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A university president makes a case against cowardice

newyorker.com

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Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#571

Post by croes »

jgalt212 wrote: post #547
low_tech_love wrote: post #425

Some personal highlights: "They’re excellent schools, and they have excellent scientists, and if one of Vice-President Vance’s kids is sick, he’s going to want the doctor to have gone to one of these schools; he’s not going to want them to have gone to Viktor Orbán’s university." "People have said to me, “Well, you take all that money from the government, why don’t you listen to them?” The answer is, because the mone…

> The answer is, because the money doesn’t come with a loyalty oath But it does come with some reasonable level of consideration and appreciation.

The government pays to get good universities which attract smart foreign who come to the US to study on these universities.

Maybe the government should appreciate them not the other way around.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#572

Post by skeaker »

jgalt212 wrote: post #547
low_tech_love wrote: post #425

Some personal highlights: "They’re excellent schools, and they have excellent scientists, and if one of Vice-President Vance’s kids is sick, he’s going to want the doctor to have gone to one of these schools; he’s not going to want them to have gone to Viktor Orbán’s university." "People have said to me, “Well, you take all that money from the government, why don’t you listen to them?” The answer is, because the mone…

> The answer is, because the money doesn’t come with a loyalty oath But it does come with some reasonable level of consideration and appreciation.

Being paid what you're owed doesn't necessitate gratitude.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#573

Post by croes »

SoftTalker wrote: post #226
justonceokay wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have multiple family members that are frustrated with higher learning because their children came out of the system more liberal-minded than when they entered. In this politically divided climate they feel like the university system “stole” their children from them. In reality I don’t think people’s political opinions change very much and they are just mad that their children individuated.

People's political opinions definitely change, especially with age and wealth.

The biggest change happens if your mental horizon widens.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#574

Post by disambiguation »

taeric wrote: post #561
disambiguation wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tuition is skyrocketing and wages are stagnant. I'm not making a hard claim about inversion of ROI, but I don't need to. What's the reason for college becoming so expensive?

You claim it is inverted. That is a hard claim, full stop. One that is, notably, not supported by any figures. I can largely agree that it, similar to other things, has become too expensive. I cannot agree that it is not worth it for folks that can do it.

You know it's kind of rude to dismiss someone when they clarify and then stuff words in their mouth?

Totally inverted? Of course not. But there is a very real portion of individuals for whom debts exceed earnings and it is very much in the data. But if you want to ignore reality to win on semantics go right ahead.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-relationship-between-...

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#575

Post by throwaway389234 »

lelanthran wrote: post #439
kevingadd wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> That's because the extent of the illiberal behavior of the radical left was yelling and "cancel culture" while the present behavior of the illiberal right is abductions and overseas slave camps. You can see why people might find having the two equated a little ridiculous, right? You are correct - one is objectively worse than the other. The unfortunate truth is that, also, one is a consequence of the other. Trump i…

Free speech in the US is about not having consequences for what you are saying. In particular not having consequences from the government. Therefor you can only say that it is a legitimate consequence if you disregard free speech. Free speech in the US is about being able to be an asshole to 10%, 50% or 90% of the population without having to be responsible for what that part of the population does. And even more so what they do with the government. As such if you believe in free speech the government's actions stand on their own. What you actually don't get to say is that it is a consequence. Because that is what free speech in the US is supposed to prevent. Consequences from the government.

In many countries in Europe we have hate speech and defamation laws, we don't have at-will employment and many of our universities are public. This means there is less freedom to make others upset, questioning someone's character, firing them and ways to affect our education. This is by definition illiberal. (Worse or not is an open question). In Europe we can't say that "I might have offended 50% of the population, but sending me to prison is worse" because our laws says it isn't. In the US you can.

Does US law also say that the government can do all kinds of things, including pardoning criminals? Yes, but it still goes against the credibility of free speech in the US. One of the things the US still had over other countries.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#576

Post by rtkwe »

xdavidliu wrote: post #564
pclmulqdq wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard is a hedge fund that happens to do some education and research as a tax-advantaged side gig.

who gets to withdraw that money?

The university uses it for salaries, financial aid and other operations.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#577

Post by aaronbrethorst »

vimax wrote: post #481
hellotheretoday wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for brevity I did trivialize it but I will expand: The left side got people fired. This is objectively not as bad as getting people disappeared. You can get a new fucking job. You can’t get freedom from detention and you cannot easily return to the country (if at all) Additionally there is the motivational factor behind both sides: The lefts argument in policing language was to reduce harm to marginalized groups…

You're still trivializing. The cancel culture would often follow the people it wanted to cancel to make it hard for them to get another job again. Also, I'll add that the "there is the door" comment is entirely wrong. There are countless stories of open source maintainers being harassed to make language changes to their code base, master/slave, whitelist/blacklist. The harassers never offered to do the work themselve…

I renamed my codebase's primary branch to main because someone complained.

versus

I was abducted by ICE agents and shipped to a supermax prison in El Salvador without due process.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#579

Post by freedomben »

wat10000 wrote: post #504
freedomben wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don't see a problem with this? I consider myself more on the left, but this practice has always seemed highly antithetical to liberal values to me. If somebody in their off hours says something assinine, and telling (some might call that "snitching to") their employer in a public forum like Twitter (in a clear attempt to get a social media frenzy going to ultimately get them fired) is a good thing, then wo…

In a free country, private employers should be allowed to choose who they employ, with very narrow exceptions for discrimination based on race, religion, etc. In a free country, citizens should be allowed to read what other citizens write in public. Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that? IM…

I mostly agree with you.

> Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that?

If the employer happened to see it, then yes I think that's well within rights. But I think having some random stranger see something and actively campaign against the employee to their employer is a little bit different. It's not illegal, nor should it be, but there are plenty of things that are legal but still not good behavior. I would consider this under that umbrella.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#580

Post by mancerayder »

slg wrote: post #539
emptysongglass wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Not part of the rest of the conversation, just narrowing in on the idea of speech being free if there are consequences. That sounds like some sort of 1950's-era doublespeak. If there are consequences, how would speech be free? It's a very American-centric perspective that "Free Speech" is defined as "1st Amendment". Free speech means not getting fired, jumped, killed, poisoned, expelled, etc. Fired is something that would happen in Soviet Times as well, in the USSR, and in the McCarthy era, in the U.S.

Apologies for the "two sidesism".

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