To which the very young get to a real university, where the word and the idea are free, but where you are slaves to the duties and tasks, can be one of life’s great experiences: to stow the memory full of facts and explanations, to learn humility, but to lose self-confidence, to realize you have been wrong about most things, and that there are plenty of folks who are clever than you. It as been enriched by this can thank their teachers – who surely would rather read or researched than that for the hundredth time to clear up the same misconceptions.
I remember my academic years, like Ali Babas cave or H C Andersen the flying trunk – a series of adventures and inspiring teacher escort: the omutlige Hans Mathlein a short semester in Stockholm, Barbara Weinstein, who was more about Brazil than any native and Raúl Hernández from Tucumán, which showed that the Latin american economy worked the way I imagined me – but just the opposite. And many others.
cocksure and prejudiced as only a 19-year-old can be. How many times have I thanked my teachers! For their skills, certainly, but above all because they did not show any reverence for our inclinations and preconceptions.
Some of the teachers were wild paradoxmakare, the other walked with an aura of seriousness around him. Some were rabulister, other urkonservativa, but they could all be themselves in their environment without having to anxiously look over his shoulder. The idea that they would have been afraid to say against us, and that we would be able to notify them of the sedlighets and åsiktskommissarier was too exotic to be imagined.
Now, tells a familiar, one of the very top of their corporate ladder, who taught at one of our prestigious universities, he stopped. The relationship with the students had become a minefield, and he noticed that he started to refrain from jokes, irony and, above all, criticism. If a known, established person feel that way, how careful must not a younger teacher without a permanent position to choose their step?
do not conclude up behind their teachers when fanatics fly them in the throat. Right now, there is an eerie inquisition against Germund Hesslow, professor of neurophysiology in Lund. Hesslow has long but to embarrass the reported research on hereditary conditioned psychological differences between women and men. I don’t know Hesslow, but once many years ago I heard a lecture by him where he showed pictures of apflickor who chose to play with dolls instead of cars.
The real subject stand out clearly behind the alleged: the one that brought annoyance to be silenced, and the example statueras.
Such is the scathing and vexatious in the circles where biology may never trump sociology. Because the findings not possible to determine empirically, so they must be blacklisted. At kvinnouniversitetet in Riyadh, where Darwin and homosexuality is a taboo subject, or in Cuba, where the term ”racism” is prohibited because the decree started from the highest place, if racism is eradicated.
and the avalanche was rolling. An investigation was appointed – by the management of the medical school! It found no trace of harassment or discrimination, but was still not Hesslow. The investigator discovered that ”the formulations and expressions, the lecturer uses, can pose a risk for discrimination in the form of harassment on the grounds of sex, transgender identity…”
the Report gives not a single example of such gryphon – how to see an expression like that is not discriminatory but nevertheless constitute a risk of discrimination? With a sinister turn of events recommended ”preventive measures”, which are not specified.
anyone who has read inkvisitionsprotokoll feel immediately recognized it. You have not managed to churn out some evidence but the council and the bishops have already promised away the inquiry, the property and the court is infallible. The real subject stand out clearly behind the alleged: the one that brought annoyance to be silenced, and the example statueras. Hesslow, as well as the inquisition’s victims, has offered to kiss the cross and do penance. He has, to its credit, declined.
shocking. We have seen such a thing before, but far away. You have to pinch themselves in the arm to make that this is taking place in Sweden, in Lund, where our heritage has been built up over centuries. It is a pity that Sweden, like Switzerland, can take a position on the matter in a referendum.
How many swedes would give its assent to this barbarism? Very few. But no politicians are talking openly about this terror, it will be no elections. On the contrary, our authorities are on the ball, they worry far more for themselves to be targeted than for academic freedom.
the Losers are not just the teachers that smoked out or hold their views, but, above all, the students. Students whose teachers are afraid to hurt them or enable their prejudices will not thrive intellectually. Their studies will do society more harm than good. Woe to the young who end up in an academic environment where sober research must yield to the ideological beliefs and where those who ignore the commandments are to be chastened publicly, as in a tableau on a medieval square.
