Kelly in Kansas

From Cliopatria:

Free Speech at UNC

Last week, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights issued an important ruling touching on many of the ideological divisions affecting the academy. The matter involved a case at the University of North Carolina, in which an English professor named Elyse Crystall ended a class by asking whether heterosexual men felt “threatened” by homosexual men. One student (an evangelical Christian) responded that he would not want to take his son to a baseball game where two men were kissing, and that a Christian friend of his was propositioned by a gay man and found the experience “disgusting,” but that “threatened” would be too strong a word for the feeling.

The next day, Prof. Crystall sent an E-mail to the entire class saying that “what we heard thursday at the end of class constitutes ‘hate speech’ and is completely unacceptable.” She apologized “to those of us who are now feeling that the classroom we share is an unsafe environment,” and promised to do her “best to counter those feelings and protect that space from further violence.” The student’s remarks, she continued, constituted “a perfect example of privilege. that a white, heterosexual, christian male . . . can feel entitled to make violent, heterosexist comments and not feel marked or threatened or vulnerable is what privilege makes possible.”

Upon learning of the E-mail, Crystall’s department chairman met with her and the student, stated that the E-mail was inappropriate, and monitored the remainder of the class to ensure that the student suffered no formal or informal retaliation.

This is a great example of some of my professorial colleagues going way over the top - they have in fact created a hostile environment for those with less politically correct belief. She opened the door for free exchange and had an excellent opportunity to explore controversial issues and then slammed it right shut. Aren't we supposed to teach diversity of thought and, when we explore that same diversity of thought with students, we help them better understand and truly tolerate the points of views of others?

This greatly troubles me even as a professor in a small regional state university. I couldn't believe when I heard a colleague in a related department assert that it wsa his job to disabuse his students of any of their beliefs in any realm of the Christian faith or religious belief in general because none of them could truly learn to think if they were religious. What?????? While I know the studies show that the more intelligent you are, the less likely you are to practice formal religion, it does not make the two concepts mutually exclusive . . . . .what limited thinking - just the opposite of what we are supposed to be encouraging in our students. I love certain parts of the "life of the mind" but not the view that "since I am smarter (and have letters behind my name to prove it), I know better than the citizens of the state that pay my salary, my health benefits, and my retirement." "Academic freedom" is now being used as an unnecessary crutch and hurting our students.