[HN Gopher] Texas A&M bans part of Plato's Symposium
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Texas A&M bans part of Plato's Symposium
Author : loughnane
Score : 159 points
Date : 2026-01-07 17:23 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dailynous.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dailynous.com)
| slater wrote:
| server seems to be hugged.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20260107085450/https://dailynous...
| bediger4000 wrote:
| I thought we were broadly against colleges and universities
| banning politically incorrect speech. Wasn't that a huge talking
| point 2-3 years ago? Didn't we bring back freedom of speech?
| LocalH wrote:
| Bigots got salty that they were told to shut up or prevented
| from speaking in the most blatant instances, and made it their
| mission to gain control and turn the tables.
| uncletscollie wrote:
| Freedom of speech is now defined as the person with the most
| power or who screams the loudest has the final say. That is
| what happens when you elect a dictator.
| daveguy wrote:
| It has been that way in the US since the supreme court
| decided that money is equivalent to speech. And the effects
| have been ramping up ever since. If there is only so much
| bandwidth in communication, then using money to monopolize
| airwaves directly reduces the speech of those who cannot
| afford the excessive cost that results. Monopolize here is
| used in the sense of dominating the available supply (of
| bandwidth) and bidding up the price.
|
| Citizens United must be overturned.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| > elect a dictator
| lukev wrote:
| It's really depressing how the popular discourse around these
| topics so _consistently_ fails to address any kind of bad-faith
| reasoning on topics like this.
|
| Politicians complaining about free speech almost uniformly are
| referring to _speech they don 't like._ Just like when they say
| they want to be "moral" its their morals, and when they say
| they want safety it's safety for a certain kind of person.
|
| But the media (institutional AND social) ends to just accepting
| their stated motivations at face value. And at this point it's
| making us all look like idiots.
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| Who is "we" here? I can't count how many times I've argued
| against just an apparently broadly-held view that free speech
| ends at the first amendment and isn't a general principle that
| should be practiced at, eg., universities. Looks like when I
| argued that here, I was told that I should pick a different
| term for the principle of free speech in order to disambiguate
| from the first amendment (they recommended calling it 'my
| personal content preferences').
|
| Likewise uncountable is the number of times I've said
| normalizing free speech restrictions against the other side
| will come back to bite you once they're (inevitably, especially
| given these tactics) in power.
|
| I can see how 'pro-speech' might have appeared to be a right-
| leaning position when violations were typically against right-
| leaning expression, but I never got the sense that either side
| really gave a damn.
| watwut wrote:
| Majority of that was bad faith argument designed to create
| exactly this situation. And it succeeded.
| A_Duck wrote:
| One thing we know is that few of the people debating this have
| actually read Plato's Symposium
|
| A thing you can right now do is read it (1-2 hours):
| https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1600/1600-h/1600-h.htm#link2...
|
| Or just the two sections in question:
|
| Aristophanes' myth of split humans (7 minutes):
| https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/eros/platos-other-half
|
| Diotima's ladder of love (20 minutes)
| https://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/103/jowett_symp_A.htm
| aestetix wrote:
| Don't forget the _extremely_ loaded context surrounding
| Alcibiades.
| codyb wrote:
| I've heard an uptick in derogatory terms being thrown around
| recently and while unsurprising, it sure is sad.
|
| Recent events...
|
| - Went to a concert, an underage kid with a fake ID couldn't
| get a beer, turned to me and goes "Isn't this guy a f----"
|
| Uh... well, he may be making your night less enjoyable, but I
| don't see why gay people have to catch strays cause of it...
|
| "I don't think I'd call anyone that" was my response, and "it's
| okay to be gay" was a follow up
|
| - My boss said something was retarded. I'm a bit wishy washy on
| the r-word myself as, while I'm friends with people with Down
| Syndrome and other maladies, it never occurred to me to relate
| the word to them (especially since they're generally really
| very nice people)
|
| It's similar to how I never associated the word spaz with... I
| dunno what it is... multiple sclerosis or whatever, apparently
| that's a very common association in the UK, but I'd never heard
| of it (the association)
|
| But now I've stopped using it entirely, although in this case I
| did not correct my boss (who I respect as a person and enjoy
| working for very much)
|
| - One of my other friends called something "gay" recently
|
| "Don't call things gay bro" was my response. As my mom
| explained to me in sixth grade "even though you don't really
| even have an idea what it means to be gay, when you say that
| negative things are gay, you're implying that being gay is
| negative, but gay people just are themselves and don't deserve
| that"
|
| I became the "don't say gay kid" at school after that and I'm
| damned proud of it
|
| All these losers trying to turn back the times to put gay
| people back in the closet give me "peaked in middle school"
| vibes, and it's sad to see that it's also slowly becoming
| normalized with people who I don't even think have that
| inclination or care to say prejudiced shit again too
| mrec wrote:
| > I never associated the word spaz with... I dunno what it
| is... multiple sclerosis or whatever
|
| Usually cerebral palsy, I think, or (less commonly) epilepsy.
| I'm not sure it's still that common in the UK; I don't think
| I've heard it in the wild since the 80s [1], though some of
| that may just reflect the people I talk to as I get older.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Deacon#Blue_Peter_and_
| cul...
| codyb wrote:
| Yea that's it... definitely wasn't on our minds when we
| were 14 in middle school in America lol
| Dig1t wrote:
| Language police are extremely uncool; going around telling
| people which words they are allowed to use mostly just hurts
| your own cause. It has the exact same effect that an old
| Christian woman scolding kids not to use swear words has.
| Eventually people realize that your magic words give them
| power and it becomes cool and useful to start using them in
| the exact opposite way you want them to.
|
| The only way for you to achieve the goal of making sure
| nobody's feelings are hurt by words is to take away the power
| of the words. You only give the words MORE power by reacting
| to them.
| codyb wrote:
| Huge eyeroll.
|
| Who said anything about scolding anyone lol. I responded
| very calmly.
|
| I'm sorry, but you'll never win me over that the world be a
| better place if only we could bring back overtly prejudiced
| speech.
|
| Actions have consequences. You can say whatever the hell
| you want, but doesn't mean you deserve respect, or not to
| be corrected, or not to face the consequences of saying
| overtly bigoted words.
|
| The fact is... calling negative things gay implies being
| gay is bad, and therefore we should stop calling negative
| things gay if we want to support all the good people in the
| LGBTQ community.
| Dig1t wrote:
| OP's words exactly:
|
| >I became the "don't say gay kid" at school after that
|
| Making a point of trying to shame other people for using
| words you don't like is a losing game in the long run.
|
| The "actions have consequences" argument is what lead us
| to where we are now where you can see an obvious
| backlash.
|
| Heck the papa John's pizza guy got fired for using a
| magic word in an obviously non-derogatory way, and it was
| the same "actions have consequences" mentality even
| though basically nobody would be genuinely offended by
| his usage of it.
|
| If you continue to make a big deal out of every usage of
| gay and retarded those words will only grow in power and
| popularity because you are showing someone that they have
| the power to get you to freak out if they use them.
|
| You can see the opposite effect with traditional swear
| words, which are so used in popular media that they have
| lost almost all of their power.
| codyb wrote:
| Ah yes... sixth graders and human adults have so much in
| common.
|
| In fact, the culture at the school changed, and people
| stopped saying gay so much. It was very cool.
|
| You should try standing up for something you believe in
| sometime, maybe you'd like it.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I've only realized this somewhat recently, and it happens
| passively, but the way people use some of these magic words
| helps me to categorize the person who said it.
|
| Sure, use whatever derogatory or offensive words you want,
| I don't really mind, but I am damn sure going to judge you
| based on it.
|
| I don't tend to be the "don't use that word" type of person
| though. But I'm absolutely the "get the fuck out of this
| 'will make me dumber' conversation" type of person.
| Dig1t wrote:
| I tend to agree, the words someone chooses tell you about
| the kind of person they are. Context is usually obvious,
| you can tell if someone is trying to be edgy, if someone
| normally uses the word in their vocabulary with their
| friends, or if they are genuinely using it in a hateful
| way.
|
| The genuine hateful usage is the actually bad thing that
| people want to stop, but many people mistakenly think
| they are fighting hatred by policing other people's
| vocabulary.
| codyb wrote:
| Genuinely hateful usage is of course important to stop
| but let's not pretend that hearing negative things called
| something you are all day isn't damaging to people.
|
| The idea that gay people walk around and hear "Oh that's
| gay as hell!" whenever someone stubs their toe, or loses
| in a game or whatever and don't have that affect them is
| silly and it clearly progresses into a culture where
| people don't feel comfortable being themselves.
|
| It's a good thing that since I've grown up we don't say
| "oh you're not acting black enough", or "oh that's so
| Jewish", or any other variation of things that may not
| seem harmful at the time but end up perpetuating a
| "right" and a "wrong" whether intentional or not.
| striking wrote:
| That's only true of people who overreact or use offense as
| an excuse to let off some righteous anger. Most people
| don't react that way, even if that is what you'll most
| often see surfaced on social media because it's the most
| exciting and engaging sort of reaction. Most people will
| just tell you it's not a good thing to say and let you
| quietly reflect on it, or just exit the conversation.
| jayrot wrote:
| There are no "language police".
|
| I think about this quote from Ricky Gervais a lot. He's had
| more than a few controversies, which you may or may not
| agree with but I think his take here is apt.
|
| "Please stop saying 'You can't joke about anything
| anymore'. You can. You can joke about whatever the fuck you
| like. And some people won't like it and they will tell you
| they don't like it. And then it's up to you whether you
| give a fuck or not. And so on. It's a good system."
| Dig1t wrote:
| OP said:
|
| >I became the "don't say gay kid" at school after that
|
| Making a point of trying to control which words other
| kids are using counts as policing language in my opinion.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| Something I've noticed under Trump is how a country's
| leadership does actually affect the behavior of the people
| under that leadership.
|
| Trump's openly crude behavior is normalizing such behavior
| amongst the impressionable.
|
| And society will be worse for it for a long time to come.
| allturtles wrote:
| True, but I think it's rather beside the point. Administrators
| shouldn't be censoring materials from professors' syllabi.
| watwut wrote:
| Nah that is fine.
|
| The issue is only when professor suspect of being liberal
| changes assigned reading in any way. That is the only
| possible big issue
|
| /s
| jtbayly wrote:
| Core curriculum is _always_ controlled by the university. The
| professor can sometimes make requests and get them approved.
| stvltvs wrote:
| At the university level, this is patently false. Professors
| have wide latitude to pick the texts for their classes
| except in lower division classes that might be taught by a
| TA.
| TheNewsIsHere wrote:
| This is more nuanced than "controlled by the
| administration or not".
|
| Universities that have accreditation (typically regional
| accreditation for nonprofit and private research
| universities) have to meet certain standards for certain
| curriculum design. Within those requirements there is
| wide latitude.
| HoJojoMojo wrote:
| That doesn't seem more nuanced between controlled by
| administrators or not.. An accreditation may have a
| minimum number of hours for Greek Classics and could
| expect the topic of Classical Greek Cultural norms to be
| compared/contrasted with modernity or it may not be
| mandatory to cover. That's a bit short of an
| accreditation telling an administration to ensure the
| topic is never covered or to police every unlisted topic
| a professor may cover.
| aebtebeten wrote:
| When even an old independently wealthy dude whose favourite pupil
| thought some people are slaves by nature is too "woke", who can
| we teach? Dick and Jane?
|
| (oh, I see the problem now; they're supposed to be implied to be,
| by strategic omission, old independently wealthy slave-owning
| dudes who were into the flute girls?)
| aebtebeten wrote:
| PHILOSOPHY 101 by Gray and Sharp See Dick.
| Dick thinks about people. See Jane. Jane thinks
| about events. See Spot. Spot keeps a close eye on
| the two intellectuals.
| freejazz wrote:
| What a joke
| ashleyn wrote:
| It really begs the question of, how much is this obsession with
| controlling others' gender actually going to end up negatively
| impacting the US's competitive edge in higher education? Between
| this and firing qualified TAs who did their job, we're well
| beyond just impacting gender studies majors at Evergreen College.
| How much longer until it cuts into mathematics, merely because an
| author was part of the reigning administration's monster of the
| week?
| bo1024 wrote:
| It's an issue, but a small part of it. The funding cuts and
| immigration barriers have already laid foundations for a
| massive harm to the US's edge in research and education.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Funny that conservatives want people to read the classics.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| I'm pretty sure they still do, actually. What I suspect
| happened is that someone high up the food chain put out a broad
| directive to remove "gender ideology" without thinking too hard
| about the consequences, and then some relatively unimaginative
| admins lower down decided to implement it Consistently With No
| Exceptions. Just doing their jobs "fairly". I expect they'll
| fix the glitch, frankly, at least the immediate glitch.
| wat10000 wrote:
| This smells of malicious compliance to me. Similar to
| removing the Bible when given a directive to remove texts
| containing sexual material.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Could be. That would be funnier, for sure. Actually, the
| Bible definitely contains gender ideology, so I guess they
| do have to ban it.
| ofrzeta wrote:
| Let the king decide what to read in his universities and you are
| good. It's also hard to stomach how the professor said he doesn't
| teach "ideology" but the administration doesn't even bother to
| refute this or anything. They just stubbornly repeat their
| allegations and confront him with an ultimatum.
|
| It's almost like the bullying is trickling down, right?
| browningstreet wrote:
| Falling in line.
| aebtebeten wrote:
| I'm sure some philosopher somewhen had something to say about
| whether or not being alternately servile and arrogant
| constitutes living the good life?
| lordleft wrote:
| Not to minimize the significance of this but prohibiting a
| portion of a reading is like slapping a "parental warning" on a
| Rap CD in the 90s -- if I was an undergrad, I'd only want to read
| those excerpts more.
| gosub100 wrote:
| Similar vein: reading in general is down, overall. Especially
| among young people. "Banning" a book isn't affecting anyone, it
| just gets a bunch of people riled up on two political tribes.
|
| Now, if they actually _banned_ a book, like "you will go to
| jail for having this" I would be concerned.
| petsfed wrote:
| The real barrier to students reading Plato has historically
| (and correctly) been the dismal quality of translations
| available. I always hated reading plato because the
| translations available to me were _significantly_ more
| concerned with carrying into the modern day the wonky syntax
| and sentence structure of ancient Greek philosophical writing,
| and less concerned with translating the underlying ideas into
| language understandable by a 19 year-old engineering major who
| can barely spell their own name.
| pklausler wrote:
| I think that it would be easier to get younger people to
| study Quenya to be able to read fragments of Tolkien in the
| "original" than it would be to somehow get them to learn to
| read classical Greek. But it's not that hard to learn to just
| _read_ Attic and Homeric Greek, and then there 's a lifetime
| of really great stuff that opens up for one to enjoy.
| dugidugout wrote:
| You act as if there are not companion or derivative works ad-
| nauseam. The barrier is hermeneutic, not grammatical, which
| is a fundamental constraint on shared meaning. Thus the "real
| barrier" is innate and your particular fixation only serves
| artificial ones. But please do add more than a complaint to
| our canon of meaning, I do not mean to devalue the act you
| are advocating, just the notion of neglect in this respect.
| petsfed wrote:
| I mean to say that the only time I've _ever_ needed to
| diagram a sentence to figure out what was being said was
| while taking Philosophy 1010, because the cheapest
| translations available of e.g. The Republic was a bit too
| opaque for me.
|
| There's certainly a lot to be said about the manifold
| interpretations of Platonic Idealism; what I'm saying is
| that when we've historically introduced new philosophy
| students to things like Jowett's translations ("But tell
| me, Zeno, do you not further think that there is an idea of
| likeness in itself, and another idea of unlikeness, which
| is the opposite of likeness, and that in these two, you and
| I and all other things to which we apply the term many,
| participate-things which participate in likeness become in
| that degree and manner like; and so far as they participate
| in unlikeness become in that degree unlike, or both like
| and unlike in the degree in which they participate in
| both?"), there's _also_ a grammatical issue. Yes, I can
| deconstruct that and reassemble it in more colloquial
| terms. The problem is that for a lot of students, they don
| 't develop interest enough to engage in the deconstruction
| until _after_ they 've gone through the arduous process of
| reading that and thinking "WTF?!"
| evan_ wrote:
| The difference is people wanted to listen to Eminem or whatever
| because it's enjoyable, trendy music that's played on the radio
| and all their friends were listening to.
|
| Plato is not exactly burning up the airwaves right now. Most
| likely the only exposure most people will have to this work (or
| any of the libraries of work that's been banned in this manner)
| would be at college, assigned to them for a class.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I think the point was more Streisand Effect than commentary
| on the popularity.
| adamc wrote:
| This is where MAGA leads.
|
| I'm gradually tuning out Hacker News, because it persistently
| tries to ignore the politics that are destroying the United
| States and freedom of enquiry.
|
| There is a dead comment below that tries to raise an argument but
| was killed instead. This is no longer a place to go to discuss
| ideas.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| > This is no longer a place to go to discuss ideas.
|
| No longer? Flagging comments isnt a new feature, and if
| anything, the site has been getting more political as time goes
| on, not less.
| djoldman wrote:
| > I'm gradually tuning out Hacker News, because it persistently
| tries to ignore the politics that are destroying the United
| States and freedom of enquiry.
|
| There are many places that focus on, allow, or encourage
| political content. Hackernews is not one of them, as by express
| design, it deems politics as _off topic_ :
|
| > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports,
| or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new
| phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal
| pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
| topic.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| shagie wrote:
| This essay also likely influenced the "what are things
| appropriate for HN":
|
| https://paulgraham.com/identity.html I
| finally realized today why politics and religion yield such
| uniquely useless discussions. ...
| Then it struck me: this is the problem with politics too.
| Politics, like religion, is a topic where there's no
| threshold of expertise for expressing an opinion. All you
| need is strong convictions. Do religion and
| politics have something in common that explains this
| similarity? One possible explanation is that they deal with
| questions that have no definite answers, so there's no back
| pressure on people's opinions. Since no one can be proven
| wrong, every opinion is equally valid, and sensing this,
| everyone lets fly with theirs.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| Indeed, some discussion topics are more about being
| confident than being right, since there's no objective way
| to determine the latter.
| foster_nyman wrote:
| "Until we know we are wrong, being wrong feels exactly
| like being right." - Kathryn Schulz
| wrs wrote:
| Typical paulg overgeneralization from his bubble. Just
| because many political opinions are legitimately debatable
| doesn't mean that _every opinion about every topic you call
| political_ is _equally valid_. That's just silly.
|
| I don't see Paul acting like every opinion is equally valid
| when it directly affects something he cares about. He seems
| to happily participate in "useless" political discussions
| when he has a strong opinion.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Do religion and politics have something in common that
| explains this similarity? One possible explanation is that
| they deal with questions that have no definite answers, so
| there 's no back pressure on people's opinions. Since no
| one can be proven wrong, every opinion is equally valid,
| and sensing this, everyone lets fly with theirs._
|
| Well, even Republicans accepted that an insurrection was a
| bad thing:
|
| > _There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on
| Capitol Hill. This is 3rd world style anti-American
| anarchy._
|
| * https://twitter.com/marcorubio/status/1346909901478522880
|
| * https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/marco-
| rubio-2021-tweets-...
|
| Are insurrections, now five years later, a good thing?
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_6_United_States_Cap
| ito...
| ryandrake wrote:
| I think people's definition of "politics" aren't universal.
| And a lot of people just take all the things they don't like
| and say "well they're 'politicial' therefore they aren't
| allowed here." Using the site guidelines as their own
| personal eraser.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _There are many places that focus on, allow, or encourage
| political content. Hackernews is not one of them, as by
| express design, it deems politics as off topic:_
|
| That's all very fine and well in theory, but it's like saying
| the topic of the ship taking on water is not allowed to be
| discussed when you're on a _Star Trek_ cruise:
|
| * https://startrekthecruise.com
|
| Sure: a gash in the haul doesn't cover things like Kirk,
| Picard, Sisko, or Janeway, but it's kind of a prerequisite
| that nothing is happening to hull integrity before the others
| topics can be entertained.
| zeroonetwothree wrote:
| I hate this kind of politicizing... it was wrong when the left
| was doing it to force mandatory "diversity statements" and it's
| wrong now when the right is forcing removal of specific course
| content.
|
| Professors should be free to teach whatever they want that's
| relevant to their courses. Students are adults and can make up
| their own minds.
| foster_nyman wrote:
| Given sufficient historical context, this should not be
| surprising; Paul Graham's influence on Hacker News is
| foundational, as he created the platform to foster an
| intellectual community, personally shaping its culture, design,
| and moderation policies.
|
| For me, at least, this is one of his most important essays and
| worth re-visiting from time to time -
| https://paulgraham.com/identity.html
|
| "I think what religion and politics have in common is that they
| become part of people's identity, and people can never have a
| fruitful argument about something that's part of their
| identity. By definition they're partisan."
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Academics absolutely do have fruitful arguments about
| religion and politics. Pretending that there is nothing to
| learn is just anti-intellectualism.
| pklausler wrote:
| Want to know what a retreat from the Renaissance and scientific
| Enlightenment back into medieval mindlessness looks like? This is
| what it looks like.
| breckinloggins wrote:
| I am a former student and graduate of this department at Texas
| A&M. I just called The Association and informed them that I
| consider this completely unacceptable and will not consider
| donations to the university unless this policy is reversed.
|
| I would encourage fellow like-minded Aggies to do the same.
|
| Drs Austin and McDermott are surely spinning in their graves
| right now.
| tsoukase wrote:
| I am really confused with the fights around gender of the last 5
| years. As a doctor I have a solid grasp of the five dimensions of
| gender (genital organs, genetic, social, psychological and
| legal). Each must be binary. So there can be a 2^5 = 32 genders
| although some combinations are impossible. Non binary are in
| reality just combinations.
|
| Literally any authority that tries to force a new gender POV is
| totally wrong.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I am really confused with the fights around gender of the
| last 5 years. As a doctor I have a solid grasp of the five
| dimensions of gender (genital organs, genetic, social,
| psychological and legal). So there can be 2^5 = 32 genders
|
| Biological sex has multiple dimensions, ascribed gender (which
| is social, and of which _legal_ gender is one of many forms)
| has a number of dimensions _per form_ that depends on the
| particular social milieu, gender identity (which is a mix of
| social and psychological) has multiple dimensions that vary,
| again, at least by social milieu, and many of the dimensions
| involved are not strict binaries. So both the base and exponent
| in your formula are unjustified.
|
| So, no, doctor (of what?) or not, I don't think you have a
| solid grasp of _anything_ relating to gender.
| tsoukase wrote:
| There is no need to repeat the word social so often. We can
| argue infinitely at any level of substraction. In humans
| there are two sexes. In some other species there are eight.
| Start from there and build your way up.
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| > In humans there are two sexes.
|
| You claim to be a doctor (again, _of what_?). Have you even
| _heard_ the word intersex before?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
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(page generated 2026-01-07 23:01 UTC)