Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Why should you have freedom?
Zombies are attacking our universities! On that tobacco money stuff...
Clearly what academic freedom means to some people these days is the right of academics to sell their services to the highest bidder, regardless of where the money comes from.
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Some people with good educations who should know better have always used their knowledge to research bad things, all the way back well beyond the legendary Dr. Faustus.
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In the old days, academic freedom was not based on the golden rule (those who give the gold make the rules). Then it meant the freedom of academics to hold any ideas they pleased and to teach about them as they wished. You can see the assertions:
1) Professors are zombies who are incapable of making decisions and will always do whatever the dude with the most money says. Therefore, we smart people have to step in and make sure to tell them where they can get money, so that their zombieness is targeted where we want. (How Becky O'Malley squares this with the professors coming out and complaining about this stuff is a mystery)
2) Academic freedom means freedom to research what they want, except when they research "bad things" as determined by Becky O'Malley. They are not allowed to research those things, but that is not a restriction on freedom at all.
Remember... for some people, "freedom" is just another word for "room for error."
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