A Sea Of Red

We just posted an interesting interview with Kevin Roose. The interview is unique because it's more focused on Liberty, unlike most of his interviews so far.

Check it out: http://libertyfreelance.blogspot.com

You know, I think my biggest issue with that interview (and it seems Kevin's approach in general) is that he seems to be saying that education is on one side and religion on the other and that you can't be both educated and religious. This i think is perhaps the greatest myth perpetrated by the rest of the Academic community. If you are religious, then you aren't educated, and to the contrary, if you are educated, you look down with disdain at all who are religious. While I think Kevin was more fair than many would've been, I think he should've perhaps given a little more credence to the fact that the Bible is a historically accurate book as evidenced from the many geological discoveries gained from using the Bible as a reference for location and time period.

I think it would've been of more credit to him if instead of trying to divide faith from education, he had looked into the possiblity that you could be both religious and educated.

The Freelance: Should Liberty students change any of their practices? If so, which ones, and it what ways?

Mr. Roose: Most of the Liberty students I met were incredibly personable – warm, funny, outgoing – and I made some really good friends at LU. I did think they could be judgmental at times, especially with respect to homosexuality. Lots of "fag" and "queer" being tossed around all the time. I've heard from some gay Liberty students since the book came out, and I know it's incredibly hard for them to exist in a culture like that.

this part of the interview was gay

RubberMallet wrote:

The Freelance: Should Liberty students change any of their practices? If so, which ones, and it what ways?

Mr. Roose: Most of the Liberty students I met were incredibly personable – warm, funny, outgoing – and I made some really good friends at LU. I did think they could be judgmental at times, especially with respect to homosexuality. Lots of "fag" and "queer" being tossed around all the time. I've heard from some gay Liberty students since the book came out, and I know it's incredibly hard for them to exist in a culture like that.

this part of the interview was gay

Wait a sec.......Gay LU students?

Yes. And when you leave Liberty, you'll come across gay people as well.

matshark,

Roose's point is that educational institutions should be a free market of ideas. Liberty's not. The Champion's Exhibit A. Such fierce control of the ideological points of view that prevail on campus suggests that Liberty's administration is insecure in its beliefs. In a free market of ideas, the truth will prevail, right? Why suppress the competition by exclusion? It's a top-down system where those at the top decide what's right on a slew of controversial issues, and many students naturally ignore the competing ideas. Political and theological questions aren't easy black-and-white issues. There's a reason they're debated so much. There's a reason that public intellectuals of every stripe line up on all sides of these issues. Education should be about grappling with all of the ideas and challenging your assumptions until you can forcefully defend what you believe. In many respects, Liberty's administration cuts out the grappling and defending part and jumps straight to the conclusion and guards it closely. (Again, the Champion's Exhibit A, but there are many examples.) That needs to change. Soon.

I was on Champion staff for 4 years. I'm quite aware of what is and isn't allowed to be published.

However, I don't think it's fair to single LU out for this, when the rest of the academic world does the same thing only from the other side. When LU does it = censorship. When everyone else does it = fairness?

As far as inviting people from other viewpoints, the name Ted Kennedy comes to mind. He spoke at LU back in the day. Tim Kaine also.

"I can't speak for the whole Liberty curriculum, since I only took a handful of courses, but I do think that the ones I took were somewhat tainted by the attitude that education is an enemy of faith, at least when it gets to a certain level. I remember one professor saying to our class, "My biggest hope for Liberty students is that you won't become educated beyond your obedience." That's a really toxic stance, especially in a university setting, and it's got to be eradicated if Liberty is ever going to become a serious academic university."

It's kind of funny, because in all of the classes I've ever taken at LU (120 hrs undergrad, 45 hrs grad) I've never had one professor ever suggest that faith and education didn't go hand in hand. Also the phrase "serious academic university" i take issue with. Here you have a kid who just finished his undergrad and after one semester at a school is in a position to give a weighted opinion on whether a school is a serious academic university or not? Sorry. Not buying it.

Period. (And my academic track record makes his pale in comparison)

Did you even ask him positive questions about Liberty?

SuperJon wrote:Did you even ask him positive questions about Liberty?

what he said.

This seems like a pretty sketchy "interview" anyways. What, did you ask him over Facebook Chat? You're not a media outlet, how did you land this "journalistic gem"...

They had an agenda. That was obvious. He's said before how he doesn't like that the Champion is censored. Of course he asked that question. It was a chance for someone more respected than him to say what he thought.

matshark:

I'm glad you were on the Champion. Did you ever challenge their censorship? It's an embarrassment. What other schools censor their student newspapers? Doesn't that disqualify it as a legitimate newspaper? Besides, who cares if other schools do it? That doesn't justify Liberty doing it. That's a tu quoque fallacy. "You do it, too, so it's OK if we do it." It's obviously not. There's a higher principle called freedom of speech and expression. And even though Liberty's a private institution, adhering to that principle has worked on a greater scale for larger institutions. So Liberty should stop censoring speech. Why would they censor the Champion or anything else, unless they were insecure about defending their own ideas?

Yes, Ted Kennedy, in . . . 1982. That was 27 years ago. Quick: name the last five commencement speakers? Yes, that was admirable to invite Tim Kaine. And Liberty has done better at bringing in more speakers. But it's hardly a free market of ideas. And that should be the goal.

You're last point is an ad hominem. Sure, he's young. Sure, you have a few graduate hours under your belt. So what? Take his ideas on the merits. You can't right off an idea because of some personal characteristic of the speaker. Because of your experience with never hearing a professor say that, you should be all the more shocked and perhaps outraged that Roose did hear someone say that. He's obviously not out to tear down the school. He gives credit where credit is due. Why would he make that up?

Super Jon:

Read the interview for yourself. Whether you would have asked the questions we asked, the answers are important. Liberty's administration should take them very seriously. They should get to work tomorrow. His suggestions would be major improvements for the school.

Can anyone point out something wrong with a free market of ideas? Does Liberty have a free market of ideas? Why not?

Super Jon:

Here's your chance: defend the censorship of the Champion. Go . . .

Why do you attack me every time I come on here, yet refuse to engage on the merits. Agenda? What agenda? And what's wrong with an agenda?

Please, defend censorship . . .

I was one of the first views on this thread. I've read the interview. Liberty shouldn't get to work on these things just because one person said to. Liberty does have a free market of ideas. You just don't want to hear that. You want a revolution started tomorrow and you want to be the start of it.

Liberty Freelance wrote:Super Jon:

Here's your chance: defend the censorship of the Champion. Go . . .

Why do you attack me every time I come on here, yet refuse to engage on the merits. Agenda? What agenda? And what's wrong with an agenda?

Please, defend censorship . . .

I never once said I agreed with it. I said that because you disagreed with it, instead of posing an unbiased question, you loaded it to get the response you wanted.

I've "engaged on the merits" plenty of time on here. I told you over and over why I didn't like the way you were doing things. You are writing things with a negative slant towards Liberty. If you were being unbiased or even posting about the good things Liberty is doing, I could somewhat take you seriously. You're just picking all of the things you don't like and writing stuff about it because it's cooler to complain than to congratulate.

Edit: I reread the question and got that question mixed up with another. My bad on that. I still wonder if he said anything else or did you just choose to put that part on there?

Super Jon:

It's difficult for me to take your arguments seriously. All you're doing is attacking me. You're making statements with no support. You're ignoring the answers in the interview that show Liberty doesn't have a free market of ideas. You can't seriously believe that they do. If you didn't know before, you know from this thread that the Champion's censored. So where's the free market of ideas?

Please engage on the merits or I'm not going to be able to respond to your posts. They're just personal attacks. You can attack anyone. It doesn't further an argument, though.

Super Jon:

You should read the other posts on the blog. The majority of what we do is report the news going on at Liberty.

Don't fall into the trap of labeling someone negative and writing off the rest of their ideas. Defend your positions. Calling someone a "complainer" is verbal throat clearing. Meet our "complaints" with counterarguments. Don't just label them. Labeling them does no one any good.

I posted the complete interview. Email him and ask him. I would never edit an interview. The Freelance is a free market of ideas . . .

Because the Champion is censored, does that mean there's no free market of ideas? There may not be a "free market of ideas" in the Champion, but there are others on campus. We have a college democrats club that is an officially approved club. We invited every single presidential candidate, democrat or republican, to speak on campus during the election. There are things that happen on campus every day that show we have a free market of ideas. Just because the administration decides what is said through official Liberty newspaper doesn't mean there is not a free market of ideas.

Liberty Freelance wrote:Super Jon:

You should read the other posts on the blog. The majority of what we do is report the news going on at Liberty.

No it's not. It's reposting things that Liberty and the News and Advance have already posted. You're just reporting the news that other people are reporting. Oh, wait, you interviewed Rashad. Good job on that. Haven't seen that done before.

Those are all great improvements. I applaud Liberty for doing that. But again, name the last five graduation speakers. Name a professor who's a Democrat. Name a professor who challenges the censorship of the paper. Perhaps those things all exist, and I just don't know about them. If so, great. But when I was there, there was a prevailing conventional wisdom on campus with politics and religion. There should be more diversity. It's a good and challenging thing.

Again, this progress you've mentioned are all good steps. Liberty's moving in the right direction. And there are many wonderful things about Liberty. It just has a long way to go. And until those things change, every student and alumnus should passionately fight for them to change.

The official school newspaper should not be censored. It's embarrassing that it is. If the administration wants to send out it's own censored material it should. But the official student newspaper should not be. And it shouldn't be overlooked because other improvements are taking place.

Every school I've ever been to (including two state schools) have had school newspapers that have been censored in some way shape or form.


Why should the school bring in graduation speakers that oppose the school? Convo and other assemblies are the perfect place for that. We're bringing in a frickin Jew this year for graduation.


Push for change all you want, but don't forget to give credit when there has been progress made on that change.

I didn't interview Rashad. I copied and pasted an interview. I'm not ashamed of that. You need to start reading more blogs. (And you should start reading ours more closely so you don't make gross misinterpretations about which interviews are our first-hand ones.) Bloggers do a lot of copying and pasting and referring other people to good material. What's wrong with that?

Why do you dislike our blog so much? Seriously? You're presumably in college or are a college graduate. Why are you on a message board mocking how I link to other articles? Isn't that a little immature for someone who takes himself so seriously? Because you're bringing up pedestrian criticisms about my linking to other blogs, here we are, wasting time in a pointless feud when we could be discussing something constructive, like censorship and the freedom of speech. What is it about our blog that gives rise to such a obstinate and passionate opposition from you? For someone who loathes negativism so much, you're pretty negative about our blog. What's the deal?

I find it funny that even Kevin Roose found the school to be less fundamental and crazy than he expected, but yet this "unbiased journalist" seems to think we're just a bunch of future abortion clinic attackers waiting to happen who refuse to allow anything academic or contrary to the "Liberty Way" or what we stand for to sneak into our God bubble.

How about you really ask Kevin how the school is... he can tell you that there is diversity, there is academic challenge, and there is opposing views.