Addition: File this under the ‘Mill touchstone.’ Better Mill than points further Left.
Patrick Deneen:
‘So it is today—the faculty largely accept as true most liberal mantras, including the widely-embraced view in academe that the Pope is wrong on abortion, its support for gay marriage, and avoidance of not only racism (agreed), but “triggers” of “classism, sexism, heterosexism, cissexism, ableism, and other issues of privilege and oppression.” They are the fruits of Mill’s transformation—the defenders of “experiments in living.” Sandra Korn has not called for a fundamental change, but described how things are.
The real debate lies not between Sandra Korn and the defenders of “academic freedom,” but the truth or falsity of the commitments that are most deeply held. Mill was right about conservatives if we think that they “win” by upholding an academic freedom that has issued progeny like Sandra Korn. I agree that we should be committed to academic justice; I disagree that today’s academy has defined justice correctly.’
Ken Minogue (in discussion with William F Buckley) touches on similar ideas, including Mill (starts at 1:20):
‘The exercise of arguing against falsity strengthens truth.’
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Related On This Site: Roger Kimball At Arma Virumque: ‘Kenneth Minogue 1930-2013′…Kenneth Minogue At The New Criterion: ‘The Self-Interested Society’
Stanley Fish defended Ward Churchill’s academic freedom too: From The Stanley Fish Blog: Ward Churchill Redux…
Broad, but maybe not broad enough. Martha Nussbaum says the university needs to be defend Socratic reason and still be open to diversity: From The Harvard Educational Review-A Review Of Martha Nussbaum’s ‘Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education.’…
A lot of this could be avoided by keeping political and aesthetic judgments apart, argues Roger Scruton: Repost-’Roger Scruton In The American Spectator Via A & L Daily: Farewell To Judgment’…