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?Rights For Some People??

I wonder whether the title of an article on Inside Higher Ed this morning, Rights For Some People, was wittingly or unwittingly ironic. It begins:

Should someone who teaches human rights back human rights for all people?

That?s the question being raised by some students at New York University?s law school, who are upset that a visiting professor in the fall semester, slated to teach human rights law, is Thio Li-ann of the National University of Singapore, an outspoken opponent of gay rights. Thio has argued repeatedly and graphically that her country should continue to criminalize gay sexual acts....

NYU OUTLaw, a group of gay and lesbian students at the law school, last week sent an e-mail message to all students drawing attention to Thio?s statements, saying that it was crucial to ?raise awareness of anti-gay statements made by an NYU visiting professor? because ?it is important for LGBT students and allies to be aware of her views in order to make fully informed decisions regarding class registration.?

Perhaps Inside Higher Ed should also ask whether students should take classes only from professors who agree with them.

Those who do might get some support from the AAUP.

Cary Nelson, national president of the American Association of University Professors, said that he would not advise NYU to rescind the invitation to Thio to teach there. But he said that it would be legitimate to raise questions about whether she should be teaching human rights.

?Academic freedom protects you from retaliation for your extramural remarks, but it does not protect you from being prohibited from teaching in an area where you are not professionally competent, and there are doubts on whether she has the competency in human rights,? Nelson said....

Would the AAUP and the NYU students similarly question, say, the competency of a communist (or in some universities, a capitalist) to teach economics? What about an opponent of affirmative action teaching civil rights law?

According to the controversial professor,

?Everyone is entitled to their opinion, free conscience, free thought -- that is a cardinal principle for every academic community. I hold to it, in my own law school, and I would expect the NYU law community to do so as well. We can be united in commitment to this principle, without slavishly bowing to a demanded uniformity or dogma of political correctness set by elite diktat. I cannot say I am impressed by this ugly brand of politicking which I hope is not endemic,? she wrote.

I know nothing of Prof. Thio or the state of academic freedom, if any, in Singapore. But it would be ironic, or worse, if Prof. Thio were less free to teach (or to teach free of harassment) here than a supporter of gay rights would be in her law school in Singapore.

Full post as published by Discriminations on July 08, 2009 (boomark / email).