10 ms·

Medical Student banished from UVA campus for questioning Microaggressions

99 points by dnag 5y ago

dsnr 5y ago
> On November 26, this suggestion became a mandate: The student was informed that he must be evaluated by psychological services before returning to classes. You know that something’s wrong when someone is forced to be psychologically evaluated for asking uncomfortable questions. This entire story looks like something straight out of a dystopia.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Yes - the story appears to be a perfect example of something that is Kafkaesque. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Kafkaesque https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Kafkaesque
- kenneth 5y ago
  Going to university in the USA these days sounds like an absolutely terrifying prospect, and doesn't sound very promising for the future of the country.
  - foldr 5y ago
    This incident is bad, but it's also important not to look back to some imagined golden age of perfect intellectual and academic freedom. Take say the famous case of Bertrand Russell being fired by CUNY for his views on sexuality and religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bertrand_Russell_Case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bertrand_Russell_Case Or some of the stuff that went on during the McCarthy era: https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loyaltyoath/schrecker.html https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loy... Free speech and academic freedom have always been and will always be under threat. It's a constant struggle.
  - meowfly 5y ago
    I went back to school to take a couple classes at a public school in a red state. It definitely has changed but it wasn't that bad. My observations around this: * Lots more platitudes. Nearly every teacher in the CS department had signs on their doors about being an inclusive zone or standing for social justice. Seems like it would have been easier to just make a big sign that says, "The CS department is inclusive and promotes equity." * Early in President Trump's tenure they designated an area as a safe-space. This is honestly the first actual safe-space I had run into, despite hearing about them endlessly in culture wars news. I personally don't mind a politics free zone. * I had to take a mandatory title ix training. It used words I don't normally bump into but have been targets for the right like "trigger warnings" and "microaggressions". I wrote the title ix coordinator (simply because it felt like a waste of time) and asked if I could skip it because I had already done 8 years of college without running afoul of school rules and she told me no. That was about it. So I'm not sure how endemic the problem is but my anecdata was it's not too much to fret over. My personal sense here is that the media likes to report these stories because they are "man bites dog" stories.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
    As long as you keep quiet about sensitive issues, you will be fine.
    - dsnr 5y ago
      There shouldn’t be any “sensitive” issues in a university context. These “universities” look more like re-education centers than educational institutions. All those “sensitive” issues are plain ideological ideas and some people want those ideas to prevail by suppressing all conversation around them.
      - dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
        I think the discussion about this already over, i.e. it's now a part of the social contract that we don't question certain things, not because they're true or false but because of social cost of challenging them. For example, we know that the distribution of certain psychological traits in both genders is a bit different, but discussing it - either in the social context or the academia - is more or less a taboo in order to protect the vulnerable, and in part also because of the expectations of desirable traits in today society [0]. For the same reason, nobody in the right mind would organize a study of IQ differences between races, and if someone was stupid enough, their professional life in the academia (and probably beyond) would be finished. In general, in the West any study of relationships between the aspect of the body (any inherent traits) and the mind/psyche is forbidden. A few years ago the Chinese published their famous study of facial traits of convinced criminals. [1] The result was that there were more variations from the mean among the convicts than the rest of the population. Of course everybody criticized the study as unethical and minority-reportesque. The only danger I see is that by effectively renouncing to analyze any links between the body and mind we might lose some important insights, and the vulnerable groups could also greatly benefit from discovering these. But the danger that the result of this kind of research will be used against us is not negligible, as the history shows. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/the-science-behind-why-so-many-successful-millionaires-are-psychopaths-and-why-it-doesnt-have-to-be-a-bad-thing.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/the-science-behind-why-so-ma... [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v2.pd https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v2.pd
- gnull 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatr... They did it in Soviet Union at some point to the intellectuals who questioned their ideology.
  - Glavnokoman 5y ago
    They do it everywhere when an ideology takes over the common sense. To intellectuals or not.
- somesortofsystm 5y ago
  Should we be allowing psychologists to gate-keep academia? Isn't this how universities become temples?
- silicon2401 5y ago
  The recent cultural trend towards radical liberalism is inherently dystopian. Fighting free speech, mandating psychological evaluation for questioning the main narrative. These are things that dictatorships and theocracies do
  - hellisothers 5y ago
    Is it necessarily radical liberalism that tends towards a dystopia? I was curious where this sentiment was coming from (I’ve read it elsewhere) and read some books on conservative philosophy (original post-enlightenment conservatism, not contemporary) and found it there too. It seemed like you could replace “radical liberalism” with “radical $ideology” including conservatism, the problem isn’t liberalism, it’s extremism.
    - silicon2401 5y ago
      That's a great point. My point was very specific, I didn't comment on whether or not other ideologies also lead to a dystopian end, or whether radical liberalism is the only one. It's probably academic/semantic/subjective. Very interesting to think about
not_knuth 5y ago
This is petty outrage material. If you're having a good day, don't read this. You'll miss nothing.
- jmeister 5y ago
  No, this is the illiberal left taking their tactics one level higher, to asking for psychological evaluation. It has caught the attention of many prominent free-speech activists in the country. Expect it to blow up further.
flyinglizard 5y ago
I’m afraid that when the pendulum of public perception inevitably swings away from this insanity, a lot of the social progress we’ve done on discourse and tolerance will be lost. If I’m reading this and saying “what these people are doing is evil, I’d like to affiliate with the opposite group of people”, I won’t have too many outlets that are not far right.
- kenneth 5y ago
  A big reason why the far-right grew is as a rejection of this insanity.
  - laurent92 5y ago
    I take the bus a lot in France and, in conversations I overhear, people don’t seem to mind being racist anymore, discretely but a bus is already quite public. And diverse. I don’t know whether I have a bias about seeing this trait, but I think 10 years ago, people would at least keep social restraint. Something has definitely snapped.
  - oceanghost 5y ago
    This is such an important point. You can't tell people they're irredeemable racists and expect them to vote for you.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Could it be the goal? Do those people try to be reasonable, or are they trying to disrupt the rest of society because, for example, they are bitter about it, have no hope, or hate the West’s evils so much that they’d rather take revenge on their own country, “for the good of humanity” (at least according to their ideology)? Which means, they are happy with pendulum swings, as long as it keeps us busy with aimless infighting, rather than being powerful and united in a war against, say, Koweit. At one point, you have to ask whether they are trying to be logical, or whether they hope to throw despair, illogism and unfairness in all layers of society, because of entrenched hate of something.
  - 5y ago
Majestic121 5y ago
This source seems a bit biased, so I tried to find an alternative one. I found the raw case here : https://casetext.com/case/bhattacharya-v-murray https://casetext.com/case/bhattacharya-v-murray To be honest, the raw case is even worse than the article. Little excerpt : > During Bhattacharya and Peterson's one-hour meeting, Peterson "barely mentioned" Bhattacharya's questions and comments at the panel discussion. Dkt. 33 ¶ 73. Instead, Peterson attempted to determine Bhattacharya's "views on various social and political issues—including sexual assault, affirmative action, and the election of President Trump." Id.
Causality1 5y ago
This is why I'm glad I went to a small college with essentially zero extracurricular activity. We went to class, maybe hung out on the weekend, and that was it. No panels, no presentations, nothing. Not once was I ever screamed at by an angry student or handed any sort of flyer or pamphlet.
cwwc 5y ago
I so often wonder with pieces like this: what am I missing? I mean, it’s hard to believe this was so one-sided and that he was a little angel through it all. It could be, I suppose. And I am outraged if it is. But the question that keeps nagging me... is it?
- layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
  Think about how your comment would sit if it was made on a sexual assault case.
- rincebrain 5y ago
  It's perfectly possible that he was an obnoxious asshole in various ways through it all _and_ they were unreasonable in responding to him. It's also quite possible for a university to act completely unreasonably in a conspiratorial way based on a culture of believing they don't need to obey the laws or statutes. (My university had a famous scandal a number of years ago where the person in charge of handling student sexual assault allegations simultaneously acknowledged in writing the legal obligation to report cases of possible danger to the community publicly (the allegation was of a group committing sexual assault regularly at parties) and that they weren't going to do it, after years of a reputation of covering up anyone foolish enough to report it to them, and said writing got leaked to the press. ...despite the massive public fallout from this at the time, the institutional result was to found a new org to handle sexual assault cases...and put the aforementioned official as the head of it.)
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  The judges ruling (allowing the trial to go ahead) says that the university claims that he made threats on web forums. They have never provided the proof to him or the judge. These alleged threats were the basis for the banning from campus, but not the suspension. The claim is that they have been made after the suspension. A lawsuit should bring these into the air.
- somesortofsystm 5y ago
  What you are missing, is that totalitarian-authoritarianism is a real, legit transmissible mental disease, and those who have it can rarely detect it in others.
maxehmookau 5y ago
I'm just here for the nuanced comments.
layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
As a European I must say, American universities are weird places...
- curtisblaine 5y ago
  Do you consider UK Europe? https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/feb/02/goldsmiths-comedian-kate-smurthwaite-free-speech-show-feminist-campaigners https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/feb/02/goldsmiths-c...
  - layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
    No. They're like a mini-USA sans guns.
thinkingemote 5y ago
Let's pre-empt the inevitable sub-thread: "This is a private educational establishment and they can do what they want. It is not censorship." and "If you have a problem with this, just start your own medical university".
- huitzitziltzin 5y ago
  The University of Virginia is a public institution so I’d imagine you would not see that argument.
  - thinkingemote 5y ago
    I imagine they will settle with him to avoid the immense damage this would leave them. It would also avoid the case law precedent.
    - kenneth 5y ago
      I would love to see them pay handsomely for this and set some case law precedent.
  - jhanschoo 5y ago
    Indeed, UVA being a public institution is the only reason why such legal recourse was possible in the first place.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't add the very thing you're objecting to.
kenneth 5y ago
Since apparently reason.com gets flagged — I submitted the original lawsuit text which cannot possibly be a biased source. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26737077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26737077
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cedilla 5y ago
  The reason why I personally flagged this story is not because it is outrage porn – I think it obviously is, but that's not why I flagged it. I flagged it because it misrepresented the very source you now linked. Quote: > For the purposes of ruling on Defendants' motion to dismiss, the Court accepts as true the following allegations set forth in the amended complaint and attached exhibits. This court decision did not side with the plaintiff, nor has the court spend a second thinking about whether his allegations are or could be true. A motion to dismiss simply says "Hey, even if we take everything at face value here, this case can't win". The article misrepresents this as the court siding with the plaintiff. That did not happen. I can't know if that's an honest misunderstanding or deception; but in any case it shows that the author did not understand the court decision, as he evidently didn't take into account the premise I quoted above.
  - imbnwa 5y ago
    The very fact that this comment has to engage in a theatre of objectivity (I can't know if that's an honest misunderstanding or deception; the post in flagged on some technicality despite intuition) when it is very clear this post is outrage porn is PRECISELY why micro-aggressions are a problem without fully stating it: coded language. Once coded language is on the table, there is absolutely no statement that can be decided as misunderstanding or deception, and thus the gaslighting retort of "you, the accuser, must be misunderstanding/projecting", but also, the prevalent fear amongst certain non-Black males that "people will just make something up to get me"/"I will be unprotected". There's no satisfactory resolution to coded language in the legal domain because it is a purely ethical problem. The real problem in America isn't "them/the other side", its that no one, as far as I can tell, actually values or can actually imagine a world where we can and do live together without hegemony. I'm very reminded of Neil DeGrasse Tyson arguing with Rogan on JRE about tourist litter in the Himalayas: you either value ending and cleaning-up the pollution, and all other solutions flow from this, or you don't. But everyone's just hand-waving the elephant in the room.
Gatsky 5y ago
I listened to the audio. He was a bit tactless, with some barely concealed contempt for the entire concept of microaggressions. I consider such contempt justified mind you. The thing to know is that Academics take themselves very seriously, and it is a foolish endeavour to cast doubt on their status.
cedilla 5y ago
This story reads a bit too outrageous. It's like a plot from a film like "God is Not Dead", with social justice warriors standing in for militant atheists. This should raise a few eyebrows with any critical reader. And indeed, the article simply completely sides with the student and takes every allegation as already proven – going so far as discrediting the university's defence of what happened as "gaslighting". For all we learn from the article, the student may have been increasingly hostile to a point that warranted suspension. Siding so completely with the student against the university seems to be very premature. Unfortunately, the author seems to suffer from a critical misunderstanding about what a motion to dismiss is and isn't. A motion to dismiss claims that a case can't be won even under the assumption that everything alleged is true. That's why the opinion takes everything the student claims at face value – because that's the bar for a motion to dismiss. The court did not decide that these events were factual; just that if they all were that the case has to go on. I'm not commenting on what happened. I don't know. But the article feels quite manipulative, even under the assumption that the misrepresentation of the court's opinion is an honest mistake, this article tries to enrage the reader. Not the kind of content I would have hoped to see under a brand like "reason.com".
- grammarprofess 5y ago
  The audio is available on youtube. It's pretty much what is written here, the kid just brought up very high quality questions
  - curtisblaine 5y ago
    I can't find it, could you please provide a link?
    - grammarprofess 5y ago
      https://m.soundcloud.com/user-381804527/asac https://m.soundcloud.com/user-381804527/asac
      - curtisblaine 5y ago
yotamoron 5y ago
George Carlin says it best (as usual...): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9n8Xp8DWf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9n8Xp8DWf8 He also said: "Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners".
grammarprofess 5y ago
I remember when thid unfolded, glad it's going to court
ObnoxiousProxy 5y ago
Why did this submission get flagged?
underseacables 5y ago
I’ve read the lawsuit and it’s absolutely nuts. The student is being punished for asking reasonable questions that made the recipient “uncomfortable.” UVA needs to lose this case badly because their reaction has gone far beyond normal discourse and into suppression of reasonable speech. Just because you don’t like a question does not mean you can kill the messenger.
morekozhambu 5y ago
He seems to be the victim of MacroAggression.
dang 5y ago
Also discussed here: A movement that cannot be criticized cannot achieve positive goals - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26718823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26718823 - April 2021 (117 comments)
andyxor 5y ago
the lawsuit is worth reading, hopefully it sets a precedent https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/microagressions.pdf https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/mi...
pmdulaney 5y ago
Why is it that conservatives like myself freely criticize as silly or insane the excesses of the Right (Jan 6, assertions that Covid-19 is a CIA PsyOp, Trump won the election) but the Left is so reluctant to be critical of its lunatic fringe? I think it is because bad actors on the left are both powerful and vindictive -- even as this story illustrates.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  I see (at least here) a fair number of people who self-identify as left criticizing the anti-free-speech tendencies of parts of the left...
  - pmdulaney 5y ago
    I am delighted to be corrected! May their number increase.

99 points by dnag 5y ago

dsnr 5y ago

> On November 26, this suggestion became a mandate: The student was informed that he must be evaluated by psychological services before returning to classes. You know that something’s wrong when someone is forced to be psychologically evaluated for asking uncomfortable questions. This entire story looks like something straight out of a dystopia.

lostlogin 5y ago
Yes - the story appears to be a perfect example of something that is Kafkaesque. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Kafkaesque https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Kafkaesque
kenneth 5y ago
Going to university in the USA these days sounds like an absolutely terrifying prospect, and doesn't sound very promising for the future of the country.
- foldr 5y ago
  This incident is bad, but it's also important not to look back to some imagined golden age of perfect intellectual and academic freedom. Take say the famous case of Bertrand Russell being fired by CUNY for his views on sexuality and religion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bertrand_Russell_Case https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bertrand_Russell_Case Or some of the stuff that went on during the McCarthy era: https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loyaltyoath/schrecker.html https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/uchistory/archives_exhibits/loy... Free speech and academic freedom have always been and will always be under threat. It's a constant struggle.
- meowfly 5y ago
  I went back to school to take a couple classes at a public school in a red state. It definitely has changed but it wasn't that bad. My observations around this: * Lots more platitudes. Nearly every teacher in the CS department had signs on their doors about being an inclusive zone or standing for social justice. Seems like it would have been easier to just make a big sign that says, "The CS department is inclusive and promotes equity." * Early in President Trump's tenure they designated an area as a safe-space. This is honestly the first actual safe-space I had run into, despite hearing about them endlessly in culture wars news. I personally don't mind a politics free zone. * I had to take a mandatory title ix training. It used words I don't normally bump into but have been targets for the right like "trigger warnings" and "microaggressions". I wrote the title ix coordinator (simply because it felt like a waste of time) and asked if I could skip it because I had already done 8 years of college without running afoul of school rules and she told me no. That was about it. So I'm not sure how endemic the problem is but my anecdata was it's not too much to fret over. My personal sense here is that the media likes to report these stories because they are "man bites dog" stories.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
  As long as you keep quiet about sensitive issues, you will be fine.
  - dsnr 5y ago
    There shouldn’t be any “sensitive” issues in a university context. These “universities” look more like re-education centers than educational institutions. All those “sensitive” issues are plain ideological ideas and some people want those ideas to prevail by suppressing all conversation around them.
    - dvfjsdhgfv 5y ago
      I think the discussion about this already over, i.e. it's now a part of the social contract that we don't question certain things, not because they're true or false but because of social cost of challenging them. For example, we know that the distribution of certain psychological traits in both genders is a bit different, but discussing it - either in the social context or the academia - is more or less a taboo in order to protect the vulnerable, and in part also because of the expectations of desirable traits in today society [0]. For the same reason, nobody in the right mind would organize a study of IQ differences between races, and if someone was stupid enough, their professional life in the academia (and probably beyond) would be finished. In general, in the West any study of relationships between the aspect of the body (any inherent traits) and the mind/psyche is forbidden. A few years ago the Chinese published their famous study of facial traits of convinced criminals. [1] The result was that there were more variations from the mean among the convicts than the rest of the population. Of course everybody criticized the study as unethical and minority-reportesque. The only danger I see is that by effectively renouncing to analyze any links between the body and mind we might lose some important insights, and the vulnerable groups could also greatly benefit from discovering these. But the danger that the result of this kind of research will be used against us is not negligible, as the history shows. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/the-science-behind-why-so-many-successful-millionaires-are-psychopaths-and-why-it-doesnt-have-to-be-a-bad-thing.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/08/the-science-behind-why-so-ma... [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v2.pd https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v2.pd
gnull 5y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatr... They did it in Soviet Union at some point to the intellectuals who questioned their ideology.
- Glavnokoman 5y ago
  They do it everywhere when an ideology takes over the common sense. To intellectuals or not.
somesortofsystm 5y ago
Should we be allowing psychologists to gate-keep academia? Isn't this how universities become temples?
silicon2401 5y ago
The recent cultural trend towards radical liberalism is inherently dystopian. Fighting free speech, mandating psychological evaluation for questioning the main narrative. These are things that dictatorships and theocracies do
- hellisothers 5y ago
  Is it necessarily radical liberalism that tends towards a dystopia? I was curious where this sentiment was coming from (I’ve read it elsewhere) and read some books on conservative philosophy (original post-enlightenment conservatism, not contemporary) and found it there too. It seemed like you could replace “radical liberalism” with “radical $ideology” including conservatism, the problem isn’t liberalism, it’s extremism.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    That's a great point. My point was very specific, I didn't comment on whether or not other ideologies also lead to a dystopian end, or whether radical liberalism is the only one. It's probably academic/semantic/subjective. Very interesting to think about

not_knuth 5y ago

This is petty outrage material. If you're having a good day, don't read this. You'll miss nothing.

jmeister 5y ago
No, this is the illiberal left taking their tactics one level higher, to asking for psychological evaluation. It has caught the attention of many prominent free-speech activists in the country. Expect it to blow up further.

flyinglizard 5y ago

I’m afraid that when the pendulum of public perception inevitably swings away from this insanity, a lot of the social progress we’ve done on discourse and tolerance will be lost. If I’m reading this and saying “what these people are doing is evil, I’d like to affiliate with the opposite group of people”, I won’t have too many outlets that are not far right.

kenneth 5y ago
A big reason why the far-right grew is as a rejection of this insanity.
- laurent92 5y ago
  I take the bus a lot in France and, in conversations I overhear, people don’t seem to mind being racist anymore, discretely but a bus is already quite public. And diverse. I don’t know whether I have a bias about seeing this trait, but I think 10 years ago, people would at least keep social restraint. Something has definitely snapped.
- oceanghost 5y ago
  This is such an important point. You can't tell people they're irredeemable racists and expect them to vote for you.
laurent92 5y ago
Could it be the goal? Do those people try to be reasonable, or are they trying to disrupt the rest of society because, for example, they are bitter about it, have no hope, or hate the West’s evils so much that they’d rather take revenge on their own country, “for the good of humanity” (at least according to their ideology)? Which means, they are happy with pendulum swings, as long as it keeps us busy with aimless infighting, rather than being powerful and united in a war against, say, Koweit. At one point, you have to ask whether they are trying to be logical, or whether they hope to throw despair, illogism and unfairness in all layers of society, because of entrenched hate of something.
- 5y ago

Majestic121 5y ago

This source seems a bit biased, so I tried to find an alternative one. I found the raw case here : https://casetext.com/case/bhattacharya-v-murray https://casetext.com/case/bhattacharya-v-murray To be honest, the raw case is even worse than the article. Little excerpt : > During Bhattacharya and Peterson's one-hour meeting, Peterson "barely mentioned" Bhattacharya's questions and comments at the panel discussion. Dkt. 33 ¶ 73. Instead, Peterson attempted to determine Bhattacharya's "views on various social and political issues—including sexual assault, affirmative action, and the election of President Trump." Id.

Causality1 5y ago

This is why I'm glad I went to a small college with essentially zero extracurricular activity. We went to class, maybe hung out on the weekend, and that was it. No panels, no presentations, nothing. Not once was I ever screamed at by an angry student or handed any sort of flyer or pamphlet.

cwwc 5y ago

I so often wonder with pieces like this: what am I missing? I mean, it’s hard to believe this was so one-sided and that he was a little angel through it all. It could be, I suppose. And I am outraged if it is. But the question that keeps nagging me... is it?

layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
Think about how your comment would sit if it was made on a sexual assault case.
rincebrain 5y ago
It's perfectly possible that he was an obnoxious asshole in various ways through it all _and_ they were unreasonable in responding to him. It's also quite possible for a university to act completely unreasonably in a conspiratorial way based on a culture of believing they don't need to obey the laws or statutes. (My university had a famous scandal a number of years ago where the person in charge of handling student sexual assault allegations simultaneously acknowledged in writing the legal obligation to report cases of possible danger to the community publicly (the allegation was of a group committing sexual assault regularly at parties) and that they weren't going to do it, after years of a reputation of covering up anyone foolish enough to report it to them, and said writing got leaked to the press. ...despite the massive public fallout from this at the time, the institutional result was to found a new org to handle sexual assault cases...and put the aforementioned official as the head of it.)
thinkingemote 5y ago
The judges ruling (allowing the trial to go ahead) says that the university claims that he made threats on web forums. They have never provided the proof to him or the judge. These alleged threats were the basis for the banning from campus, but not the suspension. The claim is that they have been made after the suspension. A lawsuit should bring these into the air.
somesortofsystm 5y ago
What you are missing, is that totalitarian-authoritarianism is a real, legit transmissible mental disease, and those who have it can rarely detect it in others.

maxehmookau 5y ago

I'm just here for the nuanced comments.

layoutIfNeeded 5y ago

As a European I must say, American universities are weird places...

curtisblaine 5y ago
Do you consider UK Europe? https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/feb/02/goldsmiths-comedian-kate-smurthwaite-free-speech-show-feminist-campaigners https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/feb/02/goldsmiths-c...
- layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
  No. They're like a mini-USA sans guns.

thinkingemote 5y ago

Let's pre-empt the inevitable sub-thread: "This is a private educational establishment and they can do what they want. It is not censorship." and "If you have a problem with this, just start your own medical university".

huitzitziltzin 5y ago
The University of Virginia is a public institution so I’d imagine you would not see that argument.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  I imagine they will settle with him to avoid the immense damage this would leave them. It would also avoid the case law precedent.
  - kenneth 5y ago
    I would love to see them pay handsomely for this and set some case law precedent.
- jhanschoo 5y ago
  Indeed, UVA being a public institution is the only reason why such legal recourse was possible in the first place.
dang 5y ago
Please don't add the very thing you're objecting to.

kenneth 5y ago

Since apparently reason.com gets flagged — I submitted the original lawsuit text which cannot possibly be a biased source. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26737077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26737077

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cedilla 5y ago
The reason why I personally flagged this story is not because it is outrage porn – I think it obviously is, but that's not why I flagged it. I flagged it because it misrepresented the very source you now linked. Quote: > For the purposes of ruling on Defendants' motion to dismiss, the Court accepts as true the following allegations set forth in the amended complaint and attached exhibits. This court decision did not side with the plaintiff, nor has the court spend a second thinking about whether his allegations are or could be true. A motion to dismiss simply says "Hey, even if we take everything at face value here, this case can't win". The article misrepresents this as the court siding with the plaintiff. That did not happen. I can't know if that's an honest misunderstanding or deception; but in any case it shows that the author did not understand the court decision, as he evidently didn't take into account the premise I quoted above.
- imbnwa 5y ago
  The very fact that this comment has to engage in a theatre of objectivity (I can't know if that's an honest misunderstanding or deception; the post in flagged on some technicality despite intuition) when it is very clear this post is outrage porn is PRECISELY why micro-aggressions are a problem without fully stating it: coded language. Once coded language is on the table, there is absolutely no statement that can be decided as misunderstanding or deception, and thus the gaslighting retort of "you, the accuser, must be misunderstanding/projecting", but also, the prevalent fear amongst certain non-Black males that "people will just make something up to get me"/"I will be unprotected". There's no satisfactory resolution to coded language in the legal domain because it is a purely ethical problem. The real problem in America isn't "them/the other side", its that no one, as far as I can tell, actually values or can actually imagine a world where we can and do live together without hegemony. I'm very reminded of Neil DeGrasse Tyson arguing with Rogan on JRE about tourist litter in the Himalayas: you either value ending and cleaning-up the pollution, and all other solutions flow from this, or you don't. But everyone's just hand-waving the elephant in the room.

Gatsky 5y ago

I listened to the audio. He was a bit tactless, with some barely concealed contempt for the entire concept of microaggressions. I consider such contempt justified mind you. The thing to know is that Academics take themselves very seriously, and it is a foolish endeavour to cast doubt on their status.

cedilla 5y ago

This story reads a bit too outrageous. It's like a plot from a film like "God is Not Dead", with social justice warriors standing in for militant atheists. This should raise a few eyebrows with any critical reader. And indeed, the article simply completely sides with the student and takes every allegation as already proven – going so far as discrediting the university's defence of what happened as "gaslighting". For all we learn from the article, the student may have been increasingly hostile to a point that warranted suspension. Siding so completely with the student against the university seems to be very premature. Unfortunately, the author seems to suffer from a critical misunderstanding about what a motion to dismiss is and isn't. A motion to dismiss claims that a case can't be won even under the assumption that everything alleged is true. That's why the opinion takes everything the student claims at face value – because that's the bar for a motion to dismiss. The court did not decide that these events were factual; just that if they all were that the case has to go on. I'm not commenting on what happened. I don't know. But the article feels quite manipulative, even under the assumption that the misrepresentation of the court's opinion is an honest mistake, this article tries to enrage the reader. Not the kind of content I would have hoped to see under a brand like "reason.com".

grammarprofess 5y ago
The audio is available on youtube. It's pretty much what is written here, the kid just brought up very high quality questions
- curtisblaine 5y ago
  I can't find it, could you please provide a link?
  - grammarprofess 5y ago
    https://m.soundcloud.com/user-381804527/asac https://m.soundcloud.com/user-381804527/asac
    - curtisblaine 5y ago

yotamoron 5y ago

George Carlin says it best (as usual...): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9n8Xp8DWf8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9n8Xp8DWf8 He also said: "Political correctness is fascism pretending to be manners".

grammarprofess 5y ago

I remember when thid unfolded, glad it's going to court

ObnoxiousProxy 5y ago

Why did this submission get flagged?

underseacables 5y ago

I’ve read the lawsuit and it’s absolutely nuts. The student is being punished for asking reasonable questions that made the recipient “uncomfortable.” UVA needs to lose this case badly because their reaction has gone far beyond normal discourse and into suppression of reasonable speech. Just because you don’t like a question does not mean you can kill the messenger.

morekozhambu 5y ago

He seems to be the victim of MacroAggression.

dang 5y ago

Also discussed here: A movement that cannot be criticized cannot achieve positive goals - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26718823 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26718823 - April 2021 (117 comments)

andyxor 5y ago

the lawsuit is worth reading, hopefully it sets a precedent https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/microagressions.pdf https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/mi...

pmdulaney 5y ago

Why is it that conservatives like myself freely criticize as silly or insane the excesses of the Right (Jan 6, assertions that Covid-19 is a CIA PsyOp, Trump won the election) but the Left is so reluctant to be critical of its lunatic fringe? I think it is because bad actors on the left are both powerful and vindictive -- even as this story illustrates.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
I see (at least here) a fair number of people who self-identify as left criticizing the anti-free-speech tendencies of parts of the left...
- pmdulaney 5y ago
  I am delighted to be corrected! May their number increase.