Copyright Law and Andy Warhol
| David French and Sarah Isgur | Jun 1 | 26 | 36 |
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| 0:00 | -1:14:47 |
After our hosts catch us up on the latest goings on at the Supreme Court, Sarah tells about another copyright case involving none other than the great Andy Warhol. Plus, David and Sarah chat about the legality of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s call for a coup, an updated indictment involving the Oath Keepers and their January 6 activities, a lawsuit against Florida’s Big Tech law, whether public schools should ban critical race theory, whether you should defer law school if you have the chance, and so much more!
Show Notes:
-Tuesday’s Supreme Court orders
-Conversation between David and Christopher Rufo moderated by Bari Weiss
-“The Sliming of Bari Weiss” by David French in National Review
| 26 | 36 |
I kind of hope David or Sarah read this and respond.
I'm curious how they think public schools should handle the speech issue discussed on the podcast. It seems to me someone has to decide what a school's curriculum is. Some things are going to be in and some things are going to be out. When you're dealing with public primary or secondary schools, I don't know who they expect to make those decisions if it's not either the state or (to the extent the task is delegated by the state) the local municipality in one form or another. Somebody has to say "this subject is part of the curriculum and that subject isn't. Moreover, somebody has to look at the materials and approaches available to teach each subject and pick among them. In Texas we don't want to use the anti-racist math textbook that teaches that 2+2=5 if your skin is a certain color and it's important to your identity that we validate your mathematical views. Here we think 2+2=4, regardless of whatever they're teaching in California.
I know history or civics, or where ever CRT is slipping in, aren't quite as cut and dried as arithmetic, but somebody still has to decide how the curriculum is going to be structured. Do they really think every teacher should be able to just teach whatever they want at that level?
I'm not, by the way, addressing the hallway discussions a student might have with a teacher. There's a lot more room for a teacher to say "here's how I see it" in that context. But it seems to me entirely reasonable that there's some centralized decision making about the core classroom curriculum in public primary and secondary schools.
As a public school teacher, I'm very interested in how this anti-woke legislation plays out. However, I thought the discussion in this episode was a little bit confused. One reason this might have been the case is that the difference between facts and opinions can be kind of confusing. See this article: https://www.philosophersmag.com/essays/26-the-fact-opinion-distinction
Another problem is that with the distinction being brought to the forefront, it neglects teachers teach opinions all the time. As Sarah rightly pointed out, if a teacher introduces a particular book by saying, "This is a really excellent piece of literature," that teacher is promoting a viewpoint on that book. If a teacher says, "I don't think that seeing a gay coming-of-age subtext in Huck Finn is the most appropriate or well-supported reading of the text," that teacher is promoting a viewpoint. Now, I actually try, in my teaching, to avoid stating that sort of viewpoint whenever possible, and just provide evidence to allow students to process and come to their own conclusions. In the Huck Finn example, I would rather say, "These are the reasons that this reading might not be well founded. I'll leave it to you to decide if you think that reading still holds up given these reasons." But I'm still teaching the viewpoint.
Likewise, if I were teaching CRT, I would begin a unit with a question like, "Has the US realized its stated goals of freedom and equality for all of its citizens?" and then pick texts and information that showed that it hadn't. Now, because I think that this topic deserves nuance, I would also pick texts and information that showed that it had, and I would try to help my students to also develop a nuanced view of this question. But that's still me teaching a viewpoint. If that state can declare that the viewpoint I must teach is that CRT is 100% bogus and everything is rainbows and butterflies for black people in the US, than what other viewpoints could they declare I must promote? Maybe Florida bans the teaching of CRT, and California mandates it?
I believe that once upon a time there was a general consensus that, "complicated subjects required nuanced perspectives." Unfortunately, that consensus is gone and the demand now is that students be taught complicated subjects in a way that flattens them and eliminates nuance. This demand exists on both the left and on the right, and the outcome is going to be the elimination of good teaching.