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Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Campus-Level Discussion Needed?

We have previously blogged about the Kipnis case at Northwestern U in which an article by a faculty member in the Chronicle of Higher Ed led to a Title IX complaint and a rather Orwellian investigation.* That event sparked considerable online discussion. Now the libertarian-leaning Volokh Conspiracy blog (on the Washington Post website) has a piece (by UCLA Prof. Eugene Volokh) regarding "training" programs at UC and "microaggressions" that might occur in the classroom or elsewhere that seems related.** Apart from such programs, there has been little formal discussion on campus at UCLA about boundaries, triggers, balancing viewpoints in the classroom, academic freedom, etc. Maybe it's time for the Academic Senate to take an independent role from the administration and sponsor such a forum. Online debate is fine but surely an in-person, campus-level discussion would be preferable.
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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2015/05/a-cautionary-tale-follow-up.html
**http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/16/uc-teaching-faculty-members-not-to-criticize-race-based-affirmative-action-call-america-melting-pot-and-more/. The Volokh blog also featured an earlier piece by another author on the Kipnis case: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/06/08/a-kipnis-accuser-speaks-and-kipnis-corrects-the-record/.
UPDATE: A version of Prof. Volokh's blog item later appeared in the LA Times at http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-0623-volokh-uc-microaggressions-20150623-story.html
UPDATE: The LA Times appeared to endorse the Volokh op ed with its own editorial at
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-microaggression-what-not-to-say-at-uc-20150624-story.html

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