Truth, Knowledge, and Academic Freedom; Huffington Post, 7/26/16

David Moshman, Huffington Post; Truth, Knowledge, and Academic Freedom:

"Microaggressions. Trigger warnings. Safe spaces. These are among the latest entries in the ever-expanding lexicon of campus censorship. There appears to be a new free speech crisis on campus, and it seems largely due to demands from a new generation of students to be protected from offensive ideas, emotional triggers, and feelings of being intellectually unsafe.

But not so fast. Two new books from the academic publisher palgrave macmillan expand the time frame and shift the blame from students to faculty. One of these, Unsafe Space: The Crisis of Free Speech on Campus, is a collection of short, readable chapters. The other, Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity: Confronting the Fear of Knowledge, is a systematic book-length analysis by Joanna Williams..."

Much campus controversy today revolves around issues of respect for others. Respect for others is crucial but, as both these books make clear, such respect is not enough. In the academic context, what matters most is respect for truth. But there is no final arbiter of truth. Instead we seek it through intellectual and social processes that require respect for intellectual freedom.

It’s worth adding that respect for intellectual freedom, even when motivated by a concern for truth, brings us right back to respect for others. Full respect for others includes respect for their freedom of expression, even when we don’t like what they’re saying."

Obama Thinks Students Should Stop Stifling Debate On Campus; HuffingtonPost.com, 9/15/15

Tyler Kingkade, HuffingtonPost.com; Obama Thinks Students Should Stop Stifling Debate On Campus:

"President Barack Obama wants college students to hear the arguments of people they disagree with, not try to block them from speaking...

"I've heard some college campuses where they don't want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don't want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women," Obama said. "I gotta tell you I don't agree with that either. I don't agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view."

The president said that when he was in school, listening to people he disagreed with helped to test his own assumptions and sometimes led him to change his mind.

"Sometimes I realized maybe I've been too narrow-minded, maybe I didn't take this into account, maybe I should see this person's perspective," Obama said. "That's what college, in part, is all about...""

"Part of what a college education is for is to be real people, to be citizens -- not to protect them from discomforts of life," Stone told The Huffington Post...

The professor theorized that students have been "indoctrinated" by their parents that they are "entitled to be safe and comfortable."

"The consequence, I guess, of parents that are hovering all the time and telling everyone they're the best," Stone said."