Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta • Hacker News Board

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#421

Post by rrobukef » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:17 PM UTC

tensor wrote: post #404

macksd wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think sidelining the lead researcher and giving the project to another group is accurately described at "gutting a team". No, they didn't end the project, but the series of events described seems to be insinuating that she could have led the project if she was willing to have her work funded by Facebook, listen to one of their former people, etc. So if that was their goal, and they just got someone else to do the w…

That's not quite what I imagine when I hear the term "gutting a team." Gutting a team is when then very significantly reduce its size and priority. Simply switching leadership of a project isn't gutting a team, it's normal university politics and infighting. If they are forcing funding by Facebook/Meta, then that does seem like a conflict of interest, but is a quite a different headline.

The sidelining is to show damages to her reputation etc. Page 50 or so starts the description alleging how the administration and the dean gutted her department by blocking, reallocating funds, stopping hiring, and refusing to extend contracts when funds are available.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#422

Post by wharvle » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:19 PM UTC

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #354

wharvle wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes more sense when one recalls that a whole lot of powerful people, including and perhaps especially politicians, come from a handful of prestigious schools, and are surrounded by advisors and assistants largely from those same schools. [edit] and of course the real rabbit hole is private prep schools. Good luck becoming president in this century without attending one. Wonder what their donor lists look like.

> Good luck becoming president in this century without attending one. Bill Clinton made it last century, and Hillary almost made it this century. I don't think the odds are that stacked against public school attendees even now.

It’s mostly a recent problem, oddly enough. Only one of the last nine big-two party candidates didn’t go to prep school (Hilary, as you mention). Typically more than half the primary candidates “prepped”, over the same period. Most VPs have, too, though it’s been less totally-captured than the big chair (and you’ve got edge cases like Harris who didn’t technically “prep” but had a pretty similar situation) Seems like damn well-stacked odds, considering fancy prep school kids are a small minority of all kids. But maybe this is just a multi-decade weird run of strange fortune, and not a persistent trend.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#423

Post by wizzwizz4 » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:22 PM UTC

sroussey wrote: post #290

stareatgoats wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean to say that no one is running the world, not even behind the scenes, or even behind behind the scenes? You are leaving us without anyone to blame! Daring I must say.

Certainly not a way to get clicks. People are eager to see patterns—it’s in our wetware. For example: two podcasts about JFK: one is about a lone gunman, the other a secret conspiracy and coverup. Which will be more interesting? Get more of an audience?

Consider “Oswald: the man who took on the United States Secret Service, and won”. I'm not particularly interested in US history, but I think I'd find this much more interesting than yet another conspiracy podcast.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#424

Post by tptacek » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:24 PM UTC

drawkward wrote: post #419

tptacek wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the contrary, I think a great many pro-Palestine activists are inadvertently advocating for exactly that; that the chant, to them, implies that the Levant be restored to the control of non-Jewish Palestinians, and that Jewish interlopers lose that control. It's part of a very common perspective on Palestine that suggests Jewish Israelis are ethnically white European "settler colonists", which is false. If you beli…

The fact that your and my interpretation of the modal meaning of "from the river to the sea" when chanted by American college students is so divergent points to the problem with "assuming the worst." I agree that the phrase is poisonous, but I don't ascribe genocidal intent to the hypothetical modal speaker of it without knowing exactly who that speaker is. Consider it from a Bayesian standpoint: even if you test pos…

I think I have two things to contribute to this thread:

1. The observation, after going and looking it up a week ago, that the slogan is associated with not just Hezbollah and Hamas but also the Kahanists.

2. The observation that people of good will have and continue to a "decolonization" narrative that posits the dispossession of Israeli Jewish people as a kind of restorative justice, based on the terribly broken premise that Israeli Jewish people are all descendants of settler colonists. They largely are not that, and advocacy for blanket dispossession for those people can reasonably be seen as genocidal. Israelis are not moving back to Yemen.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#425

Post by anonymouskimmer » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:28 PM UTC

u32480932048 wrote: post #271

> Donovan co-wrote a widely-read study that discovered that a significant number of participants in the January 6 attack on the Capitol were driven by their support for President Trump. [1] It's outrageous that Harvard won't fund such an insightful, groundbreaking researcher. Hopefully, another university will step up and help us discover if there is any possible link between Zuck and Meta. [1] https://en.wikipedia.o…

> It's outrageous that Harvard won't fund such an insightful, groundbreaking researcher.

TFA flatly tells that she brought in her own funding from outside grants. Like the vasy majority of academic researchers do. She claims that Harvard is keeping this money even though it was dedicated to her research agenda.

> Though Donovan’s contract was supposed to keep her on the job through the end of 2024, her superiors took away her ability to start new projects, raise money or organize large events, she alleges. They kept the money she had brought in, including more than $1 million from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark that he wanted specifically to go to her research project, according to documents quoted in the declaration. Newmark declined to comment.

It's right there in the article.

People have wrong ideas as to what kinds of funds and resources academic researchers actually have access to from their employing institution.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#426

Post by anonymouskimmer » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:29 PM UTC

joshspankit wrote: post #403

xss2f wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is 'Big Tech' already available. Plus America has raised interest rates, which means market capture/empire defense is getting more and more expensive, so expect all of them to become small soon.

Big Tech as a term doesn’t feel like it encompasses the specifically social influence of some of the social media companies (Meta could almost be called Big Social just by itself, but that’s a different conversation). The reason it made sense to me is that when the article said “Big Tech” it didn’t feel right.

I agree with you, but the use of "tech" to mean "computer-centric technology" has already poisoned the term a bit anyway.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#427

Post by TeeMassive » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:31 PM UTC

u32480932048 wrote: post #282

TeeMassive wrote: post #191

"prestigious team of online disinformation experts" Not being the devil's advocate here, but "online disinformation" is not a credentialed field. That's like calling yourself a "truth expert". Also the prestigious part is bogus at best. If they are then they sure don't make the headlines often.

She discovered the link between support for Trump and attendance at the J6 riots. She's basically the Francis Crick of declaring Facebook memes not entirely true.

Sorry but what you said doesn't mean anything.

Links can be "discovered" ad infinitum.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#428

Post by sonicanatidae » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:32 PM UTC

nobodyandproud wrote: post #258

dehrmann wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Teacher pay rarely raised There's an oversupply of most PhDs, so there's no need to raise their pay. And that's for professors. Grad students that teach are practically free.

There’s an oversupply of administrators too.

Honest question:

When is there not a glut of administrators in any industry?

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#429

Post by anonymouskimmer » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:33 PM UTC

joshe wrote: post #380

Harvard's actions are also consistent with her not doing good research. Note that she was not snapped up by another institution to be faculty, just a "tenure track position". One red flag is that the reporter cites all the times she talked to media and congress. A good indicator that it was superficial and headline driven work. I'm sure she was a valuable source for reporters needing dramatic quotes on a slow news da…

> Donovan was recently hired for a tenure-track professorship at Boston University.

A tenure-track professorship is faculty. So probably an assistant professorship.

Re: Ousted propaganda scholar accuses Harvard of bowing to Meta

#430

Post by anonymouskimmer » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:38 PM UTC

wharvle wrote: post #422

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Good luck becoming president in this century without attending one. Bill Clinton made it last century, and Hillary almost made it this century. I don't think the odds are that stacked against public school attendees even now.

It’s mostly a recent problem, oddly enough. Only one of the last nine big-two party candidates didn’t go to prep school (Hilary, as you mention). Typically more than half the primary candidates “prepped”, over the same period. Most VPs have, too, though it’s been less totally-captured than the big chair (and you’ve got edge cases like Harris who didn’t technically “prep” but had a pretty similar situation) Seems like…

I'm sure there are social factors both driving prep school graduates to run, and helping them stand out from the crowd. Outside of just family money.

I do wonder if "prep" schools are recruiting more of the socially outstanding non-rich students than in previous years. Even so this can only have so much of an effect, as non-prep schools will always have valedictorians and social organizers regardless of who's pulled out beforehand.