Thoughtcrime at Georgetown? It Is & Wrong for Faculty to Be Thinking Not Just Speaking & Reason.com

I appreciate the disagreement on the factual question. As I mentioned in my original post, there had been nationwide aggregate evidence gathered on this in the 1990s, and discussed seriously in the mid-2000s by scholars with different normative viewpoints. But perhaps things have dramatically changed, or are different at the Georgetown law school. It would be great if Georgetown could shed light on that dispute by distributing aggregate data on its students’ grades, broken down by race.

But I’m more interested in the professor’s normative judgment: that it is wrong for university faculty to think that such a thing might be the case, to the point that letting slip the fact that you think this is a fireable offense. Indeed, if taken seriously, that normative judgment would preclude any discussion of the factual question, because even open-mindedly considering the factual question whether disproportionate numbers of black students tend to get lower grades would risk “wrong & thinking.”

I appreciate that, say, some churches might excommunicate a member for wrong thoughts, or for speech that reveals the presence of wrong thoughts. I just didn’t think that this was seen as a proper position for a university.

via reason.com