Ted McCormick

@tedmccormick
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Historian of scientific, economic and colonial projects in early modern Britain, Ireland, and beyond. Lecturer on Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment. Author of William Petty and the Ambitions of Political Arithmetic (OUP, 2009) and Human Empire: Mobility and Demographic Thought in the British Atlantic World (CUP, 2022).
Show threadTed McCormickJan 16, 2023
It's not only unprincipled, it's disastrous strategy. What the Hamline admin did, *and is actively defending*, hands a large and blatant win to right-wingers and Islamophobes. It harms a perfectly good, precarious scholar. And it makes the student who complained into a public target, too. As a comprehensive screw-up on both principles and practice, it's hard to beat. That it's wrapped in the language of concern for students only makes it like every single other self-serving administrative move.
Ted McCormickJan 16, 2023

If you're going to waste my time arguing that what happened at Hamline isn't bad because out-and-out fascists have done worse, maybe stop and think about how asinine that line of argument is.

Yes, people who see academic freedom as a bad thing have attacked it. (Yes, academics like me have commented on that, too.)

The news here is that people who claim it's a good thing, and whose professional responsibility it is to protect it, have also attacked it, and doubled down on the attack.