Professor Punished for Witty Remark

[Eric Cordian]

Peter Trei wrote:

> On the other hand, ACTA has specifically condemned the 
> U of NM for their punishment of Berthold (which started 
> this thread).

An interesting tactic.  Out those whose remarks are not publicly known, to
intimidate them and others into silence, while at the same time,
"defending" someone whose reputation cannot be further vilified against
excessive punishment.

Like most organizations that are members of the Conservative Labyrinth,
ACTA's web page is a bit deceptive.  On first reading, you might get the
impression that you were looking at some sort of ACLU-like organization
devoted to intellectual and academic freedom.  Look at how many times the
word "liberal" appears in a positive context.

Of course, this is designed to appeal to people who don't pay too much
attention to the fact that the word "liberal" in "liberal education" has
an entirely different meaning than it does in "liberal political
thinking."

Defense of liberal education and attacks on the elimination of humanities
programs, do not equate to support of liberal politics and humanism.  :)

> "It is the responsibility of a university to teach that the right way to
> counter ideas with which one disagrees is with more speech, not less,"
> said Neal.

Even the ADL proudly advertises that the "solution to bad speech is more
speech."  In fact, they will happily provide you with carefully prepared
"more speech" to add to any website which contains comments that might be
construed as negative about a particular ideology and its followers.

I think most of us would consider the ADL pro-censorship, even as it
adopts Cypherpunkish slogans to describe its behavior.

As conservative organizations and other agendas strive to blend in to the
freethinkers, it becomes even more important to recognize that the ACLJ is
not the ACLU, Pregnancy Crisis Centers are not Abortion Clinics, and Child
Advocacy is not Childrens Rights.

Neither is defending a professor against being punished for snickering
over the exploding Pentagon an invitation to university faculty to speak
their minds on the likely fallout from decades of Belicose and Belligerent
US Foreign Policy.

There's a pretty good Boston Globe article on all this at...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/1113-03.htm

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"