Word: thernstrom
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Spence's statement addresses student charges that Winthrop Professor of History Stephan A. Thernstrom displayed racial insensitivity in some of his course lectures last semester. Spence first made his remarks at Tuesday's Faculty meeting, but did not allow the text to be quoted directly until yesterday afternoon...
Here, the question of academic freedom centers around the right of an intellectual to present the views of others, even though they may be controversial and even offensive. This is Thernstrom's line of defense: he was simply discussing other historians' ideas...
...when students and faculty fail to communicate, they can arrive at different definitions of academic freedom--as has happened in this case. Comments which Thernstrom and his supporters find justifiable are absolutely out of bounds in the eyes of some students. For them, Thernstrom's appeal to academic freedom is nothing more than a sham which avoids the more important issue of race relations on campus...
Race relations or not, the Thernstrom case still contains a threat to academic freedom. However Thernstrom is not the victim of a witch-hunt by crusading students, as The Salient would have it. Rather, the problem lies in the breakdown of communication between students and faculty, which prevents the community from coming to a common understanding of what can and cannot be accepted in academic discourse...
Administrators, faculty and students must give serious attention to improving faculty-student interaction. In recent years, there has been much empty talk about the declining state of student faculty relations but no true appreciation of what a breakdown in communication does to the Harvard community. The Thernstrom controversy has shown what can happen. If Harvard becomes a school where education is synonomous with dry lectures by remote professors, we may not see the last of "racial insensitivity...