[HN Gopher] Open Letter by CSM Faculty
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Open Letter by CSM Faculty
Author : peanutcrisis
Score : 78 points
Date : 2022-11-26 15:14 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (sites.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (sites.google.com)
| jrm4 wrote:
| So, part of my job is to work with this sort of thing and, meh?
| Both sides have a few fair points?
|
| I think the thing is; there's always a lot of play in these words
| and people perhaps frequently get too uptight when it comes to a
| current definition etc.
|
| I'd say my only issue would be "anti-racist" (I'm black fwiw). I
| don't think that much belongs in a mission statement for roughly
| the same reason I don't much respect air-quotes "Atheism" --
| being _against_ a thing, or "not" a thing is just far weaker
| than being for something. While I actually _do_ personally
| believe that racism is at least a plausible candidate for our
| worst problem right now, I still don 't like it in a statement
| like this. It would be like if, instead of "spreading knowledge"
| there was a bit about "fighting ignorance." Mission statements
| aren't the place.
|
| But I think e.g. "social justice" and "diversity" are terms that
| are loose enough to be appropriate, even if they carry certain
| connotations today. It's hard to not think that, again, taking
| these words at face value -- that "social justice" and
| "diversity" aren't well within the mission of a
| college/university.
|
| Get these people in a room and hash it out.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Get these people in a room and hash it out.
|
| That is the key and it's not that big a deal.
|
| People with a certain political agenda, seek to depict these
| situations as irreconcileable warfare - because the division
| and conflict are what they seek.
|
| A mission statement could easily address everyone's concerns,
| which as usual are understandable.
| nr2x wrote:
| I don't think it's an agenda so much as a desire to create a
| grand victim/hero narrative.
|
| There seems to be some attitude present that they are
| fighting some grand battle. In reality this is the same type
| of stupid academic infighting that has existed since Monks
| ran the place hundreds of years ago.
| nr2x wrote:
| Exactly, they're trying to leverage mob outrage and not
| actually seeking a reasonable accommodation that allows all
| sides to come out with a win.
| riedel wrote:
| I myself work at a university (had the pleasure to be in the
| working group that drafted our first code of conduct) and I
| can very much relate to this: that is both sides.
|
| IMHO CS professors, however, tend to become drama queens when
| it comes to any progressive political thinking. And they
| might have reason for this reflex.
|
| An important aspect of this is that keeping things as they
| are in the scientific community is also very political. And
| what claims to be apolitical in the letter and purely
| research guided is often radical conservatism. I think one
| has to understand that the academic system at its current
| state still relies a very biased narrative of excellence that
| has promoted a certain type of academic. The reaction
| demonstrates IMHO that there might a bit of good reasoning
| behind the mission statement (which I still don't really like
| because it seems to not reflect other important values in
| science)
| geofft wrote:
| This is an excellent point from the comments, from one of the
| signatories:
|
| > _If you as a public university had no power against racism
| beyond the nobility of your intentions, your mission statement
| wouldn 't matter a damn anyway. The public university's power
| against racism is the inherently anti-racist power of genuine
| knowledge._
|
| And I think it actually refutes some of the more simplistic
| comments by other signatories about e.g. a desire to keep
| politics out of science or whether a university's goal should be
| truth or social justice. Such a phrasing implicitly claims that
| social justice (however one defines it) is a separable goal from
| truth. It reminds me a little of the "non-overlapping magisteria"
| non-solution to conflicting claims from science and religion,
| that either science determines truth and religion determines, I
| dunno, vibes, or alternatively that religion has real truth and
| science is limited to some subset of reality - it solves the
| problem by refusing to take either one or the other seriously.
|
| The claims of politics and social justice are claims within the
| domain of truth, just as the claims of science are. Either
| climate change is happening and merits a response, or it isn't.
| Either diversity brings conflict or it doesn't. Either the
| implicit association test is good science or it isn't. Either
| social Darwinism is good science or it isn't.
|
| The goal of the university should be to seek the truth because it
| helps humanity. This is why the research university publishes its
| research and the teaching university opens its doors to the
| public, after all. There are enough places (as we tech folks
| know!) where you can pursue the truth about many things for
| private gain.
|
| Those of us who are on the side of "science" and "truth" must say
| that when the pursuit of truth has brought us somewhere, we need
| to do something with that conclusion. It might take us a long
| while and to false places on the way (as with social Darwinism),
| but once we've landed on the shores we sought, we need to build
| something there. And those of us who adhere to the cause of
| "social justice" as widely understood (and I certainly count
| myself as one) must believe that the claims it makes about the
| world we live in are in fact true, and that the pursuit of truth
| will keep us focused on what actually benefits the people or
| causes we support, and we need to not cede ground to the idea
| that our pursuit of truth is somehow a different thing from the
| ordinary pursuit of truth.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| canadaduane wrote:
| Physical truth is very different from socially constructed
| truth. It took me 25 years, great pain, and leaving my original
| Mormon faith to understand this.
|
| Money, God, and What's Good are socially constructed truths,
| for example.
|
| You can converge on understanding physical truth without
| necessarily converging on socially constructed truth.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > The claims of politics and social justice are claims within
| the domain of truth, just as the claims of science are. Either
| climate change is happening and merits a response, or it isn't.
| Either diversity brings conflict or it doesn't. Either the
| implicit association test is good science or it isn't. Either
| social Darwinism is good science or it isn't.
|
| That's a rather black and white way of looking at things, and
| seems to imply that once "truth" is found, that further action
| no longer requires any relationship to it.
|
| Why these things are happening and what is the best way to
| solve them seem to be more pertinent questions, and involve a
| much deeper search for the truth then merely establishing that
| they're occurring and something needs to be done.
|
| > Those of us who are on the side of "science" and "truth" must
| say that when the pursuit of truth has brought us somewhere, we
| need to do something with that conclusion.
|
| There are those of us who see this as pure hubris. Particularly
| that you're conflating scientific result with truth and
| ultimately with conclusivity. It suggests a path where
| solutions are no longer socially discussed and implemented
| collectively though compromise, but rather handed down by
| science and enforced by rote.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Politics and social justice _contain_ claims in the domain of
| truth, but also _contain_ claims in the domain of norms, i.e.
| end goals, which are inherently orthogonal to truth (or near
| enough). Whether a fact is true is different from whether it 's
| good or bad, which is different again from whether you should
| do something about it. Confusing these leads to dangerous
| outcomes, I believe some of the "false places" you mentioned.
| ttpphd wrote:
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Research is the process by which we uncover empirical truth. If
| the existence of objective, empirical truth is "political",
| then everything is political.
| ttpphd wrote:
| Sure you can make up definitions but that's not a persuasive
| or responsive argument.
| zmibes wrote:
| While this is, of course, a racist counterargument, it is also
| correct. Doing research without a activist agenda is now a
| political stance. The sooner neutrals realise this the better
| ttpphd wrote:
| "neutrals"
|
| Big 4chan energy
| creator934 wrote:
| scarmig wrote:
| It's interesting that your first instinct in counterargument is
| to claim that anyone making the argument in the letter must be
| a white man.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| It's interesting that what they actually said was that it's
| usually the case, and that you provided no counter evidence.
| scarmig wrote:
| Many people don't believe that the truth or falsehood of a
| logical argument rests on the identity of the person making
| the argument.
|
| If you want to convince them of something, it's best to
| point out flaws in the argument, not try to discredit the
| person making the argument by calling them names.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| And yet I still don't see a refutation of the claim that
| this particular complaint usually comes from a particular
| demographic.
|
| If an observation is true, then the observation is true,
| and is a valid data point to consider along with any
| others.
|
| A logical argument can be perfectly true and still
| invalid if it is the result of motivated cherry picking
| and framing to support an agenda or incentive.
|
| As a master logician lecturer, we can assume you already
| knew that, which makes this comment curious.
| scarmig wrote:
| > A logical argument can be perfectly true and still
| invalid if it is the result of motivated cherry picking
| and framing to support an agenda or incentive.
|
| The approach to take here, then, would be to critique the
| part of the letter that is invalid and cherry picked.
| Perhaps universities have a broader scope than education
| and research, and focusing on the pursuit of truth
| doesn't allow it to fulfill its broader responsibilities.
| If that's your point, make it, instead of saying that
| certain personal traits of an arguer inherently makes
| their argument wrong.
|
| A world where arguments are primarily about which
| identities are good and bad is a world where you just
| have insults being thrown back and forth about who's a
| "white man reply guy" and who's an "autistic enby about
| to saw his genitals off." I'd prefer a different one.
| ttpphd wrote:
| I wrote a specific criticism (it's a mistake to believe
| the status quo is apolitical) AND I noticed who it is
| that this criticism usually applies to. Your brain got
| short circuited and you instead tried to make it personal
| against me and my approach to critique.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| > perfectly true and still invalid
|
| LOL. In other words, it's only "valid" if it supports
| your POV? Because you just admitted that "true" isn't
| part of the criteria.
| noasaservice wrote:
| When talking of identity politics, the identity of the
| speaker is included with the content.
|
| It definitely is a variant of an ad hominem logical
| fallacy (they are X demographic so they must know and
| represent all X). But critical thinking goes out the
| window with identity politics.
|
| And if you identify as white (or others identify you as
| white), you're just wrong. There's even insults of that
| type: Karen, Chad, Josh. Doubly so if you are or identify
| as male.
| ttpphd wrote:
| This is very self pitying
| ttpphd wrote:
| You are confused. Your brain went fight or flight as soon
| as you heard someone talking about white men, and you
| didn't stop to think about whether any of this is
| responsive to what I wrote.
|
| I didn't call anyone names.
|
| I in fact did point out a flaw in the argument. The flaw
| is thinking that the status quo is apolitical. The people
| I talked about on my comment (a real, literal group of
| people who exist and whose behavior can be empirically
| observed and analyzed). I commented on them. I am not
| talking _to_ them.
| crackercrews wrote:
| Why would parent need to provide counter-evidence when GP
| provided no evidence in the first place?
| xfitm3 wrote:
| It's extremely sad that racism against white people is
| acceptable to so many.
| ttpphd wrote:
| It's not racism against white people to notice and
| critique attitudes of oppression.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| There's a difference between noticing and "noticing". By
| now, claims of "noticing oppression" are well past the
| point where they should be uniformly regarded as crude
| dog-whistling.
| ttpphd wrote:
| This is funny to me. "You saying that I enslaved you,
| barred you from education, and divided and slaughtered
| your family is actually a subtle dog whistle against
| white people"
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Yes, indeed. What you just quoted is in fact the language
| of crude conspiracy theory, not even of the most cursory
| thinking about real-world systems and structures of
| oppression.
| ttpphd wrote:
| History is a thing
| ttpphd wrote:
| I didn't claim that, actually! Please don't be a reply guy.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > However, we also believe that this outcome was likely
| accidental
|
| Oh, you sweet summer child
| matkoniecz wrote:
| That is almost certainly intentional to allow backtrack without
| losing too much face.
| epicureanideal wrote:
| pyuser583 wrote:
| The new mission statement sounds a lot like the Nicene Creed. "We
| are ..."
|
| Other than that, they're pretty similar.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| > This is most evident in the Vision Statement which discusses
| diversity, equity, expansive notions of excellence, wellness, an
| ethic of care, plural identities, climate justice, environmental
| justice, and racial justice, and then states that "We hold
| ourselves and each other accountable to ensure these values drive
| all decision-making in research, pedagogical innovations,
| resource allocation, and the development of policies and
| practices."
|
| Heaven forfend that "excellence" and "wellness" and various sorts
| of justice should be primary drivers of various sorts of
| decisionmaking.
| nr2x wrote:
| What's the point of having people outside the university sign the
| letter? Seems like another veiled attempt to litigate by mob
| action.
|
| This is an internal organizational discussion and should remain
| that way. This is just inflaming the situation with no clear
| strategy to sensible resolution.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| > _We are a public urban university_ _dedicated_ _to teaching,
| learning, and research_ _rooted_ _in equity, environmental
| sustainability, social and racial justice, innovation, and
| expansive notions of excellence._
|
| Swap these words above and your mission statement is not standing
| on its head.
|
| This type of control over words and the nuanced replacement of
| priority is NewSpeak. Anyone dismissing the importance of this
| subtlety is either a proponent of the concept or ignorant of the
| far reaching consequences. Neither is acceptable.
| tptacek wrote:
| It looks like only a small fraction of CSM faculty have signed on
| to this open letter.
| [deleted]
| crackercrews wrote:
| > However, we also believe that this outcome was likely
| accidental, and that it stemmed from the fact that the College of
| Science and Mathematics only has one representative on the
| committee despite being the second largest college on campus.
|
| This is a very optimistic take, and surely the signers must know
| this. Is this move to allow for face-saving?
| nr2x wrote:
| Also, I'm guessing they didn't show up to the meetings,
| circulate earlier drafts, and got upset with outcome they don't
| like.
|
| This is how this type of self governance works: you have to
| show up.
| ttpphd wrote:
| It's interesting to me that I offered a genuine critique of this
| view point and my comment was flagged and I was piled on with ad
| hominem attacks.
|
| The status quo is not apolitical and science doesn't exist
| separately from society and people.
|
| When this fact is pointed out, a certain demographic freaks out.
| Usually people for whom the status quo was good.
| scarmig wrote:
| > It's usually white men who are used to seeing any action
| taken to further the interests of oppressed people as
| "political" and "ideological", but they do not see their own
| actions which implicitly require continuing said oppression as
| "political" or "ideological".
|
| Just for the record. You could easily make the argument that
| the idea of academic objectivity is itself political without
| the added invective about white men and reply guys.
| ttpphd wrote:
| Just for the record, you omitted the critique in my comment.
| Seems like you also missed that I was saying. I face
| hostility simply for existing here with an alternate
| viewpoint and experiences with real, literally nameable
| people I have encountered. Nothing I said was an attack on
| white men, unless you believe that noticing white men is an
| attack.
| phnofive wrote:
| I don't think it is a critique.
|
| > I am always wary of people who want to do world changing
| research and then call it "not political".
|
| > It's usually white men who are used to seeing any action
| taken to further the interests of oppressed people as
| "political" and "ideological", but they do not see their own
| actions which implicitly require continuing said oppression as
| "political" or "ideological".
|
| > Compute takes resources. Is there anything less political
| than massive resource use?
|
| I interpret this as:
|
| "It is usually white men seeking to do apolitical, world-
| changing research who are willing to ignore the consequences to
| the oppressed to maintain the status quo."
|
| I think that is probably true of almost any demographic, given
| the opportunity.
| crackercrews wrote:
| What ad hominems? I looked through the comments and didn't see
| any. Also we don't even know who you are. It's hard to ad
| hominem an internet commenter.
| scarmig wrote:
| One commenter did dig through their history and called them
| an autistic enby who wanted to saw his[sic] own genitals off,
| though thankfully it's been deaded. Plenty of personal
| attacks all around.
| ttpphd wrote:
| I did not attack anyone.
| peanutcrisis wrote:
| I don't think you offered a genuine critique, you simply made
| an unsubstantiated (racist) accusation and claimed it as fact,
| then framed anyone who disagreed with your racism as being
| racist.
| ttpphd wrote:
| I didn't do that, so you are factually wrong.
| tartarate wrote:
| This reminds me of the article "Catechism Class at British
| Universities" about similar policies in the UK, and that title
| neatly sums up how, while this conflict is being presented as
| about politics, it is really about religion.
|
| People in earlier eras wouldn't have all been surprised by the
| requirement for all teaching and research to happen within a
| particular moral framework, whose tenets were not drawn from
| rational study or considered open to debate, but simply held as
| self-evidently correct. They wouldn't be surprised about
| lecturers or students having to attend prayers or recite
| scripture.
|
| And all societies undergo periodic revivalism, where there is a
| constriction of what is considered ethically acceptable
| behaviour, enforced through a mixture of social ostracism and
| state and institutional coercion. The fact that the current
| revivalist movement is a secular religion instead of a spiritual
| one is a minor difference. Otherwise, it's little different from
| equivalent Victorian campaigns against immoral behaviour. It just
| feels unusual because we've been through such a long period of
| liberalisation and religious decline and perhaps fooled ourselves
| into thinking it was a permanent state of affairs.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Part of the process of "revivalism" is allowing minority
| viewpoints protection and platform.
|
| In the modern Anglo-tradition, colleges and universities have
| played a major role in constructive dissent.
|
| Non-public universities have historically had some kind of
| creed, but it was interpreted liberally enough to allow
| energetic debate.
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