in the way you're describing, Mordy. but I've been on a bunch of faculty hiring committees & on departmental votes & the opinions of students play as little role as they can.

when I was a 1st year grad student a job candidate explained how his work would be applicable to robots and the others all just gave straight math talks & I pressed the committee to hire the robot guy and was crushed when they ignored my views and hired someone who I thought was kinda boring! I had a lot to learn.

though I remember being a finalist for a job w/ a terminal masters program and on the flyout having lunch with some of the masters students and expressing the opinion that they should seriously consider leaving academia b/c the chances that they'll get an academic job were too tiny to bother and then when I didn't get the job I was convinced (in some stage of handling the disappointment) that the masters students convinced the faculty that I'd be bad for their morale.

i once interviewed for a hillel job and supposedly (i was told later) got the best response of any of the candidates from the students but they didn't hire me :(

It's no Port Huron statement.

A new College of Power and Liberation to focus on “the study of histories and communities that continue to be mis- and underrepresented into the mainstream curriculum at Western.” In addition to the college itself, the list calls for “a cluster hire of 10 tenure-track faculty,” a new building to house the college and that the Student Assembly for Power and Liberation have “direct input and decision-making power over the hiring of faculty for the college.”
That $45,000 be allocated to compensate students and faculty “doing de-colonial work on campus,” which is defined as “providing space and resources to learn alternate histories, supporting students' nonacademic work, emotional and intellectual labor that is not about publishing or service to the institution, providing often unrecognized trainings, workshops and/or interventions on behalf of students.”
The creation of a 15-person student committee called the Office for Social Transformation “to monitor, document and archive all racist, antiblack, transphobic, cissexist, misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, Islamophobic and otherwise oppressive behavior on campus.” Using a three-strike system, the committee would have the power to take disciplinary action up to and including dismissal against faculty members who receive citations for creating “an unsafe classroom environment.”
A mandatory online survey conducted by the faculty and administration that would “allow Western Washington University community members to confidentially express concerns of discrimination and safety.”
A new “multicultural residence building,” applications to which would be overseen by the new Office for Social Transformation.
And finally that the university provide tuition reimbursement to “any Western Washington University student who has been targeted by, harassed by or has experienced excruciating acts of violence that [ were ] racialized, sexualized, gendered, based on ability, employment status, citizenship and/or mental health from the university.”

jesus just found your own fucking university, it's been done before

https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2016/03/11/open-letter-students-about-course-they-call-racist-essay

straight fire, no doubt, and the pushback the instructor experienced was probably all too real. but - if she even did mean this as any kind of pedagogical act, beyond the gesture of publishing it for eyeballs, which seems kind of not very student-centered - it seems like an utter pedagogical failure. how is this degree of dogmatism ever going to fly in a college course that's supposed to be concerned with the students' responsibilities for their society? there's more give in calculus.

I am torn because on the one hand I'm sure the emails she got were entitled and obnoxious, but on the other hand -- you know how students of color rightly complain "it's not my job to be endlessly patient and teach white students about how race works, I'm not paid for that"? They're right -- but this professor IS paid for that and it IS, literally, her job to teach white (and nonwhite) students about how race works.

That is, who gets to produce knowledge about race and racism that is accepted, and why?

the term "knowledge production" is so sleazy

seize the means of knowledge production

The notion of reverse racism is a myth. Silencing white stories does not change what it means to be white in this country, and it certainly does not impact public policies that continue to privilege white people.

if silencing white stories does not change what it means to be white in this country and does not impact public policies then what exactly is the point of doing it?

Second, it is true that not all whites live a privileged life. However, even poor whites have the privilege of whiteness even if they are unable to see it because of their inability to put Wonder Bread on the table.

it's a good thing you can eat privilege if you're hungry

if silencing white stories does not change what it means to be white in this country and does not impact public policies then what exactly is the point of doing it?
--Mordy

Um learn something maybe? It is a class.

lol as if this kind of shit has anything to do with learning

The questions -- really, belligerent interrogations -- you posed in class today seem pertinent both pedagogically and epistemologically

that's a lot of polysyllabic words in one sentence – and an opening sentence

xp Oh university classes are about what then?

xp LOL total flashback for me.

some university classes are about scholarship and learning. others are about imparting political values. sometimes broader abstract paradigms are useful for better understanding reality, but when reality is in service to the paradigm and not vice-versa i can't consider that "learning."

You have a very narrow definition of learning is all I'll say to that.

technically speaking all life experiences constitutes learning but i'm using the term in a less flexible way to explicitly mean the kind of study that has historically characterized the academy

it's the difference between teaching an ideology by assigning reading of its main proponents and understanding its historical + social context and teaching an ideology as the correct political platform for students to follow. you can do the former and have students decide after reading marx that they are really marxists, but the latter is indoctrination not pedagogy imho.

straight fire, no doubt

lol that essay was absolute garbage although i enjoyed the reflexive contempt for the white underclass. but i cannot imagine having any sympathy for ppl taking a 'race & ethnicity' class and not knowing exactly what sort of thing theyre getting themselves into. just take a intro geology course or something

(xp to Mordy) Perhaps without much evidence I am imagining her class being the former, and her students responding by "you are trying to indoctrinate me into hating white people by asking me to do the reading," in much the same way that parents across the US believe that their schools are indoctrinating them into becoming Muslims by teaching about the existence and history of Islam. But I concede that I have that image of her course because it's the image it suits me to have, it could just as well be as you suggest.

I couldn't finish that thing. If her prose is this leaden, I have more sympathy for her students.

i took similar types of classes in undergrad (on various provocative ideologies) and never got confused between the text and what the professor believed. if someone thought a text we read was racist the professor might've opened it up for discussion and pushed back but never would've become so entangled in the material that it became clear that they were teaching their own beliefs. i even took a class on poverty taught by a major scholar of social work + american poverty and he was able to interact w/ conservative students in productive + not personal way. it was obvious from reading any of his books where his political sympathies were but it didn't interfere with his ability to be a somewhat neutral proxy for understanding the material.

and he was able to interact w/ conservative students in productive + not personal way.

But it's a two-way street. I'll bet part of the reason he was able to do that is that the conservative students were respectful and engaged with the texts, instead of skipping the reading and then getting in touch with the prof personally to tell him that his course was prejudiced against job creators.

like it seems to me that if the students were pushing back on this professor that the readings were racist, she could have interacted directly with their concerns in the classroom within the text. "show me what sentences specifically bothered you," etc. but instead she chose to shame them in a public statement which implies to me that she was trying to do what the students accused her of.

also it's super easy for me to believe that it went down that way bc a lot of this doctrinal ideological social justice material is clearly polemical + political, so it's not hard to believe that the person teaching it was polemical + political as well.

it's tricky, but I think if you don't at least model a kind of Weberian "value neutrality" (which itself can then be reflexive and self-questioning) then you've failed to really create a pedagogical space, or a space in which actual teaching and learning can happen, and it's not surprising that students will respond to polemical or political provocations in kind. to create that kind of value-neutral space (which is of course constructed and itself beholden to particular politics and values) is the entire point and benefit of higher education. it's not as simple as a naive endorsement of "keeping politics out of the classroom" but i think you've got to buy into the classroom as a particular space with its own subject positions and possibilities for knowledge that also in no way proposes itself as the objective or "right" point of view.

but then i also think people's politics are not amendable to change from a frontal assault.

when I teach "normative" things my approach is confuse the students as to what are my own views. like, I'm happy if half the class thinks I'm a staunch conservative. after some particularly intense terms I've wondered what my own views really are. inhabit the texts, lose yourself in them. "authentic" polemics in the classroom sounds so boring to me, both as a student and as an instructor.

The questions -- really, belligerent interrogations -- you posed in class today seem pertinent both pedagogically and epistemologically

that's a lot of polysyllabic words in one sentence – and an opening sentence

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, March 17, 2016 9:41 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the professor who wrote that sounds awfully full of herself and convinced of her own righteousness. i'm sure some of her students are turds but this seems a case of it takes two to tango.

in other words,

but I think if you don't at least model a kind of Weberian "value neutrality" (which itself can then be reflexive and self-questioning) then you've failed to really create a pedagogical space, or a space in which actual teaching and learning can happen, and it's not surprising that students will respond to polemical or political provocations in kind

yes.

After further reflection I think my optimistic mental model of what her course is like is not really compatible with her choice to write an open letter bagging on her students instead of taking it up with them in person

epistemologically and philosophically!

Her students had belligerent interrogations in class as well as hollow stares and silent voices?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dxPVyieptwA/hqdefault.jpg

"their inability to put wonder bread on the table" reads to me as a classist jeer at ppl who are presumably too poor and ignorant to shop at whole foods or whatever

After further reflection I think my optimistic mental model of what her course is like is not really compatible with her choice to write an open letter bagging on her students instead of taking it up with them in person

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, March 17, 2016 11:03 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, otm, obviously she's right on the merits of her course content, but there's a difference between having that knowledge and having the skills to get people to think about challenging ideas in real ways.

eephus! also otm upthread that students at the university level need to meet profs halfway by doing the readings and not dismissing ideas out-of-hand, something anyone teaching on race, gender, or sexuality has to deal with all day every day

ime students doing the readings was a problem for every humanities class no matter what the major or ideological perspective

hasn't changed!

yeah. i had some blank stares this morning and the assigned reading was just a philip k dick novel, so i empathize with anyone teaching the kind of stuff that the course in question was about. (on the other hand, maybe it gets them riled up in a way an old novel simply cannot match...)

yeah, good point xp @alfred

when I teach "normative" things my approach is confuse the students as to what are my own views. like, I'm happy if half the class thinks I'm a staunch conservative. after some particularly intense terms I've wondered what my own views really are. inhabit the texts, lose yourself in them. "authentic" polemics in the classroom sounds so boring to me, both as a student and as an instructor.

this is otm btw and i tried to do this when i teach and continue to try to do this whenever i read.

i once complained to a mentor professor that my latin american politics prof was too conservative, and was basically told that I had been totally duped.

cuz Latin American politics profs are famously accused of conservatism

lol the one conservative in the field :p but i can imagine if you're a student you might not know

haha yeah, i was a callow 19-year-old, thought i knew better and was further left than most everyone else. I was also happy to judge others quickly, and likely to take the aforementioned "Weberian 'value neutrality'" as right-wing.