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Jewish World Review Oct. 11, 2012/ 25 Tishrei, 5773 Shades of the Monkey Trial By Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Have you ever heard of The good news is that the student editor, Good for the student editor, who seems to know what a free press is all about, and that if it doesn't find a way to fight censorship, it won't be free for long. Three cheers for him and something else for the college's president, one Might have been? Sir, there's no might have been about it. It was a bad call, an atrocious call, one that betrays what ought to be the essence of a college: the free flow of ideas and information.
A college ought to be about education, not suppression. It ought to be the last citadel of liberal education, though the barbarians entered the gates of so many of our colleges and universities long ago, and now seem in charge of a lot of them. You can tell when they've seized control. They throw the dead white males out of the literature courses, eliminate the classics, de-emphasize foreign languages, and generally prefer technical courses (computer science, driver ed) to the arts and sciences. When classes in Shakespeare and the King James Bible have been replaced by the fad of the day, you know all is lost. Or soon will be.
Here's a telling sign that an institution of higher education has started to specialize in the lower kind -- when not even its president can make a decent apology. At least President Livesay made an attempt at one. So there may be hope for him after all. There's certainly hope for The moral of this story: When college administrators mess up, the students need to correct them. Gosh, didn't it used to be the other way around? Historical footnote: The dateline The widely reported trial (H.L. Mencken covered it for the Say, you don't think How little things change. In this case, they just get reversed. Now it's those science teachers who express any doubts about evolution, or dare mention creationism to their students, who have to fight to express their ideas in class. What was it Mark Twain said? "History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
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