Fatal Flaw

CHICAGO - The distinguished free speech absolutist, Jerry Coyne of the University of Chicago, has reviewed the Sawicki Report and found it disappointing. To be more precise, he calls it "lame" and labels it "long and turgid."

The only thing Coyne likes about the report is it dropped the suggestion floated earlier by Jana Sawicki at Inside Higher Education that each student group should have a faculty adviser who would "...talk with the club members about whether they'd thought through how the speaker's views would affect their peers."

Ultimately, Coyne asserts it is impossible to combine freedom of speech with inclusion and diversity.
Setting an example of simplicity and grace, Coyne introduces his article with a short and easy to understand summary of the Sawicki Report and its most significant and fatal flaw. "The committee’s statement does not constitute a policy," he writes. "...it’s a farrago of good intentions and desires to balance free speech with diversity and inclusion. But it offers no guidelines about what speech is to be seen as “hate speech” that threatens “dignitary safety” and therefore subject to institutional action."

Fans of Ephblog will note that Jerry Coyne quotes liberally from my recent Ephblog article accessing the Sawicki Report. As you may know, Jerry Coyne is a prominent "New Atheist" along with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Reportedly, Coyne's Why Evolution is True blogsite has over 50,000 e-mail subscribers.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Weepy Futch Potato

Over on Twitter, Franny Choi announced that she had accepted a two-year fellowship in English at Williams College. "I’m so so so excited to work with the fierce students at Williams," she wrote. Here's how she describes herself on her website:

Franny Choi is a queer, Korean-American poet, playwright, teacher, organizer, pottymouth, GryffinClaw, and general overachiever.  She is the author of two poetry collections, Soft Science (Alice James Books, 2019) and Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), as well as a chapbook, Death by Sex Machine (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017).

I imagine the prolific Choi will feel right at home given her hatred for Trump, her advocacy for illegal immigrants, and her hostility to the second amendment. Inexplicably, her tweet indicates her surprise at her new appointment. "Can you believe," she tweets, "they wanted to hire this weepy futch potato?"

Out of curiosity, I looked up "futch." It means she sees herself as midway between being a feminine lesbian (femme) and a masculine lesbian (butch). There is even an attractive, multicolored chart for this.

I'll leave it to others to figure out why she refers to herself as a "weepy potato."
I think the readers of Ephblog are not as surprised as Franny about why the English department wanted to hire her.

I suspect we would be a good deal more shocked if the English department hired a high femme. Personally, I would consider it progress if the English department hired a poet - maybe even a stone butch - who composed poems that rhymed...like the way poetry used to be, back when it was popular and everyone liked it.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

The College Fix

 Report this morning and highlighted the reactions of those of us who were hoping Williams College would adopt the free speech absolutism of the Chicago Principles including Jerry Coyne, Luana Majora and me.

Ethan Berman, a student at the University of Texas-Austin, criticizes the Sawicki Report saying "...this ad hoc committee on 'Inquiry and Inclusion' instead gave the administration plenty of loopholes to regulate both student and faculty speech, including a 'feedback' protocol that resembles a community-wide heckler’s veto."

The article favorably quotes the pessimistic views of Jerry Coyne, a top leader of the New Atheist movement, who asserts it is impossible to reconcile freedom of speech and inclusiveness, and silly to think the Sawicki Report will fix things. “If Mandel and the committee thinks that this policy will quell the discontent of Williams’s woke students when they return this fall," Coyne writes, "they are sorely mistaken."

On a positive note, the article report  Coyne was pleased that the committee report dropped an idea floated earlier that would have required each student group to have a faculty advisor who would discuss “the appropriateness of a speaker and its effect on the College community."

The College Fix interviewed Williams biology professor Luana Majora who indicated she was “relieved” the report was “not as terrible” as she feared it might have been. Maroja told The Fix that she agrees with Coyne’s take “for the most part." “I thought [the report] would require an ‘advisor’ approval all invited speakers,” as Coyne feared, Maroja wrote in an email. “We will see what the fall brings to us.”

Global Warning

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.

Cheating Freedom

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - Williams College has been named as one of the top five worst schools for free speech by civil-liberties lawyer Harvey Silverglate, a co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The school won a not so coveted Campus Muzzle Award largely due to highly visible student protests against the adoption of the Chicago Principles and a generally "spineless" faculty response. According to Silverglate, a key moment was when

...a group of about 20 Williams students showed up to the faculty meeting to protest, some waving signs that stated “free speech is hate speech.” Disruption notwithstanding, the faculty was extremely accommodating, inviting the students into the meeting and permitting them to read their response aloud. But the students continued to be disruptive, at one point demanding that white male professors sit down and admit their “privilege,” and at another screaming that faculty members were trying to “kill them.”

Most of Silverglate's ire, however, is focused on the weak response from faculty members who seemed, over time, to give in to the free speech is hate speech mob.

We might expect at least the grownups on campus to safeguard free inquiry, even if those in their charge do not yet recognize how precious it is. Sadly, this is not the case at Williams College. Dozens of professors who originally supported the Chicago Principles caved to the unruly students and withdrew their signatures, rendering the petition all but defunct. These professors do their students a great disservice by denying them the opportunity to critically engage with a diversity of viewpoints, including ones they may disagree with. Such instances of intellectual cowardice by the professoriate are the antithesis of the goals of liberal education.

As you may know, Williams College is a previous award winner. It won a Campus Muzzle Award in 2016 in recognition of Adam Falk's paternalistic effort to protect the fragile students of Williams College from the potential death and destruction which would have ensued if he had not rescinded a speaking invitation to John Derbyshire.

For the record, the other Campus Muzzle Awards for 2019 went to Middlebury College, Roger Williams University, UMass Boston and UMass Amherst. In 2018, the awardees included UMass Boston, Tufts University, Northeastern University, Harvard and Brandeis University. More details on this story are available over at The College Fix.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist.