Professors Avoid Participating in Research about Divestment due to Politics

The College Fix with the latest:

When National Association of Scholars research associate Rachelle Peterson recently attempted to interview a Harvard professor who is part of the university’s divestment movement, he told her he advocated something close to an “affirmative consent” standard for speech.

Professor James Recht suggested that “before engaging in a conversation, both parties should disclose their political leanings and decide whether they are compatible enough for the conversation before they consent to proceed,” Peterson told The College Fix.

Suffice it to say, he hung up the phone in the middle of their conversation.

The stifling experience was one of many Peterson has encountered recently as she studies the campus fossil fuel divestment movement for the right-leaning academic group the National Association of Scholars. It’s prompted her to determine the movement “has become part of a larger war against freedom of thought and freedom of expression on campus.”

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