TO OUR LIBERAL COLLEAGUES
The picture above comes to us from the University of Kentucky. You may think the white curtains are in place because of construction activities, but they are covering a remarkable piece of artwork depicting Kentucky in the 1800's. The painting has been on the wall since 1934, when artist Anne Rice O'Hanlon completed her work as part of a public works project.
The curtain was put up because the painting, shown to the left, includes African-Americans working in the fields--which they did in the 1800's.
The administration, responding to a handful of complaints, directed that the curtain be installed to protect students and faculty from seeing this piece.
Covering art is censorship, regardless of the reason. It is censorship and censorship is anathema to the mission of the university.
We ask you, is this what you desire?
Is this what you want?
We suspect we know the answers to these questions and we suspect that you, too, have grown increasingly concerned over the tyranny, censorship, and outright oppression sweeping across our campuses.
You, and only you, can change this. As you know, there are not enough conservatives or libertarians on campus to slow down this rush to madness. Only you can stop this.
We encourage you to speak up at faculty meetings and to oppose the continued erosion of faculty rights. Speak up when the diversity office demands you hire someone you don't want. Speak up against the unfairness and danger of secret trials and tribunals. Don't participate in efforts that further restrict our campus freedoms and that allow for or encourage censorship.
We have an obligation to preserve all that is great with our institutions of higher education and to pass these institutions on to the next generation of scholars better than when we inherited them. We can. It is not too late.
Please,
We can change the course of our institutions by reviving the classically liberal principles on which they were founded. Those principles likely attracted you to the university and likely flow through you, just like they do us.
Censorship, secret tribunals, and the continued explosion of the administrative class has done grievous harm to our institutions and to real individuals; people with names, faces, family, and careers. Indeed, the lives of good people have been ruined, their careers and reputations lost or tarnished, because WE allow zealotry to flourish on our campuses.
We are better than this and WE have the power to demand change.
Stand against the curtains of ignorance, the tyranny of the minority, and intellectual intolerance.
The curtain was put up because the painting, shown to the left, includes African-Americans working in the fields--which they did in the 1800's.
The administration, responding to a handful of complaints, directed that the curtain be installed to protect students and faculty from seeing this piece.
Covering art is censorship, regardless of the reason. It is censorship and censorship is anathema to the mission of the university.
We ask you, is this what you desire?
- Do you support censorship, the continued erosion of academic freedom, and being dictated to by a handful of campus radicals and self-professed diversity experts?
- Do you want faculty governance to be further reduced?
- Do you want to be investigated secretly by your university after anonymous complaints lodged by students or faculty over something you said or wrote? Laura Kippnis, a well known feminist, was put through a Title IX witch hunt after anonymous complaints by students who didn't like what she had written.
- Do you support Bias Response Teams who examine your syllabi and who validate every banal complaint about you--secretly?
- Do you support the suspension of due process rights extended to students processed by Title IX? If your son was hauled before a Title IX tribunal and exculpatory evidence wasn't considered, nor were police reports, nor was he allowed to question his accuser ............. what would you do?
Is this what you want?
We suspect we know the answers to these questions and we suspect that you, too, have grown increasingly concerned over the tyranny, censorship, and outright oppression sweeping across our campuses.
You, and only you, can change this. As you know, there are not enough conservatives or libertarians on campus to slow down this rush to madness. Only you can stop this.
We encourage you to speak up at faculty meetings and to oppose the continued erosion of faculty rights. Speak up when the diversity office demands you hire someone you don't want. Speak up against the unfairness and danger of secret trials and tribunals. Don't participate in efforts that further restrict our campus freedoms and that allow for or encourage censorship.
We have an obligation to preserve all that is great with our institutions of higher education and to pass these institutions on to the next generation of scholars better than when we inherited them. We can. It is not too late.
Please,
- Stand for free speech
- Stand for academic freedom
- Stand up for due process
- Stand up for intellectual rigor
- Stand up against the destructiveness of diversity ideology and identity politics
- Stand up for true intellectual tolerance
We can change the course of our institutions by reviving the classically liberal principles on which they were founded. Those principles likely attracted you to the university and likely flow through you, just like they do us.
Censorship, secret tribunals, and the continued explosion of the administrative class has done grievous harm to our institutions and to real individuals; people with names, faces, family, and careers. Indeed, the lives of good people have been ruined, their careers and reputations lost or tarnished, because WE allow zealotry to flourish on our campuses.
We are better than this and WE have the power to demand change.
Stand against the curtains of ignorance, the tyranny of the minority, and intellectual intolerance.
