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A university president makes a case against cowardice

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Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#391

Post by 0xEF »

low_tech_love wrote: post #385
0xEF wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. In both cases, compulsion is the problem. Neither side has the right to compel anyone to do anything, but they operate on the premise that they do, usually characterized by indignant self-rightiousness. The irrational extremists of both sides, the ones screaming the loudest, naturally, seek to enforce their version of "how things should be" on to other people, regardless if their objections are rational o…

Surely one can find ways to fight the irrational, inconsequential leftists (which there are many) without bullying institutions by cutting their funding, or kidnapping people in broad daylight in the street? Civilized western countries do it all the time.

Absolutely. A functional civilization hinges on rational, equitable and cooperative solutions. Extremists are not interested in those things, though. They want what they want and they want it now with all the petulance and emotional regulation of a spoiled toddler.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#392

Post by thyristan »

immibis wrote: post #356
_fizz_buzz_ wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many countries completely ban non citizens from joining political protests, even ostensibly western countries. Which ones?

Germany bans pro-Palestine protests (officially they're still legal, but they've been arresting people since it began and they've just started deporting people for participating in completely legal protests) but I think that's a slightly different criterion than the one you asked for.

While the protests are per se not illegal, the people arrested aren't accused of just protesting, they are accused of supporting a terrorist organisation. The right to free speech isn't as all-encompassing in Germany as it is in the USA, so shouting the wrong slogans can very well get you in trouble.

Also, the right to protest in public only applies to German citizens: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_8.html

Foreigners are usually still free to do it, but they don't have a constitutionally protected right to public protests.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#393

Post by aswanson »

robertlagrant wrote: post #343
vkou wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you. The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.) It's odd that one ban operates within the constraints of freedom (the freedom to associate requires the exercise of the freedom to not associate), while the other does not. It's almost like there's a categorical distinction.…

> One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you. Many people have been fired / expelled / and many more silenced by those examples. If you can't tell the truth about your side (from how you're writing I assume you think in sides) then there's no point saying it. > The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.) I have…

Is wearing an "autism awareness " tattoo considered speech?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#394

Post by n4r9 »

CaptWillard wrote: post #134
n4r9 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From further down the page: > A COVID-19 death is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID-19 disease (e.g. trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery between illness and death It does not include cases like someone dying in a car c…

> It does not include cases like someone dying in a car crash who happened to be COVID-positive. Maybe not, but it definitely includes millions of elderly or otherwise comorbid subjects who developed pneumonia and never recovered. Sad is it is, that happens year-in and year-out when the initial virus doesn't have a household name. It also happens with the influenza virus ... except 2020 and 2021, where we had a mirac…

> where we had a miraculous reprieve from flu deaths

It's not so miraculous to think that lockdowns, distancing and mask-wearing affected flu prevalence as well as COVID prevalence.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#395

Post by clonedhuman »

nomonnai wrote: post #328
kevingadd wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's not an equation in what it does to people. Yes, abduction is worse than being yelled at. However, it's pointing out that the general principle has been established: "People whose opinion I don't like can be banned from society." At first, it's only removing individuals from public discourse (cancel culture), then it's removing people physically (deportation). This is always the endgame of eroding core liberal va…

Part of the problem here is that you're abstracting the actions of a handful of relatively powerless people to a principle: "People whose opinion I don't like can be banned from society." The 'I' here is, from your framing, the 'left' or something.

Strawman. The fired people you're talking about weren't banned from society by the people pointing them out on the internet. If someone's on an international flight yelling racial slurs and causing a commotion, and someone else publishes video of that person yelling racial slurs on an international flight, it's not the people commenting on the video who fired that person from their job. It's their employers. What would be the alternative? No one takes video of the person yelling racial slurs? Or, if the video is posted, no one comments on it? Or, maybe, the person yelling racial slurs could simply avoid losing their employment by not yelling racial slurs on a flight full of people with their phones out? Or maybe the employer could choose to ignore the negative publicity and keep the person on staff despite the risk to their revenue? Who exactly is the responsible party here?

I generally find it pointless to point out that 'right' perspectives suffer from a lack of practical logic--pointing out the fundamental irrationality of a position rarely changes the mind of the person holding that position. But, your position ignores power differential between people--your argument is a matter of 'principle,' but this isn't fundamentally about principles.

Is your argument then that a person yelling racial slurs on a full airplane shouldn't have their employment threatened by their behavior? That their employer shouldn't fire them?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#396

Post by [deleted] »

thyristan wrote: post #390
adhamsalama wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing in that article implies supporting terrorism. They support Palestine. People conflating supporting Palestine with supporting terrorism should be ashamed of themselves, as Israel is the biggest terror state in the world.

Well, when it comes to conflating, I'll take your calling Israel a terror state as a standard: The democratically elected government of Gaza-Palestine is the Hamas, which is a terrorist organisation. Thus by your conflation regarding Israel to be a terror state, the Gaza strip part of Palestine is as well. Its population chose a known terrorist organisation, everything is run by a terrorist organisation, they did ter…

[deleted]

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#397

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #294
necubi wrote: post #213

Oh hey, Wesleyan on HN! I’m an alumnus (matriculated a year or two after Roth became president). Wesleyan has a rich history of activism and protest, and not always entirely peaceful (Roth’s predecessor, Doug Bennet, had his office firebombed at one point). I’ve had a few opportunities to speak with Roth since the Gaza war started, and I’ve always found him particularly thoughtful about balancing freedom of expressio…

Ok, I'll bite: in your view, what were the illiberal "demands" post-2020? Reading tfa, this kind of rendering feels a little too pat for him. Namely, its one thing to argue against the kind of knee-jerk moralism of well-meaning woke liberal arts kids, its quite another to imply a kind of "capital L" program to "chill speech." Like, c'mon, are we really still doing this now ? Roth himself is sensible enough to not be,…

It's nothing but out of touch at this point, and adds nothing to the discourse

Exactly. Its a communications problem.

Its hard to have a decent critical conversation when one side has a biased view about $symbol. Both communicating parties need to reach the same interpretation of a message, otherwise the conversation is broken. Thats why you shouldnt say the N-word or throw out a heil heart on stage (unless you want to hide behind this ambiguity). Or why its so difficult to have critical conversations with strong believers, for you its just evolution or vaccines but for the other side it may affect the core of their identity and the ape goes defense mode.

The result is that the discourse does not deal with differentiated cases but _only_ with simplistic labels like "chill speech", "woke", etc. because the more biased side drags it down into the mud.

For instance, the "chill speech" label is actually dependent on the "racist" label that initiated it. If a case shows clear racist behavior, then dismissing the lefts reaction as censorship is unjustified or biased. The other way works too, if there is no racist behavior, the censorship blame would be justified.

And since you cant look into peoples heads to clearly identify racist intentions, it falls back to interpreting messages. The problem with biased people is, they are not aware even of their unawareness. If you would ask Musk whether he is a neo-nazi, his response would be something like "hell no". Fast forward the dystopian timeline and his response might be "always have been".

The left has IMO more unbiased awareness about systemic issues -- but is not free of bias either. The right is in its core biased indentity politics about $culture -- but is not totally host to tribalism either.

My advise, avoid popular symbols at all cost and if you come close to using one, augment it with case specific background, even a vague "_unjustified_ chill of speech" would suffice. If someone opens with "the woke left" and shows no signs of differentiation -- or even better, acknowledgement of core leftist topics -- i mentally turn away. The comment you replied to was about personal anekdotes and projections and the one symbol that rubs me the wrong way too, even before trumps abuse.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#398

Post by rayiner »

hausrat wrote: post #369
rayiner wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was the progressive push of theoretically neutral institutions taking stands on moral politics. People who were fine with universities being staffed with liberals, but neutral in practice, realized their tax dollars were subsidizing institutions that were actively taking a side in national politics. For example, universities burned a lot of political capital, and opened themselves up to a great deal of legal liabi…

[flagged]

If you are shocked you might consider getting out of your bubble. A recent poll shows Americans support Trump’s deportation program 58-42: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opinion-poll-trump-economy-tari...

Meanwhile, 68% support the Supreme Court’s ban on Harvard’s affirmative action admissions policies: https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4411246-majority-supp...

Universities, as institutions, were actively working against the public on both of these issues, from legal clinics trying to block deportations to extensive programs of racial preferences. It’s not surprising many people don’t want the taxpayer to subsidize that.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#399

Post by Sloowms »

sequoia wrote: post #49

A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions? Is there anything they could have done differently in the past decade or two to have broader sympathy now, or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?

Wait, there are attacks on universities? Or are we just using that word for any expression of free speech?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#400

Post by Ray20 »

xracy wrote: post #300
gedy wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly man since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left in the US threw their whole weight into pushing the Overton window on identity politics/intersectionality to the point that "real" old time leftists and communists (like my father) were treated like some sort of conservatives, lol. They went way past the sustainable point.

I feel like the people who say things like "communists were treated like some sort of conservatives because of identity politics" are telling on themselves. If you look at the people on the actual political left in the US (Bernie, AOC, etc) are they talking about identity politics? Last time I checked they were talking about the problems that impact non-billionaire Americans: Healthcare, Social Security, Raising Mini…

>Healthcare, Social Security, Raising Minimum Wage, and other efforts to improve quality of life for Americans.

But then why are they supported, for the most part, not by the most oppressed masses, but by the oppressive elites?

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