ASU investigates itself
No problems found!
ASU has issued its internal investigation report as the response to the Az Legislative Joint Committee on Freedom of Expression at Arizona’s Public Universities. Surprise, surprise, surprise, no problems were found. They handled the controversy perfectly. Next, the IRS can start having taxpayers audit their own taxes.
I actually see some very important things in this report. I want to look at what was said and what is implied between the lines. Most of the report is an overview of what happened with very selective use of emails and evidence to support ASU’s innocence. Unsurprisingly, they rally around faculty who used class time to promote personal political opinions. They had to do that. If they seemed to take the side of an outside group criticizing faculty, they would lose allegiance from all faculty. They selectively used evidence and left out very important pieces that are now part of the public record, such as the content of a recording of the Provost.
But here is what they did say which is telling:
Barrett faculty use of insults. Page 5 says, “Portions of the letter were also strongly worded in ways that contributed to the overall controversy regarding the event.” ASU distanced itself from the insults in the letter and said they do not represent the university. Remember, these are professors who teach students how to think. And they can’t even put together an actual logical argument against conservatives.
On page 55, we are told of Barrett’s approach to the “core classes, which focus on teaching students to engage substantively with readings that express various perspectives from throughout [sic] history and to learn the skills of critical thinking, reasoning and argument.” This is exactly what the honors professors failed to exemplify in their letter and what brought about all of this controversy. Had they said: “we disagree with conservatives like Prager on marriage, and here is why,” ASU might have been the location of a fruitful dialogue. Instead, they wrote a letter that would not pass their own freshman-level classes as an argumentative paper. Because of this, they are being put through free speech training to remind them of their responsibility to be examples:
On page 69, we learn that the Barrett Faculty will now have to be taught how to protect free speech and actually engage in discussions without insults. This process will be overseen by FIRE. Reading between the lines, this is a rebuke to Barrett that they performed very poorly here as critical thinkers.
There would have been no controversy if the Barrett professor had lived up to their professional standards and written a thoughtful letter. ASU must defend poorly behaving professors against outside criticism or risk offending all of its professors. But the letter shows us where ASU sees they failed and what must be done to correct it. These professors must learn how to professionally interact with those they strongly disagree with by using reason and argument rather than petty insults.
The worst part is what this does to the students. Students looked up to these professors who couldn’t engage with intellectual opponents without insults. Students had their class time taken away by professors pushing personal agendas. Students were afraid to speak up, fearing their grades would be affected. ASU choose to protect its professors at the expense of these students. All of that is public record from the last hearing.
It isn’t over for ASU on this matter. Because they decided to take the path of “we investigated ourselves, and we are innocent,” and because of the evidence that was presented publicly to the Az Legislature but left out of this report, another hearing can now be held to compare what ASU has publicly said with the evidence publicly available. ASU has put itself in a difficult spot.