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A university president makes a case against cowardice

newyorker.com

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Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#611

Post by cduzz »

wat10000 wrote: post #504
freedomben wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don't see a problem with this? I consider myself more on the left, but this practice has always seemed highly antithetical to liberal values to me. If somebody in their off hours says something assinine, and telling (some might call that "snitching to") their employer in a public forum like Twitter (in a clear attempt to get a social media frenzy going to ultimately get them fired) is a good thing, then wo…

In a free country, private employers should be allowed to choose who they employ, with very narrow exceptions for discrimination based on race, religion, etc. In a free country, citizens should be allowed to read what other citizens write in public. Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that? IM…

I think you're missing the basic distinction between private parties and government.

Private parties (including companies) largely have freedom of association. There are (theoretically) protections in "commerce" against a company discriminating against a person or group based on "innate" factors (such as skin color or gender).

But largely, people and companies have a wide degree of latitude about what they are and are not allowed to do.

The government, on the other hand, (theoretically) is largely not allowed to stop people from saying things or associating with each other, and when these prohibitions are in effect they're subject to both documentation and review. This is "theory" because the government has done lots of shady things.

The government, similarly (and theoretically), is bound by a variety of procedural constraints, such as due process, right to see an attorney, right of the attorney to request your presence, right to a trial, etc.

There's a categorical distinction between:

I, a private party, am offended that I face consequences of offending someone else when I would prefer not to face any consequences.

and

I, a private party, am abducted by the organization in this country with a monopoly on violence and which interprets all laws, and I vanish with no recourse from anyone.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#612

Post by xracy »

Ray20 wrote: post #400
xracy wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Gosh "who is an oppressive elite?"

Musk, Trump and the billionaires in their administration sure look like "oppressive elites" to me. Can you name multiple oppressive elites?

Edit: I think you answer your own question here. The actual oppressive elites have convinced the masses (and you) that there's a different amorphous group of "oppressive elites" that aren't the obvious ones standing right in front of your eyes. Obligatory https://xkcd.com/1013/

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#613

Post by adamc »

hsiuywbs630h wrote: post #531
hellotheretoday wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t win with these people. They don’t care if they aren’t personally impacted. The “sjw boogeyman” that could theoretically impact their cushy livelihood matters more than the very real right wing government that exists right now and is disappearing people. But as long as they can still say the n word on twitter and call of duty everything will be okay. Who cares about those disappeared people anyway, they were…

Listen, this is not theoretical. In my realm, we had people getting in trouble for otherwise benign speech, because someone's feeling matter more than basic.common sense. The pendulum has swung pretty hard not because sjw bogeyman, but because it has gotten to the point people skilled in ignoring corporate idiocy had enough AND the chronic complainers were demanding increasing superpowers.

"Getting in trouble" at work and being disappeared are so freaking different that there is no discussing it. If you cannot see a difference, you are blind.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#614

Post by dluan »

mapt wrote: post #475

Columbia has an endowment that stands (pre- Liberation Day) at 15 billion dollars. They kowtowed to some of the militant Zionist interests involved in that endowment in order to attain a fractionally higher return, and betrayed their students. They kowtowed to the fascist administration on the grounds that it was threatening 400 million dollars in grants, and betrayed their students to the point of facilitating a pro…

And specifically the ivy league schools and "elite" ones are cementing their reputation among younger students and soon to be college applicants. They are paying attention. I've seen several boycotts of Columbia and other universities from students.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#615

Post by nothrabannosir »

emptysongglass wrote: post #360
hellotheretoday wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

When I see the left's recent brazen devotion to "winning" and "sticking it to the other side", sometimes it feels like Democrats have started acting like Republicans.

And it turns out that wasn't sustainable.

I know it's glib and coarse and lacking in nuance but when I hear American conservatives complain about the ways of the liberal countrymen I can't help but think, "That's how you guys sounded for a long time. Now they're doing it, lo and behold: everyone loses."

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#616

Post by slg »

mancerayder wrote: post #580
slg wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Not part of the rest of the conversation, just narrowing in on the idea of speech being free if there are consequences. That sounds like some sort of 1950's-era doublespeak. If there are consequences, how would speech be free? It's a very American-centric perspective that "Free Speech" is defined as "1st Amendment". Free speech means not getting fired, jumped, killed, poisoned, expelled, etc. Fired is something that…

How do you define which speech is speech worthy of protection and which speech is a consequence of speech and therefore not worthy of protection?

For example, imagine some CEO says something politically objectionable, as is their right granted by allowing free speech. Do I have the right to protest or boycott their company as part of my free speech rights or would that be illegal because I'm rendering a consequence for the CEO's speech?

I just have trouble conceptualizing what you think a world with consequence free speech would actually look like.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#617

Post by cduzz »

hsiuywbs630h wrote: post #531
hellotheretoday wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t win with these people. They don’t care if they aren’t personally impacted. The “sjw boogeyman” that could theoretically impact their cushy livelihood matters more than the very real right wing government that exists right now and is disappearing people. But as long as they can still say the n word on twitter and call of duty everything will be okay. Who cares about those disappeared people anyway, they were…

Listen, this is not theoretical. In my realm, we had people getting in trouble for otherwise benign speech, because someone's feeling matter more than basic.common sense. The pendulum has swung pretty hard not because sjw bogeyman, but because it has gotten to the point people skilled in ignoring corporate idiocy had enough AND the chronic complainers were demanding increasing superpowers.

Are these people in your realm being picked up off the street by the police, drugged, put into an airplane, and then being dropped into the ocean over international waters?

Or are these people having the things they've said repeated widely, perhaps out of context, to other people, who then decide "sheesh, maybe I don't want to hang out with / work with this dude." ?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#618

Post by steviedotboston »

Bluescreenbuddy wrote: post #466
steviedotboston wrote: post #465

The real cowardice was when student mobs took over campuses and harassed jewish students but the universities did nothing about. They hoped it would fizzle out and go away, and even though the worst of it did, it didn't go away entirely and the underlying tensions still simmered. Jewish students who were terrified to walk to class, lest they be harassed by some masked terrorist supporters, wanted to make sure the wor…

And pray tell how did they harass jewish students?

Here's one example: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-rules-jewish-stud...

"the protesters created a “Jew Exclusion Zone” where in order to pass “a person had to make a statement pledging their allegiance to the activists’ view.” Those who complied with the protesters’ view were issued wristbands to allow them to pass through, the complaint says, which effectively barred Jewish students who supported Israel and denied them access to the heart of campus."

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#619

Post by ziddoap »

theultdev wrote: post #600
foldr wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech doesn’t mean not getting fired. You can get fired in any county for things that you say (e.g. insulting your coworkers, lying to your boss, defaming your employer on social media, …). The exact laws and social conventions obviously vary from country to country, but this shouldn’t be a difficult concept in general.

Someone doxxing you and pressuring your employee to fire you because you said something they don't agree with politically is the same as you insulting your coworkers in your eyes? You don't see any discrepancy between those two scenarios? And you don't see anything wrong with the former scenario?

They didn't say it was the same. You're arguing with what you imagined they said.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#620

Post by adamc »

rayiner wrote: post #502
goldfish3 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there's no due process for everyone , that distinction literally does not matter in the slightest! Dozens of citizens could have been sent into slave labor for all we know, and no judge has been able to provide the constitutionally mandated oversight. It has been upheld many times and for hundreds of years that the Due Process clause applies to non-citizens for this reason.

[flagged]

You have case law to back that up?
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