Doug Smith, the author of On Value and Values posted this alarming news on his blog today:
“…two professors at UMass told their local newspaper about a student of theirs who “was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called “The Little Red Book… The student, who was completing a research paper on … fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents’ home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security.”
Smith contrasts the attitudes of Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin with our very own King George. A great post. Read it here >>
I find it strange that a man who wrote a book on Teams and High Performance would write this post without doing a lot of homework.
The story reeks of unverified statements, unanswered questions, hidden agendas, and assuming the worst about people trying to do their best.
It could be just another campus legend, there could be much more below the surface, it could be someone in an agency that went too far, and of course it could be a conspiracy of incredible proportions. But Occam’s Razor says don’t start assuming anything but the simplist, least consiratorial possibility and use scientific method.
What is the impact of insulting criticism on teams? What does this kind of outsider second-guessing and assuming the worst do to indivdual initiative on teams? Shouldn’t critics do some serious homework before making people on “our team” look like agents of the KGB repressing innocent little students and causing well meaning professors to “shudder” at some posh campus.