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Palestine and the limits of academic freedom in Germany
by Jeff Bale The origin of this blog post is a symposium organized by the Speech Axe: Harms of Language project on March 22, 2024. I learned a great deal from the event. But one idea in particular has stayed with me. As we introduced ourselves that morning, most of us noted that we hadn’t…
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What’s going on at the University of Alberta?
By Sophia Martensen Last January, the University of Alberta announced it would be shifting away from Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) portfolios and replacing them with something new: Access, Community, and Belonging (ACB). Then, in September, the Mintz Report — from a provincial panel on post-secondary funding– recommended a new funding model for Alberta universities. Among the recommendations, the Report emphasized institutional neutrality and a move away from EDI. Now, CBC News has reported that the University of Alberta…
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Uninformed opinionators part 1: On the spurious arguments of Bill Ackman and others
By Yvette Hacks Ultracrepidarian – “Someone who has no special knowledge of a subject but who expresses an opinion about it.” That’s my word of the day, a word that I learned recently for people who, up to this point, I had referred to as “uninformed opinionators” or more formally epistemic trespassers. In particular, I…