The assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University last year sparked a wave of anger directed at scholars for their public comments following Kirk’s death.
I think the general tone of the questions in the second survey have some bearing in the view of the responses. You have one, arguable two, that have fairly clear cut negative connotations, with one being outright violent. In the other two, one is on its face positive while the other has a negative connotation and may have *some* basis in fact, but neither does anything the way of advocating violence. The way I interpret the results of the poll is that left-leaning students seem to tend to agree with allowing more violent rhetoric when they agree with it while they don’t necessarily disagree with silencing speech they don’t like regardless of the implication of violence. Conservatives on the other hand seem to disagree with the advocacy of violence and the seeming negative view of their political or religious beliefs where ad hominem rhetoric is used to describe those beliefs. I think the questions posed or at least how they’re worded matters in why the responses were the way they were.
Forms of academic freedom are critical but they are not the mission of the university which is above all the search and development of useful facts, that is, knowledge. A professor’s speech may indicate the quality of intellect, which is an important trait to consider in relation to the mission. If the mission is Marxism, DEI or social justice, the same concept applies.
How many university professors were putting out, in sizable numbers, comments that were as disparaging of Floyd or celebratory in his death as there were for Kirk? I think that matters in the discussion. I’m sure there were some. But in one instance you have a fairly sizable and visible faction almost outright celebrating a political assassination for perceived grievances and accusations of hatred however accurate those views are. I don’t recall ever seeing that sort of reaction from professors about Floyd. I would posit that its because conservative professors and students, at least in 2020 were a much more “underground” and silent faction of partisans. There was a point when it was an open secret that conservative campus members (students and faculty) were self-censoring because of the threats to their employment and access to various social and even classroom resources for being open about having an opinion different from progressive orthodoxy.
I think the general tone of the questions in the second survey have some bearing in the view of the responses. You have one, arguable two, that have fairly clear cut negative connotations, with one being outright violent. In the other two, one is on its face positive while the other has a negative connotation and may have *some* basis in fact, but neither does anything the way of advocating violence. The way I interpret the results of the poll is that left-leaning students seem to tend to agree with allowing more violent rhetoric when they agree with it while they don’t necessarily disagree with silencing speech they don’t like regardless of the implication of violence. Conservatives on the other hand seem to disagree with the advocacy of violence and the seeming negative view of their political or religious beliefs where ad hominem rhetoric is used to describe those beliefs. I think the questions posed or at least how they’re worded matters in why the responses were the way they were.
Forms of academic freedom are critical but they are not the mission of the university which is above all the search and development of useful facts, that is, knowledge. A professor’s speech may indicate the quality of intellect, which is an important trait to consider in relation to the mission. If the mission is Marxism, DEI or social justice, the same concept applies.
How many university professors were putting out, in sizable numbers, comments that were as disparaging of Floyd or celebratory in his death as there were for Kirk? I think that matters in the discussion. I’m sure there were some. But in one instance you have a fairly sizable and visible faction almost outright celebrating a political assassination for perceived grievances and accusations of hatred however accurate those views are. I don’t recall ever seeing that sort of reaction from professors about Floyd. I would posit that its because conservative professors and students, at least in 2020 were a much more “underground” and silent faction of partisans. There was a point when it was an open secret that conservative campus members (students and faculty) were self-censoring because of the threats to their employment and access to various social and even classroom resources for being open about having an opinion different from progressive orthodoxy.