I’m on a roll. Chapter 4 of my blogging book, “Bloggers and the University,” is just finished in a first draft. Well, actually I’ve been working on it for some time already and all I really needed to do during this past week was to wrap it all up. The next chapter, chapter 7 probably, will take quite a bit longer to do.
Anyways. Here is a sample excerpt:
A pretty clear pattern emerges from these cases. The greatest threat against freedom of speech on the internet comes from the very people responsible for running the university. They are the ones who put in long hours compiling evidence against the bloggers, taking notes, backing up web pages to their hard-disks.
If anything this shows how far removed the university’s bosses are from the academic life of the universities they are in charge of. University bureaucrats rarely have higher degrees. They don’t have a commitment to critical inquiry and independence of thought. Let’s face it, they just aren’t that bright. Today’s university administrators are the very same people the professors gave B minuses to when they were students. Clearly, they don’t understand what a university is and what it’s supposed to be.
University bosses for their part, have just as much disdain for academics. Professors are lazy, they wear rumpled suits, they don’t come in on time in the morning. Universities, the bureaucrats believe, would be far better off without the academics. In fact they would be far better off without students too. Without students and professors the bureaucrats could just send off university diplomas to whoever is prepared to pay for them.