I'm a liberal professor, and my liberal students terrify me

Huh? He gives at least one example as to why he is concerned:

> I once saw an adjunct not get his contract renewed after students complained that he exposed them to "offensive" texts written by Edward Said and Mark Twain. His response, that the texts were meant to be a little upsetting, only fueled the students' ire and sealed his fate.

If anyone wants to get inside a liberal's mind, you got one right here, BlackAura I'd bet money you are. Weasel words are present and everything.

The young liberal-speak of concepts of 'systemic bias' and 'societal pandering' and of course the students as victims who 'have no choice' but to complain

Everyone is going to have an example of some bad professor. But if you're in college seeing a systemic bias, you've gone into it thinking that ahead of time, or somebody planted the idea and no surprise young students are impressionable as all get-out.

You'll find a good deal of variation among educators. The only systemic bias you'll find across a whole campus (or more with the administration) is an almost shocking and unrealistic unnecessary drive towards what might be called 'diversity' but really isn't. But if these SJWs / Liberals / feminists go in expecting some sort of bias, they are definitely going to find it. Just like once you buy a car, you see it everywhere on the road.

> "ignored, belittled, insulted" More weasel words. Nothing that can be checked up on specifically, no particular victim or perpetrator. Just a thing that we're supposed to believe is ever present, rampant etc.

>material that is disturbing or emotionally difficult for absolutely no good reason other than "it doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother you either"

You've got the SJW bug for sure. You need a dose of realism. The obvious symptom is making wild assumptions about somebody else's frame of mind or purposely narrowing their intent and stating it on their behalf in order to justify any and all reaction over them. Add on to that getting mad that others aren't on your side.

The reason society might be considering a lot of SJWs as scary is that they are young impressionable and have a lot of ignorant followers on twitter and will do anything and everything to weasel through a situation because their form of social justice must prevail. that includes, as we've seen in St. Louis and Baltimore, justifying illegal behavior for so-called systemic racism.

the other scary thing about SJWs is they attack in many ways our most important right, freedom of speech. Like here you insist it's not being attacked but it is. It's playing the victim card and projecting somebody's intent knowing full well that your feelings hurt don't justify somebody getting a write up or being forced out of a position because of the way you claim to have suffered.

The sad thing about all of it is it really doesn't get anyone anywhere. SJWs might get a statue taken down or a tradition removed, a speech cancelled, but they never really fix anything they just destroy things because they don't like them, so nobody else should either.

Keep in mind that the word liberal has different meanings in the political context on both sides of the atlantic ocean.

Although it is always a question of one's own standpoint. Where I (a somewhat social-democratic german) stand, both CDU and SPD look like parties of the right today. :(

> not having the necessary information to make those biases could result in ideas actually being judged in a vacuum

Potentially, yes. It certainly can happen, but it can also go horribly wrong for a whole variety of reasons.

In online discussions, people's ideas tend to be judged based on how well the person proposing them conforms to the norms of the group. Which is part of the reason most online communities tend to develop a kind of hive mind - everyone who sticks around shares the same opinions as the group, because the group chases off anyone who dissents, either by making the environment unwelcoming, or outright harassing people.

It's part of the reason the hacker subculture isn't as egalitarian as it likes to believe. Even if everyone's anonymous (or at least using a pseudonym), it's still composed almost entirely of nerdy, reasonably well off straight white guys, mostly from the US. The reason for that is a reflection of external social forces which don't exactly exist inside hacker subculture, but strongly influenced who was able to participate in it. That creates an extremely homogenous group, which is reflected in the way hacker culture developed.

It's not deliberate, but it can feel like a hostile environment to outsiders. Which can make outsiders avoid it like the plague. Since there are no outsiders, members of the group never hear their perspective, nor do they ever realize that there's a problem, because they assume that they're being egalitarian.

That's not universal, and it's much less common in groups that have always been diverse from the very beginning. If you have a group with significant numbers of women, for example, they will tend to object (much more loudly than in real life) when someone says something sexist. The group culture that develops tends to be one that does not tolerate sexism.

In that kind of environment, you tend to be able to have discussions where everyone is listened to, and their ideas judged on merit, for precisely the reasons you suggest. It's all text based, and there's no stimuli to re-enforce your biases that you carried with you from the outside world.

However, that can only be done if you don't allow the group's culture to become a reflection of the outside world's culture. Which is what happens if you just ignore it.

I'm not blinded by my own perspective. I actually happen to listen to people, hear their opinions, and want to try to understand them. I don't tell people that their opinions or point of view are wrong, and shouldn't be listened to, just because they disagree with my own.

> inside a liberal's mind

Use of "liberal" as a snarl word. Awesome way to start a conversation - just go straight for a veiled insult. Nice.

> Weasel words are present and everything.

You're being condescending. This is literally the first thing you've said that could be said to be an argument, rather than an insult, and you've already resorted to trying to trivialize and ignore what I've said, rather than attempting to engage in it.

Rather than claiming that I'm using "weasel words", how about actually engaging in discussion, rather than just dismissing things that you don't agree with?

> The young liberal-speak of concepts of 'systemic bias' and 'societal pandering' and of course the students as victims who 'have no choice' but to complain

I'm probably a lot older than you would assume, and seriously, "liberal" is not an insult, even though you keep trying to use it as one. And how would that invalidate anything?

Frankly, you're being hopelessly naive if you don't think those things exist. Systemic bias is a thing. It also happens to be a thing that's incredibly difficult for straight white men to actually see, because it (mostly) only benefits them. They certainly can't see all the ways it disadvantages others, and are very often unsympathetic. Unless, of course, they actually take the time to listen to others, and attempt to understand their point of view.

So, what do you expect students to do if their professor just ignores all their concerns, and acts like their opinions are worthless just because he disagrees with them? That attitude is obvious in the article. How else do you expect them to actually be heard?

> The only systemic bias you'll find across a whole campus

Is a reflection of wider culture. Which is wildly discriminatory in many different ways, including race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, country of origin, political or social status, class (even if that's invisible), religion, and a whole load more.

> Nothing that can be checked up on specifically, no particular victim or perpetrator. Just a thing that we're supposed to believe is ever present, rampant etc.

Did you read the same article as I did? This professor had nothing that can be checked up on, no victim, no perpetrator, no specific events... Just a thing that we're supposed to believe is ever present, rampant etc.

Do you seriously expect me to come up with more specific detail about something that happened to someone else, on the other side of the planet? Or even to put that much effort into an comment on some random website? The author of this article didn't. You sure didn't. Why should you be holding me to a more strict standard, unless it's just because you happen to disagree with me.

I will concede - I have not given specific cases. Fine. Neither have you, and you make a lot more allegations than I did.

> You've got the SJW bug for sure. You need a dose of realism.

Labeling someone is not an argument. Insulting someone is not an argument. Being dismissive is not an argument.

> making wild assumptions about somebody else's frame of mind

Implied in the original article. OK, I might have been reaching.

I've seen versions of this article from various college professors recently. They're all pretty much the same, and some of those were a lot more specific.

I can come up with a more specific example - a professor complaining that students wanted to be warned that a piece of literature contained a rape scene. Said professor's excuse was "it doesn't bother me, so it shouldn't bother you".

Here's what he was failing to understand - the students in question had actually been raped. Surprising them with a rape scene is an extremely shitty thing to do, and in cases where rape survivors developed PTSD (which happens a lot), that can seriously screw them up.

What the students wanted was to have been warned in advance. If they had been warned, they could have worked out for themselves whether they were up to dealing what that, and either mentally prepared themselves, or opted out by leaving the class.

The professor interpreted that as "we don't want you to talk about rape ever", and "we're scared little children that need coddling". Then wrote an article very similar to this one.

This isn't suppression of free speech. It's asking people, particularly those with power over others, to avoid being assholes for no reason, and to be considerate of other people. Not exactly difficult.

> Add on to that getting mad that others aren't on your side.

No? Kind of irritated that I'm spending part of my afternoon dealing with this shit, rather than actually having a productive discussion about something.

> The reason society might be considering a lot of SJWs as scary is that they are young impressionable and have a lot of ignorant followers on twitter and will do anything and everything to weasel through a situation because their form of social justice must prevail.

Sigh...

How about a different perspective?

Most people find this stuff scary because it challenges their existing ideas and beliefs. In particular, it challenges people's belief that the world is actually fair and just. Which is isn't.

> that includes, as we've seen in St. Louis and Baltimore, justifying illegal behavior for so-called systemic racism.

"So-called"?

Y'know what? Not even touching that one. If you honestly believe that, there's absolutely no hope of reaching you, and you're clearly unwilling to listen to anyone else's perspective.

> Like here you insist it's not being attacked but it is.

Rubbish.

Minority groups do not have freedom of speech. Majority groups do, and they are using that freedom of speech to suppress the voices of minorities.

What's being "attacked" is the presumed "right" for the majority to have it's opinion heard to the exclusion of all others. Which is exactly what you're advocating for.