State Of Academic Freedom 2016

This is the reply after asking a scientist to endorse putting a draft of an article into a more fitting category on the arXiv, which is a mere preprint archive (not a journal or anything like that) where I already put almost 20 articles, and the endorsement would be anonymous, so this established scientist fears that the enforcers at the PC arXiv may notify his or her University - this is the state of free speech today, the reality of the scientific community:Hi Sascha,

This is the reply after asking a scientist to endorse putting a draft of an article into a more fitting category on the arXiv, which is a mere preprint archive (not a journal or anything like that) where I already put almost 20 articles, and the endorsement would be anonymous, so this established scientist fears that the enforcers at the PC arXiv may notify his or her University - this is the state of free speech today, the reality of the scientific community:

Hi Sascha,

Unfortunately UC Santa Cruz and many other college campuses have been changing their code of conduct to make it hard for me to even endorse your article. ... So the repercussions for me to endorse any article related to intelligence of ethnic groups could be quite severe. If I didn't have any children, I could contemplate doing so, but since I do, I think I shouldn't venture out on this limb. I'm sorry if this appears to be cowardly.

I would suggest that you try to find an endorser at an institution with more permissive standards. There is a database kept by thefire.org on this that lists the degree of academic freedom at different universities. UC Santa Cruz isn't the worst at all. It's listed as yellow. Others, such as University of Chicago are in green. Faculty at green schools are less likely to face unpleasant consequences for expressing an opinion. …

In any case, I wish I lived at a time where universities had the kind of academic freedom where ideas, however controversial, could be openly discussed without fear of retribution. I'm sorry I can't be of more help in this regard.

Best wishes,

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