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Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

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Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#141

Post by freejazz »

WalterBright wrote: post #56
anigbrowl wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But anonymous posters are also exercising their free speech. Sometimes this is out of a genuine fear of political persecution, sometimes it's hateful trolling or spamming (a problem not helped by anonymous domain registration, for example). A prohibition on anonymity has very negative implications for privacy. I's weird that a rational person like yourself conflates all anonymous speech with criminal prosecutions, a…

"All three said they wouldn’t discuss their views publicly on campus for fear of being reported to the school’s bias-response team for harassing students who disagree with them." Anonymous complaints are ok and are important to allow. Providing an official method for "name and shame" based on anonymous complaints are not. Having a "bias-response team" come after you based on anonymous complaints is not acceptable.

So should the complaints not be investigated? how do you purport that a complaint be investigated without having a 'bias-response team' (the complaint was related to bias, right?) 'come after you' (whatever that means)? is the problem the name of the team?

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#142

Post by freejazz »

didericis wrote: post #122
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so done with this performative outrage. Yesterday somebody called me "dude". According to Wikipedia, dude was a replacement for "dandy" in the late 1800s. I'm gay. How dare thee??!! Where's my check?

> Where’s my check? That right there is the real problem. I’m convinced a huge motivation for a lot of the current performative outrage is a combination of conscious and unconscious anxiety about having very little to no real skill based leverage or ownership/stewardship of things that anchor you to society, like housing and kids. That’s the sympathetic angle. The unsympathetic angle is laziness and greed. Both are a…

Whose performative outrage? The complainant from the article, or the one you just responded to? They are both complaints. A huge assumption underlying the post you responded to is that there's some check, waiting. Perhaps this is driven by media reports of examples that titillate viewers, but I think it's a fairly unfounded assumption. Underlying any of those cases is a fact pattern that has to go beyond whatever the headline trivialization of the case is. I've had limited experience litigating employment cases, but in my time, I did not come away with the impression that a client could walk into my office, complaining that somebody called him a "G", and I tell them that they are going to need to start picking out a new boat.

There is the other side of the coin that you are discussing, and it's what I pointed out above. The belief that all these things are an easy out to the financial problems you have, and that's the only reason why someone would complain about being called a "G".

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#143

Post by freejazz »

lettergram wrote: post #83
yodon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an anonymous accusation has the potential to be career ending for the accused, the simplistic assessment of relative power between parties ceases to be correct. This is why the constitution (which doesn't apply here but was very thoughtfully designed) requires that defendants be given the right to face their accusers. Valid accusations and false accusations happen in all forms of law. There are commonly power or…

> which doesn't apply here but was very thoughtfully designed There are many people (and quite a bit of case law) who believe the constitution governs everyone in every situation. If it’s for the people and by the people, then it’s to protect “the people” from government (which is “the people”). This includes private entities. Particularly, private entities receiving public funds (which Stanford is). Anyway, in this…

Are you saying that the constitution outright applies to private entities the same as it applies to the government? and that is so, because the government consists of people?

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#144

Post by [deleted] »

freejazz wrote: post #139
stale2002 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not, because there are differences between private actors and the gov't I am going to keep my response short to ensure that you cannot possibly misunderstand it. Point 1. There are principles that matter, even if it a private company doing the bad thing. Agree or disagree with this directly. Point 2. Yes, if the government does bad thing X, it could be worse than if a private company does it, but it is still b…

1. too vague for me to agree - what principles? whose principles? even then, I'm not sure that all principles that apply to gov't, apply to private actors. for ex. some might say it's a good principle to be religious, but we don't think that is true for gov't (so we restrict the gov't via the constitution), or the corollary, that it's good for the gov't to not be religious, but not necc. true for the individual. 2. t…

[deleted]

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#145

Post by didericis »

freejazz wrote: post #142
didericis wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where’s my check? That right there is the real problem. I’m convinced a huge motivation for a lot of the current performative outrage is a combination of conscious and unconscious anxiety about having very little to no real skill based leverage or ownership/stewardship of things that anchor you to society, like housing and kids. That’s the sympathetic angle. The unsympathetic angle is laziness and greed. Both are a…

Whose performative outrage? The complainant from the article, or the one you just responded to? They are both complaints. A huge assumption underlying the post you responded to is that there's some check, waiting. Perhaps this is driven by media reports of examples that titillate viewers, but I think it's a fairly unfounded assumption. Underlying any of those cases is a fact pattern that has to go beyond whatever the…

The cases of actual litigation with a big payout are rare, but the cases of people in paid positions meant to prevent big payouts and to make sure employees are speaking to each other and hiring people in the least risky way possible are not. That’s been a huge industry.

I’m not arguing that there’s no legitimate level of complaint or job for helping employees relate to each other better, or that people shouldn’t strive to relate to each other naturally on each others’ terms, but it seems like there’s been a steep rise in bureaucracy that is less about actually encouraging productive cooperation and happy employees and a lot more about job stability for the bureaucracy.

That can be true despite there being a majority of good faith participation in that bureaucracy and a lot of employees who believe in the mission. If you get a job and you’re a decent person, which I believe the majority of people are, you want to do a decent job. But if it’s hard to find other comparable jobs, the need to feed and house yourself usually overrides considering whether or not your job is actually exacerbating the problem you’re tasked with solving.

I don’t think having people dedicated to monitoring employee communication for insensitive interactions and training people in the way that is currently done typically helps, I think it typically makes employees more paranoid and prone to overanalyzing interactions due to increased focus on sensitivities. Which is tragic, because again, I think most employees who get involved in jobs to help people communicate better legitimately want to be making a positive impact.

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#147

Post by cornholio »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #39
WalterBright wrote: post #3

Anonymous accusations are a fine way to harass and intimidate anyone you disagree with or have a grudge against. As the article points out, it's a fine tool for oppression. A fundamental right we have in the US is the right to face our accusers, for good reason. Here's the text of it: > Sixth Amendment > In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury…

Yes, exactly. And I understand that you are not suggesting that Stanford is violating the 6th amendment, since this is not a criminal prosecution. What you're saying is that Stanford should adopt the same line of reasoning embodied in the 6th amendment, to the extent that being accused in this fashion is a very high cost, and that the accuser should not be able to escape accountability for making false or misleading…

But should Stanford really adopt constitutional standards for criminal proceedings if it's not holding a criminal inquiry?

One of the important conclusions of the "Me too" debacle was that victims cannot make their accusations in public - in fact, many tried, for many years - because they face a much higher cost of doing it than the aggressor. It's only when they are organized as a group that their individual accusations gain power leaning on one another, otherwise each accuser taken individually is taking a (major) image cost, up to removal from the field. The traditional criminal system was powerless to give victims justice before this, and deviants in ppsitions of power could victimize dozens or hundreds of people.

So as long as participation in this anonymous process is entirely voluntary for the accused and the texts are treated as entirely made up until proven true, then they can be interpreted as a way of organizing a larger number of anonymous victims who don't know of one another, and a way for management to get an early warning of things they need to look into more closely.

If a certain academic is accused by ten anonymous people of sexual harassment, it could be an organized smear campaign from a disgruntled student or peer. If, however, those accusations follow them across multiple departments and academic years, there might be more there than meets the eye.

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#148

Post by t0bia_s »

> A group of Stanford University professors is pushing to end a system that allows students to anonymously report classmates for exhibiting discrimination or bias..

As a citizen of post-communist country, I would never expect something like that coming from West. This system and behavior of snitching for party was something that brutally destroyed trust in society and we are still learning.

After over 30 years we have still huge snitching. For example during covid, reporting a suspicion of breaking chaotic regulations, that changed every week was most common call to police. Usually by people who was locked at home with bottle of alcohol because they would otherwise sit in bar that was closed. They reported every suspect behavior observed from their windows. Like state security was doing during communist regime. Source: My friend is police operator.

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#149

Post by Clubber »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #138
Clubber wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always thought it was a city person trying to be a rancher / cowboy / farmer.

Me too but fortunately I found there was a different etymology 140 years ago, so now I get to be outraged for fun and profit.

Dude, that's great!

Re: Stanford faculty say anonymous student bias reports threaten free speech

#150

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

lliamander wrote: post #25
yodon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an anonymous accusation has the potential to be career ending for the accused, the simplistic assessment of relative power between parties ceases to be correct. This is why the constitution (which doesn't apply here but was very thoughtfully designed) requires that defendants be given the right to face their accusers. Valid accusations and false accusations happen in all forms of law. There are commonly power or…

> When an anonymous accusation has the potential to be career ending for the accused I think this is only a problem when people treat such accusations as evidence or proof of wrongdoing, which they absolutely are not. At most, it can be cause to investigate further. We do have whistle-blower protection laws, and I think those serve an important function in our legal context.

> I think this is only a problem when people treat such accusations as evidence or proof of wrongdoing, which they absolutely are not.

There's the way we think the world should be, and then there's reality. Please let me know when you find the planet where this conversation takes place "Mr. Smith, the teacher, was just accused by a student of sexual assault. But it's just an accusation, there's no proof, so we'll begin an investigation, but in the meantime everything will go on as prior with Mr. Smith teaching his students."

And in fairness, if you had a kid in Mr. Smith's class, would you want him teaching your kid, even if the result was "Well, we did an investigation but we couldn't find any additional proof beyond the accuser's word, so all is back to normal."

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