The Business Of Polluting Minds
Universities once stood for disciplined speech, not "freedom of speech, or freedom of expression."Â There is a big difference between these two notions, a distinction now lost.
Western countries protect the media's and culture's freedom of expression, whether in shape of books, movies, caricatures, blogs, and "YouTube" postings, although not to the same degree. The U.S. offers the widest protection, the exception being not to shout "fire" in crowded movie theaters. European countries have laws against "hate speech." Canada has its own version, enforced by "human rights tribunals," where bureaucrats decide whether verbal or visual barbs, even stereotyping, are "too offensive" and qualify for condemnation and compensation.
Yet, what these laws and courts achieve is hardly more civil behavior, but rather the wearing of thin masks that hide much that would be much better if it came into the open.  Mel Gibson and Galliano rant against Jews? Dior sacks Galliano and the Metropolitan Opera drops his gorgeous evening gowns for Renee Fleming in Nazi-collaborator Richard Strauss' Capriccio. A bit hypocritical, no? Gibson had been in decline, so it's hard to know how much his steepened descent is due to his anti-Semitic, drunken ramblings.
Do these two have rights to free expression? Yes. Does society have the right to punish them, by ostracizing or revoking contracts? Yes. No need for laws or tribunals.
Should universities tolerate rights to such "free expression," drink induced or not? Of course not, academia would say.  But why not? Answering this question brings us to the essence of what is so wrong with universities today.
What is it that distinguishes "universities" from other institutions in the "inquiry and expression" business?
Forget about trade schools (be it engineering, medicine, accounting) which are all under "university umbrellas," though they should never have been. Forget mathematics and the sciences too, since the serious disagreement about the role of the university and of academics' rights and obligations concern humanities and the so-called "social sciences" rather than the "hard" sciences.
University education once stood for informed, civilized debates where people expressed opinions backed by facts, logic, and knowledge of precedent. That is the definition of "disciplined speech."
The criterion for becoming an academic was having had a history of expressing reasoned opinions and research, double checked by peers, based on "disciplinary" standards. This self imposed discipline within university walls did not imply that academics could not express their opinions on just about anything.  The media has been the outlet for this. But the university had no obligation to offer platforms for activities unrelated to its core and to its faculty's non-academic endeavors.
Having opinions on wars, peace, resolution of conflicts, and the right to express them, does not imply that academics, whose credentials are unrelated to these topics, have rights to use the university's premises to spread them. Albert Einstein was passionate about peace, had his ideas about resolving conflicts, and wrote about them. But at the university he taught physics.
Unfortunately, government subsidies to tens of thousands of "academic journals," universities, libraries, and conferences, destroyed the once sharp distinction between "academics and disciplined speech" and "freedom of speech." Here is a concrete example of how it happened.
Decades ago I was asked by an institution (that I shall not name) that subsidizes academic journals to check if it should continue to subsidize a particular one. They sent me hundreds of pages of documents. Two critical data were first missing.
One was the relation between the number of articles published in this journal and the number submitted. When I got the information, it turned out the numbers were equal. This implied absolutely no critical selection. The editor asked friends to submit, who then got promotions based on their "academic performance."
The second missing information was how many times the articles in this journal were cited in other journals in the field. The answer was: "never." My half page letter mentioned these facts, and recommended to stop the subsidies. The subsidies continued. I was not asked to do any such auditing job again.  Welcome to an academic Ponzi scheme, taxpayers being the suckers.
These bring us to two separate issues.
This year at Northwestern University (which charges $40,000 tuition) "performance artists" demonstrated sexual acts and sex-toys at a psychology class. As far as I know, the university is making some inquiry, but nothing else for the moment. A few weeks later at La Salle University in Philadelphia, students testified that a professor hired three strippers to give lap dances at an extra-credit seminar on business ethics.  This matter too appears to be under investigation. "Freedom of expression" truly running amok.
More insidious are the findings that Ghaddafi's son gave $1.5 million to London School of Economics and got a PhD.  His father contracts Boston-based Monitor, a consulting company, to spruce up his and his country's image by hiring "scholars" from Harvard. Professors lined up for the honor..... - and pay. After a few, short meetings with the great leader, they promptly published "academic analyses" praising the big changes in Libya. So much about "disciplined speech" and standards, and never mind integrity, which long disappeared from universities' vocabularies.
So is "education" today necessarily "investment"? No. The distortion in the selection process of both "academics" and students has led to a situation where spending years in schools, colleges, or universities can no longer be confused with acquiring any "education" or skills of "disciplined speech." Throwing more money at this will be anything but "investment."
The Biblical passages that list the forbidden animals, birds, fish, are followed by others that taught that what comes out of our mouths can bring about far greater damage than what goes in them. Perhaps we spent too much time worrying about "polluting the bodies and the environment," and forgot that "polluting the minds" can be far more dangerous. Confusing "disciplined speech" with "freedom of expression" brought about significant pollution. Time to remedy it.
Reuven Brenner hold the Repap Chair at McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management. The article draws on his "Making Sense out of Nonsense" and Force of Finance.
Read full article: , April 28, 2011
Feedback
For more information or if you would like to report an error, please web.desautels [at] mcgill.ca (subject: Website%20News%20Comments) (contact us).
