One incident at the last Louisiana State University Board of Supervisors meeting encapsulates why another item on its agenda is so entirely needed.
As by the state’s open meeting laws, after ceremonial matters the Board solicited public comment on items part of the agenda. Whereupon a student from a campus radical organization began issuing constipated “demands,” contrary to the law which says if a public body chooses this option the comment must adhere to an agenda item, which that did not. That was announced at the start and online which noted requests to speak and the specific item for comment must be registered prior to the meeting. The student, setting a fine example, simply lied.
When it became clear that the student’s comments would not stick to the agenda, he was asked to leave, and then when he refused, he and his chanting confederates (who also requested public comment on the same item) were escorted out. Kudos to Board Chairman Lee Mallett for not letting the meeting become hijacked, when there are many in higher education made of much less sterner stuff who allow bullies free rein at meetings, as well as to officials who cut the microphone off.
Terrific irony ensued when later the Board approved of a new institute at LSU called the Prosperity Institute. Kickstarted with a grant from former supervisor Roger Ogden, its purpose is to focus on interdisciplinary study of and instruction about the workings of the free enterprise system compared to more regulated or publicly-owned systems. Ogden stated free enterprise was devalued and degraded in the media to the detriment of students’ learning and understanding of economic progress that hampered economic development in the state. He noted that a super-majority of the younger favorably viewed socialism and called this a failure of the educational system – something he could have held up as exemplary the ignorant rabble-rousers escorted out earlier.
He’s not wrong. As an incredible imbalance has developed in the worldviews of faculty members and become oppressively self-replicating that indoctrinates rather than educates that gives free enterprise short shrift. There is an incredibly rich and voluminous vein of scholarship that demonstrates not only that what has come to be called capitalism produces superior pecuniary benefits for people at every socioeconomic level in comparison to heavily-regulated or state-owned system, but that it is morally superior as well. That often is either taught in a caricatured manner or not even at all, reflecting both ignorance and bias that departs from a quest of true academic dispassionate inquiry.
And that’s reflected exactly by the protest of the nimrods to the Board. More and more often, higher education doesn’t train students to think but indoctrinates. As a consequence, not only do you get people who can’t defend their views because they haven’t encountered opposing views and debated them, but then as a defensive mechanism they wrap their views in some moral superiority to justify their not being challenged and this extends to such a belief in rectitude that they feel entitled to break the rules in such venues as public comment at public meetings.
So, it’s refreshing to see this as a first step. LSU and then the entire system, if not all of the state’s higher education systems, would do well to see the ethos behind the new institute to propagate beyond just business majors to general education requirements for all students. Honest, knowledgeable, and complete explication of prevailing theories within disciplines wedded to a commitment of free inquiry trains the minds of students to avoid becoming shills or patsies for suspect arguments. This new venture holds promise to allow the state’s academia to begin paying its debt for falling down on the job over the past decades.
No comments:
Post a Comment