Nate Knows Nada

Tenure and free speech

This, of course, is why we have security of employment in the university. 
Otherwise, the conservative political masters of many state and private
universities and the liberal orthodoxy of many campuses would stifle
free inquiry.  It protects radical liberal Ward Churchill in the
same way it protects neo-conservative Harvey Mansfield.

And, as is true with most free speech debates, the people who object
most strenuously to the ideas expressed forget that they benefit from
the protections they object to when they say things unpopular.

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This entry was posted on Friday, 11 February 2005 at 10:37 am and is filed under IvoryTower. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

3 Responses to “Tenure and free speech”

1. Liz Renner Says:
   13 February 2005 at 7:37 pm.

   You can learn all you need to know about tenure by sitting through one of Prof. Gregor’s lectures at Berkeley.

   ‘Nuff said.

2. Nate Says:
   13 February 2005 at 9:12 pm.

   ‘Cause he’s boring or controversial?

   Either way, he just published a pretty good book. Which is the major argument. Even if he weren’t good at other things, protecting him for all these years has kept the fascist-studies field alive. And although he may be the only one doing it, it’s good that we’ve got someone who didn’t get swept away because he “irrelevant.”

3. Liz Renner Says:
   15 February 2005 at 10:55 am.

   I was referencing the fact that he threatened to urinate on a student’s head during one of his lectures. I actually took two of Gregor’s classes because I though he was interesting (even if I did have to buy all 14 books he and his wife wrote) and thought he made compelling arguments about fascism and the development of democracy in Asia.