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Is there anyone that wants to defend this blacklisting of the author by the Chicago Review for writing this article [0]? That is, not to reconfirm that they do

Is there anyone that wants to defend this blacklisting of the author by the Chicago Review for writing this article [0]? That is, not to reconfirm that they do indeed have the right to do so, but to argue that they are right to do so? Maybe some of us can avoid this fate if we understand the grounds for it, since they decline to make it explicit. What did he say that was not just wrong, but so wrong that he should not be associated with? [0] https://arcdigital.media/self-censorship-in-the-academy-524186bacafd https://arcdigital.media/self-censorship-in-the-academy-5241...

yew 6y ago
Yes? I've just read the article. It's a collection of crypto-fascist dog whistles about race; it barely merits being called an opinion. (It is an example of why the academic personnel pool needs the thorough cleaning it's currently getting.) Anyone who declined to associate with the author would be right to do so. There aren't many people who don't understand what this kind of article is really about. The Chicago Review staff understand. The author understands. I would bet that you understand. Empty appeals to principle won't oblige society to give anyone a platform.
- leephillips 6y ago
  I just read it, too. I find your take, frankly, bizarre. Everything he said there makes perfect sense. He is defending the idea that the reason to study a work of literature is because it is good literature. Shocking.
- santoshalper 6y ago
  Did we read the same article?
  - yew 6y ago
    The one in which the author objects to disciplining professors for racist conduct and refuses to update his curriculum to include a diversity of viewpoints because "the only good reason to study a work of literature is that literature itself has value?"
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Apparently we didn't.
- cpitman 6y ago
  It seems like calling it a collection of dog whistles is directly addressed by this paragraph: "The trouble is that Nazis are human beings, and they have many benign thoughts along with their antisemitism. So I might avoid repeating some ordinary, unthreatening statement uttered by someone with a Nazi reputation, lest you think that I sound like a Nazi. Soon only actual Nazis and a few weirdos who don’t care what other people think are willing to repeat these unthreatening statements — which now appear rather threatening. In this regime of self-censorship, even arguments defending academic freedom (which is not a traditional Nazi commitment!) or aesthetic judgment (a commitment shared by many people, including a few Nazis) can look like signs of crypto-Nazism. This increases the costs of honest discussion."
  - sickofparadox 6y ago
    Dog Whistle (Politics): The use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. [Wikipedia] To what group is this directed? What about this speaks to the "Crypto-fascists" the above commenter mentions? Is it simply the word Nazi? I have read through this a few times and I'm having a difficult time finding the angle in which this could be a nod and a wink to a skinhead.
    - cpitman 6y ago
      Calling it dog-whistles instead of calling out specific issues with the argument implies that the problem isn't what he is saying, but that he is saying things that sound like things said by other people. IE, calling it crypto-fascist dog whistles is saying "I think he is a fascist because he says things I think fascists say, but isn't actually coming out and saying fascist things". Which, in the end, means that no one can say things that fascists might also say, without sounding like a fascist.
      - sickofparadox 6y ago
        I understand and completely agree. I suppose my comment would have better been directed at the original commenter, as their take was so alien to my reading of the text.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  > It's a collection of crypto-fascist dog whistles about race... I must not be a dog, then, because I'm not hearing it. For those of us with less acute hearing, could you point out the dog whistles? > ... it barely merits being called an opinion. No, it has a definite opinion. You may not agree with it, you maybe would prefer to ignore it, but it is quite clearly there.
  - monoideism 6y ago
    I notice that yew responded to a lot of the comments here, but not to any of them that asked him to point out specific dog whistles. This generation has learned a debating style where they call anything that they strongly dislike as being "fascist". Such a style is not conducive to a working democratic society (is that the goal?).
- sneak 6y ago
  > It's a collection of crypto-fascist dog whistles about race; I read it having already seen you say this about it, looking for those, and, like the other sibling replies to you, did not find them. Could you please point them out?
- bradleyjg 6y ago
  Can we please not redefine fascism to mean “something I don’t like”? This article has nothing at all to do with the power or primacy of the state. We have tons of pejoratives in the English language, why do we have to homogenize every word with any negative valence into yet another pejorative stripped of all nuance?
  - marshmallow_12 6y ago
    Up next: "support the expanded Fascist Party under the leadership of generic Hitler. You haven't changed, only our definitions have, by people who are mildly to the left of you. They call everything you support Fascist, so we clearly can't be so wrong." I'm being sarcastic but this really isn't at all funny. But judging by the largely negative response i got last time i pointed this out, this doesn't majorly bother anyone else. At least they didn't respond to this specific point. I'm just going to have to vote for Stalin. Edit: ignore the elephant. Obviously this article is not relevant to you. It's only about a publication in Chicago.
  - earleybird 6y ago
    There are several underlying concerns. One is a persistent redefinition of words to suit a political narrative. Another is the rejection of words without consideration or analysis of what the words mean.
- vqterrain 6y ago
  I'd submit that someone with the name of Aaron Kunin is unlikely to be a fascist. From the essay: "Last year when I proposed to teach a seminar in which the syllabus would include essays by Ralph Ellison, two of my colleagues wrote to the Curriculum Committee, as well as to the dean and the president of the college, objecting that it would be “literary blackface” for me to study Ellison." Here we have professors talking like children, and this is an example of what Kunin complains about.
  - FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
    Also, Ellison was a great writer, but bringing attention to his work doesn't really advance the Cause. The whole point of Invisible Man is that Ellison doesn't want to be reduced to a dehumanized representative of some collective. He is a person in his own right. If you're an activist, the kind of thinking represented by Ellison is actively counterproductive. It's old-school Liberal stuff -- "outdated". It interferes with building the proper Consciousness. Hence the objection to someone, and in particular a "white" person, working to advance Ellison without enough criticism. Instead you need someone who can "properly contextualize" Ellison, which is to say, to treat him with a little surface respect, but ultimately to make clear to readers that his work is somehow misguided. Nobody will go so far as to say "Uncle Tom" or "counter-revolutionary", but that's the subtext. I wouldn't call this "talking like children", because the people are highly-educated adults and they understand exactly what they are doing.
- schoen 6y ago
  I would most likely have downvoted your reply if I'd encountered it in any other context, but I upvoted it because you were replying to an invitation to defend the magazine's decision that purported to be curious about why someone would defend it. I really don't like the pattern of asking "I'm curious whether anyone would seriously advocate opinion X that's controversial in this community, and why" and then downvoting people who try to seriously advocate opinion X. (I know people can't downvote direct replies, but it seems like this pattern indirectly discourages curiosity and conversation and encourages a sort of official party line.)
  - yew 6y ago
    It certainly makes following the conversation more difficult, but you needn't feel obligated. I don't mind watching the total go up and down with the tide... Edit: but as my answer (including quote!) below has been flagged, I think I'll just leave this to stand on its own.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - seneca 6y ago
    In general I agree with you, baiting people into stating an unpopular argument and then dog piling kills conversation. That being said, I downvoted that particular response because there's no argument being made. It's the typical gnashing of teeth and hurling of slurs you see everywhere on the internet, and is also harmful to a useful conversation.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    I think the comment has been downvoted because it does not seem to be in good faith and there is no substance to it.
    - schoen 6y ago
      Well, here's a better sibling comment with more substance and effort: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26394196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26394196 I tried writing a response three different times (specifically on the concepts of "safety" and "representation") and didn't manage to hit the right notes. ... Maybe next academic cancel-culture thread? :-(
- monoideism 6y ago
  Wow. I’m actually at a loss for words. I think we’re in deep, deep shit as a society if this is what a significant percentage of the younger generations believe (and from what I’ve seen, it is). Not from the point of view of “you’re bad, I’m good”, but that no country can survive this kind of radically different outlook on life from subsequent generations. It even surpasses the 60s.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
  Good grief. I will start by agreeing with you on one thing. Chicago Review does not owe the author a platform. Other than that, it is genuinely hard to respond to this comment without wondering whether parents' post is serious. I just read both articles and I do not get how the irony of what the author discussed is lost. What are those collections of dog whistles? I think I need an example. Is it the mere mention of a nazi? Saying they are human beings too with all that comes along with that simple fact? Is the 'literary blackface' that throws people off? I genuinely want to know, because if this is a serious comment and people hear dog-whistles here, they probably have not heard an actual racist, ever.
- serf 6y ago
  'crypto-fascism' and the concept that anyone can easily identify 'dog-whistle politics' strikes me as a somewhat McCarthy-style method by which to coerce a group of people to condemn an individual without much need for explanation as to why they should be condemned -- even if the individual being condemned is pleading against the perceived hostile opinion. It seems to be a very trendy right now. It's sort of a perfect technique to mention in a thread about blacklisting. "We don't care if you say you're not a member of the Communist party; look at who you hang out with and the opinions you write -- we have read between the lines and understand the secret message held within your action, and we know that you're a communist." Pretty scary stuff.
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  Oh come off it. "Dog whistle" is just a made up term used by dishonest bullies to accuse people of saying things they didn't say. I challenge you to list the "dog whistles" in the original article referenced.
  - alphabettsy 6y ago
    It’s certainly not, they are very real, but that doesn’t mean the article contains any.
fatbird 6y ago
By including Kunin, they lost enough other contributors that their project was threatened. As a voluntary effort by grad students, they don't have the time or money to make a spirited defense of Kunin. He's had to take up his martyrdom on his own. I'm sure Kunin would have been very happy for them to burn their project down for his sake. Kunin's sake is not the only one at play here.
- refenestrator 6y ago
  Ok, let's take that at face value. Are the unspecified others who would burn them down justified? At the end of the day, is there any positive moral case for this?
  - fatbird 6y ago
    The others aren't burning them down, the others are making clear that they have conditions on participating, and if they're met, they're happy to do so. Triaging your project to get it done by excluding the one person who makes five others leave, by forcing the one guy out, is basic management. It's the basic stuff of editorial decisions. As for the larger case of "blacklisting", as Kunin describes it, the moral case is that amplification is bad, that by appearing onstage with a villain, you dignify his villainy by taking it seriously, when it should be rejected out of hand; you provide a platform for odious ideas that, even met with a superior response, get more airtime and borrowed legitimacy than they would otherwise. You can certainly disagree that avoiding amplification justifies cancel culture, but acting like there isn't a moral case for not getting onstage with someone you don't want to amplify, begs the question.
    - refenestrator 6y ago
      How many degrees of separation can you get in here and still feel justified? Kunin opposed the idea of blacklisting in general, he didn't even endorse any person. So now, for those who refuse to be published in the same magazine as him, the chain goes "unspecified other" -> Kunin didn't disavow -> they can't publish anything where Kunin might also publish? There's not even a specific idea they're condemning besides general open-mindedness. What about if the magazine had allowed him to publish, and you had been in there as well? Would you deserve censure as the third link? After all, you shared a stage with someone, and god only knows how many stages they've shared with how many people.
ariabuckles 6y ago
It's a pretty standard anti-inclusivity rant (although it starts by attempting to position itself as more than such), and then ends with an anecdote/strawman (which is contrary to every notion of inclusivity advocacy that I've seen) to propose that those advocating for inclusivity are the real people who want segregation. I think what a lot of the commenters are missing is that this article, and statements like "If I must revise my teaching to conform to a popular view of inclusivity that I do not share" have an impact on not just his research, but also sends a message to his students: that he doesn't whether they feel safe being there matters, and that they don't deserve to have representation in studied works. I know a lot of people (mostly white, mostly men) don't think that's true, but these types of attitudes can easily allow harmful messages to fester in academic classrooms. Just because an idea is controversial doesn't mean it's worthy of debate. The idea that we should want more students to feel welcome in academia, and that we should study history and literature that has largely been ignored (or often, deliberately destroyed) is one such idea to many people. So I know most of the people on this forum will disagree, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for an organization to say that they don't want their name associated with that. The position in that article isn't a new or particularly interesting idea: it's been rehashed over and over, and studied, and it's an idea that many people have decided is harmful and they don't want to associate with it or people who continue to spread those ideas. I probably don't have the eloquence to properly convey these thoughts, but there's a whole field out there that cares deeply about these things and has been working on making them better for, literally, centuries. In tech I often see people frustrated that the public doesn't understand what they're talking about when they discuss technologies (see the 5G conspiracy theories!). If you're interested in understanding why many people think doubling down on these ideas that inclusivity is in contradiction to good research/teaching/whatever, there's a whole field of literature out there to read up on that can help explain that. If you're in the US, one decent starting place is the history of black people in the US, and the history of women in the US. I've heard really good things about this series, for example: http://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/ http://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/
- baggy_trough 6y ago
  Any organization that concludes the ideas in that article are hateful or harmful can really no longer be considered an academic one.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> Is there anyone that wants to defend this blacklisting of the author by the Chicago Review for writing this article? Well, first, “blacklisting” for an exclusionary practice is a poorly chosen term for an act by a single actor and not a coordinated action across a group of theoretically competing actors. Second, are you looking for a defense of the act within Chicago Review’s “editorial and political agenda” (which is difficult for any outside actor since they haven't specified what it is) or are you looking for a debate on that agenda (again, difficult for any outside actor for the same reason) or an argument for why a similarly situated might be justified on the basis of some set of goals which may not be Chicago Review’s agenda or for defense of a set of goals which might justify it that may not be Chicago Review’s agenda? Because the last two seem like a pure waste of time while the first two seem like a waste of time if you aren't specifically asking the Chicago Review editorial staff.
- dnissley 6y ago
  Why are the last two pure wastes of time? It seems to me that they could be productive lines of inquiry. Also, let's not be coy -- it's pretty obvious what their agenda is. At the very least you and I both know. I've seen you round these parts before, partner.

yew 6y ago

Yes? I've just read the article. It's a collection of crypto-fascist dog whistles about race; it barely merits being called an opinion. (It is an example of why the academic personnel pool needs the thorough cleaning it's currently getting.) Anyone who declined to associate with the author would be right to do so. There aren't many people who don't understand what this kind of article is really about. The Chicago Review staff understand. The author understands. I would bet that you understand. Empty appeals to principle won't oblige society to give anyone a platform.

leephillips 6y ago
I just read it, too. I find your take, frankly, bizarre. Everything he said there makes perfect sense. He is defending the idea that the reason to study a work of literature is because it is good literature. Shocking.
santoshalper 6y ago
Did we read the same article?
- yew 6y ago
  The one in which the author objects to disciplining professors for racist conduct and refuses to update his curriculum to include a diversity of viewpoints because "the only good reason to study a work of literature is that literature itself has value?"
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Apparently we didn't.
cpitman 6y ago
It seems like calling it a collection of dog whistles is directly addressed by this paragraph: "The trouble is that Nazis are human beings, and they have many benign thoughts along with their antisemitism. So I might avoid repeating some ordinary, unthreatening statement uttered by someone with a Nazi reputation, lest you think that I sound like a Nazi. Soon only actual Nazis and a few weirdos who don’t care what other people think are willing to repeat these unthreatening statements — which now appear rather threatening. In this regime of self-censorship, even arguments defending academic freedom (which is not a traditional Nazi commitment!) or aesthetic judgment (a commitment shared by many people, including a few Nazis) can look like signs of crypto-Nazism. This increases the costs of honest discussion."
- sickofparadox 6y ago
  Dog Whistle (Politics): The use of coded or suggestive language in political messaging to garner support from a particular group without provoking opposition. [Wikipedia] To what group is this directed? What about this speaks to the "Crypto-fascists" the above commenter mentions? Is it simply the word Nazi? I have read through this a few times and I'm having a difficult time finding the angle in which this could be a nod and a wink to a skinhead.
  - cpitman 6y ago
    Calling it dog-whistles instead of calling out specific issues with the argument implies that the problem isn't what he is saying, but that he is saying things that sound like things said by other people. IE, calling it crypto-fascist dog whistles is saying "I think he is a fascist because he says things I think fascists say, but isn't actually coming out and saying fascist things". Which, in the end, means that no one can say things that fascists might also say, without sounding like a fascist.
    - sickofparadox 6y ago
      I understand and completely agree. I suppose my comment would have better been directed at the original commenter, as their take was so alien to my reading of the text.
AnimalMuppet 6y ago
> It's a collection of crypto-fascist dog whistles about race... I must not be a dog, then, because I'm not hearing it. For those of us with less acute hearing, could you point out the dog whistles? > ... it barely merits being called an opinion. No, it has a definite opinion. You may not agree with it, you maybe would prefer to ignore it, but it is quite clearly there.
- monoideism 6y ago
  I notice that yew responded to a lot of the comments here, but not to any of them that asked him to point out specific dog whistles. This generation has learned a debating style where they call anything that they strongly dislike as being "fascist". Such a style is not conducive to a working democratic society (is that the goal?).
sneak 6y ago
> It's a collection of crypto-fascist dog whistles about race; I read it having already seen you say this about it, looking for those, and, like the other sibling replies to you, did not find them. Could you please point them out?
bradleyjg 6y ago
Can we please not redefine fascism to mean “something I don’t like”? This article has nothing at all to do with the power or primacy of the state. We have tons of pejoratives in the English language, why do we have to homogenize every word with any negative valence into yet another pejorative stripped of all nuance?
- marshmallow_12 6y ago
  Up next: "support the expanded Fascist Party under the leadership of generic Hitler. You haven't changed, only our definitions have, by people who are mildly to the left of you. They call everything you support Fascist, so we clearly can't be so wrong." I'm being sarcastic but this really isn't at all funny. But judging by the largely negative response i got last time i pointed this out, this doesn't majorly bother anyone else. At least they didn't respond to this specific point. I'm just going to have to vote for Stalin. Edit: ignore the elephant. Obviously this article is not relevant to you. It's only about a publication in Chicago.
- earleybird 6y ago
  There are several underlying concerns. One is a persistent redefinition of words to suit a political narrative. Another is the rejection of words without consideration or analysis of what the words mean.
vqterrain 6y ago
I'd submit that someone with the name of Aaron Kunin is unlikely to be a fascist. From the essay: "Last year when I proposed to teach a seminar in which the syllabus would include essays by Ralph Ellison, two of my colleagues wrote to the Curriculum Committee, as well as to the dean and the president of the college, objecting that it would be “literary blackface” for me to study Ellison." Here we have professors talking like children, and this is an example of what Kunin complains about.
- FooBarBizBazz 6y ago
  Also, Ellison was a great writer, but bringing attention to his work doesn't really advance the Cause. The whole point of Invisible Man is that Ellison doesn't want to be reduced to a dehumanized representative of some collective. He is a person in his own right. If you're an activist, the kind of thinking represented by Ellison is actively counterproductive. It's old-school Liberal stuff -- "outdated". It interferes with building the proper Consciousness. Hence the objection to someone, and in particular a "white" person, working to advance Ellison without enough criticism. Instead you need someone who can "properly contextualize" Ellison, which is to say, to treat him with a little surface respect, but ultimately to make clear to readers that his work is somehow misguided. Nobody will go so far as to say "Uncle Tom" or "counter-revolutionary", but that's the subtext. I wouldn't call this "talking like children", because the people are highly-educated adults and they understand exactly what they are doing.
schoen 6y ago
I would most likely have downvoted your reply if I'd encountered it in any other context, but I upvoted it because you were replying to an invitation to defend the magazine's decision that purported to be curious about why someone would defend it. I really don't like the pattern of asking "I'm curious whether anyone would seriously advocate opinion X that's controversial in this community, and why" and then downvoting people who try to seriously advocate opinion X. (I know people can't downvote direct replies, but it seems like this pattern indirectly discourages curiosity and conversation and encourages a sort of official party line.)
- yew 6y ago
  It certainly makes following the conversation more difficult, but you needn't feel obligated. I don't mind watching the total go up and down with the tide... Edit: but as my answer (including quote!) below has been flagged, I think I'll just leave this to stand on its own.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- seneca 6y ago
  In general I agree with you, baiting people into stating an unpopular argument and then dog piling kills conversation. That being said, I downvoted that particular response because there's no argument being made. It's the typical gnashing of teeth and hurling of slurs you see everywhere on the internet, and is also harmful to a useful conversation.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  I think the comment has been downvoted because it does not seem to be in good faith and there is no substance to it.
  - schoen 6y ago
    Well, here's a better sibling comment with more substance and effort: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26394196 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26394196 I tried writing a response three different times (specifically on the concepts of "safety" and "representation") and didn't manage to hit the right notes. ... Maybe next academic cancel-culture thread? :-(
monoideism 6y ago
Wow. I’m actually at a loss for words. I think we’re in deep, deep shit as a society if this is what a significant percentage of the younger generations believe (and from what I’ve seen, it is). Not from the point of view of “you’re bad, I’m good”, but that no country can survive this kind of radically different outlook on life from subsequent generations. It even surpasses the 60s.
A4ET8a8uTh0 6y ago
Good grief. I will start by agreeing with you on one thing. Chicago Review does not owe the author a platform. Other than that, it is genuinely hard to respond to this comment without wondering whether parents' post is serious. I just read both articles and I do not get how the irony of what the author discussed is lost. What are those collections of dog whistles? I think I need an example. Is it the mere mention of a nazi? Saying they are human beings too with all that comes along with that simple fact? Is the 'literary blackface' that throws people off? I genuinely want to know, because if this is a serious comment and people hear dog-whistles here, they probably have not heard an actual racist, ever.
serf 6y ago
'crypto-fascism' and the concept that anyone can easily identify 'dog-whistle politics' strikes me as a somewhat McCarthy-style method by which to coerce a group of people to condemn an individual without much need for explanation as to why they should be condemned -- even if the individual being condemned is pleading against the perceived hostile opinion. It seems to be a very trendy right now. It's sort of a perfect technique to mention in a thread about blacklisting. "We don't care if you say you're not a member of the Communist party; look at who you hang out with and the opinions you write -- we have read between the lines and understand the secret message held within your action, and we know that you're a communist." Pretty scary stuff.
betwixthewires 6y ago
Oh come off it. "Dog whistle" is just a made up term used by dishonest bullies to accuse people of saying things they didn't say. I challenge you to list the "dog whistles" in the original article referenced.
- alphabettsy 6y ago
  It’s certainly not, they are very real, but that doesn’t mean the article contains any.

fatbird 6y ago

By including Kunin, they lost enough other contributors that their project was threatened. As a voluntary effort by grad students, they don't have the time or money to make a spirited defense of Kunin. He's had to take up his martyrdom on his own. I'm sure Kunin would have been very happy for them to burn their project down for his sake. Kunin's sake is not the only one at play here.

refenestrator 6y ago
Ok, let's take that at face value. Are the unspecified others who would burn them down justified? At the end of the day, is there any positive moral case for this?
- fatbird 6y ago
  The others aren't burning them down, the others are making clear that they have conditions on participating, and if they're met, they're happy to do so. Triaging your project to get it done by excluding the one person who makes five others leave, by forcing the one guy out, is basic management. It's the basic stuff of editorial decisions. As for the larger case of "blacklisting", as Kunin describes it, the moral case is that amplification is bad, that by appearing onstage with a villain, you dignify his villainy by taking it seriously, when it should be rejected out of hand; you provide a platform for odious ideas that, even met with a superior response, get more airtime and borrowed legitimacy than they would otherwise. You can certainly disagree that avoiding amplification justifies cancel culture, but acting like there isn't a moral case for not getting onstage with someone you don't want to amplify, begs the question.
  - refenestrator 6y ago
    How many degrees of separation can you get in here and still feel justified? Kunin opposed the idea of blacklisting in general, he didn't even endorse any person. So now, for those who refuse to be published in the same magazine as him, the chain goes "unspecified other" -> Kunin didn't disavow -> they can't publish anything where Kunin might also publish? There's not even a specific idea they're condemning besides general open-mindedness. What about if the magazine had allowed him to publish, and you had been in there as well? Would you deserve censure as the third link? After all, you shared a stage with someone, and god only knows how many stages they've shared with how many people.

ariabuckles 6y ago

It's a pretty standard anti-inclusivity rant (although it starts by attempting to position itself as more than such), and then ends with an anecdote/strawman (which is contrary to every notion of inclusivity advocacy that I've seen) to propose that those advocating for inclusivity are the real people who want segregation. I think what a lot of the commenters are missing is that this article, and statements like "If I must revise my teaching to conform to a popular view of inclusivity that I do not share" have an impact on not just his research, but also sends a message to his students: that he doesn't whether they feel safe being there matters, and that they don't deserve to have representation in studied works. I know a lot of people (mostly white, mostly men) don't think that's true, but these types of attitudes can easily allow harmful messages to fester in academic classrooms. Just because an idea is controversial doesn't mean it's worthy of debate. The idea that we should want more students to feel welcome in academia, and that we should study history and literature that has largely been ignored (or often, deliberately destroyed) is one such idea to many people. So I know most of the people on this forum will disagree, but I think it's perfectly reasonable for an organization to say that they don't want their name associated with that. The position in that article isn't a new or particularly interesting idea: it's been rehashed over and over, and studied, and it's an idea that many people have decided is harmful and they don't want to associate with it or people who continue to spread those ideas. I probably don't have the eloquence to properly convey these thoughts, but there's a whole field out there that cares deeply about these things and has been working on making them better for, literally, centuries. In tech I often see people frustrated that the public doesn't understand what they're talking about when they discuss technologies (see the 5G conspiracy theories!). If you're interested in understanding why many people think doubling down on these ideas that inclusivity is in contradiction to good research/teaching/whatever, there's a whole field of literature out there to read up on that can help explain that. If you're in the US, one decent starting place is the history of black people in the US, and the history of women in the US. I've heard really good things about this series, for example: http://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/ http://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/

baggy_trough 6y ago
Any organization that concludes the ideas in that article are hateful or harmful can really no longer be considered an academic one.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> Is there anyone that wants to defend this blacklisting of the author by the Chicago Review for writing this article? Well, first, “blacklisting” for an exclusionary practice is a poorly chosen term for an act by a single actor and not a coordinated action across a group of theoretically competing actors. Second, are you looking for a defense of the act within Chicago Review’s “editorial and political agenda” (which is difficult for any outside actor since they haven't specified what it is) or are you looking for a debate on that agenda (again, difficult for any outside actor for the same reason) or an argument for why a similarly situated might be justified on the basis of some set of goals which may not be Chicago Review’s agenda or for defense of a set of goals which might justify it that may not be Chicago Review’s agenda? Because the last two seem like a pure waste of time while the first two seem like a waste of time if you aren't specifically asking the Chicago Review editorial staff.

dnissley 6y ago
Why are the last two pure wastes of time? It seems to me that they could be productive lines of inquiry. Also, let's not be coy -- it's pretty obvious what their agenda is. At the very least you and I both know. I've seen you round these parts before, partner.