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Did you go down to Plaza de Mayo to speak to some of las Madres and ask how they feel about it, or where is your idea coming from?
A university president makes a case against cowardice
131–140 of 934 posts
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like how you claim data doesn't support this being a problem but at the same time can't be bothered to cite any data. I'll do it for you: https://5666503.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/5666503... "Alarming proportions of students self-censor, report worry or discomfort about expressing their ideas in a variety of contexts, find controversial ideas hard to discuss, show intolerance for controversial speakers,…
> Jay Bhattacharya, who in hindsight was far more correct on everything COVID-related than the CDC was Bhattacharya who signed the Great Barrington Delaration, advocating for herd immunity and "focused protection" for the elderly? Just imagine how much larger the death toll would have been. This page has a good list of concerns about Bhattacharya, including how the study mentioned in your link was flawed and one of t…
An honest seeker of truth wouldn't just say Jay's estimate was off, but compare it to other estimates of the time. Bhattacharya's IFP estimate was .2%. The WHO's IFP estimate was 3.0%. Which of the two had the more accurate estimate? The WHO, with billions in funding, or Jay operating by himself on a shoestring budget, all while the CDC in its bureaucratic incompetence couldn't be bothered to do any real studies? In fact, a positive outcome of Jay's study was to help understand just how bad the initial estimates were!
And as far as the great Barrington declaration is concerned, it is widely accepted now that the lockdown strategy failed, and that focused protection would have saved far more lives and caused far less economic harm and educational harm, which by the way, correlate with loss of life and loss of years of life. Even far left news outlets admit this now: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/covid-lockdowns-big-...
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
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First we're not allowed to call the detention camps "concentration camps" because there aren't ovens, now we can't call them "disappearances" because they're not getting thrown out of helicopters. Forget that people are getting shipped to a foreign torture slave camp from which nobody has been released with, and with no due process. I think this language policing may be because people don't want to allow opposition t…
This is exactly how it went in Russia. First it was, ‘Well, this isn’t that bad.’ Then, ‘Okay, sure, this isn’t great—but it’s not like we need to take action yet.’ And bit by bit, people kept rationalizing, minimizing, delaying—until suddenly it was, ‘Well… we’re f’d.’ That’s why we should speak up now.
We’re already at the point where one side is openly arguing that due process isn’t guaranteed by the Constitution—because it's inconvenient. So how many rights do we have to give up before it’s acceptable to call it out? How many norms have to be broken? How many lines crossed?
It's not like (other than Elon) they're going to show up in Hugo Boss suits one day and announce 'we have crossed the line to where you can criticize us now'.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
AFAIK, that number more accurately reflects the number of people who died within two weeks of testing positive using PCR tests at high Ct values (35-45), inflating case counts. 94-95% involved at least one comorbidity. Over 75% had at least four comorbidities.
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 miraculous reprieve from flu deaths.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#135Wild that he is some kind of exception. Rolling over, folding is not the university culture I remember.
> not the university culture I remember.
that's because universities are now businesses first, research institutions second, and academic institutions third
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing about this is new - the right has harbored a particular hatred for "academics" and "intellectuals" since at least the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. Today's fear of "wokism" is just the prior generation's fear of "cultural marxism" with a new coat of paint. But this kind of political talk is against the guidelines. Good hackers don't care about any of this. So Javascript is getting crazy, h…
When the politics get crazy enough it bleeds into everything, which is why it's now acceptable to discuss here.
I think you'll find that no matter how crazy it gets or what it bleeds into, it's never going to be acceptable to discuss here. As soon as people get a whiff of "politics" they're going to start flagging. Especially if they see the "T" word.
The regime could be rolling dissidents into mass graves and the only valid point of discussion for most people here would be packing algorithms.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I agree getting shipped off to a concentration camp ("detention center") without resource to justice is not on par with getting thrown out of a helicopter, but it's starting to get pretty damn close. And Trump is only getting started. If he had 7 years like the Junta did, we might wind up with our own contingent of desaparecidos.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
He states in the interview that Wesleyan has NIH grants. They are preparing to let scientists go if it comes to it.
Wesleyan does not have a medical center and according to the NIH’s public reporting, they have under $2 million in NIH grants, compared to $600 million for Columbia. ( Edited from $400 million, which is the value cut. ) Wesleyan has a $250 million operating budget, so the (from what REPORTER indicates) $1.6 million in NIH funding represents 0.6% of their budget. In contrast, the $600 million in NIH funding to Columbi…
That makes a strong case for academic institutions not being substantially dependent on government research dollars.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#139A 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?
There are some reasons that I think you probably know, which don't receive enough time and attention 1) Despite an appearance of being "left leaning" (according to polls of faculty political sentiment) they continue to gatekeep education behind prohibitively expensive tuition that is out of reach of lower economic strata without crippling debt, and have simultaneously struggled to produce graduates whose economic dif…
> many failing to grow their student bodies in tandem with the growth of the US population
this is mostly true of elite schools (who nowadays are mostly selling a brand more than an education), not so much of state schools
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#140Some of that so-called activism seems to be closer to suppressing any thoughts someone dislikes. Removing that from university life is not cool, that „activism“ itself went off the rails too.
Freedom of speech necessarily implies that a group of people might team up and loudly announce that the people they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or even ostracized. That's the price of freedom of speech, and it's a fair price. Being annoyed, inconvenienced, or even negatively impacted by the speech acts of others is by design. To throw that out is to make a calculation that without…
I’ll defend other people rights to offend me. But nowadays some people think others, even just between themselves, can’t say what would offend them.