In the essay by Stanley Fish, entitled, “Academic Cross-Dressing”, he presents historical arguments on the subject of academic freedom on the college level. These freedoms are an incredibly important subject within our educational system. The article states his position as one that is pro freedom regardless of content or previous thought. That is to say the importance of learning is how to think out the importance of what you think. It is my firm belief that education, particularly in the college arena, should be focused on teaching not only subjects of interest but also interesting thought. Throughout my essay we will look into the subject of “teaching the controversy” and academic freedom within our college system.
Academic freedom is power. Not implied, not suggested but truly one of the most leveraged assets one can have. In the category of education there is typically more freedom than constraints in our country. Writers, theologians, professors, students and even publishers wield incredible power. What comes from this environment is problematic and a success story. One reason why our country has the best engineers is that we teach students to ask not only why, but why not.
Many students would state that the era of the 1960’s was the birth place of educational free thinking. History teachers would argue otherwise. The subject is not a left or right position. The subject is used to promote a left or right or center agenda at times. So in some ways academic freedom, or at least the subject of free thinking, has been high-jacked by those with power in order to promote a position or at the very least introduce it. This is not a new idea. It may be the fact that the 1960’s was the time of more lenient over site of coll...
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...compete with our neighbors throughout the world, an attitude of openness for new ideas and development is needed. Commonality of importance is a pivotal factor as to whether we can achieve understanding and otherwise continue to develop as students. The game of tug-of-war within the colleges and universities is currently a game that has evolved over the last hundred years and will continue to change. Our job as students is to listen, learn and on occasion gather the rope.
Works Cited
American Association of University Professors: Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Freedom in the Classroom. June 2007. 18 March 2011.
Fish, Stanley. "Academic Cross-Dressing: How Intelligent Design Gets Its Arguments from the Left." Bloom, Lynn Z and Louise Z Smith. The Arlington Reader Contexts and Connections Second Edition. Boston: Bedford: St. Martin's, 2008. 532-537.
In the novel Monkey Girl: Evolution, Religion, and The battle for American’s Soul, Humes tells the story of how 11 furious parents in the Dover Area school district decided to sue the school board and the district, because of the new learning objective requirement saying that all of 9th grade biology classes had to be taught Intelligent Design (ID), which is basically a form of creationism as a scientific alternative to evolution. They also believed that it “violated their first amendment right to information and ideas in an academic setting” (Humes, 2007, p. 221). This was the first legal trial to the perception of Intelligent Design. This novel is a narrative that captures nearly everyone’s view point in the Dover Area school District on the issue of Intelligent Design replacing evolution. There were numerous groups and organizations involved the trial including; The American Civil Liberties Union, Americans Unites for Separation of Church and State, Pepper Hamilton LLP, and the National Center for Science Education. This Trial was so major that even that national government was involved. George W. Bush sent a conservative appointee (John Jones) to the bench, which was done because it was “the early handicapping in the trial suggested a
... The “Doubting Darwin”. Newsweek.com - "The New York Times" 07 Feb 2005. 44. eLibrary.
The Dover Area School District of Dover, Pennsylvania is seeking approval from the General Assembly of Pennsylvania House to include the theory of intelligent design in the instruction of biology. Intelligent design, also known as I.D., is a theory that seeks to refute the widely-accepted and scientifically-supported evolution theory. It proposes that the complexity of living things and all of their functioning parts hints at the role of an unspecified source of intelligence in their creation (Orr). For all intents and purposes, the evidence cited by I.D. supporters consists only of the holes or missing links in evolutionary theory; it is a widely-debate proposal, not because ?of the significant weight of its evidence,? but because ?of the implications of its evidence? (IDnet).
The documentary begins with Stein speaking before an audience, addressing the principle of freedom in America. He then advances to discourse of the loss of academic freedom in the scientific community through interviews of scientific figures such as Richard Sternberg, Caroline Crocker, Michael Ignore, Robert Marks, and Guillermo Gonzalez. These interviews are contrasted with clips of scientists who refute the idea and validness of intelligent design. To get a perspective about the credibility and thoughts of Darwinism and intelligent design in the scientific community, Stein is referred to talk to other figures of science such as Bruce Chapman, Paul Nelson, William Dembski, Stephen Meyer, and Jonathan Wells. Stein then begins his in depth investigation interviewing Richard Dawkins, David Berlinski, and Michael Ruse, looking to determine how Darwin theory applies to the cr...
In the world today, Freedom of Speech is taken to a different level than what one may imply verbally. With social media, political debates, and the outpour of sexual orientation the First Amendment is exercised in its full capacity. Protecting Freedom of Expression on the campus is an article written by Derek Bok expressing his concerns regarding the display of a confederate flag hung from a window on the campus of Harvard University. The Confederate flag to some is a symbol of slavery and to others it is a symbol of war, or perhaps known as the “Battle Flag”. In this paper one will review Bok’s opinion of the First Amendment, clarity of free speech in private versus public institutions and the actions behind the importance of ignoring or prohibiting such communications according to the First Amendment.
At this point in a college freshmen’s life, they have been in school for 14 years. Throughout those 14 years, freshmen have learned the Bill of Rights like they’ve learned how to walk and the first amendment the way they’ve learned to talk. The first amendment has been engrained in a child from the first history class in 5th grade, to the fifth history class in 9th grade and the eighth class in their senior year. In those eight years, a student has the first amendment in their head to bring to college and express themselves how they see fit and how they have been socialized to do so. According to Dinesh D’Souza, Stuart Taylor and Tim Robbins freedom of speech has been inhibited and taken out by politics and political correctness and fueled heavily by the societies need for preferential treatment.
Plato, Thoreau, and Sartre suggested that human life should be free. They had different points of view about freedom, but combining Plato's freedom in mind, Thoreau's freedom in nature, and Sartre's freedom in subjectivity of individual gives people the clear and perfect image of freedom. Understanding freedom is the first step to find freedom in the real life. So in relevant, college students have freedom to think critically. Students' freedom is able to study whatever they want, and find out their own roads to the bright future. However, how to use correctly freedom is the hard question to students in this real life.
“A high school graduate who has acquired Hirsch’s core knowledge will know, for example, that John Stuart Mill was an important 19th-century English Philosopher who was associated with something called Utilitarianism and wrote a famous book called On Liberty. But learning philosophy in college, which is and essential component of a liberal education, means that the student has to be able to read and understand the actual text of On Liberty”. (Murray
The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee vs. Scopes but given the nickname “The Monkey Trial”, has been credited as starting the popular legal dispute between evolution and creationism in the court, and its impact in the 20’s was immeasurable. The interpretation of the case is just as popular, if not more, than the actual result of the case. The worldwide attention and media coverage the case received produced many opinions. Scholar’s opinions range from describing the case as an irrelevancy and a good show to describing it as a “Watershed in American religious history” (Ronald L. Numbers, 1998, p. 76).
In the last decade, many states are trying to reinstate the teaching of creationism in public schools under the more academic title of “intelligent design.” Funded heavily by the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank, intelligent design is an attempt to produce scientific backing for the idea that an intelligent being (the Abrahamic God) has designed all life on earth.... ... middle of paper ... ... Branch, Glenn. A. A. "Intelligent Design is not Science, and Should not Join Evolution in the Classroom."
Throughout our society ideas, morals, and lessons are thought through books and if books are being banished from our schools, then we are all being deprived of our freedom as intellectuals that have the own opinions and ideas.
My higher education has been built upon the metaphor of school as war. I write papers to defend a position. To win my diploma, I have to defeat my opposition; the professors. If I survive, I can leave this institution with the victorious banner of my diploma, supposedly strong enough win the battle on the outside. I have been trained to recognize those signs that enhance my success and encouraged to disregard others which could provide an alternate metaphor; such as school as practice o...
Maycock, A.. (2011). Issues and Trends in Intellectual Freedom for Teacher Librarians: Where We've Come From and Where We're Heading. Teacher Librarian, 39(1), 8-12. Retrieved December 6, 2011, from Research Library. (Document ID: 2505611051).
Talking on both sides of the debate, each side feels as though the other has no scientific reasoning come up with their theory. In reading the article written by Shipman, the evolutionists believe that intelligent design has no concrete evidence on how the world was crea...
Before this time period there were restrictions on what was allowed to be taught in schools as the educational system was stuck in old traditional values. German universities played a role in the shift in education as they advocated the fundamental belief that searching for the truth should be the most important when earning a university education. These universities gave their professors freedom to voice and have their own way of teaching and exploring new intellectual concepts. In the United States there was a much different road to academic freedom as conflict with donors to the Universities created issues as they had a lot of power in the direction of the university. An example is at the University of Chicago economics professor Edward Bemis was fired for his support in the railroad strikes in 1895 as the businessmen who donated to the university felt that this was treason against their interests. During this time Universities were under the influence of the wealthy who donated large sums of money and the ability of free thinking and different ideologies were very much limited. In 1949 The New York Feinberg law was passed that banned public schools from employing staff who were members of groups that advocated the overthrowing of the government. This law halted progress on a different kind of thinking as this