Education is Freedom
The downfall of a free society usually begins with the collapse of its education system
“The main hope of a nation lies in the property education of its youth.” Yet nowadays, when we survey the scenes of our nation’s education systems from K-12 to colleges, it’s easy to feel somewhat hopeless. In this week’s newsletter, I want to focus on education with two pieces: speech censor in higher ed and the woke math education reform in K-12. There is some depressing data, but there is also hope because people refuse to accept this situation and do something about it. I hope these pieces will give you some ideas of what you can do in your community about education, because education is freedom.
Before Making a Year-end Contribution to Your Alma Mater, Ask This Question First
It is the season of giving, and many Americans have been bombarded by emails and phone calls from their alma mater, asking for year-end contribution. Since most of us have fun memories of attending colleges and universities, we are often glad to answer the call to action from the alumni’s office and write that check right away. But this year, before you give away your hard-earned money, ask your alumni office: “What have you done to promote/ensure free speech on the college campus?”
Today’s college campuses are some of the most illiberal places in our country. Speech suppression concepts such as “political correctness” and “safe space” were first introduced on college campuses and then spread to society. We’ve all heard or read about how some students blocked or shouted down speakers on campus in the past few years. But the intolerance of ideas and speech censorship on college campuses have only gotten worse.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a recent poll shows that more than “80% of students said they self-censor at least some of the time on campus... 66% of students said it is acceptable to shout down a speaker to prevent him or her from speaking on campus and 23% say it is acceptable to use violence to stop a campus speech.” Students-led censorship has gone beyond self-censoring and blocking outside speakers. Increasingly, woke students on campus are targeting fellow students and instructors.
Last year, students at UCLA demanded the firing of two instructors: Mr. Gordon Klein for refusing to offer a “no-harm” final exam that could only benefit black students’ grades, and W. Ajax Peris, an Air Force veteran, for reading aloud MLK’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which includes the n-word. This year, one professor at a top medical school in the U.S. apologized for saying “pregnant women” because she knew students were monitoring instructors in classrooms and lodge complaints in real-time about politically incorrect speeches.
Most recently, a group of students at Arizona State University (ASU) demanded their school to ban Kyle Rittenhouse from their school. They called Rittenhouse a “beacon of White Supremacy.” They claimed the university must “protect students from a violent, blood-thirsty murderer,” even though a jury found Rittenhouse not guilty of all charges over the triple shooting during riots last year in Kenosha, Wisconsin. As of now, Rittenhouse is no longer enrolled at ASU.
Woke students are not the only driving forces of turning college campuses into one of the most intolerant places in this country. Increasingly, liberal faculties are doing just as much damage to shutting down speeches and speakers whose viewpoints they disagree with.
Late last year, Stanford University's Faculty Senate passed a resolution against Dr. Scott Atlas, a public policy expert and neuroradiologist, for "downplaying the threat of COVID19" and "promoting dangerous falsehoods and behaviors." These accusations are false. All Dr. Atlas has advocated was "careful protection of our nation's most vulnerable while safely re-opening society." His view was shared by close to 900,000 infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists worldwide who signed the Great Barrington Declaration. But to some of Stanford University's faculty, the fact that Dr. Atlas served as a health adviser to former President Donald Trump was enough to discredit Dr. Atlas' credentials and his belief.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) recently disinvited Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago. Dr. Abbot was scheduled to deliver a talk on climate change at MIT. But some professors and graduate students demanded the school to cancel his talk because he criticized race-based personnel decisions in higher education in an opinion piece for Newsweek. Phoebe A. Cohen, a geosciences professor at Williams College and one of many who called on MIT to disinvite Dr. Abbot to speak, said in an interview that "This idea of intellectual debate and rigor as the pinnacle of intellectualism comes from a world in which white men dominated." Eventually, MIT bowed down to the mob demand and canceled Dr. Abbot's talk.
When colleges and universities pursue ideological purity and ban certain ideas and speeches, they deprive students of higher learning and do a disservice to society.
These intolerance and illiberal trends on college campuses should stop alumni from making financial contributions to the schools they once loved. One of the few ways that we as alumni can advocate for free speech and open inquiries on college campuses is through the power of the purse.
According to the Wall Street Journal, "Colleges and universities raised nearly $50 billion last year from outside sources, and more than $11 billion came from alumni. Donations make up nearly 19% of the budget spent on students at private not-for-profit four-year colleges." By either demanding colleges to show their support for free speeches before we write them checks or withholding contributions to colleges and universities that refuse to stand up for free speech, alumni can push for positive changes on college campuses because of our financial influence.
Some alumni have already taken such actions. In October, alumni from Princeton, Cornell, University of Virginia, Washington, and Lee and Davidson College, created a national organization called the Alumni Free Speech Alliance to champion open inquires on college campuses. Organizing such an alliance is a welcoming first step. Still, it is far from enough to change the illiberal trends on college campuses because there are close to 4,000 degree-granting academic institutions in the US. More of us need to join the movement and start tying our financial contributions with our alma meter's commitment to free speech and open inquiries. It will be an uphill battle, but it is worth fighting for.
Op-ed in Newsweek: Woke Math Education Is Too Dangerous to Ignore
Algebra matters. That’s the message from more than 700 educators, engineers, and scientists, including winners of the Turing Award in computing and Nobel laureates. They have signed an open letter about the future of K-12 math education. These luminaries are alarmed by the dangerous trend of woke reform in public schools, and their letter warns this trend will negatively affect students and the U.S. economy in the long run. Read more here.