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

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

#81

Post by jstarfish »

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…

I'd discount that entirely until a more-reliable source surfaces.

Given that there are supposedly sorority sisters wearing costumes for which Mein Kampf is somehow a relevant prop, the book seems an odd detail to fixate on.

The only detail the article and anonymous source agree on is that Mein Kampf was the name of the book.

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

#82

Post by kube-system »

stronglikedan wrote: post #63
Brybry wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is overly reductionist. There are trivially imaginable contexts in which "an image of a student reading a book" can be harassing. Forget the book at all, sending someone "an image of a student" can be harassing depending on the unspoken details.

Political activist groups love to use FERPA to their advantage, and I bet this is that.

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

#83

Post by Animats »

Stanford has campus rabbis now? Yes, they do. Not just a branch of Hillel or Chabad. For a secular university, Stanford seems to have acquired quite a religious establishment.[1] They have all the major brands represented.[2] There's even a atheist chaplain.[3]

This looks less like theology and more like Stanford's administrative bloat.

As for Mein Kampf,[4] it's useful to read it again today, along with a biography of Putin to understand where the Ukraine mess came from. There's an "our destiny is to rule the world" mindset. It's back.

[1] https://orsl.stanford.edu/

[2] https://med.stanford.edu/hhp/about/people/professors-and-lec...

[3] https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stanford-gets-a-chaplain...

[4] https://archive.org/details/mein-kampf-by-adolf-hitler-ralph...

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

#84

Post by mellosouls »

This could serve as a literature/news trivia style question for any pub quiz compilers out there:

In which publication did an Office of Religious and Spiritual Affairs investigate a Protected Identity Harm Report after somebody read a book?

A) The Handmaid's Tale

B) 1984

C) Stanford Daily

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

#85

Post by golem14 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #73
prvc wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"?

Mein Kampf is reportedly and famously an extremely boring book, so if you can laugh at it you can laugh at anything.

Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

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

#86

Post by notahacker »

zozbot234 wrote: post #62
sudobash1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And it's also entirely possible that the staged reading was, in fact, just a joke between friends at the ridiculousness of the Nazis that was massively overreacted to by an uninvolved party and that the university will end the investigation it's been asked to undertake by getting the participants to shake hands, move on with their lives and maybe think before acting next time.

It's odd to watch what is a fairly consistent pattern of Americans being more concerned about the free speech implications of students being students than a likely next presidential nominee banning entire university courses and introducing the felony offence of having unvetted books in school classrooms as part of his culture war against "wokeness" though...

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

#87

Post by warcher »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #12
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.…

Wasn't this an anonymous tip, precluding the possibility of any form of dialogue?

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

#88

Post by commandlinefan »

wahern wrote: post #76
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.

FIRE is a relatively new free speech advocacy organization started after the ACLU abandoned its very principled stance on free speech rights, which it had adopted in the 1970s, mostly famously in the Skokie Case where it supported a neo-Nazi organization. Now, many of the organizers and funders of FIRE clearly have conservative leanings. But as far as I can tell, so far FIRE's advocacy has been just as principled and…

> organizers and funders of FIRE clearly have conservative leanings

Freedom of speech as a concept has become (in a very bizarre plot twist to anybody who's old enough to remember even the 1980's) a conservative standpoint, so it's safe to assume anybody who's defending it in the 21st century has at least conservative leanings.

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

#89

Post by meany »

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…

Stanford review story link. That confirms OP.

https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/22/protected-identity-harm...

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

#90

Post by 8f2ab37a-ed6c »

I'm highly sympathetic to the cause of FIRE and Greg Lukianoff, in part because of his book with Jonathan Haidt, but I'd be pretty disappointed if they started to use poorly reported hate-bait stories as a way to support their mission and generate outrage.

I think it's possible to hold oneself to a higher standard and not play the outrage game by falling for hoaxes. At least in my eyes they would get much more credibility. But perhaps that's just not the world we live in anymore, and if you don't generate outrage hateclicks, you might as well give up.

We can do better than this whole got-em-advocacy regardless of what side you care for.

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