There is something fishy here :)
Dewayne E. Perry
Professor Emeritus & Motorola Regents Chair Emeritus in Software Engineering

perry at utexas.edu
Empirical Software Engineering Laboratory
Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering
Computer Science in the College of Natural Sciences
The Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences (ICES)
The University of Texas at Austin

Location: POB 5.124 Address: ECE, UT Austin
+1.512.471.2050 (Office) 201 E. 24TH Street
+1.512.471.3621 (Fax) POB 5.124, C5000
Austin TX 78712


Office Hours: 11-12 M/W Education Research Professional Fun Stuff Whats New A Surprise



** LATEST NEWS **

Alex Wolf's and my seminal software architecture paper, " Foundations for the Study of Software Architecture",
written during the summer of 1989 and published in 1992, has been the most cited software engineering paper since at least 1999.
At ESEC/FSE the paper received the ACM SigSoft Retrospective Impact Award.

A little known fact about the paper: it was first presented here in Austin at MCC in August 1989.



** Words of Wisdom **

Benno Schmidt on Free Speech

From "Universities Must Defend Free Speech" in the May 6, 1991, Wall Street Journal, adapted from remarks by Benno C. Schmidt Jr., who was at the time president of Yale University:

The most serious problems of freedom of expression in the U.S. today exist on our campuses. Freedom of thought is in danger from well-intentioned but misguided efforts to give values of community and harmony a higher place than freedom. The assumption seems to be that the purpose of education is to induce "correct" opinion rather than to search for wisdom and to liberate the mind.

On many campuses, perhaps most, there is little resistance to growing pressure to suppress and to punish, rather than to answer, speech that offends notions of civility and community. These campuses are heedless of the oldest lesson in the history of freedom, which is that offensive, erroneous and obnoxious speech is the price of liberty. Values of civility, mutual respect and harmony are rightly prized within the university. But these values must be fostered by teaching and by example, and defended by expression. When the goals of harmony collide with freedom of expression, freedom must be the paramount obligation of an academic community.

Much expression that is free may deserve our contempt. We may well be moved to exercise our own freedom to counter it or to ignore it. But universities cannot censor or suppress speech, no matter how obnoxious in content, without violating their justification for existence. Liberal education presupposes that a liberated mind will strive for the courage and composure to face ideas that are fraught with evil, and to answer them. To stifle expression because it is obnoxious, erroneous, embarrassing, not instrumental to some political or ideological end is-quite apart from the invasion of the rights of others-a disastrous reflection on the idea of the university. It is to elevate fear over the capacity for a liberated and humane mind ....

A more vexing question of freedom of expression concerns the actual use of university authority to suppress freedom. This is the most serious example of confusion and failure of principle in university governance today. It reminds us how frequently in history threats to free expression have come not from tyranny but from wellmeaning persons of little understanding.


Adam Smith, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" (1759):

The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very , brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine. He neither endeavours to impose upon you by the cunning devices of an artful impostor, nor by the arrogant airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the confident assertions of a superficial and impudent pretender. He is not ostentatious even of the abilities which he really possesses. His conversation is simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by which other people so frequently thrust themselves into public notice and reputation. For reputation in his profession he is naturally disposed to rely a good deal upon the solidity of his knowledge and abilities; and he does not always think of cultivating the favour of those little clubs and cabals, who, in the superior arts and sciences, so often erect themselves into the supreme judges of merit; and who make it their business to celebrate the talents and virtues of one another, and to decry whatever can come into competition with them. If he ever connects himself with any society of this kind, it is merely in self-defence, not with a view to impose upon the public, but to hinder the public from being imposed upon, to his disadvantage, by the clamours, the whispers, or the intrigues, either of that particular society, or of some others of the same kind.




Fleeting Moments: A Blast from the Past - - Another Blast from the Past



Dewayne E. Perry - This information last updated September 2008
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