http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2015/02/03/academic-profiles-in-courage/
This is the "scholar" who in the New York TIMES slandered me by saying I alone in my "black hole" had heard that Melville finished a book in 1860 which he called POEMS, when everyone had known about it since 1922.
His character as "scholar" and administrator is all of a piece. Ask James Van de Velde. Ask Mike Pressler. Ask the falsely accused lacrosse players . . . .
Richard Vedder in FORBES:
Most university presidents are incredibly risk-averse, trying to minimize controversy by appeasing crowds of students, faculty, or alums who are angry over some university policy. Increasingly, these meek presidents allow basic principles on which universities operate, such as the freedom of expression, to suffer in order to enforce a liberal academic conformity that is intolerant of deviations from prevailing progressive dogmas. We see this most vividly in the dis-invitation moments of the past year, where, for example, Brandeis’s spineless president Frederick Lawrence disinvited the incredibly courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali because she offends some Muslims by pointing out the assaults on civility and modernity prevalent among some of that religious persuasion (Lawrence said her pronouncements were “inconsistent with Brandis University’s core values”). There is, of course, also the University of Virginia’s Teresa Sullivan who appeased a vocal constituency by punishing all UVA campus fraternities, accepting the word of a magazine reporter for Rolling Stone (who apparently largely fabricated her story) about an alleged rape at a single fraternity, without apparently listening to a number of knowledgeable members of that involved fraternity. Or Duke University’s President Richard Brodhead, whose administration took the word of a non-student over that of a large number of Duke Lacrosse undergraduates, ruining, at least temporarily, the life of many who committed no crime. Campuses are full of Profiles in Cowardice, doing the politically correct thing (as determined by the prevailing progressive campus orthodoxy), but trampling principle and due process.
This is the "scholar" who in the New York TIMES slandered me by saying I alone in my "black hole" had heard that Melville finished a book in 1860 which he called POEMS, when everyone had known about it since 1922.
His character as "scholar" and administrator is all of a piece. Ask James Van de Velde. Ask Mike Pressler. Ask the falsely accused lacrosse players . . . .
Richard Vedder in FORBES:
Most university presidents are incredibly risk-averse, trying to minimize controversy by appeasing crowds of students, faculty, or alums who are angry over some university policy. Increasingly, these meek presidents allow basic principles on which universities operate, such as the freedom of expression, to suffer in order to enforce a liberal academic conformity that is intolerant of deviations from prevailing progressive dogmas. We see this most vividly in the dis-invitation moments of the past year, where, for example, Brandeis’s spineless president Frederick Lawrence disinvited the incredibly courageous Ayaan Hirsi Ali because she offends some Muslims by pointing out the assaults on civility and modernity prevalent among some of that religious persuasion (Lawrence said her pronouncements were “inconsistent with Brandis University’s core values”). There is, of course, also the University of Virginia’s Teresa Sullivan who appeased a vocal constituency by punishing all UVA campus fraternities, accepting the word of a magazine reporter for Rolling Stone (who apparently largely fabricated her story) about an alleged rape at a single fraternity, without apparently listening to a number of knowledgeable members of that involved fraternity. Or Duke University’s President Richard Brodhead, whose administration took the word of a non-student over that of a large number of Duke Lacrosse undergraduates, ruining, at least temporarily, the life of many who committed no crime. Campuses are full of Profiles in Cowardice, doing the politically correct thing (as determined by the prevailing progressive campus orthodoxy), but trampling principle and due process.
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