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Quite related: "Criticism of Ideas Is Not Harassment" [1] [1] https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/letters/criticism-of-ideas-is-not-harassment https://www.chronicl

Quite related: "Criticism of Ideas Is Not Harassment" [1] [1] https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/letters/criticism-of-ideas-is-not-harassment https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/letters/criticism-of-ideas-i...

zamfi 6y ago
It’s worth reading the piece that inspired this one [0] too, through. [0] https://www.chronicle.com/article/when-academic-bullies-claim-the-mantle-of-free-speech https://www.chronicle.com/article/when-academic-bullies-clai...
- tenkabuto 6y ago
  > Academic freedom has been weaponized, cut loose from its traditional mooring in intellectual expertise (as has been argued by intellectuals expert in the subject, such as Robert Post and Joan Scott), Huh. This phrasing suggests to me that the response article (OP) is pretty on point, maybe even more than the author explicitly mentions: rather than there being ideologies that are beyond reproach or criticism, "experts" are not to be questioned.
  - avs733 6y ago
    no...its saying exactly the opposite. questioning is good. claiming academic freedom to drive targeted Harassment of people you do not like is not criticism. The first article is talking about what is and is not criticism, it is not talking about who is and who is not allowed to perform critique. If you and I disagreed in a meeting, even if we had a serious argument, I'll accept that as critique. If I followed it up by convincing all our coworkers to write you emails telling you to kill yourself, that isn't criticism thats harassment.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      > If you and I disagreed in a meeting, even if we had a serious argument, I'll accept that as critique. If I followed it up by convincing all our coworkers to write you emails telling you to kill yourself, that isn't criticism thats harassment. The broader cancel culture debate, including here on HN, made me realize how few people actually understand that threats and harassment do not fall under the rubric of criticism. Similarly, many people seem to think it's only harassment if convicted in a court of law, and if the law doesn't bother to pursue cancellers then what they are doing must not be harassment. It seems that we free speech advocates are not doing a very good job of educating people about what is and isn't free speech, or at least I thought we had been doing a better job.
      - avs733 6y ago
        This 'misunderstanding' is an active effort. It is curated propaganda to provide a shield for those who engage in such tactics by playing the victim.
  - zamfi 6y ago
    I’m not sure we’re interpreting that passage the same way, and I know nothing about this incident beyond these two articles, but I imagine most people involved would agree on these values: 1) “Academic freedom” should include the ability to speak truths that may be politically unpopular, regardless of format, and this includes critique of any academic content, ideologically-driven or not 2) Harassment or deliberate inducement of harassment, or actions that are likely to result in harassment, are not ok, and this includes both Twitter mobs doxxing and academic harassments These really parallel the whole “free speech” values: say whatever you want, but don’t yell fire in a crowded theater. In neither case should anyone be forced to listen to you if they don’t like what you say. It’s hard to tell from these two opinion pieces alone what actually happened here (at least, without some serious reading-between-the-lines, as the two accounts appear to reflect entirely different universes), but I’m curious where (if at all) people disagree on these principles.
    - jariel 6y ago
      Don't yell fire in a crowded theatre ... But what if the theatre is actually on fire? Or what if you whisper something quietly and people still react like you screamed 'Fire!'? And that's the whole point: we're not worried about people arguing over most things. We're worried when they are arguing over truthful things that are sensitive, and often ideological. Like 'identity' etc.. The war is real. Hugely respected academics have had to come out and make public statements about it. They are not saying 'oh this is a non-issue' they are betting their public identities on it. I really don't much in the way of academics yelling 'fire' in theatres i.e. things that are meaningfully offensive on an academic level. I only see people people reacting to those they disagree with in oppressive ways.
      - zamfi 6y ago
        Yelling fire in a crowded theater is a metaphor. If the theater is on fire, the situation is obviously more ambiguous. > And that's the whole point: we're not worried about people arguing over most things. We're worried when they are arguing over truthful things that are sensitive, and often ideological. Like 'identity' etc.. I'm not worried about people arguing about anything, truthful or not, and I don't have a problem with respectful conversation around ideology, large-scale protest, or any other communicative action that respects individual humans. I am worried about harassment, sending death threats, suicide requests, showing up at someone's house uninvited, etc. Not many academics are doing this personally, but are they complicit in this harassment if they're tweeting out-of-context remarks to groups of followers who have engaged in this harassment in the past? At least, that's the complaint in piece I posted above, without endorsement, and I repeat that I do not know the facts in question there. (I am also worried about echo chambers that deceive people into holding beliefs through mere repetition, but that's another conversation.) > I only see people people reacting to those they disagree with in oppressive ways. You and me both -- isn't harassment one of these ways?
avs733 6y ago
To expand on the other commenter who posted the 'bullying' article I think the flipside of this idea is also important to remember: Harassment is not a criticism of ideas. I work in academia, there are good ideas and bad ideas. There are good and bad discussions of good and bad ideas. There are well formed and also poorly formed critiques. Rarely can you simply categorize something into only one category. All of these are separate from bad faith actors and asshole colleagues. My general rule is if someone feels the need to end their 'critique' by explicitly stating it is a criticism not harassment, its probably harassment. If it wasn't, the criticism would speak for itself and stand on its own. The simplified and mythicized narratives of how scholarship works and the increasing esotericism of some fields discourse leave them increasingly open to bad faith attacks. To the letter you posted, you can easily find signs of what I am talking about: >"First, if there’s an institutionalized rule that criticism of academic work is harassment, how would Critical Theory, which is entirely predicated on criticizing existing systems, have emerged? " This is a straw man, no such idea was proposed in the original article. Instead, what the original author did was draw clear bounded lines between critique and sicking the twitter verse on academics you disagree with and noting that Prof. Boghossian did the later and claimed it as the former. >"Ruth’s article criticizes my use of Twitter, but criticism of academic ideas should not be locked wholly behind the paywalls of scholarly journals because ideas coming out of the academy affect everybody. Beyond the academic merits of open inquiry and free discourse, the public has a right to know what’s happening in universities — especially in public universities like Portland State. One reason I use Twitter is to inform the public of what is going on in university classrooms and in what counts these days as academic scholarship." Subtle but critical in here is a shift from critiquing ideas in academia, in the first sentence, to this entirely different idea of 'revealing the truth' in the last one. If he was engaged in sincere critique, this paragraph wouldn't end the way it does. It is a transition from purporting to criticize ideas and engage in scholarly work to trying to shame universities for treating certain people's work as scholarship in the first place. Its gatekeeping as opposed to critique. In other words, reading this as an academic, this is weaponized and knowing bad faith that relies on the (often unfortunate) simplifications that academics have allowed to perpetuate about what is and is not scholarship. Put it this way, the original article only mentioned people by name once, and used their full name. The response used the original authors first name repeatedly. That is an intentional slight, especially when deployed against female academics, and the author knows it.

zamfi 6y ago

It’s worth reading the piece that inspired this one [0] too, through. [0] https://www.chronicle.com/article/when-academic-bullies-claim-the-mantle-of-free-speech https://www.chronicle.com/article/when-academic-bullies-clai...

tenkabuto 6y ago
> Academic freedom has been weaponized, cut loose from its traditional mooring in intellectual expertise (as has been argued by intellectuals expert in the subject, such as Robert Post and Joan Scott), Huh. This phrasing suggests to me that the response article (OP) is pretty on point, maybe even more than the author explicitly mentions: rather than there being ideologies that are beyond reproach or criticism, "experts" are not to be questioned.
- avs733 6y ago
  no...its saying exactly the opposite. questioning is good. claiming academic freedom to drive targeted Harassment of people you do not like is not criticism. The first article is talking about what is and is not criticism, it is not talking about who is and who is not allowed to perform critique. If you and I disagreed in a meeting, even if we had a serious argument, I'll accept that as critique. If I followed it up by convincing all our coworkers to write you emails telling you to kill yourself, that isn't criticism thats harassment.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    > If you and I disagreed in a meeting, even if we had a serious argument, I'll accept that as critique. If I followed it up by convincing all our coworkers to write you emails telling you to kill yourself, that isn't criticism thats harassment. The broader cancel culture debate, including here on HN, made me realize how few people actually understand that threats and harassment do not fall under the rubric of criticism. Similarly, many people seem to think it's only harassment if convicted in a court of law, and if the law doesn't bother to pursue cancellers then what they are doing must not be harassment. It seems that we free speech advocates are not doing a very good job of educating people about what is and isn't free speech, or at least I thought we had been doing a better job.
    - avs733 6y ago
      This 'misunderstanding' is an active effort. It is curated propaganda to provide a shield for those who engage in such tactics by playing the victim.
- zamfi 6y ago
  I’m not sure we’re interpreting that passage the same way, and I know nothing about this incident beyond these two articles, but I imagine most people involved would agree on these values: 1) “Academic freedom” should include the ability to speak truths that may be politically unpopular, regardless of format, and this includes critique of any academic content, ideologically-driven or not 2) Harassment or deliberate inducement of harassment, or actions that are likely to result in harassment, are not ok, and this includes both Twitter mobs doxxing and academic harassments These really parallel the whole “free speech” values: say whatever you want, but don’t yell fire in a crowded theater. In neither case should anyone be forced to listen to you if they don’t like what you say. It’s hard to tell from these two opinion pieces alone what actually happened here (at least, without some serious reading-between-the-lines, as the two accounts appear to reflect entirely different universes), but I’m curious where (if at all) people disagree on these principles.
  - jariel 6y ago
    Don't yell fire in a crowded theatre ... But what if the theatre is actually on fire? Or what if you whisper something quietly and people still react like you screamed 'Fire!'? And that's the whole point: we're not worried about people arguing over most things. We're worried when they are arguing over truthful things that are sensitive, and often ideological. Like 'identity' etc.. The war is real. Hugely respected academics have had to come out and make public statements about it. They are not saying 'oh this is a non-issue' they are betting their public identities on it. I really don't much in the way of academics yelling 'fire' in theatres i.e. things that are meaningfully offensive on an academic level. I only see people people reacting to those they disagree with in oppressive ways.
    - zamfi 6y ago
      Yelling fire in a crowded theater is a metaphor. If the theater is on fire, the situation is obviously more ambiguous. > And that's the whole point: we're not worried about people arguing over most things. We're worried when they are arguing over truthful things that are sensitive, and often ideological. Like 'identity' etc.. I'm not worried about people arguing about anything, truthful or not, and I don't have a problem with respectful conversation around ideology, large-scale protest, or any other communicative action that respects individual humans. I am worried about harassment, sending death threats, suicide requests, showing up at someone's house uninvited, etc. Not many academics are doing this personally, but are they complicit in this harassment if they're tweeting out-of-context remarks to groups of followers who have engaged in this harassment in the past? At least, that's the complaint in piece I posted above, without endorsement, and I repeat that I do not know the facts in question there. (I am also worried about echo chambers that deceive people into holding beliefs through mere repetition, but that's another conversation.) > I only see people people reacting to those they disagree with in oppressive ways. You and me both -- isn't harassment one of these ways?

avs733 6y ago

To expand on the other commenter who posted the 'bullying' article I think the flipside of this idea is also important to remember: Harassment is not a criticism of ideas. I work in academia, there are good ideas and bad ideas. There are good and bad discussions of good and bad ideas. There are well formed and also poorly formed critiques. Rarely can you simply categorize something into only one category. All of these are separate from bad faith actors and asshole colleagues. My general rule is if someone feels the need to end their 'critique' by explicitly stating it is a criticism not harassment, its probably harassment. If it wasn't, the criticism would speak for itself and stand on its own. The simplified and mythicized narratives of how scholarship works and the increasing esotericism of some fields discourse leave them increasingly open to bad faith attacks. To the letter you posted, you can easily find signs of what I am talking about: >"First, if there’s an institutionalized rule that criticism of academic work is harassment, how would Critical Theory, which is entirely predicated on criticizing existing systems, have emerged? " This is a straw man, no such idea was proposed in the original article. Instead, what the original author did was draw clear bounded lines between critique and sicking the twitter verse on academics you disagree with and noting that Prof. Boghossian did the later and claimed it as the former. >"Ruth’s article criticizes my use of Twitter, but criticism of academic ideas should not be locked wholly behind the paywalls of scholarly journals because ideas coming out of the academy affect everybody. Beyond the academic merits of open inquiry and free discourse, the public has a right to know what’s happening in universities — especially in public universities like Portland State. One reason I use Twitter is to inform the public of what is going on in university classrooms and in what counts these days as academic scholarship." Subtle but critical in here is a shift from critiquing ideas in academia, in the first sentence, to this entirely different idea of 'revealing the truth' in the last one. If he was engaged in sincere critique, this paragraph wouldn't end the way it does. It is a transition from purporting to criticize ideas and engage in scholarly work to trying to shame universities for treating certain people's work as scholarship in the first place. Its gatekeeping as opposed to critique. In other words, reading this as an academic, this is weaponized and knowing bad faith that relies on the (often unfortunate) simplifications that academics have allowed to perpetuate about what is and is not scholarship. Put it this way, the original article only mentioned people by name once, and used their full name. The response used the original authors first name repeatedly. That is an intentional slight, especially when deployed against female academics, and the author knows it.