So, I’ve just finished reading through all the heated responses to my FIRE posts last week, and I wanted to finally get to the FIRE Web site and take a look (more closely) at how they represent themselves online. But the site seems to be down right now. I’ll try again this evening or tomorrow, but I just wanted to talk a bit about the nature of the responses to those earlier posts.
Some remarks were quite thoughtful and compelling pushbacks. For instance, Saucebox offered the following:
… And I’m sorry to see any academic defend the violation of a faculty member’s intellectual and academic freedom by a public university, regardless of what may be viewed as noble outcomes. If Mr. McGlamery and Prof. Jackson would likewise defend a public university imposing what might be called “conservative” ideologies among its faculty, then I could respect this consistency more (however much I might disagree with both the principle and the ramifications). But it’s easier, isn’t it, to see it as a harmless no-brainer when other people are coerced into endorsing and implementing those things in which you personally believe, and that you have concluded are of such value that they outweigh other considerations?
Thence lies oppression, on both the left and the right.
One might reasonably take up Prof. Jackson’s suggestion that this is a communitarian/individual issue — that universities have the right to articulate and impose community norms/interests that supercede individual rights. Private religious colleges, of course, do this daily. But VT is indeed a public university. Is Prof. Jackson suggesting that the definition and exercise of “diversity” proffered by VT accurately reflect those of Virginia’s citizenry, and do they need to in order to defend ethically the violation of the faculty’s academic autonomy?
These are important themes/points to discuss and debate. Saucebox proffers a pretty reasonable argument in defense of FIRE’s position on the VT guidelines. I don’t totally agree with the formulation, but I get it.
Somebody named Parent censures me for what he or she considers to be my too-quick condemnation of FIRE:
Shame on you Professor Jackson for not doing your homework on FIRE. It is not a conservative organization, and it does not take a stance on affirmative action. It is a civil-liberties organization that was founded and is supported by people of both liberal and conservative political views. The cases it has championed have involved the free speech and freedom of conscience rights of students and teachers of all political persuasions. Your blatant distortion of this organization’s orientation and work calls your research, objectivity and judgment into question.
Stewart Trickett did his own research and came up with the following assessment of things: I did a search of the FIRE site. Although they have on many occasions defended peoples’ rights to criticize affirmative action, I only found a single article in 2006 where they took a position on affirmative action (against, by the way).
I can find no support for Jackson’s assertion that “the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reject any and all nods to affirmative action or other diversity initiatives within the academy”.
Again, fair enough. FIRE has different fish to fry. But I still think that discussions about university commitments to diversity are a hair’s breadth from major firestorms within the academy about affirmative action as institutional policy.
I appreciated all of the spirited and invested hostility. Granted, FIRE specifically asked its supporters to blitz me with correctives to my “attack,” but most of the fired-up responses were offered up in a spirit of true dialogue and sincere commitment.
As is always the case, however, other comments seemed to traffic in the very kinds of offensively narrowminded and dismissive ideological assumptions and polemical posturing that characterize other organized responses to academe’s commitments to diversity. For instance, someone who anonymizes himself or herself as ACF states the following as self-evidential fact: John L. Jackson Jr. is a fraud and would not even have a Ph.D., let alone a professorship[,] if not for his skin color. He wants to continue his gravy train by requiring others to reward him for his skin color through “diversity” requirements.
I have no response to that. And, of course, it demands just such silencing. Of course, ACF doesn’t represent the majority of FIRE’s supporters, but he or she stands for a significant subset of the people who clearly muddy the water for everybody else, those of us who really want to think productively about our collective future.
