“There is perhaps no more dramatic index of the disaster that has befallen liberal arts education in this country than the contempt in which the new academic orthodoxy holds this constellation of ideas about the nature and goals of higher education. It would be difficult to overstate the resulting intellectual carnage” (Roger Kimball, Tenured Radicals, …
Doublethink
“Perhaps Marcuse’s ability to reconcile liberty and dictatorship has come of age, and Orwell’s characterization of such thinking as ‘doublethink’ does not bring the flash of recognition that it once did” (The Shadow University, p. 96).
Sounds Like Some People I Know
“Many codes explicitly encourage charging a student with sexual harassment even if his intent is innocent . . . The City University of New York warns that ‘sexual harassment is not defined by intentions, but by impact on the subject.’ As Herbert London, a dean and a professor of humanities of New York University, notes, …
More for You, Less for Me
“Restrictions on speech are justified by the assertion of a compelling need to promote freedom for some by limiting freedom for others. To the code writers, as to Marcuse, freedom is a zero-sum game” (The Shadow University, p. 83).
Cherishing the Banned
“On the one hand, the codes claim to cherish free speech and academic freedom, including the freedom to express even the most challenging and offensive ideas; one the other, certain categories of ‘offensive’ speech are banned in order to create a ‘comfortable’ and ‘inclusive’ learning atmosphere” (The Shadow University, p. 79).
Who? Whom?
[Stanley] “Fish openly suggested that he was receptive to the prospect of both ideological indoctrination and ideological intimidation of students. He was equally blunt in responding to the classic claim of free speech absolutists that the beginning of censorship is a perilous ‘slippery slope’ that would result in pervasive and unpredictable restrictions on freedom. ‘Some …
Serene Self-Confidence
“Marcuse firmly believed that this process was capable of ‘objective’ and ‘rational’ determination. There was no danger, in their view, that the differential assignment of rights would backfire, since they were wholly confident that any rational being, once freed from the dominant group’s indoctrination, would agree with their own values” (The Shadow University, p. 75).
Historically Temporary, Aye
“Censorship, during this ‘reversal,’ was essential, because ubiquitous, dangerous, and regressive notions were too quickly translated into practice. Indeed, censorship, for Marcuse, must be deeply pervasive, although historically temporary. The result, he promised, would be to restore real freedom, and the words ‘freedom’ and ‘liberty’ once again could attain their ‘true meaning'” (The Shadow University, …
The Legacy of Marcuse
“Nonetheless, on college campuses the drive for speech codes, for double standards in their application, for the mechanisms of indoctrination in their rationales, and for the disciplinary systems to enforce their strictures, comes from the Left” (Kors and Silvergate, The Shadow University, p. 67).