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Duke Medical prof. calls mandatory equity training “Maoist political propaganda”
- ceeplusplus 4y agoAnd now watch as the school finds some reason to fire him.
- Bud 4y ago
- jleyank 4y ago
- alaricus 4y agoTenure will protect him, no?
- KMag 4y agoI'm not following these things because I realize I really don't want to spare the time to dig deeply enough down the rabbit hole to find the truth. However, it doesn't seem difficult at present to find a workable pretence for firing most tenured professors. I haven't done any research as to if the Princeton Black Justice League really did engage in harassment of opponents, as former tenured professor Joshua Katz alleges. However, it does seem that Katz's claims that the group harassed opponents is what led Princeton to re-open its investigation into Katz's consensual relationship with a student, for which he had already been disciplined. It's entirely possible Princeton was right to re-open its investigation and right to fire a tenured professor over it, but the timing of the re-opening and firing casts a lot of doubt as to Princeton's motivations, and this doubt over motivations also casts doubt over impartiality of the findings. The problem is virtually none of us are as virtuous as we tell ourselves, and the older we are, the more history there is to use to damn us. "Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something to hang him." --- Cardinal Richelieu. It's a big problem that Dr. King's extramarital affairs these days would probably be enough for the FBI's COINTELPRO to get him cancelled. It's a big problem any time attacking the messenger's past (or, to a lesser extent their present) is a very easy way to silence the message, and the spirit of our age seems particularly bad in this regard. It also seems that the zeitgeist is particularly vulnerable to criticisms of a group's methods being deliberately twisted to look like criticisms of the group's stated goals.
- mlyle 4y agoThe training is likely Duke's implementation of training requirements under Title 6 and Title 9 to continue receiving federal funding, and the professor's attendance is almost certainly contractually required.
- alaricus 4y agothen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31563667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31563667
- pizza 4y agoAnd here I thought Mao killed the counter-revolutionary teachers rather than giving them tenure and having them whinge about training. My bad..? Maybe I'm the one who misremembers the actual historical events we refer to when calling things Maoism?
- mannerheim 4y agoNot in most cases. Typically they would just subject said teachers to struggle sessions and public berating. Eventually offenders could be driven to suicide, or their students could be incensed to beat their teachers to death.
- kelseyfrog 4y agoIt's beyond the pale that being driven to suicide or beaten to death is the experience trans people face and that he's equating a training course as being the same.
- repltoof 4y ago
- cato_the_elder 4y ago> Maybe I'm the one who misremembers the actual historical events we refer to when calling things Maoism? Yes, you are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Precursor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Precursor
- pizza 4y agoPerhaps I've fallen on my own sword But also I was thinking of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_August https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_August
- jleyank 4y agoAnother example of how dinosaurs still walk the earth. While he might be tenured, Wikipedia says he’s 71, and I’m sure there’s something about retirement age in the department. Or, as an md, he probably has two parts to his salary: that of a senior professor and an uplift to make up for what a senior md could make in private practice. I suspect the latter part is independent of tenure. And if it was truly Maoist, he’d be looking at a few years in the tobacco fields for criticizing the thought police. Edit: judging by the speed this got down rated, I feel pretty confident about the right/libertarian bias to HN. Guess it’s useful providing test cases. And I imagine this guy is chuckles to deal with when working with the women in the department. Too many years, perhaps, being god in academia?
- pyuser583 4y agoSadly we are only seeing bits and pieces of the emails. Roughly it’s going: ““My initial reaction is I refuse to engage in left-wing Maoist political propaganda workshops and, as a tenured faculty, that is my choice,” Response on Twitter: “[the professor] expressed reactionary rhetoric for many years now, and is set to retire soon.” “Yet another reminder that despite someone's contributions to a field, or the money they might bring in to an institution, academic administrators do themselves and future scientists a great disservice by keeping these types of people around for the long haul …” If that’s the worst of the professors rhetoric … then so what?
- bobsmooth 4y agoHe's rejecting the groupthink. That means he needs to be removed.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jhanschoo 4y agoYeah I expect to be fired and professionally scandalized if I were to call equity training Maoist too, and expose such confident ignorance in my understanding of what either word means.
- boppo1 4y agoI think it depends on the training. If it'd DiAngelo style "separate people by skin color then have the white people stand up & admit guilt and the brown people stand up and admit they can't get ahead" then yeah, I'd draw comparisons to struggle sessions too. But if it's like "hey your hospital serves this particular community that lots of challenging patients come from and we're going to talk about some of the history of how they were displaced from a different neighborhood (or something) and still fighting a particular uphill battle for these identifiable reasons X, Y, Z." then obviously it's helpful and I'd embrace it. There is some seriously poisonous stuff masquerading under the 'equity' banner alongside some seriously necessary stuff.
- djohnston 4y agoSmile and nod during the re-education and all will be well comrade :)
- alaricus 4y agome during mandatory company trainings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onZRb2aTlj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onZRb2aTlj4
- anm89 4y agoSomething that always bugs me with stuff like this. The people in favor of these trainings and woke stuff in general make this claim that they are doing it because they are so deeply compassionate and have a ceaseless drive to do the right thing. But they never actually try to be compassionate or make situations better. Here's the response from a supporter > "In the below figure, we see a textbook example of a tenured faculty member whose grasp on human decency is on par with his grasp on the reply-all function," wrote MGM doctoral candidate Jeffrey Letourneau in a reply-all email obtained by The Chronicle. Is this guy the standard bearer for decency? Going into full on personal attack mode when someone disagrees with you. Isn't his whole gripe with this other guy a lack of decency? How does this not strike everyone as disingenuous?
- alephnan 4y agoIn the same way some people say they are "color blind" and people who reject that under the pretense that it would be racist to be "color blind". The people who are "actively anti-racist" think of the world in strictly racist terms.
- gsk22 4y agoBeing aware of racial differences is not the same as being racist...
- alephnan 4y agoSo you don't believe people are equal?
- threatofrain 4y agoNot unless we do the proper work to make it so. Values prescribe where we want to go, not where we are today or the history we came from. Thus I expect a doctor who is treating someone of my ethnic background to take into account any differences which would benefit my medical outcomes.
- xunn0026 4y ago
- xunn0026 4y ago
- morninglight 4y agoDuke Kunshan University (DKU) needs to reply to this professor's screed. DKU is a Chinese-American partnership of Duke University and Wuhan University to create a liberal arts and research university offering academic programs for students from China and throughout the world. If DKU and the Chinese Ministry of Education have no objection to this characterization as “left-wing Maoist political propaganda workshops”, then so be it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Kunshan_University https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Kunshan_University .
- xunn0026 4y agoThe whole article shows what happens when there's no economic growth: people eat themselves. The woke stick is used very well by younglings to smack old people. These younglings will be experts at leaving no trace. After they have passed though an institution, will anything of worth remain? Soon it will be standard MO for people in high position to use attorney for any communication. Saying something yourself, showing some personal facet, even a joke, is a dangerous thing. Society is now a dark forest. Shh, be quiet.
- __B_B__ 4y agoIn the darkness and silence of the void, no one can tickle my neurotic anxieties, or at least I'll believe so in the moments before they issue forth again from the only thing left.
- trlqy 4y agoIronically, the responses in that article are perfect examples of a standard denunciation during the cultural revolution. Pick some examples of speech/jokes that deviate from the party line and treat the "perpetrator" like a criminal. So the professor is correct and Duke seems to have degenerated into a horrible environment.
- fennecfoxen 4y agoOh! Welcome to the American private university. (Don't worry, the American public university and the international university are not too far behind.)
- prepend 4y ago> Mercado pointed to Cullen's claims that "male homosexuals played a critical role in the early spread of HIV in the USA, especially in [San Franscisco, Calif.] and [New York City, N.Y.]" and that "the promiscuity of African women who then gave British sailors HIV...allowed HIV to spread to Europe" as examples. Aren’t these claims true? It seems odd for a medical student to not be familiar with early HIV/AIDS. And to present these as examples of homophobia exposes this person’s lack of knowledge in areas they should be knowledgeable. And to criticize someone with wrong criticisms shows poor judgement. I think this is included to show how some of the complainers are silly and misguided. I’m glad they include specific examples because it’s hard when articles just quote non-qualified sources as saying someone is X-ist.
- pyuser583 4y agoIt really matters how it’s presented. But we don’t know those details. All we get are insinuations. If you want to assume horrible things about this professor you now can. As bad as your imagination allows.
- prepend 4y agoGood point, the context is important. If I wanted to sho someone was a homophobe, I would provide that context. Since the accuser didn’t do that it’s much more likely that the accuser is stupid than the lecturer is a homophobe. They have a few quotes from the lecturer that talks about this and provides more detail and it seems like it was presented factually. There’s probably some recorded copies as he said he frequently gives that lecture.
- treis 4y agoYou don't see the ridiculousness of blaming the spread of HIV to Europe on the promiscuity of African women and not the British sailors who came half way around the world to have sex with them? That said, google returns no hits for either of these statements outside of articles repeating the claim from TFA so I'd be wary of the accuracy of the quote.
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- throw457 4y ago
- escape_goat 4y agoWell, either the professor in question has "a history of xenophobic, homophobic and racist behavior," or he does not, and I suppose people affiliated with Duke Medical might care about that in some way. But. For the love of God, can we not simply decline, on Hacker News, to take seriously a man who arbitrarily specifies that equity training is 'Maoist'? There is nothing interesting to say here. There is nothing to learn. This is a beef some of us here want to have, but there are plenty of other places to have it. Everyone is aware that every single form of corporate training is more often than not going to be garbage produced as part of a grift profiting off of the underlying ideal. People are not monsters for hating mandatory extraprofessional training. The real monsters here mostly stay in the woodwork these days. Do not give them an excuse to come out.
- pyuser583 4y ago“For the love of God, can we not simply decline, on Hacker News, to take seriously a man who arbitrarily specifies that equity training is 'Maoist'?” It’s exaggeration, but that doesn’t mean he should be written off. The real problem is there’s little detail or context.
- escape_goat 4y agoIt's not an 'exaggeration' so much as an explicit guarantee that he does not know enough about Maoism or equity training to have an interesting opinion about either one of them, and to be honest I found nothing particularly insightful in any of the rest of the largely incoherent article's quotes. We are in "grad students chide old man for yelling at cloud" territory here. The real problem is that this is simply an excuse for people to air their own grievances. It is news of literally no interest to anyone otherwise.
- gsk22 4y agoIt's exaggeration in the same way liberals called Trump-era policies "Hitler-esque", which is to say a totally useless epithet that betrays an ignorance of the referenced history.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]