Re: [PEN-L] Churchill Fallout: It’s About Academic Freedom

[Gar Lipow <gar.lipow@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 5/26/06, Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2006/05/26/baron
> Churchill Fallout: It's About Academic Freedom
>
> The University of Colorado investigation is not just about professional
> malpractice. It's also about academic freedom. We're experiencing a new
> wave of McCarthyism in this country, and academics who take unpopular
> political positions can expect to have their scholarship as well as their
> politics scrutinized. Two members of the Colorado select committee came out
> against firing Churchill because it would discourage other academics from
> conducting their research "with due freedom." Whatever one thinks of the
> Churchill case, these concerns are well placed. Ideologues everywhere are
> trying to shape curriculum to match their particular orthodoxies. State
> legislatures are being encouraged to rein in liberal faculty (Pennsylvania
> has already established a Select Committee for that purpose). Now the
> distinguished members of the Colorado panel warn us not to step out of line
> or they'll take yet another look at our résumés.
>
> Dennis Baron is professor of English at the University of Illinois at
> Urbana-Champaign.

Yes. This. That is why I was one of the people so angry at Brown when
visited the list. It was not about the specifics of the charges; it
was that he made them just at the time when they could be used to fuel
movement against academic freedom.  IMO it would have been bad enough
if the timing had been accidental; to deliberately speed up publishing
this to take advantage of the right wing attack against Churchill was
extrordinary bad judgement or bad faith or both.