6 ms·

The comment at the end is spot on: Please know that there are many people that support you and are sick of this hyper-sensitive, McCarthyism-like environment

by anonu 6y ago

The comment at the end is spot on: Please know that there are many people that support you and are sick of this hyper-sensitive, McCarthyism-like environment that is being fostered across the country." My view on this is it's the culmination of years of anti free speech trends on campus. It's a sad day when universities which should be bastions of tolerance, exploration and ideas have their culture consistently chipped away at by people who get "triggered" so easily.

vladd 6y ago
At the end of the day, students vote with their wallet. The decision of the dean chooses to protect an environment of low-risk social-compliant low-EQ classroom, which will act as a deterrent on the university's prestige moving forward (e.g. you don't see those traits associated with MIT or Harvard). At the end of the day the dean might get fired for his actions. To use an analogy, "nobody gets fired for choosing IBM, but if for years you're left beyond Amazon"... one might need to eventually take a hard look at the university leadership and make the needed changes.
- Alex3917 6y ago
  > e.g. you don't see those traits associated with MIT or Harvard Didn't this entire movement basically start with Larry Summers?
sydd 6y ago
But why does the university cave in so easily? Why is the Dean himself crawling on the floor to apologize for basically nothing? Are they afraid of bad PR? or lawsuits? Why?
- white-flame 6y ago
  I would say that's the most likely explanation. Plus, we see very similar things happen in primary education, where the loudest craziest parents cause the biggest potential PR/legal kerfuffles, so the schools often bend to them instead of standing on educational principles.
- vladd 6y ago
  Deans, just like CEOs, are at the top of the leadership chain to protect the interests of the institution, and especially to maintain a long-term vision against short-term gains and speculation. Most people cave in when it's time to make such decisions. A lot of folks would chose a cookie in the short term, while desiring to have a six-pack on the medium outlook. In business or education, you fail as a leader every time you don't make that trade-off: every time when you take a quarterly one-time gain against the long-term interest or profits of the corporation, or when you fail to protect freedom of speech and the right of innovators to take risks just because the "safe path" is easier for now. I think Paul Graham touches on this very well in his latest essay: >> Why do the independent-minded need to be protected, though? Because they have all the new ideas. To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong. Conventional-minded people can't do that. For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so. So it's no coincidence that societies prosper only to the extent that they have customs for keeping the conventional-minded at bay. << >> For the last couple centuries at least, when the aggressively conventional-minded were on the rampage for whatever reason, universities were the safest places to be. That may not work this time though, due to the unfortunate fact that the latest wave of intolerance began in universities. perhaps the decline in the spirit of free inquiry within universities is as much the symptom of the departure of the independent-minded as the cause. People who would have become professors 50 years ago have other options now. Now they can become quants or start startups. You have to be independent-minded to succeed at either of those. If these people had been professors, they'd have put up a stiffer resistance on behalf of academic freedom. So perhaps the picture of the independent-minded fleeing declining universities is too gloomy. Perhaps the universities are declining because so many have already left << http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html
- thu2111 6y ago
  This essay provides a highly thought-provoking answer: https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/ https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/ The argument is sophisticated and hard to summarise, but essentially, the author argues that "enlightenment liberalism" (i.e. the sort of philosophy that dominates universities) has a flaw at its centre that both creates Marxists and causes "enlightenment liberals" to constantly give in to the demands of those Marxists. The cycle goes like this: 1. Liberals assert that henceforth all with be free and equal, and that these things are self-evidently desirable (i.e. using reason alone). 2. Some liberals observe that life is full of inequalities and lack of freedoms. Because everyone is supposed to have equal opportunities, and because liberalism is generally uninterested in historical or traditional justifications for things, unequal outcomes demand an explanation which they find in the assumption of oppressive hierarchies. These liberals become Marxists. 3. They demand affirmative actions be taken in order to rectify these supposed oppressions. Embarrassed by the existence of inequality and lack of freedoms after declaring that their society is meant to have neither, liberals agree to these demands. 4. Realising they got what they wanted with little resistance, and that inequalities and lack of freedoms still exist, Marxists return to step 1. In this framework the cause is nothing as simple or skin-deep as bad PR or lawsuits. Perhaps fear of those does play a role, but the author argues that the core reason is that the university is staffed by people who are genuinely embarrassed and upset by Marxist critique. Lacking intellectual ammo or a coherent philosophy of inequality, they invariably cave in when faced with outspoken demands that appear to align with their own agenda of equality.
  - beaner 6y ago
    I'm not necessarily against this but I don't think it goes deep enough. I think a better societal/psychological explanation can be found in the first third of Industrial Society and its Future. [0] [0] Free read: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...
    - Kephael 6y ago
      I've brought this up on HN before and been downvoted for it, but Ted certainly recognized the illiberal tenancies of "Liberals".
ThrowawayR2 6y ago
I have said this before and will continue to say this: to put an end to this, liberals in the United States need to openly repudiate identity politics progressivism and cancel culture. Former-President Obama has ( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-cancel-culture.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-ca... ); we should too. Please speak up and, more importantly, please vote for old-school liberals instead of progressives.
- galimaufry 6y ago
  Politics isn't going to solve this. You could elect an anti-PC theorist like Donald Trump, or an old school liberal like Nancy Pelosi, and this sort of thing would keep happening. The real solution is just awareness. As people see more examples of this sort of thing going wrong they will be more careful about it.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    And it's not exactly an "if" in the first place. Both the governor of California and the mayor of LA are pretty mainstream Democratic politicians.
  - Natsu 6y ago
    I wish I believed that, but it seems more like a prisoner's dilemma. People get turned by making their self-interest the opposite of the group's interests after being individually targeted with high-pressure tactics. Anyone who thinks this is all purely organic hasn't been paying much attention.
- elihu 6y ago
  I'm okay with Obama rejecting identity politics if that's what he's doing, but it seems to me more like he's been spending his time post-presidency advocating for a certain style of incremental reform: just make small fixes right now to make things a little bit better, and as he likes to say: "the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice". The problem I have with that, is that for some problems you can't just fix it with incremental reform, you have to rip the bandaid off, and if you reject any reforms that aren't small incremental fixes to what we have, you end up fixing the small problems and leaving the big structural problems. Opinions will reasonably differ on how to deal with the problems facing society, but Obama's approach seems to me to be a little bit like vacuuming your living room while the house is on fire. On the other hand, you have someone like Bernie Sanders, who isn't at all shy about advocating for significant structural reforms (similar in scope to the New Deal) and is about as progressive as anyone can be in American politics, yet at the same time he doesn't put any stock in identity politics either. I haven't listened to as much from AOC, but I get the impression she's the same way. In fact, I don't know of any major political leader who fits the mold of the "social justice warrior" or "political-correctness police" stereotype. I haven't run into very many of those people in my day-to-day life either, but my impression is that they're largely people without any great deal of power except maybe on University campuses. Tl;dr: don't be afraid to vote for progressives in general with the aim of thwarting identity politics. A lot of prominent progressives aren't really fans of it either.
throwaway9221 6y ago
It's not confined to universities, either. This growing list of "forbidden words" is making its way into the corporate world, too. Coupled with spineless HR who don't know how to constructively deal with people who claim to be offended. My current company is undertaking a massive, probably thousand man-year (sorry, person-year), effort to scrub all its internal and external documentation and even source code of any forbidden words, replacing them with, for now, non-triggering words. Not one person, to my knowledge has even politely questioned publicly whether this was a good use of company funds. If I was a shareholder I'd be outraged. A small, core group of people loudly make this a huge issue of great importance, while the rest of us just want to get our work done and stay silent so we don't get fired by the woke patrol. Honestly I can't wait until retirement when I don't have to constantly be walking on eggshells at work. It's sad--I used to love working in tech but it's insufferable now.
- wildrhythms 6y ago
  Can you kindly provide an example of the type of behavior you might engage in at work in absence of the 'woke patrol' (as you described it)?
  - vianneychevalie 6y ago
    In my personal case it would be using the words « master » and « slave » when talking about interfacing databases
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - throwaway9221 6y ago
      Exactly. Or, say you're building some business logic and you need to make some exceptions for VIP partners. In times past, you would add these exceptions to a "whitelist" and have logic to check this list and apply the exception. Now, you need to be very careful to call this an "allowlist" lest the woke patrol pull you aside and warn you that your variable name is insensitive and non-inclusive. I wish I was joking.
tootie 6y ago
That's a vast overstatement. To the point of being ridiculous. This kind of thing happens more than it used to but is still extremely rare. And in this case represents a misunderstanding. McCarthyism was also a government initiative. Private universities can do whatever they want. Someplace like Liberty University actively censors and punishes liberal views, but people are less likely to get upset because it's expected.
throwawaysea 6y ago
The irony of the new anti free speech movement is that much of it sprung up on Berkeley’s campus (and nearby SF), which is also host to the famous Free Speech Cafe.

by anonu 6y ago

vladd 6y ago

At the end of the day, students vote with their wallet. The decision of the dean chooses to protect an environment of low-risk social-compliant low-EQ classroom, which will act as a deterrent on the university's prestige moving forward (e.g. you don't see those traits associated with MIT or Harvard). At the end of the day the dean might get fired for his actions. To use an analogy, "nobody gets fired for choosing IBM, but if for years you're left beyond Amazon"... one might need to eventually take a hard look at the university leadership and make the needed changes.

Alex3917 6y ago
> e.g. you don't see those traits associated with MIT or Harvard Didn't this entire movement basically start with Larry Summers?

sydd 6y ago

But why does the university cave in so easily? Why is the Dean himself crawling on the floor to apologize for basically nothing? Are they afraid of bad PR? or lawsuits? Why?

white-flame 6y ago
I would say that's the most likely explanation. Plus, we see very similar things happen in primary education, where the loudest craziest parents cause the biggest potential PR/legal kerfuffles, so the schools often bend to them instead of standing on educational principles.
vladd 6y ago
Deans, just like CEOs, are at the top of the leadership chain to protect the interests of the institution, and especially to maintain a long-term vision against short-term gains and speculation. Most people cave in when it's time to make such decisions. A lot of folks would chose a cookie in the short term, while desiring to have a six-pack on the medium outlook. In business or education, you fail as a leader every time you don't make that trade-off: every time when you take a quarterly one-time gain against the long-term interest or profits of the corporation, or when you fail to protect freedom of speech and the right of innovators to take risks just because the "safe path" is easier for now. I think Paul Graham touches on this very well in his latest essay: >> Why do the independent-minded need to be protected, though? Because they have all the new ideas. To be a successful scientist, for example, it's not enough just to be right. You have to be right when everyone else is wrong. Conventional-minded people can't do that. For similar reasons, all successful startup CEOs are not merely independent-minded, but aggressively so. So it's no coincidence that societies prosper only to the extent that they have customs for keeping the conventional-minded at bay. << >> For the last couple centuries at least, when the aggressively conventional-minded were on the rampage for whatever reason, universities were the safest places to be. That may not work this time though, due to the unfortunate fact that the latest wave of intolerance began in universities. perhaps the decline in the spirit of free inquiry within universities is as much the symptom of the departure of the independent-minded as the cause. People who would have become professors 50 years ago have other options now. Now they can become quants or start startups. You have to be independent-minded to succeed at either of those. If these people had been professors, they'd have put up a stiffer resistance on behalf of academic freedom. So perhaps the picture of the independent-minded fleeing declining universities is too gloomy. Perhaps the universities are declining because so many have already left << http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html
thu2111 6y ago
This essay provides a highly thought-provoking answer: https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/ https://quillette.com/2020/08/16/the-challenge-of-marxism/ The argument is sophisticated and hard to summarise, but essentially, the author argues that "enlightenment liberalism" (i.e. the sort of philosophy that dominates universities) has a flaw at its centre that both creates Marxists and causes "enlightenment liberals" to constantly give in to the demands of those Marxists. The cycle goes like this: 1. Liberals assert that henceforth all with be free and equal, and that these things are self-evidently desirable (i.e. using reason alone). 2. Some liberals observe that life is full of inequalities and lack of freedoms. Because everyone is supposed to have equal opportunities, and because liberalism is generally uninterested in historical or traditional justifications for things, unequal outcomes demand an explanation which they find in the assumption of oppressive hierarchies. These liberals become Marxists. 3. They demand affirmative actions be taken in order to rectify these supposed oppressions. Embarrassed by the existence of inequality and lack of freedoms after declaring that their society is meant to have neither, liberals agree to these demands. 4. Realising they got what they wanted with little resistance, and that inequalities and lack of freedoms still exist, Marxists return to step 1. In this framework the cause is nothing as simple or skin-deep as bad PR or lawsuits. Perhaps fear of those does play a role, but the author argues that the core reason is that the university is staffed by people who are genuinely embarrassed and upset by Marxist critique. Lacking intellectual ammo or a coherent philosophy of inequality, they invariably cave in when faced with outspoken demands that appear to align with their own agenda of equality.
- beaner 6y ago
  I'm not necessarily against this but I don't think it goes deep enough. I think a better societal/psychological explanation can be found in the first third of Industrial Society and its Future. [0] [0] Free read: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/unab...
  - Kephael 6y ago
    I've brought this up on HN before and been downvoted for it, but Ted certainly recognized the illiberal tenancies of "Liberals".

ThrowawayR2 6y ago

I have said this before and will continue to say this: to put an end to this, liberals in the United States need to openly repudiate identity politics progressivism and cancel culture. Former-President Obama has ( https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-cancel-culture.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-ca... ); we should too. Please speak up and, more importantly, please vote for old-school liberals instead of progressives.

galimaufry 6y ago
Politics isn't going to solve this. You could elect an anti-PC theorist like Donald Trump, or an old school liberal like Nancy Pelosi, and this sort of thing would keep happening. The real solution is just awareness. As people see more examples of this sort of thing going wrong they will be more careful about it.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  And it's not exactly an "if" in the first place. Both the governor of California and the mayor of LA are pretty mainstream Democratic politicians.
- Natsu 6y ago
  I wish I believed that, but it seems more like a prisoner's dilemma. People get turned by making their self-interest the opposite of the group's interests after being individually targeted with high-pressure tactics. Anyone who thinks this is all purely organic hasn't been paying much attention.
elihu 6y ago
I'm okay with Obama rejecting identity politics if that's what he's doing, but it seems to me more like he's been spending his time post-presidency advocating for a certain style of incremental reform: just make small fixes right now to make things a little bit better, and as he likes to say: "the arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice". The problem I have with that, is that for some problems you can't just fix it with incremental reform, you have to rip the bandaid off, and if you reject any reforms that aren't small incremental fixes to what we have, you end up fixing the small problems and leaving the big structural problems. Opinions will reasonably differ on how to deal with the problems facing society, but Obama's approach seems to me to be a little bit like vacuuming your living room while the house is on fire. On the other hand, you have someone like Bernie Sanders, who isn't at all shy about advocating for significant structural reforms (similar in scope to the New Deal) and is about as progressive as anyone can be in American politics, yet at the same time he doesn't put any stock in identity politics either. I haven't listened to as much from AOC, but I get the impression she's the same way. In fact, I don't know of any major political leader who fits the mold of the "social justice warrior" or "political-correctness police" stereotype. I haven't run into very many of those people in my day-to-day life either, but my impression is that they're largely people without any great deal of power except maybe on University campuses. Tl;dr: don't be afraid to vote for progressives in general with the aim of thwarting identity politics. A lot of prominent progressives aren't really fans of it either.

throwaway9221 6y ago

It's not confined to universities, either. This growing list of "forbidden words" is making its way into the corporate world, too. Coupled with spineless HR who don't know how to constructively deal with people who claim to be offended. My current company is undertaking a massive, probably thousand man-year (sorry, person-year), effort to scrub all its internal and external documentation and even source code of any forbidden words, replacing them with, for now, non-triggering words. Not one person, to my knowledge has even politely questioned publicly whether this was a good use of company funds. If I was a shareholder I'd be outraged. A small, core group of people loudly make this a huge issue of great importance, while the rest of us just want to get our work done and stay silent so we don't get fired by the woke patrol. Honestly I can't wait until retirement when I don't have to constantly be walking on eggshells at work. It's sad--I used to love working in tech but it's insufferable now.

wildrhythms 6y ago
Can you kindly provide an example of the type of behavior you might engage in at work in absence of the 'woke patrol' (as you described it)?
- vianneychevalie 6y ago
  In my personal case it would be using the words « master » and « slave » when talking about interfacing databases
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - throwaway9221 6y ago
    Exactly. Or, say you're building some business logic and you need to make some exceptions for VIP partners. In times past, you would add these exceptions to a "whitelist" and have logic to check this list and apply the exception. Now, you need to be very careful to call this an "allowlist" lest the woke patrol pull you aside and warn you that your variable name is insensitive and non-inclusive. I wish I was joking.

tootie 6y ago

That's a vast overstatement. To the point of being ridiculous. This kind of thing happens more than it used to but is still extremely rare. And in this case represents a misunderstanding. McCarthyism was also a government initiative. Private universities can do whatever they want. Someplace like Liberty University actively censors and punishes liberal views, but people are less likely to get upset because it's expected.

throwawaysea 6y ago

The irony of the new anti free speech movement is that much of it sprung up on Berkeley’s campus (and nearby SF), which is also host to the famous Free Speech Cafe.