A huge public thank you to Paul Krugman for his outstanding defense of academic freedom in Monday's New York Times. As an untenured professor and regular blogger, I am eternally grateful that he -- at least -- gets it.
He is absolutely right about the risks of letting this kind of behavior go by--
"... less eminent and established researchers won’t just become reluctant to act as concerned citizens, weighing in on current debates; they’ll be deterred from even doing research on topics that might get them in trouble.
What’s at stake here, in other words, is whether we’re going to have an open national discourse in which scholars feel free to go wherever the evidence takes them, and to contribute to public understanding. Republicans, in Wisconsin and elsewhere, are trying to shut that kind of discourse down. It’s up to the rest of us to see that they don’t succeed."
Now if only UW-Madison Administration would take such a stance.
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