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Of the three things banned by the Texas bill, there’s no issue at all with two. DEI departments, and compelling (profession of) belief under implicit threat of failing a class, are not forms of free speech. They’re means of enforcing ideological conformity through institutional power. They have as much right to exist under the principles of free expression as Orwell's Ministry of Truth. If woke professors or laid off DEI employees want to promote their views by, say, handing out fliers in the hallways, that's fine.
Banning tenure is a little more questionable, but even here it’s not so clear where advocates of free expression should land. This isn’t a straightforward case of tenure being banned so that the establishment can censor antiestablishment views. It's being banned, rather, by one group with institutional power (political leaders) to try to stop another group with institutional power (professors) from indoctrinating students into the dominant elite ideology. This is historically unusual because, of course, in most times and places political leaders support the dominant elite ideology.
Agreed that professors often overreach by compelling certain types of belief. But on my reading, the legislation is overly broad:
Suppose an economics professor has an exam that compels students (on penalty of getting a worse grade) to express that, in a hypothetical all-else-equal scenario, minimum wage increases unemployment. This is certainly a political belief (minimum wage is a controversial political issue), but I'd say it's fair game for an economics exam.
(The "inherently superior" wording is a bit weird, if you say political belief X is true and not-X is false, is that equivalent to saying X is inherently superior to not-X?)
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Yesh who thought elite overproduction would mean politicians fighting with professors?
I think more seriously, that inquiry should be separated from instruction. The current model doesn’t allow free inquiry into taboos because the professors cannot be poor examples to students even if they happen to be disco and telling the truth.
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The dominant elite ideology in most cities, but not in Texas, or at least the Texas political scene. This is an attempt to stop the pollination of this ideology into Texas elite ideology in the future.
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