TRI In The News
No Place for 'Taboo' in Academia
8/8/2011
TRI IN THE NEWS: NO PLACE FOR 'TABOO' IN ACADEMIA
From One News Now
Original article available here.
The Rutherford Institute has come to the defense of a University of Minnesota student threatened with academic reprisal for using research sources not approved by the school.
A freshman student was threatened with reprisal if he used information from the Turkish Coalition of America website for his research. But one attorney has an issue with that.
"If you have university officials telling students that if they use a certain sort of information or cite it in the paper that they could get bad grades or be blacklisted or whatever, you have a really serious situation," contends John Whitehead, founder and president of The Rutherford Institute.
The university's Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies drew up a list of what they call "unreliable websites." But Whitehead thinks all ideas should be discussed in an academic setting, whether everyone agrees with them or not. Otherwise, he argues, freedom is eliminated.
"We're at a really strange point in the United States, where political correctness is wiping out all sorts of alternative viewpoints. And certain things are absolutely taboo," the Institute founder acknowledges, "but in terms of academia, where freedom should be, there should be no taboo subjects; we should discuss everything."
The Turkish Coalition of America has filed suit on behalf of the student, and the case is now on appeal to the Eighth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
