A Texas A&M Regent says "McElroy’s hiring would derail the “purpose” outlined for the journalism program: “to get high-quality Aggie journalists with conservative values into the market.”
Tell me again how liberals are controlling university values? /s
@djvanness@academicchatter High quality journalists with conservative values? Don't they know how these cancel each other out and you can't have both at the same time?
@djvanness@academicchatter
Republicans are trying to do in Texas what they're doing in Florida. I know a lot of Texas Aggies who were educated there, but were too smart to fall for the BS.
@djvanness@academicchatter I'm convinced at this point that the entire "free speech" framing is designed to make Koch-friendly arguments shielding dark money/speech from review.
@djvanness@academicchatter the only people using "free speech" framing are doing it in bad faith, and the only good faith versions are the academics and leftish pundits responding to the idiot attacks;
@djvanness@academicchatter we should treat these as a distraction and find a new framing that doesn't provide cover for Koch-funded astroturfing operations
Excellent points. Too many conservatives use "free speech" to mean that they can say overtly racist / misogynist / nativist / classist things without being criticized.
What we're talking about here is the ability to engage in research and public discourse without political interference. "Academic freedom" is a better frame, but perhaps could do better...
@djvanness@academicchatter I think that arguing for free inquiry without some established frame of public goods is what makes it so difficult. There are economic and civic rationales, but they don't shield the public research university, because they're competing with theological and political rationales for education. Narrow conceptions of public good also limit the scope of "beneficial" activities in education.
@djvanness@academicchatter I think the rhetorical problem here is that any reasonably descriptive term for our practice has little political purchase in electoral politics. And the partisan terms won't win over academics either.
TX went to war with the AAUP and academic freedom earlier, and the only thing that won over the theocrats and anti-communists was the prospect of scientific/economic advancements and Cold War hegemony. Liberal arts were carried along, but not particularly protected.
@mazdam@academicchatter liberal arts is funny though. Look at what Florida is trying to do with New College. They want to make a new Hillsdale college. Hillsdale's hardly a research powerhouse. Of course, by liberal arts, they mean Western value liberal arts.
@djvanness@academicchatter for conservatives, lib arts always = canonical, white, western works representing civilization; IOW lib arts before last century of research.
"transmission of values" is a powerful ideological motivator for conservative education; but obvsly wrong frame for academic humanist research. R1 models show the anachronism/misfit of "transmission" models of higher ed.
@mazdam@academicchatter Yep. It does create an interesting wedge, though, between three parties: a) humanities pseudo-intellectuals like Rufo, b) techno-bros who think the only thing universities should do is the basic research that doesn't make money by itself but helps them get rich, and c) the chamber of commerce crowd who wants universities to exist only to train the workforce (but not give them generalizable skills they can take to other employers).
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