5 ms·

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 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago
As long as you keep quiet about sensitive issues, you will be fine.
- dsnr 6y 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 6y 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

foldr 6y 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 6y 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 6y ago

As long as you keep quiet about sensitive issues, you will be fine.

dsnr 6y 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 6y 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