Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) officials have started what they call a 10-week lecture series about climate change “from a variety of academic perspectives” — but don’t expect any climate change skeptics to speak.
People who admire environmental activist Greta Thunberg and believe in man-made climate change, however, will have a platform.
The Tennessee Star touched upon this topic with MTSU’s dean of the Honors College John Vile.
“I am guessing that they (climate change skeptics) will not speak. In my judgement you don’t find too many of those people at these things,” Vile said.
“But climate change skeptics are welcome to attend. My attitude is if someone is a climate change skeptic, and if they listen respectfully then I’ll do the same for them.”
As part of the lecture series, Vile is scheduled to speak in April about what he describes as a Biblical approach to climate change.
The lecture series began last week and is scheduled to have 12 other lecturers, many of whom are MTSU professors.
One lecturer, philosophy professor Phil Oliver, warned on a website attributed to him about “climate effects so severe that they might destabilize governments.” He said climate change might also “produce waves of refugees, precipitate the sixth mass extinction of plants and animals in the Earth’s history, and melt the polar ice caps.”
Oliver, on the same website, seemed to praise Thunberg as a climate-change expert. He spoke of political revolution and fantasized about Americans one day electing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as president.
According to an MTSU press release, this lecture series is part of a longstanding Honors upper division class, but it is open to the general public.
The series is held starting at 3 p.m. every Monday — except March 9 because of spring break — through April 13 in Room 106 of the school’s Paul W. Martin Sr. Honors Building.
As The Star reported last year, an MTSU music professor apparently went off script during his guest lecture at Belmont University and played the song “F**k Donald Trump” over the loudspeaker.
Belmont, of course, is a Christian school.
Joseph Morgan was the MTSU professor in question.
As reported in 2018, MTSU hosted a left-wing academic who told a room of about 200 students about a network of conservative and libertarian forces supposedly out to undermine democracy.
During her lecture, that woman, Nancy MacLean, author of Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America, also disparaged the religious right and Tea Partiers.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Middle Tennessee State University” by Middle Tennessee State University.
[…] The Star reported last week, MTSU officials have started what they call a 10-week lecture series about climate change “from a […]
Had a look at the list of speakers for this, One of them I interviewed when choosing a graduate school advisor for chemistry. Good scientist, and nice fellow. He has actual scientific and environmental credentials, unlike many of the “keyboard climatologists” I see around here.
This us what you get with Bill Lee. Hired that socialist from California to run our state Schools. Hired pro illegal immigration donner La Raza Randy Boyd.
Taxpayers funding Bill Lee’s Refugee hobby. Now needs 40 billion for more socialist and communist education.
Get ready for that State income tax. Wake up TN, Bill Lee is a liberal running as a Republican.
More liberal indoctrination on the taxpayers’ dollar.
I’m what you would say is the classical Redneck Hillbilly, dumber than a creek rock when it comes to many of today’s Sciences.
I guess you could say about the only sense I have is what you would call “Common Sense”.
And using that Common sense I still haven’t figured out how paying more taxes to the Government is going to cause the weather to change,
Like I said, I may be missing something along the way but I don’t think it’s “Brains”.
If I wanted to use brains to change the weather, I’d try “Praying”, after all, it’s worked before, taxing people never has.
Talk about messed up priorities. While a large percentage of our third grade kids can’t read at grade level, our State government is pouring more and more taxpayer dollars into “higher education” propaganda machines!