Today in Good Trouble: Melissa Calhoun

When educational policy is in the hands of dominionist jackasses Republican politicians (or their minions), bad things are likely to happen.  There’s the recent case in Idaho that Curmie wrote about a couple of weeks ago in which a poster reading “everyone is welcome here” was deemed political in nature.  (There’s a shocking but not surprising update on that story, by the way). 

There’s the ongoing attempt to require that public schools in Oklahoma teach the Bible; that one is currently “stayed” but not shot down by the state Supreme Court. 

There’s the attempt in Texas to give parents taxpayer-funded vouchers to pay for private school tuition (or to homeschool!), decreasing funding for public school in the process.  This should be unconstitutional, but isn’t, because the conservative majority on SCOTUS care more about ideology than about the Constitution want to pander to rich Christians think denying public funding for religious education is somehow a violation of the First Amendment.

But today, Gentle Reader, Curmie wants to write about a case in Florida, in which Melissa Calhoun (photo above), a high school English teacher at an arts magnet school in Brevard County since 2019, was de facto fired (she will not be re-hired for the next academic year) for violating an absurd law that prohibits teachers from addressing students by their preferred name.  This is all in the pursuit of “parents’ rights,” which is a catchy if deceitful term for denying students’ rights.

As Curmie wrote two years ago

The seemingly innocuous provisions of the [federal] Parental Bill of Rights actually provide a de facto open invitation for every homophobe, Christian nationalist, racist, or garden variety anti-intellectual within hailing distance to remove any topics of discussion, course materials, library books, or whatever else that might disrupt their myopic and theocratic view of the world. What purports to be an exercise in ideological balance and freedom of expression, therefore, is precisely the opposite.

In terms of what is immediately relevant in this case, which appears to be the first of its kind anywhere in the country, what is at stake is students’ rights to define themselves and to be treated with respect.  There are all sorts of problems with the law, not least of which is that no teacher worthy of the name would fail to call students what they want to be called, except in cases of something objectively offensive.  By “objectively” here, Curmie means a term that would clearly be offensive irrespective of questions of race, gender, religion.

Once again, Curmie quotes himself:

The laws in question, of course, are a paean to cis-gendering at the expense of individual liberty. What passes for the argument suggests that insisting on parental control over what a child can be called will somehow preserve that kid’s retention in the ranks of the cis-gendered. It won’t, of course; it will only add another layer of stress to a young citizen trying to figure things out.

Also, of course, there are some asshole parents out there who think they’re being cute by naming their kid something weird.  (Curmie once had Spring Day and Justin Case in the same class.)  Some poor kid named “Fauntleroy” or, God forbid, “X Æ A-12” or “Techno Mechanicus” is flat-out gonna get teased.  And whereas Muskian spawn are unlikely to venture into a public school, Daddy is a big enough asshole to refuse, on a whim, to let them go by “Bud” or “TM” or whatever. 

Think that couldn’t happen?  Curmie’s standard practice was to call roll on the first day of class by reading the surname and asking the students to tell him what they’d like to be called.  Some wanted to be known by their middle name or surname; some went by initials; a couple went by “Bud” or J.R. (for “Junior”); some used a standard nickname.  One young man said he’d like to be called Bob.  OK, Bob, no problem.  But he came up to me after class and said that if I ever had occasion to talk to his parents, I should always refer to him as Robert or he’d get in trouble.  Yes, really.  The lad was 19!

As Curmie wrote a couple of years ago, 

... if young Dana (to pick one of more than a few names that could refer to a boy or a girl) wants to be Daniel or Danielle (or Dan or Danny, or Dani…), and the parents object… THEY’RE THE PROBLEM. Curmie shudders to contemplate the fate of children who cannot trust their parents to support them as they work through questions of identity. And now, the state wants to take away their sanctuary: adults who see them as they believe themselves to be instead of what the parents want them to be.

The corollary to this is that if I’m in a class with my friend who wants to be called “Stephanie,” I’m gonna call her (or him) Stephanie, regardless of what their name was last year, or even last week.  And every kid in the class is going to follow suit.  So the teacher who submits to the absurd law that says that child must be called “Jacob” alienates not only Stephanie, but every other kid in the class… or, at the very least, all of Stephanie’s friends.  This does not create a positive learning environment.  Of course, the overwhelming majority of GOP pols aren’t actually interested in actual education, like knowing that the Civil War was about slavery or that there are millions of people alive today who remember when segregation was a thing.

Moreover, literally any deviation from the name at birth is verboten.  So if Susan wants to be called Suzy, there’s a form for that.  And when she’s in middle school and wants to be Suzi with a heart instead of a dot over the “i,” it’s another form.  And when she gets to high school and wants to be Sue, it’s another form.  And what happens if she still gets called Suzy by a teacher who goes to her church and has known her all her life?  Can that teacher get fired for the slip-up?  Can that teacher still call her Suzy outside of school?

Want to go by your middle name?  Get Mom and Dad to sign the form.  Curmie is so old that he remembers when Republicans were opposed to bureaucratic administrivia.

But revenons à nos moutons.  Is it reasonable that Calhoun should be out of a job for the transgression (get it? transgression) of acknowledging the right of a student to self-identify?  Well, as Curmie was notorious for saying in his Asian theatre classes, yes and no.  On the one hand, even stupid laws are laws, and disobeying them will inevitably have consequences.  She knew the risk.  On the other, willingness to stand against cruelty and stupidity ought to be applauded, not censured.  She did what she believes was right.  Curmie concurs with her assessment.  So, apparently, do her students and their parents.

The district bosses, having either made the announcement or confirmed its accuracy, are in a no-win situation.  They can’t follow through without being hammered by anyone with the slightest hint of empathy.  But they can’t back down without incurring the wrath of Ron (he’s an adult so we can call him that without a note from his mom) DeSantis and his merry band of howling banshees.

The best solution for Calhoun is to finish out the school year and head for a state that is a little more willing to face 21st century than Florida seems to be.  She could teach… or go on the lecture circuit for, probably, more money.  The best solution for the district is to concentrate on real problems, like the principal and teacher busted for partying with a couple hundred kids with alcohol, drugs, and weapons present.  Up until this week, nearly three months after the incident, those actual (alleged) criminals were on paid leave.  Oh, and the response from school board president Gene Trent?  “When we have thousands of employees, things happen.” 

La la how the life goes on.

Ron DeSantis Wins the Best Impersonation of a George Orwell Novel Award

You won’t be seeing this sight this year.

Those who know Curmie personally know that one of his favorite mantras is “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so.”  This slight tweaking of “actions speak louder than words” or of the difference between commanding and demanding respect tends to be directed at those who claim to care, or sometimes at those who claim to be in control.  If you’re a teacher or a theatre director (two things Curmie knows something about) and you have to tell the students or the actors that you’re in charge, you’re not.

Curmie thought about using that line to address Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s “Freedom Summer” program, but unfortunately the reality is rather more sinister than that, even apart from the co-opting of the name from an actual 1964 civil rights initiative for an exercise in faux patriotic virtue-signaling.  Curmie is therefore pleased to present Governor DeSantis with the Best Impersonation of a George Orwell Novel Award.  You know:  “War Is Peace.  Freedom Is Slavery.  Ignorance Is Strength.”? 

As a key ingredient of the… erm… “freedom” being celebrated in Florida this summer is a directive that the only colors that are permissible to light the state’s bridges from Memorial Day through Labor Day are—you’re way ahead of me here, aren’t you, Gentle Reader?—red, white, and blue.  It is, of course, purely coincidental, as noted in Rex Huppke’s deliciously snarky commentary in USA Today, that this means no rainbow lights for Pride Month, or indeed any yellowish, greenish, or purplish colors for any reason.  And we’re not talking here just about things that would give heart palpitations to bigots conservatives like DeSantis, like orange for National Gun Violence Awareness Day or including green for Juneteenth, which is <checks notes> a national holiday explicitly celebrating actual, literal, freedom. 

But, if, for example, the baseball team from Florida State, Florida, or Miami were to win the College World Series, it’s within the realm of possibility that the folks in Tallahassee, Gainesville, or Coral Gables might want to celebrate by lighting up the local bridges in the school colors, the way New Yorkers light up the Empire State Building if one of the local teams wins the Big Game.  (Or the way people from around the world showed solidarity with Ukraine after the Russian invasion.)  Nope.  Not allowed.  Freedom!

What’s also interesting about this year is that DeSantis now seems eager to embrace his role as authoritarian enforcer of “freedom,” meaning, of course, that Floridians can do what they like as long as Little Ronnie approves.  About this time three years ago, he ran away with his tail between his legs when there was outrage at the Florida Department of Transportation’s decision to turn off the rainbow lights on a Jacksonville bridge.

Then, DeSantis sent forth one of his minions forth to proclaim that “The Governor was most definitely not involved in that decision, and it’s absurd to think otherwise.”  Curmie pauses here to mutter “if you have to tell me, it ain’t so” under his breath.  But although he is a disaster as both a governor and a human being, Ron DeSantis does have one skill: he’s particularly adept at plausible deniability.

Of course, although DeSantis is perhaps only 40% as smart as he thinks he is, he’s not an utter imbecile.  He knows full well that outlawing colored lights on bridges won’t have any appreciable affect.  People will use flags instead of lights, or they’ll light up city hall or the county courthouse.  He’s not going to lose any votes for this little stunt, as anyone who cares about what is represented by, say, rainbow lights for Pride Month wouldn’t have voted for him, anyway.  But he gets to strut for his base and maybe pull in some campaign contributions from wealthy homophobes.  He comes out smelling like a rose… a rose that has been well fertilized with bovine excrement, but a rose nevertheless.

Curmie acknowledges that many of the more ridiculous euphemisms that have degraded the English language over the past few decades have come from the left.  He remembers calling up some mid-level college administrator to ask what the hell “differently abled” was a euphemism for (she wasn’t all that certain, by the way); that was almost 40 years ago.  People who are in this country without the legal right to be here are not “migrants”; convicted felons are not “justice-impacted individuals”; people who are pregnant are still (biologically, at least) women. 

But whereas the Woke phraseology may be the third cousin twice removed from the reality of the situations which are (sort of) being described, at least you can find your way from one term to the other with a road map and a little patience.  Ron DeSantis’s concept of “freedom” is a complete inversion of the term, a misrepresentation on the scale of what used to be known as the “German Democratic Republic,” albeit with fewer and lesser consequences.

Still, for all his authoritarianism and double-speak, DeSantis continues to trail both Greg Abbott and Mitch McConnell in what is shaping up to be an epic struggle for the title of Hypocrite of the Month.  The GOP, of course, cares little if anything about actually solving problems or upholding individual rights (except their own, of course); it just wants to make sure that the country is ruled by those they consider to be the right people… you know, rich het white pseudo-Christian men.  (Actual Christians who want to feed the poor or welcome the stranger need not apply.)

They’d need a little assistance, though.  If Curmie might switch dystopian novels on you, Gentle Reader, the ideal minions would be the equivalent of Brave New World’s Betas: competent enough to serve the interests of the state, but not really capable of independent thought.  In other words, the Republican rank and file, who will continue to elect and re-elect imperious jackasses like Ron DeSantis.

If only the Democrats were much better…

Of Bill O'Reilly, Hoising, and Petards

 

A modern day petard,
You didn’t really want to see a photo of Bill O'Reilly, did you?

We begin, Gentle Reader, with a short lesson in vocabulary and etymology in reference to the title of this entry.  Most people know the word “hoist” as either a verb meaning to raise up or as a noun meaning the mechanism by which that raising up is accomplished.  

Its most common usage today, however, may be in the expression “hoist by his own petard,” an expression employed by the title character in Act III of Hamlet.  (A petard is a medieval gunpowder-based bomb.)  In this expression, “hoist” is not a verb per se, but rather the past participle of the verb “hoise,” a verb meaning pretty much the same thing, but which has long since fallen into disuse. 

We do understand the expression correctly, however: to be hoist by one’s own petard is literally to be blown up by one’s own bomb, or figuratively to be undone by one’s own scheme.  Perhaps the best example in mythology (and subsequently in dramatic literature) is Oedipus, who would not have found himself in quite that relationship with his birth parents had he not attempted to avoid the fate foretold by the oracle.

Anyway, the most recent victim of such self-inflicted damage is the insufferable Bill O’Reilly.  Like so many other right-wing talking heads (Beck, Carlson, Ingraham, et al.), O’Reilly started out as a conservative-leaning commentator who not infrequently actually had something to say, but subsequently took a hard turn into Loonyville when it became apparent he could achieve more fame and fortune by doing so.  Even if O’Reilly weren’t a sexual predator, Curmie would have no sympathy for him. 

The source of the heady aroma of schadenfreude that currently fills the air is the news that two of O’Reilly’s books—Killing Jesus: A History and Killing Reagan: The Violent Assault That Changed a Presidency—are among those that have been at least temporarily pulled by Florida’s Escambia County School District lest they run afoul of Ron DeSantis’s purge of books that anyone anywhere might allege “to contain pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct.” 

The chances that O’Reilly’s books actually meet any reasonable interpretation of the criteria for removal is remarkably close to zero, but the same could be said for the overwhelming majority of the literally thousands of other books similarly pulled from the shelves (see below).  O’Reilly’s objection just got more play, both because people recognize his name and because he was an outspoken proponent of DeSantis’s censorial machinations.

Like most such authoritarian regulations, those currently embroiling Floridians appear to have started as a legitimate concern.  There is little doubt that some books inappropriate for young readers found their way into a few school libraries, and some small percentage of librarians and school administrators failed to provide appropriate safeguards.  But “protecting the children” does not include sheltering them from realities like the facts that slavery and segregation are very much a part of this nation’s history, that gay people exist, or that “loving America” is not the ideology-free perspective the right wing proclaims it to be.

More importantly, perhaps, is that O’Reilly is actually right about one thing (insert stopped clock analogy here): the law as written is disastrously, almost certainly unconstitutionally, vague.  As Curmie wrote about a similar exercise in censorship in Utah last spring, “excluding everything you want to exclude while not forbidding what you don’t want to forbid requires language skills surpassing those of the average state legislator,” and censorial reactionaries are even less likely than the average pol to craft such a bill.

That’s why one Utahn (that’s the correct term, apparently) sought to have the Bible removed from schools: “Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide…. You’ll no doubt find that the Bible, under Utah Code Ann. § 76-10-1227, has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition.”  According to the law, the complainant has a point, as no “socially redeeming value” exception is allowed.

The drafters of such legislation have two things in common: 1). they aren’t really interested in protecting children, but rather on ensuring that their weltanschauung is the only one permitted (OK, they wouldn’t use that word; it’s not ‘Merkin, after all), and 2). they’re relying on selective enforcement leading to prior restraint to do their dirty work.

In Florida, Ron DeSantis’s minions over-stepped in a different way.  By holding individual librarians responsible criminally responsible for allowing one of those naughty books to go unsuppressed, and by attaching absurd penalties for those alleged crimes of omission, they’ve prompted precisely the reaction we see now. 

If a single complaint from a parent (sorry, the internal link in Curmie’s piece is now behind a paywall) can get a 25-year-old episode of “The Wonderful World of Disney” about Ruby Bridges pulled from classrooms lest students come to the obvious and irrefutable conclusion that at a particular moment in time “white people hated black people,” then the Trouble right here in River City isn’t pool, but something that rhymes with pool: Fool, in the person of the Governor of Florida.

Curmie can’t be sure if the recent removal by the same school district that pulled O’Reilly’s books of Webster’s Dictionary for Students, along with over 2800 (!) other books, for potentially violating the state law against “sexual content” was precipitated by an actual concern or as a means of showing just how remarkably stupid the law is.  Curmie fears the suppression was  spawned by the former, but there is no doubt that the latter has been amply demonstrated.

To be fair (sort of), although Curmie doesn’t have immediate access to that particular volume, he suspects that more than a few words involving sexuality may well be spelled and defined therein.  It’s a dictionary! 

Revenons à nos moutons: feeling too much sympathy for hypocrites like Bill O’Reilly, who were all for censorship of other people’s books, may be too big of an ask.  But perhaps, just perhaps, his notoriety might initiate a review, not of books which happen to include a gay character or suggest that slavery may not have been such a good idea, but of a ridiculous, anti-intellectual, ethically unenforceable, and (dare I say it?) un-American law imposed at the behest of one of the country’s foremost proponents of governmental thought control. 

Even Curmudgeons can dream.

The Left and Right Both Hate Free Expression--They Just Do It Differently

Curmie, as anyone who has seen a handful of his posts will know, leans left on most issues, but is more civil libertarian than liberal. 

Those on the left think those on the right want to shut down freedom of expression, and vice versa. Trouble is, they’re both accurate assessments of current reality. It was, after all, the right that forbade doctors from giving their best medical advice to women seeking an abortion. Similarly, it was the left that rejoiced when the Twitter and Facebook accounts of a sitting US President were shut down by those social media corporations. But let’s confine ourselves to events of this month. 

Curmie offers two examples (there are undoubtedly more) on each side. I ask you to believe me that I literally just flipped a coin to decide which to talk about first. Liberals first, then. 

Exhibit A, we’ve already discussed: the Hamline University case in which adjunct professor Erika López Prater was dismissed because she showed a couple of images of the prophet Muhammad. The artworks were shown in a course in global art history. They were by Muslim artists, celebrating the prophet. Students in the course were warned in the syllabus and immediately prior to showing the images in class exactly what was going to happen; they were given the opportunity to opt out of the viewing. No one did. 

Ah, but one student claimed to have been grievously wounded by seeing an image she was given every opportunity to avoid, and every administrator you could mention rushed to appease her tender sensibilities. The professor did nothing wrong, but became a pariah anyway, because pretending to believe the victimization claims of anyone who can claim any kind of minority status is easier for those with no ethical compass, no moral courage, and no actual belief in their protestations of academic freedom. 

Ultimately, with virtually the entire academic community piling on, the administration issued an “oops” statement. But it was too little, too late, and López Prater is suing. Curmie hopes she wins big. Also too little, too late, the Hamline faculty is now asking President Fayneese Miller to resign. 

Exhibit B comes not from a “where’s that?” school like Hamline, but from one of the most respected universities in the world, Stanford. Let’s just say Curmie is glad he didn’t end up there after they recruited him for their PhD program forty-something years ago. 

Anyway: the story. It seems that an as yet unnamed (but apparently identified) student was photographed reading a copy of Mein Kampf, and that photo was circulated on Snapshat. 

The book, by the way, has been required reading in at least one Stanford course of late, albeit only a single chapter, and as a linked pdf. The FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) website suggests that the book is available for loan from the university library; Curmie checked, and can see no copies of the book per se except in the original German. Literally scores of analyses, but no copies of the book itself in English. In other words, the student in question apparently purchased the book. The question “So what?” presents itself here. 

Reading a book, any book, is an exercise in freedom of expression. Curmie supposes this idea could be contorted to excuse actual unethical (but still probably legal) conduct, but barring the specific intention of offending onlookers (a variation on incitement), the student in question is guilty of nothing more than accidental rudeness. 

Of course, as might be expected from those who are never happier than when they can claim to be abused, a Protected Identity Harm (PIH) report has been filed with university authorities. The PIH may or may not be well-intentioned—Curmie doubts it, but you know how he is, don’t you, Gentle Reader? The idea is that anyone can nark on their friends conflate the university with the Stasi “address incidents where a community member experiences harm because of who they are and how they show up in the world.” 

Here, as at Hamline, the censorious asshats were urged on by university-employed religious leaders, in this case Rabbis Jessica Kirschner and Laurie Hahn Tapper, who couldn’t resist the siren song of victimhood: “Jewish people belong at Stanford, and deserve to be respected by our peers.” FFS, literally no one is suggesting otherwise. What is being not merely suggested but screamed from the metaphorical rooftops is that students who want to know what Hitler actually wrote instead of what someone else said he wrote don’t belong at Stanford. Intellectual curiosity used to be considered a good thing. Not anymore, apparently. 

Of course, FIRE is right in declaring that “the process is the punishment”: “Administrators with disciplinary authority formally notifying students they’ve been accused of ‘harm,’ when they’ve done nothing more than read a book, and asking them to ‘acknowledge’ what they’ve done and ‘change’ their ways through restorative justice-type exercises undoubtedly chills student speech.” 

It might be going a bit far to suggest that the author of Mein Kampf would approve of Stanford’s tactics (not their overt political stance, of course), but that suggestion is not far off the mark. 

OK, let’s look at the other side of the ledger: Exhibit C. We all know that Florida governor Ron DeSantis is positioning himself for a presidential run.  Those of us of a particular political disposition might be tempted to suggest that he’s trying to be the sane and not senile version of Donald Trump.  Curmie, to say the least, has never been impressed: he objected to DeSantis’s obviously phony rationale in demanding that everyone—faculty and students alike—at state universities declare their political affiliations. No rational being believed the rhetoric about “competing ideas and perspectives,” especially when there was a not-so-veiled threat of withholding funding if not enough of his acolytes were hired. 

Curmie also wrote:

Diversity of perspective doesn’t require hiring both liberals and conservatives; it requires faculty who know what the hell they’re doing. Curmie has taught plays that are very Catholic, very Jewish, very Buddhist, very Hindu, very atheist; he’s taught plays that advocate for monarchy, for democracy, for socialism, for capitalism, for anarchy. Do I really need to tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’m not an adherent to all of these philosophies?

As for Gov. DeSantis… he's baaaaaack, and he continues his mendacious ways. We knew that because he’s Ron DeSantis and his lips were moving, but just for verification’s sake, let’s look at his desire to make New College of Florida into a “Hillsdale of the South.” (To be fair, Curmie can’t find anywhere those precise words were uttered by DeSantis himself, only by his minion, Education Commissioner Manny Diaz. Kinda doesn’t matter, though.) 

The point is that DeSantis hasn’t the slightest interest in making New College into a Hillsdale. How can Curmie be so sure? Two reasons: 1). Curmie has a dear friend of long standing who teaches at Hillsdale, and we’ve had more than one discussion about life at our respective institutions, and 2). Hillsdale is a private college whose defining characteristic isn’t its conservatism, but rather its libertarianism and self-styled independence from government interference. The government says “your students can’t get Pell Grants unless you do this,” and Hillsdale replies, “Okay, no Pell Grants.” The college is breaking no rules by their refusal, it’s just that the government is flustered by their inability to impose demands. 

New College is a state institution, and DeSantis wants to be able to appoint its board members; if it were a private college, he wouldn’t be able to get his grubby mitts anywhere near its day-to-day operations. He’s a megalomaniacal narcissist, not the slightest bit interested in diversity of perspectives; he wants his own views presented to the exclusion of others, and he wants the state to pay for it. 

Curmie has made the point repeatedly that for the last generation or more, boards of state colleges and universities are appointed for their adherence to the political philosophy of the governor. The state university from which Curmie recently retired had dozens of Regents over the last two decades; nary a one, to the best of Curmie’s knowledge, was a Democrat. Indeed, being active in Republican politics far outstripped any particular skillset or interest in education in the selection process. So whereas DeSantis is less than ethical, he at least has, or, rather, had, the lame but commonplace excuse that everybody does it. 

This is different, though. As Peter Greene writes at Curmudgucation, “Taking the liberal and successful New College and targeting it to become the ‘Hillsdale of the South’ is not about creating more choices, and nobody is even pretending that it is. It’s about silencing one set of voices and amplifying another set.” 

Greene continues by arguing that “School choice advocates who hold Florida and DeSantis up as examples of forward-thinking awesome school choice advances are being disingenuous—Florida is on a road to impose a more ideologically focused authoritarian model of education in which only ideas approved by the governor may be included in schooling.” 

Curmie agrees, and notes also that DeSantis wants to overthrow the tenure system, audit money spent on DEI programs (this could actually be legit, but it’s Ron DeSantis, so we’d be wise to expect the worst, especially in terms of an attempt to suppress Critical Race Theory), block AP courses on African American Studies (newsflash, Ron, it’s not your call)… well, you get the idea. This is the “free speech” guy conservatives salivate over? Seriously? 

And so we move on to Exhibit D. Now we’re in the great (or perhaps not so great) state of North Dakota. Needless to say, Curmie is not an expert on things in the Peace Garden State (yes, Curmie had to look that up). There are actually two stories here, but Curmie is going to lump them together because of their chronological propinquity. The first to catch Curmie’s attention wasn’t in the form of a news story per se, but in a post by the above-mentioned Peter Greene. His post is titled “ND: Actual Anti-Furry Legislation. Really,” which sort of borders on clickbait because the essay is really about some pretty creepy manifestations of transphobia. 

You should check out Greene’s post in its entirety, Gentle Reader, but there are two specific points that need to be emphasized. First, North Dakota (like Missouri, apparently) clearly has no real problems to solve or no sane person would be wasting time on stuff like this. Second, like Texas’s abortion bill of a couple years back, there’s money to be had for narking on your neighbors. At least the left only encourages this kind of crap; they don’t provide monetary incentives. 

The other North Dakota story concerns proposed legislation being pushed by the House majority leader to give university presidents the right to fire tenured faculty pretty much at will. A decision to do so could not be appealed by the faculty member, and “the president and any administrators designated to assist the president shall fulfill these duties without fear of reprisal or retaliation. No complaint, lawsuit or other allegation is allowed against a president or other administrator for actions taken pursuant to these provisions.” 

This idiocy makes tenure meaningless, of course, and completely ignores both the advantages of a robust tenure system and the obligations owed to faculty who took a position or didn’t leave because they believed the state and the university would behave ethically. 

More to the point: the governor appoints the board, the board appoints (and fires or rewards) the president, and the president is to be granted absolute, unrestricted (by internal appeal or lawsuit) authority to fire even tenured faculty. (Curmie notes that Kansas tried this crap a couple of years ago, disingenuously invoking financial exigencies caused by COVID. Guess what party controls Kansas’s government.) What could possibly go wrong? 

Neither the left nor the right, then, really give a damn about free expression. Curmie won’t bother to link all the examples he’s written about over the years, but there have been a lot of them, from both sides, and scores of others he didn’t get to. As Hall of Fame baseball manager Casey Stengel would say, you can look it up. Both sides want to control what happens in the classroom; Curmie was about to say the left is more interested in what happens outside the classroom, the right in controlling the curriculum and the faculty… but that really isn’t true, at least universally. 

The one difference is the strategy. Most of the repression from the left comes from the campus per se, generally from idiot administrators at both the university and secondary school levels. The right prefers to legislate from outside the institution itself, citing often imaginary problems that need to be solved. 

Neither side seems willing to allow faculty to teach and students to learn. ‘Twas not ever thus, and the future of education and indeed of the nation depends on returning to free expression in and out of the classroom, to the quest for truth rather than the dubious claim to have found it, and to finding an appropriate balance between encouraging disparate perspectives and believing (or pretending to believe) that they’re all equally valid.

Ah, Florida...

Curmie had a post underway, then postponed it because something else came along, and now he’s putting that project on the back burner because of this.  I first read about this story on Salon.com, but that’s an extremely left-leaning site, so I looked for other sources, because it couldn’t be this bad, right?  Right?

Well, Business Insider, that bastion of Commie propaganda, says pretty much the same thing in their story.  Florida is once again making its pitch to be the principal laughingstock of the nation.  I wish they’d stop, not because their idiocy affects me directly, but the Texas legislature really resents being out-stupided, and they’ll develop a scheme even more hare-brained (and repressive) than this. 

Governor Ron DeSantis
Censorious Asshat

Governor Ron DeSantis this week signed into law that requires the state’s public universities to survey their faculty, staff, and students about their political beliefs.  The Florida GOP wants to ensure an environment in which “competing ideas and perspectives are presented.”  

This is an absolute lie, of course.  All you have to do is look at the rhetoric of House Speaker Chris Sprowls, who may be even more reprehensible than DeSantis; he argues that Florida’s students need to be taught “about loving America” and “what our real history is and what our legacy is.” 

Well, our “real history” includes slavery; lies and broken promises to First Nations people; internment camps for Japanese-Americans; discrimination against Jews, Catholics, Muslims, women, homosexuals; the use of atomic weapons on civilians… the list goes on.  That’s not all our history is about, of course.  There were, and are, ways in which this truly is the greatest country in the world.  But we’re talking about university students here: they’re old enough and mature enough to know that George Washington didn’t admit to chopping down the cherry tree with his little hatchet.

A nation that can recognize and confront its failures to deliver the “liberty and justice for all” its rhetoric promises is inherently stronger than one which hides away its darker moments like crazy Uncle Elmo whom we never let out of the attic.  Sometimes the only way to disinfect the wound is to rip off the scab.  By the way, apparently Sprowls (and DeSantis, and most of the rest of the Florida GOP) believes that “loving America” is ideology-free.  Uh… no.

Of course, the entire idea of threatening to withhold funding from universities which might have disproportionately large numbers of (gasp!) Democrats is both sinister and doomed to failure.  Let’s face it, people will lie if their livelihood is on the line.  (There is, by the way, no guarantee of anonymity for those answering the survey.) 

And it is certainly true that universities (in certain departments at certain schools, at least) are indeed primarily staffed by folks who are more likely to be liberal.  The average university professor (if Curmie does say so himself) tends to be well above average in intellect and possessed of a good work ethic.  Such a person could make more money developing a new marketing campaign for Amalgamated WidgetCorp.  Crude but not altogether inaccurate generalization: capitalists tend to prefer money; socialists are more likely to seek to benefit the society at large.  Curiously, the former like their government-funded infrastructure and the latter would willingly be paid more.

More to the point, my politics are none of the state’s damned business.  That’s why we have secret ballots, after all.  If, and only if, my political stance shuts off legitimate debate, then that’s a problem.  But the presumption must be that I am operating in good faith until it is proved conclusively that I am not.  Forces on both sides of the political divide would rather make us prove innocence.  That is un-American. 

Ah, but Governor DeSantis has heard fears from “a lot of parents” that their offspring are being “indoctrinated.”  1). That’s because DeSantis and his cronies are screaming such nonsense from the rooftops.  2). What’s happening more likely than not is that the indoctrination happened when little Johnny or Suzy was growing up, and that what happens in the college classroom is in fact a challenge to that pre-existing indoctrination.

This is not to suggest, of course, that all faculty are blameless, or indeed that there aren’t threats to freedom of expression emanating from the left.  Of course, there are.  They’re real, and no one who’s been paying attention thinks otherwise.  But this bill is using an assault rifle to kill a guppy.  It can only lead to an increasingly high stakes battle with both sides moving away from the real issue for the sake of winning the argument rather than improving education.

It is also true that on Curmie’s campus, there are some faculty far further to the right than Curmie’s most liberal colleague is to the left.  One professor at this state university gave students extra credit for memorizing Bible verses (needless to say, this wasn’t a course in comparative religion).  The administration loved him. 

Moreover, this effort demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the way universities work.  Diversity of perspective doesn’t require hiring both liberals and conservatives; it requires faculty who know what the hell they’re doing.  Curmie has taught plays that are very Catholic, very Jewish, very Buddhist, very Hindu, very atheist; he’s taught plays that advocate for monarchy, for democracy, for socialism, for capitalism, for anarchy.  Do I really need to tell you, Gentle Reader, that I’m not an adherent to all of these philosophies?

The same is true for the history part of my courses: I suppose that Curmie’s dislike for blowing up innocent people, or slaughtering them, or starving them to death… this could be taken as a political stance, but it would be kind of a stretch to call that a comprehensive philosophy, wouldn’t it? 

And whereas, as noted in a piece I wrote a month or so ago, students will know something of my politics when I refer to them by their preferred pronouns or suggest that part of choosing a theatre season is ensuring that there are qualitatively good and quantitatively enough roles for actors of different demographic profiles, that doesn’t mean they know where I stand on any particular issue except in the most general terms (cops killing civilians is sometimes but not always justified; what about this particular case?).  To the best of my knowledge, no current student even knows of the existence of this blog.

There’s also the matter of academic freedom.  Especially but not exclusively tenured faculty are, and should be, granted the ability to determine the content and structure of their courses.  The Florida GOP stratagem, of course, represents the first step toward subjecting higher education to the censorial powers of whoever happens to have the political advantage at a given moment.  Given the splintering of the American electorate and the intransigent extremism of both sides, that’s a terrifying prospect in the short term, and it won’t get any better if the blues instead of the reds are in power.

Finally, one is tempted to wonder at the rationale for requiring students to acquiesce to this violation of their privacy.  At least the desire to suppress the rights of faculty makes sense in amoral, utilitarian terms.  But the only possibility for studying the student body is to track changes over time, looking for the “gotcha” moment when the senior class is marginally more liberal than they were as freshmen.

Well, duh.  At least in certain ways, of course they are.  The classroom isn’t the only place that learning takes place.  Curmie had a couple of gay friends in high school, but they weren’t out to him at the time.  In college, I “knowingly knew” gay friends.  And there were more people of different races, religions, and, yes, political philosophies.  In the classroom, I learned some facts that challenged my beliefs and some that bolstered them.  That is what is supposed to happen.

Curmie emerged from college more liberal in some ways, more conservative in others, and certainly more skeptical of all pronouncements from either side.  This, too, is what is supposed to happen. 

It is only a matter of time before Governor DeSantis, Representative Sprowls, or one of their cohort declares the imminent arrival of Shari’a Law on American shores.  Newsflash: such enforced orthodoxy is already here; it’s manifested in this legislation.