{"id":755,"date":"2019-10-25T11:01:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-25T16:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/?p=755"},"modified":"2019-10-25T11:01:36","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T16:01:36","slug":"liberty-to-argue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/liberty-to-argue\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberty to argue"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I travel, I take pictures – lots of pictures.\u00a0 I take pictures of buildings and signs and lampposts and steeples and arches and flowers and a perfect espresso and quotes carved on cornerstones. And I have my desktop preferences set to rotate through my thousands of travel pictures, one at a time, so that each day I see a different picture from my journeys.<\/p>\n

Today’s picture was of this quote:\u00a0 “Give me liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to my conscience, above all other liberties.”\u00a0 Milton<\/p>\n

Here’s the picture that’s serving as today’s desktop decoration.\u00a0\"\"<\/p>\n

Milton had it right, didn’t he?\u00a0 We are sorely in need of greater understanding and acceptance of the liberty to argue freely according to our understanding.\u00a0 I would add, of course, that we should also argue respectfully, which also seems to be lacking these days.<\/p>\n

Isn’t that one reason we work at an institution of higher education?\u00a0 To foster the ability to “know, to utter and to argue freely according to [one’s] conscience”?<\/p>\n

I believe that education is the key to a good life.\u00a0 It is the key to a thriving economy, to creativity and innovation, to an engaged citizenry, to a functioning democracy, to acceptance of differences – but most importantly it is the key to liberty.\u00a0 So when I spin and churn at work, when I go from a meeting about a new initiative to hearing a complaint from a faculty member to writing a report about another initiative to responding to an argumentative email, I do it because I believe in the power of education to change things for the good.\u00a0 And yes, I believe fervently in liberty, including the liberty “to argue freely [and respectfully] according to my conscience”.\u00a0 And I expect that you do too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I travel, I take pictures – lots of pictures.\u00a0 I take pictures of buildings and signs and lampposts and steeples and arches and flowers and a perfect espresso and quotes carved on cornerstones. And I have my desktop preferences set to rotate through my thousands of travel pictures, one at a time, so that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updates"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.austincc.edu\/avpacad\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}