Standing for Civilization Week in Education
Your weekly report on education news.
If you have not yet watched Professor Jacobson’s speech at Cornell last week, you must.
Meanwhile, this is what the other side has been up to…
- UC San Diego Students Hold ‘Vigil for Palestine’ to ‘Honor Our Martyrs’
- Investigation Launched After Pro-Israel Display at U. Delaware is Repeatedly Vandalized
- There is an Antisemitism Problem Among the Faculty at UC-Santa Cruz
Let’s check in on what’s been happening at Columbia.
- Ilhan Omar’s Daughter Arrested at Anti-Israel Protest at Columbia University
- “Columbia in Crisis” — University President Gets Caught Contradicting Herself On Campus Antisemitism
- Arab Studies Prof at Columbia U. Claims School Put ‘Most Extreme’ People on Jew Hatred Task Force
Maybe things are going better at Harvard.
- Harvard Medical “Expert” Disqualified in Federal Court Case Due to “Overwhelming” and “Misleading” Plagiarism
- Wife of Former Harvard Morgue Manager Pleads Guilty to Transporting Stolen Human Remains
Higher education has a serious free speech problem.
- Assistant Professor Removed by Police for Disrupting Ann Coulter Speech at Cornell
- Third of Stanford Students Find It Acceptable to Use Violence to Silence Speech
Compare and contrast.
- Colleges Across the Country Are Ditching DEI Policies Due to Political Pressure
- Sociology Prof Claims ‘Attacks’ on Higher Ed DEI ‘Threaten Democracy’
Why?
And he’s right.
Fantastic.
Totally normal, right?
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Comments
Civilization runs on unwritten rules that everybody knows but cannot articulate. It was once the study of Sociology, in particular Erving Goffman (not his ne’er do well daughter). In particular Asylums and then a dozen following books.
Somewhere between bipartisan eulogies for Tip O’Neil in the 90s and Gore contesting the 2000 election you noticed the rules by way of their suddenly being violated in the open.
From Asylums, at the end:
The simplest sociological view of the individual and his self is that he is to himself what his place in an organization defines him to be. When pressed, a sociologist modifies this model by granting certain complications : the self may be not yet formed or may exhibit conflicting dedications. Perhaps we should further complicate the construct by elevating these qualifications to a central place, initially defining the individual, for sociological purposes, as a stance-taking entity, a something that takes up a position somewhere between identificaiton with an organization and opposition to it, and is ready at the slightest pressure to regain its balance by shifting its involvement to either direction. It is thus _against something_ that the self can emerge. This has been appreciated by students of totalitarianism …
I have argued the same case in regard to total institutions. May this not be the situation, however, in free society, too?
Without something to belong to, we have no stable self, and yet total commitment and attachment to any social unit implies a kind of selflessness. Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wider social unit ; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personality identity often resides in the cracks.
Erving Goffman _Asylums_ “The Underlife of a Public Institution” p.320
The enemy is within the gate.