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On Being Blacklisted

aaronkunin.medium.com

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Re: On Being Blacklisted

#151

Post by [deleted] »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #115
rsj_hn wrote: post #14

"“we believe the essay does not align with Chicago Review’s editorial and political agenda.”" It's interesting that some academic literary magazines are now being forced to admit they have political agendas, which is a step in the right direction. People like Kunin are the conscience of our generation, daring to stand up to the mobs and tell the truth - a political act that conflicts with the Chicago Review's agenda.…

> some academic literary magazines are now being forced to admit they have political agendas I think "have political agendas" is a logical leap. If your employees or customers are going to be angry with you for working with someone, you don't work with that person. To go against the wishes of your employees and customers would be having a political agenda.

[deleted]

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#152

Post by waterhouse »

ariabuckles wrote: post #119
waterhouse wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think what a lot of the commenters are missing is that this article, and statements like "If I must revise my teaching to conform to a popular view of inclusivity that I do not share" have an impact on not just his research, but also sends a message to his students: that he doesn't whether they feel safe being there matters, and that they don't deserve to have representation in studied works. You're making a jump…

I might be making a jump, because I've followed a lot of these discussions over time. To my understanding (and as a disclaimer, I advocate strongly for it), "inclusivity" in general means making an environment safe for people of marginalized backgrounds. So to me, his declaration that inclusivity as a value ought to be up for debate seems to indicate he doesn't think it's a top priority that students of marginalized…

> So to me, his declaration that inclusivity as a value ought to be up for debate seems to indicate he doesn't think it's a top priority that students of marginalized backgrounds feel welcome in his classroom.

Well, Kunin says: "My sense is that students and faculty are unsure of the meaning of inclusive teaching. To the extent that we feel any certainty, we do not agree with one another." I don't think he ever says that he thinks inclusivity, the way he interprets it, is a bad thing or isn't worthwhile.

Is that a distinction without a difference? Suppose, for illustration, that I declare that "inclusivity" means everyone has to sit in a circle for the whole class, because otherwise some people won't be seen by others and therefore won't be properly included in the classroom experience. Kunin protests that this would make it impossible for him to write on a chalkboard or project an image onto a screen. I tell everyone that this means Kunin opposes inclusivity, and the minority students start to feel unsafe. Is this Kunin's fault, or mine? Is the solution for Kunin to buckle up, or for me to stop scaring the students?

If you think that's a silly idea, consider this: "Last year when I proposed to teach a seminar in which the syllabus would include essays by Ralph Ellison, two of my colleagues wrote to the Curriculum Committee, as well as to the dean and the president of the college, objecting that it would be “literary blackface” for me to study Ellison." (The more general term "cultural appropriation" could be used if Ellison were a non-black minority.) I wouldn't be surprised if someone had actually proposed sitting in a circle.

Is there some source of truth, that all responsible people should obviously recognize as the source of truth, about what is the ideal "inclusivity"? If it were a serious attempt at "making an environment safe for people of marginalized backgrounds", then one thing I would expect to see is for these recommendations to be backed by studies; is that usually the case?

Also, by the way, receiving a failing grade on a test is probably very distressing to many people (perhaps a majority), and failing a class even more so. Surely making students feel "safe", at this level, would imply eliminating the possibility of such distress and making sure the students knew it was gone?

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#153

Post by schoen »

monkeypizza wrote: post #113
marshmallow_12 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abolish is a synonym of cancel. Culture is the product of collective agreements. You Sir, are in fact suggesting we create a cancel, cancel culture. Instead of eradicating the evil, you are embracing it.

Yes, this is a coherent, stable proposal. For a tolerant society to adopt complete tolerance, even of things designed to destroy their society, is unstable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

I'm kind of surprised at how the "paradox of tolerance" has gained so much currency in the past few years as if it were an obviously-established principle in free speech theory or something.

In the recent past, this idea was much less accepted in the U.S. because it was not assumed that allowing people who were intolerant in some regard to express their ideas (or people who were hostile in some regard to U.S. society or culture) would inevitably lead to destroying the tolerant social order. Instead, the "marketplace of ideas" theory was usually taken to mean that people would consider various ideas (including intolerant ideas, or ideas aimed at radically changing the social order) and, in most cases, largely find them unappealing and not act on them.

In the Cold War era, there were lots of civil libertarians who thought Communism was gravely evil and threatening, but that there was no "paradox" in allowing Communists to advocate their views because those views would lose an open discussion. The fact that Communists didn't necessarily believe in free speech or intend to reciprocate this tolerance did nothing to undermine this confidence; it was like "Communism is a bad idea and it's not going to win in a free marketplace of ideas; only the Communists need to use censorship to shore up their bad ideas, whereas we don't".

Similarly, the ACLU defending Nazis in Skokie (etc.) didn't think that it was a paradox to defend and tolerate people who themselves would not tolerate the ACLU or other minorities. They believed that those people had pretty crummy ideas and that most Americans would see through those ideas.

Similarly, there have always been religious groups that are wildly intolerant in the sense that they believe that their religion is the only true religion, that everyone should follow it, and even that ideally people should be forced to follow it, if that were possible. (To say nothing of the harshness with which they may treat people who disbelieve or mock their religions, or of people who flout their precepts.) Nonetheless, tolerating these religions isn't really a "paradox" except in the case where they're capable of taking over a whole society. Which is not never, but also not always.

The stability question is subtle because it depends a lot on your assumptions. But isn't the paradigmatic unstable equilibrium case where most people in the society are willing or eager to become more intolerant, and tolerance is only maintained because they're kept from hearing suggestions that would move them in that direction? As I've been noticing more and more, that's what the west said about our adversaries in the Cold War: rickety societies propped up by lies and suppression!

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#154

Post by Bakary »

konjin wrote: post #150
Bakary wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't meant this as a personal attack but there is something faintly ironic about this statement Orwell is pretty the much the one-stop gramophone record for quotes when someone wants to express concern about censorship or authoritarianism in a vague, semi-lyrical way

Only if you know nothing about him or his life. He was cancelled in Britain from when he went to fight in the Spanish civil war until the end of WWII and the start of the cold war. Which is what makes his quote so noteworthy, he was right, his view became the dominant one, but it still wasn't an improvement because the people repeating it did so without thinking.

I'm not criticizing Orwell or the quote itself. I'm pointing out the irony of seeing this quote and others by the same author get regularly popped out following the very same gramophone mindset he warns about. People just pop an Orwell and call it a day. Could it be called recursive irony? I don't know if that's a thing.

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#155

Post by manfredo »

ariabuckles wrote: post #128
manfredo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a lot of people (mostly white, mostly men) don't think that's true, but these types of attitudes can easily allow harmful messages to fester in academic classrooms. > 88 percent of students agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that “the climate on my campus prevents students/faculty from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive.” Sixty-three percent of faculty agreed or stron…

The question in that survey is different: it asks whether people self-censor because of others. That's pretty different than whether inclusivity is a worthwhile goal, and surveys are notoriously variable based on wording. For example, I would answer yes to that question, I censor myself to avoid offending people (I have done so in this thread, to try to keep it constructive), but I strongly support work to make colle…

It didn't just ask about censoring specific words or terms, or staying polite. It asked about censoring beliefs.

Say someone who is very much in favor of legal abortion stays silent as one of their co-workers goes on about how abortion should be banned, for fear of offending said co-worker. Is the fact that this person held back from sharing their beliefs an example of inclusivity? I'd say that this is not only false, it is the opposite of what is true. The fact that this person self-censored out of fear of causing offense is evidence of an environment intolerant of pro-choice people.

Inclusivity is a worthwhile goal. That is why such extensive self-censoring beliefs is a prominent concern, it's strong evidence that we are not being inclusive of people of different beliefs.

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#156

Post by fatbird »

refenestrator wrote: post #138
fatbird wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kunin opposes blacklisting that resulted from others voting with their feet . He heaps scorn on the editors of the magazine, who have, I think, the best defense of their actions, namely that it was him or them, and they chose them so they could continue publishing. Kunin's target is really the other contributors who effectively strongarmed the editors into ejecting him, and he later in his essay falls back on the old…

It's really funny to me that this is 'inclusivity'. We have a tiny clique of upper-middle-class people who want to control all discourse in the name of 'inclusivity'. If you're one million percent sure that you're right about everything, that's justifiable. You're maximizing inclusivity. But if you're not?

No, what's really funny is suggesting that the editors of the Chicago Review and their contributors somehow CONTROL ALL DISCOURSE. It's as if Kunin has no other medium for the written word available to him.

Of course I don't think I'm right about everything. But, as should be obvious, maximizing inclusivity means more than just ensuring an edgy, white, male poet with a university position is provided an audience.

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#157

Post by konjin »

Bakary wrote: post #154
konjin wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you know nothing about him or his life. He was cancelled in Britain from when he went to fight in the Spanish civil war until the end of WWII and the start of the cold war. Which is what makes his quote so noteworthy, he was right, his view became the dominant one, but it still wasn't an improvement because the people repeating it did so without thinking.

I'm not criticizing Orwell or the quote itself. I'm pointing out the irony of seeing this quote and others by the same author get regularly popped out following the very same gramophone mindset he warns about. People just pop an Orwell and call it a day. Could it be called recursive irony? I don't know if that's a thing.

I look forward to the day that we can't use reheated arguments from last century about current events. It doesn't help that people who want to destroy our ability to think use Orwell as a manual - hate speech might as well be something he coined in 1984 for all the emotion and lack of logic behind it, that it's law today will be judged harshly by future generations.

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#158

Post by rayiner »

ariabuckles wrote: post #148
bradleyjg wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what the parent poster is getting at is that many of us are bewildered at the way you are using the word “safe”. I take it you aren’t saying that students believe that an assailant will be hiding in the classroom with a bat ready to assault them as the enter the classroom. Rather I take you and others to be using safe to mean something like comfortable. But unsafe and uncomfortable are two different words. Th…

I mean psychological safety, as in https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/after-years-of-research-go... , or as in "will i face verbal bullying in this space". That is a different type of safety than physical safety, but it's very real. How much people experience not feeling psychologically safe varies widely, though. I'm a visible minority, and my rights are frequently a part of political debate. In spaces where those de…

Okay, but are people being verbally bullied in university classrooms?

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#159

Post by waterhouse »

ariabuckles wrote: post #148
bradleyjg wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what the parent poster is getting at is that many of us are bewildered at the way you are using the word “safe”. I take it you aren’t saying that students believe that an assailant will be hiding in the classroom with a bat ready to assault them as the enter the classroom. Rather I take you and others to be using safe to mean something like comfortable. But unsafe and uncomfortable are two different words. Th…

I mean psychological safety, as in https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/after-years-of-research-go... , or as in "will i face verbal bullying in this space". That is a different type of safety than physical safety, but it's very real. How much people experience not feeling psychologically safe varies widely, though. I'm a visible minority, and my rights are frequently a part of political debate. In spaces where those de…

> In a team with high psychological safety, teammates feel safe to take risks around their team members. They feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.

Well. What happened when Kunin took a risk and published an essay asking some questions and offering what he thought was a new idea? He faced verbal bullying and was punished. Is the point to give psychological safety to minority students but not bother about other people? (In fact, I suspect many of the minority students who happen to agree with Kunin would not feel psychologically safe saying so.)

At this point the classic rejoinder would be to say "look at these suffering minorities; your argument is invalid" or to talk about Kunin's privilege, but you seem to make better arguments than that.

Re: On Being Blacklisted

#160

Post by schoen »

monkeypizza wrote: post #142
ttt0 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's fine, just don't call yourself "tolerant". It's doublespeak, just like how the word "racism" is used today

In your definition of tolerant, is it required to tolerate even attempts to destroy the tolerant person? i.e. is there a line beyond which tolerance doesn't apply? Where do laws fit in here? I honestly thought that tolerance already included this concept - it actually means tolerant of difference of opinion, except for attempts to overthrow and replace the system of tolerance itself.

I've thought that the "attempts to destroy" and "attempts to overthrow" are limited in the sense of "imminent lawless action" and not "mere teaching or advocacy". E.g. if someone says "we should have a dictatorship of the proletariat/guardianship of the Islamic Jurist/integralist monarchy/national socialism/etc. instead of the social order that we have now", that statement doesn't cause or create those systems. Tolerating it presumably does increase the chance that one of those systems will eventually come to power (because advocating it could be an important step in creating it), but there's no guarantee of that, any more than there's a guarantee that tolerating any other idea or belief will lead to that idea or belief's ascendancy or general acceptance!

(And on the other hand, not tolerating these ideas also opens the door to making other beliefs shared with any of these belief systems taboo.)

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