Where’s the outrage?

Defining pointed criticism as “harrassment” is a clear and present danger to academic freedom. What has been the reaction of RPI faculty?

Occom, at 8:10 am EDT on August 11, 2008

Orwellian Academic Freedom

It’s bad enough that RPI is suppressing free expression on its email system. It’s even worse when they invoke academic freedom to justify censorship, claiming that it means: “administrators, students, and faculty are protected from harassment for expressing their own ideas.”

Part of the problem here is a fundamental misunderstanding of harassment is. Harassment is a subset of discriminatory conduct that effectively prevents someone from doing their job. At a university, intellectual conduct and criticism of a university’s leadership is always fundamentally exempt from any accusations of harassment or discrimination. Indeed, by punishing this professor, RPI is the one engaging in harassment, because it is going beyond mere criticism and actively suppressing the rights of others.

What’s next? Will RPI start blocking websites from being seen on campus to prevent “harassment"?

John K. Wilson, collegefreedom.org, at 8:15 am EDT on August 11, 2008

email lists

Sounds like RPI is in the wrong here, but I think sometimes these listserv’s are abused by faculty, some email will come from the administration to the entire faculty list, then someone replies and next thing you know there are 30 messages in the inbox of every faculty member on campus, most of whom want nothing to do with the “discussion.”

rightwingprofessor, at 9:40 am EDT on August 11, 2008

Seems like a childish response from a fearful group. Too bad. Mike, Students can and do fight back—-in their faculty reviews. If Steiner is an emeritus prof. where is the value placed by the administration on his insight?

Schoolhouse, at 9:50 am EDT on August 11, 2008

RPI’s Action Against Legitimate Criticism

FYI—Since the Provost is a “public figure” within the meaning of the law (see Sullivan v. the NY Times and many subsequent cases), criticism such as that engaged in by the Professor is protected by the First Amendment. While RPI certainly has the right to protect its employees from real “harrassment", this is no such thing. In fact, this is nothing less than a free speech matter. The Professor ought to seek the assistance of one of the many groups that support the First Amendment and its application to college campuses.

Legal Eagle, at 10:25 am EDT on August 11, 2008

In Response To Jerry

You wrote “... Academic freedom is intended to allow academics to engage in rational discourse. There was a time when civility was virtue among academics.”

In “Compulsory Mis-Education, and the Community of Scholars,” Paul Goodman wrote ...

“It is my thesis that the agent of this clinch is administration and the administrative mentality among teachers and even the students. It is the genius of administration to enforce a false harmony in situations that should be rife with conflict.Historically, the communities of scholars have perennially been invaded by administration from the outside, by visitors of king, bishop, despotic majority, or whatever is the power in society that wants to quarantine the virulence of youth, the dialog of persons, the push of inquiry, the accusing testimony of scholarship.

But today Administration and the administrative mentality are entrenched in the community of scholars itself; they fragment it and paralyze it. Therefore we see the paradox that, with so many centers of possible intellectual criticism and intellectual initiative, there is so much inane conformity, and the universities are little models of the Organized System itself.”

Frizbane Manley, at 12:05 pm EDT on August 11, 2008

Déj� vu

Steiner’s situation reminds me of my own ten years ago at a college district here in California. I had published a newsletter (named “Dissent") that criticized the college President and the board of trustees. So the district placed a letter in my file, asserting that I had violated the district’s anti-workplace violence (etc.) policies by criticizing some denizens of the district to the point of intimidation. (They also blamed me for our colleges’ accreditation problems.) I took the district to court. The judge ruled fully in my favor, saying “this is a case where [the concept of workplace violence], is being stretched for the purpose of taking a vigorous critic of the administration and the board of trustees and trying to keep them quiet.” The district’s workplace violence policy was ruled unconstitutional. (See http://dissenttheblog.blogspot.com/1999/10/bauers-court-victory.html )

Roy Bauer, Professor of Philosophy at Irvine Valley College, at 5:50 pm EDT on August 11, 2008

Civility

Common sense suggests that gratuitously insulting, manifestly rude and highly personalized attack on another’s reputation in a public forum at a private institution warrants sanction. Electronic communication has filled in the moat around the ivory tower. It appears that some academics haven’t yet realized that instantaneous, broadly distributed e-communication changes the nature of one’s accountability.

Jackson, at 10:05 am EDT on August 13, 2008

The Jackson Monarchy

The RPI management under Shirley Jackson has become utterly subservient to her whelms and to her well known thin skin. A personal manager has stripped an emeritus professor of his email accounts because he offended the sensitivities of public figures who are adequately paid to roll with occasional punches. Professor Steiner’s remarks, taken as a whole are neither insulting nor harassing, particularly to a president who earns over a million dollars a year and to a provost who earns over a quarter-million dollars a year. Harry Truman said, “If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.” It is long past the time that Shirley left Rensselaer. Unfortunately, she is so tainted by her mismanagement of the faculty at RPI that another job is unlikely.

It is worth nothing that the administration choose an emeritus professor who apparently even lacks an RPI address as the letter was sent to his home. What will happen if the administration pulls the same trick with an outspoken tenured professor. Depriving this person of an email account would be equivalent to depriving her of an office and phone. It would destroy her ability to communicate — in what has become the normal fashion – with students, faculty colleagues internal and external, and even with the administration. Thus her teaching and research abilities would be virtually eliminated. I suspect serious litigation would follow. The personal manager avoided this issue – while intimidating many – by attacking the defenseless. Shame, but that is nothing new. All high level RPI administrations have become shameful in order to keep their jobs. To paraphrase Malcolm X, they have become slaves who imagine themselves to be kin because they live in the same house as their master.

Fearful RPI Professor, at 5:10 am EDT on August 15, 2008