James Gill: Some want to fire Walter Block for ‘racist and sexist beliefs.’ But he has tenure. – NOLA.com

In the age of snowflakes, trigger warnings, safe spaces and no platforming, it comes as no surprise that a petition is demanding that Loyola University fire a professor regarded as insufficiently woke.

It comes as no surprise either that the object of this campus ire is Walter Block, a leading proponent of the Libertarian theories embraced by the Austrian school of economics.

Block has a knack for propounding those theories in a fashion that might be calculated to stir up controversy.

But he is not under fire this time for any recent pronouncement. Instead, his detractors are citing remarks quoted by The New York Times six years ago. Block filed a federal lawsuit claiming those quotes were taken out of context with libelous effect, which District Judge Ivan Lemelle, of New Orleans, rejected but the Court of Appeals reinstated. The case was never argued, and the parties eventually settled with no public admission of fault by the Times.

Loyola's then-President, the Rev. Kevin Wildes, however declared he would give Block a failing grade after 17 faculty members averred in a letter to the campus newspaper, The Maroon, that the university should take the long overdue and necessary steps to condemn and censure Block. His fellow faculty members were no doubt sorry that, as the occupant of an endowed chair in the economics department, he could not be banished from the academy.

The hundreds of students demanding Block's dismissal cannot have grasped the concept of tenure, else they would have figured they were wasting their time. And had they valued the academic freedom that tenure safeguards, they might have viewed exposure to unorthodox views as a benefit of higher education.

Current Loyola President Tania Tetlow was left to explain at a town hall the folly of wanting to only be taught by people with whom we agree. Pedants should note that not everyone agrees that split infinitives are a crime.

The petition, in fact, did concede that different opinions should be tolerated, but it maintained that such liberality should not extend to the racist and sexist beliefs which Block has allegedly promulgated. So a difference of opinion is fine so long as it is not about anything important.

Former students of Block responded with a petition of their own calling on Loyola to give Block a raise and repudiating the allegations of racism and sexism.

Such accusations had been leveled even before The New York Times interviewed Block in 2014 about the presidential aspirations of U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, of Kentucky. Paul's father, former Congressman Ron Paul, had also been a long-shot presidential candidate as a leading light of the Libertarians, so Block was asked to explain what made them tick.

The reporters must have hoped Block would give them some incendiary quotes, for he had already created a considerable stir by averring, in a lecture delivered at Loyola University in Baltimore, that White men get paid more because they are more productive than women or black men.

Block has said his research shows that there is no pay gap between men and single women; only when motherhood and domestic arrangements intrude does a discrepancy arise. As for the racial divide, Block endorses no explanation, but lists IQ differences among the possibilities. That was clearly asking for trouble.

He did not disappoint The New York Times reporters when they contacted him. In expounding the Libertarian belief that freedom of association is of paramount importance, he opined that its lack was the major problem with slavery, which otherwise wasn't so bad. You could pick cotton, sing songs, be fed nice gruel etc.

He added that Woolworth's right to free association was violated, to a much smaller degree, with the requirement to serve Black customers at its lunch counters.

The appeals court, in reviving the lawsuit, wrote that a jury might conclude that the decontextualized quotation in the newspaper, falsely portrayed (Block) as communicating that chattel slavery itself was not problematic, That would be a bizarre opinion for a Libertarian to hold, but the responsibility for any misunderstanding must rest largely with Block and his evident fondness for provoking those he regards politically correct.

No wonder that his advice to young academics is to get tenure before wading into contentious topics.

Email James Gill at Gill1407@bellsouth.net.

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James Gill: Some want to fire Walter Block for 'racist and sexist beliefs.' But he has tenure. - NOLA.com