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The Freedom to Assign Controversial Books
An Israeli minister demands that Princeton University prohibit a professor from assigning a controversial book
It is not every day that a government minister writes to an American university president demanding that a book be immediately removed "from the curriculum of any of its courses" and "conduct a thorough review of the academic materials" used in its classes. But such is the demand that Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism has issued to President Christopher Eisgruber of Princeton University.
In recent days it has come to the attention of the national media in both the United States and Israel that an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University is assigning a controversial book to students who will take a seminar at the university in the upcoming fall semester. The book in question is The Right to Maim by Rutgers University professor Jasbir Puar. The book is published by Duke University Press and is billed as an application of "Foucauldian biopolitics" to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Critics see it a bit differently. Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress called on Princeton to "cancel the course in question immediately" and "fire its professor" for fomenting "hate speech." International Legal Forum CEO Arsen Ostrovsky characterized the book propagating "a modern-day antisemitic blood libel" and should be banned from the class in order to avoid creating "hostile and discriminatory environments for students, such as one that will inevitably be created as a result of the use such antisemitic and inflammatory material." The university has yet to comment.
Unfortunately, the demand that students be protected from problematic books is an age-old one and is once again a live one in the United States. Such efforts to restrict access to disturbing books has most recently focused on primary and secondary education, where the state has an unusually strong hand in setting the approved curriculum and schools must grapple with how and when difficult subjects should be introduced to minor students. It should not be surprising, however, that such demands might make their way into universities as well.
Activists on both the left and the right have insisted that universities should be made into safe spaces where students can be sheltered from disturbing and offensive speakers, materials, and ideas. Professor Stephen Kershnar is still banned from setting foot on the SUNY-Fredonia campus because he talked about his book, Pedophilia and Adult Child Sex: A Philosophical Analysis, on a podcast. It is not hard to imagine a university barring professors from assigning that book in their classes. With universities trying to stay in the good graces of conservative state legislatures, some university presidents might be tempted to prohibit their faculties from assigning Kimberle Crenshaw or Ibram Kendi to their students. With the controversy at Hamline University and the attack on Salman Rushdie fresh in mind, might a university president think it a safer course to ban professors from assigning books visually depicting or satirizing the Prophet Muhammad? If Charles Murray can be shouted down, can a professor assign students to read The Bell Curve? The controversy surrounding this seminar at Princeton might well be a sign of things to come.
We have had this fight before. Some of the earliest fights over academic freedom in American universities involved university officials prohibiting professors from assigning controversial books in their classes. In 1880, the New York Times breathlessly covered the battle between pioneering sociologist William Graham Sumner and Yale University President Noah Porter over a book assignment. Sumner had assigned Herbert Spencer's The Study of Sociology in his class. Sumner and Spencer were leading "Social Darwinists" in the late nineteenth century, and Porter had strong views about the "so-called science" of sociology. Sumner threatened to resign over Porter's "interference with my work," and they eventually found a compromise. In the early twentieth century as state legislatures debated whether evolution could be taught in public schools, a dean at the University of Tennessee rescinded a professor's book order and fired the professor for applying the theory of evolution to humans.
In response to such controversies, a fundamental demand of the emerging movement in favor of academic freedom in the United States was the insistence that university officials not interfere with how professors taught their classes. The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure endorsed by the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges laid out three core principles of academic freedom. One was that "teachers are entitled to freedom in the classroom in discussing their subject, but they should be careful not to introduce into their teaching controversial matter which has no relation to their subject." That commitment has found its way into university policies across the country. We may well soon see whether the courts are also willing to recognize this as a First Amendment principle.
As a result, the right of university professors to assign their preferred books to a class without interference from university administrators is one of the fundamental features of academic freedom in the United States. The critical consideration from the university's perspective is not whether an assigned book is controversial, hateful, or wrong, but whether it is germane to the class being taught. If a book is relevant to the subject matter, it is up to the professional judgment of the faculty member as to whether it should be used.
The professor might be wise or unwise in making such an assignment, and a professor might reasonably come in for public criticism for how they design or run their classes. But criticism must stop short of interference. If a work is relevant to the subject matter of the class, it does not matter whether others regard it as offensive or wrong. Students arriving at a university should expect that they will sometimes encounter readings and ideas that they regard as contemptible or erroneous.
The outrage surrounding the Princeton seminar is also entirely premature. Professors assign readings with which they disagree all the time. It is a routine feature of university classes to criticize and analyze controversial materials and not simply to absorb them uncritically. A professor may be justly criticized for behaving incompetently or unprofessionally if that professor attempts to present roundly rejected ideas as if they were widely accepted or tries to insulate controversial ideas from criticism. Professors should not attempt to indoctrinate or misinform students. But the mere fact that a professor assigns a controversial or mistaken text for undergraduate students to read is no reason to think that the professor is engaged in unprofessional misconduct.
It would be outrageous for a university president to unilaterally prohibit the assignment of any given book in a university class. Universities address bad ideas through discussion and debate, not through gag orders.
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Here’s the summary of the book from the publisher:
https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-right-to-maim
In The Right to Maim Jasbir K. Puar brings her pathbreaking work on the liberal state, sexuality, and biopolitics to bear on our understanding of disability. Drawing on a stunning array of theoretical and methodological frameworks, Puar uses the concept of “debility”—bodily injury and social exclusion brought on by economic and political factors—to disrupt the category of disability. She shows how debility, disability, and capacity together constitute an assemblage that states use to control populations. Puar’s analysis culminates in an interrogation of Israel’s policies toward Palestine, in which she outlines how Israel brings Palestinians into biopolitical being by designating them available for injury. Supplementing its right to kill with what Puar calls the right to maim, the Israeli state relies on liberal frameworks of disability to obscure and enable the mass debilitation of Palestinian bodies. Tracing disability’s interaction with debility and capacity, Puar offers a brilliant rethinking of Foucauldian biopolitics while showing how disability functions at the intersection of imperialism and racialized capital.
I wonder how many of her students will actually read the book. Sounds like anti-Semitic, er, anti-Zionist po-mo gibberish. They’d be better off watching Cronenberg’s “Crash”…
Just because a professor assigns a book as mandatory reading, doesn’t mean they intend for their students to accept/agree with the book’s contents…
The real scandal, as it always is, is that a professor has a class reading a book that the professor wrote. Which happens all the time.
On the one hand, it does make sense in some cases; obviously, the professor should be an expert in something. On the other hand, it is a nice racket … write a book, make sure you get paid.
….also, it seems unlikely that the professor in this case will be looking for opinions contrary to the book he wrote. Just … guessing.
Typically professors forgo payment for their own books they assign to their own class. It also makes for a good test bed for discussion and clarity.
Tit for tat assigns with other professors is left as an exercise for the reader.
Fair. I did not know that, although I would be curious as to the value of “typically.”
I am personally split on the issue; on the one hand, I have taken classes with people who were giants in their field, and it would have been weird not to have at least some assigned reading from them. On the other hand, I have been forced to slog through some execrable writing and ideas by professors who seemed delighted to have a captive audience.
I don’t think that any bright-line rule would work, other than the usual, “Pick your professors carefully.”
Policy where I work (TX public university).
1. Can’t directly sell your book (or anything else) to students, at all.
2. Can’t assign your own works as a required textbook without review by department faculty and approval from the administration.
3. The usual resolution is for the faculty-author to get permission from the publisher to distribute free photocopies to their own class.
Publishers typically agree to (2) since it’s a common situation and they’re well aware of state laws on the issue.
loki13, I once had a Professor refund to each student the royalties they made per copy of the book they authored, right there in class with cash. Thirty-two (32) students each got $1.25 in cash on day 2 of class. That was a long time ago. 🙂
It was a stats class.
The notion that academics make big bucks if their students read their book is complete nonsense. Academic books are only good for substantial income if they are widely adopted as textbooks, or if they are turned into mass market books.
This particular book has all the signs of a runaway bestseller.
I made all of $100 from my text last year.
Are you bragging or complaining?
If it’s anything like the situation in my class (engineering) he should be bragging.
One textbook sale is probably like $4 or $5 royalties. If only one student per class buys the book, that means roughly 20-25 professors nationwide assigned his book. Which is pretty damn good, actually.
Maybe law school is different and students can’t wing it without having a legit copy of the actual book?
Not too many students? 🙂
I figure you teach STEM, so that narrows the pool considerably.
Just coincidence, first day of class this morning. Second semester of a two semester course, using the same textbook.
I asked how many had actually purchased the book. 1 out of 29.
Then I asked how many had “acquired” a PDF or copy of the book, one way or another. About 15 out of 29.
The other 13 just went off the lectures and blew off reading the book entirely.
The professor (Satyel Larson) and author (Jasbir Puar) are different people.
I appreciate the correction; I misread the OP in haste.
“The real scandal, as it always is, is that a professor has a class reading a book that the professor wrote. ”
I agree with the sentiment here. However, I must plead guilty in using a textbook I wrote as the text for my course. The book was provided to the students at no cost to them.
The school book store actually permitted that? When I was at Michigan Tech, the profs would negotiate donations of electrical component kits from manufacturers for our classes, and the school book store demanded that they be distributed by them.
And then charged just under what Radio Shack was charging…
You can imagine the markup we were seeing on the textbooks.
On the one hand, it’s natural for a professor to think a book they wrote does the best job aligning with what they want to teach.
On the other, when outside of technical spheres, it can make speaking critically of the work a fraught concept.
“doesn’t mean they intend for their students to accept/agree with the book’s contents”
It does in all Near Eastern Studies departments such as where Satyel Larson works.
“Just because a professor assigns a book as mandatory reading, doesn’t mean they intend for their students to accept/agree with the book’s contents…”
This is sarcasm, I hope.
I imagine that disagreeing with the premises of the professor’s book in class would very likely result in a reduction in grade.
Jerry – I think it’s right as a general concept, just probably wrong in the specific case here.
Kerfuffles like this are always fun to watch because they’re the absolute best way to get students to actually read a controversial book no matter what their professors and outsiders think. Writers and publishers learned long ago that generating a controversy over a book almost always guarantees it will be a best seller.
There has to be a middle ground between letting the university president rule the university by diktat and letting each professor do what they please. Isn’t there an important role for the professor’s department? (Or whatever you call the group of academics who more or less study the same thing, and who are well-placed to peer-review each other’s decisions.)
What’s the right level to make this decision? Obviously, the Israeli Ministry of Diaspora Affairs.
So, I remember in undergraduate class that for a certain advanced class in documentary film studies and techniques, we looked at some of the films of Leni Reifenstahl among many mothers. Specifically, we examined Olympia (about the Berlin Olympics) and Triumph of the Will.
As a side note, the Professor (who was Jewish, not that this mattered) went out of his way to provide the proper context for the films. Still, seeing how these two films influenced later films … for example, understanding how sports were later filmed is difficult without seeing Olympia … was invaluable.
Grappling with controversial issues should be part and parcel of the academic experience. So-called “cancel culture” on both the left and the right really needs to stop.
Can’t Princeton get something less anti-Semitic, like Alfred Rosenberg’s “The Myth of the 20th Century” or Nitschke’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra”??
Frank
I remember Ray Nitschke, a brutally dominant middle linebacker. I didn’t know he was an author, too. And in German yet.
In imitable Drackman style, I think it’s a joke on Nietzsche believing he was Polish and respelling his name.
“I think it’s a joke ”
No, very unlikely to be a joke. It would be way to subtle for our Francis Mengele.
“Also Sprach Zarathustra” has some nifty aphorisms, but I found it kind of boring otherwise. 99% dross, really.
This, ironically, can be said of the Strauss piece of the same name; The first few minutes are glorious, and make a great test for a sound system, after that it’s totally meh.
Nietzsche’s poem is just about unreadable, but I’m not sure there’s much specifically anti-Semitic in it. As a general matter Nietzsche is angrily and viciously anti-Judeo-Christian-charity, and his idea of the pitiless “Overman” fits that theme, but there’s not a lot of race-baiting there.
Race-baiting was supplied by his posthumous disciples.
Nietzsche’s sister was a raging anti-semite, as were many of his later fans. Nietzsche himself, not so much.
“My Dear Minister,
“Thank you for your concern about American affairs. I have forwarded your letter to the U. S. State Department, which is responsible for handling grievances of nation against nation. If the State Department wants to get in touch with our University, then they will presumably decide what to share with you about the results of any such consultation.
“If you have further concerns about the internal government of American universities, please contact the U. S. State Department about those concerns, too.
“Yours most sincerely,” etc.
A fair and objective analysis of a Princeton University issue by a Princeton University professor.
“Students arriving at a university should expect that they will sometimes encounter readings and ideas that they regard as contemptible or erroneous.”
Yes, personally I found the use of “A'” to mean “Ā” contemptible and think it should be considered erroneous.
Next up, defending professor who assigns Mein Kampf. What part on Never Again do you not understand?
In an (advanced) class about, for example, fascism or World War II that seems like a pretty obvious choice. (Although making students read the whole thing seems unnecessary.)
re: “What part on Never Again do you not understand?”
1. Why you think it’s possible in the first place? History and literally millennia of experience show that we make the same mistakes over and over again. We always will and attempts to claim otherwise are mere hubris. But you might succeed at Not In My Lifetime. Which brings me to:
2. Why do you think that memory-holing is an effective tactic at any timescale? If you refuse to understand the social context that led to something like Mein Kampf becoming accepted, how do you hope to prevent that context from reoccurring? If you are unwilling to even listen to people advocating for a position, how can you hope to understand them well enough to rebut their arguments or allay their concerns?
As the saying goes, those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it. If you truly believe Never Again (or at least, Not For A Very Long Time), you should be seeking out and studying the thing you want to prevent from every possible angle. And yes, that means not only allowing but encouraging dissenting voices.
I would defend a professor who assigned Mein Kampf. Furthermore, I would read Mein Kampf.
I wouldn’t be persuaded by Mein Kampf, but I would be interested in how this manner of thinking came about. And you can only come to that understanding if you are familiar with the thinking.
You obviously are not familiar with the concept of critical thinking. You might read propaganda that isn’t persuasive to you in order to understand why it is or was persuasive to others.
Your solution is to not fully understand the problem. It is kind of like the person who avoids going to the doctor about a particular symptom because they are afraid they might hear bad news.
Also, surely you would trust yourself to not be persuaded by Mein Kampf if you read it. It is always other people who cannot be trusted. Censorship is always built on a presumption of superiority.
This is somewhat ironic, because genocide is ALSO built on a presumption of superiority. Probably, if you really believe in the concept of never having one group of people mass murder another, you should avoid moves that imply superiority. Other people than just you are capable of reading these works of propaganda without turning into monsters.
I read excerpts from Mein Kampf in my largely Jewish high school.
I see this on the left as well – what is this idea that examining/explaining is the same as endorsing?
I see this on the left as well – what is this idea that examining/explaining is the same as endorsing?
People that are highly emotional about an issue can quite easily make that mistake.
Warning: Long personal story ahead, set after the beating of Rodney King in LA. I’ll have a TL;DR summary afterwards.
I will always remember an incident that occurred in my Intro to Criminal Justice class I took as an elective in college. (A poli-sci course aimed at non-majors.) It was taught by a local judge. Not long after the video of Rodney King being beaten by LAPD officers became public, the topic of the day’s lecture was use of force. The judge made a comment at one point to the effect of saying that he “understood” why police in that situation could do what those officers did. That did not go over well with many students and he was confronted by a large group of them after class. Having several angry young students up close to him, he spoke to one a bit harshly, saying, “You’re stupid!”
The next class, he apologized for his response, saying that he heard a personal insult directed at his wife (the mayor) and yelled back at the person he thought said it. He also tried to explain that he meant that he understood how the officers could behave that way on an analytical level (adrenaline after a high speed chase, routinely dealing with unpredictable criminal suspects, and so on, in addition to likely racial biases). He was not sympathizing with them in any way, he said. Some students in the full lecture hall (~100 students) accepted that, but quite a few did not. Nor did they excuse his outburst, expecting a judge to stay fairly calm even in the face of abuse.
My own opinion, both at the time and afterwards, was that the judge did not behave unreasonably. It is different being behind a bench with bailiffs in the room compared to being in a lecture hall with no security. It is also to be expected for an academic to evaluate a situation dispassionately rather than look only to the reasons to be outraged by an event.
TL;DR:
In the end, the completely justified emotions of people outraged by the treatment of Rodney King cut short their ability to look at that event rationally for causes and solutions. They instead only wanted to hear condemnation for the officers that beat him.
My history of the holocaust professor, who survived the holocaust, assigned Mein Kampf, and a whole host of anti-semitic texts and propaganda dating back to the middle ages. I do not know how you would understanding anti-semitism without this.
Or, stated differently, a number of people don’t understand when their words or actions rub against anti-semitism because they have no familiarity with these texts.
Jamie Foxx was talking about fakefriends and said “they killed Jesus” which is a common talking point in the black church about people in your inner circle and community betraying you (a thing which has happened to many black leaders), but it was interpreted by some as anti-semitic as this has been a catholic anti-semitic stance for nearly a millenia.
Confusion which could have been resolved with more knowledge.
Mostly wrong, as are most of Prof. Whittington’s recent posts on this topic. No, the professor in question should not have the “academic freedom” to teach whatever she wants (and to assign whatever books she wants). The university gets to decide what’s taught by its professors (and what books are assigned). If it were a public university, the state government gets to tell the university what can and can’t be taught there (and what books can and can’t be assigned).
While universities do certainly have some latitude when it comes to setting the overall curriculum (such as majors, core requirements, etc.) and ensuring that there are classes available for that*, your no-nothing comment is indicative of everything that is wrong with the moron majority that makes up the GOP base.
“Hey, we shouldn’t let college professors … the people who understand their subjects and are the experts in their fields … determine what to teach. Instead, we should make sure that bureaucrats and state politicians who know absolutely nothing about the subject matter be the ones to determine what should be taught. Because we, the moron majority, totally trust state politicians to determine what needs to be taught in an advanced cryptography course. I’m sure nothing will go wrong.”
*It’s not like most most law professors, to give an example, are clamoring to teach 1L contracts.
*know-nothing.
See, you can’t rewrite, ’cause to rewrite is to deceive and lie, and you betray your own thoughts.
Why not for elective classes. But then you believe in brainwashing and grooming
Indeed,
Further, if people are never exposed to bad arguments, they will not fully gain the skills needed to distinguish bad arguments from good arguments.
I don’t see a problem generally with people criticizing the choice of materials and content that are used, or the ideological perspective that is pushed in a university class. Many ideas are wrong, dangerous, immoral, etc. Many materials are a waste of time. As the Bible says, all things are lawful, but not all things are useful or edifying.
With that said, it is certainly strange for a foreign government official to act entitled to make such demands of a private American university. Even an American government official is not entitled to make such demands of a private American university. Government funded universities are another story of course, and that distinction is often glossed over.
“Such efforts to restrict access”
But criticism is not restricting access, and neither is the necessarily highly selective act of choosing what will be taught in class. That remains true whether the choice is made 100% by a professor or teacher with complete autonomy, or whether there is external control or standards over what is taught (whether exercised by a board of trustees, or by the government in the case of government schools, or however else). It’s not really “restricting access.” It is just the decision of what is taught in class, which again is necessarily highly selective and exclusive.
” . . . primary and secondary education, where the state has an unusually strong hand in setting the approved curriculum . . . universities trying to stay in the good graces of conservative state legislatures . . .”
He who pays the piper calls the tune. If the state being involved in education is a problem, then the answer is to have the state less involved in education. Shut down the departments of education and let education be a more private parochial affair. It is no solution to have armies of pinhead academics growing fat on the public teat, living off the backs of the working man, while the working man who figuratively writes their checks doesn’t get to tell them what to do and has no say in the matter.
I agree with the broader point that a university should not ban books and controversial ideas should be brought to light and examined rather than censored. It’s good when a bad idea is being looked at critically with an upright perspective, not so good if the professor actually supports pedophilia. The issue though as usual is who decides.
“not entitled to make such demands”
They certainly have the right to criticize decisions, even by Jew hating Princeton professors.
Yes and in practice, the dirty little secret is that the government is even funding private universities now, under the guise of “student loans.”
But in theory the government has no more right to tell a private university what they can or can’t say than they do an individual.
The government has no right to mandate or forbid books at private schools but individual officials certainly can complain about books.
The book sounds bad, but I’m put off at the idea of a government minister from another nation writing a university President demanding the removal of a book from the curriculum and a review of procedures to avoid such books in the future.
*If* the Israelis want to use their special relationship to press for American curricular reform, they should contact the Secretary of State. I don’t know how the SoS in the current administration would respond. My guess is, since it’s Princeton, they’d probably make soothing noises to the Israelis while refusing to do anything concrete.
In reality, of course, I know all about “public diplomacy” and how governments (including the U. S. government) bypass diplomatic channels to meddle in other countries’ internal affairs. But this demand letter is particularly egregious and unsubtle.
I’d say, the U. S. should rebuke Israel for its meddling, then Princeton should wait for a purely *private* complaint to arrive, then deal with *that* complaint.
Furthermore, would there be Logan Act issues with a university negotiating with a foreign government in a dispute which the foreign government has with the U. S. over university curricula?
” Ronald Lauder of the World Jewish Congress called on Princeton to “cancel the course in question immediately” and “fire its professor” for fomenting “hate speech.” International Legal Forum CEO Arsen Ostrovsky characterized the book propagating “a modern-day antisemitic blood libel” and should be banned from the class in order to avoid creating “hostile and discriminatory environments for students, ”
Maybe they can deal with these complaints?
Logan Act, really?
That second quote uses the term of art “hostile and discriminatory environments,” which refers to *illegal* discrimination. Thus they’re accusing the university of virtually violating the law by using the book.
The summary makes the book sound really bad, but that wouldn’t make it illegal.
“It is no solution to have armies of pinhead academics growing fat on the public teat, living off the backs of the working man, while the working man who figuratively writes their checks doesn’t get to tell them what to do and has no say in the matter.”
Who had “pinhead academics,” “public teat, or “working man,” on their Stereotype Bingo card?!?
Glad you liked it. I can expound on that point if there’s interest.
One case: Rice v. Palladin Enterprises (4th Cir 1997)
Palladin Enterprises had published a book called Hit Man containing an exhortation to live the exciting, liberated life of a professional contract killer together with a detailed manual on everything from how to market ones services and negotiate contracts to how to perform hits and avoid detection.
A man named James Perry followed the book’s detailed instructions closely in performing a hit.
The 4th Circuit said that in this context, the combination of exhortation and detailed instructions placed the book outside the First Amendment’s protection and into the category of what Professor Volokh has called “crime-facilitating speech.” Palladin Enterprises could be found liable for Perry’s conduct in following the book’s detailed advice.
The threshold is a high one. But it can be met.
If (and only if) a work meets the high standard of lying outside the First Amendment’s protection as crime-facilitating speech, it also lies outside the scope of academic freedom. A license to teach is not a license to facilitate crime.
That said, not just exhortation but detailed instructions were critical to Hit Man’s being classified as outside the First Amendent’s protection.
From the book’s publisher’s excerpts, it appears that Professor Puar is arguing, in abstruse jargon, that the Israeli government is maiming Palestinians. I can’t tell if the argument is that this is being done physically or metaphorically.
That seems a different argument from, and somewhat further from the Palladin Enterprises subject-matter than, what I had initially thought when reading the title, that Professor Puar was arguing that Palestinians have a right to maim Israelis or Jews generally.
The 4th Circuit decision is absurd. Especially because the decision itself is crime facilitating speech.
An aspiring hitman need only read the judicial decision to find out what book to read. And combine that with knowledge from the judicial decision on the hitman’s mistakes, and you have an even more effective guide to being a hitman than the original book.
Look, if I read the book on becoming a hitman, I would not become a hitman. And the detailed instructions could be used by me to think about security measures that I might take to protect myself from crime.
Why should responsible people be forbidden from reading a book because irresponsible people might be influenced by it.
Shall we also ban the Bible while we are at it? Plenty of people have read that book and come up with some justification for murder afterwards.
You may disagree with the result, but your argument doesn’t support the disagreement. Just look at Professor Volokh’s voluminous posts on pseudonymitity. The obligation to explain the basis of their decisions to the public routinely leads courts to report facts supporting their legal conclusions, such as names of parties, even when parties protest that reporting those facts will itself cause harm, sometimes the very harm sued about.
This is no different. Judge Luttig of the 4th Circuit (now better known for his role in Jan. 6) believed he had to report facts sufficient to explain why the panel decided the case as it did, including excerpts from the book. Just as this routinely overrides pseudonymity arguments, it overrides your similar argument as well. And just as routinely.
The decision might be wrong. But not for this reason.
Oh, I would say it is ONE of the reasons it is wrong.
The judicial decision COULD BE USED FOR EVIL.
That a writing could be used for evil is not a basis for banning it. (And making a publisher liable for the actions of a random reader is equivalent to a ban.)
This hitman book has illegitimate uses for readers (as an instruction manual) and legitimate uses (raising awareness of a problem so one can think of potential solutions).
The judicial decision is actually the same. It could be used illegitimately (as an instruction manual) and has legitimate uses (for legal research).
Always liked the Palladin and Loompanics book catalogs. Just the blurbs were entertaining.
This is what I have learned from this thread so far.
Apparently, there is a large group of conservative (well, so-called conservatives at least) that are clamoring to have California politicians micro-manage what Eugene Volokh (Professor, UCLA School of Law) teaches and says.
Because … REASONS!
Also, apparently they are in favor of turning over higher education in America, which has its problems but is still considered world-class, to the rule of the state. Because … that owns the libs, or something.
It’s almost like people don’t think these things through. I know, shocker.
Personally, I would say the government doesn’t need to be involved in funding higher education. But if the state is going to fund/own universities, then they have the right to control them, that’s just a simple fact. Now should they? I would say no, except maybe in a few limited ways in limited circumstances.
if the state is going to fund/own universities, then they have the right to control them, that’s just a simple fact.
No, actually, it is not.
Actually, it is. That’s inherent in the employer relationship. There are some limits on that right of control but it is both wrong and silly to imply that there is no allowable level of control.
And the fact that that relationship can be abused for political purposes is one of the strongest arguments why government shouldn’t be funding/owning universities in the first place.
Finding a person or institution does not mean they are your employee.
Grants are an example of funding something but not creating a such an obligation.
… said no grantor ever. Grants always come with strings and conditions. (If they don’t, they’re called “gifts”, not “grants”.) Okay, they might not be precisely the same strings and conditions as an employer but they are the same “right to control” that M L first started talking about.
No new goalposts.
There are terms and conditions specific to the performance of the grant, but in no way does a grant mean the government controls the grantee, nor that the government is the employer of the grantee.
Grants do not have conditions scoped to the institution generally.
Care to explain? Or just leave it at ipse dixit?
You’re the one with the ipse dixit.
Receiving money does not mean the government controls you. Even a contract’s terms are limited to the performance under the contract.
In general, anyone who is paying for something is free to place any conditions they want to on the use of those funds.
If the government sometimes doesn’t control some aspects of things they are paying for through such conditions, and lets a third party run things, that doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have the option to do it differently.
What about state owned and operated universities? Do you think the state doesn’t run state universities?
I did say “funding/owning” and of course the former definitionally implies some third party is actually owning and operating the thing.
Deep down, in their heart of hearts, they’re Bolsheviks.
I ask out of genuine curiosity.
Why, out of all the authoritarian flavors, are they specifically Bolsheviks?
Because Mr. Hook wants to be clear that they aren’t Mensheviks.
Okay, that’s probably going to be lost on a lot of people. 🙂
Oh, largely for ironic flair. Nazi/fascist is the too obvious, too lazy one. But pick whatever anti-liberal, totalitarian ideology of your preference.
With their anti-intellectualism, I might go Mao.
I’m fond of Pol Pot for this analogy.
A faculty member should be able to use whatever books are deemed by them to be suitable or appropriate for the class, subject only to the faculty and university leadership being satisfied that the book makes sense to include in the context of the course – so it’s not a matter of free speech but education.
For example, if a professor has “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” on a reading list for a course on, say, Anti-Semitism. that makes sense. If however the course is “Influences on European Foreign Policy before WWI” and in context it’s evident that the professor intends Protocols to be regarded as a true historical document, then their faculty should stop them on education grounds. Though the subject is more emotive, it’s akin to a chemistry professor insisting that, e.g., “A Diſſertation on ye Phlogiſton Theorie” be read as a serious textbook, as opposed to a History of Science professor using the same essay.
Well argued.
I would add that it is also appropriate for the faculty/university leadership to determine whether a course should be taught at all. The resources, staff and infrastructure spent supporting and teaching “Influences on European Foreign Policy before WWI” inherently means that some other course could not be taught. Deciding what products to offer is an entirely routine business decision.
“The critical consideration from the university’s perspective is not whether an assigned book is controversial, hateful, or WRONG, but whether it is germane to the class being taught. If a book is relevant to the subject matter, it is up to the professional judgment of the faculty member as to whether it should be used.”
I can think of more than 6,000,000 people who might partially disagree… if they were living. It is the responsibility of a university — and the fiduciaries of its funding sources — to verify that those making assignments are actually competent to do so; more specifically, there is a responsibility to prohibit the dissemination of verifiably incorrect information by those entrusted with the bully pulpit of higher education. Abdication of this responsibility to monitor, silence, and severely punish incompetent faculty has repeatedly proven to be a costly error.
How many members of the AAUP were, in 1940, advocates of negative eugenics, even after being informed (by fellow members of the academy trained in genetics) that their position had no scientific basis? Was it wise for us to allow such fools within the AAUP to mount stages and profess their wrongness? Is the Holocaust a shining example of what can happen when the “best” minds — US university faculty and Hitler — are allowed free reign?
More recently and somewhat less controversially, the “best” minds of our universities decided, without a shred of credible evidence, that a sitting national president had conspired with an adverse foreign power. Were we right to allow them to spew such bilge? Should we have allowed them to continue as they please, to remove the president they disliked, and award control of the nation to themselves?
Why _should_ we trust those who have proven that they cannot police themselves? What, other than accolades of peers, makes the “expertise” of a university faculty member remarkable? Can the academy humble itself and admit its repeated wrongness?
“Were we right to allow them to spew such bilge?” – Yes. That’s what freedom of speech means. You have the freedom to say things I disagree with and to try to persuade me to your side.
“Should we have allowed them to continue as they please” – Yes
“to remove the president they disliked” – If they could do so through lawful means.
“and award control of the nation to themselves?” – Again, if they could do so through lawful means.
“Why _should_ we trust those who have proven that they cannot police themselves?” – We shouldn’t. But we should trust even less the people who claim to need the extraordinary powers of censorship to stop them.
No freedom, whether of speech or anything else, is an unmitigated good. Any freedom can be abused. We seek those freedoms anyway because history shows clearly that the alternative is far, far worse.
The best letter I ever read — magnificent in several respects — was written by a government official on government letterhead.
This letter does not seem to have resembled that one.
” With universities trying to stay in the good graces of conservative state legislatures.”
As opposed to the good graces of progressive state legislatures?
You’d have a point if there were a scintilla of balance in academia, but there isn’t. Imagine an American academic arguing that Israel should respond to terrorist attacks by carpetbombing Palestine and another professor who decided to assign it. What do you think would happen THEN?
So how is this different? And the Israeli government doesn’t have it’s own rights of free speech?
But back to the issue in question — let me know when a professor assigns The Turner Diaries and then we can talk about free speech.
Progressive state legislatures aren’t doing this shit.
That you need to go into your usual hypothetical/fantasy land to find an example is rather a tell you’ve got nothing, eh?
“Progressive state legislatures aren’t doing this shit. ”
They don’t have to. The “progressives” already control the universities.
I disagree.
But make all the theories as to why you want, the right is rolling authoritarian on this and the left is not.
“the right is rolling authoritarian on this”
As is said by others here, every accusation is a confession.
Its not “authoritarian” to push back against illiberal control of our institutions.
The left pushes all dissent out, that is truly authoritarian,
Its not “authoritarian” to push back against illiberal control of our institutions.
The call of ‘we gotta authoritarian them because they are authoritarianing us’ is just the song of the authoritarian.
You’re using authoritarian methods. These schools are not. One clue is you went with the weak-sauce ‘illiberal.’ Authoritarian methods to ensure liberty!
Sure, dude. Sure.
Still, I think it appropriate for a university to require teachers to explain the purpose of using and the way in which it is used for highly controversial books prior to their use. The university should get to ensure that widely debunked theories are not advocated as actual fact, and that the focus is on the important aspects of teaching (and not the pet projects of the teacher).
Genocide law, genocide medicine, and Zionist attempt to control public discourse are meeting at Princeton.
The Zionist effort to control US public discussion and debate has been ongoing for decades.
As ongoing Zionist genocide against Palestinians becomes more public and obvious, this Zionist effort cannot be ignored.
Go back to Stormfront.
Bob from Ohio has a mentality that is congruent with that of a Nazi. I don’t.
I guess I must explain that I am Jewish.
Practically all my father’s family in the Ukraine was murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
A Zionist anti-Jew defecates on the memory of every Jew, who was murdered during the Holocaust, when he tries to use Nazi persecution and murder of Jews to legitimize, to normalize, and to justify genocide of Palestinians.
My Zionist relatives have been preparing, planning or perpetrating genocide against Palestinians since 1914.
Too many people try to give vicious bloodthirsty white racial supremacist Euro Zionist anti-Jews a license to commit genocide after Auschwitz and after the 1946 Nuremberg International Tribunal and subsequent Nuremberg Tribunals, which made acts of genocide criminal in international law.
Because too many people shut off their brains when a depraved and evil hasbarah-monger babbles about Jews, we pro-Palestine anti-Israel anti-Zionism advocates must explicitly assert the truth of the following proposition in the case of the Zionist state, Zionism, the Zionist movement, and Zionist anti-Jews.
A group subjected to genocide at the hands of a first set of genocide-perpetrators (e.g., Nazis) can later themselves form a second set of genocide-perpetrators (e.g., Zionist anti-Jews) just as evil as the first set of genocide-perpetrators.
I do not believe you are actually Jewish.
If you are, may HaShem forgive you.
A Zionist anti-Jew murders his mind with the poison of Zionist belief and can no longer process the truth.
Zionism has murdered Judaism by transforming Judaism into a program of genocide.
If the Department Head and Dean are Ok with the texts that this professor uses, what is the problem? Is there a 1A issue here? I don’t see one.
This lady is an odious anti-semite, for sure, but being an anti-semite is not illegal.
Look, you don’t have to be a free-speech absolutist to say the USA shouldn’t be answerable to other countries for books in university classes.
What’s next?
Will the Turkish government complain of anti-Ottoman (or pro-Armenian) bias in U. S. textbooks?
Will the Chinese government…well, I presume they’re already put the pressure on, so I doubt this is hypothetical.
Complain? Yes to all of them. It’s happened many times in the past and will happen many times again. And the US does the same about other countries’ practices.
The question is not their right to complain, demand, pontificate or rant – the question is always whether the institution succumbs.
And the proper response to other countries demanding censorship is “piss right off with that stuff.” Nothing short of that will do.
This blog should emphasize that intellectual-freedom issues are tough enough without foreign pressure for censorship.
American is an outlier – among other countries there’s been a developing consensus for years that a country’s failure to censor is an issue of international concern. The “civil rights” treaty of 1966 (a United Nations treaty, and nothing bad ever comes from there) says countries must suppress war propaganda and incitement to discrimination. IIRC this was inserted at the behest of what was then the Soviet bloc. America attached a “reservation” to these clauses, upholding the First Amendment – and outlier though it is, American should indignantly reject foreign demands for censorship.
Even if we’d censor on our own initiative, that’s no reason to be pressured from outside on this subject.
This one does seem bad – a political advocacy book – a spicy one at that – by the prof themselves. That does seem to align so many avenues for bias it looks like bad practice to me.
That this seems to be bad is different than any policy upshot, of course.
Agree with all that – I had profs you had to agree with but many more that were pretty cool with contrary points of view.
My antennae still go up when the particular viewpoint is both being taught AND assigned as book the prof wrote to AND it’s kinda extreme.
But you’re right – there are still plenty of folks who could still be pretty cool (though I will note that this particular subject area is fraught with ideologues on both sides).
Above there is a TX policy of faculty review of such materials. That could be a good way to keep things on the straight and narrow.
Having read it for a college class on the rise of totalitarianism in Europe — trust me, you would not be persuaded by it.
Hitler was many things — “to the point” was not one of them. He pounded on a topic incessantly and seldom improved his point with further argumentation.
That the initial draft was markedly longer and MORE meandering boggles the mind.
What nutty laws? (honest question)