But I just love this quote, in the context of the continuing controversy surrounding the Canadian Human Rights Commission's threat to freedom of speech (source):
People wonder why I quit university teaching. Imagine an office - all your colleagues and all your supervisors and anyone with a say in your tenure prospects, your research funding and your publications - where everyone organizes their careers in such a way that a "human rights" commission would have no reason to object. Their teaching practices, their research, their political views; everything they think and do including and especially their "private" lives from the television they (do not) watch to the fast food they (do not) eat to the sex lives they (do not) allow themselves to have. Even the concept of a "private" life dismissed as reactionary and/or illusory and in any event subject to the scrutiny of any undergraduate with internet access and a grudge. That is the life I escaped. Even a couple years after the fact I find it a surprise when my internal censor warns me against writing something for fear of losing my livelihood and my career and I realize I have already crossed that bridge, burned it and done a little dance some time ago. It is a small price for freedom compared to the price so many have already paid for me. But it is something.
My "internal censor" goes off pretty regularly.
Folks have asked me about this, in light of my neoconservative blogging. I'm outspoken, and I pride myself on having an honest voice in my writing, even if that rumples a few feathers (although I'm not up for tenure at a big university research department, so perhaps I've got more freedom than others).
Glenn Reynolds has a bit roundup of related news.
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