Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Who's Threatening Free Speech?

Via Instapundit, more evidence that the largest threat to freedom of expression and freedom of inquiry may be coming from academic left.

I didn't write anything about the Summers flap, mostly becuase it was so ludicrous. Summers posed a proposition/question that was a researchable question. He wasn't stating a conclusion, he posed a hypothesis. It was the reaction to what he said that didn't make any sense.

The people who had a case of the vapours over his words and forced an (in my view unwarranted) apology and an even more unwarranted resignation reacted in a emotional and political way to an idea outside of their emotional and conceptual comfort zone. They heard a voice from outside the echo chamber and rather than meet the challenge posed by the question, they attacked the person who challenged their comfortable world view. Instead of the academic give and take that is at the heart of free inquiry, these faculty showed the close-mindedness these same faculty undoubtedly assume is the province of rednecks, hicks, and midwestern hausfraus.

Update: Maybe the Summers debacle is just a symptom of this (via Arts and Letters Daily).

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