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Having read the whole thing I don't see what makes him an asshole. He feels he got fired due to allegations of things he didn't do, because he is (a) white and

Having read the whole thing I don't see what makes him an asshole. He feels he got fired due to allegations of things he didn't do, because he is (a) white and (b) a man and (c) not apologising for that. And of course, now his enemies are getting him fired from as many jobs as they can. This is why I just ignore claims of people being on the spectrum. It comes across as just an insult deployed against people for ideological reasons. The guy stood up to student "protests" that were disrupting the university, a problem that seems endemic these days, and of course got fired because university administrators seem to be as extremist as the student population. The guy got angry and wrote a public explanation. Given the history of such firings in academia I'm sure he's correct. Nothing about that is indicative of a developmental or mental disorder, which is - let us recall - what Asperger's and autism are. After all, by this standard Martin Luther King and many others who made sacrifices for their beliefs would have been considered deeply autistic.

dunstad 7y ago
If you can't see what makes him an asshole, then you probably agree with his opinions about all the groups he's insulting. There are a lot of them in there.
- repolfx 7y ago
  For the avoidance of doubt I have no idea who the protesters were, what colour they are and don't really care. I agree with him that students shouldn't be occupying university buildings and disrupting the business of the university unopposed by administrators. That's clearly nonsense even though it's now common. I agree with him the most likely explanation for this absurd behaviour is administrators being afraid of accusations of racism, as that seems to be a common thread in all these incidents, and students knowing they can get away with anything if they are seen as an "oppressed minority". Whether they are actually oppressed or not is a separate issue. The rest of his post is a general commentary on modern identity politics. He draws analogies between modern western white men and Jews in Germany/Russia. He observes that one of the justifications used to oppress Jews was their (huge) over-representation in various lucrative/powerful fields like finance, and that this led to accusations of a (non-existent) global "Jewish conspiracy" that was keeping out non-Jews. In the eyes of the anti-semites this justified a range of oppressive measures like keeping Jews out of jobs and, of course, much worse. Sergey Brin's father was a victim of this in the Soviet Union and that's one reason why his family fled to America. The parallels between these sort of anti-semitic beliefs and modern identity politics are very clear. Frankly they should be drawn more often. We see the modern left arguing that it's OK to deny white men from jobs, educational opportunities and even to bias the justice system against them because they are over-represented in lucrative/powerful jobs like finance, politics and tech. This is justified by reference to a non-existent conspiracy of the "patriarchy", or sometimes just an assumption that if white men dominate a field it must be because of discrimination, thus "positive discrimination" against them is morally OK. We know where this kind of thinking leads. Povey is a remarkably brave man to point this out to delusional students and administrators who apparently can't or won't learn from the mistakes of history.

dunstad 7y ago

If you can't see what makes him an asshole, then you probably agree with his opinions about all the groups he's insulting. There are a lot of them in there.

repolfx 7y ago
For the avoidance of doubt I have no idea who the protesters were, what colour they are and don't really care. I agree with him that students shouldn't be occupying university buildings and disrupting the business of the university unopposed by administrators. That's clearly nonsense even though it's now common. I agree with him the most likely explanation for this absurd behaviour is administrators being afraid of accusations of racism, as that seems to be a common thread in all these incidents, and students knowing they can get away with anything if they are seen as an "oppressed minority". Whether they are actually oppressed or not is a separate issue. The rest of his post is a general commentary on modern identity politics. He draws analogies between modern western white men and Jews in Germany/Russia. He observes that one of the justifications used to oppress Jews was their (huge) over-representation in various lucrative/powerful fields like finance, and that this led to accusations of a (non-existent) global "Jewish conspiracy" that was keeping out non-Jews. In the eyes of the anti-semites this justified a range of oppressive measures like keeping Jews out of jobs and, of course, much worse. Sergey Brin's father was a victim of this in the Soviet Union and that's one reason why his family fled to America. The parallels between these sort of anti-semitic beliefs and modern identity politics are very clear. Frankly they should be drawn more often. We see the modern left arguing that it's OK to deny white men from jobs, educational opportunities and even to bias the justice system against them because they are over-represented in lucrative/powerful jobs like finance, politics and tech. This is justified by reference to a non-existent conspiracy of the "patriarchy", or sometimes just an assumption that if white men dominate a field it must be because of discrimination, thus "positive discrimination" against them is morally OK. We know where this kind of thinking leads. Povey is a remarkably brave man to point this out to delusional students and administrators who apparently can't or won't learn from the mistakes of history.