Risky Business at ‘Slate’

Alison Meyer

May 24, 2012

Internet powerhouse Slate featured a piece on Tuesday interviewing the founder of the "risk quotient" scale, Dylan Evans. Evans' remarks about risk assessment and "risk intelligence" are interesting, especially when he mentions FIRE and his opinions about the increasingly risk-averse culture of academia (near the end of the interview).

Two years ago this month, FIRE President Greg Lukianoff wrote in The Huffington Post about a sexual harassment charge filed against Evans for discussing the sexual habits of fruit bats. (Professor Evans was censured by University College Cork in Ireland, which is outside of FIRE's mission.) This powerful experience with the stranglehold of academic political correctness gave Evans personal evidence for what he calls "a worrying trend in academia towards policies that inhibit free discussion of ideas and sharing of information," which we see throughout the American academy.

Check out the rest of Evans' take on the stymied progress of academic culture and his thoughts about risk intelligence here.

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