Friday, March 28, 2008

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed


Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

Related;
Larry Summers on the role of universities;
But I think that we will almost certainly make more progress in advancing the values that we all share, if every issue is open for academic debate and if the response to distrastful argument is logical counter argument, rather than statements of revulsion. So I will always wish that I had handled that whole situation differently, but at the same time I think it is very important to uphold the principle of the right to be speculative, the recognition that when you offer hypotheses and judgments in a tentative way, they sometimes turn out to be right and they sometimes turn out to be wrong. People will debate over time the merits of different hypothesis. But I think it is something that is very, very important. Which isn’t to say that with the benefit of hindsight not gone to the NBR that day, but it is to say I think we do need to do a certain amount of soul searching around concepts of freedom of discussion and how we regard controversial hypotheses.

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