The latest campus cancellation is different • Hacker News Board

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#181

Post by ghaff » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #3

How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Seems like they can bully and intimidate any organization from universities to corporations to GitHub projects to kowtow to their demands. Their demands are usually to fire, boycott, or boot people with opinions that run afoul of the mob. Not a healthy precedent to set. We will regret this later if we continue down this path.

Or just someone who made a stupid joke or otherwise set off someone with enough followers. The corresponding antibody reaction of a lot of institutions, especially companies, is to make the offending thing go away before the next news cycle--especially if the person involved isn't senior. Easier to fire someone than have to publicly defend their behavior. And, if the organization is going to take any other sort of material action, might as well fire the person anyway as they're done with the organization.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#182

Post by LeoNatan25 » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:25 PM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #156

pessimizer wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that there's a subconscious belief that US institutions should be loyal to the white race, especially as expressed through the American spirit of our forefathers and their ideals of fair play, and that any cancellation based on expressing the same racial beliefs as the country was built on is basically sedition as a prelude to white liquidation. Some white people feel like they're going to be forced out of th…

There's also a conscious belief on behalf of immigrant families like my own that the reason we came to this country is for the free speech, so when we see American institutions that do not seem to care, we wonder if America actually lives up to its promises.

Spoiler: it doesn’t, and it hasn’t for a very long time.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#183

Post by scythe » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

mawise wrote: post #118

Seems like there were two things Abbot did "wrong", one was to argue against affirmative action, and the other was to use a nazi reference to make his point. Does anyone have first-hand knowledge of what the mob said on Twitter? I'm curious if they differentiated between the two. For anyone who hasn't seen it, Netflix's fiction THE CHAIR satires cancel culture in liberal institutions and their story includes someone…

There are really only two analogies he could have used, because there are only two cases in (post-Mongol) history where a nation with the best universities in the world experienced a calamitous fall from grace. One was in Nazi Germany.

The other incident was Napoleon's conquest of France, Italy, and Spain, and the damage that was done by the anti-Church reforms imposed on those universities. This is a closer analogy, since Napoleon's reforms were nominally "liberalizing" in that he had proclaimed the abolition of nobility and its continuation via said institutions. But it's unlikely that the Twitter mobs would have been any happier about being compared to Napoleon instead of Hitler.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#184

Post by metagame » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

civilized wrote: post #111

creata wrote: post #92

Here's what seems to be a follow-up on an MIT webpage: https://orgchart.mit.edu/node/6/letters_to_community/importa... Edit: and for what it's worth, I think many people here are too easily stirred into a frenzy based on astonishingly little information about this incident.

The letter you link is quite clear: MIT doesn't want to hold a scientist up as a role model if progressive activists dislike him. This wouldn't have happened at University of Chicago.

Here, I'll give a rebuttal, even though I don't think every internet comment deserves a reply, your comment included.

It is an outreach event. The majority of people in developed nations live in progressive cities, and hold center-liberal to outright progressive views.

Now, if you're trying to spread propaganda, good or bad, you want to do it in the most efficient way possible. Just as you wouldn't put a radical Satanist in a government role of promoting birth control, you shouldn't have your PR representative be a man who's against the very role he's supposed to be playing. Both the first instance and the last are counterproductive. An advocate for Satan would be just the ammunition someone against birth control could use perfectly, and a PR representative who's against the inclusion of the people he's supposed to play PR for will naturally alienate.

The John Carlson lecture isn't an opportunity to offer the field cutting edge science, it's an opportunity to present to the rest of the world new findings in climate science, and to inspire others to take up the banner. It is science propaganda, in the best way possible.

Just as you wouldn't invite OJ Simpson to give a lecture on sentencing reform despite his innocence because it would alienate the very people you're trying to convince to rally for sentencing reform, you should aim to have the least-offensive and most-captivating candidate give the annual PR speech. This is meritocracy, which is something that many universities aren't big on (being filled with legacy admissions).

My own views are probably not far from the person who was denied the speech, here, but I understand the value in propaganda, and having someone who would set PR back when most of the point is to captivate the public would be a net-negative, and anti-meritocratic. Despite their viewpoint being probably comparable to my own, I'm aware that PR is delicate, and public advocacy plays a large role in changing public opinion, so they should indeed step aside to let someone more publicly-accepted give the speech.

In short: Don't alienate your audience if your goal is to persuade. Go with a safer bet, always. It's not a great idea to fire controversial people, but if the goal is a good speech for PR, go with someone else. They'll probably appreciate the time to do more research.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#185

Post by gbrown » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

rmak wrote: post #164

gbrown wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, not being super familiar with this guy outside of what is presented in the article, there does seem to be a pretty important difference between someone like Milo and an actual academic giving an academic talk. I see why some would worry about cancelling a talk by the former (despite him being utterly repugnant and bringing nothing of substance to the audience), but the latter cancellation seems worse to me.

Must be the homophobe inside you.

Sure… that’s it.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#186

Post by ncann » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

cyberpsybin wrote: post #62

umvi wrote: post #3

How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Seems like they can bully and intimidate any organization from universities to corporations to GitHub projects to kowtow to their demands. Their demands are usually to fire, boycott, or boot people with opinions that run afoul of the mob. Not a healthy precedent to set. We will regret this later if we continue down this path.

Ban twitter and tiktok

Why Tiktok? 95%+ of these incidents came from Twitter. FB, Tiktok, Instagram, for all their shortcomings, is rarely the place where these incidents happen.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#187

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

umvi wrote: post #3

How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Seems like they can bully and intimidate any organization from universities to corporations to GitHub projects to kowtow to their demands. Their demands are usually to fire, boycott, or boot people with opinions that run afoul of the mob. Not a healthy precedent to set. We will regret this later if we continue down this path.

Two things:

We probably only hear the stories where they succeed, or nearly so, which may be anywhere from almost all the attempts to only a tiny number.

Second, if this is a which hunt, then we should treat it as such and immediately lob accusations at those who start the accusations.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#188

Post by lolinder » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

dfdz wrote: post #144

> John Carlson Lecture As a disclaimer I am against any censorship of academia and think that even Charles Murray should be allowed to speak at a university (assuming he is invited by an academic department or student group) and that the university should never have veto power. However, I think the example in the Atlantic is actually more mild than past cases: the John Carlson Lecture is a general audience talk that…

The article argues, and I agree, that a university is free to not invite someone if they view them as controversial. Where the problem really is is that they invited him and then retracted the invitation in response to a mob. The retraction is what makes this problematic.

EDIT: the other point that the article makes is that this professor's "controversial" views are held by upwards of 70% of the American public. The net result of applying this rule consistently would be that a strong majority of the American public cannot express their opinions on this subject because of a tiny vocal minority.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#189

Post by nradov » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #110

umvi wrote: post #3

How do we neuter the power of Twitter mobs? Seems like they can bully and intimidate any organization from universities to corporations to GitHub projects to kowtow to their demands. Their demands are usually to fire, boycott, or boot people with opinions that run afoul of the mob. Not a healthy precedent to set. We will regret this later if we continue down this path.

Hard to imagine a legal approach that does not impermissibly infringe on the free association rights of all the various participants. The question is whether any other mechanism would be sufficient. If Twitter were interested, they could do something to inhibit the flow of the outrage mechanism, but there are strong free speech arguments against doing this. Also it is of course not in Twitter's own best interest. If…

Twitter management stopped caring about free speech years ago. They are no longer the "free speech wing of the free speech party". Instead they actively promote a particular brand of US progressive politics, and ban anyone who steps out of line.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/twitter-steps-down-fre...

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#190

Post by User23 » Sun, Oct 10, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

I find it helpful to think of prestigious colleges as hedge funds with strong branding and a world class associate pipeline. The reason why they favor legacy students and jocks is that those are the people who are the most likely to write huge checks to their alma mater and otherwise act in its interests continually after graduation. Perhaps that will change, but it hasn’t yet. This professor advocating an end for legacy and athletics admissions is a direct attack on a wildly successful multi-billion dollar business model that’s lasted centuries and still going strong. I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever made this call is using the twitter mob as a convenient fig-leaf for chastising a boat-rocker.