…Introducing what may or may not become a regular feature. Call it an experiment to jump start stalled blogging with Diigo's "blog this" feature and publish/distribute Precarity Network collections. This article is just as timely now as when it appeared in 2014 ~ perhaps even more so.
Excerpts and notes on Civility, Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom ~ by Philip A. Pecorino, Ph.D. Queensborough Community College, CUNY, October, 2014
- In “Pleas for Civility Meet Cynicism” http://chronicle.com/article/Pleas-for-Civility-Meet/148715 by Peter Schmidt, describes the current phenomena being evidenced by college administrators.
Chancellor of the University of California at Berkley who maintains that free speech requires civility http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/7/uc-berkley-chancellor-free-speech-requires-civilit/#! by Jessica Chasmar - The Washington Times, Sunday, September 7, 2014
- Applicable to the situation are observations found in “Wild Words, Brain Worms, and Civility” September 14, 2014 in the New York Times http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2014/09/14/wild-words-brain-worms-and-civility/ by CUNY’s Paul Krugman who has written that
"On the right observers such as Rush Limbaugh have described the calls for civility as a form of censorship"
- Conservative Scott Kirwin describes in his Razor article, http://www.therazor.org/oldroot/Spring03/censorship.htm, cases where concern over civility results in censorship, either from the bottom-up or top-down.
- “Universities need less civility and more ‘shit‑kicking’”
- September 11, 2014 Dennis Hayes, a professor of Education, writes, “Civility and Speech in the Modern University, 200 Years Ago in Germany” https://notevenpast.org/civility-and-speech-in-the-modern-university-200-years-ago-in-germany/ by Matthew Bunn
"Civility as a conversational virtue has much to recommend it. The enforcement of civility, however, especially among classes like academics particularly inclined to advance challenging ideas, should make us recall how the use of “tone” as a criteria for controlling discussion works."
- In “Civility Does not Justify Censorship” http://www.benningtonbanner.com/columnists/ci_17153474
- Civility is seen as a device for censorship at the Northern Illinois University which is restricting students' access to certain websites. Orwellian University Blocks Students' Access to Harmful Sites, For 'Civility' -
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- In Free Speech and Civility, http://www.popecenter.org/commentaries/article.html?id=2737#.VEKXWmt5mK1 a college student at North Carolina State, Derek Spicer, describes how he learned that that “civility” is the latest buzzword in the lexicon of reactionary administrators.
- In his “A Civility Manifesto” https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/10/10/essay-defending-value-civility-higher-education Cary Nelson 10-10-14 claims that:
University presidents who urge civility are not trying to stifle dissent or suppress speech. They are trying to make the campus an oasis of sanity. They are trying to urge faculty and students to showcase productive dialogue. That is part of what higher education owes the country. That is part of the cultural and political difference higher education can make.
- In his “Civility and Free Speech" reply to Nelson the AAUP's Henry Reichman cautions https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2014/10/14/essay-argues-recent-statements-college-leaders-about-civility-are-threat-academic
It's one thing to encourage civil conduct and reasoned discourse, quite another to regulate expression in the name of such encouragement. But that is precisely what too many college and university administrators and trustees are threatening to do. The threat to free speech rights is real. As Greg Lukianoff of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education noted, in his experience, "campus administrators are most likely to deem as 'uncivil' speech that criticizes them or the university’s sacred cows."
- And "wide ranging critique of civility police and call for strong action and language in the face of injustice and discrimination,” Civility Disobedience”(http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/civility-disobedience/), Tav Nyong’o 18 Aug 2014
- Sometimes it needs to be reiterated that “Dialogue Is Important, Even When It’s Impolite” as observed by Ryan M. Milner
Incivility is a difficult problem for Americans, because its underlying issues are social. But restrictive gate keeping just serves to dampen the generative value of diverse voices engaging. The impulse to silence can be just as uncivil as the trolling that inspired it.
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