If the announced concerns of the American Association of University Professors’ special committee to study academic freedom in the wake of Sept. 11 are any indication, look for more rarefied hand-wringing over the academic left’s travails and cricket-chirruping silence over others’.
Controversy continues to swirl around what the University of North Carolina at Wilmington did to a professor for chiding a student’s mass-distributed e-mail as “bad speech.” As well as around what UNCW didn’t do.
A report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni has the establishment-left wing of academe up in arms. “Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It” builds on the fact that “academe is the only sector of American society that is distinctly divided in its response” to the terrorist attacks on America to reiterate (not to mention, underscore) the organization’s call for trustees, donors and alumni to seek change in their institutions of higher education.
On October 5 the American Association of University Professors issued a statement denouncing criticism of professors opposing the war on terrorism by those who seek to “demonize” them.
A barrage of hate mail, physical confrontations and death threats at Duke University has prompted suprisingly little reaction from a school that prides itself on tolerence and diversity. The trouble began when two freshmen, Berin Szoka and Jay Strader, submitted a series of op-editorials to The Chronicle, Duke’s student newspaper, protesting the creation of a Hindi major at Duke.
