Christopher F.

Personal account | Views my own | Veritas liberabit vos

[Christopher F. @ChristopherF198]

‘In a revolutionary epoch, sometimes men taste every novelty, sicken of them all, and return to ancient principles so long disused that they seem refreshingly hearty when they are rediscovered.’
—Russell Kirk

[Kathleen Stock @kathleen_stock1]

In these days of fluid teenage identities, it is ridiculous to think that a parent challenging a teenage's professed sexual orientation might be a criminal act. The Conversion Practices Bill is a menace in more ways than one. Me in the Times ⬇️

https://t.co/V8thCMByfl

[Christopher F. @ChristopherF198]

“There will come a time when three words uttered with charity and meekness shall receive a far more blessed reward than three thousand volumes written with disdainful sharpness of wit.”
Richard Hooker, d. 2nd November, 1600.

[Committee for Academic Freedom @ComAcFreedom]

“An academic who criticised universities’ marketing efforts as ‘bad’ is under investigation by his institution after fellow staff members raised complaints.”

As reported in Times Higher Education, CAF is currently supporting the academic in question, Dr Mike Ryder, following Lancaster University's decision to investigate him over criticism of its marketing practices.

We have secured specialist external legal counsel to advise on the case, and a formal letter challenging the basis for the investigation will be sent to the University on Dr Ryder’s behalf early next week.

Full story in @timeshigher:

https://t.co/TC5UcnLpRP

If you’re an academic facing an investigation or disciplinary action over your lawful speech, please get in touch: [email protected]

[Committee for Academic Freedom @ComAcFreedom]

🚨 BREAKING: The Committee for Academic Freedom (CAF) has written to Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) on behalf of two senior academics who are refusing to complete mandatory training requiring assent to contested theoretical propositions about “unconscious bias”, potentially jeopardising their career progression and professional opportunities.

The dispute concerns an assessment within What is Unconscious Bias? — part of QMUL’s Introducing Inclusion course, which is “mandatory for all staff”.

The assessment requires participants to affirm that “unconscious biases help us to react quickly but can cloud our judgement”, and to identify accepting that “we have unconscious biases” as helpful. The accompanying feedback declares that such acceptance is “the first step to combating their negative effects”.

Informed by their scholarly research, the academics we’re supporting dispute these propositions and have refused to complete the assessment rather than give answers contrary to their convictions.

Under the assessment’s all-or-nothing marking system, refusing to affirm both propositions caps a participant’s score at 60%, below the 80% pass mark. Yet passing is a condition of eligibility for promotion, professorial review, including decisions on remuneration, and participation in recruitment and promotion panels.

Although influential in social-justice-oriented scholarship, the concept of unconscious bias is contested within psychology, with researchers disagreeing about what it means, whether the processes in question are necessarily unconscious, and whether they exert a causal influence on judgement. Peer-reviewed research also questions whether acknowledging such biases improves behaviour.

QMUL is of course entitled to provide training on its preferred theory of bias. But it remains just that: a theory. When such training is mandatory, requires staff to pass an assessment, and is tied to professional opportunities, there is a clear risk of compelling academics to affirm propositions they simply don’t believe.

That’s why we’ve proposed a simple solution: amend the assessment so that academics who don’t all think alike can demonstrate understanding without having to endorse its underlying assumptions.

Should QMUL decline to address these concerns, CAF is prepared to fund legal counsel to assist the academics, should they wish, in pursuing an internal grievance and subsequent complaint to the OfS.

We believe there are strong grounds for such a complaint, given that such training may breach QMUL’s statutory duties to secure freedom of speech and academic freedom. Consistent with Article 10 protections against compelled expression, the Office for Students has also warned that universities “should not require training or induction that imposes a requirement on the person completing the training actively to endorse any viewpoint or value-judgement”.

Sadly, this isn’t an isolated case. As CAF knows from its casework, universities often impose mandatory training in which the distinction between “understanding” and “endorsing” contested ideas becomes blurred.

That’s why we hope this intervention marks the beginning of a wider pushback against compelled intellectual conformity on campus.

If you’re an academic with similar concerns about mandatory training at your institution, get in touch. CAF can assess your case and, where appropriate, secure specialist legal advice and raise the matter with your university on your behalf.

Contact us at [email protected]

Full story via The Telegraph:

https://t.co/se2AAC6bFw

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

This is one of the most illiberal, invasive and appalling pieces of legislation ever to come before Parliament.

The Conversion Practices Bill isn’t about preventing gay children from being abusively coerced into being straight. That is already rightly illegal.

It will criminalise well-intentioned conversations between parents and gender-confused children, discussions with therapists, and religious leaders sharing their faith’s teachings with their congregations.

A parent could face up to five years in prison simply for trying to dissuade their child from embarking on irreversible, dangerous and life-changing medical pathways before the age of 18.

In his letter to the pre-legislative scrutiny committee, the Minister for Equalities attempts to reassure us that the bill respects “freedom of religion and parental rights”.

It does no such thing.

So much for the Labour Government’s promise to tread more lightly on our lives. It is not the state’s role to dictate what conversations parents can have with their young children around the dinner table.

Parents know best — not ministers.

Read the letter below 👇

[The Free Speech Union @SpeechUnion]

This is completely unacceptable. Nobody should be suspended from their job for the views they hold.

Nobody has the right to prevent someone from earning a living because they do not feel “comfortable” with their views. That is not how our society or economy works.

The thought police and the actual police are creating an environment of fear. Employers should not kowtow to the censorious tactics of certain employees.

@sophielouisecc, please let @SpeechUnion know if we can be of any assistance.

[The Culturist @the_culturist_]

I don't think anybody really grasps how desperate this situation is.

University professors are now saying they are unable to teach history because reading long books and passages is how a person learns history. College kids are incapable of reading more than a few pages.

Some classes don't assign any reading at all now, only lectures.

There is an assumption among the people managing this decline that reading is just a way of receiving information. It isn't. Proper reading is how we build the mental muscle to synthesize ideas and evaluate them.

If the catastrophic decline in reading and literacy is not addressed now, we risk losing everything.

Western civilization cannot survive the death of reading because it was built by people with the kind of cognitive depth that a culture of deep reading brings:

Complex reasoning, extended internal dialogue, the capacity to hold opposing ideas in tension. Our systems and institutions are complex, and they require well ordered minds to maintain them.

Reading forms minds, and the West was built by the richest minds in history.

[The Knowledge Archivist @KnowledgeArchiv]

"The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries."

— René Descartes

[Nancy Pearcey @NancyRPearcey]

"Intellectuals are naturally seduced by the idea of a planned society, because they think they will be in charge of it."

--Philosopher Roger Scruton

[Athenaeum Book Club @athenaeumbc]

If schools and universities refuse to teach the great books of Western Civilization, we will do it ourselves.

Athenaeum now has 500 members reading the classics alongside us!! Thank you all 🙏

We're about to start our 12th book — see you on 28 April for the next discussion...

[Bret van den Brink @BretVDB]

“It is because education is rooted in habit that its technological basis is the book. The book is a model of patience, for it always presents the same words no matter how often one opens it; it is continuous and progressive, for one book leads to another, and it demands the physical habits of concentration. Popular and mass media are discontinuous: their essential function is to bring news, and to reflect a constantly changing and dissolving present. It is often urged that these media have a revolutionary role to play in education, but I have never seen any evidence for this that I felt was worth a second glance. The arts of phantasmagoria can only stimulate a passive mind: they cannot, so far as I can see, build up habits of learning. The university informs the world, and is not informed by it.”

—Northrop Frye, “The Study of English in Canada”

[The Spectator @spectator]

It’s strange and ironic that higher education establishments in Britain, institutions which ostensibly exist to broaden minds and deepen thought, should today speak in such a cliche-ridden, jargon-infested and deadening variety of English.

Yet it’s unsurprising and rather appropriate that they should do so in order to communicate to everyone that they’re no longer interested in standards anymore.

✍️ Patrick West

Article | https://t.co/4M5v17WZan

[Jaynit @jaynitx]

In 2019, MIT professor Patrick Winston gave a legendary 1-hour lecture called “How to Speak.”

It has 18M+ views for a reason.

His frameworks:
• Your ideas are like your children
• The 5-minute rule for job talks
• Why jokes fail at the start

15 lessons on communication:

[Brandon Luu, MD @BrandonLuuMD]

Students who took notes by hand scored ~28% higher on conceptual questions than laptop note-takers.

Writing forces your brain to process and compress ideas instead of copying them.

[Christopher F. @ChristopherF198]

“Unless a state maintains a fair balance of rights, duties, and functions—the magistrates having adequate power, the aristocratic council adequate influence, and the people adequate freedom—its constitutional organization cannot be preserved from change.”

Cicero, Republic II,57

[Christopher F. @ChristopherF198]

"The simplest way to explain the behaviour of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies."
- Robert Conquest

[Thomas Sowell Quotes @ThomasSowell]

"One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again."

— Thomas Sowell

[Christopher F. @ChristopherF198]

Outstanding use of diagrams by the BBC. Now I understand.

[David Blagden @blagden_david]

The answer is visible from space, and that answer is proper exams under exam conditions.