Prof Removed From Director Position After Inviting Controversial Prof to Speak on Campus
“sent a very clear message to its faculty that there are limits on free inquiry”
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Academic Freedom Alliance is defending the professor. The school in question is St. Olaf college which is fairly woke.
From the Volokh Conspiracy at Reason:
Academic Freedom Alliance Letter to St. Olaf College
The Academic Freedom Alliance released a public letter to St. Olaf College calling on the college to reaffirm the academic freedom of religion and philosophy professor Edmund Santurri.
Santurri has long served as the director of the Institute for Freedom and Community at St. Olaf. The Institute encourages inquiry and debate into contemporary political and social issues and seeks to present “diverse ideas” to the campus community on controversial issues relating to politics, markets, and society. As part of its programming, the Institute sponsors public lectures, and in recent years it has hosted lectures by a range of speakers, including David Brooks, Glenn Loury, Alice Dreger, Michael Sandel, Bari Weiss, and Bryan Caplan. Unsurprisingly, such speakers discussing such topics sometimes generate controversy on college campuses, and controversies have sometimes swirled around the Institute.
In the spring of 2022, such a controversy took a troubling turn. The Institute invited Princeton philosopher Peter Singer to give a public lecture on his views regarding contemporary moral philosophy. Singer is a controversial figure, and some students launched a petition calling for a boycott of his talk at St. Olaf. Several offices on campus set out emails to students distancing themselves from Singer’s views, but the talk took place without disruption or cancellation.
Nonetheless, in apparent response to the Singer invitation, the president of St. Olaf College suddenly removed Santurri from his position as director of the Institute. Santurri had just recently been reappointed as director, and was in the middle of a two-year term in the position. His appointment as director included salary support and a teaching reduction.
The president of St. Olaf College has sent a very clear message to its faculty that there are limits on free inquiry on that college’s campus and that the College will not tolerate speakers whose ideas are offensive to influential campus stakeholders.
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Comments
“…the College will not tolerate speakers whose ideas are offensive to influential campus stakeholders.”
Influential stakeholders have a lot of influence in just about every area you can think of in this country. Liberals would have us believe that these rich people behind the scenes controlling things are Republicans when just the opposite is true. But if you put “Tax the Rich” on the back of your dress it will fool the peasants and redirect their attention as to what is going on.
But then along comes Musk and upsets the apple cart. And the election is coming up in November with ill winds blowing. Uh oh. Time for a new slogan.
He’s an animal liberation loon who thinks the mentally disabled aren’t human and can ethically be exterminated. I’m fine with the university’s decision.
It’s time to realize the battle for free speech on campus has been lost and start punching back twice as hard.
He doesn’t think the mentally disabled aren’t human. He denies any moral distinction between animals and humans. He’s OK with painlessly killing any being — human or animal — that is incapable of forming the concept of their own life, and therefore can’t fear death or feel distress at the prospect of being killed. That includes babies until about the age of two, and those whose minds function at the level of newborns. He’s vegetarian, except for beings that are physically incapable of feeling pain, e.g. crustaceans. As you say, a loon. But a respected philosophical loon, and the academy is supposed to be open to that kind of person.
The twin-tusked irony in the room —
St. Olaf’s homepage features the giant headline:
DIALOG THAT OPENS MINDS
The Institute needs to be renamed.