Search Results for: Free speech

Universities: Forced diversity? Nuanced judgment?

1 Comment / Education, Free Speech and Censorship /

For weekend readers, two articles from me this week on the campus battles: “Should Politicians Force Diversity at Universities?” Published by the Berens Foundation’s The Right Insight. Excerpt on politicized universities: “Politicians must then choose either (1) to fail in their responsibilities to taxpayers by continuing to spend their money on educationally irresponsible institutions, or […]

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Campus Power Politics – It’s Calculated Strategy [Good Life series]

1 Comment / Education, Philosophy /

Universities are political places, but there’s good politics and bad. First point: The protesting students are neither “snowflakes” who can’t take the heat nor “delicate flowers” whose feelings have been bruised. University students have seen movie violence, broken up with boyfriends and girlfriends, read ugly things on the internet, viewed porn clips, lost grandparents, and

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How Randy Newman Solved Stanley Fish’s Credibility Problem

Leave a Comment / Culture, Epistemology, Human Nature /

Stanley Fish, postmodern provocateur, gave a talk at Indiana University when I was a graduate student there in the late 1980s. He was then working on what would become There’s No Such Thing As Free Speech, And It’s a Good Thing, Too. Fish’s theme was social construction and oppression: We all are products of our

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Understanding Triggers and Microaggression as *Strategy* (Part 2) [Good Life series]

Leave a Comment / Philosophy /

Micro-aggression theory could be seen a sign of progress. The luxury of obsessing over tiny hints of racism or sexism implies that the problem of macro-aggressions has been solved. If your environment — to draw a parallel — is dirty and unhealthy, then you focus on the big messes first. Only when those are cleaned

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Is Republishing Hitler’s Mein Kampf the Correct Decision? [Good Life series]

Leave a Comment / History, Politics, The Good Life /

German authorities will allow the republication of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, after decades of censorship. Decent people can argue that the book is too dangerous to be published. But the fact is that Mein Kampf is too dangerous not to be published. The great fear is that Hitler’s ideas are not dead and that his

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Liberdade de expressão e pós-modernismo

Leave a Comment / Free Speech and Censorship /

[Publicado pela primeira vez em Inglês: “Free Speech and Postmodernism” at Amazon or in PDF. Português tradução de Matheus Pacini e revisão de Mateus Bernardino.] No início dos tempos modernos, a causa em prol da liberdade de expressão venceu a batalha contra o autoritarismo tradicional. Os argumentos poderosos de Galileu[1], John Locke[2], John Stuart Mill[3] e outros venceram

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Nick Cohen on how PC is devouring its own

3 Comments / Free Speech and Censorship, Philosophy /

I recommend this strong piece by Nick Cohen in Standpoint magazine out of Britain, on the downward spiral of the anti-free-speech movement. Related: Three of my recent pieces on the state of free speech: * On the German decision: “Is Republishing Hitler’s Mein Kampf the Correct Decision?“ (Portuguese translation.) * On censorship in British universities:

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Can We Blame Keynes for Keynesianism? [new The Good Life column]

Leave a Comment / The Good Life /

The opening of my latest column at EveryJoe: “In our era of Keynesian economics on steroids, we should ask: How close is current Keynesian practice to original Keynesian theory? “John Maynard Keynes‘s main claim to fame is his advocacy of deficit spending as a tool of economic recovery. In a depressed economy, the argument runs, the government

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