Banned
Banned
I recently expressed an interest in attending colloquia at the University of Miami, where I used to teach (I live nearby). I was told by the chairman, Professor Mark Rowlands, that I was banned from campus at the direction of university administrators. No reason was given. There was no protest from members of the department, including the chairman. Apparently the ban is in effect until the day I die. So much for academic freedom, etc. Happy New Year everybody!
Can’t imagine anything more absurd than one of the last of the great philosophers around in this time of progressive intellectual and moral decay being banned from attending philosophy colloquia at a so-called university due to acts of impropriety from a decade ago, for which he’s been more than adequately punished already. For those in the University of Miami philosophy department staying silent: grow a backbone, take an unpopular stand of principle for once in your lives, you might find it exhilarating. Or acquiesce in the rot that is slowly but surely consuming the American university system (and society at large) from within.
Alleged acts of impropriety.
Does the idea of “my mind” you sketched in your previous post cast any new light on “cancel culture” (which I distinguish from a “call out” culture, though the phrases are sometimes interchanged)? What type of “my mind” is being curated when certain individuals are artificially and collectively no longer acknowledged as minds? It must surely be an impoverished mind – both because it shuts something within oneself with potential down (like an amputation or scorched earth) as well as because it binds one in a rigid collective act (like being part of the Borg).
More context please. Could you do more to create a provisional ongoing narrative around this bare event?
I am not legally permitted to discuss the relevant events.
I would have hoped that some of your old friends in philosophy and elsewhere would have rallied in support. The desperate fear of cancellation is now the pathetic norm. What a weak bunch of snow-flake philosophers has the discipline bred.
Yep.