Recently, Glenn Beck has made sociology professor Frances Fox Piven his pet hate. His attacks have gotten so incendiary that several people have actually made threats against her. Well, late yesterday, a broad spectrum of the American academic community stood up and said "Enough!"
The full statement, hosted on the Website of the American Sociological Association and signed by 23 academic groups, begins by comparing Beck's recent spree to past attacks made against scholars in other countries.
For many years, the academic community in the United States has stood firm in its support of scholars across the world who have been threatened or endangered by their scholarship, research, and writing. We must do the same for scholars in the United States.
We, the leadership of major scholarly associations, express our collective outrage at the recent, repeated attacks on Professor Frances Fox Piven. These attacks have been based on rhetoric, rather than substance, and have incited threats of violence, rather than encouraging open debate.
Translation: "This is not politics. This is garbage. And we are disgusted by it."
The statement points out something that we've been saying for a long time--that this recent spate of overheated rhetoric "does nothing to serve democracy." It also calls upon both sides to respect academics' rights to "gather and analyze evidence related to controversial questions, but also to arrive at their own conclusions." Sounds like a pretty basic request. But will the wingers respect it?