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The latest campus cancellation is different

theatlantic.com

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Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#481

Post by makeitdouble »

q1w2 wrote: post #138
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.

This letter reinforces the Atlantic article's claim that progressive Twitter mobs are cancelling anyone who disagrees with them.

The other angle: University changed plan for a PR event when they were confronted to the fact that the speaker’s public views on diversity were wildly against the people the Uni was trying to reach in the first place.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#482

Post by coldtea »

kodah wrote: post #379
still_grokking wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is than the next obstacle in the US system: You need to have very deep pockets to actually take a case in court. "Justice" is only available to the rich in the US. (And this doesn't seem to be a construction error if you look closer. But that's another topic).

> "Justice" is only available to the rich in the US. I disagree. I think we can all agree the government has a monopoly on violence which it is relatively inclined to use. The US system depends on the idea that someone will challenge the use of that monopoly in their particular instance, which we call precedent. It is true that people not-of-means may be subject to that violence unjustly but it only takes the governm…

>but it only takes the government messing with the wrong person once to establish precedent.

Kind of like the case of police routinely shooting unarmed blacks and getting off scot-free?

This system seems to have worked wonders to prevent this from happening. Or maybe they just haven't messed with the wrong person yet, since Rodney King hardly changed anything, and Derek Chauvin's convinction wont either...

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#483

Post by WalterBright »

gruez wrote: post #476
WalterBright wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You, as an individual can't charge people criminally. I can press charges. Violently holding people prisoner is a felony. It's not a joke. > I suspect you won't get much in the way of financial compensation from a broke college student. It'll be enough to matter to him. Future wages can be garnished. > you'll lose your job I don't want a job where I'm required to be a milquetoast.

>It'll be enough to matter to him. Future wages can be garnished. civil judgements can be discharged via bankruptcy. >I don't want a job where I'm required to be a milquetoast. Isn't that the problem? There will always be someone who is willing to be a milquetoast, hence why institutions are caving to the slightest pressure from twitter mobs.

Bankruptcy isn't a joke, either.

Besides, my goal is not to destroy the person. It's to make it costly for him to commit crimes against me.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#484

Post by mactavish88 »

jefftk wrote: post #479
mactavish88 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does the chair of the department get more of a say in who gets to speak than those who were going to come listen?

Because it is there department that is organizing the talk? I'm happy to argue about whether they should have decided to cancel the talk, how in general you should decide what speakers to have, and how you should respond to public pushback to your selections. But the general idea that a department gets to decide who they have come and speak seems like it should be uncontroversial?

My point is, for whose benefit was the talk in the first place? I imagine it’s mostly for those who were coming to listen to the talk, right? So what’s the job of the chair of the department in this case? To serve those who are coming to listen to the talk, is it not?

If that’s all true, then were all of those coming to listen to the talk consulted prior to the cancellation?

If not, who was the chair serving?

Do you see where I’m going here with the idea of the “weak bureaucrat”? They’re pervasive in modern politics too. Most such people are supposed to serve others, but inevitably end up unashamedly serving themselves first and foremost.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#485

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

yummypaint wrote: post #165
brigandish wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't this exactly the world that free speech / pro-liberty advocates want? No. The main consequence of speech that is being opposed should be… speech, not action to get that speaker's speech curtailed, whether by speech or other means. > I can also decide whether to patronize their business or not These people didn't have to turn up to the talk. That's not the same as cancelling a talk because someone said they do…

This post, like many in this thread, misrepresents what free speech is. Free speech protects us from government retribution, nothing more. I agree that it's bad form to lobby the university directly, but it's their right to do so, and the university has a right to change which speakers it invites. Having it any other way would be an attack on free speech. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of reli…

> "Free speech protects us from government retribution."

It is so embarrassing to hear fellow Americans quote the First Amendment as being the definition of freedom of speech when even a casual perusal of history points to the First Amendment being inspired from the more general principle of freedom of speech originating in the Enlightenment. We really need to have better education in this country.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#486

Post by post_from_work »

dustintrex wrote: post #69
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.

I suspect we've reached Peak Woke already, and the tide has started turning. With Trump out of power, they've lost the unifying hate figure to rally against, and many SV companies (mostly prominently Coinbase, but more quietly the FAANGs as well) are starting to show the loudest extremists the door. All that said, academia is where this all started and where it's also going to stay on the longest.

>>>All that said, academia is where this all started and where it's also going to stay on the longest.

Yuri Bezmenov warned us decades ago, and somehow nobody listened to him.

https://youtu.be/Z1EA2ohrt5Q

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#487

Post by gruez »

WalterBright wrote: post #483
gruez wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It'll be enough to matter to him. Future wages can be garnished. civil judgements can be discharged via bankruptcy. >I don't want a job where I'm required to be a milquetoast. Isn't that the problem? There will always be someone who is willing to be a milquetoast, hence why institutions are caving to the slightest pressure from twitter mobs.

Bankruptcy isn't a joke, either. Besides, my goal is not to destroy the person. It's to make it costly for him to commit crimes against me.

>It's to make it costly for him to commit crimes against me.

That only works if he doesn't think the cost is worth it. If you've already gone through the trouble of planning/executing this, I doubt one of the hostages telling you about the potential financial consequences is going to make you change your mind.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#488

Post by lupire »

f-jin wrote: post #305
cratermoon wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this professor's "controversial" views are held by upwards of 70% of the American public. First of all, who says? Second of all, just because a majority believes something doesn't make it right. There was a time when the majority of Americans believed slavery was OK. Times change.

Majority rule is kind of the underpinnings of democracy though, and free speech is a major factor in effective democratic systems.

No! Democracy is rule by the people, not 50.1% of the people. "Tyranny of the majority" is the major anti-democratic risk of majority rule systems. That's why free speech is in the Constitution, to defend free speech against majority rule.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#489

Post by lupire »

makeitdouble wrote: post #480
NovemberWhiskey wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I broadly think you're wrong on this. On the one hand, we have Abbot, who is an academic, being uninvited from a public lecture organized by the department that covers his field based on apparently little more than Twitter outrage. On the other hand, we have Yiannopoulos, who is an activist, whose event was canceled by the College Republicans due to public safety concerns after 150 protesters blocked access to the ve…

There is a lot of focus on the Twitter aspect, but from the article that outrage comes from an article he published in a magazine explaining his views on affirmative action. It’s not some random comment that got blown out of proportion, nor some accidental miscommunication, and the subject is also not unrelated to universities. Why is it out of proportion to have a mob wanting this guy out of the university system fo…

Who gets to decide what positions are so controversial (despite being held by a supermajority of the population, and aligned with the US Constitution) that they must prevent a holder from speaking on a wholly unrelated topic?

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#490

Post by orand »

whatshisface wrote: post #387
jwond wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't have any power, other than to annoy the institution. The only power here is the power that MIT has over the people they book to speak, and since MIT doesn't want to be annoyed, they canceled the speaker. The ability to get others to do what you want them to is absolutely a form of power.

I can't believe that Twitter culture has this much power but they're using it all on cancelling MIT speakers and not even trying to improve US policy.

It’s about postmodern deconstruction. Tearing everything down will make everything better. Somehow.
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