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The latest campus cancellation is different

theatlantic.com

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Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#501

Post by api »

smolder wrote: post #438
api wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People need to learn that the nuts (of any belief system) are always the loudest, and therefore give a distorted impression of actual consensus. Who are the loudest people on the left? Mobs and trolls who imagine grievances everywhere, which is sort of the leftist equivalent of conspiracy theory. Who are the loudest on the right? Qanon, Nazis, and theocrats / dominionists who think we should return to Old Testament l…

The nuts on either side aren't the loudest by their own virtue. They are amplified by their opponents. "This is the left," say the right wingers, pointing to the easiest-to-criticize, most ill-informed example of a leftist... and vice versa.

Yes that’s another part of the dynamic. The nuts form ready made living straw men to criticize to avoid engaging with more challenging arguments.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#502

Post by bart_spoon »

farmerstan wrote: post #171
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 think Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogan are setting the standard for ignoring cancel culture, and are being rewarded for it. I think most moderate people are sick of cancel culture and will support those that won’t buckle to it.

Unfortunately, that standard seems to be “you can ignore cancel culture if you are independently wealthy”. You can try and ignore cancel culture as some regular working man/woman, but that won’t get you far when your employer caves and fires you, and no one will hire you, because of the Twitter mob.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#503

Post by deadpannini »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #470
deadpannini wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protesting isn't addressed in the article. Who in the 60s and 70s was invited to speak at a college or university, then later had their invitation withdrawn due to their support of the Vietnam war or corporate interests?

This is actually extremely googable and definitely happened way more than you think.

Then it shouldn't be hard to share a few examples, right?

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#504

Post by silexia »

worrycue wrote: post #477
motohagiography wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pervasive lack of backbone among individuals in institutions is key to this. The shunning and shaming tactics used by online mobs are a very particular form of human aggression. Speculating on a correlating factor among the people in these institutions who seem so consistently vulnerable to it may be itself, problematic, but it's as though the organizations are missing anyone with the instinct to challenge or defle…

> The shunning and shaming tactics used by online mobs are a very particular form of human aggression. I just realise how similar the Twitter mob and 4chan harassment mobs are. They are basically 2 sides of the same coin. Even using the similar tactics like digging up dirt and more or less organise the same way, as impromptu mobs that just organically form. Basically modern lynch mobs who never have to face the conse…

The only way to stop mobs is to reveal each individual in it and hold them accountable. How can we organize to unmask and reveal the individuals of these mobs? I bet we would find some of these accounts are the Russian accounts specifically built to divide Americans.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#505

Post by account42 »

abacadaba wrote: post #403
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.

Hold twitter accountable for harm caused by their 'trending' algorithm?

I don't think we should encourage coporations to control what can and cannot be said.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#506

Post by krainboltgreene »

deadpannini wrote: post #503
krainboltgreene wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually extremely googable and definitely happened way more than you think.

Then it shouldn't be hard to share a few examples, right?

Okay so you didn't do any research before making your comment, cool.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#507

Post by pmdulaney »

Kudos to The Atlantic for publishing this. They have taken a veer to the left under Ms Jobs, but this restores my confidence somewhat.

There needs to be a new coalition for the next presidential election and going forward: a coalition of the sane that excludes the woke left and the anti-vaxxer/Trumpian right. Let's make America American again!

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#508

Post by krageon »

WalterBright wrote: post #469
gruez wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd politely ask the person holding me prisoner for his name "no" >and if he doesn't step aside I'll inform him that I'll be charging him with kidnapping You, as an individual can't charge people criminally. Civil suit is an option, but I suspect you won't get much in the way of financial compensation from a broke college student. >After all, what do you think will happen to you if you hold someone prisoner? Inflict…

> 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.

> I don't want a job [...]

Is what your last sentence essentially says. Every organisation you might work for will care about how things look and how what you do reflects on it.

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#509

Post by deadpannini »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #506
deadpannini wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it shouldn't be hard to share a few examples, right?

Okay so you didn't do any research before making your comment, cool.

The original post claimed this, with no substantiation:

> University lecturers have been protested or cancelled for decades for reasons unrelated to their topic ... Back in the day it was "edgy" to protest or cancel a speaker due to their support of the Vietnam war.

I don't think I'm obligated to do anything before asking OP for evidence, but sure, I'll show my work, so to speak.

I've been following free speech issues for about thirty years, which a close interest in academia. Obviously, that doesn't overlap with the period under discussion (I'm too young), but in the course of reading deeply about the issue, I've come across a lot of history covering the 60s and 70s (in the US & Europe, in particular). So I was surprised to learn that cancelations I'd never heard of were common.

It's not easy to figure out the search terms for this - it's not like looking for the ten most popular NPM packages. So I tried searching for a few things.

"campus speaker canceled 60s" "campus speaker canceled 70s"

I tweaked the terms - "1960s"/"1970s" seemed to produce slightly more relevant content, but no examples. Substituting "lecture" for "speaker" and "university" for "campus" didn't improve things either. I dug a couple pages deep in the results and clicked on a few seemingly relevant links, but was always disappointed.

I thought that maybe the ACLU's "Speech on Campus" page might reference an episode, but no. [1] I thought, perhaps FIRE has something on this, but they appear to be more concerned with recent history.

If these events were "extremely googable", I'd expect to have seen something promising by that point, but it wasn't happening. After your second response I thought "Oh, maybe krainboltgreene said googlable but meant duckduckgo or bing", so I tried those, and guess what?

Nothing.

I've got huge gaps in my knowledge. It's possible that OP is right and this is neither new nor different. But I'm not going to take their word for it, and it's ridiculous to expect me or anyone else to spend more than ten minutes searching for (even just) a lead on something that might not even exist, particularly given the confounding ambiguity of the possible search terms and the lack of indexed web resources for the historical era in question.

[1] https://www.aclu.org/other/speech-campus

Re: The latest campus cancellation is different

#510

Post by robotresearcher »

ren_engineer wrote: post #46
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.

the problem is that prestigious institutions are run by bureaucrats wearing its skin. For example this article says "MIT buckled", when in reality some campus admin buckled because to them it's not worth risking their comfy job over a speaker. The bureaucrats have no skin in the game, they don't benefit from thinking about long term damage to MIT or society in general. From their perspective it's logical to bow to Tw…

> the problem is that prestigious institutions are run by bureaucrats wearing its skin

Universities are run by their professors. Invited talks are regular academic business. A 'campus admin' does not invite or disinvite anyone to give an academic talk.

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