Jonathan Turley defends Professor Jacobson and criticizes Cornell
Turley has taken up the cause:
Twenty-one colleagues at Cornell signed a June 9, a letter denouncing unnamed “commentators… attached to Ivy League Institutions” as calls were made to the Dean to have Jacobson fired. The professors lashed out against academic commentators who criticize the [post-Floyd] looting as effectively racists….
Not a word about academic freedom or free of speech; not a suggestion that critics of these protests could have anything other than racist motivations. It is the antipathy of the intellectual foundations for higher education. Rather than address the merits of arguments, you attack those with opposing views personally and viciously. That has become a standard approach to critics on our campuses. Unless you agree with the actions of the movement, you are per se racist…
…[I]t suggests that the presence of conservative (which they seem to view as synonymous with racist) scholars have no place at such schools. That last point is unfortunately the view of many faculty at top schools which are overwhelmingly if not exclusively liberal…
The message for other faculty by these Cornell clinicians is both clear and intimidating. Disagree with the BLM movement or the protests and you will be labeled a racist. Indeed, the letter ends on a menacing note: “And we will continue to expose and respond to racism masquerading as informed commentary.” Thus, if you attempt “informed commentary” on the costs of looting and the need for great law enforcement, you are a per se racist….
That last paragraph is especially important, and describes the larger purpose of leftist campaigns like the one against Professor Jacobson: to serve notice to others about what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable speech, and what the penalties are for the latter.
Turley’s letter also mentions other anti-free-speech actions on campus, against both professors and speakers. As we know, this has been going on for years, but I think they’re now emboldened by the Floyd killing and the widespread demonstrations and riots that have followed. The want to strike while the iron is hot, as it were.
One of the cases mentioned in Turley’s letter was unfamiliar to me, but this is an astounding example of the “logic” involved:
CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,” Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech.
The mental gymnastics involved must be painful, but to the leftist they have become second nature.
Here’s what Turley had to say about Bilek:
While Bilek says that the heckler’s caused only a “limited” interruption, Blackman says that it was prolonged and prevented him from being able to give his full speech.
The protesters reportedly chanted things like “legal objectivity is a myth” and called him “a white supremacist.”…
[Bilek] added “this non-violent, limited [8-minute] protest was a reasonable exercise of protected free speech,” adding that “it did not violate any university policy.”
Some of that is defensible, but Bilek lost me in the end. First, students clearly have a right to protest outside of the event. Stopping an event is not an act of free speech. It is the denial of free speech and should be punished by the school as such. For Bilek to say that it is not a violation of CUNY policy is alarming. Particularly in an academic setting where a variety of views and values should be allowed to be voiced, the shutting down of a presentation or speech is to deny the choice to others in exercising their rights. It is an act to prevent others from even hearing someone with whom you disagree.
And in particular, the broader aim is to discourage other conservative speakers from even trying to be heard and to get them to think: Who needs the aggravation? If the administrative won’t protect your right to speak, why bother?
And that, my friends, is a victory for the left.
I repeat, this is why I am not including schools I attended: MIT, CIT and UofM in my will.
Instead, I am leaving it all to Hillsdale College and the Marine Corps scholarship fund.
Related:
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/anonymous-berkeley-professor-shreds-blm-injustice-narrative-damning-stats-and-logic
And the crux (a crux?) of the problem:
https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/former-steve-jobs-advisor-says-facebook-destroying-very-fabric-human-relationships
Barry Meislin,
That’s a great letter. Cogent arguments, well presented. Berkeley’s response is disgusting. Rather than debate they defame.
Again, stop using these people to sort the labor market. You can do that by:
1. Stripping the legal profession of it’s franchise to second-guess the hiring, promotion, and firing decisions of private enterprise absent an explicit contract. In the public sector, have timely examinations for every open position.
2. Restructuring the system of certificates and degrees. The mode should be a 48 or 60 credit degree in a discrete (vocational) subject. For many subjects, there would be a preparatory certificate with a discrete menu of academic courses (occasionally business courses) precisely adapted to the degree course in question (or precisely adapted to the student’s deficits). The very longest preparatory certificates would be for medical school and law school (60-70 credits).
3. Making it so that the vast majority of law schools have two sorts of offerings: a working lawyer’s degree of 48 credits and certificate programs in discrete subjects of varying duration offered to law firm employees. (Anything from a three week workshop to a 48 credit degree in tax law). A selection of schools might offer a ‘judge’s degree’ of about 40 credits atop the working lawyer’s degree and a few might offer a legal scholar’s degree which might have some course work but would largely consist of thesis supervision.
4. Allowing anyone to take the bar exam for a fee.
5. Require that all state institutions limit their degree and certificate offerings to those delineated in a state glossary, and that they apply to the board of regents for permission to offer a given course of study.
6. Subject all state institutions to an annual audit by the state comptroller, who would have the authority to close any program which had persistently failed to attract a critical mass of students from among those whose board and achievement test scores placed above the 32d percentile of their entering class. The state legislature could designate certain institutions as the home of repository programs, wherein the last-program-standing in the state system would be protected.
7. Requiring all institutions to issue an audited statement of their demographic stock and flow, and reporting explicitly the board and achievement test scores of coarse categories.
8. Requiring the boards of all public and private institutions in the state be elected by alumni registered to vote in the state. The state board of elections or secretary of state would supervise the elections, which would take place by postal ballot and in which any alumnus could run by paying a deposit. All such elections would be held at the same time every four years, with all board members up at the same time. Require in addition that the number of board members be at least five, but, if exceeding that, a function of the number on the voter roll in question. No more 60 member boards; boards should not have more than 20 members. The boards of community and technical colleges would be delegates from local school boards serving ex officio.
9. Mandatory retirement for faculty. Pro-rating periods of p/t employment, you’d be mandated to retire after 40 years of contributions to TIAA-CREF, provided you were eligible for full Social Security as well.
10. Limiting the share of faculty holding continuous tenure to 35% – 40% of FTE.
11. Debarring the grant of tenure to faculty under 45 and faculty with fewer than twelve years of service, and making it a general practice to limit awards of tenure to faculty over 55. All other faculty would be on renewable contracts of one to twelve semesters, with terminal contracts of a duration derived from the length of one’s service.
12. Limiting the discretion of admissions offices at state institutions to the award of certain types of financial aid to students already admitted. Students seeking admission to state schools would submit a single application to a state admissions bureau, which would include a card where the applicant rank-orders his preferences from among all the state’s institutions. Admission would be determined by an automated queuing system wherein the applicants are ranked according to a composite score derived from their college boards and achievement tests.
13. Limiting federal regulation of higher education to some consumer protection measures applied to interstate transactions &c.
14. Ending federal subsidies to research in higher education. Have federal agencies do their own research in-house, picking the brains of university-based researchers by the use of short-term fellowships.
“…disgusting…”, no doubt true; but really—honestly—are we surprised?
And it’s metastasized, so that the question of getting the ketchup back into the bottle, the toothpaste back into the tube, decency and respect back into society has all but become moot.
Articles like the following make one wonder what it will take. And the only reasonable conclusion (as opposed to wishful thinking—note: I am generally a “wishful thinker”) should leave one terrified, if no less resolved:
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/06/10/this-has-become-a-neo-maoist-war-on-the-past/
So all good people out there: Time to take a deep, deep breath.
The academy was lost 15 years ago. We are just beating another dead horse. This is just more of the same, but maybe a bit louder and more public. Faculty have been burning at the stake other faculty who dare have a different opinion for some time now. Here’s an example from 5 years ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/04/08/the-hypocrisy-and-dishonesty-of-attacks-on-connecticut-college-professor-andrew-pessin/ . They have almost achieved their main goal to rid the academy of all moderate to conservative faculty. They are just targeting the last remaining few and the purge will be complete.
ArtDeco: good ideas, but they have snowball’s chance of ever becoming reality. The only way it’s going to change is through a collapse of many of those schools. The one bright spot of the Wuhan flu is it might take out a few of those schools as the worst are also over extended with “middle management”, ie lower level Deans and VPs. Many of those are considered “essential” for diversity reasons.
“When *I* use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you *can* make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master-that’s all.”
physicsguy:
Agreed that the academy was lost years ago. I’ve been chronicling this for years, too.
But that’s not really the point of spreading the word. I believe that most people haven’t a clue how far it’s gotten. And I believe that it’s possible – not likely, but possible – that some Democrats who remain of the old-fashioned mindset will be shocked by it and it will be a small (or big) wakeup call for them.
You can say I’m a dreamer….but that’s my thought.
“…some Democrats who remain of the old-fashioned mindset will be shocked by it and it will be a small (or big) wakeup call for them.”
Well, Turley is proof of that, and my admiration for advocates as vigorous as he is knows no depth. He is a stalwart of the things that matter in our society, and it’s important that he names and shames. There are too few like him on either side of the discussion.
His inclusion of the two Constitutional scholars at Cornell who have joined the mob against Jacobson is especially disturbing: “…What is most striking for me is the inclusion of Professors Mark H. Jackson and Cortelyou Kenney, who teach in the Cornell First Amendment Clinic. What kind of depraved, corrupt treachery is this? These people are teaching students? It’s cringeworthy to hear leftists mis-characterize Democracy in this age, as happens when they think their voice is loud enough to force action on their demands. The image of Democracy that these people promote today is just a mob with a fancy title.
ArtDeco: good ideas, but they have snowball’s chance of ever becoming reality. The only way it’s going to change is through a collapse of many of those schools.
They don’t have a snowball’s chance at this time because Republican state legislators are otiose. They get off their duffs, we can get something done.
Aggie:
Several decades ago the Critical Legal Studies movement got going and has nearly destroyed the teaching of law and made it subservient to politics.
I believe that most people haven’t a clue how far it’s gotten.
They don’t much care. Their concern is that institution provide their children with labor market signals. The concern of people fixing to put higher education in its place should be to require them to cough up professional credentials without the filler and also to provide employers with alternative means of sorting their applicants. That has to be done through co-ordinated attacks in Congress and the state legislatures.
The comment thread over on Turley’s site is instructive. Most of the commenters supported him but were openly from the Right. The commenters from the Left called him “conservative,” tried the “lie down with dogs, get up with fleas” slur, claimed he was either stupid for believing Jacobson when Jacobson hadn’t even been mentioned by name in the letter (which of course Jacobson pointed out himself – after all, gotta protect yourself from libel claims when you call a colleague a racist!) or disingenuous for defending someone who hadn’t even been really attacked…
I wonder if he despairs of his students.
The commenters from the Left
The consistent commenters from ‘the left’ at Turley’s are (1) a fellow from West Hollywood (I’m guessing a health club employee) who uses several sock puppets; (2) a builder from Gainesville, Fla who uses at least two sock-puppets and publishes his own comments and transmits his son’s; his son works in the US Attorney’s office in Frisco; (3) a screechy head case who has at different times claimed to be a lawyer or a nurse (best guess is a morbidly obese woman on a disability benefit); and (4) a real estate agent from Orlando. There are others, but they’re there infrequently. The guy from WeHo and the guy from Orlando generally refrain from attacking the moderator. Gainesville behaves like a paid troll, investing a great deal of verbiage in the most sh!t sandwich arguments.
Art Deco – genuinely curious about how you know so many details about Turley’s commenters. Are you a long-time watcher there?
In the interest of adding to my skill set: what is the technique for discerning sock-puppets?
Turley is surely another heroic figure.
He MUST realize that they’re coming for him next. And yet, he NEVER fails to step into the breach, persisting valiantly in his stalwart defense of those under attack by the insatiable mob…. (One wonders whether the Kavanaugh “hearings” monstrosity was, for him, the turning point…)
…as we all wonder when/if the tide will turn…. (Will the “silent majority”, like John Sobieski of yore, ride to the rescue?…given that “silent” these days has been fundamentally transformed into “vicious” and “racist”….)
Anyway, here’s something for the “Yesterday and Today” crowd:
http://www.danielpipes.org/19557/this-time-the-far-left-surge-might-succeed
Cf:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yesterday_and_Today
Art Deco – genuinely curious about how you know so many details about Turley’s commenters. Are you a long-time watcher there?
I’m a participant. One of the four regular leftoids there posts under a handle but publishes articles elsewhere under his own name, to which he occasionally links. Another let slip identifying information which allowed him to be readily doxxed. I know his name and the names and addresses (current and former) of his family members, but that’s not known by other participants or (AFAIK) the moderators. IMO, much of what he says is derived from e-mail exchanges he has with his son and (IMO) one of the sock-puppets he uses is to transmit his son’s opinions unmediated. Since his son has worked for the Department of Justice for 24 years, that’s disconcerting, inasmuch as the sum of his opinions amounts to saying the gross abuses to which Gen. Flynn has been subject are perfectly kosher. I think there are something like 1,300 lawyers employed by U.S. Attorney’s offices around the country. I’m now partial to the Kurt Schlichter solution: fire them all and invite a few back.
Art Deco – thanks for the information.
The connection to the DOJ is, indeed, disconcerting.
It ties into the comments you and Neo and Snow made on another thread.
(This one is toward the end of the conversation.)
https://www.thenewneo.com/2020/06/12/people-are-afraid-and-rightly-so/#comment-2501341