What's So Special About The Speech Of Academics, Other Than It Is Often Stupid?

I get it. Academic freedom is important in the context of research into uncomfortable topics. But some fat-assed bitch shooting her mouth off about the former first lady is not by any stretch of the imagination related to academic freedom, especially since it was uttered on a public forum and not part of any academic endeavor. It is simply a function of free speech. And the aforementioned fat-assed bitch has every right to say what she said. Good for her! She lives in a free society, in which the jack-booted thugs of government are not breaking down her door and hauling her off to prison.

But that doesn't mean that her speech is or should be repercussion-free. We need to separate academic freedom from free speech, because our left-leaning academics (and that is most of them) hide behind tenure and say things that are deserving of repercussions in any reasonable workplace.

If she published a scholarly (hah!) paper making the charge that George Bush and Barbara Bush are responsible for the deaths of millions of people, and actually backed it up with some data and fact and other messy and difficult things like logical analysis, then I would grudgingly support the notion that her work is deserving of some protection.

But jabbering like a fool and looking like nothing so much as an angry sow in a barnyard is not the same thing.

[Although...Barbara Bush Foundation For Family Literacy is almost exactly like genocide]

posted by CBD at 12:00 PM

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