Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thefire.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 119 posts

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

#61

Post by wilg »

prvc wrote: post #52
wilg wrote: post #48

Some rando on Twitter reposting an screenshot of an anonymous person claims the following: https://twitter.com/barrydeutsch/status/1618697230382399488 > This article hasn't framed the incident accurately at all. the incident was two theta girls posted a Snapchat story of them reading Mein Kampf as part of their costumes at a pregame and laughing, clearly in a joking way, not at all in a historical way. The joke was i…

> laughing, clearly in a joking way, not at all in a historical way What should the penalty be for laughing in a non-"historical way"?

The penalty according to Stanford Daily would be "reckoning". This is all very silly.

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

#62

Post by zozbot234 »

sudobash1 wrote: post #39
abakker wrote: post #27

Just a reminder that a .org does not mean "trustworthy". https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Foundation_for_Individ... In this case, the discussion and the tenor of the conversation is almost certainly cherry picked to serve a particular agenda. On its face, the actions by Stanford in this article seem...not good. But I also suspect that this is making a mountain out of a molehill for political gain.

Some other sources: There is more information in the a "Stanford Daily" article: https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/22/protected-identity-harm... And an opinion article in the "Standford Review": https://stanfordreview.org/nazis-banned-books-we-shouldnt/

The Stanford Review article claims that the photo of the student reading that particular book may have been staged, as a "joke". If so, it does not seem surprising that such a stunt may potentially fall foul of Stanford's policies about protecting minority groups from harm or intimidation. There might not be an actual "book burning" concern of any sort here.

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

#63

Post by stronglikedan »

Brybry wrote: post #47
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

But isn't this about someone posting an image to Snapchat? Not about reading a book? And without seeing the image in question, and the context of why it was shared, it's kind of hard to say what's going on.

It's easy to see what's going on. An image of a student reading a book should be a non-story, regardless of where it's posted. What's going on is pure buffoonery and shenanigans.

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

#64

Post by mywittyname »

mxkopy wrote: post #18

Devils advocate - it may be that Stanford is punishing the act of taking a picture and distributing it, rather than reading the book. I was thinking of reading Mein Kampf (I've never read it), but I'd never think to pose in front of it.

That makes sense actually. Given the issue is not that the student read the book (as noted, it's required reading in certain classes).

The complaint appears to be, a student was photographed reading the book, and the nature of the photograph caused a group of people to feel adversely targeted by it. The article omits the photograph, or even any real description of it, so we can't exactly judge for ourselves.

The PIH rules seems to be for addressing, "I'm not touching you"-style harassment. So without seeing the photograph, or hearing the complaints against it, I feel like the article is very one-sided.

Also, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education claims to be non-partisan, but apparently sponsors conservative action groups on college and high school campuses. Including one run by Charlie Kirk.

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

#65

Post by causi »

Brybry wrote: post #47
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

But isn't this about someone posting an image to Snapchat? Not about reading a book? And without seeing the image in question, and the context of why it was shared, it's kind of hard to say what's going on.

But isn't this about someone posting an image to Snapchat?

What does that matter? Why is a university trying to police how crass somebody is on social media? They didn't threaten or harass someone; they didn't call for genocide. They dared to...publicly make light of a historical atrocity? This is trending dangerously into "insufficient piety".

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

#66

Post by leephillips »

nextaccountic wrote: post #25
leephillips wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t regard the article up top as a concrete example, I’m not sure I can convince you.

Is this article related to the ACLU? ctrl+f aclu doesn't return anything

I was replying to a request to supply an example of “so many [of] our institutions—from the ACLU to basically all of our elite universities”.

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

#67

Post by woooooo »

abakker wrote: post #27

Just a reminder that a .org does not mean "trustworthy". https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Foundation_for_Individ... In this case, the discussion and the tenor of the conversation is almost certainly cherry picked to serve a particular agenda. On its face, the actions by Stanford in this article seem...not good. But I also suspect that this is making a mountain out of a molehill for political gain.

If academia is overwhelmingly biased in one direction, and a free speech org is documenting cases of suppression.. then of course most of the cases they document will exhibit that bias.

It doesn't necessarily follow that they're playing for a team or using "free speech" in a bad faith manner. Academia created the discrepancy, FIRE is just documenting it.

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

#68

Post by rayiner »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #20
leephillips wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Unfortunately, lots of these public interest organizations are staffed with a new generation of lawyers who don’t believe in the old ways. My friend works at one such organization and was grumbling to me about young lawyers who protested representing a client who was undoubtedly within the scope of the organization’s mission, but who they didn’t like for unrelated reasons. (Details intentionally fuzzy to avoid outing anyone.)

There is a major ideological gap between the Boomer and Gen X liberals and the Zoomers on this front. The former were focused on craving out a space for pluralism in a society where the elite institutions were controlled by religious conservatives. The Zoomers grew up in a world where the religious conservatives have mostly been driven out of the elite institutions. They wish to use those institutions to advance their own moral ideology.

This covers the ACLU specifically: https://nypost.com/2022/01/31/ex-aclu-head-ira-glasser-slams...

This article isn’t directly relevant to your point, but covers some of the culture clash: https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-i...

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

#69

Post by abakker »

rgbrenner wrote: post #55
abakker wrote: post #27

Just a reminder that a .org does not mean "trustworthy". https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Foundation_for_Individ... In this case, the discussion and the tenor of the conversation is almost certainly cherry picked to serve a particular agenda. On its face, the actions by Stanford in this article seem...not good. But I also suspect that this is making a mountain out of a molehill for political gain.

I read the sourcewatch link and see lots of conservative funding. So I went through FIREs articles and found lots of conservative-learning articles, but also: https://www.thefire.org/news/florida-school-district-removes... https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-warns-office-missouri-secr... https://www.thefire.org/news/texas-bill-targeting-diversity-... https://www.thefire.org/news/florida-school-district-removes... So th…

my personal criticism is that that the article's premise is that Stanford "May" ask someone to do something. The outlet has published a letter to stanford seeking corrective action in line with their politics.

In general, I am in favor of free speech and do not under any circumstances want to police what people read. (especially as reading Mein Kampf at a college would seem to suggest a certain course of study, rather than just recreation). But, I am not in favor of cherry picking incidents to drum up support for "holding people accountable" and making this into some kind of broader trend instead of isolated miscommunication.

I also acknowledge that Stanford has to address this and get it right. But, fire.org appears to be paid to generate this kind of content and that makes me mistrust their motives even if their content is fine.

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

#70

Post by zozbot234 »

wilg wrote: post #48

Some rando on Twitter reposting an screenshot of an anonymous person claims the following: https://twitter.com/barrydeutsch/status/1618697230382399488 > This article hasn't framed the incident accurately at all. the incident was two theta girls posted a Snapchat story of them reading Mein Kampf as part of their costumes at a pregame and laughing, clearly in a joking way, not at all in a historical way. The joke was i…

The Stanford Review commentary on this also includes the same screenshot and claim. It seems that this can be taken as reliable, coming from an insider, semi-official source.
Post reply on HN