Give it a Rest

Chancellor Wiley meets again with "outraged" members of the Hmong community who are still offended by Prof. Kaplan's comments last Spring. Recall that Kaplan was teaching his class in the Socratic method, putting controversial statements out there and encouraging his students to deal constructively with them. The entire Kaplan non-story was disgusting, unfair, and melodramatic.

Wiley has been a class act on this issue, and knew to turn the meeting's attention to broader (and relevant) issues of Hmong representation on campus. He's correct to speak to the overarching concept of academic freedom, and he knows how to do this without alienating people. (I would be slightly less tactful, and can imagine myself pulling the Constitution out of my back pocket and politely reading it to hysterical Madison residents.) Our Chancellor repeated his standard line:

"Some things are different at a university. It is a place where all ideas are explored, even offensive ones. The best remedy to bad speech is more speech. We have to be open to ideas and talk about them and defeat them...Some are offensive to people of many kinds...I am not asking you to ignore what happened. I'm not excusing it. These things do happen, and we try to learn from it. People need to be respectful in relations with each other."

That's about as good an answer as somebody whose job is forever hanging by a thread can give. I am sure that in his private moments, Wiley knows that Kaplan did nothing wrong at all -- besides exhibiting a subtle, misunderstood teaching style which was over some students' heads. We're lucky to have a Chancellor who refuses to be bullied constantly, at any rate.