26 October 2006

"We all have a common enemy..."

Marquette University censors the office doors of its Ph.D. students. A quote from a noted terrorist has been removed.

Sorry, did I say terrorist? I meant syndicated humor columnist. The censored quote is from Dave Barry. Click the link. The story defies belief (and the quote is actually kind of funny).

Why does no one seem to care about this? A little part of me dies every time I read a story like this. It takes me a while to get over it. "Free speech zones" on university campuses. God help us.

3 comments:

detarame said...

Is not Marquette a private university? I thought you were a fan of the private sector doing whatever it wanted to?

jto said...

Any number of things should have happened here. Marquette's faculty should have been very vocal about it. Other universities should have mocked Marquette over it. Major newspapers should have editorialized on it. Students should have demonstrated. Marquette should be a laughingstock.

What drives me crazy is that nobody seems to care. I just don't understand what happened to the culture of academic freedom and, you know, personal respect.

I do not propose that the remedy should be for this guy to sue in federal court, or for federal funds to be cut off, or for me personally to be allowed to micromanage Marquette's office door policy. After all I'm obviously in a vanishingly small minority on this. I just don't understand why.

detarame said...

Ah! In that case, we're in total agreement.

Why is it happening? Because people are (1) afraid and (2) uninformed. And, I think they like it that way because solving problem #2 takes way too much effort.