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Links: Professor's blog sparks campus speech controversy |
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Posted by Lea Bishop on Sunday, November 09 @ 21:11:32 EST
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This week's Chronicle of Higher Education features on article about a campus speech controversy sparked by comments on a professor's blog.
Indiana University at Bloomington professor Eric B. Rasmusen, whose academic work focuses on game theory and law and economics, was publicly criticized by campus officials for remarks he made about homosexuals on his personal blog.
In an August 26 post, Rasmusen defended discrimination against homosexuals in certain professions, writing:
If homosexuality is to be legal, I have never heard anybody suggest that homosexuals should not be corporate directors, lawyers, or CEO's. But certain jobs, not necessarily prestigious or well-paid ones, are moral exemplars. These include teachers, pastors, and elected officials.
A second reason not to hire homosexuals as teachers is that it puts the fox into the chickencoop. Male homosexuals, at least, like boys and are generally promiscuous. They should not be given the opportunity to satisfy their desires. Somewhat related is a reason not to hire a homosexual as a doctor even though you would hire him as a lawyer: you don't mind if your lawyer has a venereal disease such as HIV or hepatitis, but you do mind if your doctor is in a class of people among whom such diseases are common.
Rasmusen's blog, which is linked to his academic homepage, is a forum for personal reflection on political, religious, and other topics. His remarks on homosexuality were prompted by a question posed by Eugene Volokh at The Volokh Conspiracy: Why shouldn't conservative Christians show the same tolerance toward homosexuals as to Hindus?
As the debate between Rasmusen and Volokh developed on the two blogs, Rasmusen elaborated on his theme of gay-men-as-child-molesters:
Men are attracted to a young but physically mature woman. But what is the ideal for homosexual men? For some it is certainly the mature, broad-shouldered, hairy 25-year-old. But my impression is that the 16-year-old beardless boy would attract more votes. And the 16- year-old beardless boy is not so different from an 8-year-old beardless boy as the 16- year-old girl is from the 8-year-old girl, so we should expect homosexuals to be far more tempted by 8-year-olds than heterosexuals are. I could check this by looking up a large enough sample of pornography---but I'd rather not.
You can imagine where it goes from there. Students and staff complain about the instance of "hate speech," university officials examine the issue, and their lawyers remind them that Rasmusen is constitutionally entitled to his air his offensive personal opinions. Professor Rasmusen's reaction to the flap is also in his blog's archives.
For me, the most interesting part of the Chronicle's article is the discussion of various commentator's attempts to draw a dividing line between professors' professional and personal lives.
Consider this excerpt:
For many of the critics, the crux of the problem is that Mr.
Rasmusen's comments, which they find so deplorable, are on a
university Web site. "I'm a full supporter of free speech,"
says Mr. Brostoff. "But I also feel that if you are going to
espouse such hatred, pay for it yourself."
Mr. Magee, the administrator who first heard the complaints
about the site, says having the blog share the same Web space
as Mr. Rasmusen's syllabus and other class materials is
inappropriate. "There should be a wall between what a person
was hired to do, their research agenda and class agenda, from
their personal viewpoints," he says.
In the real world, our speech is geographically limited. Professor Rasmusen might discuss his opinions of homosexuality at home with his wife, with friends at church, or with fellow faculty members at an informal gathering; but he probably would never dream of doing so in class with his students, or on a stage as a representative of the university. It would simply be inappropriate to the setting, and the audience.
The problem is you can't have it both ways where the internet is concerned. There is no public/private distinction once stuff in on the world-wide web.
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Re: Professor's blog sparks campus speech controversy (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Sunday, November 09 @ 21:35:50 EST | The conclusion here--that "[t]here is no public/private distinction once stuff in on the world-wide web."--is something of a non sequitur. The basic architecture of the web doesn't provide a mechanism for distinguishing between public and private speech, but it's easy to add signals to identify an intended audience. There's nothing magical about the web that keeps you from identifying a work's purpose and audience.
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Ban Republicans? (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Monday, November 10 @ 09:42:00 EST | Professor Rasmusen's views seem to be quite inline with a large percentage of elected Republicans. For evidence of this, check the voting records on S 2056 [www.vote-smart.org], which would have prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of sexuality. This breaks quite evenly along party lines with the exceptions of Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Arlen Specter (R-PA) and Robert Byrd (D-WV). Republicans, by and large, believe that homosexuality should be cause for legal discrimination. Does this really surprise anyone?Moreover, does anyone really believe that political speech should be banned from Universities?
On a side note, reading through the Professor's weblog, I hope that he is better at economics than he is as using a dictionary. He seems to believe that people would not want their schoolteachers engaging in sodomy. A quick check in Merriam-Webster reveals that sodomy [www.m-w.com] is actually noncoital sex. As much as we venerate the purity of our schoolmarms, I tend to think that the majority of them have, at one time or another, given or received fellatio, or its female equivalent whose name escapes me at the moment. |
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Re: Professor's blog sparks campus speech controversy (Score: 1) by DaveRickey on Monday, November 10 @ 19:31:49 EST (User Info | Send a Message) | Interesting that everyone chose to post anonymously on this one....
Anyway, I've had some similar issues in the past, although not specifically over politics (yet). Things I've posted in a "carping over stupidity" mode on my blog or on a discussion board have come back to bite me professionally. It doesn't help that when I'm in full swing, I can get pretty cutting in some of my remarks.
Fact is, I'll probably have more. I've managed to find a workable middle ground by making sure that everything I write wearing my 'company representative' hat gets run past my superiors, and that although they are aware of my other public writing, they understand that it's done on my own time and using my own resources.
From time to time it's going to bite me in the butt again, but I'm willing to deal with that.
--Dave |
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Re: Professor's blog sparks campus speech controversy (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Tuesday, November 11 @ 00:08:43 EST | I've had the same problem with my blog. I created it as a place to rant about my first year of law school. Now the whole school knows about, and I have reason to believe a professor or two has visited. Considering the personal content (which has now become vague or nonexistent) and my attitude (which now reflects a more responsible student that thinks WONDERS of his professors) it's no longer a private website but a 'public' one. Unfortunate, but I think even I did have a Live Journal people would find it. |
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Re: Professor's blog sparks campus speech controversy (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Thursday, November 13 @ 09:21:37 EST | A content-based comment:
This reminds me of the Boy Scouts of America when a former Scoutmaster (or other Adult in a leadership position) brought suit. Reason being he was forced to sever his ties with BSA as he had 'come out of the closet.' The court upheld the restriction imposed by the BSA and, as far as I know, to this day BSA upholds a 'ban' on homosexual involvement or participation in their activities. |
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Free speech, or not (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Monday, November 24 @ 06:07:31 EST | First off, it should be a non-issue in the U.S. since free speech is covered by the first amendment. There is no right for any group however vocal to censor another, at least not in the U.S. ... and not yet.
However, despite this concept of free speech, the content of his writing is under attack by highly vocal antagonists. The other part is that a very large portion of the populaton, both in the U.S. and outside, find the problem of homosexuality too impolite or even disgusting for conversation, let alone publication. Realize that in part because of attacks like these against free speech and the current cultural unacceptability of discussing sexual deviations, the discussion of the problems has become lopsided.
While no one should be the target of discrimination, there is still a distinction between an individual and their problems. You see this in other areas - drug recovery, criminal rehabilitation, psychiatric outpatients, and so on. Far too often, tolerance and acceptance of an individual as a human being are mistaken for acceptance and endorsement of an individual's problems.
Attacks such as these against free speech merely add to the country's growing problems. |
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