Florida's Anti-Intellectualism, A Philosophy Prof's Final Class and Gino Odjick - Dinner Table Digest № 36
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Sections: Florida’s Stop WOKE Bill / Barbarians / A Philosophy Professor’s Final Class / Saying Goodbye to Gino Odjick
HB7 “Stop Woke” Bill and the University - Bruce Janz - University of Central Florida
My friend and professor of digital humanities at the University of Central Florida, Bruce Janz, penned an analysis and response to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ‘Stop WOKE’ Bill, which threatens the independence of educators to teach their craft without persecution from the state. As a professor directly affected by the bill, Dr. Janz is in a position to comment on how the right-wing determines which concepts are acceptable and which ones aren’t, quite ironically the very thing they accuse the left of doing. Dr. Janz writes,
HB7 undermines … both how the university approaches knowledge and who the university assumes the characters are who are searching for knowledge. First, it defines which concepts are acceptable and, more importantly, which are not acceptable for consideration. … what the bill says is not what it means. What it means is that the provision in the bill is not really meant to suggest that all races are equal. It is meant to negate that massive amount of research over a century which finds that race has been a useful creation of Europeans to subjugate others. And, that this has not just disappeared because we now decide that everyone is equal. There is still a history of this marginalization which has profound effects to this day. We know from the discussion around this bill that the intent is to suppress discussions of race and gender. This is the “woke” that animates it. …
HB7 sets forth a set of assumptions, with the mistaken assertion that it will lead to free inquiry. It will not. It will lead the opposite direction. By putting specific concepts into law and attaching punishments to them (but, with very little guidance on how the law is applied, what the punishments are, etc.), the space for inquiry will close down in the university. People will avoid talking about things that might come close to the line, wherever they think that line is (and it is extremely unclear where it is, and it seems that the only way to find out is to end up being charged or disciplined).
And this might be the intended effect of the law and of those who implemented it. If we look at this law politically, thinking in terms of advantage to the party in power, all possible outcomes are desirable outcomes from their point of view. If it creates a chill on what can be discussed, that is a good thing, because it will limit the discussion of uncomfortable questions. If it results in university lawyers and administrators overreaching and restricting faculty from more than the law speaks to, that is desirable for the same reason the first scenario is. If it results in a professor being disciplined or fired, that is desirable because it confirms to the political base that the faculty, incorrectly perceived as standing against so-called “real Americans”, will be dealt with firmly. If it results in withholding funding from universities, that saves taxpayers money. And, if it results in new hires to replace those who have been fired, that too is good if hires become approved by a board of trustees instead of a university president. Every single outcome is, in other words, damaging to the university understood as the marketplace of ideas. It is hard to see this as anything other than the point of the law, the feature rather than the bug.
So, this is not a statement on what the politics ought to be, but simply one that notes the political gain for one party from a law which misrepresents how knowledge is formulated in universities. The point of all this is to make the case that HB7, far from establishing a basis of equality and fairness in inquiry, actually suppresses essential questions and distorts the university’s fundamental purpose. The university is not a mall of ideas. It is not simply a credential factory. It is not there to confirm what we already believe. It is not just a place where motivated reasoning results in justification for our previously held beliefs. (emphasis added)
According to a January 18th report from the right-wing National Review, the Stop WOKE Act has been used to kill the AP African Studies program in Florida schools:
On January 12, however, the administration of Florida governor Ron DeSantis wrote a letter to the College Board informing it that Florida was rejecting its request for state approval of APAAS. The letter, from the Florida Department of Education’s Office of Articulation, goes on to state that, “as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” At the same time, the letter notes that “in the future, should College Board be willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content, FDOE will always be willing to reopen the discussion.” In short, DeSantis has decided that APAAS does in fact violate Florida’s Stop WOKE Act by attempting to persuade students of at least some tenets of CRT.
I am continually struck by the fact that the only people who have actually legislated the censorship of educational material, are, in fact, the right wing. There is no campus free speech threat from the left, only continued systemic destruction of educational systems by hostile right wing zealots.
Barbarians
One of my favourite historical events is the Battle of Teutoburg Forest, in which a Romanized member of a Germanic tribe known as Arminius united area tribes together to defeat Varus and his three Roman Legions in 9AD. Netflix recently put together a re-telling of the story, featuring actual dialogue in Latin and proto-Germanic. It’s well worth a watch!
A Philosophy Professor’s Final Class - Jordi Graupera - The New Yorker
The author sits in on the final class of New School philosopher Richard Bernstein, a seminar class on the philosophy of Hannah Arendt. Recounting a conversation with German social and political philosopher Jürgen Habermas, Graupera writes,
The two philosophers agreed that the seed of sectarian politics seemed to lie within the rational project of modernity: people had tried to establish the one true political system on the basis of reason when, really, all politics had to be rooted in a social give-and-take with others. But Habermas argued that, in the process of rationally justifying our moral and political beliefs to one another, the force of the better argument could lead us to moral and political norms that transcend the limits of our communities. Bernstein would not go that far. To think like that, he maintained, one would have to believe that there was a fundamental difference between the way we know the world and the way we decide how to behave—or, in Kantian terms, between theoretical and practical uses of reason. A mistake, in his view.
Still, their shared commitment to philosophical dialogue was the basis for a lifelong friendship. Habermas called Bernstein “a genius of finding a kernel of truth in the philosophy of the other.” After Habermas gave his talk at Haverford, Bernstein considered going to Munich to visit him—and to see Dachau. “I said, I can’t do this,” Bernstein recalled, “I am going to have nightmares.” But, in 1976, he decided to face his fears. He liked to recount how Habermas met him at the airport. Bernstein had been studying the origins and development of different types of camps. “I thought I was fully prepared, but I wasn’t,” he told the class. What shocked him even more than the evidence of all the dead bodies was the record-keeping.
After Bernstein recounted the visit, he asked a student to read a passage from “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” Bernstein knew the page number offhand, from repeated visits: “When a man is faced with the alternative of betraying and thus murdering his friends or of sending his wife and children, for whom he is in every sense responsible, to their death; when even suicide would mean the immediate murder of his own family—how is he to decide?”
Pavel Bure on the Death of Vancouver Canucks Legend, Gino Odjick
One of my favourite players from the Vancouver Canucks mid-90’s heyday is Gino Odjick, known as much for his heart and passion as for what his fists could do to other enforcers. His role on the team was to protect the star, the Russian Rocket and my favourite Vancouver Canuck of all time, Pavel Bure. When he passed away this week after a long battle with an illness, Bure was the first person to offer his condolences:
“Gino was selfless, always ready to help on the ice,” Bure added. “He did not spare himself for the sake of his teammates, helped them, protected the guys from his team. He was a tough guy — it’s a very hard hockey job.
“But he was exactly the same in real life. Always helped friends. Gino was very friendly, funny, loved life. Huge loss.”
I loved watching him on the ice, always chippy and ready to take one for the team. I will miss him. Here are a few highlights
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Great summary of the free speech situation in Florida -- the situation is so bad that I remember hearing that even mathematics textbooks are being rejected for being "too woke"