Weekly Roundup
Reading, watching, & listening list
Yes, the Government Can Deport Immigrants for Their Speech. That Doesn’t Mean It Should.
For FAIR’s Substack, Gabriel Nadales writes about the consequences of deporting immigrants because of their speech.
The U.S. government has the legal authority to monitor and restrict speech by immigrants. But if we start punishing peaceful dissent in the name of security, we’ll lose the very thing we claim to protect: a country where ideas can be debated, not deported. If we start punishing people for peaceful speech, we risk becoming the very thing we claim to stand against.
Pope Francis was a revolutionary. Not everyone liked that.
For The Washington Post, FAIR Advisor Shadi Hamid writes about the legacy of Pope Francis.
Francis hoped to revolutionize the church, replacing clericalist rigor with an unapologetic celebration of popular religiosity. It would also be a voice of conscience on the world’s most profound economic, ecological and cultural challenges. That was already a lot, but it wasn’t just that. Francis’s papacy was wrestling with deeper questions not just for Catholics, but for anyone hoping to hold on to religious tradition in an age of secularization. As Francis well understood, conflict was inevitable — and perhaps a Hail Mary was the only way out of the impasse.
Edu-Homily Watch: Do Students Need to Like Their Teachers to Learn?
For The Next 30 Years, FAIR Advisor Robert Pondiscio writes about how learning depends more on factors like instructional quality, student motivation, and the overall learning environment than on the teacher’s rapport with students.
While positive relationships enhance learning, they are not a prerequisite for it. Students can and do achieve academically even when their personal feelings toward a teacher are neutral or even negative. The most powerful driver of student learning isn’t personal chemistry with a teacher; it’s the quality of instruction. Decades of research underscore the effectiveness of well-structured, clear, and purposeful teaching practices. For instance, Barak Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction highlights the importance of explicit teaching, guided practice, and scaffolding in promoting understanding and retention. These methods work regardless of the emotional dynamics between teacher and student.
Harvard in the Crosshairs
For The Eternally Radical Idea, Greg Lukianoff writes about government overreach and University’s real failings.
And while Harvard is, as we explained, disproportionately prominent among its peers, its peers need reform, too. Colleges across the country are unsustainably expensive, stuffed with extraneous administrative hires, turning a blind eye to the replication crisis in the sciences, and operating under the same monoculture.
If we want this reform to stick and be successful in turning higher ed back toward the pursuit of truth, it needs to be done systematically. We can’t federalize all the schools. And even if we could, we shouldn’t. What about history suggests to anyone that the federal government is the go-to place for fixes to excess bureaucracy and unsustainable spending?
The Death of Ethical Integrity?
For The Overflowings of a Liberal Brain, Helen Pluckrose writes about how a significant proportion of the anti-woke who gave every indication of having liberal principles and a genuine concern for what is true have either lost all integrity or never had any in the first place.
We always have to expect that some proportion of people espousing liberal principles and a concern for truth are not, in fact, concerned with either, but simply want a different kind of authoritarianism based on a different flavour of bullshit. Nevertheless, it is deeply disappointing to see people who have given every indication of being principled and consistent and who have made such good and strong arguments against the authoritarian tactics of the culturally dominant Critical Social Justice (woke) movement appear to entirely lose all respect for what is true, what is reasonable and what is consistently principled.
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