Friends:
Last semester was very brutal with respect to free speech. We need to hold onto free speech, disallow viewpoint discrimination, and protect academic freedom which are First Amendment rights.
Just as importantly, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick's new interim charges of the legislature are continuing to use DEI as a weapon and are pointing to a defunding of departments like humanities and social sciences because they are not satisfying workforce demands (see p. 7). The language is very vague and general, but I'm with AAUP in sounding this alarm. This is nonsense, but folks in humanities and social sciences in colleges and universities statewide need to be aware and ideally prepare to make their case in the upcoming 89th Session of the Texas State Legislature.
Here is a pertinent piece on the matter by Willard Dix in Forbes titled, "Eliminating The Humanities Decimates Every Student's Education." Dix correctly states how weakening humanities weakens critical thinking, creativity, and cultural awareness, all key to a well-rounded education. Dix stresses the need to preserve these subjects to prevent societal decline.
In the area of policy studies, the social sciences and humanities, these help us to reflect deeply on the structures that uphold unjust social relations while also exploring ways that we as individuals and institutions are similarly implicated in hidden structures of power and injustice.
To treat "workforce demands" as if they were an objective goal separate from humanities and social sciences is to suggest incorrectly that the former is "value-free" and the latter is not only "value-laden," but antithetical to the former. As students, citizens, advocates, and society, we need to push back on this as Dix eloquently states:
Whatever you think of higher education, one of its main roles is to preserve and transmit culture while adapting to and being changed by it. From libraries to classrooms, each generation of teachers and students communicates ideas and demonstrates theories that have evolved over thousands of years of civilization, now more and more including non-Western and non-white cultures. Since education isn't a zero-sum game, all of the collected wisdom and foolishness of the world comes crashing together in college. One way or another, students leave (ideally) with a greater sense of the world and who they are in it. The back and forth of educated debate is both a cause and a result of where we have come from and where we are now.We shouldn't need a social movement to defend what is obviously an attack on core values and beliefs that uphold higher education. Yet this is what is needed in this moment. Let's unmask these legislators and their enablers who can't be straight up about actually doing all they can to pre-empt the working and middle classes, as well as the next generation's capacity to conceptualize their way to personal liberation and collectively, to a better world.
Shearing off humanities because they don't deliver the goods impoverishes every student no matter what his or her background. And it's a mistake to set up a humanities vs STEM contest either. Both are important. Anyone who's watched Carl Sagan or Neil deGrasse Tyson knows that. We need all of these things, even if they aren't packed with students. Looking at them solely with a bookkeeper's gimlet eye makes no sense.
I have a B.A. in English, a Spanish minor, a master's degree in sociolinguistics, two additional master's degrees in sociology, and a Ph.D. in sociology. These have trained me to think, create, share, and store knowledge and provided me with skills and dispositions that are important to society. I know it's Texas, but I hold out that truth and wisdom will ultimately prevail over chaos and division—including, if not especially, manufactured polarization by a small group of extremists in power that seek to undermine public institutions, reversing decades of progress.
Policy battles are important and always necessary in a democracy, but voting is too. We need to vote these extremists out of power.
Today happens to be National Voter Registration Day. You must register by October 7 to be able to vote on November 6, 2024.
-Angela Valenzuela
Israel-Palestine protests, censorship and scholar sanctions contribute to UT Austin's low score on free speech survey.
 |
In a survey of 257 colleges, UT Austin ranked 244 in the analysis from research company College Pulse and the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. DSCZ/Getty Images A survey of college free speech ranked the University of Texas at Austin among the lowest in the nation, largely because of its response to student protests related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. UT Austin placed 244th with a "poor" speech climate in a survey of 257 colleges by the nonprofit Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and research company College Pulse. The ranking means a score of 23.39 out of 100. Close to 59,000 students responded nationally to the survey between January and June of this year. The bottom 10 ranking "followed the university preemptively calling the police to campus, presumably to prevent students from establishing an encampment," the report says. ALSO READ: ‘Great impact’: S.A.-area schools find hard-to-hire educators by looking outside U.S. In April, police and state troopers responded to protests in riot gear, arresting dozens of people. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict was identified as “difficult to have an open and honest conversation about” by 54% of students in the nationwide survey. In "Administrative Support," UT Austin ranks 228, and the report gave it a "yellow light" rating, indicating that the school has at least one policy that restricts protected expression. The survey found two instances where the university experienced "efforts to censor invited speakers, artwork, film screenings, or performances." UT Austin also saw at least three "scholar sanctions," which contributed to its ranking. Elizabeth L. T. Moore Reporter Elizabeth L. T. Moore is a Hearst Fellow in San Antonio. She can be reached at Elizabeth.Moore@hearst.com |
No comments:
Post a Comment