I have been watching with some dismay the firestorm at Yale concerning academic independence. I saw a blog post, which is excerpted here, from a Yale Professor -- Jason Stanley. Please give it a read. His argument is both sound and troubling, calling recent actions by the Yale leadership an "existential threat to the university mission."
I would also recommend the statement by the Yale History Department, which is breathtaking in its brevity and message. Click here for that.
Here is the beginning of the post, from the Academe Blog:
A University or a Billionaires’ Toy
BY JASON STANLEY
Yale University is a central democratic institution, a fact recognized by its tax-exempt status. It provides a forum in which society’s most difficult issues can be confronted and freely discussed. The University educator is thus tasked with presenting their students with intellectually rigorous foundational challenges to tradition; that is the role of education in fostering autonomous thought. Fulfilling this mission will always threaten those in power, and that is why academic freedom is the university’s core principle. A university with no firewall between a society’s billionaires and its academic program is no university at all. Yet, a disturbing pattern of behavior by this university’s administration over time suggests the absence of a firewall, which is an existential threat to the university mission.
Click here for the whole post.
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