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It's sad to watch how the quality of Western academia has been declining steadily in the past couple of decades. Open mindedness and free thinking are not allo

It's sad to watch how the quality of Western academia has been declining steadily in the past couple of decades. Open mindedness and free thinking are not allowed or else the cancel crowd will get you. Ganging up on someone with different views simply to eliminate them from the discourse became the new way to promote the only correct set of opinions. My children will go to a uni in few years and I'm completely terrified by the amount of nonsense or straight out lunacy in growing parts of academia these days.

tubby12345 5y ago
Lol this is literally the "back in my day" response (complete with a sprinkling of "won't someone think of the kids"). Have you ever considered that maybe you're simply uncomfortable with how the world has changed since you were young?
spamizbad 5y ago
Not sure I really see this as an issue of being open-minded. Her views are completely conventional, albeit outdated. They are, however, obsolete by the standards academia which has a more sophisticated view of gender.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- danielam 5y ago
  This statement is very unsettling. Are you claiming that any discussion that someone or some group deems "outdated", "conventional" or "unsophisticated deserves to be suppressed on those grounds, and that those who defend such views are to be treated in the manner Stock has been treated? What gender theory posits is controversial, to say the least, and it is itself quite new and highly problematic despite what your claims seem to suggest. Stock is also a feminist which belies the notion that she is defending anything that could conceivably be characterized as a traditional understanding of the subject matter.
3grdlurker 5y ago
I don’t think that there’s enough information in the article to take the side of Western academia or of the professor in question. The word used was “harassment”, so I’m not sure that that’s still the same as what people refer to as “cancel culture” which is really just disagreement, which people are free to do.
- chuckee 5y ago
  Cancel culture usually refers to calls for someone to be fired or deplatformed, i.e. to harm their livelihood and prevent others from hearing what they have to say. Applying it to mere disagreement would be abusing the term, in my opinion.
  - 3grdlurker 5y ago
    It’s still just an airing of disagreement by the end of the day. The people who lash out on Twitter don’t have the direct agency to fire or deplatform the object of disagreement. It’s still the platform or the university that decides that, and those entities are not necessarily doing so for the same reasons as the crowd that’s disagreeing. It’s not even as if the people who “cancel” strangers for deliberately making bigoted and hateful remarks or committing workplace sexual harassment are the same people who “cancel” professors from speaking about a difficult topic in the academia. You can call it a culture, but it’s not the same people with the same ideals. Plenty of those who are vocal against bigotry would agree that professors who research on difficult topics must be allowed to talk in universities, as long as the content of their talks are actually academic/scientific, and not just outright bigoted.
systemvoltage 5y ago
It is pervading everyday life, not just universities. We're exporting this behavior to other nations: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/09/04/how-did-american-wokeness-jump-from-elite-schools-to-everyday-life https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/09/04/how-did-americ...
happytoexplain 5y ago
I always read accounts like this letter is addressing, and by all personal reckoning, your (very common) observation is exaggerated, and assuming you are expressing it honestly (and not just as political-team-booing), I think you shouldn't be worried about cancel culture practically affecting your children. The vast majority of the time, somebody being described as a victim of cancel culture was really either A. Strongly criticized or even harassed, which has been a permanent fault of people on all sides of political topics forever, and in fact seems even more severe coming from people of the opposite ideology to cancel culture, or B. Was fired for genuinely hateful/immoral behavior. I.e. the cases where cancel culture actually misfires, usually due to a misunderstanding that catches on (the primary danger of cancel culture), are apparently few, relatively speaking (though of course one's political loyalties tend to color the perception of what counts as unjust consequences). I think the much more concerning, practical danger to our childrens' intellectual health and spirit is the more general phenomenon of extreme political hatred (see point A. above).
andreskytt 5y ago
Do you have any facts on the decline or just a general feeling? Don’t send the kids to these colleges, then. Send them to study STEM, it’s much harder to bs a computer.

tubby12345 5y ago

Lol this is literally the "back in my day" response (complete with a sprinkling of "won't someone think of the kids"). Have you ever considered that maybe you're simply uncomfortable with how the world has changed since you were young?

spamizbad 5y ago

Not sure I really see this as an issue of being open-minded. Her views are completely conventional, albeit outdated. They are, however, obsolete by the standards academia which has a more sophisticated view of gender.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
danielam 5y ago
This statement is very unsettling. Are you claiming that any discussion that someone or some group deems "outdated", "conventional" or "unsophisticated deserves to be suppressed on those grounds, and that those who defend such views are to be treated in the manner Stock has been treated? What gender theory posits is controversial, to say the least, and it is itself quite new and highly problematic despite what your claims seem to suggest. Stock is also a feminist which belies the notion that she is defending anything that could conceivably be characterized as a traditional understanding of the subject matter.

3grdlurker 5y ago

I don’t think that there’s enough information in the article to take the side of Western academia or of the professor in question. The word used was “harassment”, so I’m not sure that that’s still the same as what people refer to as “cancel culture” which is really just disagreement, which people are free to do.

chuckee 5y ago
Cancel culture usually refers to calls for someone to be fired or deplatformed, i.e. to harm their livelihood and prevent others from hearing what they have to say. Applying it to mere disagreement would be abusing the term, in my opinion.
- 3grdlurker 5y ago
  It’s still just an airing of disagreement by the end of the day. The people who lash out on Twitter don’t have the direct agency to fire or deplatform the object of disagreement. It’s still the platform or the university that decides that, and those entities are not necessarily doing so for the same reasons as the crowd that’s disagreeing. It’s not even as if the people who “cancel” strangers for deliberately making bigoted and hateful remarks or committing workplace sexual harassment are the same people who “cancel” professors from speaking about a difficult topic in the academia. You can call it a culture, but it’s not the same people with the same ideals. Plenty of those who are vocal against bigotry would agree that professors who research on difficult topics must be allowed to talk in universities, as long as the content of their talks are actually academic/scientific, and not just outright bigoted.

systemvoltage 5y ago

It is pervading everyday life, not just universities. We're exporting this behavior to other nations: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/09/04/how-did-american-wokeness-jump-from-elite-schools-to-everyday-life https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/09/04/how-did-americ...

happytoexplain 5y ago

I always read accounts like this letter is addressing, and by all personal reckoning, your (very common) observation is exaggerated, and assuming you are expressing it honestly (and not just as political-team-booing), I think you shouldn't be worried about cancel culture practically affecting your children. The vast majority of the time, somebody being described as a victim of cancel culture was really either A. Strongly criticized or even harassed, which has been a permanent fault of people on all sides of political topics forever, and in fact seems even more severe coming from people of the opposite ideology to cancel culture, or B. Was fired for genuinely hateful/immoral behavior. I.e. the cases where cancel culture actually misfires, usually due to a misunderstanding that catches on (the primary danger of cancel culture), are apparently few, relatively speaking (though of course one's political loyalties tend to color the perception of what counts as unjust consequences). I think the much more concerning, practical danger to our childrens' intellectual health and spirit is the more general phenomenon of extreme political hatred (see point A. above).

andreskytt 5y ago

Do you have any facts on the decline or just a general feeling? Don’t send the kids to these colleges, then. Send them to study STEM, it’s much harder to bs a computer.