23 ms·

I feel confused about this whole issue. People are acting like "cancelling" someone is a new thing, but this is something I saw happen all the time in academia.

I feel confused about this whole issue. People are acting like "cancelling" someone is a new thing, but this is something I saw happen all the time in academia. It just used to be the purview of small cliques of powerful professors who had chokeholds on particular fields. Immunology is particularly bad. Say something bad about professor X's proposal? You're never getting a grant funded again. Professor Y harassed you when you were a grad student and you're upset? Best get out of the field and don't make a fuss. What's different now other than larger groups with nontraditional forms of power are trying to impose consequences in return?

evouga 6y ago
Swapping out a small group of people abusing traditional power for a larger group of people abusing non-traditional power does not sound like a great "fix" to me.
- KirillPanov 6y ago
  It sounds good to people who are (a) in the larger group and (b) not in the small group and (c) shortsighted. People seem to be getting increasingly shortsighted these days.
- madhadron 6y ago
  > larger group of people abusing non-traditional power does not sound like a great "fix" to me. Sounds reasonable. How do we define abuse? Do we have a clear notion of when consequences for your speech is abuse? Some things are clear. Mobs threatening your children because of what you said is clearly abuse. But what about customers of your employer demanding that you be fired? There are clearly cases where that would be legitimate. Up until a couple years ago, flying the swastika and wanting to start up the Nazi party again would result in you being "cancelled" pretty thoroughly. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. It's freedom from the government taking you away because of what you said (though even that isn't universal if your speech is a direct incitement to an act, such as shouting fire in a movie theatre or calling for someone's death with an expectation that someone listening to you will go do it). You still get all the legal protections of any other member of our society. Maybe that's a better way of coming at it? If large groups abusing non-traditional power is a problem, should we define a larger set of individual legal protections to define what the consequences of speech cannot be?
  - evouga 6y ago
    I think it's a red herring to conflate legally protected rights with community norms/informal standards of conduct. Killing a colleague's papers or grant proposals in retaliation for past slights is clearly unacceptable behavior even if it is (and should remain) legal. Likewise, calling for a colleague to be fired, or starting a petition to have them stripped of their positions on editorial boards, or putting their students on a public "re-education" list, in retaliation for expressing an ill-considered or unpopular opinion, ought to be unacceptable behavior (even if, again, it is and should remain legal).
    - madhadron 6y ago
      > calling for a colleague to be fired, or starting a petition to have them stripped of their positions on editorial board...in retaliation for expressing an ill-considered or unpopular opinion, ought to be unacceptable behavior Why? Calling for a colleague to be fired might be an ill-considered or unpopular opinion, but that just puts us in a loop. We either want no consequences for ill-considered or unpopular opinions or we don't. > putting their students on a public "re-education" list This I agree with, but only because it is no longer about the individual and their speech.
082349872349872 6y ago
It used to be (and sometimes still is, qv 2020) that people were "cancelled" permanently, fatally. Getting a new job doesn't seem that onerous in comparison.

evouga 6y ago

Swapping out a small group of people abusing traditional power for a larger group of people abusing non-traditional power does not sound like a great "fix" to me.

KirillPanov 6y ago
It sounds good to people who are (a) in the larger group and (b) not in the small group and (c) shortsighted. People seem to be getting increasingly shortsighted these days.
madhadron 6y ago
> larger group of people abusing non-traditional power does not sound like a great "fix" to me. Sounds reasonable. How do we define abuse? Do we have a clear notion of when consequences for your speech is abuse? Some things are clear. Mobs threatening your children because of what you said is clearly abuse. But what about customers of your employer demanding that you be fired? There are clearly cases where that would be legitimate. Up until a couple years ago, flying the swastika and wanting to start up the Nazi party again would result in you being "cancelled" pretty thoroughly. Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. It's freedom from the government taking you away because of what you said (though even that isn't universal if your speech is a direct incitement to an act, such as shouting fire in a movie theatre or calling for someone's death with an expectation that someone listening to you will go do it). You still get all the legal protections of any other member of our society. Maybe that's a better way of coming at it? If large groups abusing non-traditional power is a problem, should we define a larger set of individual legal protections to define what the consequences of speech cannot be?
- evouga 6y ago
  I think it's a red herring to conflate legally protected rights with community norms/informal standards of conduct. Killing a colleague's papers or grant proposals in retaliation for past slights is clearly unacceptable behavior even if it is (and should remain) legal. Likewise, calling for a colleague to be fired, or starting a petition to have them stripped of their positions on editorial boards, or putting their students on a public "re-education" list, in retaliation for expressing an ill-considered or unpopular opinion, ought to be unacceptable behavior (even if, again, it is and should remain legal).
  - madhadron 6y ago
    > calling for a colleague to be fired, or starting a petition to have them stripped of their positions on editorial board...in retaliation for expressing an ill-considered or unpopular opinion, ought to be unacceptable behavior Why? Calling for a colleague to be fired might be an ill-considered or unpopular opinion, but that just puts us in a loop. We either want no consequences for ill-considered or unpopular opinions or we don't. > putting their students on a public "re-education" list This I agree with, but only because it is no longer about the individual and their speech.

082349872349872 6y ago

It used to be (and sometimes still is, qv 2020) that people were "cancelled" permanently, fatally. Getting a new job doesn't seem that onerous in comparison.