“Hunt, are you saying that a state university then has no right to determine fact from fiction at all, because the line is at their discretion? I once talked to a man who was fired from teaching science in middle school. He told me the administrators were upset when he taught the kids that weather was caused by little men sitting in the clouds. Would you say the school had no right to fire him because they violated his right to free speech?”
I’d like to know how to get reach that guy. Maybe he could get ahold of the little men sitting in clouds over Seattle and tell them we’re sick of the rain!
It seems to me that if a school thinks someone is a crappy teacher (and teaching fiction as reality fits that description), they ought to be able to fire him or her. What jobs are guaranteed for life, even if your bosses decide you are incompetent? You can’t just show up and teach the students a bunch of BS, and keep your job forever, can you?
Because some people tend to fudge the idea of a line between fact and opinion does not mean there isn’t one. it means they lack a grasp on critical thinking. We do have to accept some things as fact, or there is nothing to anchor opinion on.
But more importantly, he’s not being fired by the government because of speech; he’s being fired by the academic authorities for violating the basics of academic integrity. That the university is a state entity is besides the point; the bottom line is that academics need to respect the integrity of scholarship. And not make shit up.
It has long been accepted that freedom of speech does not immunize government employees from being terminated. The employee accepts this as an implicit condition of employment.
Yes. And he could even analyze the arguments objectively, but giving his opinion is problematic.
If you were in the military, you could discuss racism and why people have those opinions and what words can’t be used, but if you started slinging epithets at people you would be handed a dishonorable discharge - happens all the time.
Likewise, imagine a press secretary who decided to start using the podium to advance their own opinions and agendas but refused to quit. They would be fired because freedom of speech doesn’t shield you from not doing your job.
What happens when the administration of the college decides that your Marxist theory of history is BS, and decides to fire you for teaching a false and discredited theory? Or, if you prefer, the administration decides to fire a biology professor who believes in evolution, but also believes that it was directed by God? (Is that like the “little men” controlling weather?)
I don’t think many people, even the disdainful of religion, would equate believing that evolution being directed by God as the same as believing little men were sitting in clouds controlling the weather.
Maybe I’ve hurt some of those little men. I’ve flown through numerous clouds.
Theory is a framework for organizing facts. I don’t get how a theory (in the sociological definition, not scientific) can be discredited. You might argue that imposing Marxism doesn’t work, but it can certainly be used as one kind of explanation of how something happened historically. If someone demanded everyone be a Marxist or fail, I think that would be different, but that’s not the same as teaching from that economic viewpoint.
A biological professor can believe that evolution was directed by God, as long as he doesn’t teach that, but just teaches evolution as a scientific process. I’m guessing many do.
So if somebody has a theory that many important facts are being withheld from the public, how exactly do you discredit that theory?
And if the professor teaches that evolution was directed by God, then what?
My point here is just that it isn’t easy to develop a test for when we’ll fire a professor who is teaching something that isn’t “true.” Even facts can be pretty slippery. What if, for example, a history professor promotes the theory that FDR knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance, and let it happen so the US would get into the war? Personally, I don’t believe this and think the available facts argue against it–but it’s not definitive.
Hunt, what happens all the time is that universities achieve the same end, not by firing, but by not hiring. Liberty University, for example, does not hire professors unless they espouse the views of fundamentalist Christians. The marketplace of ideas then affects the reputation of the institution and impacts the donor base, the make up of the student body, amd the character of faculty members who are attracted to the institution. Students are free to apply or not apply to those schools. Liberty is not a state school, but the same marketplace of ideas works with state schools, although too much of an ideological bent would probably impact a state school quicker.
But the question still stands about fact or opinion. Most faculty members value freedom of speech, since protecting a fellow professor’s academic freedom protects their own. Certain situations may arise though where the school must decide if a professor has veered from opinion to craziness. If they can avoid public spats, I’m sure, given human nature, they will do their ut,out to avoid confrontation.
This professor is different: he went beyond academic freedom when he started harassing the family in Connecticut. Bombarding a family he’d never met with certified mail demanding they prove their murdered child ever existed is not a protected first amendment right.
Hunt–unless it’s Liberty University or the like, I think that it would indeed be problematical if a biology teacher taught religion in her classes. Biology depends on understanding it as science, so to teach it otherwise would undermine what the students need to learn.
I think a better comparison to your latter case (and fairer one) would be if a teacher taught that Pearl Harbor never happened. What Roosevelt knew is open to conjecture, and possibly factual inquiry, but that it happened is not.
Same with JFK’s shooting, or other conspiracy magnets. Theories of cause and complicity are academic fodder. Pretending things didn’t happen which unquestionably did, are not.
Look, I am a university instructor. I value free speech, even if I don’t have tenure. But having theories and ideas is not the same as making up bullshit. I don’t see this is a slippery slope at all. (And this is not to even take into consideration of course, the fact of his harassment of the families).
I agree, Garland. For the most part – especially in cases like this – the distinction between undisputed historical fact (at least, undisputed by anyone other than the tinfoil hat brigade) and theories of causation isn’t difficult to draw, and there is no slippery slope. The validity of President Reagan’s economic theories? Fine to discuss. President Reagan never existed and was actually an animatronic puppet? Sorry, not a legitimate subject of academic inquiry. And the latter is precisely the level of this guy with respect to Sandy Hook. Or of Holocaust denialism – which is the classic example of people trying to dispute indisputable historical fact (as opposed to debating, say, the exact timing of the decision to commence the mass extermination of the Jews of Europe in 1941).
I want to start by saying I agree with this. I’m going to go on to make some devil’s advocate arguments, in order to show how difficult this might be.
Did he really “bombard” them, or did he send a single request? Also, it’s horrible and rude, but it’s certainly not illegal for him to send such a letter. Just how it becomes a firing offense isn’t really all that straightforward.
According to whom? Certainly, it seems absurd to us (including me) for anybody to argue that the Pearl Harbor attack didn’t happen. But there are historical “facts” that are very much in dispute (example: the Armenian genocide). Who, exactly, gets to decide that something isn’t open to question? What’s the standard for that? (If it’s an overwhelming majority of experts in the field, can we fire all the climate change deniers?)
Hunt, the Armenian genocide is NOT – I repeat, NOT – in dispute in terms of either the fact that people were killed, or the approximate numbers. What’s in dispute is whether it met the legal definition of “genocide,” in terms of whether the Turkish government intended that result. So, no, that’s not a historical fact that’s in dispute; it’s a theory of causation. Very similar to the Holodomor in Ukraine – the FACT of millions of deaths is not in dispute, regardless of the debate over whether Stalin intended that result. So, your analogy is not apt, I’m afraid.
What Donna said. And overall, Hunt, if you want to veer toward a solipsistic nihilism, where nothing is known, and any “fact” is just as valid as any other, I think we’re out of the realm of where discussion makes any sense. Carry on without me now.
So, DonnaL, let’s take something more current–climate change. In my opinion, it’s well-established that it’s occurring, and that human activities are contributing to it. But there are plenty of people who disagree with both of those conclusions, including people with power. In some states, if a state university fired a professor who was a climate change denier, there’s a good chance that those who made that decision would themselves be fired by the state legislature. So who gets to decide?
Again, I’m not saying that any “fact” is as valid as any other: I’m just saying that I’m concerned about the process that’s going to be used to get rid of an academic who is teaching a highly unpopular point of view.
I agree with you that sometimes lines aren’t so easy to draw between fact and opinion, and that there are hard cases – although even with respect to climate change, the dispute is less over the fact of change than it is over the extent of the human contribution to that change (not that I think it’s actually a “serious” dispute). But this guy is not a hard case, and isn’t even close to the border of fact vs. opinion – even apart from the fact that the basis for his dismissal is his harassment of those parents more than his deranged beliefs by themselves. And I don’t believe for a moment that firing him is the first step on a slippery slope, or endangers academic freedom.
I will note that in this case the university took steps to fire this guy only after the PR got really bad. That’s probably not the best process to use in a case like this.