• the failure to educate the student body about the rules and manners of academia (i.E., the place of free speech). Actors with intellectual integrity would have responded to student complaints about their hurt feelings from their outraged reading of text with a lesson in 1) how to read carefully without imposing meaning on the text ( exegesis not eisegesis), and b) how to deal constructively and with dignity to criticism, even harsh criticism.Piaget cognitive learning theory that would have shown the commitment to academic freedom and worthy conversations the faculty council’s statement claims to hold dear. That would have been the lesson learned from the andrew pessin case at connecticut college in 2015 – were there a learning curve among today’s “woke” faculty.Piaget cognitive learning theory

• the invocation of factual inaccuracy and poor scholarship to attack this opinion piece. The faculty council resolution characterized hill’s work as “factually incorrect,” “shoddy research,” that does “liv[e] up to his responsibilities as [a] member of the academic community.” scott paeth’s blogpost claims hill had abandoned even “any pretense of allegiance to the facts of the israeli-palestinian conflict, its history, the status of international law, principles of human rights, or even principles of sound argumentation.” as far as he, and apparently other signers of the letter, are concerned, hill’s piece is not just nasty, it was wrong, intellectually deficient, deserving censure.Piaget cognitive learning theory this accusation, also leveled at amy wax at university pennsylvania law school colleagues, confuses a paradigmatic take (post-colonial analysis) for reality; and rejects even thinking about, much less discussing the importance of the (abundant) anomalous evidence and alternative approaches.Piaget cognitive learning theory indeed, as in the case of the attack on the issue of israel studies dedicated to “word crimes,” people like ian lustick, who contributed to the substitution of advocacy for scholarship in the first place, then accused their critics of bad scholarship.Piaget cognitive learning theory

• behind hill’s assertions about palestinian political culture, including its “abysmal and inferior” standing by any progressive standards, lies a mountain of deeply disturbing “hard” evidence, most often ignored by the news media.Piaget cognitive learning theory hill’s opponents seem to have adopted a post-colonial, palestinian narrative, as a depiction of factual reality and those who disagree, as dishonest reprobates.Piaget cognitive learning theory this confusion of a paradigmatic “take” for “objective reality”, of “opinion for facts,” not only makes it impossible to think clearly about the real world, but such an anti-intellectual approach can only survive where authoritarians marginalize those who insist on paying attention to the anomalies.Piaget cognitive learning theory

The faculty council urges professor hill to seriously reconsider his positions on these issues, to take cognizance of the perspectives of other scholars on these issues, as well as the real harm his words have caused to students and other members of our community, and to refrain from abusing his freedom as a scholar in writing on controversial issues in the future.Piaget cognitive learning theory

• the outrage of students, here affirmed by the faculty, means that prof. Hill, like many before him, has been stigmatized, publicly shamed – “ jason hill, you can’t hide, we know you want genocide!” – and effectively banished from polite academic company.Piaget cognitive learning theory those so denounced have their career trajectories cut off, their audience of colleagues drastically reduced. The censure resolution assumes the moral superiority of its own side (those good faculty who do worry about students’ feelings), and considers hill a miscreant in need of re-education before the scholarly community will let him back in their good graces.Piaget cognitive learning theory few statements better illustrate how hollow the much-protested concern for freedom of speech.

This incident is hardly isolated. Staged moral emergencies, in which students stampede faculties into taking their side, are a highly effective and widespread practice.Piaget cognitive learning theory at work here, as elsewhere on western campuses, is a curious combination of a modern and post-modern discourse which ironically produces a pre-modern result.Piaget cognitive learning theory on the one hand, faculty speaking a modern, objectivist, discourse (“facts” “accuracy” “scholarship”), and students wielding a post-modern discourse (“hurt feelings” “safe-spaces” “outrage”), both proclaiming their commitment to stopping hate speech and promoting social justice, end up undermining diversity: in the name of “inclusivity and… amplifying marginal voices,” they accept as moral guides and leaders, a pre-modern group that shows no concern or respect for those who disagree with them – indeed make them feel very unsafe – that is dedicated to a tribal (zero-sum) definition of justice in which the “evil enemy” is punished indeed eliminated).Piaget cognitive learning theory we end up with the tribal group accusing their designated enemies of the very things that the political movements they support openly espouse: hate speech, racism, genocidal rantings, xenophobia and anti-semitism.Piaget cognitive learning theory and so, the very academics who read hate speech into the work of a defender of israel, “objectively” if not intentionally, promote a discourse radically rooted in a genocidal hatred of israel and any jew or non-jew who supports her.Piaget cognitive learning theory

The rapid decay of american universities as purveyors of useful or profound knowledge impacts all americans, not just jews. But jews suffer from some particular drawbacks that make universities not just an inane waste of time and money but downright hostile environments.Piaget cognitive learning theory the evolution of even the finest american universities into hotbeds of dogmatic identity politics and very little else make them increasingly inhospitable to jews and to jewishness, an identity that privileges the questioning and challenging of majority dogmas.Piaget cognitive learning theory it took well over a thousand years for western civilization to allow open challenges to the metaphysics that painted jews and the values of questioning and difference that they embodied as inherently offensive to god; it took even longer for societies to see that those values might be a powerful engine of human intellectual and social development, and to insist that all citizens should at least theoretically be equal under the law.Piaget cognitive learning theory while it is hard to say how long it will take to reverse the headlong retreat of american universities into medieval sectarian idiocy, it is unlikely to happen anytime soon.Piaget cognitive learning theory in the meantime, though jews may be unable to reverse this calamity on their own, there is no reason why they should be footing the bill for it, either.Piaget cognitive learning theory

[…] SPME statement on depaul faculty council’s censure of jason hill’s article SPME deplores the recent faculty council of depaul university’s vote to censure an article by prof.Piaget cognitive learning theory jason hill, advocating the israeli annexation of the west bank. Regardless of how one feels about hill’s extreme policy recommendations, his treatment at the hands of his colleagues was at once deeply unfair, counterproductive, and anti-intellectual.Piaget cognitive learning theory the censure, despite its insistence on respecting academic freedom, surrendered to demands of the public-shaming squads that increasingly dominate campus politics, especially when it concerns discussion of israel and the palestinians.Piaget cognitive learning theory far from a blow for academic freedom and decency, this faculty-council initiative represents one more brick in a cognitive edifice that systematically excludes a wide range of both opinion and fact by branding it hate speech, or merely “views not representative of the [U of cambridge] student body… not a valuable contribution to the university.” worse, the move was done at the demand of student groups who practice some of the most virulent hate speech, and advocate for groups who regularly deploy genocidal hate speech.Piaget cognitive learning theory for progressive forces that treasure tolerance and inclusion, this censure was a massive own-goal. […]