09.07.09

Will Purdue University confirm its status as an ideological sewer?

Posted in Pakistan, Spiritual implications of our life choices at 4:13 pm by Administrator

We shall see in the runup to September 24.

  • Share/Bookmark

12 Comments »

  1. Mr. Dings said,

    September 7, 2009 at 11:10 pm

    You see, there used to be this idea called intellectual freedom.

  2. Bentnotesmanhisself said,

    September 8, 2009 at 12:59 am

    Which will be extinguished big-time if the educational concepts of William Ayres become the norm.

  3. Mr. Dings said,

    September 8, 2009 at 1:48 am

    I must be “old school” believing there should be intellectual freedom on college campuses especially, but, oh well.

    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/02/13/qt

    Georgia Southern University has called off a visit by William Ayers, who was to give a talk on the campus next month. The university says that security costs led to the decision. Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago was once a leader of the Weather Underground, and Republican candidates blasted him repeatedly last year in an attempt to associate his past with Barack Obama. Prior to the campaign controversy, Ayers was a frequent speaker on college campuses, primarily talking about education reform, not his past. When word spread of the invitation to Georgia Southern, some students and alumni protested that it was inappropriate to bring him to campus. A spokesman for the university said that security would have cost $13,000 for the Ayers appearance and that several major parking lots would have been closed. “Georgia Southern University does not endorse the thoughts or ideals of visiting speakers or performers that may be invited to campus,” the spokesman said. “However, freedom of speech and the free exchange of ideas are both a part of the fundamental mission of a University. The university has and will continue to support the right of its students and faculty to host a diverse range of programs on campus under the First Amendment.” Ayers could not be reached for comment. Millersville University, in Pennsylvania, is also on his schedule for a talk in March, and also setting off a debate, The Intelligencer Journal reported.

  4. Mr. Dings said,

    September 8, 2009 at 11:10 am

    Perhaps there will be disruption and/or death threats sufficient to cancel the appearance. And, though my side of the street certainly ain’t pristine, I smell hyperbole in your headline.

  5. Bentnotesmanhisself said,

    September 8, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    The Purdue visit is about him sitting on a panel on the future of education. This is the guy who headed up the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was about putting out textbooks that fed the kids all kinds of notions about “social justice.”
    He also went to Venezuela to an education pow-wow and praised what Chavez had done with that country’s educational system.
    Plus, this is a guy who had his picture taken for a NYT article about him standing on an American flag. He’s scum and doesn’t deserve a forum anywhere in our land.
    Certainly, the dangerous freedom-hating Marxist poitical-science and sociology faculty at Purdue is free to bring him to sit on this panel. I’m likewise free to say that the damn auditorium ought to be empty that night and that it’s a scurrilous decision by these freedom-haters.

  6. Bentnotesmanhisself said,

    September 8, 2009 at 2:20 pm

    Here’s another way of putting it: These organizers of this panel have decided that Ayres has something worthwhile to contribute to our society’s conversation about the future of education. He doesn’t.
    Intellectual freedom is one thing. Moral relativism is quite another.

  7. Mr. Dings said,

    September 8, 2009 at 4:18 pm

    OK, but you must really fear his freedom of speech, like real bad. If you take away other people’s freedom to hear him out, if they want, well, what are you? Scared of something?

  8. Bentnotesmanhisself said,

    September 8, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    What did I write to give you the indication I would take away anyone’s right to go hear him? All I’m doing is exhorting people not to go hear him.

  9. Mr. Dings said,

    September 8, 2009 at 4:56 pm

    If you take away Purdue’s right to feature him as a panel speaker, don’t you take away people’s right to go hear him? Suit up and show up with a placard (of course not a gun, but that’s happened before too) if you want. I thought Communism had proven itself a failure much more than capitalism (which has self-corrective features), so why worry? There’s a good chance there may be a 24 yr old in the crowd (on the now commonly accepted 7 or 8 year plan to complete college or perhaps a PhD candidate now) who was a first grader in ‘91 when Bush Sr. addressed the students, so, what’s the worry? He should already be properly indoctrinated. Of course you will quibble at what you fear Obama might say, like that is your call too. Come on, freedom lover, love all freedoms, even the freedom of speech, aka intellectual freedom in college.

    http://www.charlotteobserver.com/politics/story/933795.html

    One political party supports the idea, saying it will encourage students to succeed. The other political party criticizes the speech, saying it is a political ploy. That sounds a lot like the situation unfolding before President Obama’s speech this afternoon to U.S. students — except the other case was in 1991.

    That time, it was a Republican president, George H.W. Bush.

    And in 1986, President Reagan conducted a question-and-answer session with students — an event that was nationally televised and included Reagan discussing political matters such as national defense funding and taxes.

    Some Democrats responded furiously to Bush’s speech 18 years ago to U.S. students, even launching Congressional hearings into the matter. Democrats asked the General Accounting Office to look into the expenditure of federal money on the speech — but the GAO cleared the Bush administration, saying it had done nothing wrong.

    A check of the Observer’s archives shows no response by lawmakers and the public to Reagan’s comments with students more than 20 years ago. Apparently, that was a gentler time in politics.

  10. Bentnotesmanhisself said,

    September 8, 2009 at 5:20 pm

    I guess you still are choosing to ignore what I’m actually saying. Purdue has every right in the world to book this guy. And I – and everyone else disturbed by the university’s having done so – has the right – the moral obligation, as I see it – to tell people, “This guy is bad news. Stay away from this event.”
    I thought you’d bring up the Bush speech, as if he were some kind of equivalent of an America-hating radical like Ayres or TCM.

  11. Mr. Dings said,

    September 8, 2009 at 8:17 pm

    Oh, no, that would be moral relativism.

  12. Mr. Dings said,

    September 9, 2009 at 2:49 am

    OK, tell all the people to stay away. Most will anyway. Don’t send your grandkids to Purdue or Notre Dame for that matter. Send them to Wabash or something.

Leave a Comment