Harvard President Faults Faculty Activism for Chilling Debate on Campus
“How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
He’s right. This isn’t the only problem, but it’s a big one.
The Harvard Crimson reports:
Garber Faults Faculty Activism for Chilling Campus Debate and Free Speech
Harvard President Alan M. Garber ’76 said the University “went wrong” by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism had chilled free speech and debate on campus.
In rare and unusually candid remarks on a podcast released on Tuesday, Garber appeared to tie many of higher education’s oft-cited ills — namely, a dearth of tolerance and free debate — to a culture that permits, and at times encourages, professors to foreground their identity and perspectives in teaching.
“How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?” he said.
The remarks mark Garber’s most explicit public acknowledgement that faculty practices have contributed to a breakdown in open discourse on campus — and that he is committed to backtracking toward neutrality in the classroom.
Garber’s tenure in Massachusetts Hall has been defined by sustained controversy over free speech on campus. He inherited a campus deeply divided over the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel — and facing heavy external criticism for its handling of campus responses in its wake.
In response, Garber has launched a flurry of initiatives aimed at restoring what he has described as a culture of debate. Shortly after he assumed the presidency, Harvard adopted an institutional voice policy that commits the University and its top administrators to refrain from taking official positions on policy issues.
Though Garber has carved some exceptions to the policy — notably when he, in his personal capacity, condemned a Palestine Solidarity Committee post marking the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack — he has increasingly emphasized restraint, particularly in the classroom.
“I’m pleased to say that I think there is real movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom,” he said.
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Comments
Expecting a generation of squishes who have been brought up to believe that there is no such thing as objective truth to be objective in the classroom is a bootless pipe-dream..
Moral relativism will continue to be taught – by teachers who are either too stupid to notice that it is self-refuting, or so wicked as to teach it regardless.
Way too long, but a definitive putdown of moral relativism.
https://blogs.cornell.edu/envirobaer/religion-ethics-and-the-environment/course-syllabus/relativism/
Yah think???
He should get rid of all those conservative professors who are bullying students they fail to indoctrinate. Oh wait….
I’m just afraid that a lot will miss the sarcasm.
Sometimes a sledgehammer is necessary.
I hope not, I would think commenters here are more intelligent than average and would know Harvard has no conservative profs.
In times of insanity, sarcasm is likely to be misunderstood.
But we know you well enough to figure it out.
He’s about 60 years too late to the party.
This is the same Garber who, confronted with exactly these issues, told Trump to shove it? Funny how the very real threat of losing a couple billion a year can sharpen your point of view and tie it to reality again.