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campusreview.com.au
The fight for free speech: Pt 2
In the second part of our series,
we look at the implications
of political correctness on
academics who sit outside
‘normal’ personality types.
Geoffrey Miller interviewed by Conor Burke
W
ould Sir Isaac Newton flourish in an academic career
were he alive today?
The great man was said to have “an obsessive,
paranoid personality, with Asperger’s syndrome, a bad stutter,
unstable moods, and episodes of psychotic mania and depression”.
Imagine then if he were to teach young adults at a university today
and how difficult that would be for him and his students. How
would he get along with colleagues or university administrators?
This is the thought experiment Geoffrey Miller, associate
professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, put to
24
readers in an essay last year. Titled The Neurodiversity Case for Free
Speech, Miller explored the perils of modern academia for people
who are ‘neurodiverse’ or have “variations in brain function apart
from the autism spectrum”.
He makes the case that, for people with these disorders, it is
“hard to understand and follow speech codes that prohibit saying
or doing anything that others might find offensive”.
Campus Review spoke with Miller to unpack this argument and
its implications for the future of academia.
CR: Tell us about the term ‘neurodiversity’.
GM: The term was developed by autism and Asperger advocates
and activists to … initially mostly refer to ‘Aspie’ people, but you
could broaden the term to cover anybody with unusual mental
traits, personality traits or mental disorders.
So, the way I was using neurodiversity was pretty broad; it
covered the Asperger spectrum but also the schizophrenia
spectrum, which ranges from just a little bit eccentric and quirky,
to people who are schizotypal, to full-blown schizophrenia. It
would cover people with various mood disorders like bipolar