f**********n
发帖数: 29853 | 1 芝加哥大学有对抗政治正确，维护言论自由，支持真正民权的历史。事例有
芝大教授在民权法之前就有了黑人秘书
至大有第一个黑人终身教授
至大不玩学生成绩通胀的把戏，
这次至大站出来说，我们鼓励言论自由。
Thomas Sowell: A gem in Chicago
By THOMAS SOWELL
We have gotten so used to seeing college presidents and other academic “
leaders” caving in to so many outrageous demands from little gangs of
bullying students that it is a long overdue surprise to see a sign that at
least one major university has shown some backbone.
Dr. Robert J. Zimmer, president of the University of Chicago, has spoken out
in the plainest language against the stifling of opinions that differ from
political correctness, on campuses across the country.
“Free speech is at risk at the very institution where it should be assured:
the university,” Dr. Zimmer said.
“Invited speakers are disinvited because a segment of a university
community deems them offensive, while other orators are shouted down for
similar reasons,” he said. Demands have been made that assigned readings in
some courses be eliminated because they “might make some students
uncomfortable.”
Worst of all, such demands “have been supported by university
administrators,” Dr. Zimmer pointed out.
By contrast with many other colleges and universities where speech codes
restrict what students can and cannot say, freshmen students entering the
University of Chicago have been informed by a letter from the Dean of
Students that “freedom of expression” is one of that institution’s “
defining characteristics.”
The Dean of Students spelled it out: “Members of our community are
encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge and learn, without fear of
censorship. Civility and mutual respect are vital to all of us, and freedom
of expression does not mean the freedom to harass or threaten others.”
That such things need to be said is a painful commentary on the academic
world in general. It is doubtful if any such declaration or policy could be
made at any of the Ivy League universities, which are bastions of political
correctness.
At Harvard, not only have invited speakers been shouted down and sometimes
assaulted, even a Harvard professor’s classroom was invaded by disruptive
students who didn’t like what he was teaching. Such things have also
happened at Berkeley and other elite institutions across the country, as
well as at less renowned institutions.
The uniqueness of the University of Chicago is not something new. Back in
the 1960s, as campus riots spread across the country, and academic
administrators caved in to even the most outrageous demands, dozens of
disruptive students were simply expelled from the University of Chicago and
dozens more were put on probation. As Professor George J. Stigler, a Nobel
Prize-winning economist, said, “our faculty united behind the expulsion of
a large number of young barbarians.”
But such faculty support required a sense of mission, beyond a quiet life on
campus in which to pursue one’s own career. Even as grade inflation soared
, and failing grades virtually disappeared in some colleges and universities
across the country, that was not true among professors of economics who had
been trained at the University of Chicago.
A survey in the economics department at Cornell University, during a year in
the 1960s when I taught there, showed that the only students who received a
failing grade in any economics course that year were students who took
courses taught by professors who were trained at the University of Chicago.
In later years, when I gave failing grades to one-fourth of my class at UCLA
, I discovered that this was not at all unusual in UCLA’s economics
department, which had a sizable contingent of economists trained at the
University of Chicago. We also opposed many politically correct policies of
the UCLA administration.
One of the many name-calling responses to people who do not go along with
political correctness is to use the all-purpose smear, “racism.” But the
first time I saw a white professor at a white university with a black
secretary, it was Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago in 1960 —
four years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Years earlier, the first black tenured professor at an elite white
university was Allison Davis at the University of Chicago. But who cares
about facts in these politically correct times?
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. His website is
www.tsowell.com.
http://www.unionleader.com/Columns/Thomas-Sowell-A-gem-in-Chicago-09022016 |
|
