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Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

president.mit.edu

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Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#61

Post by quantumwannabe »

cool_dude85 wrote: post #30
tomcam wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These people are surprisingly easy to spot, by the way. Excellent. So let them say what they want and demolish them with reason instead of suppression.

This doesn't work in some situations. Hitler would not have been DEMOLISHED by facts and logic, to use a youtube-ism.

Hitler went to prison and came out stronger and more popular. Oppressing him didn't work, but there was a chance that the German people could have been convinced that National Socialism wouldn't improve the economy and restore Germany to its pre-WWI glory.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#63

Post by jaywalk »

redeux wrote: post #46
tomcam wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of years of case law in the Anglosphere contradict your view. Neither statement would be considered incendiary enough to merit censorship in the USA or Britain.

You're speaking of what is, and I'm speaking of what I believe should be. These two things are not in contradiction. Laws can and do change. There was no individual right to bear arms in the United States until the 2008[1], changing establish law for the past 200+ years at the time. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

The DC v. Heller decision meant that there always had been an individual right to bear arms in the US, and that laws against it were unconstitutional. It's an important distinction.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#64

Post by LanceH »

yanderekko wrote: post #52
RHSeeger wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given the choice between "let everyone speak even if someone might be lying" and "let only approved speakers speak even if the approval process may be corrupt", I'll take the former pretty much every time. While I tend to agree with this sentiment, it's worth noting that it takes orders of magnitude more effort to fight against lies and misinformation than it does to create them. As such, letting everyone say whate…

Even if this were true, insinuating that this necessitates that we need a Ministry of Truth to create diktats for us is pure Nirvana Fallacy. Platforms have been experimenting with all sorts of mechanisms to combat misinformation that do not involve the naked suppression of "harmful" perspectives, thankfully.

I'll agree to the MoT plan if I get to pick the MoT.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#65

Post by AbrahamParangi »

superb-owl wrote: post #59
akomtu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"University of Pisa has canceled the Prof. Galileo's lecture on celestial bodies due to the controversy surrounding his views on heliocentrism, after continued protests by the students who reject the unholy idea that the planet they live on isn't the center of the Universe. Department of Heresy and Inquisition has temporarily suspended Galileo and referred him to Church."

This is a false equivalence. Galileo was concerned with physical fact, whereas this professor's controversial opinions are sociological and fairly subjective--they boil down to a value judgement. That's not to condemn (or defend) the professor. This just isn't a fair characterization of the debate.

A fact not yet widely verified and an opinion cannot, in general, be distinguished

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#66

Post by Manuel_D »

customkitchen wrote: post #55
tablespoon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

If by "the DEI people" you mean "students who were only able to be there because someone made a conscious effort to do diversity outreach" then yes. They would be opposed to someone suggesting that they should stop the outreach so that people like them could no longer be there. His piece (you can read it here: https://www.newsweek.com/diversity-problem-campus-opinion-16... ) is more of the same intellectually dismiss…

> If by "the DEI people" you mean "students who were only able to be there because someone made a conscious effort to do diversity outreach" then yes. They would be opposed to someone suggesting that they should stop the outreach so that people like them could no longer be there.

This is only half the equation. There's another group of people who excluded on account of their race and gender as part of this "diversity outreach". DEI isn't about inclusion vs. exclusion. Both Abbot and DEI supporters are in favor of including and excluding students. What they disagree on is how this decision is made.

Also, how is "we should build a system that uses merit and qualifications alone but is also unbiased" a discriminatory suggestion? That is the total opposite of the message.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#67

Post by foobarian »

superb-owl wrote: post #59
akomtu wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"University of Pisa has canceled the Prof. Galileo's lecture on celestial bodies due to the controversy surrounding his views on heliocentrism, after continued protests by the students who reject the unholy idea that the planet they live on isn't the center of the Universe. Department of Heresy and Inquisition has temporarily suspended Galileo and referred him to Church."

This is a false equivalence. Galileo was concerned with physical fact, whereas this professor's controversial opinions are sociological and fairly subjective--they boil down to a value judgement. That's not to condemn (or defend) the professor. This just isn't a fair characterization of the debate.

I'm not so sure, even the helio/geocentrism is a matter of opinion due to relativity of motion.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#68

Post by contrast »

tomcam wrote: post #18
jonathanstrange wrote: post #6

One, perhaps the only, problem with freedom of speech in academia is that can be very actively exploited by bad faith actors, i.e., people who are not interested at all in truth and merely abuse the university system as a platform for furthering political goals and "whitewashing" their position. These people are surprisingly easy to spot, by the way. They often come from a non-academic background, have a party or "th…

> These people are surprisingly easy to spot, by the way. Excellent. So let them say what they want and demolish them with reason instead of suppression.

Do you have any evidence to support your assertion here? It seems to me that promoting well practiced liars has rarely resulted in reasoned discussions.

Nor does compelling people to promote bad faith actors seem to me anything other than another method of suppression. Compelled speech is not free speech.

Let individuals and individual institutions apply some judgement, as if they were living, breathing human beings able to make choices.

If a university demonstrates consistently poor judgement, that problem will not be solved by having event organisers who believe they are unable to make their own choices.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#69

Post by customkitchen »

Manuel_D wrote: post #66
customkitchen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "the DEI people" you mean "students who were only able to be there because someone made a conscious effort to do diversity outreach" then yes. They would be opposed to someone suggesting that they should stop the outreach so that people like them could no longer be there. His piece (you can read it here: https://www.newsweek.com/diversity-problem-campus-opinion-16... ) is more of the same intellectually dismiss…

> If by "the DEI people" you mean "students who were only able to be there because someone made a conscious effort to do diversity outreach" then yes. They would be opposed to someone suggesting that they should stop the outreach so that people like them could no longer be there. This is only half the equation. There's another group of people who excluded on account of their race and gender as part of this "diversity…

No, it is not the opposite. That suggestion is just restating the question. They already tried to build a system that uses merit and qualifications alone, and the complaint is how doing that has led to extremely biased results.

There is nothing wrong with disagreeing on how the decision is made, but the piece itself is poorly written, intentionally inflammatory, and insulting. There are maybe two valid suggestions buried within a bunch of nonsense, which shouldn't be the case for such a short article. It always disturbs me how anyone is willing to publish these terrible, low quality op-eds. And then when people get angry at them for their writings being low-quality, insulting and inflammatory, they have the nerve to complain that people don't want to hear the rest of their opinions... Instead of, you know, addressing the issue that caused the anger and changing the bad opinions accordingly.

Re: Proposed Free Expression Statement for MIT

#70

Post by panarky »

akomtu wrote: post #32
tablespoon wrote: post #19

> We saw this last fall with the wide range of views around the Carlson lecture. If anyone else was wondering what was being referenced above, I'm guessing it's this: https://thetech.com/2021/10/14/carlson-lecture-cancellation : > Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS) Department Head Robert van der Hilst canceled the department’s annual John Carlson Lecture due to controversy surrounding the invited speak…

"University of Pisa has canceled the Prof. Galileo's lecture on celestial bodies due to the controversy surrounding his views on heliocentrism, after continued protests by the students who reject the unholy idea that the planet they live on isn't the center of the Universe. Department of Heresy and Inquisition has temporarily suspended Galileo and referred him to Church."

"The MIT statement on free expression states that in order to encourage provocative thinking, controversial views, and nonconformity, the university will protect all speech within the boundaries of the First Amendment."

"Therefore, as a junior member of the Flat Earth Society, I demand MIT provide me an auditorium and a microphone to legitimize and amplify my nonconformist opinion about the shape of the Earth."

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