Thursday, April 14, 2005

More Academic Freedom

An interesting story of an economics professor's battle with the PC police at the University of Nevada. The comment that started his persecution was:
In March of 2004, during a 75 minute lecture in my Money and Banking class on time preference, interest, and capital, I presented numerous examples designed to illustrate the concept of time preference (or in the terminology of the sociologist Edward Banfield of "present- and future-orientation"). As one brief example, I referred to homosexuals as a group which, because they typically do not have children, tend to have a higher degree of time preference and are more present-oriented. I also noted--as have many other scholars--that J.M Keynes, whose economic theories were the subject of some upcoming lectures, had been a homosexual and that this might be useful to know when considering his short-run economic policy recommendation and his famous dictum "in the long run we are all dead."
This, of course, led to charges of a "hostile learning environment" and consequently a full out harassment of the professor by the university administration.

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