The Privilege to Dissent
How academic freedom coexists with stultifying conformity.
By JAMES TARANTO The Wall Street Journal EXCERPT:
The Limbaugh kerfuffle over the Fluke distraction from the Obama assault on religious liberty has now produced a meta-kerfuffle. The site is the University of Rochester, and the antagonists are Steven Landsburg, a contrarian economics professor, and Joel Seligman, the university president. Landsburg won the dispute, which wasn't really a fair fight.
It started with a Landsburg blog post last Friday, which prompted an official denunciation from Seligman Tuesday, which we shall quote in full:
I was deeply disappointed to read UR Professor Steve Landsburg's recent blogs praising Rush Limbaugh for a "spot-on analogy" with respect to his offensive remarks about Georgetown student Sandra Fluke (although Landsburg parted company with Limbaugh for calling Fluke a "slut"). Landsburg went further. He stated that Ms. Fluke's position deserved "only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered." He further stated that the right word for her position was "extortionist," characterized those who disagreed with his view as "contraceptive sponges," and added that there is nothing wrong with being paid for sex.
Professor Landsburg has the right to express his views under our University's deep commitment to academic freedom. And, of course, no reasonable person would ever assume that he speaks for the University of Rochester.
I also have the right to express my views. I am outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion. To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in this way is about the most offensive thing a professor can do. We are here to educate, to nurture, to inspire, not to engage in character assassination.
I totally disagree with Landsburg that there is nothing wrong with being paid for sex. Having been a Dean of two law schools with clinics that addressed violence against women, I am all too aware of the terrible correlation between prostitution and the physical and emotional demeaning of women.
Landsburg now has made himself newsworthy as one of Limbaugh's few defenders. I wish he had focused instead on the ideal of a university as an institution that promotes the free exchange of ideas and lively debate at its best in an atmosphere of civil discourse in which the dignity of every individual is respected.
Landsburg did not back down. He responded with a statement to the media and a letter to Seligman, both of which he published in another blog post. The letter begins: "I do appreciate your right to express your views, but I don't think you have a right to misrepresent mine." The professor doesn't need our defense, but we'd like to use the kerfuffle to make a few observations about higher education in America.
To begin with, one statement Seligman makes (which Landsburg does not address directly) is so misleading as to be scurrilous. "I am outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion," Seligman writes. "To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in this way is about the most offensive thing a professor can do."
The implication is that by treating Fluke with disrespect, Landsburg has behaved unethically. That's bunk, as blogress Ann Althouse (herself a professor) points out:
To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in your classroom may be one of the most offensive things a professor can do, but when a student is a political activist who testifies before a congressional subcommittee on a specific policy question that you disagree with, it's not that horrible to blog about that.
To put it another way, Landsburg has ethical obligations to his own students, and perhaps to other students in his department or at his university. But all such obligations are based on his institutional relationship to those students. Seligman's shot at Landsburg is the equivalent of saying it is unethical for any physician to criticize Fluke's political activism because she is a "patient."
How academic freedom coexists with stultifying conformity.
By JAMES TARANTO The Wall Street Journal EXCERPT:
The Limbaugh kerfuffle over the Fluke distraction from the Obama assault on religious liberty has now produced a meta-kerfuffle. The site is the University of Rochester, and the antagonists are Steven Landsburg, a contrarian economics professor, and Joel Seligman, the university president. Landsburg won the dispute, which wasn't really a fair fight.
It started with a Landsburg blog post last Friday, which prompted an official denunciation from Seligman Tuesday, which we shall quote in full:
I was deeply disappointed to read UR Professor Steve Landsburg's recent blogs praising Rush Limbaugh for a "spot-on analogy" with respect to his offensive remarks about Georgetown student Sandra Fluke (although Landsburg parted company with Limbaugh for calling Fluke a "slut"). Landsburg went further. He stated that Ms. Fluke's position deserved "only to be ridiculed, mocked and jeered." He further stated that the right word for her position was "extortionist," characterized those who disagreed with his view as "contraceptive sponges," and added that there is nothing wrong with being paid for sex.
Professor Landsburg has the right to express his views under our University's deep commitment to academic freedom. And, of course, no reasonable person would ever assume that he speaks for the University of Rochester.
I also have the right to express my views. I am outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion. To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in this way is about the most offensive thing a professor can do. We are here to educate, to nurture, to inspire, not to engage in character assassination.
I totally disagree with Landsburg that there is nothing wrong with being paid for sex. Having been a Dean of two law schools with clinics that addressed violence against women, I am all too aware of the terrible correlation between prostitution and the physical and emotional demeaning of women.
Landsburg now has made himself newsworthy as one of Limbaugh's few defenders. I wish he had focused instead on the ideal of a university as an institution that promotes the free exchange of ideas and lively debate at its best in an atmosphere of civil discourse in which the dignity of every individual is respected.
Landsburg did not back down. He responded with a statement to the media and a letter to Seligman, both of which he published in another blog post. The letter begins: "I do appreciate your right to express your views, but I don't think you have a right to misrepresent mine." The professor doesn't need our defense, but we'd like to use the kerfuffle to make a few observations about higher education in America.
To begin with, one statement Seligman makes (which Landsburg does not address directly) is so misleading as to be scurrilous. "I am outraged that any professor would demean a student in this fashion," Seligman writes. "To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in this way is about the most offensive thing a professor can do."
The implication is that by treating Fluke with disrespect, Landsburg has behaved unethically. That's bunk, as blogress Ann Althouse (herself a professor) points out:
To openly ridicule, mock, or jeer a student in your classroom may be one of the most offensive things a professor can do, but when a student is a political activist who testifies before a congressional subcommittee on a specific policy question that you disagree with, it's not that horrible to blog about that.
To put it another way, Landsburg has ethical obligations to his own students, and perhaps to other students in his department or at his university. But all such obligations are based on his institutional relationship to those students. Seligman's shot at Landsburg is the equivalent of saying it is unethical for any physician to criticize Fluke's political activism because she is a "patient."
