* * *
“Several years after my faculty web
site was abolished for publishing things BU administrators disagreed with, and a
short time after I had been told by my Dean what I was and was not allowed to say
in my classes or to write my students in emails, my department Chairman wrote
me a memo telling me I was not to talk about the BU situation with
reporters or other members of the media when I gave interviews. I almost
laughed out loud when I read it. Think about what he was doing. He was writing me a memo censoring
my mention of the censorship policy—even as he and other BU administrators categorically
denied that there was a censorship policy. My discussion of the censorship I
had experienced was being censored! Things had gone completely through the
looking glass. I had become a character in Alice
in Wonderland.” — Professor Ray Carney
* * *
“The students are the real losers.
They are being cheated by the bullying, monitoring, and muzzling of faculty
expression at BU, and by corruption in the faculty evaluation, promotion, and
pay system, and by codes of "pedagogical correctness" that control both what and how teachers are allowed to teach. They are being defrauded when principled and courageous faculty
leave or are forced out, and they end up with faculty who accept monitoring and
control of what they say, write, and teach in the classroom, and who are rewarded for gaming the teaching,
evaluation, promotion, and pay systems.” — Professor Ray Carney
* * *
Academic freedom is the
indispensable quality of institutions of higher education. As the American
Association of University Professors core policy statement argues, "institutions
of higher education are conducted for the common good and not to further the
interest of either the individual teacher or the institution as a whole. The
common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition."
—The American Association of University
Professors
* * *
“Our
Nation is deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of
transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned. That
freedom is therefore a special concern of the First Amendment, which does not
tolerate laws that cast a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom.”—The U.S. Supreme Court in Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385
U.S. 589 (1967)
Please
click on the menu items to the right to read an account of Ray Carney’s
experiences at Boston University. The posting order is the recommended reading order--beginning with the March 2013 postings.
Don't touch that dial! Stay tuned......
Photo of Ray Carney taken at the premiere screening of the first
version of Shadows at the Rotterdam Film Festival by Anke Teunissen. Copyrighted.
May not be used without permission.
Please note: Since Boston University administrators claim the right to read faculty and student emails sent through the university system (and since the Dean of the College of Communication has, in fact, read, commented on, and distributed copies of personal emails Ray Carney has written and received), Ray Carney highly recommends that anyone writing him who desires confidentiality not use the B.U. email system. He may be reached at his gmail.com account via the name: raycarney1.
