What it's like to be cancelled

> it's telling that you think courts are objective...

So, if you think that the court system, with it's experts, and centuries of experience, with fallbacks and checks and balances, with emphasis on applying the law with regard to precedent and societal input, with appeals and formal processes that must be followed ... is unable to be objective, what makes you think that random people with an actual specified bias is more objective?

I dunno about you, but I'll take my chances in court over someone who literally shouts their bias to the world any day.

All the arguments for mob justice that you are attempting to make are the same arguments the KKK made for their justice.

I believe I understand your perspective, but there's a few things being conflated here.

Regarding the example you provided wherein the professor was fired from her job:

- You're entitled to your own opinion, you're welcome to publish it, etc.

- Your opinion can be bad and others may dislike you for it. That's fair. You are not free from repercussions.

- A tenured professor is a representative of their university, an employee. They are a face of the school, they teach classes, etc. As far as I'm concerned, no employer should be subjected to bad PR solely because of your shitty opinion. If they want you gone, tough, that's what you signed up for.

- It sounds like the university took this seriously and launched an investigation. Seems like the right thing to me. No one should be subjected to an environment where they do not feel safe or comfortable, let alone paying university students. How should an Aboriginal student feel?

Next, the fact that you see very little difference between opinions on racism and corruption in this example is pretty concerning. For one, race is a protected class, but like birth gender, sexual orientation, etc. affects everyone. It's an intrinsic part of the individual, the identity. A more apt comparison might be "Canada is NOT sexist" which I don't think would receive a response surprising to anyone.

I don't think any individual stance on corruption, at least in North America, could be considered remotely controversial. Except, maybe, to people who have been personally impacted by corruption, which I imagine is a small cohort, but the same would apply for practically any topic.

Looping back around, I dislike the notion that "it's right to cancel" anyone. We're not executing people without trial. People aren't (usually) going to jail or dying. In your first example, it seems the professor chose this hill to die on, instead of apologizing or attempting to show some empathy. Their choice.

The mistake you and others here frequently make is that people are not logicians in isolated environments. People are emotional, have vastly different experiences and varying degrees of education, and a variety of communication skills. Life, or Twitter, isn't a structured debate, even if you'd like it to be. If you piss a lot of people off, you're going to have a bad time. The very connected world in which we live changes things. If you have a controversial opinion that might piss people off, maybe don't share it somewhere easily discovered by said people. Or better still, maybe consider why they might be pissed off and reflect on your choices.

> Everybody read history knows current Switzerland is a very unique outlier.

Correct. But I cannot see how it supports this part that you started with:

> What? This is a totally nonsensical response.

Yeah I think I understand this viewpoint but I fundamentally disagree with it. I would absolutely prefer to live in a world where academics are free to express controversial opinions that would be debated on their own merits, and not shut down because some people are made uncomfortable. “Canada is not racist” clearly falls in this category for me - it’s a far cry from something like “Hitler was right”.

In practice this would look like strong protections for academic freedom and the administration would take the side of free expression instead of pandering to the offended. I find it troubling that you’re ok with the “bad opinion” being silenced to make people comfortable instead of debated on its own merits.

I guess you’re assuming that the Aboriginal student in your example would have the opinion that Canada is in fact racist? I don’t know if this is a widespread opinion but if it is they would be entitled to expressing their viewpoint and hopefully the professor would learn something new about the country. How is shutting them up instead more productive? This doesn’t decrease the amount of racism at all.

It’s precisely because people are often emotional and are often not capable of a rational debate that we should dedicate extra effort to protecting academic freedom. If we don’t then in the long term we all lose if we have to walk on eggshells and can’t freely debate the full range of opinions.

Let me ask you this: if we’re not allowed to question if or to what extent systemic racism exists, how do we ever know when we fully conquered it? Does it just become an article of faith? At that point, what does this have to do with scientific inquiry and universities at all?

Edit: regarding your example, no I don’t think that Canada is sexist either. Canada consistently ranks in top 5 or 10 countries for women’s rights and labor equality (roughly equal to the Nordic countries). Why do you think it’s controversial to say that Canada is not sexist?

That makes no sense. A Direct Democracy would take into account the people that are not participating in the mob.