Live data from Hacker News

Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu

261–270 of 540 posts

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#261
post #13

Not sure if this link will always work but here is the instance being referred to: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/~bgzimmer/zoom_0.mp4?_=1

He was suspended for that??? Ridiculous. Seriously, the far left has ruined educational institutions. They are so obsessed with attacking "racism" or "hate" even when neither are involved. They don't care about context, they don't care about intent, they don't care about ANYTHING. This seriously needs to stop

As someone who is also quite a bit left, the actions of the university admins is just aggravatingly dumb. I'd ask you to have nuance and don't classify all the "left" as this idotic, hopefully you're not as reductionist as the people who got "offended"..

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#262

Honestly, I'm shocked everytime I read this stuff from american universities. Why is this happening? Because it's not the first nor second time that I read about events similar to this one.

> Why is this happening? This specific case, I would bet dollars to donuts, happened because: (1) The administration is hypersensitive in light of the wave of race related protests and associated two-sided violence occurring in the country. (2) Someone aware of the likelihood of that deliberately trolled the administration, probably under a false flag, to produce an incident. Possibly just for lulz, more likely than…

even money it was done on behalf of (though not necessarily at the direction of) a foreign power.

Why on earth would you assume that? What are the relatively likelihoods of it being Satanists, alien mind-worms or Marxist-Feminists versus an agent of a foreign power?

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#263
post #112

People like to blame progressive ideology for these sort of crazy stuff. But actually, the real culprit is consumerism and customer mentality of students. The professor was suspended because the faculty is terrified from upset customers. Same goes for all cancel culture incidents. The hyper producticised media , is using the upset sentiment to get attention (racial clickbait triggers) But it's riding the tiger, so it…

Can't let post-modernism and critical race theory off the hook.

Objectively, the statement was not racist and it should not be offensive to anyone. However, objective thought is not in favor anymore as it is associated with whiteness. We must accept the subjective view of the victims as paramount.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#265

Just wait until they figure out what the word for the color "black" is in Spanish...

I (don't) look forward to the future where the translation for "I have a black car" in Spanish would be "tengo un auto n-asterisco-asterisco-asterisco-asterisco"...

Poor Montenegro has to change its name to pander to the American left.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#266
post #40

> "Professor Greg Patton repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry. It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students. We must and we will do better." It's unbelievable that this "un…

I think that microaggressions are real, that language really has import, and I've been noticing those kinds of things more and more on a daily basis. But this is entirely unwarranted and a gross overreaction. Having said that, I also understand the terror that this kind of issue generates in organisations. Imagine you're the dean of an institution in an environment where people only read the headlines in their Facebo…

But that kind of controversy is supposed to be a good thing for universities! I'm not saying you're wrong as a matter of organizational dynamics, but it reads to me like an explanation of why a liquor store owner might prefer to only sell soft drinks. What's the point of a university where ideas can't be freely discussed?

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#267
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also with sexuality. My worry is that with the American cultural imperialism through Hollywood our European liberal approach to sexuality will become more puritanical. E.g. sex only after 18, teenage sex is more or less illegal (19y/o with a 17y/o). Friends of mine already think that American laws around sexuality are valid worldwide and sex with an under-18 is forbidden. Which is absolutely false in the case of Germ…

It's only crazy conservative states like California with the strict age cutoffs.

That's trivially disproven. Using the snake graph from fivethrityeight[1] as a proxy for "crazy conservative"-ness, three[2] of the top five liberal states don't have "strict age cutoffs" (which I interpret as having a lower age of consent that's limited by the partner's page). On the other hand, three[3] of the top five conservative states do have "strict age cutoffs".

[1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/

[2] Vermont, Hawaii, Maryland

[3] Wyoming, West Virginia, Idaho

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#268
post #40

> "Professor Greg Patton repeated several times a Chinese word that sounds very similar to a vile racial slur in English. Understandably, this caused great pain and upset among students, and for that I am deeply sorry. It is simply unacceptable for faculty to use words in class that can marginalize, hurt and harm the psychological safety of our students. We must and we will do better." It's unbelievable that this "un…

This is hardly surprising. We used to have lots of civil social discourse. Media, elites, and intellectuals would engage in such discourse and would present sometimes opposing thoughts. Only with such discourse will there be no room for radicals. And look what's been happening, moderates of a few years ago would be considered far-right today. Anyone with different opinions, now matter what reasons they offer, will be…

I think you're making your own counterargument: if you prioritize civil discourse, you necessarily exclude radicals - you've limited the space of discourse by insisting that the only acceptable propositions are those that people can reliably be civil about. Fewer people were making extreme claims, but many of those extreme claims could have been debated rationally, were people interested in doing so. It is a Potemkin discourse: it looks very peaceful and respectable, but it looks that way because it's artificially removed from actually discussing the state of our society.

So, I am happy to engage you in debate, and I'll even do your job for you by trying to precisely name the propositions that you think are so obviously incorrect.

Most of the hits I see for "milk is racist" is about the alt-right using milk drinking as essentially an aesthetic symbol, which seems like a) a factual observation b) not a claim about milk itself being racist, but about its adoption as a racist symbol.

I see a 2016 CNN article called "math is racist," which, if you read it, is clearly arguing that mathematical models are being used in ways that reinforce racism, not that the brute facts of mathematics are themselves racist, either. This argument is generally widely accepted, so I'm curious if you disagree with it.

I can't find any articles about interior design being racist, but I do see articles about the interior design industry confronting race problems. This doesn't sound surprising or extreme either - I'd expect that most industries have race problems of some sort.

You'll note that I have not called you bigot, racist, fascist, nor xenophobia [sic], and I'd appreciate if you returned the favor and engaged my arguments on the merits.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#269
post #56

I just watched the video after reading the article, and the video -- if it's of the incident to which people were objecting -- wasn't as cringey as I expected it to be; however , I would've hoped that an expert who was lecturing about language and culture would've anticipated the problem, and been more sensitive to it. Maybe, if he saw the problem, he could've prefaced the example with warning, or otherwise acknowled…

>however, I would've hoped that an expert who was lecturing about language and culture would've anticipated the problem, and been more sensitive to it.

The problem with that line of thinking is that there is no "problem" to begin with, aside from an inflated sense of entitlement from a group of outrage enthusiasts who believe context is irrelevant.

Re: Professor suspended for saying 那个 nà ge

#270
post #57

Watching the video, I cannot fathom how anyone can interpret this as being a racial slur? This is a common idiom in Chinese, people say it all the time. This is baffling and truly terrifying. Are we really there? This sort of overreaching witch hunting is belittling the fight against racism. Am I missing something?

I cannot fathom how anyone can interpret this as being a racial slur?

Nobody believed it was. This was a a demonstration of power by the extreme "progressives", reminding the faculty that they will do exactly as told or be smeared as bigots.

Post reply on HN