Hey friends and other human beings! This week, I am back with another edition of Five Things Friday...on Monday! This is a list of five things that have been buzzing around in my head this week — be they podcasts, books, news articles, hobbies, games, whatever.
This week, I talk about free speech on college campuses, rizz and the unviersal sound. In Kentucky, our governor was inaugurated for his second term, and the day's festivities featured a number of Kentucky artists — Ben Sollee, Silas House and Tyler Childers. Seeing some of them perform and share their work made me realize just how much of a renaissance of art and music we have here in the Bluegrass State. This week's Five Things features these artists pretty heavily.
Without further ado, here are five things for this Fri... Monday:
1. Free speech on college campuses
Two weeks ago, three university president’s of the country’s most prestigious schools — the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT — testified in a Congressional hearing on pro-Palestinian protests taking place on their campuses. Their testimony was a source of scrutiny and fallout, especially for those who view these kinds of elite universities as radical liberal bastions that defy mainstream American orthodoxy.
Setting aside the content of their testimony or the purposes of such a hearing for a moment I think it’s important to highlight two overarching things I find troubling about this recent development.
Amid the fallout, the president of Penn, M. Elizabeth Magill resigned last weekend. She did not cite the testimony as a reason, but had been facing intense calls to resign, particularly from alumni of the university’s business school.
First, I think it important to acknowledge the give and take of “free speech” on college campuses in particular and in society in general. Every constitutional right has both its freedoms and its responsibilities, its openness and its limits. The Supreme Court has said as much. We should begin by acknowledging that “free speech” is a nuanced and difficult concept we have been arguing about since the founding of the United States.
This debate has come to the fore on college campuses, both now and before. Though now it is for the recent pro-Palestinian movement at schools, in the past, those particularly in the right wing have targeted college campuses for speakers, events and protests the schools have not permitted or disinvited from campus.
That is to say, as I’ve shared with friends, college campuses are a most complicated commons. They are, on the one hand, meant to be beacons of our highest ideals, committed to free speech, free expression and free thought; laboratories where ideas are hashed out, refined, shared with others. On the other hand, campuses are a commons — a shared space, a community where members find the safety and solace that is the condition for figuring out their own truths.
Lastly, a stark reality that college education is a commodity. Individuals give money, resources and time in exchange for the education they receive. This points to the added complication that activities, speakers, events, campus groups, the spaces on campus where such events are held and many other resources are, in some way, provided for through the contributions of students. This doesn’t apply to every situation, particularly to student protest movements that arise spontaneously. I merely point this out to suggest that, from my own experience as a student, you can see how community members might feel indignation over what speech is and is not allowed on campus.
All to say, I don’t envy those in the positions to make these decisions and it is not as simple as saying “We should allow all free speech.”
The second troubling aspect in Magill’s resignation is the role of wealthy donors, in particular those from the business school, in particular one billionaire donor, in the pressure campaign to oust her as president. It is a very concerning thing for free speech and for free society when the withholding of millions of dollars in donations is a permissible threat for college campuses. When this is done to businesses or individuals these days, it’s derisively called “canceling,” but when it happens to colleges, it’s just the cost of free speech (that someone doesn’t like).
2. “Rizz” is the Oxford English Dictionary’s Word of the Year
It’s the second year in a row that an internet slang phrase has made its way to the top of Oxford’s Word of the Year list. I guess it serves as a good that language is malleable, fluid and ever-evolving.
3. Best thing I read this week
By Steve Shoemaker
"The world is full of wonders — give us this day, O God, wonderment. The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.”
Of course, picking blackberries can be filled with wonder too, gathering them, popping the sun-warmed berry into our mouth, its dark red juice running down our chin.
It is the vocation of poets to help us see, to evoke our wonder, to help us take off our shoes."
4. Song of the Week
Universal Sound
By Tyler Childers
I think about my darling girl sleeping all alone
I pray the stars will shoot her all the wishes she can hold
On the day that I return, I aim to lay her down
But right now, I am focused on the universal sound
--
I focus on my breathing and the universal sound
I let it take me over from the toenails to the crown
Of the body that I'm in 'til they put me in the ground
And I return to the chorus of the universal sound
I've been up on the mountain, and I've seen His wondrous grace
I've sat there on a bar stool, and I've looked Him in the face
He seemed a little haggard, but it did not slow Him down
He was humming to the neon of the universal sound
5. Words of the week
Those Who Carry Us
By Silas House
Kentucky, we walk a ways together,
whether in cold rain or moonlight,
sometimes the only music is hammers and saws
but we keep going, aiming for that higher ground
where they will be standing with their arms out,
saying, “Come here, and rest. Let me help you."
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