15.7.08

LINK: An extension of yesterday's conservatism-in-academia debate here. One possible addition: the standard lack of interpretive charity. It's pretty standard that your reading of someone else's views will not be fully charitable; this runs the spectrum from "putting my opponent's argument in something other than it's best light" to "I'm not going to say this rival interpretation is dishonest and wrong, but you catch my drift." Once one acclimates to this, it's a pretty unremarkable feature of academia; what's missing in that interpretation is left as work for others. From the outside, it probably looks more brutal than its taken to be.

(There are some exceptions: I've seen panel presentations where the discussant crosses the boundary of what's acceptable, but those moments are shocking because they go so far so to lose sight of basic civility. What we consider to be standard criticism is pretty intense.)

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