Alison wondered if there was a link for this, but Kyle tells me these are interviews they've conducted, which aren't yet published. We could either say "I hear from students...." or "I hear from our research interviews" but I think "from students" is the simplest, clearest way we could clarify this.

the empirical research of several others - three links.

Alison had highlighted a phrase later in this sentence. I've added in some references Kyle provided.

since this is a finding of their yet-unpublished study I think we can't link to anything here.

Merriam-Webster uses a hyphen, though that seems odd to me. I thought this was common usage but I guess never tried to spell it. Maybe we should go with the dictionary.com link and spelling ??

media

research literature

Maybe could link to this article?

should be quantify

I seem to be missing the discussion of privacy here. Maybe it got left out? Or maybe the idea we can track everything is an import from big tech that is actually wrong-headed?

Thank you, MIT Libraries. This is beyond what we can do.

I particularly like the activist tone of this statement - we should encourage people to take moral stands on information policy beyond the library.

This adds some distinctly new roles to the traditional curation, preservation, and discovery roles of libraries.

Not either/or. The curious thing is that we have become in many ways more local, less global - letting publishers be the global, treating libraries as local franchises.

And many are not on board. But the cultures are changing.

This is appropriate for a research library. What kinds of R&D can small libraries contribute?

Of course not! But this suggests that those who feel distressed and angry when their college invites a speaker who they feel has challenged their value as human beings (Milo Yiannopoulos, for example, or the "blacks are less intelligent genetically" Bell Curve argument) aren't just being made uncomfortable. There are better ways to discuss these claims that feel less like "oh, my school has invited someone to my campus to tell me I'm inferior, and they are simultaneously insisting I be polite." The "college should make you uncomfortable because it's good for you" argument here fails to acknowledge - again - the affective side of learning. Students of color are made uncomfortable every day in a myriad of ways. They're pretty good at it. No need to rub it in.

I like the idea of "modesty" and warm to this sentiment. However, at this particular moment in time, many of us are truly worried that we could see a resurgence of fascism. At some point, with some ideas, we have to firmly reject them. And we can't simply be spectators, weighing information and checking the fact-checkers. Antifascists argue that fascists use speech to build power that they can then use to suppress ideas. Interesting discussion of this at On the Media. I'm more traditionally and knee-jerkily in favor of speech, but I understand that at this particular moment, given an election that so much depended on new forms of speech and fewer brakes on it, I think we need to be thoughtful about what we mean when we say "openness."

The "clash of ideas" is not a model of liberal learning that I can embrace, as much as I respect many of these signatories, support the value of access to ideas of all kinds, and deplore violence. This statement elevates "rational" at the expense of every other form of experience. It treats students as information processors. It uses oddly violent language to promote civility and modesty and it ignores the power differentials that play a role in these clashes. It completely ignores this moment when so many feel imperiled. It insists that students be silent for the sake of speech.

It's incredibly difficult in these fraught times to come up with a statement about what we stand for - and free inquiry is right up there at the top. The question is: what conditions will allow us to freely inquire? How are we best able to describe and provide them? I feel this statement fails to take into account the complexity of this question at this moment.

This is the response to the oft-made claim that we are indoctrinating students into a left-wing ideology that has cultish aspects. I agree, they are strong. But let's consider how much strength is required from whom before we insist they demonstrate how strong they are, how much they can take.

As someone who has spent 30 years trying to help students do this work, I have to say . . . as much as I believe in the value of being able to find, evaluate, and make sense of information, learning isn't just information processing.

There is one important feature from this list, and it's one that has been dismissed as coddling and being "special snowflakes" but actually is really important. People need to feel invited and encouraged to join discussions. There's an affective aspect to creating conditions for learning that is missing from this list with "civil" perhaps being used to convey this element. I'm not sure what word I would add, but perhaps "inviting, supportive, inclusive" - though for some "inclusive" is charged with leftist ideology.

Well, it's a little old-fashioned, but liberal learning is really about cultivating the whole person.

Actually, if we believe in knowledge, in the arts, in the benefit to society and to the development of free human beings of education, we're taking sides. We're declaring a position in society. It happens to be a position that is strongly opposed by the budget proposal that the president has just released.

I find this statement glib. Sure, the ACLU had strong free speech reasons to defend the Nazis who wanted to march in Skokie. For many residents of Skokie, that "pure speech" was an act of violence. "Exposure" has consequences. I'm not saying it shouldn't happen, necessarily, but this oversimplifies something that's more complex - kind of like insisting you "don't feed the trolls" when they're publicly threatening you with rape but they haven't actually raped you.

This "clashing viewpoints" model of creating knowledge is only one way of thinking about it, and it brings to mind those television clashes of pundits where the point is to fight and the goal is to win. It's not a contest. It's not about winning. It's a conversation that grows through learning from and about one another and practicing empathy as well as reason. This statement also implies a kind of pseudo-Darwinian survival of the fittest idea. I much prefer (though it's old-fashioned) Michael Polanyi's notion that science is a republic; I've always felt knowledge in general is at its best a republic that can only thrive where there is good balance of trust and humble doubt.