Glad to know that University of Chicago has finally suspended freedom of speech.
Do you want to give some actual context? Or are you just going to let every user imagine their own worst-case scenario?
Yeah. Were they for it r against it?
Part of the letter
They also included a 100 page booklet on Academic freedom and provided this link for further reading
Bravo!!
I wonder will there be protests about this when students return.
Please ignore my initial response above.
DD was happy to see that – she read that passage to me as she was going through the packet. She’s a pretty hardcore lefty but really loves to think/talk things through and to hear/consider other POVs.
The acid test will be if somebody invites David Duke to the campus (He is running for the Senate after all), just to test the University’s commitment :))
On second thought, that may be too much, Maybe they should start with Milo Yiannopoulos and see what happens. I think he got permanently banned from Twitter.
A few years ago the University of Ottawa in Canada cancelled a speech by Ann Coulter after protests. The university vice president stated that “freedom of speech is an American concept”.
If UChicago can attract liberal students who can sit through a talk by David Duke and Milo Yiannopoulos without fainting and conservative students who can sit through Maryam Namazie without losing their cool, then UChicago would have achieved something admirable
I’d like to hear Milo speak at some point. A lot of his stuff seems designed to manufacture outrage and drama but maybe that’s just my limited exposure showing.
@bodangles The ambiguity was part of the fun.
Weird, I haven’t received any such e-mail.
Or was this a physical letter?
Either way, good for them. Often enough, I take issue with the administration’s changes to admissions (among other things) but this is one area where I can’t praise the university’s actions enough. When Yale did nothing after a professor was confronted by an angry rabble and shouted down, for the egregious crime of disagreeing with a vocal minority, that spoke volumes about the university’s commitment to its values when doing the right thing involved angering some students. When Chicago issued a strong statement in support of free speech some days later, that showed the school wasn’t going to follow Yale’s lead. Last fall went a long way towards shaping my view of both colleges, and I’m happy with the choice I made.
^My D received it today- it’s a package that contains a letter and a soft cover book.
At the University of Minnesota, Milo told the hecklers that the hecklers at Rutgers were better.
Wish my kid could get into this school because he would LOVE this 
The booklet they sent is a fascinating look at free speech and academic freedom Should be required reading for every college student.
I wonder will Yale, Oberlin and Amherst follow Chicago’s lead?
@NotVerySmart – that’s the right-wing narrative of what happened at Yale. You might want to look more closely before you buy into that framing. There was an interesting thread about it on CC – search Halloween and Yale if you want to read it.
Re David Duke as the acid test of U of C’s commitment. I haven’t read the booklet DD received, but I’d be surprised (and disheartened) if the bottom line was that the school should provide a platform for people simply because what they have to say is likely to be highly offensive or inflammatory. Presumably, the goal is intellectual engagement and there’s a quality control element re ideas and thinkers worth engaging with. And, yes, I realize that quality control (and civility) are standards that aren’t reliably content-neutral. But in a school where many people with different viewpoints have the power to issue invites, there’s not a big risk of censorship.
@exacademic I followed that thread for a while, though I tuned out after several dozen pages. Without believing that a majority of students supported their actions, that they’re the ideal Yale aspires to, or that various groups with their own agendas “proved” that Yale students want to repeal the first amendment, I’m troubled by the students’ treatment of a professor and I take issue with the school’s actions following that incident.
I assume you’ve seen the video itself, with the student interrupting a residential college’s master repeatedly when he tried to make his points.
It was not, by any standard, an acceptable reaction. Few would blame the master for getting caught up in a petty shouting contest, but to his credit he remained civil throughout the episode. Some students (likely a small but vocal minority) condemned his behavior, or believed his wife’s letter justified the student’s actions.
In isolation, I wouldn’t hold this incident against Yale - no school has a monopoly on overzealous students - but the steadfast defense of their professor one might expect was nowhere to be seen. Considering he didn’t write the letter, was asked to apologize for its contents even so, and didn’t raise his voice in response to a tirade, Yale’s reaction - expressing a general commitment to free speech, through a few sentences in a letter lauding the eloquence with which students expressed their heartfelt concerns - fell short in my view.
President Salovey could have written - and didn’t write - something like this:
“These are grave concerns, and we understand their importance. Yet in advocating personal views, we cannot shout down those who disagree. If we refuse to listen to others’ opinions, we cannot expect them to listen to ours. Only through reasoned discussion, with a fair hearing for all viewpoints, can we live up to our ideals as a place of learning.”
Instead, he wrote:
Contrast this with the report of the Committee on Free Speech, or David Axelrod’s response when protesters drowned out an invited speaker to the extent she was unable to finish her presentation (excerpts below):
Links to the two statements: http://news.yale.edu/2015/11/06/president-and-yale-college-dean-underscore-commitment-better-yale
One doesn’t need to be a reactionary to find the former overly passive, or expect nothing less than the latter from a leading university.