If you want to find out what's going on with colleges and universities, you have to look at right-wing sources. Since most colleges, university faculty, and administrators are on the Left, the mainstream media tends not to cover the excesses of the former.
The article was written by two students. It should serve as a lesson for Princeton, since it is written by two students who are also president of the open campus coalition.
The Kalven Report, which was published by the University of Chicago, prohibits official statements from our administration, departments, or units of the university about politics, ideology, or morality. Issues that affect the University's functioning are rare exceptions. I think every university should have the same principles, but I think Kalven is the only one in the world. Kalven was designed to prevent junior faculty, students, and timid professors from self-censorship out of fear that they will get in trouble for violating official University politics.
Click on the image to read it.
The administrators and faculty at the University of Chicago have a hard time understanding Kalven, but the two undergrads do. I will quote from their letter.
An academic institution that is committed to truth-seeking and open inquiry should encourage students to speak up on controversial issues that reasonable people of goodwill disagree with. We have seen our peers retreat from conversations, opportunities, and even friendships out of fear that their deeply held beliefs will cost them academically, socially, and professionally.
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When a university makes students think twice before expressing unpopular but reasonable points of view, it hinders its truth-seeking mission. This can happen when officials violate the basic institutional neutrality required for the university to be a home for the free marketplace of ideas. When an educational institution adopts official stances on controversial issues not directly connected to its core mission, it suggests parameters around an otherwise liberated discourse. The effect is enhanced when the university decides that the parameters are morally necessary. Those who defy them are morally suspect.
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The ideal of basic neutrality has been around for a while. Faculty at the University of Chicago offered the most famous defense of the principle during the Vietnam War. The Kalven Committee made the point that the university is not the critic. The Kalven Report is still relevant at the University of Chicago. The report and the university's famed Free Speech Principles should be considered by universities everywhere.
Dean Amaney Jamal of the School of Public and International Affairs issued an official statement after the Rittenhouse verdict.
Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty. She was sad that a minor avenger carrying a semi-automatic rifle across state lines, killing two people, and being declared innocent by the U.S. justice system was a problem. She implied that defenders of a not-guilty verdict are defenders of racism.
Campus Reform has seen the email and gives more of what Jamal said.
There are racial inequalities in nearly every strand of the American fabric. I ask you, our current and future public servants, to investigate our policies and practices within the justice system and beyond. How can we use evidence-based research in pursuit of the public good? What obligation do we have to serve?
These moral judgments push an ideological line hewing to CRT, similar to Kalven-violating statements of some University of Chicago Departments, which we are trying to remove. Dean Jamal is telling students how to act in an official communication.
The authors and 60 of their fellow undergrads wrote a letter to the president of the school.
. Our concern is about the implications of a University administrator speaking in her official capacity, promulgating to an entire community of students her moral evaluation of the outcome of a highly publicized and controversial trial. Her doing so places the institutional support behind a particular position on a matter which, as it engages the interests of so many, should invite a vigorous and respectful conversation amongst students and faculty alike.
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Students and faculty are left to read that a Dean has adopted a definitive stance on a matter about which reasonable people of good will can and do disagree. Dean wrote with a heavy heart as she decries the "incomprehensib[ility]" of a not-guilty verdict, labels the defendant a "minor vigilante," and suggests the trial's outcome was outrageous.
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The verdict, the alleged vigilantism, and the systemic racism claim are subjects of genuine debate among legal commentators and academics. The issues of systemic racism and the debate of students, faculty, and the public at large occupy the debates of students, faculty, and the public at large. It is no stretch to conclude that the establishment of an institutional position tends to draw restrictive parameters around a dialogue that would be otherwise unfettered, even if no one claims that Dean's statement directly forces students to remain silent or affirm what they do not believe.
The reply was disingenuous.
President Eisgruber denied that Dean Jamal had spoken in her official capacity. He said that the dean stated that her views about the Rittenhouse verdict were her own.
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We wondered if President Eisgruber read the same statement we did. There was no indication that she was speaking in a personal capacity. She qualified her views by writing that she was dean of a school of public and international affairs. She sent the message on her school email server. She used her authority to summon the resources of SPIA, and offered a space for students to process the outcome of the trial in the company of a counselor. Was he writing as an academic or a dean? She gave a clear answer.
The dean has a right to speak for herself, but she should be careful.
Anthony and McKnight were brave enough to write a letter to the President and also publish a piece in the National Review, despite being chilled by Dean Jamal's statement. I wish them well, but I don't know their politics. They are allies in the fight for freedom of speech. They understand that concept better than the grand poobahs of Princeton.
To students who frequently dissent from campus orthodoxy, statements like Jamal's are as frustrating and alienating as they are inappropriate. All university officials have a duty to facilitate an environment that is favorable to the full realization of the institution's truth-seeking mission. The fulfillment of that responsibility can be accomplished with reasonable neutrality.
I would like to attach a copy of the Kalven Report to an email to President Eisgruber.
Dean Amaney. The photo was taken by Sameer A. Khan.
Robert.
