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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

#741

Post by thyristan »

regularization wrote: post #555
thyristan wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Hamas, which is a terrorist organisation. According to the New York Times, Netanhayu was propping up Hamas in the weeks and months before the current conflict ( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q... ). This has been happening since the beginning of Hamas. The government over there has been supporting Hamas since the beginning, because they don't want to deal with Fatah going to the UN. Eve…

All that doesn't make them any less terrorist.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#742

Post by kristjansson »

nradov wrote: post #702
KittenInABox wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are US citizens who want to shoot gays, kill people different in creed or heritage, and bomb people for religious reasons. We had the gay panic defense (the legal defense to kill gay people just because you found out they were gay, and the shock justified you killing them). We had people shooting sikhs assuming they're muslim. We had folks bombing abortion clinics. There are US citizens who have done far more,…

Those situations aren't comparable. While I oppose bigoted behavior by US citizens, for better or worse they have an absolute and inviolable right to remain in this country. Aliens generally have no such right. Entering and remaining in the country is a privilege . I oppose arbitrary arrests and deportations conducted without due process, but in principle there's nothing wrong with holding aliens to a different stand…

> why should US citizens pay taxes to educate people who are apparently hostile to our fundamental values?

Because that's where Americans come from - the educated and acculturated sons and daughters of immigrants who came bearing all manner of prejudice.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#743

Post by kristjansson »

jgalt212 wrote: post #547
low_tech_love wrote: post #425

Some personal highlights: "They’re excellent schools, and they have excellent scientists, and if one of Vice-President Vance’s kids is sick, he’s going to want the doctor to have gone to one of these schools; he’s not going to want them to have gone to Viktor Orbán’s university." "People have said to me, “Well, you take all that money from the government, why don’t you listen to them?” The answer is, because the mone…

> The answer is, because the money doesn’t come with a loyalty oath But it does come with some reasonable level of consideration and appreciation.

What about e.g. writing an op-ed expressing one's views conveys a lack of consideration and appreciation?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#744

Post by singleshot_ »

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

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

If you get fired for saying something stupid, you might want to consider the notion that you deserve not to have a job. They’re called consequences, and if you don’t like them, remaining silent is free.

Put otherwise, it’s very possible that your livelihood is trivial.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#745

Post by fabbari »

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?

Not the op, but no - I don't see anything wrong with the scenario: the employer is making the call, and if they find the speech of the employee doesn't fit with their worldview they have all the rights to fire them.

Practical example: the employer is an LGBTQ+ friendly establishment, the employee is on social media saying that LGBTQ+ people are all deviants and will all burn in hell for their sins. I think the employer should have the freedom to fire the person, right?

Forcing the employer to keep the employee is the equivalent of compelled speech.

Edit: fixed - no joke - pronouns

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#746

Post by slg »

mancerayder wrote: post #730
slg wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 f…

Are you arguing with me or the person I am replying to? I object to people casually paraphrasing, you have a right to free speech but not consequences of that speech. "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences" Aside from sounding vaguely like a threat, it's a paradoxical attack on freedom of speech. Here's my point again: Freedom of speech means a lot of things. One of them is the American-centric perspecti…

>Are you arguing with me or the person I am replying to?

The way some people use the internet truly puzzle me. A username is on each comment. I made a comment, you replied, and I replied back. I wasn't arguing with myself. You took the time to reiterate your philosophy in more depth without even bothering to first take the literal second to check the usernames to clear up your confusion or pausing for a moment to actually engage with anything actually said in my last comment? I wasn't asking you for more details on your philosophy, I was asking you direct and specific questions on how this philosophy meshes with the complexities of the real world. I frankly don't know how to respond beyond just referring you back to the questions in my previous comment.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#747

Post by strken »

singleshot_ wrote: post #744
emptysongglass wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If you get fired for saying something stupid, you might want to consider the notion that you deserve not to have a job. They’re called consequences, and if you don’t like them, remaining silent is free. Put otherwise, it’s very possible that your livelihood is trivial.

This is just asinine. Consider the same argument flipped around:

"If you get deported for saying something stupid, you may want to consider the notion that you do not deserve to live in the US. They’re called consequences, and if you don’t like them, remaining silent is free."

Both arguments are ridiculous because they present no evidence as to whether someone deserves a job or a visa stay.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#748

Post by stale2002 »

alsetmusic wrote: post #697
rendall wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Valuing Palestinian lives is not supporting terrorism.

Ok, then I guess they should only go after the people who are supporting actually designated terrorist organizations.

Problem solved, right?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#749

Post by trhway »

kashunstva wrote: post #644
assimpleaspossi wrote: post #578

What bothers me the most about all these protests and going-ons at universities and colleges is that they are generally by 18-22 year olds who are pre-adults still in their formative years who still have a lot of learning and growing up to do.

> who still have a lot of learning and growing up to do I’m 60, and I have a fair bit of learning to do yet. And as the father of a student in roughly the 18-22 I would be proud to see her standing up for views that she feels strongly about whether her knowledge is fully complete or not.

Yes, i guess you'd be a proud father of a Cultural Revolution participant ... right until they send you to reeducation.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#750

Post by trhway »

tguedes wrote: post #609
assimpleaspossi wrote: post #578

What bothers me the most about all these protests and going-ons at universities and colleges is that they are generally by 18-22 year olds who are pre-adults still in their formative years who still have a lot of learning and growing up to do.

I suppose that means you don't know about the rich history of college protests that were instrumental in progressing human rights over the last 100 years?

It would be useful if you mentioned say a couple examples.

It would be even more useful if you were able to show that the effect of such student protests moving progress forward exceeded the effect of the student protests moving progress backward, like the Cultural or Iranian Revolutions. I think you'd not be able to show it.

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