[Xmca-l] Re: The imploding university

[Greg Mcverry]

The discussion of safe spaces, trigger warnings, mansplaining, checking
white privilege and other positions by feminist scholars and critical race
theorists have been hot topics among scholar activist writing circles.

Search through Medium for any of the above terms.

In terms of renaming buildings or removing Confederate Flags on campus I
can see how that can make campuses more inclusive.

Yet I also worry if we are training activist to only going after low
hanging fruit. At Yale for example the fight was on renaming faculty
advisors to dorm rooms who are currently called,  "headmasters"  yet the
city of New Haven is full of poverty.

So I am not sure how I feel. The pushback from folks similar to the author
is quite strong in conservative and neoliberal circles. I do not want these
voices silenced but we need to learn to listen to underrepresented voices.

On Fri, Feb 26, 2016, 7:44 AM Wendy Maples <wendy.maples@outlook.com> wrote:

> Interesting that Chris Patten is on board with proactive intolerance of
> intolerance. And I am saddened to find myself wholeheartedly agreeing that
> some of the more pernicious intolerances are emerging from within
> Universities themselves. Not only of Student Union addresses, but also of
> research styles (the prioritisation of qualitative, measurable, observable,
> over anything that smacks of interpretation in the UK REF) and, I fear, of
> a particular form of 'outcome-focussed' evaluation in the new Teaching
> Excellence Framework, where outcomes are strictly limited to a thin set of
> 'measurable' data. Don't get me wrong, I actually LIKED some of what I saw
> in the early TEF proposals (how nice to prioritise excellence in
> teaching!), and I think there are still potentially positive outcomes, but
> I also fear we are going to have to revise quite substantially what we
> understand what we mean by 'being an academic', as Patten points out.Thanks
> for sharing, AnnalisaWendy
>
> > From: annalisa@unm.edu
> > To: xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu
> > Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2016 22:45:11 +0000
> > Subject: [Xmca-l]   The imploding university
> >
> > Hi XMCArs!
> >
> >
> > Saw this at Project Syndicate:
> >
> >
> https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/academic-freedom-under-threat-by-chris-patten-2016-02#
> >
> >
> > Thought it might be of interest!
> >
> >
> > Kind regards,
> >
> >
> > Annalisa
>