Michael Bérubé says if you don’t watch this video, he “will come to your house—and you don’t want that.”
Now, in my experience Michael is a perfectly delightful guest, so I don’t know how much of a threat this is. At most I expect he might give you a special JoePa-chair head-slap, and urge you to roll up your pant legs.
But you get the point.
Previously.
The Edge of the American West 
12 comments
November 12, 2009 at 10:08 am
Ahistoricality
Nice discussion, eminently forwardable to one’s colleagues. However, I’m missing something: what does Ari have to do with this?
November 12, 2009 at 10:22 am
eric
And no, that’s not taken out of context.
November 12, 2009 at 10:24 am
matt w
“Watch what you do, watch what you say.” — A. Fleischer
November 12, 2009 at 10:24 am
matt w
approximately.
November 12, 2009 at 11:47 am
Tim Silverman
I don’t see that this issue is different or more serious for academics: surely it’s a problem for anybody with any sort of technical expertise or specialist knowledge, and who has a duty to third parties.
November 12, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Ahistoricality
Got it, thanks. I was conflating Ari’s.
November 12, 2009 at 1:42 pm
politicalfootball
You have to be careful about that. There’s the evil ari, and then there’s the one in the Bush administration.
November 12, 2009 at 1:46 pm
eric
Conflating Ari’s.
November 12, 2009 at 5:09 pm
bitchphd
After reading that article, I’m totally confused. One of them couldn’t have been a mathematician?
November 13, 2009 at 6:47 am
Michael Bérubé
I don’t see that this issue is different or more serious for academics: surely it’s a problem for anybody with any sort of technical expertise or specialist knowledge, and who has a duty to third parties.
Actually, it is different for academics, though it affects people with expertise in any form (after all, the case originated in a district attorney’s office, not on a campus). See Craig Vasey’s discussion of this point right here at the 4:05 mark.
Is Ari more evil than Bert, by the way?
November 13, 2009 at 7:17 am
matt w
Prof. Dangerous, is it fair to summarize Vasey’s point as saying, it’s different for academics because we specifically are supposed to have academic freedom? That we’re not more vulnerable than anyone else, but that it’s specifically our academic freedom that’s being threatened? (Which requires one to be convinced of the value of academic freedom. Which I am; I just want to be able to better explain this position to others.)
Or is it because of the nature and quantity of the speech that we’re required to produce as part of our duties? Which perhaps goes back to the issue of “Why academic freedom is important.”
Another point is that this sucks for everyone, but it might be thought to suck especially hard for academics given how much we’re supposed to talk and the way that we might be expected to say things with which people disagree.
November 13, 2009 at 11:51 am
Michael Bérubé
It sucks for everyone, but — and I think this is the heart of Vasey’s point — academics are especially at risk because (a) we’re not “employees” in the way an assistant district attorney is an employee, and (b) the scope of our professional duties encompasses just about everything we do, from hiring to curriculum to faculty senate service to routine committee work, in the course of which we are actually required to speak and write so as to help govern the academic end of the university. (As opposed to the Nike-contracting end and the T-shirt-selling end, which are important in their way but not directly related to teaching, research, and service.) So the fallout from Garcetti can have extra extra toxic effects in public colleges and universities, where faculty members should ordinarily have academic freedom in order that they can offer honest and substantial input on university governance without fear of reprisal.