Fearless Speech Index

I recently joined Heterodox Academy which encourages academics to support a diversity of viewpoints.  This week's newsletter highlighted an op-ed by professor Adam Grant at Wharton who encourages more arguing and fighting at home which helps train kids to grow up to be more creative and open minded. 

In that post, a quote struck me as consistent with my own observations and experience: "Universities—ideal homes for constructive disagreement—can now be places where students and professors alike often feel silenced." Results from a survey tracking a "fearless speech index" can be found here. Researchers are trying to determine to what degree students feel comfortable speaking about the following topics in class, and the reasons why they do/don't speak up about 3 issues: race, gender politics. There's a "control" category for comparison. The topic of race generated the most discomfort, and criticism from  other students (not professors) ended up being the biggest concern/reason for not speaking out. As an Asian-American, race is not as uncomfortable for me, but as a conservative Christian, gender is probably the hardest. 

A Century of Communism

It's been 100 years since Communism came into power. The Washington Post's Will Englund presented a cool graphic timeline or the "Red Century." Until I read this brief account, I had never considered the Communist Revolution as a social movement with major implications for world politics. But of course that's exactly what it is. It's not a single movement of course, even though there was an international organization (Comintern) set on expanding communism globally. But the Revolution has all the makings of a social movement if one considers mass mobilization, the challenge to authority, and the diffusion of ideas. The puzzle for me is why and how communist movements/parties/governments virtually everywhere turned to authoritarianism and repression, especially if communism in its pure form was an ideology which was to bring equality.

Anyway, this is a mental note to consider the Russian Revolution and the spread of communism as an example of social movements transforming world politics. I might also use the Red Century in my Intro to IR class next semester to educate students about Cold War history.