Sandra Korn is a Harvard University undergraduate student and a writer for The Harvard Crimson.\u00a0 <\/i>In a recent edition of the school\u2019s paper, she argues for abandoning the traditional value of \u201cacademic freedom\u201d in favor of what she calls, \u201cacademic justice.<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n
Korn may still be but a student, but both the lines along which she thinks as well as the ease with which she articulates her thoughts reveals to all with eyes to see the character of the academic environment in which she\u2019s been reared:\u00a0 those who she wishes to deprive of academic freedom are just those academics who refuse to endorse the leftist ideology of Korn and her professors.<\/p>\n
Korn singles out as instances of teacher-scholars who should have been stripped of their academic freedom just and only those figures who are noted for their penchant for smashing the sacred cows of the left.<\/p>\n
Richard J. Herrnstein is one such example.\u00a0 Herrnstein is probably most distinguished for having co-authored along with Charles Murray the now famous, The Bell Curve. <\/i>\u00a0However, the thesis that IQ differences vary with race and that, to at least some extent, these differences are genetic, is one that he defended two decades earlier, back in 1971.\u00a0 Because of this position of his, militant student activists disrupted Herrnstein\u2019s classes and demanded that, along with sociologist Christopher Jencks (another thought criminal), he be fired.<\/p>\n
Quoting Herrnstein, Korn relays that while claiming to have not been \u201cbothered\u2026personally\u201d by the attacks against him, Herrnstein admitted that he was deeply troubled by the fact it was now \u201chazardous for a professor to teach certain kinds of views\u201d at Harvard.\u00a0 Korn replies that this was precisely <\/i>the point of \u201cthe SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] activists\u2014they wanted to make the \u2018certain kinds of views\u2019 they deemed racist and classist unwelcome on Harvard\u2019s campus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harvey Mansfield is another person upon whom Korn sets her sights.\u00a0 She charges Mansfield with \u201cpublishing\u2026sexist commentary under the authority of a Harvard faculty position\u201d and avows that she \u201cwould happily organize with other feminists on campus to stop him\u201d from continuing to do so.<\/p>\n
Korn admits that while it could very well be the case that student activists are guilty of infringing upon the academic freedom of the Herrnsteins and Mansfields of the world, this \u201cobsession with the doctrine of \u2018academic freedom\u2019 often seems to bump against something [that] I think [is] much more important: \u2018academic justice.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cobsession\u201d with academic freedom Korn thinks is \u201cmisplaced,\u201d for \u201cno academic question is ever \u2018free\u2019 from [such] political realities\u201d as \u201cracism, sexism, and heterosexism [.]\u201d\u00a0 After all, since \u201cour university community opposes\u201d such things, \u201cit should ensure that this research\u2026promoting or justifying oppression\u2026does not continue.\u201d\u00a0 This <\/i>is in keeping with the demands of \u201cacademic justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
So too does the craving for \u201cacademic justice\u201d account for the decision of the American Studies Association at Harvard to boycott \u201cIsraeli academic institutions until Israel ends its occupation of Palestine.\u201d\u00a0 The ASA, Korn explains, are interested, not in resorting to \u201cthe \u2018freedom\u2019 game\u201d of \u201cthose on the right,\u201d but in achieving \u201csocial justice.\u201d Thus, they \u201ctake the moral upper hand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Korn concludes by reiterating the central thesis of her essay that our \u201cobsessive reliance on the doctrine of academic freedom\u201d prevents us from considering \u201cmore thoughtfully what is just.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a sane world, a world that hasn\u2019t been subverted by decades of leftism, it would be viewed as nothing less than a scandal that any college student, let alone a student at one of the world\u2019s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, would hold Korn\u2019s views, to say nothing of publishing them. Traditionally, the university had been regarded as among the premiere civilizing <\/i>institutions, the place where students were educated in just those intellectual and moral habits that would enable them to formulate, articulate, and defend their own convictions while treating those of their opponents with respect and even charity.<\/p>\n
The academic world inhabited by the Korns of our world is a radically different kind of place.\u00a0 Views with which one disagrees are not to be refuted<\/i>, but condemned<\/i>, and their proponents demonized<\/i>.\u00a0 The university exists not for the sake of acquiring and conveying truth and knowledge, but for the sake of \u201csocial justice\u201d\u2014i.e. a totalizing leftist ideology that is to be imposed, \u201cby whichever means necessary,\u201d upon both students and faculty alike.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sandra Korn is a Harvard University undergraduate student and a writer for The Harvard Crimson.\u00a0 In a recent edition of the school\u2019s paper, she argues for abandoning the traditional value of \u201cacademic freedom\u201d in favor of what she calls, \u201cacademic justice.\u201d Korn may still be but a student, but both the lines along which she…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n