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Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

thefire.org

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Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#11

Post by shanebellone »

8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote: post #4
jleyank wrote: post #3

Can have fun with this particularly if it’s a 20th century European history course assignment. If books cause harm, then pretty much any religious text will be (very) offensive to another as it’s heretical etc. psychology texts probably really offend Scientologists, and I’m sure you can come up with other combinations without too much effort. Das Kapital, any civil war history covering the western campaign and it’s g…

Indeed, but, we all know that in those circles nobody cares about Scientologists' feelings getting hurt. There's a well-established hierarchy of sacred victim groups that have to be protected from "harm" (for an arbitrary and nebulous definition of the word) at all costs, and whose defense is one of the most pious expressions of in-group belonging. Scientologists, Christians, members of political groups on the other…

{Scientologists, Christians, members of political groups}

No one likes ugly sets.

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#12

Post by kelseyfrog »

jleyank wrote: post #3

Can have fun with this particularly if it’s a 20th century European history course assignment. If books cause harm, then pretty much any religious text will be (very) offensive to another as it’s heretical etc. psychology texts probably really offend Scientologists, and I’m sure you can come up with other combinations without too much effort. Das Kapital, any civil war history covering the western campaign and it’s g…

You would have to ask the individual(s) who profess to have been harmed. Claiming "it must be X" and then dismissing X is approaching a straw man.

Restorative justice practices are notoriously antithetical to the adversarial justice system we're used to dealing with. Assumptions we make in adversarial justice systems like open observation to ensure a public check on proceedings are not part of restorative practices. Even "there is one objective truth" are not implicitly part of restorative justice systems.

The existence and practice of alternative justice systems bring to light the mechanical sympathy between reality perception and justice systems. For those who subscribe to an ideology that contains a single objective reality, the idea that not everyone believes the same way can cause an intense counter reaction. I've seen this happen to people myself.

At the interaction between these two, there exists a sliver where we can say, if the book reader didn't want to be beholden to such systems, they could have voted with their feet and chose to educate themselves at a university which practiced a system of justice compatible with their beliefs. By choosing Stanford, they implicitly consented to the system Stanford uses, restorative justice ~et al~ etc.

This is a long way of saying, we may never know the nature of the harm.

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#13

Post by superorganism »

leephillips wrote: post #5
nhchris wrote: post #2

> asking them to “acknowledge” what they’ve done and “change” their ways through restorative justice-type exercises undoubtedly chills student speech. This precedes speech. This is the right to read . Stallman's essay [1] needs an update. But no books were burned so we're still the good guys, don't worry. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

The dizzying pace with which so many of our institutions—from the ACLU to basically all our our elite universities—have not only abandoned but energetically oppose their former principles, over just the past five years, is horrifying.

Can you give a concrete example?

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#16

Post by commandlinefan »

shams93 wrote: post #6

How are we supposed to learn from history if reading historical documents becomes a crime?

Your politicians will summarize why those things were bad. No need for you to confirm independently, you can trust them.

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#19

Post by jstarfish »

Heh, I've seen this same mechanic abused twice recently-- once in a workplace violence claim, and another in a sextortion case.

Rather than make a false accusation against someone (or any accusation, really) you vaguely allude to how they did something that "triggers a trauma response from [your] past" and gaslight/coerce/shame them into admitting guilt ("acknowledging harm"). That settles all dispute over the integrity of the allegation itself and then you can shake them down or litigate at will.

When did it become 1497 again? "You're a sinner! But we don't actually know that you did anything, so you need to confess your sins-- and repent!"

Re: Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’

#20

Post by JumpCrisscross »

leephillips wrote: post #5
nhchris wrote: post #2

> asking them to “acknowledge” what they’ve done and “change” their ways through restorative justice-type exercises undoubtedly chills student speech. This precedes speech. This is the right to read . Stallman's essay [1] needs an update. But no books were burned so we're still the good guys, don't worry. [1] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

The dizzying pace with which so many of our institutions—from the ACLU to basically all our our elite universities—have not only abandoned but energetically oppose their former principles, over just the past five years, is horrifying.

> from the ACLU

The ACLU has a track record of defending the rights of the unfavorable, even irredeemable. Are there examples that lump them in with this nonsense?

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