&Psi. THE CHANCELLOR AND MY WEB-LOG. Well, things are heating up
again. I'm a
member of the Bloomington Faculty Council, the IU-Bloomington faculty
senate, and we
met
at 3:30 today for the first time this semester. I wondered whether any
of the faculty
would mention my
web-log. None did-- except the Chancellor, Sharon Brehm. She chairs
the BFC, and she
addressed the web-log controversy right at the start of the meeting.
I wasn't prepared, I'm afraid, since it wasn't on the agenda.
Here's the Chancellor's statement. To be fair, I want to quote it
in full.
First, as I have done in every previous statement I have made about
this issue, I
want
to emphasize that I deplore many of the statements posted on the
website.
For example, Professor Rasmusen asserts that "homosexuals" (gender
unspecified) should
not be hired in jobs that function as "moral exemplars," such as
"teachers, pastors,
and
elected officials." He also states, as a "second reason not to hire
homosexuals as
teachers," that "male homosexuals, at least, like boys and are
generally promiscuous."
Professor Rasmusen acknowledges that he has no evidence to support his
conclusions,
which are, instead, drawn from "the category of `what everyone
knows.'"
This is deeply offensive, hurtful, and very harmful stereotyping, in
which
characteristics of individuals are applied to a large group of people
who members,
like
all people, differ from one another on the exceedingly large number of
characteristics
that make up a human being. Logically, it is the same as drawing the
conclusion that
all
men are six feet tall.
I was first notified about the existence of Professor Rasmusen's
website at 4:44 pm on
Thursday, September 4. The 12 days that followed have certainly been
extremely
difficult
ones for our campus. I'd like to share with you today my perspective
on this matter.
After the Chancellor's statement, I raised my hand right away, but
all I did
was ask if the statement was available on the Web. She said no, but
that she'd give me
a
copy after the meeting, which she did. Nobody else commented, except
to ask if the
webpage policy ought to be considered by the *Bloomington* Faculty
Council rather
than
the *University* Faculty Council (for all 8
campuses). Good reasons were mentioned, but not what is perhaps the
best one: that
if
it
went through the BFC it would go through the Technology committee, of
which a certain
Eric Rasmusen is a member.
The meeting continued for an hour more, and after a short break we broke up into committees. We on the Tech committee had a very productive hour figuring out what topics we might address this year (e.g., spam, music downloads, central computer administrators making policy without the faculty input they used to request). The reporter for the local newspaper asked me for my response to the Chancellor's statement, but since he had a 6:30 deadline, I don't know what he will use from my few comments at 4:30 and my hurried email at 6:15 after I got home and before my 6:30 engagement.
Chancellor Brehm ought not, I think, to have blindsided me like that. She knows me a little, but not well enough to predict that I wouldn't respond angrily, which would have been unpleasant and would have so distracted everyone that we wouldn't have paid attention to the more mundate topics of the rest of the meeting. Strategic planning, merging Informatics with Computer Science, and transfer credit policy can't compete very well with attacks on faculty members. Also, it's a good idea to try to coordinate statements on controversial subjects. If she'd shown me the statement a few hours in advance, I would have told her what I thought was weak in it then, instead of putting in my web-log of the world to see, as I do below. That way, she could have taken out the weak parts, and I'd be saved the effort of writing this up.
September 17 update. The local paper, the Herald-Times, didn't get my written comments in time, but they did print the address of this web-log, which was nice since anyone interested can thereby get my response in detail. That article is "Brehm condemns professor's opinions/IU chancellor addresses Bloomington Faculty Council". The article in the student newspaper is "Faculty asked to review Web policies/ Brehm addresses business professor's controversial site".
September 17 evening update. The Herald-Times article, "Brehm condemns professor's opinions/IU chancellor addresses Bloomington Faculty Council", did make one mistake (or maybe I mis-spoke-- the reporter and I had a rather rushed conversation). It says,
Rasmusen said later Tuesday that Brehm's position that it's acceptable for homosexuals to be teachers, pastors and elected officials is outside the mainstream. "It is fine if that's her position, but she should realize it is a controversial one," he said.I do not think Brehm's position is outside the mainstream, especially in Bloomington, where it may even be the most common position. It is nonetheless a controversial one. This is the same kind of issue as gun control or abortion, where an opinion on either side is going to be controversial. It would be noteworthy if a university chancellor took a public stand on any of the three issues of whether homosexuals should be schoolteachers (or pastors), whether abortion should be legal, and whether people should be allowed to own handguns.
[permalink, http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/03.09.17b.htm ]
To return to Eric Rasmusen's weblog, click http://php.indiana.edu/~erasmuse/w/0.rasmusen.htm.