Here are some examples of the offensive memes: https://thetab.com/us/2017/06/05/harvard-memes-rescinded-694...
Interesting...I'd rate these no more offensive than Sarah Silverman stand up.
Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
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Re: Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
The civil rights movement itself exposed the need for specific legal protections for minorities, because leaving it all up to the "marketplace of ideas" only ensures that patterns of systemized oppression continue. What happens when you don't restrict along protected grounds is that entire industries collude to exclude those classes of people. Mass hatred drowns out the whole marketplace.
And right now the entire university education industry is colluding to suppress certain types of speech; an incident like this could happen at most universities, not just Harvard. So why doesn't freedom of speech also deserve specific legal protection? You still haven't justified treating freedom of speech differently from freedom from discrimination.
I'm having trouble following your logic. In my original comment, I stated that Harvard should have a right to choose who they want to admit or not admit to their school, unless they wanted to discriminate on illegal grounds.
Everyone here is exercising their rights. The kids have a right to exercise their rights to free speech, and Harvard has a right to run a business the way they want to run it.
Harvard is not a public institution run by the state, so it is not obligated to respect rights that public schools have to. This creates more diversity in the marketplace rather than less.
Everybody can make the kinds of statements they want to make, and everybody can run the kinds of businesses they want to run, until those statements or businesses run afoul of laws. That's how America works.
You can tell Harvard that they should respect student's rights the way you want them to. They can in turn ignore you. You can in turn choose a different university.
The reason we have anti-discrimination laws is because without them, minorities would have no other options.
You seem to want blanket and blind enforcement of your idea of what rights are, without regard to the reasons why we have free speech and discrimination laws in the first place. It's for greater diversification and opportunities.
Re: Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
People protecting the right of racists to spread racism, support racism. It cannot be any other way. You cannot claim that you dislike racism, and and also want to preserve it. Also, "Free speech" refers to the fact that the government cannot bust in to your house with a SWAT team and arrest you for speaking something that they don't like. Private companies can enforce whatever speech rules they like, and that doesn'…
It's exhausting to me that there are huge swaths of commenters that immediately jump on the legal protections for free speech and lecture us on how that First Amendment only protects you from government retaliation. Everyone knows that. Nobody (except the most ill-informed) dispute it. But the First Amendment is not and was never intended to be the end-all and be-all of free speech. Freedom of speech is a value held…
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Re: Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> political opponents Framing bigots as "political opponents" has some efficacy as a tactic too, given people's allergy to politics. It's sad that this has, especially recently, become equated to politics. "How should we organize government", or "are certain functions better handled by government" are reasonable questions of politics. "Should we treat some people as less than other people" is not a question of politi…
> Framing bigots as "political opponents" has some efficacy as a tactic too How about framing political opponents as "bigots"?
Go re-read the article and tell me again how they're "political opponents"? We're getting sufficiently abstract here that it's worth going back and re-reading what we're actually talking about. Their politics were never at question here, nor was this a political stage. This is a private university choosing who to admit, based on the culture they wish to encourage. Let's not elevate what they were doing to "politics".
If the article was "withdraws acceptances for people who advocated X political belief" (e.g. "less funding for universities", "less power to teachers' unions", "private healthcare", take your pick of things that the average university faculty is likely to disagree with), I'd be right there arguing against that; all of those are reasonably debatable topics in the right forums. Which is exactly why there's no slippery slope there: when it's something worth defending, there's no shortage of defenders. So why does there inevitably spring up an army of defenders to support bigots? There's no "first they came for" argument here; first they came for the bigots, and then they stopped and threw a party.
(On a technical forum, in particular, there ought to be an appreciation for historical pattern matching; today "bigotry against outgroups" looks a lot like yesterday's "bigotry against outgroups", and it really shouldn't be a battle that has to get re-fought for every outgroup. One of these days I have hope that people could simply complete the pattern and skip the next dozen instances of it. It's the same battle every time, all the arguments look the same, and the right and wrong answers are always the same.)
At this point, I don't feel like there are any new arguments to make here. I think both of us are well aware of the arguments, I don't think either of us is particularly inclined to change their stance, and I see little value in going through the motions. All the arguments either one of us might reasonably make are posted elsewhere. So, in the interests of the honesty you've expressed an appreciation for: let's stop wasting each others' time.
Re: Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
You defeat bad arguments with good arguments. By the way this is the ONLY way. Silencing those you disagree with will only enrage and mobilize those people, and those people vote. Hence, Trump.
I would argue that Trump is a manifestation of the exact opposite, that no matter how good the argument is, it won't beat a bad one.
>> that no matter how good the argument is, it won't beat a bad one.
What kind of absurd, nihilist nonsense is this? Sounds like yet another example of Trump's opponents being unable to think critically and assuming their attempt at forcing terrible policy down the throats of common people is a "good argument" against the threat of facism.
Trump is winning precisely because there's no "good alternative", 99% of all "alternatives" are just less shitty, and even then only less shitty for certain segments of the population. People never resort to facism with good alternatives, yet strangely it's the default whenever they're stuck with a shit sandwich.
But I mean only all of history repeats this lesson, not like we'd expect anyone to understand that or anything.
Re: Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
I dislike these absolutist arguments. It ignores any sort of context or nuance and generally shuts down discussion. In general, I understand and sympathize with your line of reasoning, and championing of free speech. However, I think you are going too far. Absolutist argument? Where do you get that? Who's being absolutist? What evidence do you have that I don't have "a line?" Do you have any evidence that I support p…
> Authorities, especially institutions of higher learning, shouldn't be in the business of policing their student's speech. That's not "culture." That's oppression. I considered that to be an absolutist argument. I think there are contexts in which authorities (EDIT: non-governmental authorities) can police speech in a way that is not oppressive. And not just the usual "shouting fire in a crowded theater" sense. If y…
> Authorities, especially institutions of higher learning, shouldn't be in the business of policing their student's speech. That's not "culture." That's oppression.
I considered that to be an absolutist argument
That item just on happens to be on the other side of my "line." By your logic, anyone who has a position on the wrong side of your "line" is "absolutist." I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I think there are contexts in which authorities (EDIT: non-governmental authorities) can police speech in a way that is not oppressive.
Sure. There's definitely a line. The point at which authority, even non-violence based non-governmental authority, can be used to suppress dissent through societal and/or economic coercion, there is a moral line which has been crossed. It's even built into human psychology. The psychological threat of exclusion from a group is very strong, because in the prehistoric past, exclusion from the group was tantamount to a sentence of slow, lingering death. An organization using such a fear to enforce a political view is crossing a moral line parallel and nearby the moral line crossed by an organization (or an informal association of "activists") using the fear of violence to do the same.
So if Harvard had put these students on academic probation or something instead, you wouldn't necessarily have a problem? That's something I can get behind. I thought you were opposed to any action being taken against these students of any kind.
Sure. I wouldn't be "getting behind" that, but I wouldn't be "up in arms" against something like that, since it is temporary and non-exclusionary.
Re: Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Every Harvard student has a shared responsibility with every other student for the quality and tone of the community as a whole. Harvard cultivates a very specific type of community. These candidates signaled to Harvard through their actions that they are not conducive to the community Harvard is trying to cultivate (whether true or not).
But I think this behavior is nothing new. It is just revealed in a persistent form when you put it on a chatroom with your name next to it. One hears about this kind of stuff everywhere, all over the world. It fits the stereotype of the entitled rich white guys from the ivy league, but it's also not that uncommon in the non-ivyleague world. Yes, its unacceptable to share this publically, or with coworkers. But that's…
> But I think this behavior is nothing new.
And neither is schools denying access for those they deem undesirable. Fifty years ago, if information about a candidate participating in unsavory activities reached the admissions office in some manner and they were able to verify it (or not, it's really up to them whether the rumors themselves are bad enough), they could, and I'm sure did, use that to deny admission to candidates.
> But that's a pretty huge penalty.
That happens all the time. Life isn't fair, and Harvard admissions certainly aren't "fair", by whatever standard you can come up with. They specifically admit candidates on a very diverse set of criteria, which includes things such as the promotion of multiculturalism, because it's believed that exposure to different types of people provides an overall benefit to the student body. It should come as no surprise that if they are willing to admit otherwise lesser scholastically qualified candidates to promote this facet of the Harvard experience, they would be just as willing to reject people on the same grounds. Put simple, grades and SAT scores are not all that matters, and just as a college may reject you after admission has been granted if your last semester of High School has horrible grades, they may reject you if they discover evidence that they think you are not the type of student they want attending.
> There are some people there who lost their admission who probably were very lucky to get into Harvard, who don't have 10 other ivy league schools to go to.
Nobody has to go to an Ivy league school. In the same way you can screw up a big test and get a bad grade in High School, you can screw up your image and how you are perceived morally. They screwed up, and at least one avenue was closed to them. Their life may be different, but it's not like they are being jailed. They can go to some other school. I'm positive people have been rejected and even expelled for Harvard with less evidence. Their life will go on, and if they were able to get accepted to Harvard I'm sure they'll do okay going somewhere else, as long as they can curb whatever impulse caused this incident (whether it be ignorance of how it would be perceived, too much acceptance of peer pressure, or actual racism. I'm sure it was slightly different for each of them).
Re: Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
> So what you want is authoritarian control of speech. Nope. Say anything you like. Learn to live with the consequences, which can and should include rejection by widespread parts of civilized society, and bask in the solitude. The crickets will surely enjoy your free speech. You shouldn't go to jail for it, but you can't demand that other people like it.
Nope. Say anything you like. Learn to live with the consequences Having found that much of the modern world has quite effective protections for free speech and free association, authoritarians have learned this "one weird trick" to hide their activities. Here's the dishonest trick: Just because it's not in the set of rules enforced by city, county, state, and federal officials, then it's not censorship. That's the sa…
> Our country and most of the western world has a long history of the whole of society oppressing groups largely through such non-government oppression.
> people read the posted sign or subtly got the funny vibe
Or the bigoted meme? It's a great argument; you might consider exactly which point it's a great argument in favor of.
I am amazingly uninterested in arguments for why it's important to support racism and sexism, or in attempts to paint racists and sexists as an oppressed group that needs protection, or in attempts to equate freedom of association as equivalent to violence, or in attempts to call it "your particular ideas of what's right and wrong". Enjoy beating up that strawman as long as you like, but it has little to do with any actual position I'm advocating.
Re: Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
And private individuals are well within their rights to point out that Harvard's actions are inconsistent with their purported values of free speech.
Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. And from a legal perspective free speech just means the government can't punish you for protected speech. Individuals and entities are free to discriminate based on your protected speech all they want.
Free speech means exactly freedom from consequences. You're confusing the value of free speech with the specific contractual guarantee provided by the government. In other words, a university that commits itself to free speech contradicts that commitment by unaccepting students based on their speech.
Re: Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree that what they posted was offensive. But we can't start holding graduating high school students to the same standards we hold world and business leaders. Ironically, we didn't for Trump, but that's certainly the idea. Revoking one's admission to Harvard is a really rough way to teach the lesson of what you're supposed to and not supposed to say. College is the time to not only learn new ideas, but also to un-…
I don't think that standards should be lowered for high school seniors. These are people who are legally allowed to vote, join the army, buy guns, etc.., and for these people it's go to Harvard. They should know that it's unacceptable to share memes about sexual violence, racism, and whatnot, especially on Facebook. When I was in 6th grade (I'm 21 now), my school gave us the talk about the internet, saying that whate…
And yet, they're young enough that many, probably the majority, require co-signers on their student loans.
If we set out to send mixed signals about maturation to college students we couldn't have done a better job