Biblical thermodynamics
Does the THES have this right?
The “unrestricted liberty” to be offensive to others without fear of sanction forms the foundation of a radical statement of academic freedom proposed this week by an influential group of scholars. The statement, launched by 64 academics including philosopher A. C. Grayling, would extend the current law that ensures that academics are free to “question and test received wisdom, and to put forward unpopular opinions”. If adopted in law, it would give all academics the unfettered right to speak out on any issue, “both inside and outside the classroom”, whether or not it was part of their area of academic expertise and “whether or not these [issues] were deemed offensive”…The statement would also offer backing to Andrew McIntosh, professor of thermodynamics at Leeds, who has been sharply criticised for claiming that the world is only 6,000 years old and that evolutionary theory is wrong.
Would it? Phil Baty doesn’t say how he arrives at that conclusion, and it seems…surprising, at least. It rides roughshod over the distinction between opinions that are deemed offensive, and being flat wrong. Academics are expected to be competent in their fields, and as far as I know academic freedom isn’t generally taken to mean freedom to teach gibberish. His conclusion also ignores the distinction between ‘fear of sanction’ or sanction itself, and being sharply criticised. Dawkins (for instance) isn’t ‘sanctioning’ McIntosh by saying he’s wrong or by saying that Leeds should dissasociate itself with his views. So I’m wondering if the THES just got it wrong, or if the statement would protect flat error as well as ‘offensive’ opinions. (Yeah, I know the difference is not always clear-cut, but that doesn’t mean it never is, or that there is no such.)
Having looked at the statement, I think Baty is right to draw that conclusion. The statement doesn’t say that academics have to be expert in the subject on which they comment.
When I was at college over 10 years ago, I would have been concerned about how fairly I was being assessed if my work was being marked by an avowed racist as there was no anonymous marking. Is this now the case in the UK?
P.S. Hope everyone had a good Christmas, believers or not.
Where’dja find the statement? I was going to look for it before but ran out of time. If only the URL were sitting right there in your comment…
D’oh!
http://www.afaf.org.uk/
I love the small print where it says “all entries are subject to moderation”. Surely these free speech academics are far too intelligent for unintentional irony.
Thanks! Found it while you were posting.
Norm Levitt signed.
Academic freedom of speech is one thing, moderation of open boards on the internet is another. All entries are open to moderation here, too; that’s not interference with academic freedom of speech. (It is [potential] interference with B&W comment freedom of speech, but that’s the breaks.)
I doubt that that is what they intended by the statement – but they failed to rule it out. One signer said that it could have been better worded – perhaps that’s what he (it was a he) meant. The statement says ‘to put forward controversial and unpopular opinions’ but not wrong or inaccurate information. But McIntosh could just say it’s his opinion. It seems to me there’s a real problem here…
I take your point about the distinction between open boards and academia, even though it stopped me enjoying my little joke! However, what about my point about marking? Is there anonymous marking in the US?
Hm. I have no idea. There’s plenty of de facto anonymous marking – done by people who just have no idea who the names on the booklets are. But whether it’s mandated or not, I don’t know.
B&W (well, OB) wrote
As far as I can see, the statement implies that McIntosh is free to say pretty much what he pleases about the age of the earth, the feeding habits of fairies in the garden, or the care and breeding of invisible pink unicorns, and I (and anyone else) is equally free to call him a raving loon so long as we don’t do it ‘institutionally’.
To what extent, though, does the linked statement of (so-called) academic freedom intersect with issues of competence, as for example in hiring decisions? McIntosh is allegedly competent in thermodynamics; he’s paid to teach it. Does his endorsement of a young earth (with the attendant distortions and misrepresentations of physics that position requires) suggest that he’s merely professionally incompetent, rather than a raving loon? Or should one even bother to try to discriminate competence from raving lunacy these days?
There’s the rub. Anonymous marking should have to be mandated, I think, if academics are going to be allowed to do a Larry Summers hither and thither.
The statement assumes that all academics are going to be debating in good faith. I don’t know if this is a testimony to the civilised culture of academia or a sign of its complacency.
I’d like to go beyond Andy’s first comment above. The Statement recommends
1) that academics, both inside and outside the classroom, have unrestricted liberty to question and test received wisdom and *to put forward controversial and unpopular opinions, whether or not these are deemed offensive* [my emphasis]
I think this is just too broad. Does it mean that a lecturer can launch a political broadside in the classroom or lecture hall in the course of teaching a subject totally unconnected with the political viewpoint he is directing at his students. Surely they can’t mean this is admissible?
I cheered when I first read about the initiative, but I now have second thoughts.
“To what extent, though, does the linked statement of (so-called) academic freedom intersect with issues of competence, as for example in hiring decisions?”
Exactly. And I think that was the point of Dawkins’s letter to the Guardian.
I was imagining a scenario an hour or so ago (while watching a spectacular winter sunset over Puget Sound) in which a historian gets hired and then comes out as a Holocaust denier, systematically distorts or conceals evidence, and…what? Has academic freedom to offer bogus, falsified ‘history’ and call it ‘opinion’?
To clarify – Dawkins’s letter wasn’t about the academic freedom issue; he was pointing out that McIntosh’s ‘opinions’ aren’t starkly separate from his research and teaching. He was, as I understand it, raising the issue of competence.
Andy White asked
Reflecting on my 20 years (1970s and 1980s) in academia, I’d say it was a testimony to academics’ ability to delude themselves about themselves.
“I’d say it was a testimony to academics’ ability to delude themselves about themselves.”
Hmm. I would say what academics have is an ability to delude themselves about their own faction or group or in-crowd, coupled with a deep suspicion of The Enemy. But maybe I’ve known some peculiarly combative or paranoiac academics.
>But maybe I’ve known some peculiarly combative or paranoiac academics.< Tell us more, Ophelia! You know you can trust patrons of B&W to keep it confidential.
Okay, Allen! Names, addresses and social security numbers coming up, as soon as I can find them.
But seriously folks. I’m thinking of the kind of political/generational disputes that some humanities departments are so, er, enriched by.
Protecting a right to free speech carries the cost that some people are going to spout rubbish ( perhaps “most people” would be more accurate – look at the brave new world of blogging) and some of that rubbish is going to be nasty – racist, homophobic, misogynistic, Holocaust denying – but the answer is to defeat bad free speech with good free speech, not to impose prior restraint on speech. Refute the idiots who believe the world was created 6000 years ago, refute the Holocaust deniers and expose their agendas, argue down the racists and homophobes: shut them up by argument – not by gagging. Law has its place in providing remedies in certain cases, e. g. libel and defamation, but it is right that these are posterior restraints (kicks in the pants, so to say). The reason for protecting free speech even at the cost noted, is that it keeps bad views out in the open where they can be challenged, giving the arguments against them a full chance to be heard; and occasionally what is unpopular and unwelcome might be the right thing to argue for: think of defences of of gay rights in traditionalist societies today, where homosexuality is regarded with revulsion by moralisers. – This is why I signed the free speech declaration, doing which is consistent with thinking that academics who believe the world is 6000 years old or that white people are more intelligent than black people should be vigorously challenged in regard to the case they purport to make for their views – together with their competence if that case is found wanting – and their motives.
A.C.Grayling writes:
>Refute the idiots who believe the world was created 6000 years ago, refute the Holocaust deniers and expose their agendas, argue down the racists and homophobes: shut them up by argument – not by gagging.< I agree people should be entirely free to spout rubbish in the public arena.
What I (and I suspect some others) are concerned about is that the Statement seems to give college lecturers free rein to propagate their own particular political/religious views (or whatever) *in the classroom* when they should be teaching physics, biology, English literature, etc.
Thanks, Professor Grayling – I was toying with the idea of emailing you to ask you about this very issue.
I entirely agree about nasty speech; I’ve been arguing here for the right to offend for years. It’s speech that’s (to coin a horrible phrase) disciplinarily incompetent that I’m wondering about – a historian who cites non-existent evidence that (say) Hitler tried to save the Jews; a biologist who cites non-existent evidence that God created species; both doing that in lectures to undergraduates. I’m not advocating legal prior restraint, but it seems to me institutional prior restraint is a different matter – although it’s also a complicated one, since the difference between error and “offensive” opinion is far from always clear.
Ophelia – put a copy of “Demon-Haunted World” and a pocket-sized BS detector in the hands of all students – – i.e. a capacity for critical thinking, and for being determined to check things out for themselves – that’s by far the best safeguard. It’s not on to think of vetting what lecturers teach in order to check that they stick to someone else’s (whose?) idea of an appropriate curriculum: free speech carries risks, and alertness to them is part of the intellectual responsibility of anyone who listens to it. But censorship & thought-control carry far more. As to disciplinary competence: I think you’re right, it is a real issue, though a slightly different one; peer review of work and teaching is one (in fact often rather good) way of monitoring it . That, with student responses, standardly gives a pretty clear sense of what someone is like in the relevant respects. I don’t wish this to sound complacent: there are lots of reasons not to be, alas; but the real nasties are rare enough in this setting to make themselves salient sooner rather than later, and we hear about them.
>Ophelia – put a copy of “Demon-Haunted World” and a pocket-sized BS detector in the hands of all students – – i.e. a capacity for critical thinking, and for being determined to check things out for themselves – that’s by far the best safeguard. It’s not on to think of vetting what lecturers teach in order to check that they stick to someone else’s (whose?) idea of an appropriate curriculum: < Is this an answer to *my* question? That it doesn’t matter if a teacher/lecturer sticks to the subject he is supposed to be teaching, that it’s okay if he occasionally stops teaching calculus to tell students what he thinks of the current political situation? Hey, why should he stick to someone’s idea of an appropriate curriculum if, for instance, he’d rather propagandise for the SWP or whoever?
Anthony,
Yes, that’s pretty much the sort of thing I was thinking of – peer review of work and teaching. Not vetting what lecturers teach, but being able to do something if, for instance, Dr L goes quietly mad and starts teaching that Epictetus won the Battle of Trafalgar. I agree about censorship and thought control – I have a whole section on B&W about attempts in the US to legislate thought control of university teachers, and why it’s a terrible idea.
Allen, I think the whole answer is an answer to your question! The part about student responses – that would apply to the ‘Hey let’s kick back and talk about football’ instead scenario.
Ah. I agree with you, Allen. There’s that high school history teacher in New Jersey who regaled his lucky students with his born-again religious views instead of teaching his subject – Constitutional law! – for example. Apart from the whole church-state thing [it’s a state school], he just plain wasn’t doing his job, he was doing a different job, and wasting everyone’s time. Yet the student got death threats for telling school administrators about this waste of time – and people droned about the teacher’s right to free speech.
I just thought that what Anthony said about peer review and monitoring would deal with that. But perhaps in practice it doesn’t; I have no idea.
Thanks for the last comment, Ophelia. But I really wanted A.C. Grayling to come back on this, as he *seems* to be advocating free rein to teachers to discourse on anything they like in the course of teaching their subject.
To clarify my position, as it wasn’t possible to go into subtleties in a single posting taking up a specific point. Of course there’s a large grey area here (especially in subjects like sociology and so on in which political, religious, etc, ideas are part of the syllabus). But to give an example that falls into an area I would regard as pretty clear-cut, there was a case (I think early in 2006) when a student at a US College recorded his (as I recall) chemistry instructor haranguing the class for 10 minutes or more about the iniquities of the Bush administration. (It goes without saying that one’s view of Bush is not relevant to the point I’m making, and anyway, it was pretty crude stuff even for someone like me who despises Bush. And, yes, the student put in on the web so anyone could listen to it!)
Now in such a case I think the students have every right to complain to the College authorities that they paid their fees to be taught chemistry (including peripheral aspects of the subject matter that the instructor might think of interest or importance), not have the instructors political views thrust into their faces. And I think in such a clear-cut instances, when they have absolutely clear evidence, the College authorities have every right to inform the instructor that he is being paid to teach chemistry, not indulge his political whims, and, if he persists in his behaviour, to suspend him pending an investigation (or if you like, set in motion an investigation which, if found against the instructor, would result in his suspension).
I hope A.C. Grayling will tune in again so we can see how he responds to this!
Welcome as always for the comment, Allen! I knew you wanted Grayling’s answer rather than mine, of course, but I thought I would say something so that you wouldn’t feel neglected. Heh.
“as he *seems* to be advocating free rein to teachers to discourse on anything they like in the course of teaching their subject.”
As does the statement itself. It’s not clear to me whether that was intentional or just an oversight. I think it was probably just an oversight.
The part of the statement that the THES and the Herald zoomed in on is the phrase about what’s deemed offensive – and that part I do completely agree with (and so do you, I think, as you implied when you said you cheered on first reading the statement). I well remember hearing Grayling make much the same point on Radio 4 (Today? Don’t remember) last year during the discussions of the wretched religious hatred bill. I’m pretty sure I commented on it at the time. But, as we’re arguing, there are other issues, that have nothing to do with offensiveness.
Oh, I’ll just do a post. There’s too much for a comment.
A.C. Grayling again:
>Ophelia – put a copy of “Demon-Haunted World” and a pocket-sized BS detector in the hands of all students – – i.e. a capacity for critical thinking, and for being determined to check things out for themselves – that’s by far the best safeguard.< I think this is a very naive view of the situation on the ground. Possibly Prof Grayling’s view is coloured by his experiences with teaching philosophy at Oxford. Believe me, there’s a whole different world of students out there, both in the UK and the US. I think the idea that you can get students (as a generality) thinking critically with cool rationality about extra-curricular ideas that College lecturers might be pushing onto them is simplistic, on several levels. One is that one can be sure that an instructor who is inclined to try to influence his students towards his political/religious viewpoint is likely to present his views tendentiously in a way that may well not be apparent to students who are not well versed in the subject (and in the wiles of academic argumentation). Another is that it is naive to think that students (again *as a generality*) have the intellectual maturity to tackle head on the arguments of an experienced proponent of a particular view. And in any case, one individual’s “rational” view doesn’t necessarily cohere with a different person’s “rational” view – they can give different weight to some points, select their information differently, and so on. (Here I’m thinking of Grayling’s advice to give the students a copy of “Demon-Haunted World” – I’m not sure where one can buy a BS detector.) Let me give a couple of examples to illustrate why I think Grayling’s advice here is naive. One is from a subject which (as Ophelia knows!) is dear to my heart. In July this year Walter Isaacson, formerly Chairman and CEO of CNN and the Managing Editor of Time Magazine, wrote an article in Time about the recently released batch of Einstein’s letters in the course of which he wrote that Einstein’s first wife, Mileva Maric, was a “Serbian physicist who had helped him with the math of his 1905 [special relativity] paper”. Now let’s leave aside that there is no good reason to describe Maric as a physicist, and deal with the latter part of the sentence. Put it briefly, the notion that Maric helped Einstein with the mathematics of his 1905 relativity is nonsense on several levels. (The maths in the 1905 relativity paper is elementary, Einstein was gifted at conventional maths [as against esoteric branches he had not studied], and Maric twice failed her diploma exams for teaching maths and physics in secondary schools because of her extremely poor grades in the maths component, theory of functions.) So how come someone like Isaacson, who is surely no intellectual slouch, can write this nonsense? Because what he has read on the subject consists of references to (or quotations from) tendentiously presented claims along these lines. But if someone with the intellectual nous of Walter Isaacson can be taken in like this, why does Grayling think that (mostly) intellectually immature students should be able to see through biased presentations of extra-curricular views presented by lecturers in the course of their teaching? And another completely different example. Lewis Wolpert is an impeccable rationalist and atheist. But a son of his, brought up in that kind of family intellectual atmosphere, has become a member of “Jews for Jesus”. People who think that if only we get out there and propagate the rationalist mode of critical thinking we’ll appreciably diminish the extent that human beings accept all sorts of viewpoints that are irrational, non-rational, or erroneous in the cold light of ascertainable facts, are not living in the real world of humans. That’s not, of course, to say one shouldn’t advocate at all times a rational/critical approach to human affairs (as Ophelia knows, if few others, I’ve done my bit in my time), only that one tempers one’s idealism with a touch or realism about the big wide world out there.
A.C. Grayling:
The reason for protecting free speech even at the cost noted, is that it keeps bad views out in the open where they can be challenged, giving the arguments against them a full chance to be heard ..
That sounds like pollyannish, wishful thinking to me – for what guarantee is there that the ‘good views’ will conquer? The totalitarian ideologists of the 20th century certainly held ‘bad views’, and the arguments against them had a ‘full chance of being heard’ — but it was the bad guys who won. In the real existing world it is the best rhetoricians, not the best arguers, who tend to come out on top. Sadly, the best way to ‘challenge’ bad views is not to present ‘arguments against them’ but to muzzle the bastards. Even more sadly, that is also the best way to challenge ‘good views’.
The best argument for free speech is that it is a good thing in itself – not that it necessarily makes the world a better place. It doesn’t.
Pausing only to note that I agree with Cathal above, is it possible to give Grayling a nudge to get him to come back and answer my two postings just above? Ophelia?
Footnote to Allen’s comments on ‘The Demon-Haunted World’. A.C. Grayling must truly have been talking tongue in cheek – Sagan’s classic is over 400 pages long. Most of today’s dumbed-down undergraduates wouldn’t have the attention span to read the preface, let alone the book in its entirety.
What about Schopenhauer’s ‘The Art of Always Being Right’ instead (a thin volume in big print, with 4-page introduction by … A.C. Grayling)?
The Mileva Maric item is a really good example – which of course is one reason I’ve been so pleased to be able to publish Allen’s research on it here. David Irving is another example. If he simply falsifies the evidence (as the libel trial found that he did), how is anyone going to be able to detect that? It took Richard Evans many months to track down the falsifications. Do academics have an academic freedom to falsify evidence?
This is the same argument I got into with Norm, and Eve Garrard, and Jonathan Derbyshire, last year; they all disagreed with me and agreed with each other, but I still think they were wrong; I still think there is, and should be, no ‘right’ or ‘freedom’ to falsify evidence. I agree that it shouldn’t be a crime, but not that it should be a right or freedom.
The trouble with the statement is that it says the institution shouldn’t sanction academics. But if the academic in question falsifies evidence…? Surely it’s the institution’s job to sanction the academic. As the panel at the University of Colorado somewhat reluctantly found in the case of Ward Churchill. They strongly disliked the political background to the investigation, but since they did find falsification, they felt they had no choice but to say so.
I might publish some of this exchange as an article. Give it a little more oxygen than it gets in comments on Notes and Comment.
I assumed that we are not talking about someone teaching maths yet haranguing students on politics in class time, because that is not a free speech matter – generalise this to all the places where the distinction is required (and accept that vague concepts have fuzzy boundaries so yes there will some be hard cases, requiring thought – in which the default should be to treat them as free speech cases if one really can’t decide). Correlatively I took it that we are talking about the kind of thing exemplified by, say, historians of Nazi Germany saying, as David Irving now does, that Hitler knew nothing about the Holocaust. Or about a law or philosophy lecturer saying, in discussions of theories of punishment, that he favours the use of torture. Or a preacher inveighing against gay rights. And so on. Secondly, I’m surprised at how little regard people have for the intelligence of students, even in our brave new world in which anything with a door and two windows is a university. They are in our institutions of higher education – which is what we are talking about I also assume – to learn intellectual skills, key among which should be evaluating evidence, asking critical questions, thinking for themselves, checking facts, and not accepting spoon-feeding. Surely the suggestion isn’t that they should only be offered shrink-wrapped PC-approved gobbets in case they are led astray? – Re Walter Isaacson: isn’t what is said about his view in this thread itself a hopeful fact about free speech? Re the “bad guys won”: I thought they lost pretty comprehensively in 1945 and 1989. And finally: re “muzzling the bastards”: by the logic of the pessimistic view, it will be the bastards muzzling us. Hence the reason for being determined to be optimistic instead, and to stick with Voltaire on this profoundly important subject..
PS Ophelia’s post on falsifying evidence came in while I was writing mine. I am with you on this Ophelia: falsifying evidence is an intellectual crime, and might be certain other kinds of crime too, depending on context. Falsifying evidence is lying and deceiving; there is no free speech defence of these latter two, hence none of the former either. But this is surely not the point at issue in debates about free speech. The issue is that when (say) governments and other power-wielding bodies or individuals lie and deceive, or falsify evidence (Iraq’s WMD e.g.), we need the right of free speech to challenge them, offer the contrary evidence, & put the opposition case. It is not the risk of abuses that should determine our stance on free speech, but the fundamental need for its uses.
Thank you, Anthony. Actually, I think sometimes (though rarely!) falsification of evidence is at least a point at issue in debates about free speech. It came up after Irving was imprisoned. A lot of people who were outraged by his imprisonment framed him as offering pure opinion. My complaint was that such defenses didn’t address the falsification of evidence aspect, they simply ignored it. It is possible to do both – Deborah Lipstadt and Richard Evans both opposed the prison sentence while still (not surprisingly!) keeping the fact that he falsified evidence well to the fore.
But I think we agree on the basics. I think the statement is probably intended to cover opinion and not such things as falsification; I just think it could have made that clearer.
A.C. Grayling:
>I assumed that we are not talking about someone teaching maths yet haranguing students on politics in class time, because that is not a free speech matter.< Surely the point is not about what any of us *assumes* we are talking about, nor what Grayling “took it” that we were talking about, but (as Ophelia has pointed out) what the Statement of Academic Freedom actually says: (1) that academics, both inside and outside the classroom, have unrestricted liberty to question and test received wisdom and to put forward controversial and unpopular opinions, whether or not these are deemed offensive, and (2) that academic institutions have no right to curb the exercise of this freedom by members of their staff, or to use it as grounds for disciplinary action or dismissal. #1 advocates “unrestricted” freedom inside the classroom as well as outside “to put forward controversial and unpopular opinions”. That’s what it says – unrestricted. I for one would not sign up for that if I was still teaching, even though I applaud the main thrust of the Statement. A.C. Grayling:
>Secondly, I’m surprised at how little regard people have for the intelligence of students, even in our brave new world in which anything with a door and two windows is a university. They are in our institutions of higher education – which is what we are talking about I also assume – to learn intellectual skills, key among which should be evaluating evidence, asking critical questions, thinking for themselves, checking facts, and not accepting spoon-feeding.< I think Grayling is evading the points being carefully argued above by simply presenting us with a rationalist’s wishful thinking. >Surely the suggestion isn’t that they should only be offered shrink-wrapped PC-approved gobbets in case they are led astray?< I expected better than straw man arguments from Grayling. >Re Walter Isaacson: isn’t what is said about his view in this thread itself a hopeful fact about free speech?< Oh, yeah. the hundreds of thousands (milllions?) who read Isaacson’s article in Time magazine have now learned better by scouring the internet and (as luck would have it) turning up at Butterflies and Wheels.
P.S. Although my view of Grayling’s argument about Isaacson is clear enough from my comment above, I’m not, of course, suggesting for one moment that there should be any restriction on what he, or anyone else, says in the public domain on any subject he wants to write about. We have to counter such erroneous assertions as best we can. (Though without having any illusions that those of us who do not have the kind of access to the media that Grayling does are going to have much, if any, influence.) But that is an entirely different matter to the points I made above about what may or not be appropriate for the classroom.
Mr Esterson: With respect, might I point out a difference in the evidential bases we are each employing on the subject of undergraduate competence. You read disgruntled commentary in the THES and teach pre-University entrants, and refer to the downgrading of standards at GCSE and A Level. Having taught undergraduates in three British universities and two overseas universities in the course of the last thirty years, I’m happy to be able to tell you that the reduction in A Level standards has not been accompanied by a reduction in average IQ levels – it is surely not needful to point out that the two things …? – and that it does not take much to get even weaker students to understand the need for critical reception of information and especially opinion.
You say: “I see nothing in what I have posted to justify your saying that I appear to be resistant to the ideal purpose of a University education as you describe it.” I do not speak of an “ideal” purpose; I speak of a purpose, a standard purpose, a normal objective, something that we teach as a matter of course. Your use of “ideal” consorts with your belief that students have been dumbed down along with standards and are not competent to meet that purpose. Thus, you are indeed resistant to the claim that universities are in the business, among other things, of equipping students to think critically about what they read and hear, because you do not think they are capable of being thus equipped. You are plain wrong about this, and should apply some critical scepticism to the impression given by the THES and other media on the matter – and should talk to as many of the tens of thousands of university graduates who set off on successful careers each year, to assess whether a condescending attitude to them is justified. This point, by the way, is entirely consistent with the fact that many more (but not most) undergraduate entrants are less educated than their forebears were, and less well equipped with relevant skills: neither is irremediable. – This also therefore replies to your charge of “simplisticism” relating to how students can be equipped to take responsibility for themselves in thinking about what others try to persuade them of. Far from being simplistic, therefore, the point is exactly apt.
You say “Since not one of the posters on this thread have remotely suggested [students should be served shrink-wrapped gobbets]”. On the contrary, I’m afraid: I refer you to your earlier remarks beginning, “I think the idea that you can get students (as a generality) thinking critically with cool rationality about extra-curricular ideas that College lecturers might be pushing onto them is simplistic” and ending ” …have the intellectual maturity to tackle head on the arguments of an experienced proponent of a particular view.” What is the implication of this, if not that students have to be offered what they can understand, presumably in forms that make it assimilable given what you describe as their lack of intellectual maturity and lack of knowledge? Reflect a moment, if you will, to see how this suggests that what is transmitted to students should be sanitised and suitably packaged. (And I do not have to ask that my phraseology here should be given the latitude you kindly give another poster, “Of course Cathal is exaggerating for effect.”) So this is far from a straw man argument, but a pointed response to your view about allegedly inferior student capacities to manage in a dispensation of free speech.
Your attitude is paternalistic. Since you do not think students capable of thinking for themselves, or apparently even to be taught and encouraged to do so, you think that they should be protected for their own benefit by – whom? You? Will you select for them the safe curriculum, the easy to grasp, politically neutral, absolutely true, right-minded stuff – shall I say, the shrink-wrapped PC-approved gobbets?
You say that much academic debate has a tone similar to yours on the rudeness front. Is that your justification for employing ad hominem terminology? Bertrand Russell’s grandmother used to quote to him the text, “Do not follow a multitude to do evil”, which he says he never forgot: rightly so. But we seem to live in two rather different worlds; in mine the content of a view is what matters, not whether one’s response to them should include by-remarks on whether one thinks their proponent naive or simple-minded. Consider the context in which you use such expressions: an intellectual debate. It is like calling a marksman blind or a runner lame: I take it the point simply hasn’t occurred, but if it has, it mightily increases the rudeness. But – and far more importantly – this suggests that you misunderstand the point about “offensiveness” at issue. David Irving’s views on the Holocaust are hugely offensive, not least to survivors of the death camps and relatives of the many who died there. That is not a reason for shutting him up: it is a reason for refuting him. Implying derogatories of an interlocutor in the process of debate is impolite, and impoliteness often offends, but hardly in that way; it is not a free speech issue – you can say what you like, at risk of being branded a boor if it’s rude; but this is sheer triviality in comparison to questions about the right to be offensive (e.g. with cartoons of Mohammed) in the free speech domain. And that is what the statement about academic freedom concerns. But surely you know this. I shall not impute to you the unworthy motive of claiming a right to be rude to interlocutors on a blog-spot on the grounds of free speech.
By the way: you were insistent in earlier posts that I should return to the thread to respond to points raised in the course of it. It has proved rather time-consuming & I must sign off. My thanks to Ophelia, and good wishes for the new year to all.
A.C. Grayling writes:
Having taught undergraduates in three British universities and two overseas universities in the course of the last thirty years, I’m happy to be able to tell you that the reduction in A Level standards has not been accompanied by a reduction in average IQ levels …
Under the assumption that the reduction in A Level standards has led to an increase in the proportion of university students, Grayling’s claim must be erroneous (unless there has been some wondrous ‘Flynn effect’ increase in the UK population’s average IQ, of course, to match the expansion of tertiary education).
All this has proved rather time-consuming & I must sign off …
Thanks back, Anthony.
Let me say straight away that I don’t expect anyone else to come in on this dispute between me and Grayling (and since he has moved on, I’m the sole survivor), but I don’t want to pass over the opportunity to make further comments on our discussion. (Apart from anything else, it’s a good way to hone one’s analytic skills). So here are my comments on Grayling’s final posting above (in case anyone is still interested).
Grayling puts against my view of the general run of current undergraduates his experience of teaching in three British universities (with two overseas universities mentioned, presumably for comparison purposes) in the last 30 years. Well, he doesn’t say what British universities (one of course is Oxford) and he doesn’t seem to think it worth mentioning that he teaches philosophy, a subject to which the “general run of students” to which I alluded are hardly going to be attracted to. To be fair, Grayling does say there’s a difference in the evidential bases we are each employing, but his arguments about the capabilities of students to see through tendentious and erroneous material being presented by lecturers with an axe to grind are hardly going to be of great worth if they only apply to the narrow band of students he has taught.
Grayling writes that he is confident that “the reduction in A level standards has not been accompanied by a reduction in average IQ levels, and it is surely needful to point out that the two things [are not the same]. At the risk of appearing rude, I have to say that I think this comes close to being a non sequitur. The issue is not about IQ levels, but about the educational deficiencies in UK schools that have led to many (not all) students going to university without have had the *regular* experience (in science and maths) of tackling lengthy problems that are testing rather than more or less spoon fed to them, and (in the humanities) of writing closely argued essays of an appreciable length. Grayling also writes that “it does not take much to get even weaker students to see the need for critical reception of information and especially opinion.” Well, leaving aside that this is his experience of a narrow band of students, I would have thought it obvious (there I go again, being rude) that there is a big difference between getting students to acquiesce to the *notion* just expressed and their having the intellectual tools to do so (something that can only be acquired by a reasonable lengthy time absorbing and practising them). And I’m afraid I’m going to say something that apparently Grayling doesn’t hold with – there are large numbers of students going to university nowadays whose (limited) intellectual interests and capabilities are *not* compatible with the sort of ability to analyse arguments and the presentation of facts (authentic or alleged) that one needs for the kind of intellectual analyses both he and I think should be part of a University education.
The next point Grayling makes is in regard to my use of the word “ideal” in relation to what one believes is intrinsic to a university education. He writes that *he* does not speak of an ideal purpose, and makes much of that – but I have to say I thought the context made it pretty obvious that my use of the word was shorthand for what he had earlier described. (After all, in that posting I emphasized I was in complete agreement with his view of what university education should be at least partly about.) He goes on to say that my “use of ‘ideal’ consorts with my belief that students have been dumbed down along with standards and are not competent to meet that purpose, i.e. the “standard purpose” of a university education that “we [who is the collective we here, I wonder?] teach as a matter of course”.
Sorry, he’s lost me here, not least because, as far as I can understand it, his whole argument is predicated on a misinterpretation of my use of the word “ideal”.
Grayling continues: “Thus, you are indeed resistant to the claim that universities are in the business, among other things, of equipping students to think critically about what they read and hear, because you do not think they are capable of being thus equipped.”
I think this argument is faulty. While I do think that a good many students going to university nowadays are not capable of being thus equipped, it is simply untrue that I have said this is the case with all students (as Grayling implies by his using “they” in the above sentence). Nor is the fact that many of these more capable students are largely untrained in the skills required for the purpose we agree about means that they are not *capable* of being so trained (I don’t like the word “trained” here, but it will have to do in lieu of a more appropriate word), and I fail to see how Grayling deduces this assertion from what I have previously written. (I do think that for a considerable number of students the lack of preparation they have experienced in school for the tasks required, plus the necessity for lecturers to bring each fresh batch of students rapidly up to scratch on their knowledge base, means that such training is unlikely to be a major component of the students’ early experience of university, and that for many of them they never acquire the tools Grayling writes about. God only knows, my experience of exchanges with numerous academics over the last 15 years does not give me confidence that some of these fully fledged academics have the intellectual skills that Grayling and I both agree should be part of what a university education should impart (at least in regard to viewpoints they embrace, or strongly disapprove of), so what grounds do I have to suppose that current undergraduates are achieving these skills in appreciable numbers?)
Grayling says I am “plain wrong” about this, meaning the viewpoint discussed in the paragraph above that he has imputed to me but I don’t actually hold. He writes I should apply some critical scepticism to the impression given by the THES and other media on the matter – as if I was basing my view entirely on such sources. Apart from the other points I specified, I could add regular reports of employers about the deficiencies of apparently well qualified graduates. (And Grayling’s reference to “the THES and other media” does not make explicit that I specified articles by lecturers and undergraduates about their own experiences, not views expressed by journalists.) He suggests I should talk to as many as possible of the tens of thousands of university graduates who set off on successful careers each year, to assess whether a condescending attitude to them is justified. Leaving aside that my critical attitude (in regard to the more able students) is *not* towards them, but towards the educational system that has let many of them down, I fail to see that the fact that many graduates move on to successful careers is relevant to what we are talking about. Few such careers require the specific kinds of intellectual analytical skills we have been talking about.
Grayling writes of the fact that many of current undergraduate entrants are less educated than their forebears were, and less well equipped with relevant skills, that “neither are irredeemable”. Where did I say they were irredeemable? What I have argued is that, given what Grayling here acknowledges, it is not *easy* to remedy the situation for reasons I alluded to above, and that I see no reason for confidence that the general run of students do arrive at the ability to critically analyse arguments, etc, etc. And it has just dawned on me, when I look back to my own student days at University College London, I am only too painfully aware of the limitations in *my* capacity in those days to engage in the kinds of critical analyses, etc, Grayling has referred to (I’m thinking of socio-political ideas, not science), and I’m also aware that many of my fellow students who held their views more confidently than me were deceiving themselves as to the depth of their understanding, and of course many revoked the strongly held views of their student days when they came to learn that human affairs are more complex than they had fondly imagined. Others, of course, remained in the SWP interminably. -:)
Grayling alludes to my saying that no one on the thread had suggested anything remotely like students “should only be offered shrink-wrapped PC-approved gobbets in case they are led astray”. On the contrary, he writes, it is I who is the one who (by implication) effectively holds such a view. To justify this he directs my attention to my remarking the following in response to his suggesting that enabling students to have a capacity for critical thinking and for being determined to check things out for themselves “is by far the best safeguard” [against the dangers of giving free rein to teachers to discourse on anything they like in the course of teaching their subject]:
“I think the idea that you can get students (as a generality) thinking critically with cool rationality about extra-curricular ideas that College lecturers might be pushing onto them is simplistic” [there follow some reasons why, ending] “it is naïve to think that students (as a generality) have the intellectual maturity to tackle head on arguments of an experienced proponent of a particular view.”
Grayling then writes that the implication of this must be that “students have to be offered what they can understand, presumably in forms that make it assimilable given what you describe as their lack of intellectual maturity and lack of knowledge. Reflect a moment, if you will, to see how this suggests that what is transmitted should be sanitised and suitably packaged.”
Phew! I admit I’m having trouble following Grayling’s train of argument. I was arguing that in the face of an ideologically inspired lecturer presenting his own hobby-horse ideas (outside the curriculum) in a tendentious fashion, many of them (naturally less intellectually mature than the lecturer) are likely to be relatively easily persuaded by such ideas presented with a modicum of persuasiveness. (For reasons I went briefly went into.) Why this should imply I was saying that “students should be offered what they can understand in forms that make it assimilable, etc” I don’t understand. I appreciate that Grayling hasn’t the time to check back on items thoroughly, but I can only point out that this is nothing to do with the form in which material relating to their studies should be presented (as Grayling’s words would seem to imply), but about notions presented to students by ideologically inspired lecturers that have nothing to do with their studies. And how this can be interpreted as my effectively endorsing the view that students “should only be offered shrink-wrapped PC-approved gobbets in case they are led astray” leaves me completely mystified.
(I find Grayling’s reference to “the latitude you kindly give another poster ‘Of course Cathal is exaggerating for effect’ ” mystifying. I wasn’t “kindly” giving Cathal lattitude, I was recognizing that he was being deliberately mischievous when he suggested that “most of today’s dumbed down undergraduates wouldn’t have the attention span to read the *preface* of ‘Demon-Haunted World’, let alone the 400 page book in its entirety”. What has “latitude” or “kindly” got to do with my recognition that he was exaggerating to make a point in an amusing [at least I found it amusing] fashion?)
Grayling writes: “Your attitude is paternalistic. Since you do not think students capable of thinking for themselves, or apparently even to be taught and encouraged to do so, you think they should be protected for their own benefit by – whom? You?” And so on.
Since what Grayling writes here is a travesty of what I believe, or of anything I have written on this thread, I’ll say no more about it.
In response to my saying (not quite grammatically correctly) that “I would have thought that the terms I used [simplistic, naive, wishful thinking, straw man] were no more than ones which are commonly used in the cut and thrust of academic debate”, Grayling asks “Is that your justification for employing ad hominem terminology?” Now let’s see how Chambers defines “ad hominem”: “Dealing with an opponent by attacking his character instead of answering his argument”. Where in anything I wrote in response to Grayling is there *anything* that justifies him describing my criticisms as ad hominem? Grayling refers to “ad hominem terminology”. I note in passing, as I pointed out in my last posting, whenever I used the words in question I spelled out why I thought they were apt descriptions. But on the main point, if Grayling thinks my use of the words in question are indicative of ad hominem criticisms, which can only mean that using such terms about an argument carries the implication that I’m at the same time generalising about the character of the person making the argument, then I can only say that by that definition almost all academic exchanges are ad hominem.
Grayling writes that “we [he and I] live in two different worlds”, his being one in which it is the content of a view that matters, not whether one’s response to them should include by-remarks on whether one thinks their proponent naive or simple-minded.
Well, first I didn’t use the words he objected to without explaining why I thought they were apt, so I’m definitely in his world, second I don’t think describing a specific *argument* as simplistic is the same as saying that *he* was “simple-minded” (two errors there), and third, saying that one specific argument is naive is not the same as saying, tout court, that the proponent is naive.
The rest of Grayling’s last paragraph I shan’t deal with, because I can see little relevance to anything I’ve argued.
So there it is (if anyone’s still ‘listening’). All wrapped up and finished.
Allen, Grayling did indeed present a travesty of your views — and he writes as though criticisms of his own views are ‘ad hominem’ almost by definition.
A bit of lèse majesté, perhaps?
A.C. Grayling:
>Having taught undergraduates in three British universities and two overseas universities in the course of the last thirty years, I’m happy to be able to tell you that the reduction in A Level standards has not been accompanied by a reduction in average IQ levels…< Cathal:
>Under the assumption that the reduction in A Level standards has led to an increase in the proportion of university students, Grayling’s claim must be erroneous (unless there has been some wondrous ‘Flynn effect’ increase in the UK population’s average IQ, of course, to match the expansion of tertiary education).< Cathal’s perspicacious comment has made me stop and wonder on what ground Grayling reports that on the basis of his experience of teaching in Universities in the past 30 years he can report there has been no reduction in average IQs. My sense is that this is nothing more than impressionistic. (Do Oxford and other colleges give IQ tests nowadays?) He has taught at St Anne’s Oxford and Birkbeck. It may be for both these colleges (for different reasons) the average IQ has remained more or less the same. But that would only reinforce my point that arguments about students based on his own experiece (which he was happy to report was the basis for his observations about students’ capabilities) is not a good basis for the kind of generalisations he was making about the student population as a whole.