Apparently, someone at Vermont University didn't want Ben Stein there talking about "the great What?…. Depression," or anything else:
In other venues, Stein has expressed opinions critical of evolutionary theory and in favor of intelligent design, for which he has been sharply criticized in academic circles. He has also offered views on the role of science in the Holocaust that some have found offensive. Fogel said he had been only "vaguely aware" of these controversial views.
After UVM announced Stein's selection Thursday, Fogel said in a written statement, "profound concerns have been expressed to me by persons both internal and external to the university about his selection." Fogel said he received hundreds of e-mails beginning Saturday — including only about a half-dozen from people at UVM — contending, generally, that Stein's views of science were "affronts to the basic tenets of the academy."
"Once I apprised Mr. Stein of these communications, he immediately and most graciously declined his commencement invitation," Fogel's statement said.
After UVM announced Stein's selection Thursday, Fogel said in a written statement, "profound concerns have been expressed to me by persons both internal and external to the university about his selection." Fogel said he received hundreds of e-mails beginning Saturday — including only about a half-dozen from people at UVM — contending, generally, that Stein's views of science were "affronts to the basic tenets of the academy."
"Once I apprised Mr. Stein of these communications, he immediately and most graciously declined his commencement invitation," Fogel's statement said.
And the culture wars go on and on and on… Bueller? Bueller?
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Academics seem to have some very real free speech and tolerance issues with anyone who thinks differently than they do. Never mind that Ben Stein was going to discuss the failure of the New Deal, not biology or eugenics. Everyone knows they were looking for any excuse to not hear the truth about the failure of fiscal policy, massive deficit spending, and central economic planning.
Maybe they can get Bill Ayers to speak, like USC did. Since Canada refuses to admit him, he has some open dates on his calendar.
It grates on me to see any element within academia “disinvite” anybody from speaking on campus on the basis of their viewpoints…for me that’s part of the same principle as the situation with USC’s invitation to Bill Ayers several years ago.
But on closer examination of the link Brad provided, there’s much less here than meets the eye. First of all, there’s a distinction between giving a talk/lecture at a university and being the commencement speaker, which is a singular honor. Moreover, the reason Stein had been invited to commencement in the first place is because he had ALREADY given a lecture at the University of Vermont which had been very enthusiastically received. This is simply about the community not feeling comfortable with going the extra step of bestowing the special status of being the commencement speaker.
The idea of someone being excluded from an academic forum because some people disagree with some of his ideas baffles the mind. My concept of the educational experience is one where one is exposed to all ideas and taught the skill to cull through the mass of data and form independent ideas. Politically correct new McCarthyism is scary.
Academia has never been about, nor should it ever be about being “exposed to all ideas,” even though culling through a “mass of data” is definitely useful to social scientists.
The search for truth in the broadest sense of the word must repose upon the accumulated scholarship of generations past. It is their legacy that guides the Great Conversation of Western Civilization in our universities–not the notion that every idea should get a hearing.
If scholars and scientists don’t want an anti-evolutionist to speak, it’s because there are NOT two sides to the question of whether or not evolution took place and there is no controversy in science about it, only among right-wing preachers with poor backgrounds in science. Scientists don’t debate pastors because pastors lack the standing and the knowledge base to participate in the debate.
Are there two sides to the slavery question? How about the “idea” that child pornography should be permitted? Are there two or more sides to that question?
The place for debate amongst any and everybody about anything is in the media and in the wider free marketplace of ideas. It is not the role of the university to remain neutral on issues about which the academic community is virtually unanimous on the basis of scholarship and scientific research.
In short, universities have the right to use their accumulated knowledge to make decisions about what they will or will not endorse. This is always subject to change as the ACADEMIC community, not laymen, feel the need to make changes based upon empirical evidence and cogent reasoning.
The university should never dignify the likes of a fundamentalist preacher or a political bigot. Otherwise, what’s the point of expertise if you can’t use it to make judgments and to guide public understanding? Why spend so much on university education and research if ultimately no ontological or epistemological decisions can ever be made??
Drivel, drivel, drivel Rich. For one who appears to be an educated person, I can only surmise that your education is severely lacking in anything resembling honest intellectual pursuits or are willing to encompass the possibilities that exist outside your insulated world of fantasy. No matter how you string your well chosen words together, they always come back to a closed mind, intolerant of anything resembling a faith in God or anything that cannot be proven by science.
A true intellectual will allow dissenting views and acknowledge that there are always possibilities outside their own highly held beliefs. A self-centered jerk with a high I.Q. will always close his or her mind to anything they don’t agree with. I think in your case, this is the correct fitting shoe. You are an intelligent bigot, not an intellecual as you would want us to believe. Remember, bigots come in all stripes, not just racial, religious, or gender. (bigot – one who holds blindly and intolerantly to a particular creed, opinion, etc. – a prejudiced person)
Yeah, Rich, you got Ben Stein pegged. He’s sho nuff a “right-wing preacher with a poor background in science.”
He’s a Jewish Yale law school valedictorian, professor of law and author of 28 books with a degree from Columbia, too.
A real dumb Dora.
And, yes, Rich, academia is indeed about being exposed to different ideas, as long as the different ideas are being preached by a left-wing nut like Bill Ayers. A right-wing nut like Ben Stein, no, academia’s not interested in him.
“I am far more pro-science than the Darwinists,” Stein wrote. “I want all scientific inquiry to happen, not just what the ruling clique calls science.”
I myself share that view.
By the way, Stein backed out of the commencement speech.
“I did not ask him not to come,” University of Vermont president Dan Fogel said. “I was not going to let him be blind-sided by controversy.”
p.m., I like your style. Many on both sides on this blog are genuinely intellegent, thinking, reasonable people. I like to read their comments and learn. When I read anything by Rich, out of necessity, I have to remove what Hillary labeled as “a suspension of disbelief”. This guy is a true example of a fustian ink-slinger.
“Rich” is such a caricature of socialist bigotry that I wonder if he is just a fictional character created by Brad Warthen.
No. That would require a level of introspection and objectivity which Mr. Warthen does not seem to possess.
Maybe we can get Ben Stein and Bill Ayers to do a debate. Even though I find Ben Stein reprehensible I would have no problem allowing his views to be aired at a major university. And if someone wants to discuss the scientific evidence for the existence of the tooth fairy that would be ok too.
Then again there’s probably limited time available for these types of lectures. Why waste it on someone as ridiculous and irrelevant as Ben Stein.
Uh oh. I read this wrong. This was the commencement address. Of course Ben Stein shouldn’t speak at that. He’s a nut.
To the extent that you’re trying to say that the secular left silences the religous right (and you are Brad), I’ll need more than anecdotes about commencement speeches (or license plates) to convince me. A large majority of this nation still identifies itself as Christian and I don’t know that I’ve ever gone a day in my life without hearing or seeing a reference or symbol of Christianity.
Also Stein falls short as regards to Academia (to many here I know that is a dirty word). But that is what what science is, and Intelligent Design(ID) just does not meet the criteria that would make it worthy of “academic” study. Stein’s proposition itself is backwards, setting out to prove a foregone conclusion. And IF successful, would totally undermine many of the fundamental precepts Christianity, like the importance of Faith. Stein was also one of the great cheerleaders of de-reg, supply side economics, and was rah-rahing an eminent economic turn around as little as 6 months ago.
And you can see where we are now.
If Ben Stein was going to speak about economics, are you saying he should be censored because of his religious beliefs?
Or should he be censored for describing the factual reasons stimulus spending failed in the New Deal, which challenges socialist religious beliefs?
It reminds me of when a long-time editor of Scientific American was fired after the other editors found out he attended church and taught Sunday School.
One more comment and I’m going to let this go as such arguments are recursive and never ending. Mr. Stein is free to pitch his views as he sees them or do the really difficult thing and submit them peer reviewed scientific journal.
If he’s serious, let he and his fellow “intelligent design” friends do the research and produce the evidence to support their claims. And he was also not censored, he backed out, and was never disinvited from attending. He was also the man who said that “science leads you to kill people.”
Perhaps Liberty University would be a better venue.
Sure, Ben Stein wasn’t censored.
He just withdrew after leftist goons started making threats to demonstrate and shout down his speech, like they do to all new ideas.
Y’all,
I never once suggested that Ben Stein should be censored in the free marketplace of ideas, much less of course through any positive enactment of the government. People have the right to say and put forth pretty much anything they want. Of course, there are exceptions to free speech. You can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater that is not on fire, nor can you call for the violent overthrow of the government or for physical harm to anyone. Otherwise, if you can pay for the publication and broadcast of your views, you are quite free to say almost anything.
Being free to say something, however, is not the same as dignifying an opinion as valid within the context within which it is proposed. Intelligent design proponents certainly have the right to preach their views; they do not have the right to expect universities to grant them anything like a hearing, let alone equal time.
There are many legitimate debates within the various disciplines of academe, but they fall within the intellectual parameters of those disciplines and observe the tenets of discourse proper to each.
As for religion, it has been and continues to be studied even in secular universities as a human phenomenon worthy of scholarly interest, but it is not the place of the university to accept anything on faith of a religious nature.
What we are discussing in this thread is epistemology; that is the branch of philosophy that deals with issues involved in how we know what we know and the means by which we acquire knowledge.
Universities are necessarily restrictive of academic discourse because it must be framed in terms of the epistemological constraints of the various disciplines. It’s not just a matter of having a freewheeling debate. That sort of thing can go on in the public square where the rules are a whole lot looser.
I think the sensitivity some of you expressed above has to do with a feeling of unfair exclusion. A lot of Americans feel exactly the same way and wonder, why can’t everyone’s ideas be heard?
The fact is, they can be. But there is a time and a place for it. The university has its intellectual “rules of engagement,” and these must be respected if knowledge is to advance. Only those opinions that conform to what the university considers to “knowledge” get to be heard.
As for evolution, the “controversy” in the public square can be discussed in philosophy, sociology, law, and history classes. Since there is no controversy over the fact of evolution in modern biology, it is simply not appropriate for a science class. Science is empirically based.
Last night I saw on Youtube a chemist dressed in a white coat who purportedly had scientific evidence for creationism. He began his talk by stating that, first and foremost, he would read the appropriate text from the Bible which would set for him his research agenda. If the Bible said something, he stated, it was up to science to prove it.
Actually, that’s not science; that’s religion based on faith and revelation. You cannot engage in a disinterested search for truth if you accept anything on a non-rational, non-empirical basis–particularly if what you accept on faith cannot be questioned.
Not all preachers are intolerant bigots, but a lot of them are in all the world’s religions. They proclaim their truths from the rooftops and fund huge television ministries, as well as raft of religious activities of all kinds.
But it’s all faith-based, and that’s why it has no place in serious academic discourse, except as an object of study in the larger field of human behavior and history.
BTW, I am not Brad’s alter ego. He is a practicing Catholic; I am a lapsed Catholic with a strong Catholic cultural orientation even though I am a thoroughgoing non-believer.
Jessup, academia has its status quos (or statuses quo?), among which Darwinism (evolution) may rank absolutely highest.
Ironically, considering what evolution has been at war against, wouldn’t that make Darwinism unintelligent design?
A strange thing for academia to trumpet, to say the least. 🙂
Ben Stein is also a gifted comedian. Sunday before last in the NYT magazine, he was complaining that his son ain’t go no financial sense and spends money likes it’s going out of style. I wonder where the boy could have learned how to do that?
Actually, what I’m saying (someone up there was trying to infer what I was saying) is that the Kulturkampf just never ends, although I wish it would…
Yep, Ben Stein’s a funny guy. Unfortunately, the Culture War is a real comedy killer…
Brad,
You had better forget about the culture war in this country ending any time soon. It has been going on almost since the inception of the republic. In the first half of the nineteenth century, it was slavery and the nature of the Union; after the civil war, it was what to do with the freedmen; in the 20th century, it was a combination of religious and ideological differences closely tied to the attitudes one had toward blacks and the role of government in our lives.
There tends to be a correlation between attitudes toward civil rights and government in this country, with conservatives tending toward limited government, limited intervention in society to protect rights, conservative religion, and rugged individualism. You have but to read Foner’s magisterial work on Reconstruction to see this.
Also, Brad, keep in mind where the culture war is transpiring. In conservative states such as S.C., it’s a real battle here between people who believe in evolution and those who do not. This is a state with a university named “Bob Jones.” You just don’t find such an exotic plant in the cold climate of New England (not that I would want to live there–brr!).
Nevertheless, the discussion, however brutal at times, is a necessary one, lest anyone become complacent about what our fellow citizens think. This is why it’s so good for liberals to watch Fox News and argue in their living rooms with Hannity and O’Reilly, and so good for conservatives to read the Times and sit patiently through college classes listening and learning, rather than seeking to suppress different opinions that are consistent with the epistemology of the university.
One can argue abortion from a purely secular point of view either way using entirely empirical evidence. The result won’t be normative and absolute, but the positions will run from the protection of the human potential of unborn life to a woman’s prior right (if any) to choose. No recourse needs to be made to scripture, hellfire, or guilt. That kind of a debate is absolutely worth having.
What I am not up for, however, is listening to fundamentalist wackos like John Hagee, John Ankerberg, Benny Hinn, or any of the other denizens of TBN. I have always found it amusing to think that the Lord Creator of All the Universe needs me and my pittance to spread his obscure, contradictory, bronze-age “gospel”. If he’s so powerful, let him pay for it himself. But I digress.
Believing, faith-filled Christians (as opposed to cultural Roman Catholics like myself who love the ceremony, the Latin, the incense, the art, the music and the church’s intellectual tradition) need to read people like Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Victor Stenger, and, of course, Richard Dawkins (http://www.richarddawkins.net) to sharpen their faith and perhaps even rock it to its foundation.
Too many people in S.C. want public policy based on their beliefs. I want public policy based on secular rationalism, as the Founders intended.
Sorry, guys! Don’t tell me what you believe. I just don’t care and cannot be bothered.
Tell me what you KNOW. Then we can have a conversation.
Rich
(SOOO not Brad’s alter ego!)
OK, Rich, here’s what I KNOW.
Religion has absolutely nothing to do with my inability to accept evolution on faith.
Why do I say “on faith”? Because the missing links between one species and another, which must necessarily have existed in order for the cycle of reproduction and evolution to continue, all seem to have disappeared.
Furthermore, religion has nothing to do with my objections to abortion. No preacher, nor Bible, told me when I should think life starts. Just seems to me that erring on the side of caution is safer in a moral sense. I really can’t imagine how anyone could think different.
Also, you talk about religion more than anyone else here. So obsessed with it do you seem that I’m beginning to think you’re merely a Catholic with an anti-Protestant bent.
Oh, sure, you say you’re just fascinated with the trappings and tradition of Catholicism, but what sense would it make for you to extol an empty but nicely decorated vessel?
P.M.,
When you deal with issues such as whether or not Ben Stein should be allowed to speak, or abortion, evolution, civil rights, etc., you necessarily deal with fundamental values, and in this state that means religion.
You can’t have a conversation in the public square about fundamental values without questioning the belief systems of the proponents of those with opinions as to how public policy should be made.
I have tried to base my views on those of the Founders who, quite frankly, were far ahead of their time. They were liberal, secular, humanist, deist, rationalist Enlightenment thinkers. This is not an opinion; it’s a fact, and it is rightly taught as such in our universities, although not necessarily in our high schools. Still, giants though the Founders were, they truly dropped the ball on the slavery issue, and that issue along with how to deal with the freedmen became THE issue for the next century and a half. Only within my lifetime (I was born in ’56) are we really making substantive progress.
Still, in matters of religion we have the anomalous situation in Western civilization of being the inheritors of a secular, liberal democratic republic crafted and constructed during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment AND being the most religious of the great western democratic powers in the world.
I think there are historical reasons for this, one of which is the poverty of public education in this country in the area of philosophical education. In most Western countries, philosophy is a subject of secondary education. Not here! Too controversial.
As a result, we end up with well-meaning people such as yourself claiming that you cannot accept evolution on faith, as if science would ask you to do such a thing!
As for your suggestion that there are no missing links, I find that to be incredible. Science has uncovered a great deal of geological evidence to show precisely that. You have but to watch Nova, NatGeo, the History Channel, and others that have programming dealing with origins to see the falsity of your assertion.
I would also refer you to the standard text in high-school CP biology (it is used in Richland Two)–the Miller & Levine Biology–the same book that was at the heart of the controversy in the 2005 Dover evolution case (which you can watch online at PBS.org).
One of the authors, by the way, is a practicing Catholic, but he still acknowledges the fact of evolution. That is not in dispute in academic biology. Natural selection is still the best understanding we have for the origin and evolution of life, and it has been abundantly corroborated by empirical evidence.
As for the Catholic Church being a nicely decorated, but empty vessel, I would say this: one doesn’t have to believe in a god to appreciate the cultural legacy of the Church in Western Civilization. I revere holy mother church even as I deny categorically her fundamental doctrines, precepts, and tenets.
Oh, except one: God is love. I can go with that one.
Forgive me, Rich, but I know too much about some of the History Channel’s programming to trust any program they do on anything.
One of their experts was a fellow I knew at Carolina. Five or six years ago, he was selling trips to the end of time.
Seriously. In all honesty. For real.
He, like you, would “revere holy mother church” even as he denies “categorically her fundamental doctrines, precepts, and tenets,” but slyly, with a mischievous grin on his face.
A friend who emigrated to Poland used to call the fellow who became a time merchant “Satan”.
Me, I’m not much on the “holy mother church” of Darwinism, no matter how much her “fundamental doctrines, precepts and tenets” seem to make good sense.
Sorry, but it really seems irrelevant, and the idea of paying homage to a church whose God you deny, well, that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.
Rich fears and hates religion because moral people don’t need the State ordering them around, and the minimal government they desire is at odds with the Nanny State which Rich wants to care for him.
A man cannot serve two masters.
Rich has chosen his master, the State.
Although, I believe in Creationism, the evolutionists have a point. How else can you explain wild jackasses evolving into liberals?
Mr. Wolfe,
Mainstream America outside of the South and few conservative parts of the west and the mountainous areas of the country is either moderately religious or downright unbelieving. They want their kids taught evolution in the schools; they don’t expect to have a conservative religious agenda thrust down their kids’ throats through the schools; they believe in a woman’s right to choose and in the rights of gays to full social and political equality.
The South wasn’t particularly religious prior to the Civil War. That was the reputation of New England. But when the South lost the war and saw blacks rise from slavery to social and political equality (at least temporarily in some places), the region turned to religion to find solace, an explanation for what had just happened, and a justification for the re-enslavement of African Americans under Jim Crow and the contract-labor system.
And they found it indeed! The Bible nowhere condemns slavery. In fact, St. Paul urges the Christian Philemon to accept his servitude as a gift from God. Everywhere in the Old Testament we have the subjection of women, slavery, the death penalty for such things as breaking the sabbath. As the Israelites took Canaan, they were supposed to slaughter their enemies (actually, modern archeology shows that the Israelites never went to Egypt but actually arose instead from Canaanite stock. They were as heathen as the people they supplanted.
What the South must realize is that it’s time to rejoin the Union. We’re about to witness the political thrashing of the Senate Republicans and the further embarrassment and emasculation of the selfish, conservative, capitalists of Wall St., who must now become docile public servants of the socialist state they helped to erect with their own incredible managerial incompetence and greed.
The fact that you believe in creationism says volumes about you, Mr. Wolfe. You probably believe in the rapture and listen to Rush Limbaugh. May you and your Republican friends burn in your imaginary hell!
The crisis we are in is largely the massive and public failure of right-wing ideology.
Mr. Rich,
1) You say “mainstream America outside of the South and few conservative parts of the west and the mountainous areas of the country is either moderately religious or downright unbelieving.”
I say the South is as much mainstream America as anywhere. I also say that if you teach your students the South is not mainstream America, you should lose your job.
2) You say mainstream America wants its kids taught evolution in the schools.
I say mainstream America doesn’t care.
3) You say mainstream America does not expect to have a conservative religious agenda thrust down its kids’ throats through the schools.
I agree with you, but I know of nowhere that public schools are shoving a conservative religious agenda down anybody’s throat.
4) You say mainstream America believes in a woman’s right to choose.
That may be true, but not absolutely.
5) You say mainstream America believes in the rights of gays to full social and political equality.
If that’s true, wouldn’t the vote have been different in California?
6) You say the crisis we are in is largely the massive and public failure of right-wing ideology.
I say the crisis we are in is the result of the empowerment of obsessed liberals like you.
Rich was shouting his ideology, not the views of America.
He was stating the ideology he expects children to be taught in school.
Like a few weeks ago, when Al Gore told high school students that parents who denied “global warming” were like his parents, who were racist – their children must ignore them.
At least Al Gore admitted his father was a racist. Senator Al Gore, Sr. voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
I keep on returning to one extremely important fact: the Republicans lost the election. And even if the economy tanks further, they will take a further drubbing in the midterm elections. No one believes Obama caused our economic crisis, but everyone knows that greedy Wall St. financiers paid themselves billions while their banks went belly up. Everyone knows who was president for eight long years and had the opportunity to put the Republicans’ so-called conservative agenda into practice.
I don’t think he failed to do so. Bush despised the government he supervised, starved essential programs, gave tax breaks to the rich, and spent trillions in unnecessary military expenditures.
That’s why we’re so screwed up. I think the people will remember that as the economy worsens–and it will.
Obama’s appointees are mostly millionaires from Wall Street or K Street lobbyists.
This huge deficit spending bill may very well choke off the economic recovery which is already beginning.
It is up to the public and Republicans to demand investigations and prosecution of the bums who caused this financial crisis, starting with Barney Frank, Chris Dodd and Joe Biden.
Obama was in the Senate for 2 years, but claims yesterday to have been surprised by the recession, that it was just “dropped in my lap” by the previous administration.
Obama did have a hand in causing this recession, because the few times he showed up to vote, he voted for higher taxes, cover up of the Democrat mortgage scandal, and confiscation of retirement accounts.