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Speakers are compensated handsomely for their engagements, no? I don't see anything wrong with students refusing to see their tuition bankroll the likes of Kiss

Speakers are compensated handsomely for their engagements, no? I don't see anything wrong with students refusing to see their tuition bankroll the likes of Kissinger or Rice--people with blood on their hands.

aaron-lebo 9y ago
The article is talking about something more than protest. Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm to shield him and to make sure we stayed together, the crowd turned on me. Someone pulled my hair, while others were shoving me. I feared for my life. Once we got into the car, protesters climbed on it, hitting the windows and rocking the vehicle whenever we stopped to avoid harming them. I am still wearing a neck brace, and spent a week in a dark room to recover from a concussion caused by the whiplash. That's basically mob violence. Respectful protest and disagreement is to hear someone out, not intimidate and violently stop them from speaking. It's just an odd mindset. You're at college, so presumably you are there to be educated, to experience different points of view, to learn. edit: Asked if modern media or some other factor was the biggest cause of this, saying this so the reply makes sense.
- Swizec 9y ago
  > Or is there some other change in society that is a bigger factor? Tribalism. We seem to be hardwired for it, to seek it out. As the immediate bonds in family/religion/neighborhood/etc are being torn down by modern individualism, so new tribal bonds are formed. In the age of the internet, as you said, you can find a voice that validates any belief. A community forms around the smallest nugget of common belief. And so tribes are formed. Mind you we also seem to be living in a society that increasingly believes that anything you think, you immediately believe to be true. That to hold opposing beliefs, or at least to inspect and consider thoughts that are “wrong”, immediately makes you ... I dunno. Almost like thinking something immediately makes it your sole belief. So it becomes impossible, dangerous even, to allow opposing beliefs to even be expressed lest they take you over. Thought police basically.
sowbug 9y ago
That is what you got out of this lecture?
- jim-jim-jim 9y ago
  I'm perfectly willing to engage in respectful dialogue over a simple difference in opinion. Less willing to financially compensate murderers in the name of liberal civility.
alexmat 9y ago
Listen to your enemies, they have more to teach you than your allies. "It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor." -Neil Gaiman
- matt4077 9y ago
  That's bs, easily proven by it's absurd consequences: It would mean a biologist should talk to religious fundamentalists more often than their peers.
  - mercer 9y ago
    While 'should' is going a bit far, I'd argue that that's actually not a bad idea. For me, and many ex-evangelicals like me, a crucial part in our deconversion involved respectful conversations with other-minded people who provided arguments and didn't assume I was just a dumb religious nutjob. I'm sure it must've been difficult sometimes for these people to deal with my, in hindsight, rather less than stellar arguments in favor of things like creationism or my logical proofs of God's existence. But they did a good thing, and I wish there was more of that. A conversation can have much more of an effect than might be immediately apparent. People don't want to lose face; it took me years of sweeping doubt under the rug before I had to admit that my beliefs weren't tenable anymore, and I know many like me. And yet the actual people who played a role in this might never know how much of an impact they made. Furthermore, even if someone remains staunchly 'ignorant' (which of course happens quite a lot), these respectful conversations are never fully isolated. Whether it is bystanders who maybe do take the arguments to heart, or later conversations between the ignorant person and others, I think every little bit of 'respectful connection' matters, and more than it appears.
    - matt4077 9y ago
      There's the competing argument that engaging in debate can suggest legitimacy for a belief that it doesn't deserve. If, for example, scientists started arguing with flat-earthers, publishing op-eds "The World is rather round" etc., the flat earth conspiracy theory would stand to gain from it. Part of that is the unfortunate effect that for a certain demographic, anything said by what they perceive to be the "establishment" is reflexively opposed. I believe the wish to "silence" some viewpoints is often misunderstood as an attempt to be spared some supposed personal pain from being exposed to it (the "safe space" idea). But, more often than not, it is actually an attempt to fight it, using a method that has a track record at least as good as engaging with it: making someone a social outcast when they, for example, advocate for another holocaust obviously comes with high costs for that person. It's a potent tool to change people's behaviour, and unlike laws, it's "strength" can be adapted with almost limitless flexibility. It's the same mechanism that everyone uses when, for example, no longer inviting that one relative who always gets drunk and starts a fight, or that child that can't share their toys.
stale2002 9y ago
This has nothing to do with "students refusing to see" certain people. It would be absolutely lovely, if it were solely that. What this has to do with is with students preventing other students from engaging with certain speakers. This is about insane protestors assaulting people, blocking entrances to venues, disrupting the actual events, and people trying to convince public universities to literally break the law by engaging in viewpoint discrimination. The examples that the NYT used were situations where people were attacked, and literally sent to the hospital. IE, the 50 year old democrat teacher from middlebury who had to go to the hospital, because some protesters assaulted her for protecting a speaker as they were trying to escape a mob of people who surrounded them, and wouldn't let them leave. Please, please, please lets all go back in time to when if you didn't like a speaker then you just didn't attend the speech.
dfee 9y ago
Their actions aren’t preventing the speakers from getting compensated, but rather preventing them from delivering an address. You might imagine, then, that a university would begin to narrow the breadth of intellectual perspectives it allows, to align with the students’ wishes. However, tuition is only part of the story. Universities are highly sticky - students aren’t going to leave Berkeley because Milo was invited to campus. However, the university risks both contributions from alumni, and branding against the echelon of students they want to attract. Your perspective reflects only immediate concerns, which must be accounted for. But hopefully, I’ve shed a little light on these more complex decisions.
crispinb 9y ago
The trouble is, once this perspective gains a footing, it metastasises to the point where civil disagreement becomes almost impossible anywhere, and on any topic. That seems to be happening now. Here in Australia, for instance, we have the marriage equality postal survey going on as mentioned in the article (a daft exercise in fake democracy to appease a far-right party faction, but let's put that aside for now). I have personally been called a homophobic bigot by a 'yes' campaigner, not because I'm against same-sex marriage (I'm strongly for it, and voted accordingly), but because I refuse to cut off friends and family who are on the 'no' side. Polarisation has reached the stage where, according to many, we are literally required to ostracise anyone on 'the other side' (of pretty much any debate). A capacity for, at a very minimum, civil debate, even where you disagree strongly with the other side, is a crucial foundation stone of the Enlightenment. There are edge cases for sure (I don't know how to have rational discourse with self-professed Nazis, for example), but actual debate (as opposed to fighting, spurning, hating and ostracising) needs to be a strongly-held default, or we are totally stuffed.
- jim-jim-jim 9y ago
  I picked the names in the parent comment carefully. I'm not advocating no-platforming as a blanket policy for anybody I disagree with. I'm just saying if you have a death toll attached to your name, maybe you don't deserve the same respect afforded to somebody who simply has an unpopular opinion.
  - Mz 9y ago
    Certain jobs involve making certain kinds of judgement calls. Acting like the person fulfilling the role is unquestionably immoral and at fault for the fact that people die when nations have conflicts is, at best, naïve. I was a hippie tree hugger type. I got married at age 19 to another 19 year old. Being a soldier was his dream career, in part because he was very patriotic and loved his country. My twenties were spent being genuinely surprised that some soldiers go to church and they are not all bloodthirsty villains. In fact, most of them fervently want war to not happen because their own lives are at stake. I am still kind of a hippie tree hugger type. But, I am a pro military hippie these days. "A man of peace must be strong." If you think America would be a kinder gentler nation if we got rid of our military forces entirely, think again. The US would cease to exist. It would be promptly invaded and taken over. There is a lot of not nice stuff that happens in the world. "Freedom for all" gets paid for in part with the blood of patriots. That is an unfortunate reality.
matt4077 9y ago
While former politicians do get compensated handsomely for giving speeches, I'm not sure about those they give at Universities. I believe those (as well as classes they sometimes teach) are usually part of their philanthropic efforts. I once attended a lecture by Justice Scalia at my University, and I'm absolutely certain that the University can not legally pay a speaker anything close to the 6-digit sums that someone of his caliber would get on the commercial speakers' circuit. I once sat on a committee that organised such talks, and it took us a year of politics to get approval to invite the XKCD guy, who, unlike the usual academic visitors, charges a fee. Usually, speakers are afforded a stipend to cover their travel expenses only.

aaron-lebo 9y ago

The article is talking about something more than protest. Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm to shield him and to make sure we stayed together, the crowd turned on me. Someone pulled my hair, while others were shoving me. I feared for my life. Once we got into the car, protesters climbed on it, hitting the windows and rocking the vehicle whenever we stopped to avoid harming them. I am still wearing a neck brace, and spent a week in a dark room to recover from a concussion caused by the whiplash. That's basically mob violence. Respectful protest and disagreement is to hear someone out, not intimidate and violently stop them from speaking. It's just an odd mindset. You're at college, so presumably you are there to be educated, to experience different points of view, to learn. edit: Asked if modern media or some other factor was the biggest cause of this, saying this so the reply makes sense.

Swizec 9y ago
> Or is there some other change in society that is a bigger factor? Tribalism. We seem to be hardwired for it, to seek it out. As the immediate bonds in family/religion/neighborhood/etc are being torn down by modern individualism, so new tribal bonds are formed. In the age of the internet, as you said, you can find a voice that validates any belief. A community forms around the smallest nugget of common belief. And so tribes are formed. Mind you we also seem to be living in a society that increasingly believes that anything you think, you immediately believe to be true. That to hold opposing beliefs, or at least to inspect and consider thoughts that are “wrong”, immediately makes you ... I dunno. Almost like thinking something immediately makes it your sole belief. So it becomes impossible, dangerous even, to allow opposing beliefs to even be expressed lest they take you over. Thought police basically.

sowbug 9y ago

That is what you got out of this lecture?

jim-jim-jim 9y ago
I'm perfectly willing to engage in respectful dialogue over a simple difference in opinion. Less willing to financially compensate murderers in the name of liberal civility.

alexmat 9y ago

Listen to your enemies, they have more to teach you than your allies. "It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor." -Neil Gaiman

matt4077 9y ago
That's bs, easily proven by it's absurd consequences: It would mean a biologist should talk to religious fundamentalists more often than their peers.
- mercer 9y ago
  While 'should' is going a bit far, I'd argue that that's actually not a bad idea. For me, and many ex-evangelicals like me, a crucial part in our deconversion involved respectful conversations with other-minded people who provided arguments and didn't assume I was just a dumb religious nutjob. I'm sure it must've been difficult sometimes for these people to deal with my, in hindsight, rather less than stellar arguments in favor of things like creationism or my logical proofs of God's existence. But they did a good thing, and I wish there was more of that. A conversation can have much more of an effect than might be immediately apparent. People don't want to lose face; it took me years of sweeping doubt under the rug before I had to admit that my beliefs weren't tenable anymore, and I know many like me. And yet the actual people who played a role in this might never know how much of an impact they made. Furthermore, even if someone remains staunchly 'ignorant' (which of course happens quite a lot), these respectful conversations are never fully isolated. Whether it is bystanders who maybe do take the arguments to heart, or later conversations between the ignorant person and others, I think every little bit of 'respectful connection' matters, and more than it appears.
  - matt4077 9y ago
    There's the competing argument that engaging in debate can suggest legitimacy for a belief that it doesn't deserve. If, for example, scientists started arguing with flat-earthers, publishing op-eds "The World is rather round" etc., the flat earth conspiracy theory would stand to gain from it. Part of that is the unfortunate effect that for a certain demographic, anything said by what they perceive to be the "establishment" is reflexively opposed. I believe the wish to "silence" some viewpoints is often misunderstood as an attempt to be spared some supposed personal pain from being exposed to it (the "safe space" idea). But, more often than not, it is actually an attempt to fight it, using a method that has a track record at least as good as engaging with it: making someone a social outcast when they, for example, advocate for another holocaust obviously comes with high costs for that person. It's a potent tool to change people's behaviour, and unlike laws, it's "strength" can be adapted with almost limitless flexibility. It's the same mechanism that everyone uses when, for example, no longer inviting that one relative who always gets drunk and starts a fight, or that child that can't share their toys.

stale2002 9y ago

This has nothing to do with "students refusing to see" certain people. It would be absolutely lovely, if it were solely that. What this has to do with is with students preventing other students from engaging with certain speakers. This is about insane protestors assaulting people, blocking entrances to venues, disrupting the actual events, and people trying to convince public universities to literally break the law by engaging in viewpoint discrimination. The examples that the NYT used were situations where people were attacked, and literally sent to the hospital. IE, the 50 year old democrat teacher from middlebury who had to go to the hospital, because some protesters assaulted her for protecting a speaker as they were trying to escape a mob of people who surrounded them, and wouldn't let them leave. Please, please, please lets all go back in time to when if you didn't like a speaker then you just didn't attend the speech.

dfee 9y ago

Their actions aren’t preventing the speakers from getting compensated, but rather preventing them from delivering an address. You might imagine, then, that a university would begin to narrow the breadth of intellectual perspectives it allows, to align with the students’ wishes. However, tuition is only part of the story. Universities are highly sticky - students aren’t going to leave Berkeley because Milo was invited to campus. However, the university risks both contributions from alumni, and branding against the echelon of students they want to attract. Your perspective reflects only immediate concerns, which must be accounted for. But hopefully, I’ve shed a little light on these more complex decisions.

crispinb 9y ago

The trouble is, once this perspective gains a footing, it metastasises to the point where civil disagreement becomes almost impossible anywhere, and on any topic. That seems to be happening now. Here in Australia, for instance, we have the marriage equality postal survey going on as mentioned in the article (a daft exercise in fake democracy to appease a far-right party faction, but let's put that aside for now). I have personally been called a homophobic bigot by a 'yes' campaigner, not because I'm against same-sex marriage (I'm strongly for it, and voted accordingly), but because I refuse to cut off friends and family who are on the 'no' side. Polarisation has reached the stage where, according to many, we are literally required to ostracise anyone on 'the other side' (of pretty much any debate). A capacity for, at a very minimum, civil debate, even where you disagree strongly with the other side, is a crucial foundation stone of the Enlightenment. There are edge cases for sure (I don't know how to have rational discourse with self-professed Nazis, for example), but actual debate (as opposed to fighting, spurning, hating and ostracising) needs to be a strongly-held default, or we are totally stuffed.

jim-jim-jim 9y ago
I picked the names in the parent comment carefully. I'm not advocating no-platforming as a blanket policy for anybody I disagree with. I'm just saying if you have a death toll attached to your name, maybe you don't deserve the same respect afforded to somebody who simply has an unpopular opinion.
- Mz 9y ago
  Certain jobs involve making certain kinds of judgement calls. Acting like the person fulfilling the role is unquestionably immoral and at fault for the fact that people die when nations have conflicts is, at best, naïve. I was a hippie tree hugger type. I got married at age 19 to another 19 year old. Being a soldier was his dream career, in part because he was very patriotic and loved his country. My twenties were spent being genuinely surprised that some soldiers go to church and they are not all bloodthirsty villains. In fact, most of them fervently want war to not happen because their own lives are at stake. I am still kind of a hippie tree hugger type. But, I am a pro military hippie these days. "A man of peace must be strong." If you think America would be a kinder gentler nation if we got rid of our military forces entirely, think again. The US would cease to exist. It would be promptly invaded and taken over. There is a lot of not nice stuff that happens in the world. "Freedom for all" gets paid for in part with the blood of patriots. That is an unfortunate reality.

matt4077 9y ago

While former politicians do get compensated handsomely for giving speeches, I'm not sure about those they give at Universities. I believe those (as well as classes they sometimes teach) are usually part of their philanthropic efforts. I once attended a lecture by Justice Scalia at my University, and I'm absolutely certain that the University can not legally pay a speaker anything close to the 6-digit sums that someone of his caliber would get on the commercial speakers' circuit. I once sat on a committee that organised such talks, and it took us a year of politics to get approval to invite the XKCD guy, who, unlike the usual academic visitors, charges a fee. Usually, speakers are afforded a stipend to cover their travel expenses only.