I have had quite a busy week! Last Thursday, I went to another panel that I helped run. Fortunately, I only had to make the poster for this one, so I was able to escape any stress yesterday. We had funding from Campus Progress, so we could afford decent advertising, hence the colorful posters. We covered the campus, but mostly people who came did so because they were members of the ACLUofC or were friends of members. It was an interesting panel, so the low attendance really was a shame. I guess advertising can only go so far with these things.

The panel featured Wendy Doniger, Lauren Berlant, and Richard Shweder. For the ACM AI panel, we spent a decent amount of time hammering out the format, so I thought it was pretty funny when the panelists for this event just worked everything out themselves five minutes before the panel. I guess the general format of an informal panel is not that different from most classes in the humanities.

There were a few points I found really interesting. Shweder discussed institutional neutrality for a while. As he discussed, the motivations behind the principle are very similar to those behind the first amendment. Apparently, a first amendment scholar was the principle’s primary architect. Basically, the principle creates an autonomy between the university and the students and faculty; the university refuses to take any political stances so that no one is ever silenced within the university community on any issue. The primary goal of the institution of a university is to promote free academic inquiry in general among its community and to support This principle came up most recently with the university’s decision not to remove its investments in Petrochina, which has questionable ties to Sudan, despite the efforts of student groups like STAND (see the Maroon articles “Divestment decision to come next week” and “University’s divestment decision has major holes”). Shweder agreed with the university’s decision, affirming that a university should only look at financial factors when making decisions about its investments. He went on to bring up the issue of how a department should decide how it allocates rooms. Apparently, there was some incident some time ago where some group at Northwestern invited the head of the US Nazi party, and the president refused to let him speak on campus. A group at U of C then invited him to speak. It is not that many people agree with him here, but there are many who would be interested in someone with such an extreme view. The one thing that I found a little odd was his dislike of IRBs, since they give institutions the power to limit what members of its community can do. He said that he has examined the facts behind some of the infamous experiments that lead to the the creation of IRBs, such as the Milgram experiment and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and found that the horrors of these experiments are not actually that horrible. I find that hard to believe, but I still think that IRBs have some merit. In terms of research studies, people are an asset, so it is in the institutions interest to protect its merits within these communities. Studies that get bad press harm everyone within the institution; appearance matters. This discussion raises the unfortunate difference between policies like institutional neutrality and the first amendment as idealized freedoms and the enforcement of them given financial realities. Cindy Cohn, legal director of the EFF, raised this same point when she spoke at the law school.

Lauren Berlant made a few points that stood out to me. She talked about how her and other professor’s goal in discussion classes is to cause people to disagree and to discuss. Since she teaches gender studies classes, there is often an expectation that everyone is going to take a liberal stance, so students are wary to take anything but a standardized liberal viewpoint, even if they are not aware they are doing so. She wants to create controversy, even if it means arguing a stance that she doesn’t agree with. She also shared an interesting observation during the panel about students at the U of C: no one asks questions. I have observed this phenomenon and know it quite well. She said that first years can’t stop speaking in classes usually, but most students by first year barely say anything for fear that they will say something that sounds dumb. It can really be painful here. I don’t think some degree of self-censorship is bad; I remember hating my humanities class first precisely because so many people just talked about absolutely nothing. Unfortunately, I, and I guess others too, feel the lesson taught is to just shut up and listen. I wish there was a happier medium.

See Also

• ACLU Academic Freedom Poster - Poster for the event. Graphically, I was quite pleased with this posters turnout.