[HN Gopher] A university president makes a case against cowardice
___________________________________________________________________
A university president makes a case against cowardice
Author : pseudolus
Score : 434 points
Date : 2025-04-03 12:29 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
| pseudolus wrote:
| https://archive.ph/a9ie5
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Wild that he is some kind of exception. Rolling over, folding is
| not the university culture I remember.
| rincebrain wrote:
| There wasn't, historically, the level of enormous potential
| negative consequences legally and practically if the
| universities talked back.
|
| Universities, like many institutions, have also become more
| like large incumbent businesses than previously - e.g.
| perpetuating their own existence over having strong core
| values.
| toddmorey wrote:
| This is really well articulated. It's like how a company uses
| fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to justify a pivot
| away from some kind of principled stance.
| cess11 wrote:
| Might have been a mistake to let some of them turn into real
| estate hedge funds.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Biden was considering withholding federal funds from schools
| over their vaccine policies[1], and tried to withhold federal
| funds from schools based on how they treat transgender
| students[2], but that was blocked by a judge. Obama did a
| similar thing regarding transgender students[3].
|
| Things like this are why Hillsdale College rejects all
| federal funds. So they can do what they want without threat
| of the government revoking funding[4].
|
| [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-vaccines-
| delta...
|
| [2] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/12/texas-title-ix-
| lgbtq...
|
| [3] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2016/05/13/477896804...
|
| [4]
| https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/the-
| co...
| rincebrain wrote:
| Sure, but my argument was not "the federal government has
| never done this", but that "colleges have usually felt
| secure that this would not be done to them if they defended
| student protests", or at least, if we're being cynical,
| "that they would have an opportunity to walk it back if
| their calculations were incorrect".
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't feel like the reasons behind this are the same.
|
| Biden/Obama: We want you to accept and protect _everyone_
|
| Trump: I want you to deliberately reject certain races and
| nationalities, and close all the departments studying stuff
| I don't like.
| Jensson wrote:
| > Trump: I want you to deliberately reject certain races
|
| Which race are colleges not allowed to accept? Source for
| this?
| kevingadd wrote:
| The current administration refers to inclusion of PoC and
| women as "DEI", so when they talk about ending DEI,
| that's what they mean.
|
| See https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2025/mar/17/defense-depa... for one example where
| it's particularly blatant.
| Jensson wrote:
| > The current administration refers to inclusion of PoC
| and women as "DEI", so when they talk about ending DEI,
| that's what they mean.
|
| I call bullshit on them wanting to ban women and black
| people from colleges, that is not what they mean when
| they say end "DEI", you are crazy.
|
| Can you post a single link where they even hinted at
| wanting to ban black people and women from colleges? That
| is such an egregious accusation that you need more than
| just that they took down a page about a black guy.
| CaptWillard wrote:
| Not sure when you graduated, but I've seen a complete
| inversion.
|
| Much like 90s rockers, they now rage exclusively on behalf of
| the machine.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 1990, FWIW.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Many universities are more like family offices that operate
| schools. Columbia is historically one of the biggest slumlords
| in NYC through their various entities.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > not the university culture I remember.
|
| that's because universities are now businesses first, research
| institutions second, and academic institutions third
| red_admiral wrote:
| This point gets to the heart of the matter. The more I look
| into it, everything else seems downstream from this.
| dudinax wrote:
| And yet the US has some of the best universities in the world
| academically.
| bdangubic wrote:
| it absolutely does not. you pay for paper and the network.
| the education, except at few rare exemptions, is subpar.
| talk to any asian and european and ask what they think of
| attending uni in the US :)
| mantas wrote:
| Some of that so-called activism seems to be closer to suppressing
| any thoughts someone dislikes. Removing that from university life
| is not cool, that ,,activism" itself went off the rails too.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| Freedom of speech necessarily implies that a group of people
| might team up and loudly announce that the people they don't
| agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or
| even ostracized. That's the price of freedom of speech, and
| it's a fair price.
|
| Being annoyed, inconvenienced, or even negatively impacted by
| the speech acts of others is by design. To throw that out is to
| make a calculation that without freedom of speech, your
| perspective will be the natural default without activism to
| upset it. A dangerous assumption.
| clarionbell wrote:
| Problem is that in the past two decades university admins
| gave in to various deplatforming causes and enforced codes.
| If they had stood firm before, the arguments against them
| wouldn't be nearly as strong. Unfortunately, they didn't. So
| when they now use the "free speech" argument themselves it
| rings hollow.
| rightbyte wrote:
| No it doesn't ring hallow. It is just that the issue is
| old.
| mmooss wrote:
| Those policies were designed to promote free speech from
| vulnerable groups. Political vulnerability has a huge
| influence on free speech (and freedom), and that's what
| they have been addressing.
|
| (Picking two random groups:) If you are Pakistani and are
| in a room of all Indian people, and the others say how
| horrible Pakistanis are and how research shows that
| Pakistanis are less intelligent or prone to violence, that
| is a very intimidating atmosphere and it would be hard to
| endure, much less speak up.
|
| If that one Pakistani says the same about Indians, it's
| obnoxious and annoying, but it's no threat to anyone. The
| many Indians are not vulnerable. That's the difference.
|
| Furthermore, the dominant groups in a culture tend to
| create systems and knowledge that support them to the
| exclusion of others - sometimes explicitly and
| intentionally. That's systemic discrimination - the system
| naturally generates it if you follow the usual path. It
| takes some effort to create space for other points of view.
|
| Whether the typical DEI policies are optimal is another
| question. I haven't heard anyone come up with a great
| solution. Some pretend it's not a problem and there is no
| prejudice, which is absurd and not a solution; it's just
| sticking one's head in the sand - because they can, because
| they are not vulnerable.
| lmm wrote:
| > (Picking two random groups:) If you are Pakistani and
| are in a room of all Indian people, and the others say
| how horrible Pakistanis are and how research shows that
| Pakistanis are less intelligent or prone to violence,
| that is a very intimidating atmosphere and it would be
| hard to endure, much less speak up.
|
| Much like a right-winger or a Christian at one of these
| universities.
|
| The policies didn't help the groups they were supposedly
| about helping, they helped the groups that were already
| dominant (race and religion matter a lot less in a group
| that's all upper class), whether by design or because
| they evolved to.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The policies didn't help the groups they were
| supposedly about helping
|
| Do you have any evidence?
|
| > Much like a right-winger or a Christian at one of these
| universities.
|
| So is the first quote not based on evidence, but based on
| your ideology? There's no reason any vulnerable minority
| shouldn't be protected, though 'right-wingers' and
| Christians (usually meaning conservative Christians) are
| hardly vulnerable in the US, even if they are a minority
| on many campuses. They rule the country and always have,
| have access to every job and privilege.
| antifa wrote:
| Nobody knows you're a Christian or right winger at a
| university until you open your mouth to let all the women
| and LGBT people know that you think they don't deserve
| rights, and it's not discrimination when people don't
| like you for being an asshole. The vast majority of
| Christians go to college, don't get mad that LGBT and
| non-Christians exist, and didn't get discriminated
| against.
|
| The absolute narcissism on display here is crazy.
| mmooss wrote:
| Not all conservative Christians and right wingers think
| "women and LGBT people ... don't deserve rights". I find
| that if I approach people that way, it brings out the
| worst in them - they feel cornered and they fight.
| There's not much room for discussion when someone
| dismisses 'crazy antifa terrorists'. Are you going to
| reason with them?
|
| It destroys social trust, which is what the real radicals
| aim at. If you want to fight the far right, work to build
| it.
|
| I think the DEI rule should be simply to ban intolerance,
| with some education about how norms can be intolerant of
| minorities, and the experience of being a vulnerable
| minority in a room of majority.
| antifa wrote:
| > Not all conservative Christians and right wingers think
| "women and LGBT people ... don't deserve rights
|
| Weird how those specific Christians who think women and
| LGBT are people don't feel discriminated against.
| geertj wrote:
| > they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should
| be ignored or even ostracized
|
| You have that right. But doing this is not always wise.
| Labeling people as immoral and ostracizing them, especially
| on 50/50 issues, is one of the reason why the American
| political system is so radicalized at the moment.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| That's a question of tactics, though. Moral outrage can be
| extremely effective, and it can also be counterproductive.
| And striking the right balance has been a challenge in
| American politics as long as American politics have
| existed.
|
| In his Second Inaugural, Lincoln threads the needle in a
| way that is frankly unachievable for even most skilled
| politicians. "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same
| God and each invokes His aid against the other" seems like
| an acknowledgement of moral nuance, but he follows it up
| with, "It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask
| a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the
| sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be
| not judged."
|
| Speaking to a nation in which a part of it is in open
| revolt over the right to keep other humans as slaves is
| certainly an extreme case. But it isn't categorically
| different from any other political struggle. People are
| going to accuse one another of being immoral. It's the
| human condition. A legal system that protects this behavior
| is the bedrock of democracy. It doesn't matter how annoying
| you find the people doing the judging.
| mantas wrote:
| I'll defend other people rights to offend me. But nowadays
| some people think others, even just between themselves, can't
| say what would offend them.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| A lot of people are fair-weather friends of freedom of
| speech. It's all well and good if everybody is allowed to
| express themselves as long as everybody, if they don't like
| me, at least respects me.
|
| I guess some people were never in favor of freedom of
| speech, they just wanted a world where they faced minimal
| interpersonal conflict, and the current order for a while
| was serving that purpose.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Freedom of speech necessarily implies that a group of
| people might team up and loudly announce that the people they
| don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be
| ignored or even ostracized. That's the price of freedom of
| speech, and it's a fair price.
|
| Sure, agreed. But groups and institutions taking even a dime
| of tax money _should not_ get to place a thumb on the scales
| of those arguments. US universities, in particular, chose a
| side and then silenced all opposing viewpoints.
|
| It was inevitable that the silenced would eventually
| mobilise, and they did. And now the group has to abandon
| their arguments about allowing "punching up" and instead
| pontificate on "free speech".
|
| Myself (and many others) argued over the last decade and more
| that the pendulum always swings back, so lets be a little
| less extreme in the left/right argument. I, on this site, got
| labeled a non-thinking right-winger apologist for pointing
| out that the mainstream views on transgender for minors does
| not match the views that the powers-that-be were pushing.
|
| You can't push for normalising the silencing of views for
| well over a decade without you yourself eventually falling
| victim to the same normalisation.
| ytpete wrote:
| What did US universities do to "silence all opposing
| viewpoints" on any issues? Did they kick students out of
| school because of their viewports? Claw back their
| financial aid? Get them deported? Physically harm them? I
| sure don't remember things like that happening in
| widespread manner to conservative students, let alone
| happening in a way that was organized top-down by the
| universities' leadership.
| mantas wrote:
| I think it's vice versa. Some students prevent other
| students from exercising their free speech rights. E.g.
| try to prevent speakers they don't like from speaking on
| campus. Or harass some people for their ethnicity in
| context of Hamas/Israel war. Then universities look the
| other way.
| lelanthran wrote:
| I want to assume you are asking in good faith and really
| aren't aware of academic administration's attempts to
| silence specific and common viewpoints.
|
| Your comment surprises me, because at this point, there
| really isn't any contention over the fact that
| universities have been doing exactly this.
|
| So while I _am_ assuming that you don 't actually know,
| I'll give you a short list of links (I'm not doing
| research that takes me more than 5m).
|
| > What did US universities do to "silence all opposing
| viewpoints" on any issues?
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/musbahshaheen/2024/06/05/sto
| p-r...
|
| https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/diversity-
| statemen...
|
| https://www.thefire.org/news/anti-free-speech-trends-
| campus-...
|
| https://www.thefire.org/facultyreport
|
| https://www.hrdive.com/news/stop-requiring-diversity-
| stateme...
|
| (UK, but still the same idea)
| https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/kathleen-
| stock...
|
| https://www.thefire.org/news/speaker-disinvited-
| uncomfortabl...
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-disinvited-
| speakers-...
|
| And, finally, some charts:
| https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-
| idea/ne... Analysis of the data FIRE
| has collected reveals a clear political trend in the
| likelihood that a speaker will be targeted with a
| disinvitation effort. Speakers are far more likely to
| face disinvitation efforts from opponents to their
| political left than from those to their right. Since
| 2000, those behind the disinvitation efforts targeted
| speakers with views more conservative than their own
| nearly three times more frequently (97 attempts) than
| they targeted speakers with views more liberal than their
| own (36 attempts).
|
| The takeaway is that the right-leaning students and
| administration are far far more tolerant of speech from
| the left, than the left-leaning students and
| administration are of speech from the right.
|
| It pains me to say it, but it aligns with my experience.
|
| > Did they kick students out of school because of their
| viewports? Claw back their financial aid? Get them
| deported? Physically harm them?
|
| None of that is required to silence opposing views.
|
| > I sure don't remember things like that happening in
| widespread manner to conservative students, let alone
| happening in a way that was organized top-down by the
| universities' leadership.
|
| "Allowing only one viewpoint" doesn't require that the
| university administration has a top-down directive to
| expel students, only that they allow one viewpoint and
| silence the other.
|
| Once again, that this happened _is not in dispute_ , so I
| am left wondering where you were going with this
| response.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| We all know that isn't the kind of activism being targeted.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Can you be a bit more specific what kind of "thought
| suppression" you mean?
| mind-blight wrote:
| I know someone who works for a university in event planning.
| They were putting together an event for a civil rights icon.
| Because of the new policies, they were forced to go through all
| of the brochures and pamphlets and censor any use of words such
| as "racism" and "black" (when referring to the man's skin
| color).
|
| They literally couldn't say "black man fighting against racism"
| about a civil rights icon without losing millions in funding. I
| have no idea how someone can argue that this kind of censorship
| targeting universities is acceptable
| mantas wrote:
| It is not acceptable. But at the same time the US
| ,,antiracist" campaign itself looks just like (reverse)
| racism in many case. Two unacceptables don't cancel each
| other out. But you reap what you saw.
|
| Just my 2 euro cents.
| bsder wrote:
| > But at the same time the US ,,antiracist" campaign itself
| looks just like (reverse) racism in many case.
|
| And what do you propose _instead_? I 'm not seeing the EU
| doing any better than the US with their lowest
| socioeconomic class groups.
|
| Talking points are nifty. But, at some point, you have to
| propose an _actual solution that does something_.
|
| Bigotry exists. What are you going to _do_ about it? It
| seems that the most popular answers right now vary from
| "Not a goddamn thing" to "Fuck those bastards."
|
| (In reality, I'm pessimistic that there is much that can be
| actively done. The bigots who threw slurs at my immigrant
| ancestors didn't so much get better as much as just change
| epithets and targets. Sadly, so it goes.)
| mantas wrote:
| > And what do you propose instead? I'm not seeing the EU
| doing any better than the US with their lowest
| socioeconomic class groups.
|
| Key word ,,socioeconomic" groups. It should not be racist
| policies based on skin color. Help poor people, help
| people growing up in shitty neighbourhods. True diversity
| is people with different life experiences. Sometimes it
| correlates with skin color, sometimes it doesn't. Just
| like poor economic situation and shitty upbringing.
|
| > Bigotry exists. What are you going to do about it? It
| seems that the most popular answers right now vary from
| "Not a goddamn thing" to "Fuck those bastards."
|
| Of course. Including among those so-called ,,anti
| racists".
|
| Slightly offtoic, but it's funny that modern ,,antifa" is
| one of the most authoritarian-minded people I've met.
| While a good chunk of far-right people are full-on
| anarchistic-minded people. With about equal amount of
| bigotry on either side. People loooove abusing labels to
| further their agenda.
|
| > (In reality, I'm pessimistic that there is much that
| can be actively done. The bigots who threw slurs at my
| immigrant ancestors didn't so much get better as much as
| just change epithets and targets. Sadly, so it goes.)
|
| And then there're bigot immigrants who talk shit about
| locals. My country was a major source of migration two
| decades ago and it's horrible what our people would say
| about locals. Now tables switched and we got more
| incoming migration. And now we're on the other side of
| the same transaction guests not respecting our culture.
| Bigots are everywhere. But current policies tend to focus
| on one side of bigots which just breeds more resent on
| the other side.
| bsder wrote:
| > It should not be racist policies based on skin color.
| Help poor people, help people growing up in shitty
| neighbourhods.
|
| That is, in fact, what a lot of those DEI programs _did_.
| The problem is that "lower socioeconomic status" is a
| high correlate proxy for "minority" in the US. There are
| simply a lot more minorities in the US in the lower
| socioeconomic brackets.
|
| The problem, at the end of the day, is that the a lot of
| the market became zero sum. When there were lots of jobs
| and lots of college slots, nobody cared so much about
| affirmative action-type programs.
| em500 wrote:
| According to the Supreme Court ruling[1], college
| admissions where explicitly taking race into account,
| either as a proxy for or in addition to socioeconomic
| status.
|
| [1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_h
| gdj.pdf
| diogocp wrote:
| > They literally couldn't say "black man fighting against
| racism" about a civil rights icon without losing millions in
| funding.
|
| They could. They just preferred to play the victim.
| CapricornNoble wrote:
| >They literally couldn't say "black man fighting against
| racism" about a civil rights icon without losing millions in
| funding. I have no idea how someone can argue that this kind
| of censorship targeting universities is acceptable
|
| Sounds like they are being forced to take the Morgan Freeman
| Approach to Ending Racism: stop talking about race.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2RwJlQdzpE
| DeathArrow wrote:
| It's nice universities will have to reform themselves and people
| will be able to speak their minds again without being afraid.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| You mean like afraid of being deported when they are here
| legally?
| alabastervlog wrote:
| The data do not support what you suggest being a widespread
| problem. There's a popular story about it being a big problem,
| but when people start trotting out examples most of them fall
| apart on closer examination, which is weird if lots of solid
| examples exist (why pick so many that are, at best _a stretch_
| if not simply wrong, if this is a widespread trend and not just
| a couple actual events that were maybe not great?). Folks have
| tracked things like speaker cancellations, and there are
| vanishingly few of those, conservatives, even fairly fringe
| ones, speak on campuses all the time.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| I like how you claim data doesn't support this being a
| problem but at the same time can't be bothered to cite any
| data. I'll do it for you:
| https://5666503.fs1.hubspotusercontent-
| na1.net/hubfs/5666503...
|
| "Alarming proportions of students self-censor, report worry
| or discomfort about expressing their ideas in a variety of
| contexts, find controversial ideas hard to discuss, show
| intolerance for controversial speakers, find their
| administrations unclear or worse regarding support for free
| speech, and even report that disruption of events or violence
| are, to some degree, acceptable tactics for shutting down the
| speech of others."
|
| "Less than one-in-four students (22%) reported that they felt
| "very comfortable" expressing their views on a controversial
| political topic in a discussion with other students in a
| common campusspace. Even fewer (20%) reported feeling "very
| comfortable" expressing disagreement with one of their
| professors about a controversial topic in a written
| assignment; 17% said the same about expressing their views on
| a controversial political topic during an in-class
| discussion; 14%, about expressing an unpopular opinion to
| their peers on a social media account tied to their name; and
| 13%, about publicly disagreeing with a professor about a
| controversial political topic. "
|
| And as for examples, the sitting NIH director, Jay
| Bhattacharya, who in hindsight was far more correct on
| everything COVID-related than the CDC was: had this to say
| about his experience at Stanford:
| https://stanfordreview.org/stanfords-censorship-an-
| interview...
|
| " I presented the results in a seminar in the medical school,
| and I was viciously attacked. ... It was really nasty:
| allegations of research misconduct, undeclared conflicts of
| interest... In reality, the whole study was funded by small-
| dollar donations."
|
| "It was very stressful. I had to hire lawyers. I've been at
| Stanford for 38 years and I felt it was really, really out of
| character. At one point, the Chair of Medicine ordered me to
| stop going on media and to stop giving interviews about COVID
| policy. They were trying to totally silence me."
| n4r9 wrote:
| > Jay Bhattacharya, who in hindsight was far more correct
| on everything COVID-related than the CDC was
|
| Bhattacharya who signed the Great Barrington Delaration,
| advocating for herd immunity and "focused protection" for
| the elderly? Just imagine how much larger the death toll
| would have been.
|
| This page has a good list of concerns about Bhattacharya,
| including how the study mentioned in your link was flawed
| _and_ one of the co-authors went on to admit the results
| were wrong: https://www.zmescience.com/medicine/jay-
| bhattacharya-has-a-h...
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| An honest seeker of truth wouldn't just say Jay's
| estimate was off, but compare it to other estimates of
| the time. Bhattacharya's IFP estimate was .2%. The WHO's
| IFP estimate was 3.0%. Which of the two had the more
| accurate estimate? The WHO, with billions in funding, or
| Jay operating by himself on a shoestring budget, all
| while the CDC in its bureaucratic incompetence couldn't
| be bothered to do any real studies? In fact, a positive
| outcome of Jay's study was to help understand just how
| bad the initial estimates were!
|
| And as far as the great Barrington declaration is
| concerned, it is widely accepted now that the lockdown
| strategy failed, and that focused protection would have
| saved far more lives and caused far less economic harm
| and educational harm, which by the way, correlate with
| loss of life and loss of years of life. Even far left
| news outlets admit this now:
| https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/covid-lockdowns-
| big-...
| n4r9 wrote:
| > it is widely accepted now that the lockdown strategy
| failed
|
| Is it?
|
| https://royalsociety.org/news-resources/projects/impact-
| non-...
| carbocation wrote:
| So far the fight/not fight decisions can be predicted in advanced
| based on whether an institution has a medical center with NIH
| grants.
| alephnerd wrote:
| And if they hire the right alumni lobbyists - major reason why
| you don't hear about Dartmouth in the news [0] despite a
| similarly active student activism scene.
|
| Most other private universities could have easily managed the
| relationship, but a mix of inertia and vindictiveness from
| certain alumni (eg. Ackman) messed it up.
|
| Mind you, Dartmouth is also kind of unique in that their alumni
| relations team actually TRY to maintain a relationship. The
| other high prestige colleges (excluding USC) ignore you until
| they need to hit fundraising KPIs.
|
| A Tuck or Dartmouth College grad will always fight for an alum
| if they make it to the shortlist - most other Ivy grads don't
| (Wharton kinda, but that's only for Wharton). This really helps
| build loyalty.
|
| [0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/trump-is-
| bombarding...
| ghaff wrote:
| Dartmouth is smaller and has, historically, had a stronger
| and more intense ongoing alumni connection in various ways
| than is probably the norm with the Ivies in general.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Dartmouth is smaller
|
| Yale and Dartmouth are similar in student body size, yet
| Yale has been hit by investigations [0] while Dartmouth has
| been spared.
|
| [0] - https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/office-
| civil-rig...
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair enough. Yale has more/bigger grad schools--though
| Dartmouth has tended to expand in that respect (though it
| doesn't have a law school).
| CPLX wrote:
| Dartmouth is also famously the "conservative" Ivy.
| alephnerd wrote:
| More "conservative" than Columbia but still fairly liberal
| - the overwhelming majority of students backed Harris [0]
| and support abortion rights [1]
|
| The Israel-Palestine protests (which sparked this whole
| university culture war issue) were fairly active at
| Dartmouth as well, but messaging around it was better
| handled by their admin.
|
| The only conservative-ish and kinda prestigious college
| (not university) I can think of is Claremont McKenna, but
| they are drowned out within the larger Claremont community.
|
| [0] - https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2024/11/2024-ele
| ction-a...
|
| [1] - https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2023/11/2023-ele
| ction-s...
| Balgair wrote:
| The way I saw the Columbia protests was that Donny's trial
| was downtown, and because it was not televised, producers
| told their crews to stop filming the doors to the courthouse.
| So, looking for any story at all, they took the subway uptown
| to the hippies camping out on the quad. Hey, at least it's
| better than literally staring at a door, right? Next thing
| you know, the student protest thing blew up. Why? Because
| there was literally nothing else going on for the TV news
| crews to film those days. Soon as graduation happened and the
| trial wrapped up, we never heard another thing.
|
| Dartmouth, sure, it may have a high energy protest scene and
| be smart and whatever. But no-one knows about it - not
| because they are crafty - but because it's in freakin
| Hanover.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Dartmouth's time may still come. Brown is apparently about to
| be targeted next. Trump is clearly not done yet.
| ty6853 wrote:
| And NSF grants?
| carbocation wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the NSF funding mechanisms or how
| people track NSF funding. Not saying NSF is not relevant,
| just that I'm not using it for my personal heuristic right
| now.
| dekhn wrote:
| https://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/awdlst2/default.asp shows the
| NSF funding for Wesleyan.
|
| You can drill down and infer some of the details about the
| funding programs.
| carbocation wrote:
| Thank you. So, another _de minimis_ amount ($1.8
| million): it 's not exactly zero, but it's just about as
| much as their NIH support. Columbia, as a comparator,
| gets $100 million in NSF funding.
| dekhn wrote:
| I also found a DOE grant, about $800K.
|
| I think this is the full list, NIH looks like a subset of
| overall HHS funding, and NSF is the actual single largest
| (around $2.5M)
|
| https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?method=report&tin
| =U3...
|
| Wesleyan falls into a really weird bucket: a private
| liberal arts university, generally considered a "little
| Ivy" with a modest, slightly better than its competitors
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ivies) in terms of
| research clout. The impact of losing all scientific
| federal funding would be noticeable, but presumably, not
| fatal; I don't think they structured the operating costs
| of the university to be dependent on federal research
| funding like many other schools.
|
| I grew up at Wesleyan- both my parents worked there, it
| paid for my university education, gave me access to the
| internet in the 1980s (via NSF funding), and gave me
| insight into liberal education, all of which prepared me
| to go off to a California university, maximize my
| education, and deploy that into my career. I think many
| people don't recognize the intense second order effects
| (mostly positive) of federal funding of research.
| drooby wrote:
| He states in the interview that Wesleyan has NIH grants. They
| are preparing to let scientists go if it comes to it.
| carbocation wrote:
| Wesleyan does not have a medical center and according to the
| NIH's public reporting, they have under $2 million in NIH
| grants, compared to $600 million for Columbia. ( _Edited from
| $400 million, which is the value cut._ )
|
| Wesleyan has a $250 million operating budget, so the (from
| what REPORTER indicates) $1.6 million in NIH funding
| represents 0.6% of their budget. In contrast, the $600
| million in NIH funding to Columbia represents about 10% of
| its $6 billion operating budget.
|
| So both in terms of absolute numbers and relative numbers,
| the NIH contributions to Wesleyan are _de minimis_.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| That makes a strong case for academic institutions not
| being substantially dependent on government research
| dollars.
| dcrazy wrote:
| No it doesn't. The First amendment is supposed to prevent
| the government from conditionalizing access to government
| services based on the speech of the recipient. Private
| institutions are not subject to such restrictions. If we
| want to encourage academic freedom, we want to find this
| behavior by the government to be illegal.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > we want to find this behavior by the government to be
| illegal
|
| of course we do - but we're sadly discovering how easy it
| is for the government to target and coerce these
| universities, with nobody stepping up to stop them
| dcrazy wrote:
| So we want universities to get their funding from private
| sources that are expressly entitled to impose the same
| kind of conditions? Or do we want universities to spend
| more time and overhead on cobbling their funding together
| from a large number of intellectually and morally diverse
| sources? Where will these sources get their money without
| the power of taxation?
| nickff wrote:
| If you're going to resort to Constitutional arguments,
| you shouldn't gloss over the fact that the federal
| government is supposed to be one of enumerated powers,
| and there's no 'bribing universities to do what you want'
| federal power.
| geonineties wrote:
| Unfortunately, that's not true. Article 1 gives congress
| very broad budgetary powers. Basically congress can spend
| money how they want, including bribing universities.
| nickff wrote:
| It depends on your understanding of Article 1 Section 8:
|
| > _" The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect
| Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and
| provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the
| United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall
| be uniform throughout the United States;"_
|
| What does "general Welfare" mean in this context? Are
| those words just meaningless filler, or should they be
| interpreted to indicate that the spending must be in
| furtherance of another specifically enumerated power? I
| believe the latter (Madisonian take), but this is a
| contentious subject:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause#
| Gen...
| tguedes wrote:
| I don't think the first amendment protects this. The
| first amendment protects against prosecution from speech.
| In this case, they are not being prosecuted, they are
| just being denied funding. Where are you getting that the
| "First amendment is supposed to prevent the government
| from conditionalizing access to government services based
| on the speech of the recipient." It does not state that
| at all
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| What do you think that 10% of budget is paying for that
| the university is spending on? It's more or less paying
| for the building and all that goes into it for the
| research that the NIH called for grant proposals to
| happen in. This is the entire idiocy about indirect
| benefits. Yes, paying for the building is not spending
| money directly on research. But you can't exactly do lab
| work without a lab building you know.
| nosianu wrote:
| It's nice to be against something, but incomplete to
| uselessness if you are leaving out your alternative
| suggestion(s). They will always be dependent on
| _someone_.
|
| If you were to go the most direct route, you might want
| to let the actual "customers", the students, pay for it
| all, delayed until they have a job of course?
|
| A different version of student loans, it's the university
| itself that lets them study for free to collect later. I
| have no idea how that would turn out, I'm sure there
| would be so many different cases, impossible for me to
| tell what this would mean and look like.
|
| The biggest problem I can see right away is that it's
| probably going to increase inequality between
| institutions. Ever more sorting of the rich and the poor
| into different places, with huge disparity of funding.
| So, probably a terrible idea unless the goal is dystopia.
|
| Which leads me back to my question: What is your
| alternative? I think the government is better than pretty
| much all others. Private donors are quite problematic to
| rely on, and you only get the 1% to have even more power
| over education.
| gen220 wrote:
| It's ironic that we're re-discovering this in 2025, it
| was pretty transparent in the late 1960s and early 70s,
| to students protesting their govt-funded universities'
| involvements in supporting the Vietnam War. The demands
| of students back then involved withdrawing from govt-
| funded grants and programs.
|
| If you take money from an entity, you become an extension
| of that entity.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| > And in the last two months, it's become painfully apparent that
| wanting to have nice conversations is not going to stop people
| who are bent on authoritarianism. Right now, I'm not sure what
| will stop them, except successful court challenges, and even that
| seems precarious.
|
| Winning elections could work.
|
| > Watching the video of this poor woman at Tufts who was abducted
| by federal agents --I wrote my blog today about that. I think the
| government is spreading terror, and that's what they mean to do.
|
| Brother, a blog post is, quoting you, a "nice conversation." A
| New Yorker interview is a nice conversation.
|
| Getting rid of legacy admissions... guess who wins elections? The
| sons and daughters of politicians! Whereas grandstanding on X or
| Y achieves nothing.
| tomohawk wrote:
| This is rich. The Universities that caved to student activists
| engaged in antisemitism and other egregious activities should now
| fight for their rights to be cowards? Or the Universities that
| engaged in racist DEI programs are now going to stand on
| principal?
|
| Give me a break.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| If tenure was designed to protect intellectual freedom, but
| academics are consistently the biggest cowards failing to stand
| up to anything - what does that say about academia?
| sequoia wrote:
| A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do
| people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions? Is
| there anything they could have done differently in the past
| decade or two to have broader sympathy now, or is people's
| ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?
| pjc50 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings was arguably
| a worse time for universities.
|
| Protesting attracts reprisals. Universities taught people, both
| explicitly and by example, to stand up for what they believed
| in, but have undersold students on how dangerous that is.
| Universities could have done a better job explaining that
| certain injustices are load-bearing, and that calling them out
| will make half the country hate you.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| > certain injustices are load-bearing
|
| This is an excellent way of explaining why some injustices
| are ignored and others decried. Thank you
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| People in the 1960s were murdered for protesting. You might
| imagine that this motivated an end to protest, and everyone
| calmed down. But in fact, it didn't. The very best way to
| motivate increased protest is to act like a bunch of
| monsters.
| drooby wrote:
| I think it's actually extremely simple.. because the herd
| mentality is extremely simple. Intellectuals think it's complex
| because intellectuals love complexity.. This is what happened..
|
| The right witnessed riots over the past decade. These riots
| were in response to police brutality and perceived racism. The
| ideas behind anti-racism spawned a perceived new ideology -
| "wokism". This frightened the right. Intellectuals on the right
| mapped the origins of this new ideology to philosophies from
| elite institutions. Therefore, these institutions must be
| punished to be kept in check.
|
| It's really that simple..
|
| What I find interesting about this guy is that in a way he
| actually is "caving" to the demands of the administration. This
| uni president advocates for more heterodox thinking - which is
| in alignment with what the Trump admin wants as well... maybe
| that's why Wesleyan won't be punished..
| krapp wrote:
| Nothing about this is new - the right has harbored a
| particular hatred for "academics" and "intellectuals" since
| at least the anti-war and civil rights movements of the
| 1960s. Today's fear of "wokism" is just the prior
| generation's fear of "cultural marxism" with a new coat of
| paint.
|
| But this kind of political talk is against the guidelines.
| Good hackers don't care about any of this. So Javascript is
| getting crazy, huh?
| e40 wrote:
| When the politics get crazy enough it bleeds into
| everything, which is why it's now acceptable to discuss
| here.
| krapp wrote:
| I think you'll find that no matter how crazy it gets or
| what it bleeds into, it's never going to be acceptable to
| discuss here. As soon as people get a whiff of "politics"
| they're going to start flagging. Especially if they see
| the "T" word.
|
| The regime could be rolling dissidents into mass graves
| and the only valid point of discussion for most people
| here would be packing algorithms.
| andelink wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance, but what is the "T" word in this
| context?
| Smithalicious wrote:
| Tigger
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| China
| krapp wrote:
| Trump.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Most people don't care about university protests. They're
| largely a means to get laid while achieving nothing and at
| worst destroying their own university. As long as they don't
| spill out into the surrounding town any outrage is essentially
| theater.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| There are some reasons that I think you probably know, which
| don't receive enough time and attention
|
| 1) Despite an appearance of being "left leaning" (according to
| polls of faculty political sentiment) they continue to gatekeep
| education behind prohibitively expensive tuition that is out of
| reach of lower economic strata without crippling debt, and have
| simultaneously struggled to produce graduates whose economic
| differential easily makes up for that expense and lost work
| time.
|
| 2) They enjoy a tax free status while receiving significant tax
| money despite many failing to grow their student bodies in
| tandem with the growth of the US population, leading to people
| questioning whether they deserve those benefits as institutions
| that serve the public.
|
| 3) There is a sentiment that basic literacy and numeracy of
| graduates has dropped over the last decades outside of a narrow
| area of studies, because of a shift to a model where students
| are customers buying a credential instead of getting an
| education.
|
| (These are all interrelated, of course.)
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| > many failing to grow their student bodies in tandem with
| the growth of the US population
|
| this is mostly true of elite schools (who nowadays are mostly
| selling a brand more than an education), not so much of state
| schools
| chrisweekly wrote:
| Ironically, many elite universities are actually either
| free or nearly free, for lower-income students. The super-
| rich probably don't care. While we middle-class families
| don't qualify for need-based aid, and are on the hook to
| pay outrageous sums, largely to subsidize the aid for
| others.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Lower economic strata doesn't take on debt, they get aid and
| free rides, cherry work study jobs to put some money in the
| pocket too. It is the middle class or upper middle class that
| insists in eschewing their state school benefit for a more or
| less comparable school in another state (or without favorable
| scholarship and aid package) that take the brunt of the
| loans.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I sure had to. Work study sure was nicer than the crap jobs
| I'd had but no cake walk: I graded a lot of homework and
| exams as well as helping a lot of rich kids ace their
| class.
|
| [edit: I should admit that it's been 20 years, things may
| have shifted a lot]
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also to some degree there is anti-elitist backlash after
| being told you _need_ to have a bachelor 's, which is very
| expensive at these universities, but also it's basically
| impossible to get an entry-level white collar job without one
| these days; and for a while the economy bifurcated with
| different outcomes for white-collar knowledge vs. blue-collar
| workers.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| And this anti elitist backlash will lead to... greater
| wealth inequality as the middle class is forced to cash out
| their equity and investments in a down market to be gobbled
| up by the top 1% like Elon Musk.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| While _I_ know this, I will say there is a communication
| issue in which sneering and lecturing is not really an
| effective way to persuade others.
| jart wrote:
| 60% of the US workforce these days is white collar, and
| it's one of the great illusions of our time. Most of these
| jobs only exist to keep busy the 60% of the US workforce
| that has a degree. In the 1940's about 30% of the US
| workforce was white collar and only 5% had degrees. What
| caused this change? It's probably because blue collar
| workers made so much money and had so much leverage that
| businesses shipped all their jobs overseas. Blue collar
| people actually make real things and perform useful toil
| for society, whereas now they're working fake jobs for less
| money which they're told has higher social status. It's
| genius the way the system works. The way it takes from
| people (student loans, less pay) while persuading them they
| got a better deal. But how can you have a society where the
| majority of workers are administrators? Well you needn't
| look any further than America to find your answer. One day
| the music is going to stop and other nations, like China,
| whose workers held no such delusions of grandeur, will have
| the advantage. Their illusion is that the government is a
| dictatorship of proles, which makes people think it's high
| status to be a prole. Plus when your government is
| officially one big labor union, you can effectively ban
| unions from interfering with production.
| xracy wrote:
| great illusions of our time, like there's not data to
| back it up?
| lurk2 wrote:
| He's saying that the economic viability of the model is
| illusory.
| eszed wrote:
| "White collar" labor, in a service / knowledge economy
| doesn't mean "not making real things". Most (?) people on
| this board do something software or science or product
| related. Software is real, even if it's intangible.
| Research is real, even if it's inscrutable. Heck, Design
| is real, even if it's ineffable.
|
| (Yes, yes, there's vapor-ware, and useless products, and
| certainly "fake jobs". Those existed in the '40s, too,
| and in any other time period or economy you care to look
| at.)
|
| In my view, the problem is that white collar workers
| stopped thinking of themselves as Workers. Any of us who
| rely on a company for a paycheck (and, perniciously, in
| the US for health insurance) _aren 't Capital_, even if
| we make high salaries. Maybe we're _aspiring_ to join
| that class - we 'll hit the startup lottery, or FIRE, or
| our IRA portfolio will go up forever - but we ain't yet.
| (That's fine, by the way: I'm using Marxist terms, but
| I'm not a Marxist. Pursuing financial independence, and
| the real - even if remote - possibility of attaining it
| is what's made the US such a dynamic economy.)
|
| However, allowing our aspirations for wealth, or the
| relative comfort of white-collar jobs, to lead us to
| identify with the political goals of Capital - or worse,
| to adopt an elitist attitude towards people who work in
| what you call the "real economy" - is what's got the US
| into the mess we're currently in. That's the "genius" you
| identify in the present system, and the origin of the
| cruelty within it.
|
| In reality, we're all Working Class (well, 99% of us are
| - although that proportion is way out of whack on this
| board, of all places!), and we need to (politically) act
| like it.
| justonceokay wrote:
| 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.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| > In reality I don't think people's political opinions
| change very much and they are just mad that their children
| individuated.
|
| I think this probably the case as well. If I look back at
| how my own views shifted, the shift very likely would've
| happened regardless of if I'd attended university, assuming
| everything else was the same. It wasn't the university that
| resulted in the shift as much as it was my getting out of
| my local bubble out into the world and experiencing it for
| myself.
|
| Basically any kind of life experience that brings a young
| person to actually _think_ and more deeply consider the
| world around them is likely to result in some level of
| individuation and shift away from inherited views. It's
| perfectly natural and healthy.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| But the most likely life experiences to do that are ones
| that put a person in touch with new ideas and new
| situations. Universities are much better positioned to
| generate such experiences than, say, most jobs. To some
| degree, those that have attempted to be at least
| nominally more diverse (economically/racially/...) are
| also the sorts of places where students are more likely
| to meet other people who are not like them in _some_
| important ways, and this has always been the sort of
| experience that preferentially tilts most people towards
| liberal /progressive ideas.
| ralfd wrote:
| I believe students are much more homogenic than you find
| in school (eg dumb people are around) or in joining the
| military (you meet conservative people).
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| There are many axes on which to measure homogeneity or
| diversity.
|
| I don't think you're wrong about the axes for "academic
| intelligence" or "political outlook". But those are just
| two of many. Geographic, racial, economic, class (in the
| European sense), language, culture .. these are all
| equally valid, and likely to vary more in a university
| than in a workplace (even in the military).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| People's political opinions definitely change, especially
| with age and wealth.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| They do change to some degree, but I believe that age and
| wealth are not nearly as strong of factors as popular
| culture might have one think.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I guess it depends. 40 years later, I vote completely
| opposite to what I did when I was 18-20 years old.
| tomrod wrote:
| That sort of breaks out as to personal values versus
| Overton window. It has been an extreme shift towards
| authoritarianism in the US -- to the point where case
| after case of folks with moral courage call it out
| despite where they stood even 10 years ago.
| eszed wrote:
| Just curious: in which direction on the political
| spectrum have your preferences moved?
| musicale wrote:
| Younger people with student loans, credit card balances,
| and good health might eventually become older people with
| retirement savings, investments, and poor health.
| croes wrote:
| The biggest change happens if your mental horizon widens.
| roenxi wrote:
| > In reality I don't think people's political opinions
| change very much and they are just mad that their children
| individuated.
|
| That seems to be missing the elephant in the room - they
| sent kids in their most formative intellectual years to
| immerse themselves in a culture where there is a very high
| child:adult ratio. Then the kids come back with this wild
| culture that would make a lot of sense to a bunch of
| teenagers and young adults. It isn't just that the kids
| individuating, it is dumping them into one of the most
| elitist, authoritarian and artificial subcultures society
| maintains - populated mostly by near-juveniles I repeat -
| giving them independence to form themselves and discovering
| that dislocates them from their parents subculture.
|
| It should be obvious that will happen but parents tend to
| be pretty dumb. No real training course for parenting I
| suppose.
| _bohm wrote:
| While not about resentment towards universities specifically, I
| thought this article in The Baffler [1] did a good job of
| framing a dynamic that, I think, contributes to this
| phenomenon.
|
| My interpretation: As the country has entered the post-
| industrial era, holding a college degree has increasingly
| become a table-stakes credential for entering the white collar
| labor force. The higher education system has struggled or
| failed to grow to meet increased demand for these credentials,
| which both drives up the cost and increases selectivity of
| higher-ed institutions. A lot of people get burned by this and
| become locked out of and, crucially, geographically separated
| from labor markets that now constitute the majority of US GDP.
| This split causes non degree holders to view degree holders as
| their class enemies, and the universities as the class gateway
| that divides them.
|
| [1] https://thebaffler.com/latest/one-elite-two-elites-red-
| elite...
| keybored wrote:
| Remember all those people who are resentful (of course that
| word) towards degree-holders because they wish they had one
| themselves? Me neither. That's a they-hate-me-cause'-they-
| ain't-me kind of logic.[1]
|
| True othering comes from people living in different worlds
| and hating the other person's world.
|
| [1] I did not read the the article but I've read this
| argument in a Graeber article.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| > because they wish they had one themselves
|
| I don't think the OP actually said this specifically. But
| the economy truly had, for a while, bifurcated in outcomes
| for people with degrees vs. everybody else. You shouldn't
| _need_ a degree to live a decent life, but now we are in a
| timeline where you can put DoorDash on Klarna installments.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| > Remember all those people who are resentful (of course
| that word) towards degree-holders because they wish they
| had one themselves?
|
| I think the fair comparison isn't they have a degree and I
| don't, it's they have a better life/savings/house/car than
| me, which is enabled in general by getting a degree, which
| becomes the common contention point.
| hackable_sand wrote:
| Or more directly: many people with degrees are given
| management positions unjustifiably.
|
| It's bizarre to see it all playing out in the open.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think you're necessarily drawing the right
| conclusion from what the GP said. It seems more likely to
| me that non-degree-holders aren't resentful about not
| having a degree, but are resentful that white collar work
| more or less requires a degree these days. It wasn't always
| that way; degree holders used to be a minority in white
| collar work.
|
| Why has that shifted? Can we blame the university system
| and their "marketing" that has pushed a degree as the One
| True Way of leaving the working class? If so, that's an
| understandable reason to be anti-university.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> degree holders used to be a minority in white collar
| work._
|
| That's still nearly true, if not true. 60% of jobs are
| white collar. 40% of the workforce has a degree. Data
| quality starts to decline somewhat here, but it is
| expected that 20% of degree holders work in trades or
| manual labour jobs. So, degree holders only just barely
| make up a majority on that basis. And maybe not even that
| as blue collar is usually considered to be more than just
| trades and manual labour, not to mention that we haven't
| even delved into other collars (e.g. pink collar) that
| further take from the degree holding population.
| p_j_w wrote:
| > Can we blame the university system and their
| "marketing" that has pushed a degree as the One True Way
| of leaving the working class?
|
| I'm not sure Universities are to blame for this so much
| as lazy ass HR departments looking for an easy filter.
| bell-cot wrote:
| There's a highly emotional Right-Left culture war going on in
| America. Many of our "flagship" universities conspicuously
| sided with the Left - at least on most of the "litmus test"
| issues. And where universities didn't do that, the Right found
| it advantageous to talk up the association & outrage anyway.
|
| Any decent History Prof. could have explained to the U's that
| openly taking one side in long-term cultural wars was not a
| viable long-term strategy.
|
| (Or, maybe that's why so many universities cut their History
| Dept's so brutally? Though "just shoot inconvenient messengers"
| is also not a viable long-term strategy.)
| mrtesthah wrote:
| Billionaires shifted the overton window by pouring money into
| extreme right-wing media outlets and social media platforms.
| Every other existing institution now appears "left-wing" by
| comparison. That's not universities' fault.
| lmm wrote:
| Not true, at least on social issues, which is what the
| universities are getting burned for. Policy positions that
| were mainstream in 2000 are now painted as far-right.
| jhbadger wrote:
| That's how society progresses though. Before 1865,
| slavery was mainstream and abolitionists were weird
| radical crazies. Before 1965, "Jim Crow" laws that said
| non-whites had to use different bathrooms and drinking
| fountains were mainstream, and people who opposed them
| were seen as unreasonable.
| lmm wrote:
| And back in the 1960s a planned economy was normal and
| reasonable, and many progressives openly called for
| normalisation of sex with teenagers. Sometimes shifts in
| attitudes are progress. Sometimes they're just a random
| walk. Sometimes the left is right, sometimes the right
| is.
| Duwensatzaj wrote:
| Eugenics as in forcible sterilization of the "unfit" was
| similarly Progressive back in the early 20th.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Policy positions that were mainstream in 2000 are now
| painted as far-right.
|
| Such as?
| jibe wrote:
| gay marriage?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Presumably you mean opposition to gay marriage?
| jibe wrote:
| Yes, opposition to gay marriage was so mainstream that
| even Barack Obama campaigned supporting Clinton's Defense
| of Marriage Act. Even in the Democratic primaries, as
| late as 2008, being pro gay marriage was seen as a
| liability.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I don't know that it's painted as far right as much as
| conservative (which it is) and by some as bigoted.
|
| The Overton Window moves. Upper marginal tax rates above
| 90% were not just a position but the actual law in USA
| during the 1960s, but now are seen here as "far left".
| Seatbelt requirements were initially felt to be over-
| intrusion by government, and are now seen by almost
| everyone as just common sense. And so on and so forth.
| gedy wrote:
| Honestly man since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left in
| the US threw their whole weight into pushing the Overton
| window on identity politics/intersectionality to the point
| that "real" old time leftists and communists (like my
| father) were treated like some sort of conservatives, lol.
| They went way past the sustainable point.
| xracy wrote:
| I feel like the people who say things like "communists
| were treated like some sort of conservatives because of
| identity politics" are telling on themselves.
|
| If you look at the people on the actual political left in
| the US (Bernie, AOC, etc) are they talking about identity
| politics? Last time I checked they were talking about the
| problems that impact non-billionaire Americans:
| Healthcare, Social Security, Raising Minimum Wage, and
| other efforts to improve quality of life for Americans.
|
| The only times I ever hear about identity politics is
| when I listen to conservatives describe what people on
| the left are talking about.
| nosianu wrote:
| > _If you look at the people on the actual political left
| in the US (Bernie, AOC, etc) are they talking about
| identity politics?_
|
| Great example! So... what happened to Bernie in the
| Democratic party?
| xracy wrote:
| I'm saying that the problem isn't identity politics, but
| that the American right is terrified of actual policies
| from the American Left. And they're so terrified they
| have to make a bid deal of the more divisive social
| policies (characteristic of the term "identity politics")
| rather than their economic policies that are incredibly
| popular.
|
| The majority of the Democratic party is the group being
| actually shifted by the Overton window away from the
| actual political left. They are mostly centrists, and not
| leftists. Frequently they are conservatives. I wish
| Harris suggested half of the policies that got ascribed
| to her, but she was honestly to the right of Clinton.
| milesrout wrote:
| They talk about identity politics all the time. It is us
| vs them on everything. Worker vs employer is the
| quintessential example. Two groups that in the real world
| must work together, and do. But in the mind of the
| political left they are not just people that occasionally
| have adverse interests but mostly shared interests (my
| success is yours). No, they are sworn enemies.
| xracy wrote:
| I don't think you know what "identity politics" are,
| which is kinda funny to me. I would love to have
| discussions where identity politics meant "Worker vs
| Employer".
|
| Worker vs Employer aren't actually 2 groups of people,
| unless you really consider corporations as people.
| Ray20 wrote:
| >Healthcare, Social Security, Raising Minimum Wage, and
| other efforts to improve quality of life for Americans.
|
| But then why are they supported, for the most part, not
| by the most oppressed masses, but by the oppressive
| elites?
| xracy wrote:
| Gosh "who is an oppressive elite?"
|
| Musk, Trump and the billionaires in their administration
| sure look like "oppressive elites" to me. Can you name
| multiple oppressive elites?
|
| Edit: I think you answer your own question here. The
| actual oppressive elites have convinced the masses (and
| you) that there's a different amorphous group of
| "oppressive elites" that aren't the obvious ones standing
| right in front of your eyes. Obligatory
| https://xkcd.com/1013/
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The culture war was over about sixty days into the Trump
| administration. Lots of people just haven't realized it yet.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Hum, kinda. Trump has tainted a lot of concepts by
| associating with them, and those should fall outside of our
| culture as soon as he loses power.
|
| But there's an entire other set of equivalently bad-faith
| exclusionary and authoritarian ones that presented as in
| opposition of them. Those weren't actually very powerful
| before, but may get empowered depending on how things go.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > Many of our "flagship" universities conspicuously sided
| with the Left
|
| I wonder if that's related to universities often being places
| where 'reasoning' is taught.
|
| And then by extension, that tells you a lot about the
| arguments on either side...
| concordDance wrote:
| I probably have a skewed sample, but in my observations
| those with the best reasoning skills tended to have a mix
| of views that would be labelled "left" and "right". The
| better the reasoning skills the less likely they were to
| just agree with things like "trans women are women" or
| "capitalism is the best economic system" and the more
| likely they were to dissect the statement and terms.
| disambiguation wrote:
| The political and ideological divide speaks for itself, but on
| behalf of the common folk universities have been failing their
| core mission - to provide the people with a quality education.
| The inversion and disconnect between the cost of tuition and
| economic outcomes is stunning. Too many kids who don't know
| better are pressured into pursuing higher education and taking
| on massive debt, only to graduate without any job prospects or
| reasonable hopes of paying off their loans. The salt in the
| wounds is that universities are flush with cash, yet its spent
| on anything and everything except for the welfare of the
| students.
| harimau777 wrote:
| It feels to me like part of the disconnect is that education
| and job training isn't necessarily the same thing. For many
| majors improving economic outcomes is not the core mission.
| disambiguation wrote:
| Its an implicit promise, and we can already see the
| pendulum swinging back in the form of lower enrollment as
| more people catch on.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Its an implicit promise
|
| It's an inferred promise, not an implicit promise. Lots
| of schools do try to make it an explicit, qualified
| promise (e.g. "80% of grads work in their field!"), and
| even more are shifting towards becoming what are
| effectively vocational schools, but this was never the
| intended purpose of a liberal arts education.
| jwjohnson314 wrote:
| > The salt in the wounds is that universities are flush with
| cash, yet its spent on anything and everything except for the
| welfare of the students.
|
| Maybe the elites. State schools and small colleges are not
| flush with cash and many have been shuttered or severely
| downsized recently. Though they could still spend their
| limited funds better.
| disambiguation wrote:
| Recent events alone do not fully represent the affairs of
| the past 2+ decades. Community, state, ivy, all levels were
| gorging themselves on federal funding and endowments. I
| have no comment on the current admin, but blatantly
| inefficient use of funds is an understatement.
| joe5150 wrote:
| What does "gorging themselves on endowments" even mean?
| If they did that, they wouldn't be very endowed in quick
| order.
| eszed wrote:
| Charitably, they may mean "the proceeds from their
| endowments" (or maybe "engorging their endowments", if
| that's even a proper use of the word), but I think that's
| a weak point. Proportionally very, very few institutions
| have significant endowments.
| disambiguation wrote:
| You're both wrong. I'm saying they're engorged AND well
| endowed. Many consider this a strong point.
| ben7799 wrote:
| Spending massive amounts of money on sports is something
| state schools are very much into.
|
| They will shutter academic departments but continue to pay
| a football coach more than the University president.
|
| Not all schools do this but it is part of the conversation,
| sports spending has grown out of control along with
| everything else.
| taeric wrote:
| Have they been failing at their core missions, though? You
| say there has been an inversion/disconnect between cost of
| tuition and economic outcomes, but looking at the data
| doesn't back that. At least, I have yet to see anything that
| supports an inversion. Diminished returns maybe. Certainly a
| good case to not take out loans to get into school if you
| don't have a reasonable chance of graduation.
|
| But that is true of everything we do loans for, nowadays. The
| amount of consumer debt that people contort themselves into
| justifying is insane. If you want to use that as evidence
| that grade schools are failing in education, I can largely
| agree with you.
| disambiguation wrote:
| 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?
| taeric wrote:
| 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.
| disambiguation wrote:
| 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-...
| taeric wrote:
| I'm not dismissing, I'm pointing out that you made a hard
| claim, even if you didn't intend it.
|
| Again, I can agree if you are claiming it is of
| diminishing benefits. I'll go further and agree that
| there have been predatory practices to get people to take
| out loans they shouldn't take out. This is directly
| addressed by your source. Which, notably, still supports
| that people have higher incomes after graduation.
|
| What I cannot at all agree with is it being "inverted."
| Nor can I agree that they are failing to educate people.
| By the stats I have seen, this just isn't the case.
| avs733 wrote:
| > but on behalf of the common folk universities have been
| failing their core mission - to provide the people with a
| quality education.
|
| I see this a lot and it's a concerningly reductive argument.
| Say what you want about a lot of colleges but when you talk
| about that mission you are talking about public colleges.
| Most have far lower endowments and most are very reasonably
| priced or free for instate students.
|
| Georgia and California are great examples of this. The
| support for these institutions that used to come from states
| has gone down enormously while the cost of goods has gone up.
|
| As a result it is not unreasonable to me for them to charge
| out of state and international students much much more.
| Georgia shouldn't be subsidizing the college degrees of
| Alabamans, nor California of Arizonans.
|
| All that to say the economics here are far more variable than
| people give much thought to and it's easy to point at
| headline grabbing numbers that don't reflect reality.
|
| Schools rent the ones pressuring kids...their parents and
| society is.
| InDubioProRubio wrote:
| Their core mission is to provide society with a endless
| surplus of food and energy from air
| disambiguation wrote:
| No such thing as a free lunch! Universities exist for the
| benefit of society, not the other way around.
| dogleash wrote:
| >or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100%
| irrational? am*biv*a*lence /am'biv(@)l@ns/
| noun the state of having mixed feelings or
| contradictory ideas about something or someone.
|
| Ambivalence seems like a rational take on post-secondary
| education in the US. I'd say an unwavering opinion (positive or
| negative) would be irrational. It's such a complex beast that
| serves so many roles and touches so many lives.
|
| >A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why
| do people harbour this much animosity towards these
| institutions?
|
| There are a lot of very real things that are rotten in academia
| if you exclude the social politics center to this article.
|
| So when people see they're loosing federal funding... yeah,
| some will think along the lines of "eh, whatever, fuck 'em,
| maybe they'll figure out how to clean their own house."
| Especially if the university is also known for both sitting on
| a large endowment and for prioritizing self-serving
| administrators over doing academics.
| Gothmog69 wrote:
| They could have not been so partisan
| (https://readlion.com/93-of-college-profs-political-
| donations... ), supported rational discourse (
| https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2025-college-free-spe...
| ) , not used race to discriminate on certain out groups (
| https://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/issue/discriminatio...
| ). Just for starters
| fn-mote wrote:
| >> Is there anything they could have done differently in the
| past decade or two to have broader sympathy now
|
| > not used race to discriminate on certain out groups ( https
| ://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/issue/discriminatio... )
|
| Since we have documentation of discrimination in university
| admissions for over a century, I don't think this particular
| issue produces "broader sympathy now".
|
| In fact, I will be speechless if I ever learn the new
| administration policies do not lead to even higher levels of,
| but I suppose different, discrimination. Check back in 6
| months.
| recursive wrote:
| Provide a way to get a lower-cost credential without using the
| tuition to subsidize research/athletics/arts/social programs.
|
| But that might be counter to their whole nature. Doesn't mean
| anyone's being irrational though. They're now de-facto
| gatekeepers on entering the professional class. I don't think
| it's unreasonable for the gate-kept to have opinions about the
| -keepers.
| treis wrote:
| I've got the ticket to get in the gate and I'm pretty
| resentful of having to get it. Looking back there were a lot
| better ways to spend 4 years and 100k.
| joe5150 wrote:
| Resentful of what? Directed at whom? There are lots of
| options that cost less and many are shorter than four
| years.
| xracy wrote:
| Honestly, it feels like the kind of thing that companies
| which actually want merit-based graduates should want to
| subsidize more aggressively.
|
| If you're a billion-dollar company that only hires college
| grads, it feels like there's gotta be value to you in making
| sure there's more meritocracy in the process of getting
| degrees.
|
| It would also change who the customer is so that the
| university doesn't "owe" the student a degree which makes the
| evaluation that universities do a little less rigorous.
| eszed wrote:
| Why do they want meritocracy? The companies I've seen up
| close want "certified Smart Kid", in which case nearly any
| degree will do; "pre-trained worker", in which case they
| require a degree in a particular field; or "someone well-
| connected", in which case they want someone from a limited
| set of schools.
|
| (Companies do subsidize that limited set of schools, and
| pretty heavily, but it probably has more to do with social
| connections than economic merit.)
|
| The system might break down to the point that what you're
| suggesting makes sense. On the other hand, "Indebted
| Worker" (from any of the three types above) allows
| companies a lot of power over their employees, so it might
| not.
| xracy wrote:
| oh, yeah, the "indebted worker" concept there sounds
| scary and bad and not what I'm looking for.
|
| I think a lot of companies like to appeal to the idea of
| a meritocracy. I'm just saying this could make it a
| convincing appeal.
| guywithahat wrote:
| > attacks on universities
|
| This really feels like bad phrasing, when people read that they
| roll their eyes. Basically every major republican politician
| went to college, nobody is attacking universities, they're
| trying to help the students.
| watwut wrote:
| Yes they went to universities. No, they are not trying to
| help the students. They don't even pretend to be trying to do
| so. They are nit trying to make it cheaper and they are not
| trying to make it more accessible.
|
| They agenda was either openly the opposite or they ignored
| the students. Except when they think they are too progressive
| and attack then verbally.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I mean, at a minimum, they think they're helping students.
| Nobody would vote for a politician who just makes things
| worse, that doesn't make sense.
|
| In this case, they're trying to make universities more fair
| and to reduce government waste in universities by removing
| DEI programs. There's lots of logic to that.
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| >Nobody would vote for a politician who just makes things
| worse
|
| Why not? One thing is the campaign, another one is
| exercising his power. To quote a famous Argentinian
| President: "If I said what I would do, they wouldn't have
| voted for me".
| guywithahat wrote:
| I can't find the source of that quote (possibly a
| misquote?), but if I had to guess, he's saying he sold
| people on the problem, knowing they wouldn't like the
| solution. Everyone likes the idea of fixing the budget
| deficit, and some people like the idea of cutting
| wasteful government spending, but the act of fixing the
| budget means people lose jobs, and lives are destroyed.
| Even though it has to happen, people don't like watching
| it happen.
|
| I don't think your "quote" says what you think it says.
| brazzy wrote:
| > Nobody would vote for a politician who just makes
| things worse, that doesn't make sense.
|
| Yet, that's what they did. Repeatedly. After he already
| demonstrated how much worse he would make things.
|
| Oh yeah, he denied that he would execute the planes for
| how he would make things much, much, MUCH worse, that had
| been very openly stated by his close associates.
|
| That's enough for it to "make sense" to you, I suppose.
| casey2 wrote:
| In what way does an intellectual race to the bottom help
| students? If students want to learn on the cheap they can
| use the internet.
|
| Students want to feel like their time spent studying is
| worth it, not a weird blend of trivia, online classes you
| finish in a week or useless skills that you spend months
| practicing and lose 6 months after the class.
|
| Millions of people could be working productive
| manufacturing jobs, instead they are doing effectively
| nothing all because of a disproven belief from 100 years
| ago that if you study enough you will increase your innate
| intelligence.
| concordDance wrote:
| > They are nit trying to make it cheaper and they are not
| trying to make it more accessible
|
| Should they be doing these things?
|
| Maybe I've read too much Caplan, but credential inflation
| seems to be wasting the new generation's best years.
| delichon wrote:
| Then you're reading the right amount of Caplan. So you
| probably also want more babies and immigrants.
| nosianu wrote:
| For the original argument above about Republicans and
| college I would focus more on things like who has been
| trying to make student debt as something special,
| something near impossible to get out of.
|
| I don't accept an argument of personal responsibility in
| this case, because student loans target one of the most
| vulnerable groups: Inexperienced and with a great need.
| To me, this is malicious.
|
| I'm all for personal responsibility, in this point I'm
| more on the conservative side, but reality also includes
| that humans are not perfect machines, and targeting their
| weaknesses is easy and impossible to avoid as an
| individual. This principle does not work when it's an
| individual against sophisticated well-funded organization
| (here, there is not one but many who influenced policy),
| even worse when it's someone too young or too old for
| their brains to be at their best (not yet experienced
| enough in the one case, the brain no longer working at
| its best in the other).
| sequoia wrote:
| apologies, I meant to suggest that Trump & MAGA are very
| hostile towards universities and Trump is threatening to pull
| so much federal funding some colleges may have to close, and
| a lot of Americans seem OK with that. I'm not making a value
| statement on that, Trump was elected to run the government,
| hence him reallocating funds (in this case) is part of our
| democratic process. People chose to put him in charge because
| they wanted him in charge.
|
| To tip my hand: I personally think universities don't have
| more people rallying to their defence because they have
| abdicated their responsibilities to provide space for open
| inquiry, and have instead allowed themselves to be
| institutionally & ideologically captured by a group of people
| with activist leanings and fringe beliefs not held by 90+% of
| Americans.
|
| _My_ answer to my question above is "in the past two
| decades, the universities could have done more to protect
| speech across the board and not pick favourites to protect
| and others to abandon, as they have clearly done. In the last
| two years they could have refused to tolerate lawlessness on
| their campuses (not just 'speech' but actual law-breaking,
| including assaults, going unprosecuted) instead of turning a
| blind eye when the criminality was from a favoured cause du
| jour." I think if Universities had not abandoned their
| leadership duties, they wouldn't have Trump bringing the
| hammer down on them with so much public support.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| I think there's class warfare practically baked in with how
| paying for college works today. Imagine trying to determine how
| much a fancy car costs, and being told "it depends on how much
| money you have". That's on the upper-middle-class side.
|
| The other side is just part of the worldview of the rampant
| anti-intellectualism which Trump rode to power.
| taeric wrote:
| Hard not to see this as a class war that has been fed by some
| of the personalities that were big in the "conservative" sphere
| for a long time. Modern podcast influencers are big, but this
| isn't exactly a new thing. Rush and his ilk were big on lashing
| out against "ivory tower" theories. And they didn't invent the
| idea. Just went after easy targets.
|
| None of which is to say that mistakes weren't made in the
| institutions. They were. Mistakes were also made by the
| critics. Populism, sadly, has a habit of celebrating their
| worst and elevating them to heights they flat out can't handle.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Fox News. I don't think it's 100% irrational but perhaps 99%
| irrational. These ideas usually contain a nugget of truth.
| rayiner wrote:
| It was the progressive push of theoretically neutral
| institutions taking stands on moral politics. People who were
| fine with universities being staffed with liberals, but neutral
| in practice, realized their tax dollars were subsidizing
| institutions that were actively taking a side in national
| politics.
|
| For example, universities burned a lot of political capital,
| and opened themselves up to a great deal of legal liability,
| with aggressively pursing affirmative action policies. When you
| depend on public grants, it's probably a bad idea to publicly
| discriminate against the racial group that comprises the
| majority of taxpayers.
|
| As to what universities should have done, the answer is "just
| dribble." Universities should be places that are just as eager
| to research effective approaches to mass deportations as all
| the DEI stuff they do.
| archagon wrote:
| Sure, and why not open an Institute of Enhanced Interrogation
| Studies while you're at it? Ugh.
| milesrout wrote:
| Because torturing people is illegal and contrary to our
| fundamental values, while deporting illegal immigrants is a
| very popular and sensible policy that is uncontroversial
| everywhere except the United States of Exceptionalism.
| archagon wrote:
| Torturing people was considered very cool and very legal
| until quite recently. Some of the leaders involved in
| Iraq and Afghanistan era torture are still in positions
| of power. And I would not be shocked in the slightest if
| it came back under Trump II.
| WalterBright wrote:
| They could try hiring some conservative professors.
|
| https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/2/homogenous_the_p...
| zdragnar wrote:
| You can't really just hire some, though. You need to hire
| enough so that they don't get run out of the school for
| thought crime
|
| https://www.thedoe.com/article/conservative-college-
| professo...
| xracy wrote:
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-coddling-of-the-
| am...
|
| A lot of these examples have been pretty thoroughly
| debunked as either non-existent, or about something other
| than the professors expressing "conservative views".
|
| This one is, I assume intentionally, anonymized and so we
| can't actually verify that it happened or what the
| circumstances around it were. But I'll call out one of the
| most common "views" I've heard on college campuses from
| professors that got in trouble for something was that
| "professors should be allowed to sleep with their
| students." So if professors are taking heat for thinking
| that they should be able to take advantage of barely legal
| kids... I don't really care.
|
| If there are legitimate examples of professors _just_
| expressing that they have conservative beliefs, then that
| is suspicious because school administrators and alumni tend
| to lean pretty conservative themselves, and often make the
| final decisions on such issues after a frustrating amount
| of investigation.
| karaterobot wrote:
| You're framing this in an odd way if you want neutral
| responses. Is withdrawing federal funding an attack? The
| government has always used the power of the purse as a lever to
| influence many institutions, including universities, and it
| often uses this mechanism to exert influence for ideological
| purposes. The most famous example is withholding funding for
| roads until states mandated a drinking age of 21. It's how the
| federal-state power asymmetry works. The disturbing thing is
| that Congress isn't really the one exerting it in this case,
| not that it's being used at all.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| As for the roads example, which would go to my second point
| if I understand you correctly, I think the analogy is
| limited: roads aren't gate-kept by admissions committees for
| certain intangible criteria for who can ride on them, with an
| artificial limit on how many cars overall, while they receive
| federal funding. If that was happening, _then_ you 'd have a
| similar situation to what universities are doing.
| karaterobot wrote:
| It's not meant as an analogy for this case, so don't worry
| about it too much. My only point in bringing it up is an
| example of evidence for prior governments being more than
| willing to use funding as a lever to influence the policy
| of institutions they are not directly responsible for. I
| don't believe it was to be 1:1 to make that point, as
| indeed it is not.
| energy123 wrote:
| It's about reclaiming lost social status. In their minds it's
| part of the liberal gollum that makes them feel alienated from
| society and disrespected.
| tastyface wrote:
| Why did the Germans burn books? Look there for your answers.
| And I mean that sincerely. There's really nothing new under the
| sun.
| ytpete wrote:
| Or the Cultural Revolution.
| Sloowms wrote:
| Wait, there are attacks on universities? Or are we just using
| that word for any expression of free speech?
| sequoia wrote:
| I'm referring to threats to pull hundreds of thousands of
| dollars of funding if certain demands aren't met. But yes,
| there are also plenty of rhetorical attacks.
| tomrod wrote:
| From what I've been able to gather, a mix of jealousy for not
| being involved with institutions along with some form of
| Dunning Kruger effect thinking that the institutions have no
| merit or value (i.e. the individual thinks they could do better
| / have no need / are somehow subject to the outcomes of the
| institution).
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The right's problem with universities is the same as the left's
| problem with churches:
|
| 1. They are institutions of "indoctrination" by the other side.
| Faculty are something like 98% registered democrats and many
| subjects ("X studies") have an explicitly left-leaning bent.
|
| 2. They have tax advantages and other significant government
| subsidies.
|
| 3. They exercise significant amounts of ideological control
| over the narrative for their groups of people.
|
| 4. They are exclusionary of people outside the club.
|
| Add to that the fact that universities are getting increasingly
| expensive and real life outcomes for college-educated people
| are getting worse. The perceived costs used to come with
| significant benefits, but the costs are getting higher and the
| benefits are reducing, so there is less tolerance for giving
| them favored status.
| squigz wrote:
| Maybe I just live in a bubble, but I don't think "the left"
| has acted as strongly against churches as "the right" has
| against schools.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Left leaning, but authoritarian, governments have also
| cracked down on universities. The issue isn't the political
| lean.
|
| People with a more authoritarian bent view dissent itself as
| objectionable. That's central to their whole worldview. Any
| institution or social organization that allows debate or
| questioning things is a problem for them.
| wat10000 wrote:
| One thing I haven't seen anyone mention in the replies. There
| are millions of conservative parents who sent their children to
| college and then "lost" those children when they turned into a
| "liberal."
|
| The ideas that it's ok if your child becomes a liberal, or that
| there might be good reasons why people who undertake higher
| education often become less conservative, are too horrible to
| contemplate. So they settle for "universities are bad."
| vunderba wrote:
| I can't speak to universities specifically, but I've always
| felt there has been a strain of anti-intellectualism underlying
| a great deal of mainstream America for as long as I can
| remember.
|
| It's the little things like tv shows or movies with characters
| who seem to glorify ignorance, people who state self
| deprecating things like _" I'm bad at math"_ and wear it like a
| bizarre badge of honor, etc.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| I don't mind saying this is some serious Nazi stuff going on. The
| federal government is trying to obstruct free speech, jailing
| people for free speech... we are in a bad place.
| JacobiX wrote:
| Not sure if Michael Roth is related to Philip Roth, but it
| somehow reminds me of American Pastoral and that era of protests
| against the Vietnam War and its aftermath. I'm not entirely sure
| how those demonstrations compare to the ones we're seeing today,
| but the parallels are striking
| guywithahat wrote:
| The best solution here is for universities to become less
| involved with government money. They should have to compete for
| students and research on an even playing field, and we shouldn't
| be creating politically aligned fields through government
| spending.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The issue with these ideas is they lack an understanding of
| anything really about how we fund research in this country. We
| collect taxes and disperse these taxes in the form of research
| grants that we have boards of experts in the field call for
| proposals about realistically achievable topics that would
| benefit the American citizen in health, wealth, or some other
| form of prosperity. We only have a few national labs and most
| of this research is conducted in the university system, which
| simultaneously trains the next crop of researchers.
|
| Now you are proposing this work doing/training aspect be cut
| off. What is your replacement? You have to come up with one
| that gets trainees hands on experience, as well as provides
| economies of scale benefits for expensive experimental
| apparatus or sample or data/compute resources, fosters
| collaboration and idea generation, and shares this work with
| other grant funded researchers in the field so that they might
| further their own efforts.
|
| Or, you could just not blow the whole system apart with a
| broadside strike, and enjoy the striking benefits in fields
| like medicine we have enjoyed over the decades.
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| No. Research Universities are about Research. There are non
| governmental sources of funding for research, but they pale in
| comparison with government funding. If you want to make the
| case that the private industry should take on research, the
| problem is that there is no immediate profit in it. It can take
| decades, and few companies can invest decades of funding hoping
| for some eventual breakthrough. Moreover, in that model,
| research is slowed because companies are notoriously bad at
| sharing research with competitors. So you either create
| national research centers, or you use research universities.
| InkCanon wrote:
| Surprised at how it hasn't been pointed out here but - the
| "general public" wants the sausage, but not how it's made. They
| wouldn't if they knew what it entailed. Cutbacks to student
| aid, shuttering of departments, eliminating of PhD positions,
| etc.
| mmooss wrote:
| I don't see much talk of donors? My impression is that, as in
| many situations, the super-wealthy are forming a dominant class -
| as if it's their right - rather than respect democracy and
| freedom, and attacking university freedom. Didn't some person
| engineer the Harvard leader's exit?
|
| Roth says the Wesleyan board is supportive; maybe they are just
| lucky.
| chriskanan wrote:
| Being a super wealthy alum is a prerequisite for being a
| Trustee, and University Trustees are the group that University
| Presidents report to.
| Loughla wrote:
| This is why I always have and always will prefer community
| colleges. Their boards are elected officials. Not perfect,
| but 1000 times better than just having wealth.
| tialaramex wrote:
| Election is a bad way to choose almost anything. The
| enthusiasm of Americans for adding yet more elected roles
| rather than, say, having anything done by anybody competent
| is part of how they got here. The only place elections are
| even a plausible choice is political office - with an
| election and as close as you can to universal suffrage now
| the idiots running things are _everybody 's_ fault,
| although Americans even managed to screw that up pretty
| good. Sortition would probably be cheaper, but elections
| are fine for this purpose.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| democracy is bad but its still better than more
| autocratic systems because it encourages change which
| keeps succession well-oiled and also acts as a vent for
| tyranny to curtail its worst excesses. This applies as
| much to politics as it does a school board.
| rfrey wrote:
| Having judges and university trustees hired on merit
| rather than campaigning to be elected does not make a
| system autocratic.
| brokeAstronomer wrote:
| Being super rich != merit. This is what seems to be
| happening in practice.
| judahmeek wrote:
| What better merit is there than public approval for
| positions like that?
| vkou wrote:
| If you ask five people who can't speak French to tell me
| which French-language essay deserves a higher grade,
| you'll quickly discover that their merit-finding
| abilities are a coin flip.
|
| The whole purpose of elections is tangential to merit.
| There's important reasons to have them, but finding the
| 'best' candidate isn't one of them.
| mmooss wrote:
| Who chooses them? What makes you think they choose them
| on merit?
| LtWorf wrote:
| It's the whole theological foundation of northern
| european and american protestantism = being rich means
| good loves you, so you're a good person.
|
| How they got there from jesus saying rich people can't go
| to heaven is one of those theological acrobacies they
| criticise so much in catholics, but don't disregard doing
| themselves when suits them.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Democracy doesn't entail having tons of minor roles being
| elected. That's actually completely unique to the US, as
| far as I know. A lot of the positions that are elected in
| the US would be neutral civil servants in any other
| democratic country I can think of.
| Spivak wrote:
| > neutral civil servants
|
| Look I'm not saying we don't have these but the set of
| positions that are neutral is much smaller. Thanks to the
| political whipping boys de jour any position of power
| within academic or educational institutions has become
| politicized.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Election is a bad way to choose almost anything.
|
| Except the alternatives! No form of government is more
| effective, competent, just, or free of corruption.
| bruce511 wrote:
| That's the point the parent made. Elections are suitable
| for political officers.
|
| Once you start electing other jobs, like judges or
| plumbers, then you get whoever you elected, rather than
| necessarily a person able to do the job.
|
| In other words, getting elected is a specific skill set.
| Doing the job is a different skill set. In most fields
| those skill sets do not overlap.
|
| Even in govt the overlap is marginal. Which is why some
| elected officials are pretty useless at actually
| "governing".
|
| To my American friends all I can say is "you voted for
| this".
| tobbe2064 wrote:
| Well,of course you get who ever you elected, that's a
| trueism that holds for any method.
|
| What method do you prefer?Trust in the market and chose
| the one with the highest price, or, choose the one
| recommended by most, aka the popular choice or the
| elected?
| hayst4ck wrote:
| That's false. Everything comes down to good leadership.
| Monarchies with good leadership very well might have
| incredibly effective anti-corruption techniques and
| competency. China is managing a billion people and their
| infrastructure and tech is incredible.
|
| The problems are two fold. The first is vetoing of bad
| ideas. No leader is right 100% of the time, and when they
| are wrong, someone must have the power to veto. There
| must be some way for reason to triumph over power, and a
| leader who chooses to be responsible is capable of
| deferring to expertise.
|
| The second is succession. A good leader today may be
| succeeded by rotten leader tomorrow, but both have the
| same legitimacy, because the legitimacy comes from power
| alone and not reason.
|
| > effective, competent, just, or free of corruption.
|
| These things are a result of culture, not a result of the
| government itself. The government influences culture, but
| they are first and foremost functions of culture,
| specifically a culture of tolerating speaking truth to
| power, dissent, critical thinking, tolerance, and
| solidarity.
| hnhg wrote:
| I think people get confused into thinking that democracy
| is about voting when it is should be about reducing
| prolonged concentrations of power, because of the innate
| tendency for it to be abused and hoarded. So to support
| your point, if your culture does not support the concept
| of good "democratic" governance, and no one strives for
| the institutions and constitutions to support it, you
| might be better off with a benevolent dictator, for as
| long as they last before a not-so-benevolent one.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Timothy Snyder would encapsulate this idea as "Democracy
| is not something you are, but something you do."
|
| Which makes _a lot_ of sense if you say the same thing
| about Christianity. Christian isn 't something you are,
| Christianity is something you do.
|
| Both have hallowed dogmas that are poorly understood by
| their followers, the constitution and the bible/teachings
| of jesus respectively.
| yyyk wrote:
| Democracy and elections are not opinion polls. It's a
| distribution of political power.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > free of corruption.
|
| There are just plenty examples of corruption among the
| people we elect, everywhere.
| Aspos wrote:
| This is a dangerous axiom which will take you to wrong
| conclusions. Elected officials may be better, more
| efficient and less corrupt at a local level, but this
| does not scale.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned universities lost the moral high ground
| when they prioritized ideology over truth-seeking, elevated
| identity over excellence, ostracized political outsiders, and
| lost all viewpoint diversity.
| DFHippie wrote:
| Which are not things they did.
| defen wrote:
| Does it matter if they did or didn't? Universities have
| indisputably lost the mandate of heaven, have they not?
| Arguing over whether they actually did any of those things is
| irrelevant, if a politically powerful group of people think
| they did! None of them have an objective definition, so it's
| going to come down to values, and universities / academics as
| a class have alienated themselves from a substantial portion
| of the population.
| michaelhoney wrote:
| ... or have anti-intellectual media whipped up that
| resentment as part of their culture war?
| Aunche wrote:
| Regardless of your stance on affirmative action, it should be
| very suspicious that all prestigious universities implemented
| it until it was banned while support in the general
| population is mixed.
| freejazz wrote:
| I'm not sure how that follows. Do elite universities
| typically track the general population?
| lelanthran wrote:
| > I'm not sure how that follows. Do elite universities
| typically track the general population?
|
| He's saying that the universities are out of touch with
| the general population, which is _never_ a good thing.
| freejazz wrote:
| Was it ever the case they were in touch the with the
| general population... they are _elite_ after all...
| dekhn wrote:
| I consider UC's statement of diversity
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/ucla-dei-
| statement.htm... and then 6 months later
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/diversity-
| statements-u...) to be a form of ideology over truth seeking:
| """Candidates who did not "look outstanding" on diversity,
| the vice provost at U.C. Davis instructed search committees,
| could not advance, no matter the quality of their academic
| research. Credentials and experience would be examined in a
| later round."""
| KerrAvon wrote:
| These are grand Fox News talking points! What reality are they
| from?
| jmyeet wrote:
| The last year and a half in particular has exposed just what a
| sham the academic freedom fo colleges really is.
|
| We've always heard that the college tenure system encourages
| freedom of expression and academic freedom without the pressure
| of potential job loss. Instead what we have iscollege professors
| and administrations who move is absolute lockstep and have acted
| like jack-booted Gestapos to crush and punish First Amendment
| expression where some people merely said "maybe we shouldn't bomb
| children".
|
| Norm Finkelstein, who is a national treasure, does not have
| tenure. He is a world-authority on these issues. Why doesn't he
| have tenure? Because he embarrassed Alan Dershowtiz by exposing
| him as a rampant plagiarist and general fraud.
|
| Int he 1960s we had the National Guard open fire on anti-Vietnam
| protestors at Kent State, killing several, to repress anti-
| government speech. I swear we're not far from college
| administrators open firing on protestors directly.
|
| The collaboration between colleges (particularly Columbia) and
| the administration pales in comparison to the anti-Vietnam era.
| Colleges are standing by letting agitators attack protestors (ie
| UCLA) and then later using that violence as an excuse to crush
| the protest. They're cooperating with law enforcement to crush
| protests.
|
| But they're going beyond that. These protestors who have been
| illegally deported have largely been named and targeted by
| college administrations as well as organizations like the Canary
| Mission.
|
| Think about that: colleges are knowingly cooperating with people
| who are black-bagging people protesting against genocide, fully
| knowing they will end up in places like prisons in El Salvadore.
| hello_computer wrote:
| Norm is a hero.
| senderista wrote:
| I have not heard of any protesters ending up in El Salvador,
| source?
| necubi wrote:
| Oh hey, Wesleyan on HN! I'm an alumnus (matriculated a year or
| two after Roth became president). Wesleyan has a rich history of
| activism and protest, and not always entirely peaceful (Roth's
| predecessor, Doug Bennet, had his office firebombed at one
| point).
|
| I've had a few opportunities to speak with Roth since the Gaza
| war started, and I've always found him particularly thoughtful
| about balancing freedom of expression with a need to provide a
| safe and open learning environment for everyone on campus. In
| particular, he never gave in to the unlimited demands of
| protestors while still defending their right to protest.
|
| In part, he had the moral weight to do that because--unlike many
| university presidents--he did not give in to the illiberal
| demands of the left to chill speech post-2020, which then were
| turned against the left over the past year.
|
| I don't see any particularly good outcome from any of this; the
| risk of damaging the incredibly successful American university
| system is high. Certainly smart foreign students who long dreamed
| of studying in the US will be having second thoughts if they can
| be arbitrarily and indefinitely detained.
|
| But I hope the universities that do make it through do with a
| stronger commitment to the (small l) liberal values of freedom of
| expression , academic freedom, and intellectual diversity.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Ok, I'll bite: in your view, what were the illiberal "demands"
| post-2020? Reading tfa, this kind of rendering feels a little
| too pat for him. Namely, its one thing to argue against the
| kind of knee-jerk moralism of well-meaning woke liberal arts
| kids, its quite another to imply a kind of "capital L" program
| to "chill speech."
|
| Like, c'mon, are we really still doing this _now_? Roth himself
| is sensible enough to not be, in his words, "blaming the
| victim" at this point, what calls you to essentially do it for
| him anyway? It's nothing but out of touch at this point, and
| adds nothing to the discourse but conspiratorial noise. If I
| may assume a rough age based on your forthrightness, any single
| kid in school in 2020 was and is a lot less culpable for this
| current moment than you or I. We can set an example and be
| mature enough to own that, instead of, I don't know, forever
| being tortured by the real or perceived condescension of kids.
| throwaway389234 wrote:
| It is a smaller step to further the justifications than to
| deal with the often severe implications (to the self-image)
| of having been wrong. The more obvious it becomes having been
| wrong, the more necessary the justifications are and the more
| absurd they become. As having someone accepting your absurd
| justifications becomes proof of being blameless.
| throwaway389234 wrote:
| I should add that I'm not referring to beepbooptheory, but
| in response to "are we really still doing this now?".
| throwawayqqq11 wrote:
| _It 's nothing but out of touch at this point, and adds
| nothing to the discourse_
|
| Exactly. Its a communications problem.
|
| Its hard to have a decent critical conversation when one side
| has a biased view about $symbol. Both communicating parties
| need to reach the same interpretation of a message, otherwise
| the conversation is broken. Thats why you shouldnt say the
| N-word or throw out a heil heart on stage (unless you want to
| hide behind this ambiguity). Or why its so difficult to have
| critical conversations with strong believers, for you its
| just evolution or vaccines but for the other side it may
| affect the core of their identity and the ape goes defense
| mode.
|
| The result is that the discourse does not deal with
| differentiated cases but _only_ with simplistic labels like
| "chill speech", "woke", etc. because the more biased side
| drags it down into the mud.
|
| For instance, the "chill speech" label is actually dependent
| on the "racist" label that initiated it. If a case shows
| clear racist behavior, then dismissing the lefts reaction as
| censorship is unjustified or biased. The other way works too,
| if there is no racist behavior, the censorship blame would be
| justified.
|
| And since you cant look into peoples heads to clearly
| identify racist intentions, it falls back to interpreting
| messages. The problem with biased people is, they are not
| aware even of their unawareness. If you would ask Musk
| whether he is a neo-nazi, his response would be something
| like "hell no". Fast forward the dystopian timeline and his
| response might be "always have been".
|
| The left has IMO more unbiased awareness about systemic
| issues -- but is not free of bias either. The right is in its
| core biased indentity politics about $culture -- but is not
| totally host to tribalism either.
|
| My advise, avoid popular symbols at all cost and if you come
| close to using one, augment it with case specific background,
| even a vague "_unjustified_ chill of speech" would suffice.
| If someone opens with "the woke left" and shows no signs of
| differentiation -- or even better, acknowledgement of core
| leftist topics -- i mentally turn away. The comment you
| replied to was about personal anekdotes and projections and
| the one symbol that rubs me the wrong way too, even before
| trumps abuse.
| kevingadd wrote:
| People are being abducted off the street for writing tame op-
| eds and we're still complaining about the left chilling speech
| post-2020? What are we doing here?
| decimalenough wrote:
| The left banning the use of certain words and the right
| banning the use of certain words are flip sides of the same
| coin.
|
| Of course, if you point that out, you get yelled at by both
| sides.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Reminder to anyone triggered by a "both sides" comment:
|
| just like you, we are all aware of how the sides are
| different, it is valid to be more annoyed by the ways they
| are the same
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > it is valid to be more annoyed by the ways they are the
| same
|
| Is it? One side has a vocal minority who took defense of
| minorities to the point of harassment and was ultimately
| rebuffed. The other side controls the government and is
| enthusiastically renditioning legal residents to prisons
| and defying the constitution and courts to keep doing it.
|
| To be more upset about both sides being imperfect than
| the injustice of irreversible deportations to foreign
| prison seems ... absurd.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| all parties are beneficiaries of the institutional
| structures that allow for a party to do those things
|
| so the things you are bothered by and _demand_ everyone
| to prioritize are actually solved by addressing the
| underlying mechanisms, as opposed to simply trying to
| propagate your preferred party 's numbers
|
| something... both sides... might actually be into. if the
| other party is afraid of the opposition party doing the
| same thing to different people, then there might actually
| be overwhelming consensus to change the thing that a
| "both sides" person is trying to point out
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I'm making no demands. Only pointing out an absurd false
| equivalence.
|
| Change to the polarizing system would be great. I doubt
| that will happen by softening protests to obscene
| injustice. Rather it's likely to reenforce the shifting
| Overton window further into authoritarianism and
| kleptocracy.
|
| To break the two party system we need things a large
| portion of the populous has been (falsely) taught are bad
| for them: same day primaries, ranked choice voting,
| making campaign bribery illegal, unwinding corporate
| personhood, etc. Can you guess which side is most
| attached to the system of political machines and the lies
| that reinforce them?
| hellotheretoday wrote:
| Except one side of the coin complains on twitter and maybe
| gets you fired from your job whereas the other side of that
| coin systematically removes over a hundred million dollars
| of research grants based on language and is literally
| disappearing people for their writing
|
| but yeah, same thing. sorry someone put you through the
| absolute hell of saying they/them at work
| jajko wrote:
| Extremism on any side is bad, period. 'But they are
| worse' is sort of moot point and most people don't care
| about details, you simply lose normal audience and maybe
| gain some fringe.
| immibis wrote:
| Telling your employer you were a dick is extremism?
| hellotheretoday wrote:
| You can't win with these people. They don't care if they
| aren't personally impacted. The "sjw boogeyman" that
| could theoretically impact their cushy livelihood matters
| more than the very real right wing government that exists
| right now and is disappearing people.
|
| But as long as they can still say the n word on twitter
| and call of duty everything will be okay. Who cares about
| those disappeared people anyway, they weren't even
| citizens
| hsiuywbs630h wrote:
| Listen, this is not theoretical. In my realm, we had
| people getting in trouble for otherwise benign speech,
| because someone's feeling matter more than basic.common
| sense. The pendulum has swung pretty hard not because sjw
| bogeyman, but because it has gotten to the point people
| skilled in ignoring corporate idiocy had enough AND the
| chronic complainers were demanding increasing
| superpowers.
| adamc wrote:
| "Getting in trouble" at work and being disappeared are so
| freaking different that there is no discussing it. If you
| cannot see a difference, you are blind.
| cduzz wrote:
| Are these people in your realm being picked up off the
| street by the police, drugged, put into an airplane, and
| then being dropped into the ocean over international
| waters?
|
| Or are these people having the things they've said
| repeated widely, perhaps out of context, to other people,
| who then decide "sheesh, maybe I don't want to hang out
| with / work with this dude." ?
| umbra07 wrote:
| who did that happen to?
| cduzz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_flights
| cduzz wrote:
| Or did you mean
|
| https://thehill.com/policy/technology/455751-engineer-
| claims...
|
| ?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| What sorts of trouble and benign speech are you talking
| about?
| tacitusarc wrote:
| I am terrible at following the news, so just for
| clarification: are you talking about deportations? Or is
| there something else going on?
| freedomben wrote:
| 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 wouldn't it
| logically follow that an employer should not only be
| permitted but actively encouraged to monitor employees
| 100% of the time so they can fire them if they ever step
| out of the corporate line? Amazon does this to many low-
| level employees just on-the-job and most people think
| _that 's_ creepy and unfair, I can't imagine extending
| that to off-hours as well. At a minimum wouldn't it
| follow that it would be great for employers to set up a
| snitch line so anybody could (even anonymously) call to
| make reports on people? Is that a world you'd want to
| live in?
|
| On the next line, let's say the person is fired from
| their job for a gross tweet. Should they be able to get a
| _new_ job after that? If so, how does the previous
| history get erased so the prospective new employers don
| 't see it and avoid them (this very type of thing is by
| the way, a huge problem for formerly incarcerated people
| especially felons). Add in that there was no trial, no
| standard of evidence, no due process, just a swinging axe
| from an executioner. Should this person (and often their
| families) just be relegated to extreme poverty the rest
| of their lives? Blacklisted from employment like the
| communists in Hollywood were?
| wat10000 wrote:
| 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?
|
| IMO the real issue isn't that employers can make
| decisions based on this stuff. It's that employers are
| far too big. If we had 20 Amazons, getting fired from one
| of them wouldn't be such a big deal.
| freedomben wrote:
| 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.
| wat10000 wrote:
| OK, it's bad behavior. Now what? That means nothing.
| freedomben wrote:
| Should we encourage bad behavior? I tend to think not.
| Agreeing it is bad behavior is a critical step! Now we
| can start discouraging it
| nradov wrote:
| Why should we make an exception based on religion but not
| on political viewpoint? That is logically inconsistent.
| There's nothing special about religion.
| wat10000 wrote:
| The historical answer is because Congress wanted to be
| sure that employers could fire Communists for being
| Communists.
|
| Of course, that's not my view. I think political
| affiliation should probably be protected, but it needs to
| be very narrow. You shouldn't be able to be fired for
| being a Republican. But if you post "Gay people should be
| executed," you shouldn't be able to hide behind "I'm a
| Republican, that's a political view!" any more than you
| should be able to hide behind "I'm a Christian, that's a
| religious view!"
| cduzz wrote:
| I think you're missing the basic distinction between
| private parties and government.
|
| Private parties (including companies) largely have
| freedom of association. There are (theoretically)
| protections in "commerce" against a company
| discriminating against a person or group based on
| "innate" factors (such as skin color or gender).
|
| But largely, people and companies have a wide degree of
| latitude about what they are and are not allowed to do.
|
| The government, on the other hand, (theoretically) is
| largely not allowed to stop people from saying things or
| associating with each other, and when these prohibitions
| are in effect they're subject to both documentation and
| review. This is "theory" because the government has done
| lots of shady things.
|
| The government, similarly (and theoretically), is bound
| by a variety of procedural constraints, such as due
| process, right to see an attorney, right of the attorney
| to request your presence, right to a trial, etc.
|
| There's a categorical distinction between:
|
| I, a private party, am offended that I face consequences
| of offending someone else when I would prefer not to face
| any consequences.
|
| and
|
| I, a private party, am abducted by the organization in
| this country with a monopoly on violence and which
| interprets all laws, and I vanish with no recourse from
| anyone.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I don't understand where you think I've missed that
| distinction.
| immibis wrote:
| I agree the pervasiveness of at-will employment and the
| gig economy, when combined with the way our economy is
| set up to require employment for survival, are a problem.
| rob_c wrote:
| Thanks for proving his point...
| emptysongglass wrote:
| Your attitude and inability to see anything but your own
| view is exactly the problem we've seen in the new left.
|
| "Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire
| livelihood you're trivializing.
|
| Any attempt to control speech and silence opposition is
| wrong, no matter how you slice it. "Your side" isn't any
| better than the other's.
| foldr wrote:
| How many of the conservatives complaining about it would
| support government regulations preventing people from
| being fired for expressing controversial viewpoints?
| AFAIK those complaining are the same people who support
| 'at will' employment and the liberty of religious
| organizations to impose more or less arbitrarily
| discriminatory hiring standards. So yeah, in that lax
| regulatory environment, your employer might decide to
| fire you if you (e.g.) feel the need to be an asshole to
| your trans colleagues.
| hellotheretoday wrote:
| 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 may not agree with it,
| but that is the rational.
|
| The rights argument is to erase those marginalized
| groups.
|
| These are extremely different in motivation. Asking you
| to respect a persons gender identity in professional
| contexts is far different than forcing someone to not be
| able to express it on federal documentation.
|
| One side of this was "we want to create inclusive spaces
| that make people comfortable and if you don't want to
| participate in that there is the door". The other side is
| "we did not want to participate in that so go fuck
| yourself and we will do whatever we can to deny your
| right to express your identity"
|
| "Any attempt to control speech" is an absolutist
| statement that is absurd in its fallacy. So I can say I
| can murder you? I can say you're planning a terrorist
| attack? I can say you want to kill the president? Of
| course not. Speech is limited contextually and by law
| vimax wrote:
| 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 themselves just demanded it be done for them or
| they'll keep harassing. These were people matching into
| someone else's "safe space" to police their private
| language.
|
| The government disappearing people and dismantling the
| country is very bad, and nothing good can be said about
| it. What I'm talking about are the individuals on both
| sides not formally in power, and their equal efforts to
| stifle what they see as "bad speech". It's that
| mentality, on both sides, that led us to where we are.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Harassment is bad. Extraordinary rendition is bad. One of
| them is significantly worse than the other. And the side
| complaining about A whilst celebrating B is significantly
| more hypocritical.
| vimax wrote:
| What about the side that complains about A and complains
| about B, and complains that constant polarizing rhetoric
| has been ratcheting up to get us from the less bad A to
| the very bad B?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Ah yes, it is the left's fault the right is spiraling the
| country into despotism. Feeling a lot of "Why do you make
| them hit you?" energy in this thread.
| adamc wrote:
| 1) Plenty of "Polarizing rhetoric" has come from the side
| of the current administration. 2) "Polarizing rhetoric"
| is not remotely a valid justification of disappearing
| people.
| 8note wrote:
| i think that puts you in case A, harassing people for
| their speech, in this case, the "polarizing rhetoric" is
| the speech to be protected
| wat10000 wrote:
| You're the one trivializing things by putting job loss
| and prison on the same footing.
| ytpete wrote:
| > never offered to do the work themselves just demanded
| it be done for them or they'll keep harassing.
|
| I mean if you've worked much in open source, that is
| pretty much how nearly _every_ feature request and bug
| report goes unfortunately.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| _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._
| 8note wrote:
| Generally i think harvey weinstein should be unemployable
| in any position of power. if people hear about what he's
| done and still want to hire him, sure, they can go for
| it, but they'd probably appreciate knowing about him
| before doing that.
| slg wrote:
| >"Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire
| livelihood you're trivializing.
|
| >Any attempt to control speech and silence opposition is
| wrong, no matter how you slice it.
|
| I don't know why "Hey company, this person you employ
| sucks, you should fire them" doesn't qualify as speech
| that should be protected. It shows that you aren't asking
| for free speech, you are asking for speech without
| consequences.
| mancerayder wrote:
| 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".
| foldr wrote:
| Free speech doesn't mean not getting fired. You can get
| fired in any county for things that you say (e.g.
| insulting your coworkers, lying to your boss, defaming
| your employer on social media, ...). The exact laws and
| social conventions obviously vary from country to
| country, but this shouldn't be a difficult concept in
| general.
| theultdev wrote:
| Someone doxxing you and pressuring your employee to fire
| you because you said something they don't agree with
| politically is the same as you insulting your coworkers
| in your eyes?
|
| You don't see any discrepancy between those two
| scenarios?
|
| And you don't see anything wrong with the former
| scenario?
| ziddoap wrote:
| They didn't say it was the same. You're arguing with what
| you imagined they said.
| theultdev wrote:
| They presented a strawman. I'm unravelling it.
|
| I want to know where their values are and if they
| contradict.
|
| I'm re-presenting the original scenario being discussed
| and the scenario they introduced.
|
| Comparing the two while also redirecting back to the
| original moral dilemma.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Unraveling it by creating your own?
|
| Maybe we can have a strawman party after.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| You're just abstracting it and trying to draw concrete
| conclusions form abstract cases. Of course it depends on
| what someone says; to ignore this is asinine.
| slg wrote:
| How do you define which speech is speech worthy of
| protection and which speech is a consequence of speech
| and therefore not worthy of protection?
|
| For example, imagine some CEO says something politically
| objectionable, as is their right granted by allowing free
| speech. Do I have the right to protest or boycott their
| company as part of my free speech rights or would that be
| illegal because I'm rendering a consequence for the CEO's
| speech?
|
| I just have trouble conceptualizing what you think a
| world with consequence free speech would actually look
| like.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| This is a good question that would require a long debate
| to answer, but the answer obviously is neither of these
| two extremes:
|
| - Every entity except the US govt is allowed to enforce
| consequences for speech
|
| - there should never ever be any consequences for any
| speech ever
| slg wrote:
| It is funny to see this type of comment downthread of a
| criticism of bothsidesism. You set up a spectrum in which
| one "extreme" is the status quo of American culture going
| back generations and the other "extreme" is a seemingly
| impossible to achieve idea for which I have never seen a
| single reasonable person advocate. One of those is a lot
| more extreme than the other. The only reason we are even
| having this conversation in this thread is because the
| Trump administration is trying to be more extreme than
| your first "extreme" by having the US government inflict
| consequences for speech.
| mancerayder wrote:
| Are you arguing with me or the person I am replying to?
|
| I object to people casually paraphrasing, you have a
| right to free speech but not consequences of that speech.
| "Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences"
| Aside from sounding vaguely like a threat, it's a
| paradoxical attack on freedom of speech. Here's my point
| again:
|
| Freedom of speech means a lot of things. One of them is
| the American-centric perspective of "1st Amendment" +
| Supreme Court precedent, which is that the government
| should not be involved in unduly prohibiting speech, and
| we define a bunch of speech as protected. For example, we
| exclude imminent threat, which in the U.S. is not
| protected - I can't go up in a speech and rile people up
| to go attack another race tomorrow. But I can rail
| against a race (which in most of Europe would be
| prohibited speech as it's Incitement)).
|
| Now that I've established it means a few things, let's
| talk about 'consequences.'. The 1st Amendment protects
| you from government prosecution for protected speech. It
| doesn't protect you from getting fired, people following
| you around with placards because of your speech,
| Instagram banning you, your ISP blocking you, your bank
| canceling your accounts, etc.
|
| Yet these are the (non-1st-Amendment-centric) attacks on
| Freedom of Speech. You can argue they're good, they're
| not good, whatever.
|
| Summary of my argument: freedom of speech CAN mean
| freedom from SOME consequences.
|
| Consequences are the WHOLE point. In the U.S. we had
| McCarthyism, where if you were vaguely left-wing you
| would lose your job, you would lose your life. In the
| USSR if you didn't follow party lines you'd lose your
| job, or be reassigned a shitty job. These are
| Consequences.
|
| In the Reign of the last decade of a new racialized
| political activism, some people lost jobs for reasons
| that were dubious, because they had unpopular views. The
| Left did it.
|
| Today, the Right is doing it, and they're taking in an
| extra step.
|
| When does it stop? Ahh, good question! It stops when we
| begin respecting Freedom of Speech as a principle and not
| a recycled way to attack our enemies.
|
| Again, apologies for both-sides-ism, as someone who
| believes in civil liberties, I am a both-sides-ist.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Eh, I've railed quite a bit against the left. But looking
| back, we should have fired and deplatformed more
| aggressively. The social menaces who weren't fired or
| arrested went on to become a plague.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| The thing is, right wingers are very likely to protest
| over losing jobs. In Covid times, what made the right
| finally start actually marching in the streets was losing
| their jobs. They don't protest over most things, but
| threaten their livelihood and yeah they'll come for you.
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| When I see the left's recent brazen devotion to "winning"
| and "sticking it to the other side", sometimes it feels
| like Democrats have started acting like Republicans.
|
| And it turns out that wasn't sustainable.
|
| I know it's glib and coarse and lacking in nuance but
| when I hear American conservatives complain about the
| ways of the liberal countrymen I can't help but think,
| "That's how you guys sounded for a long time. Now they're
| doing it, lo and behold: everyone loses."
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| > "Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's
| entire livelihood you're trivializing.
|
| yes, the left doing that was pretty bad and I have gotten
| into many arguments over my left leaning friends over it.
| But it was largely private companies capitulating to
| pressure. To compare that to people being abducted and
| incarcerated by the government without trial or even an
| actual law being broken is worse.
|
| You do understand why thats worse right?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| The problem with such reflexive absolutism, as I've
| pointed out many times, is that you end up advocating for
| the speech rights of people who are advocating for
| genocide. I shouldn't need to point out that killing
| people also terminates their speech rights and that
| advocacy of genocide is thus an attack on free speech.
|
| You do not have to defend the free speech rights of
| people who are themselves attacking free speech (and free
| life). In fact, it is foolish to do so.
| sterlind wrote:
| _> Maybe gets you fired from your job " is someone's
| entire livelihood you're trivializing._
|
| People are being shipped to a Salvadorean mega-prison for
| having autism awareness tattoos. Law-abiding students who
| write peaceful op-eds are being disappeared to a facility
| in Louisiana. Yes it sucks to lose your job, but it sucks
| _a lot more_ to be indefinitely detained without even
| seeing a judge.
|
| _> "Your side" isn't any better than the other's._
|
| Your argument reminds me of high schoolers that argue the
| US was just as bad as the Nazis for operating Japanese
| internment camps. Yes, both were wrong, but one was
| _much, much worse._
| ls612 wrote:
| This strikes me as someone on the left complaining that
| they fucked around and now they are finding out. I don't
| mean this in a malicious way but the lack of self
| reflection and perspective is staggering.
| Bluescreenbuddy wrote:
| They got themselves fired. People who wrote things didn't
| get themselves disappeared to a holding site in
| Louisiana.
| kylepdm wrote:
| Very refreshing to finally see people on HN call out the
| ridiculousness of the "both sides" arguments when it
| comes to this topic.
| vkou wrote:
| One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not
| associate with you.
|
| The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence
| from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is
| deafening.)
|
| It's odd that one ban operates within the constraints of
| freedom (the freedom to associate requires the exercise of
| the freedom to _not_ associate), while the other does not.
| It 's almost like there's a categorical distinction.
|
| It's utterly pointless to say that the starting point is
| the same, when one is an utter sabotage of all of society's
| rights and values... While the other is people affirming
| those rights.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > One ban consists of the exercise of their right to...
| Not associate with you.
|
| Many people have been fired / expelled / and many more
| silenced by those examples. If you can't tell the truth
| about your side (from how you're writing I assume you
| think in sides) then there's no point saying it.
|
| > The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence
| from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is
| deafening.)
|
| I haven't heard about this. Who has been sent to a
| Salvadoran gulag for speech?
| immibis wrote:
| I agree that at-will employment is a problem. So is a
| lack of safety nets. Do you know who supports at-will
| employment and a lack of safety nets?
| vkou wrote:
| If the past decade is any indication, nothing has stopped
| the long list of cancelled right wing grifters, racists,
| and various other flavors of fools and bigots from
| finding gainful employment and signal boosting and
| platforming among like-minded people who _do_ exercise
| their right to associate with them, despite their
| behavior.
|
| For (allegedly) being so persecuted and silenced, it's
| weird how so many of them have so much more power, reach,
| and wealth than ever before.
|
| Perhaps getting booed at in the last college campus they
| held a rally at is not quite the yellow star, or the mark
| of Cain that they convinced you it is.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| In the past decade, the left got so cancel-happy that
| "cancellation" by the left-wing activist crowd lost
| pretty much all of its weight among anyone who isn't an
| ideologue. In 2016-2018, if you got canceled, you would
| have a very hard time finding _any_ white-collar job
| afterward.
| Bluescreenbuddy wrote:
| Well what did they do to get called out?
| robertlagrant wrote:
| This is called "victim blaming".
| Bluescreenbuddy wrote:
| If a bigot acts like a bigot then gets outed, that's
| their own fault. They're not victims.
| noworriesnate wrote:
| We're talking about people having their lives judged by
| thousands of people online based on a 5-second video from
| someone with an agenda.
|
| There's no way for them to clarify, no way for them to
| "have their day in court," apologizing just makes the mob
| smell blood. The only point is revenge and sadism,
| there's no redemption, no point other than pain, pure and
| simple.
|
| People are complicated and I don't want a video of me on
| a bad day edited and then posted online for everyone to
| see.
| Edman274 wrote:
| If the argument is that it's not a big deal because it
| doesn't even work, then why collectively are we even
| bothering? Either it works and is something for
| reactionaries to fear and is effective social pressure,
| or it's a bunch of ineffective sound and fury that gives
| cover to your right wing aunt to tell stories about how
| "someone she knows" got fired for telling a joke. If it
| works, then let's own it completely, with all its flaws.
| If it doesn't work, then why bother at all? If it doesn't
| even work, then why try to defend the practice? Do we
| _want_ it to work? Do we _want_ it to be an effective
| form of social control?
| aswanson wrote:
| Is wearing an "autism awareness " tattoo considered
| speech?
| cess11 wrote:
| There's been a lot in usian news about people having been
| deported because of things like tattoo of the logo of
| some spanish or other soccer club.
|
| Here's one case where the deportation seems to be based
| mainly on having worn sports branded merch and a hoodie,
| and some supposed anonymous snitch, which the state has
| agreed was an error:
|
| https://www.newsweek.com/kilmar-armando-abrego-garcia-
| deport...
| theultdev wrote:
| they agreed it was an error, to send him to that
| particular prison, not out of the country in general.
|
| he is an illegal and his deportation defense in 2019 was
| he feared for his life from a "rival gang" indicating he
| was in the MS-13 gang that the feds and judge found him
| to be part of.
|
| he's not just some "father", as the left leaning news
| likes to portray. he participated in human trafficking
| and himself admitted he was a gang member.
|
| it seemed that the left did not care about vetting when
| gang members were coming into the country.
|
| ...but now they're being deported, it seems vetting is
| crucial (which is being done, but you're not always privy
| to (or aware of) the information)
|
| and "anonymous snitch" is quite derogatory. you do know
| how evil MS-13 is right? listen to yourself.
|
| they chop people up without blinking an eye. the fact
| someone risked their life to "snitch" saved so many
| people. this isn't playground shit.
| sjsdaiuasgdia wrote:
| He's not illegal, he had protected status.
|
| What precisely changed between the granting of that
| protected status and his arrest that warranted the change
| of status?
| cess11 wrote:
| It's borderline insane to call Newsweek "left leaning".
|
| 'His attorneys claimed, and ICE later confirmed, that the
| only verification came from a form filled out by the
| Prince George County Police Department, which based his
| membership on the fact that "he was wearing a Chicago
| Bulls hat and a hoodie; and that a confidential informant
| advised that he was an active member of MS-13 with the
| Westerns clique" - a group based out of Long Island, New
| York.'
|
| The state has confirmed to the press that it doesn't have
| any evidence of the claims you're making.
|
| MS-13 is less evil than the Biden and current Trump
| administrations, who are guilty of genocide. I think
| you're part of an attempt to distract from that and other
| crimes, as well as the ongoing turmoil in the financial
| system.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| >(The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this
| point is deafening.)
|
| As one of the 'Free Speech folks', I'll bite.
|
| I absolutely condemn the administration rounding up
| someone like Mahmoud Khalil if the only thing he did was
| speak a rallies. If you look up Uncivil Law's video on
| Mahmoud Khalil Deportation, he is saying the same thing.
|
| Now, let's flip this around. Where are all my left wing
| friends willing to condemn the investigation into Trump
| for his Jan. 6th speech? Are you willing to join us now?
| vkou wrote:
| The speech isn't why he would go to prison in a just
| world (that would be Georgia, the fake electors, and the
| toilet paper documents), and the impeachment that _was_ a
| consequence of the speech is _always_ a purely political
| trial. Someone can be impeached for any reason and no
| reason whatsoever, that is unfortunately how the system
| is designed. Two kinds of justice, with a few batshit
| SCOTUS rulings that make a criminal president
| unprosecutable as long as 34 senators are willing to go
| to bat for him.
|
| It's not his speech that gave him trouble with the DOJ
| (before he dismissed all charges against himself), it's
| all the other parts of his conspiracy to steal the
| election.
|
| Notice how none of the talking heads on TV were in legal
| trouble over their speech on the matter.
|
| Every one of the cases against him had a bit more to it
| than 'well he said some bad words', the same way that a
| conman doesn't go to prison _just_ for saying some bad
| words, or the same way that a war criminal gets a noose,
| despite simply giving _orders_.
| rob_c wrote:
| Good luck in that case ;)
| foldr wrote:
| Everything is a flip side of the same coin if you abstract
| away from all the important details.
|
| Oh the right say that some things are bad? Well the left
| say that some things are bad too!
|
| These lazy equivalencies only breed cynicism and give
| intellectual cover to the Trump administration's executive
| power grab. By all means criticize the left as much as you
| like. But the specifics are important. The current
| administration's deportation of green card holders without
| due process isn't somehow a mirror image of whatever
| excesses of left wing 'cancel culture' you may be upset
| about.
| Bluescreenbuddy wrote:
| Oh bugger off with your both sides horsewash
| kurikuri wrote:
| This false equivalency, if you honestly believe it, is
| shallow at best.
|
| The 'left' has identified speech that is likely used to
| belittle or negate someone else's existence and will
| appropriately label it as hate speech. Any structural
| changes to make these words frowned upon have taken years
| to get into place; people were allowed to adjust (and the
| length of time to do so is ridiculous in its own right),
| and what little change has happened did so in a way where
| the people who must change are barely inconvenienced. There
| have been few legal repercussions for the use of hate
| speech by anyone with a modicum of power. Sure, you could
| identify a few, but there are a ludicrous number of
| flagrant violations of any such laws (which are few) which
| go unpunished. The 'left' here being any sane member of
| society which has publicly pointed out that certain words
| are singularly incendiary.
|
| Meanwhile, the grifters of this 'right' have conned the
| honest conservatives into believing that DEI is a term of
| hatred against conservatives. The 'right' has identified
| that they wish to say whatever without punishment and are
| structurally creating a cost for using inclusive language
| in any official capacity. The grifting part of the 'right'
| also doesn't mind breaking any semblance of stability for
| everyone else. The 'right' here being the near-narcissistic
| people who have happened upon positions of privilege and
| believe that they are superior, have earned it, and that
| only those similar to themselves should ever attain such a
| position in the future.
|
| But no, you have reduced your observation to 'two sides are
| banning words.'
| LtWorf wrote:
| We're doing a dictatorship, cosplaying as having freedoms.
| zuminator wrote:
| I dispute that the left ever had any kind of monopoly on
| chilling speech. Getting people fired from their jobs for
| exercising speech isn't a specialty of the left. The fact
| that it consistently made headlines when the SJWs scored a
| win showed how relatively rare it was. It was and remains
| much more common for people to get fired for left-leaning
| speech, such as union organizing efforts. And which side
| imposed "Don't say gay" laws?
|
| Remember when people lost their shit when it came out that
| the Biden administration was leaning on social media
| platforms to stop the spread of certain ideas? Yet now we see
| the current administration openly and flagrantly punishing
| and extorting private universities and law firms, even
| disappearing people for attending rallies, to thunderous
| silence from the right. It's as if all the outrage about free
| speech was a farce.
| kubb wrote:
| They'll make it through if they bend the knee. Otherwise the
| regime will destroy them, and the conclusion will be that it's
| all because of these darned radical leftists.
| lelanthran wrote:
| > They'll make it through if they bend the knee. Otherwise
| the regime will destroy them, and the conclusion will be that
| it's all because of these darned radical leftists.
|
| Well, it _is_ , isn't it? They required complete loyalty to
| the ideology before accepting any faculty:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/ucla-dei-
| statement.htm...
|
| They shouldn't have gone that far.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > Wesleyan has a rich history of activism and protest, and not
| always entirely peaceful (Roth's predecessor, Doug Bennet, had
| his office firebombed at one point).
|
| Arson is not protest. Arson is a VIOLENT type of activism,
| which is legally classified as terrorism.
|
| Trump (or anybody) shouldn't be allowed to punish folks for
| speech or peaceful protest. Unfortunately, folks are calling
| VIOLENT acts like arson and battery "protest", and threats of
| bodily harm "speech" ("harassment" or "assault" under most US
| criminal law) -- we should be in favor of the government
| stepping in to protect people from arson, battery, and assault/
| harassment.
|
| > he did not give in to the illiberal demands of the left to
| chill speech post-2020,
|
| Roth has been president since 2007. What was his response to
| Nick Christakis's struggle session (plenty of video of that) or
| Erika Christakis leaving Yale, after she penned an e-mail that
| students should be able to handle Halloween costumes they find
| offensive?
|
| The American Left has been illiberal and going after speech for
| decades; it didn't start post-2020.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Just so. The First Amendment assures the right to peacefully
| assemble and speak your mind, not to commit arson. Violent
| attacks aren't free speech and should always be prosecuted.
| cess11 wrote:
| If the state is illegitimate then it is permissible or
| perhaps an obligation to topple it, according to people like
| the revolutionaries that founded the USA. That is, it doesn't
| necessarily matter what is legal or not, if the state
| misbehaves then you should put it to the guillotine or fire
| or bear arms or whatever suits you.
|
| As an outsider it's always funny to see people write about
| the "American Left", as if there were any leftist movements
| of national importance in the US. As if Food Not Bombs had at
| some point had a majority in congress or something, it's just
| a ridiculous idea. If that happened there would be a bloody
| purge, Pinochet style but bigger.
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| ah, some both sides claims while people are disappeared
| MPSFounder wrote:
| What unlimited demands are those? Every protest I have read
| about asks at most for divesting from Israel, which is arguably
| (and more likely than not) engaged in genocide. If these United
| States cannot divest from a country that did not exist 70 years
| ago, we have a huge problem. We won WW2 with Israel being a
| mythical state taught in myths and religious books, since it
| did not exist until after WW2. I swear someday Atlantis will be
| formed by billionaires as a resort for their progeny, and the
| rest of us will be compelled to fund it. Ridiculous
| trentnix wrote:
| If you don't want to be subject to the whims of whoever is in
| office, don't take the poison pill of government money.
| altacc wrote:
| If only politics was limited to affecting those who opted in.
| But mostly government shouldn't be the whims of one individual,
| it should be much more considered than that.
| mathgradthrow wrote:
| These do not represent the whims of one person. Donald Trump
| was elected.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| An elected person can both have and act upon whims,
| including ones their supporters might not approve of.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| They could fight back with, "We will not accept students from
| politicians that support anti-education policies". Further they
| could kick out any students currently enrolled, "if they wrote a
| college essay promoting their anti-education values, we wouldn't
| have let them in - so they were clearly lying and we're just
| remedying that mistake"
| nosianu wrote:
| > _" We will not accept students from politicians that support
| anti-education policies"_
|
| Given how many stories there are about children seriously at
| odds with their parents about political issues, I don't think
| that is a good idea. At all.
|
| Do you want to be judged by how your parents think or behave,
| or think that is acceptable?
| siliconc0w wrote:
| This wasn't a serious proposal, I was mocking the cruelty and
| logic of the current administration.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Brown just got targeted next, after releasing a statement that it
| would "not compromise on academic freedom". We're about to find
| out how true that is or not. But if universities don't start
| fighting back, they will all find themselves in the same boat as
| Columbia -- and ultimately regret it.
|
| The US's universities are one of its greatest assets, if not the
| greatest. The repercussions of this are highly damaging.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| America has done an absolutely terrible job of teaching people
| about rights.
|
| If governments granted rights then they would be privileges not
| rights. In western tradition governments exist to _protect_
| rights, such as the freedom of expression, not to grant them. If
| you believe these are human rights, rather than your privilege as
| an American, then you must protect their rights to seek justice
| too.
|
| People are already being robbed of due process, which means they
| are robbed of the process that determines their right to
| "protections" and citizenship status. Almost all authoritarian
| regimes presume the right to rob people of the protections of
| their state. You perceive citizenship to be some indelible legal
| status, but citizenship can be revoked either tacitly or
| explicitly which is a prelude to the violation of someone else's
| rights and their human dignity.
|
| The law can't protect or enforce itself. If the ruling regime
| chooses not to be bound by law then what should happen or what is
| supposed to happen is supplanted by what can happen. Even a
| cursory look of what _can_ happen in authoritarian regimes should
| turn anyone 's stomach.
| kelnos wrote:
| I think what's going on is a helpful reminder that there's no
| such thing as "rights" in the way you describe. Everything we
| have, everything we're permitted to do, is at the pleasure and
| permission of our governments. Constitutions and laws are only
| worth anything if the people in charge honor them. Might may
| not make right, but might does let you impose whatever you want
| on people who don't have your might.
|
| You can try to design systems where one group of people don't
| have all the might, and so those who balance them are somewhat
| adversarial in their goals and desires. We always thought the
| US had such a system, but when you put law enforcement and the
| military under a single group, and give the other two groups no
| teeth, you really don't have that sort of system.
| branko_d wrote:
| > Everything we have, everything we're permitted to do, is at
| the pleasure and permission of our governments.
|
| Wrong! The people are ultimately responsible for reigning-in
| their governments and are the ultimate source of any rules or
| rights that the governments end up enforcing.
|
| If you think that the ultimate authority is with the
| government, then you have justified every authoritarian
| regime out there.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| There are two basic world views.
|
| One is based on order and rule. You have a leviathan, an
| absolute ruler, who imposes order on society.
|
| The other is one based on freedom and law/justice. A
| society based on affirmative mutual consent and a system
| _orthogonal to power_ to handle disputes.
|
| Unfortunately, power determining the outcome of disputes is
| the default, and a system of law or justice cannot enforce
| itself without the participation of those bound by it. The
| core founding principle of western society is solidarity
| via collective bargaining, what other option is there than
| other than to submit to someone more powerful than any
| individual?
|
| Do you want to submit to a man, or submit to an idea? If
| you submit to an idea you must defend it. If you submit to
| a man, you deny your own agency and your own rights.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > The core founding principle of western society is
| solidarity via collective bargaining
|
| What is the basis of that assertion? If you go back as
| far as the Greeks, this only holds true if you focus on
| one specific city-state, and ignore that said city-state
| disenfranchised foreigners and legally permitted the
| ownership of slaves. Similar problems occur if we
| attribute western civilization to the Romans.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| I am far from a historian, but my understanding is that
| the protestant reformation birthed the enlightenment by
| shifting people's idea of god as something to be
| interpreted by an authority structure (the church) to
| something that is interpreted internally. Is your
| relationship with god mediated by a church or a direct
| relationship with god? The reformation is more closely
| related to "westenrism" than the Greeks or Romans who
| laid some of the philosophical groundwork.
|
| Out of the enlightenment we get John Locke who provided
| much of America's founding philosophy:
|
| _Locke argued that a government 's legitimacy comes from
| the citizens' delegation to the government of their
| absolute right of violence (reserving the inalienable
| right of self-defense or "self-preservation"), along with
| elements of other rights (e.g. property will be liable to
| taxation) as necessary to achieve the goal of security
| through granting the state a monopoly of violence,
| whereby the government, as an impartial judge, may use
| the collective force of the populace to administer and
| enforce the law, rather than each man acting as his own
| judge, jury, and executioner--the condition in the state
| of nature._
|
| My claim is that this is isomorphic to solidarity via
| collective bargaining when you account for the idea that
| the government being an impartial judge is not black and
| white but grey.
|
| I think it's fair not to say that it is not the core
| founding principle. I think it's probably more correct to
| say that it's the theory of power that must be true to
| support human rights or ideas of freedom.
| milesrout wrote:
| It is not collective bargaining. You refer to the social
| contract.
|
| The idea of the social contract has issues. For one, the
| fundamental of contract is consent, which is missing.
|
| Realism tells us that we do not delegate anything to the
| state.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > The reformation is more closely related to "westenrism"
| than the Greeks or Romans who laid some of the
| philosophical groundwork.
|
| I can see where you're getting this, but I would
| disagree. Western civilization is inseparable from the
| Greeks and Romans. What you are describing sounds more
| like a particular development that occurred in Northern
| Europe which resulted in a radical re-engineering of
| social structures, ultimately culminating in
| parliamentary democracy. I don't know enough of the
| history well enough to determine whether this happened
| because of the reformation, a scientific revolution,
| economic changes, or whatever other reason we could come
| up with, but I do understand the trend that you're
| talking about. Today we would broadly associate it with
| Anglo-American liberal democracy. The issue I took with
| your comment was that I don't think there's a compelling
| case to be made that "the West" is predicated on these
| values, since historically speaking they are
| comparatively new.
|
| There is some scholarship that tries to make this
| argument (e.g. I can remember reading an article many
| years ago which tried to argue that western civilization
| originates in the Near East after the adoption of massed-
| infantry by the Hittites), but the more of it that I
| read, the more convinced I became that it was simply an
| attempt to view history through the lens of contemporary
| attitudes (e.g. of Anglo-American liberal democracy being
| the culmination of all historical development).
|
| > I think it's fair not to say that it is not the core
| founding principle. I think it's probably more correct to
| say that it's the theory of power that must be true to
| support human rights or ideas of freedom.
|
| I don't have a strong opinion on this one way or the
| other, but you may be interested to know that there is a
| considerable tradition which rejects this conclusion in
| the reactionaries. Some element of the tradition rejects
| the premise of human rights entirely, but others are
| rooted in a far more critical reading of power and how it
| (ostensibly) must operate. Most people who have read into
| these issues will be familiar with the reactionaries who
| reject human rights as a principle, but very few are even
| aware of the sort who reject the prescriptions of the
| sort of governance you are describing while (at least
| nominally) sharing its aims re: justice and freedom.
| klodolph wrote:
| You're making useful points but you're also just choosing
| convenient definitions that make your point of view
| "correct".
|
| The parent comment has a definition of "rights" that admits
| their existence... and I think what you've demonstrated is
| that you have a different definition of "rights". In other
| words, you've demonstrated that you haven't really grasped
| the underlying meaning that the parent comment is getting at,
| and you're instead responding to the words that they used to
| express it.
|
| If you start with a definition for "rights" you can make
| arguments about whether they exist. But if you start with a
| different definition and get to a different conclusion, it
| doesn't mean you've discovered some logical flaw in the
| argument, it just means that the two of you have failed to
| communicate with each other.
| glial wrote:
| I appreciate your analysis, but another way to consider
| this discussion is that asserting the existence of "rights"
| is an unsupported conversational maneuver that frames the
| debate. The grandparent is defining a concept into
| existence, which is a questionable move IMO, despite being
| tradition.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| These are the kind of men that founded our country, better
| men than exist today. This is the type of thinking that led
| to America, and these are the cultural echo's many young
| culturally American boys hear from their fathers and
| grandfathers.
|
| _These are the times that try men 's souls. The summer
| soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink
| from the service of their country; but he that stands by it
| now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny,
| like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this
| consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more
| glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too
| lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its
| value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods;
| and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as
| FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to
| enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not
| only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" and if
| being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not
| such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is
| impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God._
| Thomas Paine - The Crisis
|
| _Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God_ - Benjamin
| Franklin and Thomas Jefferson
| (https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-
| jeffers...)
|
| _If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to
| retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in
| submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking
| may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable
| and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. It is in
| vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace,
| Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The
| next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears
| the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the
| field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen
| wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so
| sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?
| Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may
| take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!_ John
| Henry -- Give me liberty or give me death.
|
| You say you have no power and so let the world inflict itself
| on you, these were men that inflicted themselves upon the
| world. These men chose reason over comfort. These men chose
| not to be slaves through their action.
| ooterness wrote:
| We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
| created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
| certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
| Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these
| rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
| just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever
| any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it
| is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to
| institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
| principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them
| shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot
| somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"
| milesrout wrote:
| What a strange view. America has done a poor job of teaching
| you about rights. They are legal only - natural law (the proper
| name for the doctrine of so-called "human rights") is religion.
| God-given rights you may have but rights in law they are not.
|
| The rule of law is crucial to a free, just, and good society
| but you conflate the rule of law with the law saying what you
| would have it say. If the law is changed or the powers given
| under law are used in a way you do not like then that is not
| unlawful.
|
| Dictators vary in how much they rely on law. Some have used law
| to do their evil: take Hitler. Some do their evil outside the
| law. This tells us that in truth the rule of law is but one
| part of what we need to have a good society.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > In western tradition governments exist to protect rights,
| such as the freedom of expression, not to grant them.
|
| You may be overgeneralizing here, only the US has enshrined
| freedom of expression in their constitution. Pretty much in any
| other western government such protections do not exist and
| freedom of expression has been under attack for a long time
| shellac wrote:
| Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights is
| enshrined in legislation in the UK and Ireland, and offers
| protections for signatories of the convention.
|
| (Edit: Oh, and the Bill of Rights gives parliamentarians
| quite an extreme version)
| nelblu wrote:
| Also Canada : https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-
| heritage/services/how-righ...
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Universities don't have to roll over, they also don't have to
| accept federal funds
|
| Easy
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Most simply this all boils down to two entirely incompatible
| models of a university. One institution produces thinkers who can
| innovate and lead. The other is a training camp that produces
| docile workers for the oligarchs. Regardless of allowing students
| free speech on campus universities have been heading toward the
| latter for three decades. It's a little late to be preaching
| courage thirty years after selling-out the core tenets of
| pedagogy. There is so much more to this than just "Trump". The
| fascists in power now are the _result_ of 30 years of moral
| cowardice.
| piokoch wrote:
| So, after long years of accepting cancel culture, kicking off
| people from universities since they happened to write a twitter
| comment that was not aligned with the current "right" way of
| thinking, universities suddenly are protectors of free speech.
| Well...
|
| Who is going to buy this?
| rtkwe wrote:
| Harvard's rolling over was particularly annoying, they have a 52
| billion dollar endowment! If any university could afford to make
| a stand and lose funding over it it's Harvard. What's the point
| of this massive pile of money if you never dip into it in
| exceptional circumstances?
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Harvard is a hedge fund that happens to do some education and
| research as a tax-advantaged side gig.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| who gets to withdraw that money?
| rtkwe wrote:
| The university uses it for salaries, financial aid and
| other operations.
| Animats wrote:
| That surprised me. It set the pattern for lesser schools, too.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Universities typically only spend about 5% of their endowments
| per year, since it has to last forever. And much of it comes
| with restrictions on what it can be spent on, those come from
| the donors wishes. So money in the endowment that's for the
| theater department or to support an econ professorship can't be
| repurposed to support federal funds that supported cancer
| research.
| low_tech_love wrote:
| 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 Orban'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 money doesn't come with a loyalty oath."
|
| "I don't have to agree with the mayor to get the fire department
| to come put out a fire. And that's what they're saying to these
| international students: "Well, you came to this country. What
| makes you think you can write an op-ed in the newspaper?" Well,
| what makes you think that is, this is a free country. "
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > 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.
| turtlesdown11 wrote:
| "you didn't say thank you!!!"
| sigmar wrote:
| You don't know how they feel, so what you're saying is "they
| have to show/express appreciation," which is synonymous with
| a loyalty oath.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Why do you think this?
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Because it's a transcation and there are two parties to the
| transaction. And for these transaction to occur in a
| repeated fashion neither side should feel they are being
| taken advantage of.
| standardUser wrote:
| I don't think anyone feels taken advantage of. I think
| most people involved in academia value the complexities
| and jagged edges that come with an international student
| body. And the outcome - the preeminent education system
| in the world that keeps the US at the cutting edge of
| science and technology and has for nearly a hundred years
| - is indisputable.
| croes wrote:
| 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.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Yeah, I agree. The government appreciates, or should
| appreciate, the good uses its taxpayers' money is put
| towards. As to the other intractables above, appreciation
| and loyalty are very far from the same thing.
| mlinhares wrote:
| I don't think it ever crosses these people's minds that
| some other country PAID FOR these people's education and
| they are now USING that education elsewhere for the
| profit of a foreign nation.
|
| All my high school and college education was at free
| schools/colleges in my home country, paid for by taxpayer
| money. All incredibly competitive places, with very high
| maintenance costs compared to the other colleges around,
| not a single US dollar was invested in me and here I am
| paying taxes and improving this place.
|
| The bargain the US gets from this is one of the biggest
| reasons it can do what it does, the investments it makes
| are compounded by the work of the people that it never
| put a dime for.
| skeaker wrote:
| Being paid what you're owed doesn't necessitate gratitude.
| margalabargala wrote:
| For those who disagree with this, when was the last time
| you thanked your boss for your paycheck?
| humanpotato wrote:
| Consider that any competent manager will value polite debate
| and constructive criticism far more than the empty words of
| "yes" men.
|
| Guess which category "reasonable ... consideration and
| appreciation" falls into.
|
| Put another way, if you read North Korean state media, you
| will find that they always have a reasonable level of
| consideration and appreciation for their government.
| hekette wrote:
| It is their right to be there. They do not have to show
| appreciation and the current government should never be one
| deciding these what is appreciation. Bowing to authority is
| exactly the opposite of what education is about.
| kristjansson wrote:
| What about e.g. writing an op-ed expressing one's views
| conveys a lack of consideration and appreciation?
| Telemakhos wrote:
| > "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
| Orban's university."
|
| I'm not sure I understand. If I want a medical doctor, I'm not
| looking for someone based on his political views or spirited
| independence from the Hungarian government, but for someone
| with training in a very narrow discipline, namely medicine. I
| really don't want someone who is more interested in "the modern
| and the postmodern" prescribing me meds, but I do want someone
| who conforms to the current pharmacological standards.
|
| The University President in question does not even run a
| medical school; Wesleyan does not, to my knowledge, teach
| anyone the art of medicine, however highly it might rank as a
| liberal arts institution. Semmelweis University in Budapest,
| however, is older than the United States, is the largest
| healthcare provider in Hungary, and is ranked among the top 300
| universities in the world. Therefore, if I had to chose between
| someone who went to Wesleyan and someone who went to
| Semmelweis, which I'll take as "Viktor Orban's university," I
| should much rather have the Hungarian who actually knows
| medicine rather than the liberal arts PhD who might be able to
| lecture me on what postmodernism should mean to me.
| abbadadda wrote:
| What are you purporting not to understand? It seems you're
| fighting your own straw man.
| timewizard wrote:
| The author of the article seems to accept "appeal to
| authority" he just wishes it was more critically refined to
| a point that it might somehow be justifiable.
|
| The OP is expressing dismay at this obviously compromised
| position. There is no purportment or strawmen that I can
| detect.
| mapt wrote:
| Columbia has an endowment that stands (pre- Liberation Day) at 15
| billion dollars.
|
| They kowtowed to some of the militant Zionist interests involved
| in that endowment in order to attain a fractionally higher
| return, and betrayed their students.
|
| They kowtowed to the fascist administration on the grounds that
| it was threatening 400 million dollars in grants, and betrayed
| their students to the point of facilitating a project to
| unilaterally deport many of them based on Constitutionally
| protected quasi-private speech.
|
| At this point I don't think they want or deserve to be called a
| university. Let's go with "Tax-exempt investment fund".
| bko wrote:
| Do you think calling for the genocide of Jews violates
| Columbia's codes of conduct on harassment and bullying?
|
| I think people were upset about the hypocrisy. For years, every
| minor transgression against a marginalized group was met with
| swift disciplinary response and thorough investigation. And now
| they can't even offer a straight answer on a simple question
| and suddenly turned into free speech absolutists.
|
| It's fine to be either one, but don't piss on me and tell me
| its raining.
| sbochins wrote:
| There is an ongoing genocide in Gaza and genocidal language
| is commonplace in Zionist discourse. If there are cases of
| hate speech on the pro Palestinian side, they pale in
| comparison to speech from the other side.
|
| Regardless we shouldn't be rounding up and imprisoning folks
| if they disagree with your politics. This is what is getting
| lost in this specific case.
| bko wrote:
| I don't remember the pro single state pro Israel protest.
| Don't know what it has to do with the question
| viccis wrote:
| >Do you think calling for the genocide of Jews
|
| I'm guessing the motte associated with this particular bailey
| won't be nearly as clear in its violation of such codes.
| trustinmenowpls wrote:
| If someone said they wanted another kistallnacht while
| holding torches and refusing to allow jews to walk down the
| street, would you know what they meant? Are they just
| talking about breaking some glass at a jewish wedding?
| Maybe they just want to go to one of those rage rooms?
|
| Just so we're clear, people are still losing their minds
| when someone "finds" a noose-like knot in the vicinity.
|
| There is no baily here.
| viccis wrote:
| You're still stuck on the bailey. Let's see the motte (in
| this case, some evidence of a pattern of calling for
| genocide of Jews at Columbia)
| dluan wrote:
| And specifically the ivy league schools and "elite" ones are
| cementing their reputation among younger students and soon to
| be college applicants. They are paying attention. I've seen
| several boycotts of Columbia and other universities from
| students.
| trustinmenowpls wrote:
| Fewer nazis at Columbia is never a bad thing. I think
| Columbia is more than happy to lose the type of student who
| thinks like a brownshirt
| efitz wrote:
| Cowardice is in the eye of the beholder and the article is self-
| serving.
|
| The article makes the point that it's cowardly to cave to
| administration pressure to limit the activities of anti-
| Israel/Pro-Palestine protesters.
|
| Someone on the other side of the issue could make the argument
| "it is cowardly to kowtow to a small but vocal minority who
| justifies interfering with other students' ability to learn, as
| 'free speech'".
|
| It is dishonest to describe non-speech activity such as
| intimidation and forceful prevention of access, as "speech", even
| if you like the motivation or outcome. "Speech" is talking with
| words. Physically using your body to prevent someone else from
| acting in a desired way, is something other than "speech".
| adultSwim wrote:
| The Trump administrations attacks are able to go so far now,
| because institutions already rolled over under a Democratic
| administration.
|
| Take for instance University of Pennsylvania. In 2023, student
| anonymously projected "Let Gaza Live" onto a building. The next
| day then-college president Liz Magill publicly called in the FBI
| to investigate this as an "antisemitic hate crime". She was later
| forced to resign for "not doing enough" to combat alleged
| antisemitism.
| assimpleaspossi wrote:
| What bothers me the most about all these protests and going-ons
| at universities and colleges is that they are generally by 18-22
| year olds who are pre-adults still in their formative years who
| still have a lot of learning and growing up to do.
| calf wrote:
| What bothers me is the ageist assumption that "full-adults",
| say, boomers, are somehow more educated, less indoctrinated, or
| less prejudiced than young adults
| BoingBoomTschak wrote:
| Pretty sure that this wasn't implied. It's more about being
| "life wise".
| tguedes wrote:
| I suppose that means you don't know about the rich history of
| college protests that were instrumental in progressing human
| rights over the last 100 years?
| kashunstva wrote:
| > who still have a lot of learning and growing up to do
|
| I'm 60, and I have a fair bit of learning to do yet. And as the
| father of a student in roughly the 18-22 I would be proud to
| see her standing up for views that she feels strongly about
| whether her knowledge is fully complete or not.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| OK. Does that mean you think they shouldn't protest because
| they're naive, or that people (especially in government)
| shouldn't be freaking out so much when they do protest?
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