Journalist – Historian – Speaker
University of Chicago’s Open Letter condemns white supremacist abuse toward scholars of color: https://t.co/9WuFYnbNYZ — medievalpoc (@medievalpoc) October 31, 2017 This letter from the English faculty does a nice job of parsing how to talk about free speech while considering how to protect the vulnerable. They write: We wish to reaffirm that our role as …
For Pacific Standard, I write about the free speech complexities of the upcoming “free speech week.” First, the organizers didn’t even ask the speakers or book the spaces before they started crying oppression. Second, “security concerns” forced the Anthropology department to cancel a long-planned talk. I write: “Thanks to “safety concerns,” the annual distinguished lecture …
Yesterday, Pacific Standard published a piece of mine on Naming Nazis. Please read and share! One general theme I’m noting a lot in the Trump era is a question of how we defend our principles. I wrote: Over the last few days, I’ve been struck by the ways in which the debate over naming Nazis mirrors …
Yesterday, I wrote about the adjunct prof fired by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for alleged homophobia. I wrote that we have to pay attention when people with less power are punished for speech, even if their views might be objectionable. Today, I turn to the case of Dr. Jonathan Higgins, the …
Below you will find a letter from the president of Middlebury on the recent protests around the presence of Charles Murray. My basic take is that giggling GOP student groups have hacked the free-speech pieties of my generation. Those pieties were based on a pre-internet information culture, and perhaps still hold true, but they should …
Amidst all the furor over Milo and UC Berkeley, in which non-students staged an action to shut down a speech, the GOP keeps doing its thing – using money and access to power to try and overthrow public universities. I wrote about this most recently here for Pacific Standard and on the blog. Latest examples: Waiting excitedly …