I’m surprised that no one has mentioned “tenure”, because this is exactly the problem that academic tenure was designed to solve. The point of having professors be relatively unfireable, after they’ve demonstrated a basic minimum standard of academic output, was precisely to allow them to explore controversial opinions without having that investigation be immediately shut down because it was offensive to broader society.
It seems like you’re advocating for more tenure, or at least tenure-like insulation across all of society.
I think I would like more areas with tenure-like insulation, but I think I’m more pointing at what happens when you remove it where it already exists.
There’s e.g. much more second-guessing of rank-and-file employees who previously would’ve been shielded by their superiors, these days, which has come with upsides (abuse and harassment getting noticed and addressed way more than it used to) and downsides (professors being publicly censured for saying a Chinese word that sounds a little bit like the n-word, in the context of teaching Chinese words to students).
I’m surprised that no one has mentioned “tenure”, because this is exactly the problem that academic tenure was designed to solve. The point of having professors be relatively unfireable, after they’ve demonstrated a basic minimum standard of academic output, was precisely to allow them to explore controversial opinions without having that investigation be immediately shut down because it was offensive to broader society.
It seems like you’re advocating for more tenure, or at least tenure-like insulation across all of society.
I think I would like more areas with tenure-like insulation, but I think I’m more pointing at what happens when you remove it where it already exists.
There’s e.g. much more second-guessing of rank-and-file employees who previously would’ve been shielded by their superiors, these days, which has come with upsides (abuse and harassment getting noticed and addressed way more than it used to) and downsides (professors being publicly censured for saying a Chinese word that sounds a little bit like the n-word, in the context of teaching Chinese words to students).