If our tax paid purpose is solely to teach, then why should tax money go for research? Why should Universities pay faculty for doing any research? Why should teachers do research?The attack on NSF funding for research goes to the heart of Tea Party commitments to science denial and aversion to social change. It is also part of a systematic attack on the concept of academic campuses as centers of knowledge.
On our own UW campus the response to this attack is not at all new. For the forty years I have been here, the UW has worked hard to avoid any appearance of speaking out on public issues like the Berkeley Blog. Of course, even at Berkeley, public funding can not be used to back a candidate or support a position that is “political.” This has been why I have advocated that the UW/AAUP needs an off campus PUBLIC blog where it is free to take political stands and support candidates. The lack of open speech at places like this campus not only does not help, it gives the right wing an all too easy way to drive a wedge between “teaching” and “research.”
Perhaps we need to take a lesson from the Newspeak as in the “Right to Life,” “Death Tax,” “Choice,” “Right to Work.”
Here is an offer … I will award a THE-Ave.US beer mug to the first person who comes up with a better answer to the “What Do You Teach?” and pay for creating a place on the web where we can buy tee shirts and beer mugs with the new logo.
cross posted on THE-Ave.US