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Of all the observations I’ve heard about the purpose of arguments, one of the most memorable came from an imam who served students at the university I attended. “Arguments are for education,” the imam said during one of the many discussions we had back when I was an undergrad in the 1990s. His point was to not get lost in the emotional aspect of an argument, or overly concerned with trying to “win,” but rather to consider both “sides” to gain more insight into the particular issue or problem at hand.
I thought about the imam’s take when I edited an article by Isaac Kamola, a political science professor who studies higher education and lists five distinct ways academic freedom has been under attack at colleges and universities in the United States as of late. One of those is through laws and educational gag orders that seek to curtail what college professors can teach and say about the role of race and gender in society.
“These bills misrepresent what discussions about race and gender identity actually look like in the college classroom,” Kamola writes.
Based on that and four other ways policymakers and others have sought to restrict what college professors can teach, it seems there are some who’d rather win an argument not by putting forth the best case, but instead by trying to squelch what the other side has to say.
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New research shows college professors are facing more political pressure to stifle what they want to say.
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Isaac Kamola, Trinity College
From educational gag orders to the decline of tenure-track positions, academic freedom in the United States has been worsening in recent years.
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Arts + Culture
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James Dawes, Macalester College
Some of the most essential but least protected workers in a $200 billion industry want to ensure that AI won’t do away with their jobs.
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Edith Gwendolyn Nally, University of Missouri-Kansas City
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Lianne Foti, University of Guelph; Kathleen Rodenburg, University of Guelph
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Science + Technology
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Darby Saxbe, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; Lizzie Aviv, University of Southern California
Moms execute more household tasks. But they’re also family executives, doing more of the thinking ahead and assigning that are part of all those chores – bad news for their mental health.
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Politics + Society
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Anthony Saich, Harvard Kennedy School
The all-important third plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China was heavy on intensions, but light on detail.
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Eric L. Piza, Northeastern University
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Ethics + Religion
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Mitch Hendrickson, University of Illinois Chicago
In asking how Buddhism gained such a vast material presence, the course helps students understand how a religion manages to survive over time.
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