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My university sacrificed ideas for ideology, so today I quit

• rossdavidh 5y ago
  Dismaying if true...but I would be curious to hear from anyone who knows more about the situation, especially if they are in attendance at Portland State University. Any HN readers out there who fit that description? Does this sound like an accurate depiction of Portland State, in your experience?
  • rvanlaar 5y ago
    I've been following the situation around Peter for a few years now. Here's a documentary that touches on the panel with James Damoore that he mentions. He was also a member of the Grievance Studies Affair[1]. They got a chapter from Mein Kampf published, rewritten in a feminist manner. I think that shows how rigorous the gender studies field is in practice. He was indeed reprimanded for social experiments on people. Then again, how come a university isn't reacting when its personnel is spit upon and finds feces in front of their office door. You might remember the moral outrage on a noose that was found in the garage of a black racing driver[2]. It's the asymmetry that is the problem. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nascar-releases-photo-noose-found-bubba-wallace-s-garage-n1232131 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/nascar-releases-photo-n...
    • bradlys 5y ago
      If you think poop at a door and being spit on is the equivalent of centuries of built on racism - you got some thinking to do.
• trentnix 5y ago
  Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. They have been taught the magnitude of their outrage makes them righteous. And their outrage is never satiated. These people are toxic and sometimes evil. They'll eventually come for you too no matter how much you generally agree with them. Some of them are certainly sincere. But as Milton Friedman once said, "sincerity is an overrated virtue". The damage they cause is the same irrespective of how sincere they might be.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • CrazyPyroLinux 5y ago
    And as Thomas Sowell said, "The problem isn't even that Johnny can't think. The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is; he confuses it with feeling."
    • brodouevencode 5y ago
      My other favorite Sowell: "Intellect is not wisdom." My hope is that Sowell's work will see a groundswell of support and he'll finally be appreciated for what he has contributed. My fear is that we won't be on this earth when it happens.
      • leephillips 5y ago
        Then one of his other famous quotes will apply: “there are only two ways of telling the complete truth — anonymously and posthumously.”
      • blacktriangle 5y ago
        Hilariously from the pov of this forum, Sowell is pretty much a hero of the right wing, having been formally trained as a Marxist at UofChicago only to reason his way out of that position back to sanity and then make a career of trying to educate the rest of the world to do the same.
        • TMWNN 5y ago
          >Hilariously from the pov of this forum, Sowell is pretty much a hero of the right wing, having been formally trained as a Marxist at UofChicago only to reason his way out of that position back to sanity and then make a career of trying to educate the rest of the world to do the same. A big contributor to said reasoning out was his observing the antics of late-1960s black Cornell students (mostly admitted via affirmative action and, Sowell said, unqualified for the university's rigors), their takeover of university buildings, and their justifying doing so by claiming various outrages against themselves that were foreign to the day-to-day life that Sowell, a fellow Cornellian and Ithaca resident, experienced.
• chrjxnandns 5y ago
  Reading through this guys Twitter feed makes me happy he no longer has a platform at a university
• vjust 5y ago
  I think university departments that teach Philosophy, esp where edgy ideas are discussed should have some protection where the teacher is not harassed. Some of his experimental papers where he talks of "dog rape" were perhaps borne out of his outrage at his situation - I am not sure if they are wise decisions on his part - instead seen as extreme measures to prove a point. A liberal college by definition should allow diversity of opinion. A literal interpretation of the word "liberal college" reflects the reality that many places are liberal bubbles of thought, where there won't be a safe space for researchers to pick apart and look closely at conservative views of a subject. It's the sad reality that the authorities are not remotely ready to be proven wrong - the anti-thesis of rational inquiry in an educational setting. Outrage Politics has pervaded everything. But his outrage is real and maybe justified, where he seems to be the victim (being 'coached' i.e. akin to a PIP )
  • joshuaissac 5y ago
    > A literal interpretation of the word "liberal college" reflects the reality that many places are liberal bubbles of thought, where there won't be a safe space for researchers to pick apart and look closely at conservative views of a subject Isn't that the opposite of what he is complaining about? He criticised illiberalism and picked apart a subject in an unorthodox way, which resulted in his critics harassing him. There were not any liberal bubbles/safe spaces that could protect him from the harassers.
    • orestarod 5y ago
      Liberal as in "liberal" with the contemporary meaning, as understood in US culture, not as allowing liberty of thought.
  • dandare 5y ago
    > Some of his experimental papers where he talks of "dog rape" were perhaps borne out of his outrage at his situation You may have misunderstood the whole Grievance Studies affair. The papers were not experimental, they were deliberately and visibly fake in order to point out the ridiculousness of the whole field.
• AbjectFailure 5y ago
  Are HN readers ever going to tire of this schtick?
• gedy 5y ago
  Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who would be pleased by his resignation purely based on his gender and skin color, no matter his reasons.
  • brian_herman 5y ago
    Yes, when I was going to school one of my teachers said political correctness is the new facism. And with the actions that people are taking now with the destruction of statues in the US by erasing history. And with the resignation of this great man. I realise that that teacher was completely right in his depiction of what political correctness has turned into, cancel culture.
    • vjust 5y ago
      True there. By example, all germans of a certain generation paid a price after Hitler's crimes, unjustly or not. Racism and other injustices in the system have been perpetrated for centuries. When the tide turns, there is a blanket application of outrage on everyone, regardless of involvement. There was a time when any act by a colored person was subject to abuse by authorities (and indirectly by a silent majority). The blacks couldn't do a thing right - if they weren't being a slave, under that system. The same yardstick is being applied now on the other side - blindly. I am not for one moment saying revenge is OK or anything is justified.. its just the nature of mobs. We had an (orderly) mob rule (masquerading as the rule of law) over blacks then, and we have a kind of a mob rule now (the beginnings of ..) . Its too much to ask a mob to analyze.
    • bigbillheck 5y ago
      He submitted fraudulent research, Brian.
      • bmn__ 5y ago
        He did so with a certain motive, Bill. You can't just look at the end result of a socially proscribed action or crime, the motive is important. Examine this: why do we sanction research fraud? Because we want to discourage people from abusing the process to gain a personal advantage, like having an academic title that confers material wealth and social status without putting the corresponding work in. Having fake magisters in our midst dilutes the value of real magisters and undermines the concept of trust in our society as a whole. Was that Boghossian's plan? No, he did not do that to advance the career. He did it to expose the anti-scientific ideology through the journals of the illiberal elements of culture, which in my view is a positive idea. I understand the argument that disrupting an institution to make a point is a bad thing, c.f. <http://enwp.org/WP:POINT http://enwp.org/WP:POINT>. I assume he came to the conclusion that mere speech would not achieve the same result and risked a small harm to prevent a greater harm.
• seibelj 5y ago
  There are some subjects that require lots of capital equipment to properly learn, like chemistry. But the majority of subjects like English, Computer Science, philosophy, etc. do not need anything more than knowledge, discussion, and a laptop to properly learn. Companies should start hiring based on aptitude rather than degrees. Most roles don’t need a degree. Students can learn the ability to think and reason without an insane amount of money and time spent at these indoctrination factories. People say, “But what about the social experience?” It seems to me that creating groups and meeting up has never been easier with the internet. If people can online date than the stigma of meeting in person after coordinating online can be lost too. Overall I think universities through their neverending price hikes, focus on grievance over education, and the lack of actual teaching is sowing the seeds of their irrelevancy.
  • OneEyedRobot 5y ago
    >Companies should start hiring based on aptitude rather than degrees. Most roles don’t need a degree. Students can learn the ability to think and reason without an insane amount of money and time spent at these indoctrination factories. A not unreasonable statement. Companies tend to be too lazy to bring in bright high school students and run a proper training systems, but you can certainly push for certification programs without degrees like the California Bar Exam. Given the amount of OJT (self-taught) I did at first plus the real lack of value of college, I'd have to say that in my case the degrees and time spent were of no value.
• CabSauce 5y ago
  Whoa.... Pretty big left turn from education free speech to "I was accused of stuff". It seems like this grandstanding might really be about the latter. Edit: Downvotes for expressing an opinion contrary to the thread. Very fitting.
  • vetinari 5y ago
    If it was the latter, there would be criminal investigation and he officially would know, what he is accused of. But by putting that into question in Title IX investigation, it is about destroying credibility. Nobody is accusing him of anything, but a slanderous thought is being put into minds of his students.
    • CabSauce 5y ago
      According to him. And even if that were true. So what? The university should investigate claims. They seemed to find that he shouldn't be fired based on the findings. What's the problem? He's just whining. And now he's trying to get a bigger stage.
      • vetinari 5y ago
        We have due process for a reason, and part of it is an investigation, that has to meet certain standard of evidence, without committing another crimes in the process. Witch or heretic burning is a terrible part of a human history, that should never repeat again.
  • elefanten 5y ago
    I didn’t vote, but the accusations part was from years ago and described as resolved / ruled on. Not a likely catalyst for the recent departure.
    • CabSauce 5y ago
      I'm not sure why he's quitting then. That's exactly what he brought up in his resignation blog post.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• badRNG 5y ago
  Boghossian is well-known for Sokal Hoaxes where he submits bogus papers to hundreds of journals (where it seems only obscure open access journals seem to actually publish) to discredit "feminism" and "the left" when they get published. The work is largely in the same vein as what you'll see out of Project Veritas. He had a large following in the "anti-PC" and "anti-SJW" online subculture a few years back. It's been a long time since I've seen that name, interesting that I'm seeing it now where "PC" and "SJW" are largely swapped out with "woke" in discourse.
  • Mizza 5y ago
    Alan Sokal is well known for the Sokal Affair, which happened in the 90s, they copied the methodology. The media called it "Sokal Squared", which is a dumb name.
  • CodeGlitch 5y ago
    > submits bogus papers to obscure open access channels to discredit "feminism" and "the left" when they get published. I think you missed the point. > The work is largely in the same vein as what you'll see out of Project Veritas. I'm not sure what you're point is here? > "PC" and "SJW" are largely swapped out with "woke" in discourse. Again - not sure what point you are trying to make here. Words and meanings change over time.
    • badRNG 5y ago
      >I think you missed the point. >I'm not sure what you're point is here? The point is that Boghossian has built his brand over the past decade as an "anti-SJW" thought-leader and has used methods like the Sokal hoax to create stories that seem scandalous on the surface, and fall somewhere on the spectrum of dishonesty upon closer inspection, like Project Veritas often does (e.g. getting one of hundreds of your submissions published in an obscure open access journal doesn't prove what your readers think it proves on the surface.) >Again - not sure what point you are trying to make here. Words and meanings change over time. PC and SJW fell out of favor as time went on. The dishonesty in the discourse in the so-called "anti-PC" crowd around trigger warnings, "safe spaces", and gay rights is plainly obvious at this point, to the degree that it's hard to be taken seriously using these talking points, and terms like "PC" and "SJW" fell out of fashion accordingly. The discourse around so-called "wokeness" seems to also suffer from some of the same issues, though it may take time for that to become as obvious as it is now with the former.
• padastra 5y ago
  Unfortunately, I see this same trend happening on HN too. Every post about an accomplishment, a novel business, a new approach, is filled with comments on the inadequacies of social justice and woe-is-mes.
  • Anon4Now 5y ago
    Yep. That's why you were downvoted.
  • badRNG 5y ago
    Can you provide an example?
  • notacoward 5y ago
    From one extreme, everything appears to be at the other. The highest-ranked comment on this story right now is an utterly predictable concurrence with the article's claim that students are being taught to "mimic the moral certainty of ideologues" and it even quotes Milton Friedman to banish any uncertainty about where the commenter is coming from. To you it might seem like HN is dominated by wokeness. To me it seems quite otherwise. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
  • angelzen 5y ago
    Every HN comment section has a different audience than the next. My hypothesis is that a large chunk of the audience of a given article is people that are irked by the title and join in to express their discontent. This explains the 'top comment is the antithesis of the article' phenomenon.
• Mizza 5y ago
  Weird to compare Occupy Wall Street activists to flat-Earthers and climate change deniers in the opening. If you've heard this guy's name before, it's probably from this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair
  • treeman79 5y ago
    Occupy Wall Street had various efforts to levitate buildings using mental powers.
  • leephillips 5y ago
    The opening absolutely does not “compare Occupy Wall Street activists to flat-Earthers and climate change deniers” in any way, even remotely.
    • Mizza 5y ago
      "I’ve invited a wide range of guest lecturers to address my classes, from Flat-Earthers to Christian apologists to global climate skeptics to Occupy Wall Street advocates. I’m proud of my work. I invited those speakers not because I agreed with their worldviews, but primarily because I didn’t."
      • leephillips 5y ago
        Yes, thank you, I did manage to find the words. The quote you reproduced does not “compare Occupy Wall Street activists to flat-Earthers and climate change deniers” in any way, even remotely.
        • Mizza 5y ago
          Of course it does. It's an ancient rhetorical trick. I could say, "famous world leaders like Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Pol Pot and Barack Obama." It's technically true, but it implies a second categorization which is false.
• fallingknife 5y ago
  The university system has turned into some combination of a credentialing racket, an indoctrination camp, and a country club. The sooner the whole thing collapses under its own weight the better.
  • daveslash 5y ago
    Re >> credentialing racket - I agree. This is an aspect of higher education that's made me sad for some time. I've seen too many college-aged kids who's perception of University is that it's simply the way "to get a good job with good pay". I've known the engineers who gripe about taking a history class, or history students who gripe about taking a math class, etc... Not everyone, but more than I'd hope.
  • silexia 5y ago
    Excellent point! The problem is that systems like this that received government funding never die... Too many politicians support them in return for votes. My kids will be doing a combination of apprenticeships and online learning instead of universities in the US.
• dreen 5y ago
  In many universities in eastern europe, Philosophy and Logic is a required subject regardless of your major (and so was some form of PE). At least it was when I briefly studied there a decade ago. I think its great but it requires you not to look at university education as a product sold in exchange for better shot at jobs, but as a form of bettering yourself. This goes very much against how western universities are run (where I also studied).
  • the_third_wave 5y ago
    It was mandatory when I studied at Wageningen University (an agricultural university in the Netherlands) in the 90's, the subject was called 'wetenschapsfilosofie' (philosophy of science). It was not taken seriously by most students since the way the subject was taught and tested was not very inspiring, to pass the test it seemed to be enough to intersperse dense prose with the names of some well-known philosophers - Popper being the king here.
• imback 5y ago
  Funny how this post got flagged in half an hour.
  • kvee 5y ago
    I am curious to understand - why was it flagged?
    • dekhn 5y ago
      there's a bunch of liberal progressives on HN who flag stuff like this.
      • AustinDev 5y ago
        I prefer the term 'illiberal progressives' as it does a good job of explaining their position and doesn't confuse them with 'classical liberals'.
      • codezero 5y ago
        I wonder if it's someone else. I'm a liberal progressive and found this story interesting and worth the read.
        • dekhn 5y ago
          Probably. I don't think all progressive liberals downvote things like this.
      • MrZongle2 5y ago
        There's nothing "liberal" or "progressive" about that kind of activity, though. I'd choose another term, but those seem to all be used (and abused) by those kind of people when they talk about their ideological opponents.
        • dekhn 5y ago
          Within the unversity cluster that Boghossian worked, this activity is predominantly progressive liberal because that describes the makeup of the campus. There is a very different orthodoxy if you visit conservative colleges.
• bandyaboot 5y ago
  I feel compelled to point out that the outrage regarding “human experimentation” was nearly universal here when it was researchers making intentionally bad commits to the Linux code base.
  • vjust 5y ago
    Not sure if I understand you completely, but I can't help but say bad commits don't necessarily get merged into the trunk / master / main.
    • CodeGlitch 5y ago
      > master Careful there - this word is now criminal. /s
      • andrei_says_ 5y ago
        Of course it’s not criminal and you know it. It’s just bad taste to keep using it in the context of slavery, segregation and ongoing institutionalized oppression. And, you can keep using it. All that changed was the default on GitHub. “main” is a better term for a main branch anyway. Inconvenience is not criminalization.
        • teawrecks 5y ago
          I don't think that guy had any reason to point out the "master" thing, but now that we're down here, I don't think that version control has any context of slavery, segregation, or ongoing institutionalized oppression. Glad to be proven wrong though. I get abandoning master/slave terminology, but on its own the word "master" has nothing to do with slavery. In general, I get being sensitive towoard ongoing social injustice, but on the other hand I want to be careful not to fall victim to a 4chan psyop baiting people into irrational levels of "wokeness". My workplace recently recommended against using the terms "tipping point" and "chop chop" without giving any context. I had to google them to find out why they were problematic. Turns out that "chop chop" and "chopstick" have the same (possibly insensitive) origin. But I don't know what else to call a chopstick! Luckily they didn't ban it...for now... I'm not saying this whole "master" thing was "masterminded" by anyone, but if I were a troll with nothing better to do but "own the libs", I would spend my time coming up with ways to cancel random things by linking them to racist pasts. Which would be pretty easy because, turns out, everything that existed 100+ years ago probably had a run-in with overt racism.
• orwin 5y ago
  Ok, i thought this was overblown, i did not know that this was as extreme as this. On the other hand, i think it was latent. It seems to be as extreme as Baudrillard postulated, years ago. So i guess victory for the postmodernists, if their theory could predict that.
• da39a3ee 5y ago
  Moderators: would you mind taking this opportunity to explain to us what it means when we see "[flagged]" in a title? Is it an automated title edit triggered by many people clicking the "flag" link? Or does it show that a moderator reviewed the article and deemed it inappropriate for HN? Or something else?
  • oolonthegreat 5y ago
    FAQ says: What does [flagged] mean? It means that users flagged a post as breaking the guidelines or otherwise not belonging on Hacker News. Moderators sometimes also add [flagged] (though not usually on submissions), and sometimes turn flags off when they are unfair. so I guess it could be either?
    • CodeGlitch 5y ago
      I'm struggling to see which ones of those it fits into: * breaking the guidelines: > On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. > Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic. "Most stories about politics" - perhaps this one? Although there are plenty of "political" stories that don't get flagged. This definitely won't get covered on TV.
      • brodouevencode 5y ago
        The politics-is-off-topic ship sailed a long time ago.
        • daveslash 5y ago
          I agree. I won't say that I dislike politics, so much as that's generally not what I'm coming here for ~ I go elsewhere for my politics. (Then again, here I am in these comments...); I mostly come here to scratch my nerd-itch. But yes - politics being off topic is a ship that sailed long ago...
• jgilias 5y ago
  Kind of amusing in a sad way how quickly this post got 'deplatformed'.
  • CodeGlitch 5y ago
    ...and a little bit scary? How students learn in Universities affects all of us - especially HN crowd.
    • jgilias 5y ago
      Very scary. History gives us many examples showing what self-righteous people with strong convictions and a belief that the end justifies the means can do. It's not pretty.
  • noasaservice 5y ago
    That's on par for the silicon valley children here. Ive never seen a hard discussion here that didn't evoke the woke brigade in shunning it... Which goes to the very point of having hard discussions about these topics that we aren't having.
    • ianleeclark 5y ago
      > Which goes to the very point of having hard discussions about these topics that we aren't having. A bunch of programmers kvetching on a forum doesn't do anything. It isn't politics, it won't solve any of these "hard discussions," and everyone will continue to talk past one another. These discussions are entirely cultural at this point--it's comparing batman to superman.
      • CodeGlitch 5y ago
        Batman is better.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      • 5y ago
• rich_sasha 5y ago
  Knowing very little about the US educational system, I wonder if this is somehow a symptom of unresolved trauma of the historical crimes against African slaves. They were enslaved then, many died an awful death, then technically freed, but still living as an underclass for decades, arguably still today. It never ceases to amaze me how many societal statistics in the US - education levels, wealth, teenage pregnancies, crime and incarceration rates - are explained by something as superficial as skin colour. So you see this every day, poor neighbourhoods are full of Black people, and you know why they are there - because White people enslaved them, brought them to America, then gave them a very sub-standard freedom. There is a hypocritical narrative of how we're all equal, but we're not (affirmative action?), but we ought to be, but really you know the society is so unequal, based on race. So what do you do? Most people cannot do anything of major practical impact. Maybe there are charities you can donate to or work with. Maybe you can vote for the right political candidates - but that's so indirect and diluted, it doesn't feel real. So the least you can do is be very vocal about how guilty and outraged you feel about the whole situation. It probably feels very genuine, it may be 100% genuine, just not actually productive. You put the sticky tape on the crack in the wall so it looks less bad. I don't know how that massive historical injustice can be fixed, but I think it should. I don't think Woke inc. is doing anything productive towards that though, and I understand the OP's frustration. But that's my best guess as to what the root cause is. I hope none of this comes as disrespectful to Black people. My point is they were very badly mistreated, and the consequences of that last until today too, not to posit that one race is better than another. Based on 2 trips to America, some reading and some very unwoke thinking. But I care about it a lot, not just for its own sake, but also as Woke is being exported, with some success, as the new prevailing ideology to shape the Western world.
  • brodouevencode 5y ago
    There are historical aspects that the US must contend with, even some 150+ years on after the official end of slavery (the American Civil War) and 50+ years on after the practical end of slavery (Civil Rights bill). Many injustices will take generations to work through. It's not something that will just happen naturally over night - humans are messy creatures. However there are people, mainly of the progressive left, that are pushing for these changes to happen much faster than they naturally would and that's fine up to a point. Many, many of them, driven mostly by ideology and internet points, have forced the pendulum of reconciliation completely off it's course in favor of their own power grabs. It is no longer about putting everyone on equal footing. It's about moving perceived power structures away from some and towards themselves. The US education system is a pivotal battleground because that's where many young minds are molded and formed. It's actually kind of brilliant that the secondary education system was one of the first institutions to be captured by these radicals. But now that the public at large is starting to wake up and realize what's going on the radicals are using the other tools at their disposal (censorship, shaming, rioting, attacking other normed institutions) they are being called out and brought to light. Boghossian did just this and on their turf, and is currently being ostracized for it.
• pron 5y ago
  TL;DR: An assistant professor whose claim to fame is the trolling of other disciplines, who never promotes an ideology but merely asks questions, says universities are evil and stupid because the more he spoke his opinion, the more others insisted to speak theirs back, paints his professional failure as persecution and quits after a career noted for sparse publication (embarrassing even in comparison to his juniors at his own department) before being let go for the lack of any actual academic work, with a mock-shock statement crafted to start a far more lucrative and stable career as an online influencer for right-wing young adults.
• bigbillheck 5y ago
  Regardless of whether you believe that he did research on human subjects without IRB approval, the man intentionally submitted for publication research he knew was false : https://psuvanguard.com/research-misconduct-findings-for-hoax-articles-prompt-disciplinary-review/ https://psuvanguard.com/research-misconduct-findings-for-hoa... >>> [Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies] McLellan stated in a Nov. 27 letter to Boghossian, “The Committee unanimously agreed that the ‘dog park’ article represents an unambiguous example of research data fabrication.” Doing a little digging, he also appears to have a EdD instead of a PhD: https://pdx.smartcatalogiq.com/en/2017-2018/Bulletin/Directories/Academic-Faculty/College-of-Liberal-Arts-and-Sciences/Department-of-Philosophy https://pdx.smartcatalogiq.com/en/2017-2018/Bulletin/Directo... The thing that really stands out to me is he got it from PSU, and I'm wondering what the backstory was that led PSU to hire him back, six years later, in a different department (and college).
  • elefanten 5y ago
    He did it to show lax-to-nonexistent standards in review. The committee’s finding is damning of the journals, not him.
    • bigbillheck 5y ago
      Ethics in research is ethics in research, you can't say it doesn't matter when it's results you like.
• kyle_martin1 5y ago
  Why was this flagged? Oh the irony.
• iandanforth 5y ago
  The weird thing is that this prof and the SJWs attacking him are ostensibly fighting the same fight with different strategies. Let's take the analogy from poisons. Poisons are bad for your health but they exist, how do you deal with them? One strategy is to remove poisons from your environment. If someone brings poisons into your environment you make them take the poison away and criticize the person for bringing it. Hopefully the person doesn't bring any more in the future. Another strategy is to learn the procedures necessary for safe handling of poisons. You put on protective gear, you ensure proper ventilation, you put up warning signs, you make sure people who arn't trained don't get near the poisons. Both of these strategies can work. For most people the former is the better strategy, for professionals the later may be necessary. So if this prof and the SJWs agree that some points of view are bad how do you deal with those ideas? The prof wants to use the second strategy, and teach people how to safely handle potentially harmful ideas. The SJWs don't want anyone near the ideas, especially in public forums or around impressionable minds. Personally I find the SJW proposition insulting, but then again I've had explicit training in critical thinking, persuasion, rhetoric, the propagation of ideas and sufficient life experience to be confident in my ability to wade into toxic environments and come out relatively unscathed. Still, I think of the SJWs as fundamentally (and ironically) paternalistic. That said there are plenty of myopic professors who believe that people won't be influenced by exposure to ideas, or believe that you can provide a venue without conveying the impression of support. Naive ivory tower BS. They don't recognize, or believe in, the need for caution. Then there are the counter-activists, and this prof could be one. They know how to influence people and recognize the power of providing a forum and are "teaching the controversy" in an intentional gambit to spread ideas with which they agree. There are enough of these that for the SJWs a few ivory tower casualties are acceptable losses. The reactionary intellectual is the enemy. So how to judge the current mood, the current movement? As a fascinating and effective marriage of the ideological purification tactics long employed by the ultra conservative set, now wielded by a sufficiently powerful amalgam of historically marginalized groups. Continual harassment, slander, character assassination and public ridicule work. This prof is just another battle won.
• the_solenoid 5y ago
  I am all for the free exposure to all ideas. But. We are in a horrible time where people are espousing them either for profit or outside motive, not from any core belief structure. It is unbelievably frustrating to watch, from my perspective. In other words, people are being paid to weaponize things like "free speech" on campuses, but they don't really believe in it, they are just tools. And let me be more succinct here - it's almost all coming from the "right wing" Kids see through this bs, at least ones I have talked to about it. "Woke"ness, to what I can process, is the push back from decades of inaction on "lets not be assholes to certain classes of people", which is largely driven by companies wanting to sell to everyone, no matter how out of sync their, and I don’t know the term for this, prejudice externalities (that is, when ones prejudices effect someone rather than just being a thought) are with “regular” society. This was of course facilitated by the internet. Without a way to communicate outside the gated walls of mass media in the past, this would probably not have happened. Is there some over-reaction? Sure, but it’s a massive correction to how human history has worked forever. People who use woke, triggered, without any disambiguation or nuance are to me just not handling the massive cultural change facilitated by things like the internet. Either they hate it, or can’t understand it, or do not like the results (imo)
• dekhn 5y ago
  Don't worry. The pendulum swung backwards this year and now the establishment has learned not to tolerate SJW without questioning their motives and logic.
  • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    It did? What, specifically, are you referring to? I mean, I'm all in favor of the pendulum swinging back, and I think it will. But I didn't notice it happening yet...
    • dekhn 5y ago
      You can see it in what the NY Times publishes in its editorial section. A couple years ago a review with this viewpoint would not have been published: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/books/review/trans-helen-joyce.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/books/review/trans-helen-...
      • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
        Ah. Yes, I had forgotten that.
• agomez314 5y ago
  why is this post flagged?
• bigphishy 5y ago
  How apropos it is that hackernews has flagged this, I really hope that mods remove the flag here, this warrants debate and discussion.
• GoodJokes 5y ago
  Ah yes, the culture war. The people on this website working for social media companies are directly responsible for creating these absurd atmospheres
• glonq 5y ago
  > Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division. Yup, that's pretty much how things work everywhere nowadays. This guy gets it.
• clustrfunk 5y ago
  Immediately after reading the title, I knew Peter would be involved in its contents in some shape or form. Was not surprised when the first thing I saw was a picture of him pop up after clicking on the link. Took a philosophy class with him during my freshman year of undergrad before transferring to another university. Really cool guy that had a massive part in enabling my critical thinking skills.
  • bennysomething 5y ago
    I was sure this was going to end with "he's horrible" nice surprise that it didn't :)
• moralestapia 5y ago
  >[...] Title IX investigator asked them if they knew anything about me beating my wife and children The "investigator" was trying to frame him on that. It's amazing how low some people are willing to go for a few bucks and a pat in the back.
  • bigphishy 5y ago
    Almost hilariously the exact definition of a Logical Fallacy of a Loaded Question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question Ex. "When did you stop beating your wife?" We need to educate more people against logical fallacies, and we need to educate and arm people with better critical thinking skills.
    • moralestapia 5y ago
      >We need to educate more people against logical fallacies Definitely! And train them on how to identify and fend this sort of abuse, particularly on students (and youth in general) who often find themselves in situations where there is a huge power imbalance playing against them. While I was studying at KAUST (Saudi Arabia's flaghship university), my daughter was kidnapped by the staff there and held hostage for a few weeks, all of this to try to get me to sign some documents I didn't want to [1]. Aside from other things, they were desperately trying to get some dirt on me using such tactics, so that part of the post resonated with me very well. I am in the process of writing a book about this whole ordeal with the intent of letting other people learn from my experience and how to get out of this sort of thing in time, or better yet, never fall into it in the first place. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27827524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27827524
  • Aerroon 5y ago
    That sounds very much like defamation though. But US defamation rules are difficult for public figures to use.
  • btilly 5y ago
    That's called "leading the witness".
• akomtu 5y ago
  The woke are easy to understand. They are those nonconformant people who were dismissed, mocked or even bullied in schools. Now they're having a field day and directing their anger at the archetype of their bullies - a white male. Blacks are here just incidentally - the woke aren't in business of helping blacks or latinos, they're actually trying to put a wedge between blacks and whites. The more interesting question is who's funding this show - you don't get this sort of organized and superficial activity without a command & control center.
• 908B64B197 5y ago
  > Early in the 2016-17 academic year, a former student complained about me and the university initiated a Title IX investigation. (Title IX investigations are a part of federal law designed to protect “people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”) My accuser, a white male, made a slew of baseless accusations against me, which university confidentiality rules unfortunately prohibit me from discussing further. What I can share is that students of mine who were interviewed during the process told me the Title IX investigator asked them if they knew anything about me beating my wife and children. This horrifying accusation soon became a widespread rumor. > With Title IX investigations there is no due process, so I didn’t have access to the particular accusations, the ability to confront my accuser, and I had no opportunity to defend myself. Finally, the results of the investigation were revealed in December 2017. Here are the last two sentences of the report: “Global Diversity & Inclusion finds there is insufficient evidence that Boghossian violated PSU’s Prohibited Discrimination & Harassment policy. GDI recommends Boghossian receive coaching.” > Not only was there no apology for the false accusations, but the investigator also told me that in the future I was not allowed to render my opinion about “protected classes” or teach in such a way that my opinion about protected classes could be known — a bizarre conclusion to absurd charges. Universities can enforce ideological conformity just through the threat of these investigations. Didn't know there was a "Portland State University" in Cuba.
• RickJWagner 5y ago
  No matter your politics, this is a very bad thing. Imbalance in the political arena (i.e. the academic political arena) leads to over-reach and eventual decay. Behold the current woes of California. Too much of one side, not enough of the other will lead to over-reach and decay. Academia is on the same path.
• cyanydeez 5y ago
  is every substack selling future far right nujobbery or is that just from the hackernews crew
  • scaramanga 5y ago
    I think it's just the overwhelming trend on HN. You can see from the top comments on this post that HN is a hive of far-right edge-lordism and LARPing outrage about imagined injustices. Edit: Then again, usually you can filter out these posts just by the topic and not click on them, which is what I usually do. But the title of this one could have gone either way so I got fooled in to clicking on it. So maybe judging by this post would give a misleading impression about the whole community on HN. I think these people just end up infecting whatever internet forums don't have the moderator capacity to get rid of all the trolls
  • splitstud 5y ago
    Today I learned that free inquiry in university is far right nutjobbery.
    • cyanydeez 5y ago
      you know how certain people talk a certain way and you can decern by their word selection basic biases they have. people on the far right fringe on the internet have that. its like when you train dogs to sniff out drugs. its not the subject, its how its presented.
• dryst 5y ago
  This thread has some serious brigading going on. University man doesn't like changing cultural norms, engages in bad faith actions to make those norms look ridiculous. People treat him like a pariah for doing it, and his work satisfaction suffers. It seems to me, not knowing this man personally, that he has taken the example of Socrates to heart. Believe so completely in an ideal, that you seal your own fate.
  • DougN7 5y ago
    I think he’s pointing out that cultural norms are getting out of control, and sometimes absurd. Not enough critical thinking is taking place. In it’s place is knee-jerk outrage.
  • raxxorrax 5y ago
    Which norms are you referring to here specifically? Students today are very unsure about what values they still need to fight for and the message of some activists seems unclear.
  • rirze 5y ago
    For me, there's an extreme reaction to his actions. He is definitely stirring the pot a little much, but does he deserve this treatment?
  • lordlimecat 5y ago
    For a moment there it sounded like you were equating his inflammatory research with the feces left by his office and the vandalism of sound equipment during his sessions. Many of the responses he has gotten would be criminal outside the institutional process. It's a specious comparison.
• raxxorrax 5y ago
  I have the same impression because the results of said "educations" pours out into public places. It is very easy to identify because proponents use certain vocabularies and put up certain arguments. I am not even a native speaker to be able to identify this, although there are similar negative developments in my country, it is not restricted to the anglosphere. Kudos to her for staying strong to the principle of free and real education.
• raxxorrax 5y ago
  > Global Diversity & Inclusion finds there is insufficient evidence that Boghossian violated PSU’s Prohibited Discrimination & Harassment policy. GDI recommends Boghossian receive coaching. Global Diversity & Inclusion is looking for a thorough beating.
• geekraver 5y ago
  So, he’s stirred the pot over and over, including bringing in people who’s main claim to fame is grievance, but he still had a job at the university, and he quit, for amongst other things, too much grievance. I’m not sure that this proves it’s the university that’s intolerant (although I’m sure some faculty and staff are). Or that he’s capable of enough self-reflection that he should be teaching reflection to others. Plenty of blame to go around. Resignation letters are attempts to write history, but as he himself should be teaching, there are surely differing views here.
• not_kurt_godel 5y ago
  This guy is just another Trumpian conman and magnet for boomers that are experiencing empty-nest syndrome. He's cut straight from the typical right-wing cloth of claiming false victimhood (i.e. leaving on his own accord but implying otherwise) while he himself is victimizing others (a track record of deliberately trying to hijack the peer review process to prove a political point, and failing miserably).
• mosew 5y ago
  I believe a significant component of this division, in academia at least, concerns whether people can or can't generally be trusted to think critically, for example, about subtly incoherent and/or morally repugnant viewpoints that Prof. Boghossian may have publicly interrogated (e.g. James Damore's). "Does giving him a platform to speak do more harm than good?" I don't generally trust people to think critically. The last ten years have showed us all how easy it is for people to be manipulated and misled at scale if the belief is accepted by their respective communities. This was shown scientifically decades ago[1]. And we all know some anti-vaxxers and/or cult followers. Of course, most attempts to repress misinformation inevitably cause bigger problems than any alternative, including doing nothing. Attempts to repress opinions based on misinformation sow divisions which are even worse. There is a tension between efforts towards a weak form of "prior restraint" and a belief that people are smart enough to discern truth from fiction. But don't fool yourself -- no matter your feelings here, everyone including you is subject to in-group favoritism. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments
• 392c91e8165b 5y ago
  I wonder how much of the bad decision-making that led to the US's wasting more than 2 trillion dollars failing to effect any permanent change in Afghanistan can be ascribed to the fact that it is career suicide to imply that the people of Afghanistan were any less capable of democratically governing themselves than the people of, e.g, Germany and Japan were in 1945.
• YeBanKo 5y ago
  Midway while reading this it hit me: he is one of the co-authors from this article: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-... When I first read about their research I was actually was actually thinking, about possible repercussions they may face. It turns out, that he did face a repercussion for exposing the flaw. A serious question I have: where do all these people end up? Stories like this come up often recently, and it is not limited to liberal arts schools. Is there a business opportunity here? A private school not beset by any particular ideology, except truth seeking?
• lenkite 5y ago
  I am just afraid that there is soon going to be a civil war inside the USA.