I read the book on these killings when it came out. Frightening.
Be careful what you hand out
erinoconnor.org
By Erin O'Connor
At the University of Southern Illinois at Carbondale, award-winning history professor Jonathan Bean has become the center of an impassioned controversy over the limits of academic freedom and the politics of balanced pedagogy. InsideHigherEd.com has the details:
...in the last two weeks, he has found himself under attack in his department --with many of his history colleagues questioning his judgment for distributing an optional handout about the "Zebra Killings," a series of murders of white people in San Francisco in the 1970s. His dean also told his teaching assistants that they didn't need to finish up the semester working with him, and she called off discussion sections of his course for a week so TA's would not have to work while considering their options.
Students and professors at the university are trading harsh accusations about insensitivity and censorship, talking about possible lawsuits, and assessing the damage. Shirley Clay Scott, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, sent a memo to faculty members warning that they could "easily self-destruct if we do not exercise restraint and reason."
Support for Bean appears strong on the campus, at least outside of his department and his dean's office, and several national groups that defend professors who get in trouble for their views have offered to help him.
The offending handout can be read in its original form at FrontPageMagazine.com; Bean handed out a condensed version.
Bean is receiving strong support from the campus paper, The Daily Egyptian, whose writers have expressed both support for professors' right to teach controversial material and faith in students' ability to differentiate among bogus and credible ideas. The staff editorial, "Feeling the Chill," is well worth reading--among other things, it suggests that the students at Carbondale have a stronger grasp of the principles of liberal education than many of their professors and certainly of their dean. |
