From: bud@mtek.com (Bud Hovell)
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Banned Computer Material 1992
Keywords: (LONG)
Date: 16 Oct 92 15:54:54 GMT
Article-I.D.: mtek.1992Oct16.155454.11788
Reply-To: bud@mtek.com
Organization: MTEK International, Inc.


[Sorry it took so long to get to this, but other matters have had to
come before, and the queue is still growing. "No rest for the wicked",
I heard someone say....... :-)  I had promised Carl a response, and
while this doesn't provide a comprehensive reply, it will have to do
for now. ]

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quoting me here and hereafter:
>>Also, I frankly have little patience for dealing with what some snot-
>>nosed teenager whose parents have come up with tuition may have to say
>>on the subject, based solely upon his belief that one slow reading of
>>the Bill of Rights entitles him to thus draw sweeping conclusions
>>about what *must* have been in the minds of the Founding Fathers with
>>regard to his personal login privileges.

....Dave Hayes responded by email:
>I guess literacy with the written word does not imply sensitivity
>to the concerns of other humans, does it? Sometimes these "snot-nosed
>teens" have very interesting and enlightening things to say. (Do I 

It implies nothing either way -- assuming I might be found guilty of
"literacy". Which I seriously doubt. :-)

If you find the aformentioned teens interesting and enlightening, then
I have no basis for invalidating your experience. Nor do you mine. The
question is whether what they have to say is informed, thus relevant.

Relevance may be a meaningless criterion among persons who assume that
because both Nobel laureates and fresh high-school graduates wander the
same corridors of travel at a university, that the opinions of both on
any randomly-selected subject should therefore be regarded with equal
gravity simply because both are generic "academics". I know of no one
in the academic profession who actually *believes* this, or would ever
accede to the notion that the faculty lounge should thus be opened to
everyone who happens by so that debate could be broadened and made more
"interesting". Offering up such a suggestion in the real world of modern
academia should leave one with little expectation of witnessing the next
sunrise.

>detect a chip...?)

Possibly -- if one of your shoulders feels heavier than the other,
then that's a sure sign.

>It is precisely this worldview that compells me to side with Carl

One might define "thinking" as a process by which a person learns
to limit his compulsions by the application of reason, rather than
the other way 'round. This isn't universally agreed upon, of course.

But I do seriously doubt you are in any way armed to comment on my
"world view", unless you mean by this your own preconceived (but
carefully undefined) notions of what that may be. If you are unable
to summon an indictment more compelling than a vague and accusatory
innuendo, then expect marginal response, since more would require of
me some fairly advanced mind-reading, which I have no confidence in
having mastered. Unlike yourself.

>and those fighting for academic freedom. Tactics do not make
>any impression upon me (as I said in the post that you'll probably 
>miss) other than the strategic mindset of the tactician. 

I hope this doesn't mean that you believe any tactic is allowable
in furthering what you believe to be a good cause. If so, then what
they -- and you -- are fighting for may bear closer scrutiny.

>As a sys admin of 10+ years, I have become increasingly aware that
>there is a marked correlation between the amount of experience of a
>sys admin and the tolerance and understanding with respect to policy 
>that is presented. Usually the elder sys admins are much more patient
>and thus have a lot more control over their network as a result.

My wife is just fine, and she sends her regards, also.

Does it not strike you as rather odd to find yourself lecturing others
about "tolerance and understanding" while defending a list which has
been roundly criticized precisely because of its *notable* absence of
either of these qualities?

The subject at hand is whether -- specifically -- it was appropriate
for Carl to publish his "BANNED" list or not, and why or why not. The
question is whether that *tactic* matters, regardless of the strategy.

It has nothing whatever to do with any other act of Carl's, nor does
it address whether every other act which he has undertaken in the cause
of academic freedom may not have been as pure as the driven snow.

But it most *rightly* brings into question the propriety of one specific
act performed on one specific occasion. And compounded thereafter.

As to "policy that is presented", the policies of our site have been
publically available for comment for over two years. My own peculiar
notions of how policy should be formulated -- and enforced -- have
been variously published during that time, and have thus *hardly*
been shielded from public view. If you or others have not previously
chosen to criticize these, it does not owe to a lack of generous
opportunity. And some (or much) criticism may well be due them. But
my actual views and practices have been made public in sufficient
detail to bar any requirement for idle speculation.

Those views are, indeed, largely antithetical to *any* universal,
canned policy expression which presumes to the claim that "one
size fits all". Just as I see no evidence that one political party
"fits all", or one religion "fits all", or one profession "fits
all", or one suit of clothes "fits all". To believe any of these,
one must be either a fool or a fascist. (The former is arguably
even more dangerous than the latter.)

Differing institutions are *required* to ensure that locally ded-
icated (and funded) assets be assigned to support the particular
mission for which they were intended. It is folly to expect that
every institution (or every member of a given class of institution)
will invariably define for itself the same identical mission, or
that each must cleave to only one particular schema for effecting
policies that will assure the mission is not significantly under-
mined by abuse. And some classes of assets at some of these insti-
tutions may exist solely *because* they are dedicated to some
unique mission which implicitly limits how they may be used.

Granting such assumptions, assessment by an administration about
the provisions of particular policies must *begin* with how that
institution views its own purposes and traditions, while regarding
the standards of the larger society in which it must continue to
function in order to effectively sustain that mission. That some
significant variances may occur among categorically similar insti-
tutions (or among the greater societies of which each is a part)
provides no conclusive evidence of disloyalty to a set of idealized
abstractions that a self-nominated clique has reduced to its own
preferred list of dos and don'ts.

(In other words, policy is driven by mission. Not vice versa.)

In the case of universities, such variation may only evidence that
the entire academic world has not yet copped to the implicit assump-
tion that they should view themselves as just an endless series of
cookie-cutter extension campuses of the University of Illinois (or
wherever) and its particular assumptions about defined mission.

It is reasonable also to question how, in an academic society that
swells up with such great pride about its dedication to "diversity"
that some of its citizens might excite themselves into a damp lather
when decisions depending *from* the diverse perspectives of different
administrations *might* (and inevitably shall) differ in *some* cases,
even though there may be a general meeting of all honest minds about
the supreme importance of preserving some vital (but again abstract)
principles.

It is even more curious when some persons may expect an unassailable
defense exists for *any* tactic which might be taken under the color
of authority of "academic freedom" -- an authority not granted, but
assumed. Much as one might assume the uniform of a police officer in
a false belief that this automatically conveys the authority of the
entire community to go forth and harry persons who don't agree with
his own personal version of how "the law" reads -- or, worse, what
he thinks "morally" it *should* provide, even though it arguably may
do no such thing. (Imagine the indignant outrage that would gush
forth from every academic nook and cranny across the U.S. were such
a one allowed to roam the streets unchecked!)

Whatever happened to the notion that "honest persons can disagree"?
Has the *academic* "mindset" so overreached itself as to now assert
that the *only* honest and admissible decisions are those made by
people who obey the academic.freedom.police? And that any who do not
thus conform should properly expect to find themselves pilloried on
a wanted poster published under that same threadbare cloak of doubt-
ful authority?

Would such intolerance of *actual* dissent not make absurd any "moral"
claim upon the abstract notion of preserving the *right* to dissent?
It causes one to wonder if the sham may not be more valued than the
genuine article.

Dissent, when expressed with intellectual freedom and autonomy, will
*never* produce absolute uniformity either of interpretation or resulting
decisions. What characterizes a functioning democracy is willingness
to compromise in the face of inevitable conflict. What characterizes
a tyranny is the absence of any such impulse.

So how does this square with your professed attendance to "tolerance
and understanding with respect to policy"? And how is it *evidenced*
by your truly Jesuit defense of such an inquisitorial device as
Carl's odious list?
-- 
________________________________________________________________
bud@mtek.com ... uunet!m2xenix!mtek!bud ... bud@rigel.cs.pdx.edu
MTEK International, Inc.             Throughput Technology Corp.
Walk the talk.
Newsgroups: comp.admin.policy