Fascinating article in the New York Times about what is occurring, or, rather not occurring at college and university campuses. If you wish to read the entire article here is the
LINK in keeping with our host, MM, wishes, I am only sharing the first few paragraphs:
Professors Protest as Students Debate
By KATE ZERNIKE
AMHERST, Mass., April 4 — It is not easy being an old lefty on campus in this war.
At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, awash in antiwar protests in the Vietnam era, a columnist for a student newspaper took a professor to task for canceling classes to protest the war in Iraq, saying the university should reprimand her and refund tuition for the missed periods.
Irvine Valley College in Southern California sent faculty members a memo that warned them not to discuss the war unless it was specifically related to the course material. When professors cried censorship, the administration explained that the request had come from students.
Here at Amherst College, many students were vocally annoyed this semester when 40 professors paraded into the dining hall with antiwar signs. One student confronted a protesting professor and shoved him.
Some students here accuse professors of behaving inappropriately, of not knowing their place.
"It seems the professors are more vehement than the students," Jack Morgan, a sophomore, said. "There comes a point when you wonder are you fostering a discussion or are you promoting an opinion you want students to embrace or even parrot?"
Across the country, the war is disclosing role reversals, between professors shaped by Vietnam protests and a more conservative student body traumatized by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Prowar groups have sprung up at Brandeis and Yale and on other campuses. One group at Columbia, where last week an antiwar professor rhetorically called for "a million Mogadishus," is campaigning for the return of R.O.T.C. to Morningside Heights.
Even in antiwar bastions like Cambridge, Berkeley and Madison, the protests have been more town than gown. At Berkeley, where Vietnam protesters shouted, "Shut it down!" under clouds of tear gas, Sproul Plaza these days features mostly solo operators who hand out black armbands. The shutdown was in San Francisco, and the crowd was grayer.
Also, at Columbia University, the
The Columbia Daily Spectator the student newspaper , a random recent poll of 172 students showed the following (once again I am sharing only a few paragraphs, click above for the full story):
Published on March 28, 2003
Spectator Poll: On War, Students Evenly Divided
Defying expectations, the survey found equal numbers of undergraduates supporting and opposing the war in Iraq.
By James Romoser
Spectator News Editor
While a large majority of the American public is in favor of the war in Iraq, Columbia University undergraduates are split down the middle, according to a Spectator poll conducted this week.
Fifty-three percent of undergraduates surveyed said they oppose the current U.S. military action, and 47 percent said they support it.
...
Still, there is no denying that Columbia has been overcome with vocal anti-war sentiment in the last two days. On Wednesday, the anti-war demonstration at the center of campus outnumbered the counter-rally supporting the war by up to 400 students. That night, anti-war students packed Low Library for a teach-in with 30 Columbia faculty members. And yesterday, a group of students attempted to meet with University President Lee Bollinger in Low Library to protest the University's perceived support of the war.
That is not to say that pro-war opinion is not commonplace on campus as well. Although outnumbered, the students at Wednesday's pro-war rally were just as loud as their anti-war counterparts. And the survey results show that, even at Columbia, a campus typically thought of as liberal, nearly as many students support the war as oppose it.
Matthew Continetti an undergraduate at Columbia University., writes a guest editorial at
National Review Online about the Nicholas DeGenova affair at Columbia University:
Action Item
A congressman sends a message to Columbia University.
By Matthew Continetti
Representative J. D. Hayworth, Republican from Arizona, had never heard of Columbia University assistant professor Nicholas DeGenova before last Friday. But when Hayworth read DeGenova's comments at an antiwar "teach-in" held inside Columbia's Low Library last week, the House Ways and Means Committee member knew he had to speak out. The result is a letter to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger — now making its way through the House of Representatives — that calls for DeGenova to be dismissed.
"I heard the press accounts and I think I reacted as most Americans did — with outrage and disbelief," Hayworth said Tuesday. "I was also disappointed with President Bollinger's response."
DeGenova had told the audience at Columbia's antiwar teach-in that "U.S. patriotism is inseparable from imperial warfare and white supremacy." He also wished that U.S. troops encounter "a million Mogadishus" during the course of the war against Saddam Hussein's regime, a reference to the 1993 "Black Hawk Down" incident in Somalia, when 18 U.S. troops, and several hundred Somalis, were killed in a brutal firefight.
In a statement released on Saturday, Bollinger said that "I am shocked that someone would make such statements." On Monday, a new paragraph was added to Bollinger's statement, which read: "Assistant Professor Nicholas DeGenova was speaking as an individual at a teach-in. He was exercising his right to free speech. His statement does not in any way represent the views of Columbia University."
"What is academic about hate speech?" asked Hayworth, responding to Bollinger's comments. "There's no shred of academic freedom at stake here. You have the right to say what you will, but responsibilities come with that right."
William Pratt, a Columbia University senior whose father is currently fighting with U.S. forces in Iraq, was glad to see that DeGenova's comments had attracted national attention. "There's a thin line between freedom of speech and stupidity of speech," Pratt said. "And [DeGenova] jumped right over it."
I have read the information provided on this thread about this last case on DeGenova. Frankly, DeGenova's comments are beyond the scope of academic freedom. The beginning of the concept of academic freedom , started with the Galileo Affair, where the Catholic church, literally silenced a scientist from sharing his scientific findings with other scientists (it had to do with Galileo's treatise about Mars, of all things, and that the earth was not the center of the universe!) Since then this tradition has allowed academicians to provide theories and knowledge that may be seen as controversial to some entities. In the past century, academic freedom, kept professors from being fired for having different political positions than the mass culture.
However, in the case of DeGenova, he was not in his anthropology class, his political position was not threatened, so I fail to see this as an academic freedom issue.
The next question is is it an individual's freedom of speech to say to a group of people, including members of the media, that "He also wished that U.S. troops encounter "a million Mogadishus" during the course of the war against Saddam Hussein's regime."
The dichotomy of this statement baffles me. This was a university teach-in, and for the most part the participants promoted the peace movement, which logically and rationally should be the antithesis of what DeGennaro wished on our servicemen. No wonder that half the students at Columbia, which as was noted above, is a bastion of liberal education, are pro-war.
DeGenaro acted in every way opposite of what we professors and instructors have strived to be, rational and objective. His actions add fuel to those who call those of us in academia: "Ivory Tower Idiots"
What should he do? He should do the decent thing, apologize to the university, to the students, and to the nation, in particular to those brave soldiers that died in Mogadishu, and to the parents of those soldiers that have died in this war. That's what a decent person would do. Then he should resign.
What will the university do? Hard to say. However, recently the president of a notable university here in Florida resigned because he said a racial slur about a member of the Board of Regents. He was given a choice resign or get fired. Academic freedom and freedom of speech carry with them the equal burden of common sense and responsibility, even in academia.
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