- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Alice Pawley, a professor of engineering education at Purdue University, said that many faculty members in Indiana were angered by the new restrictions, and that “nobody trusts that this is actually going to be fairly applied.” Many felt discouraged about their job security, believing it would be at the mercy of trustees who are not experts in their fields and would be making decisions on the basis of highly subjective criteria, Dr. Pawley said.
You must log in or register to comment.
this would entail the inclusion of more conservative viewpoints on campus.
Guess it’s not about intellectual diversity
Funny how diversity is bad when it includes non conservatives but suddenly good when it forces (occurred) conservative views into, say, science, medicine, and engineering.
Under the Indiana law, which goes into effect in July, university trustees may not grant tenure or a promotion to faculty members who are deemed “unlikely” to promote “intellectual diversity” or to expose students to works from a range of political views. Trustees also may withhold tenure or promotion from those who are found “likely” to bring unrelated political views into the courses they are teaching.
Before people dismiss this, Indiana is actually pretty big for engineering, medical/chemical, teaching, journalism, and even human sexuality.
Other colleges will step up, but this could potentially destroy scientific institutions that have been around for decades.
A bunch of important science has come out of Indiana for whatever strange reason.
The Midwest in general has always been an academic powerhouse.
Sometimes it makes sense tho, like Ohio and aerospace.
If you’re born and raised in Ohio, you’d want to get as far away from the planet as you could too.
Indiana has the second or third largest naval base in the country - Crane Naval Base. Oddly, it’s nowhere near water in the middle of nowhere in the southern part of the state. The military and defense contractors do a lot of recruiting for engineers at Purdue.
This statement from the sponsor is worth the read: https://www.indianasenaterepublicans.com/deery-higher-education-reform-bill-passes-senate
An excerpt:
Deery said the worry is backed by multiple surveys. Gallup observed that the percentage of Republicans who have confidence in higher education fell 37 percentage points from 2015 to 2023 with only 19% of Republicans now trusting universities. In 2018, the Pew Research Center found that “professors bringing their political and social views into the classroom” was the leading cause of the decline in approval, cited by 79% of Republicans.
This is literally a bill about forcing “conservative viewpoints” into the classroom based on the opinions of people that probably didn’t go to college and learn everything about liberal teaching bias from right-wing talk radio.
“I know exactly what’s going on in those classrooms!” - someone who’s never set foot in those classrooms
I guess my only question is what is that 19% doing being part of a party that doesn’t trust expertise.
A good malicious compliance idea would be to teach actual intellectual diversity and cover how different cultures around the world approach the topic.
I didn’t realize that "intellectual diversity’ meant giving equal time to politically motivated drivel that fails to pass even the laugh test for factual basis or intellectual rigor.
What else would it mean? This is the academic equivalent to fake news.
Just add Mein Kampf to the curriculum to check off the “conservative viewpoint” checkbox
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A new law in Indiana requires professors in public universities to foster a culture of “intellectual diversity” or face disciplinary actions, including termination for even those with tenure, the latest in an effort by Republicans to assert more control over what is taught in classrooms.
Hundreds wrote letters or testified at hearings, and faculty senates at multiple institutions had urged the legislature to reject the bill, condemning it as government overreach and a blow to academic free speech.
“The whole point of tenure is to protect academic freedom,” said Irene Mulvey, the president of the American Association of University Professors, who described the law as “thought policing.”
“Recent events and blatant antisemitism have placed a spotlight on the hyper-politicalization and monolithic thinking of American higher education institutions, and many are warning that universities have lost their way,” Mr. Deery said after the bill passed in the Senate.
Keith E. Whittington, a politics professor at Princeton University, expressed concern around the vagueness of the law, including the uncertainty around what will be needed to meet the requirements.
In practice, Dr. Whittington said there will be a lot of professors “running scared and trying to figure out not only, ‘How do I construct a class that I think is intellectually coherent and satisfying and educationally useful?’” but also “‘How do I shelter myself from potentially getting fired?’”
The original article contains 833 words, the summary contains 225 words. Saved 73%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
And this is why I voted for the other guy. Of course it’s Indiana so his campaign was trash, but he wore some funny hats. Spencer Deery can go kick rocks.
