4 ms·

Well, 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

Well, 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 ago
  It'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 ago
  It'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]
tomohawk 4y ago
Sounds like Maoist struggle sessions to me.
TMWNN 4y ago
>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'? "Equity training", in this context, is more or less a struggle session (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session>) from Maoist China.
- mlyle 4y ago
  > "Equity training", in this context, is more or less a struggle session Yes, listening to someone drably read slides about trends in how people would like to be addressed and hearing about some behaviors that have been problematic in the workplace, as required for decades by regulations implementing title 6 and title 9, is exactly like a Maoist struggle session. /s
the_third_wave 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'? No, we - or at least I - do not decline to take seriously someone who (no doubt after many years of fighting the beast) uses a short and descriptive term for something which does in fact have many parallels with the way Mao organised students to take on established institutes. You may not like the comparison but that does not invalidate the fact that what goes under the term "equity training" oftens resembles struggle sessions. He could just as well have compared "equity training" to Scientology "training" intent on "rehabilitating the thetan" of a subject since there are parallels to those practices as well (just replace "body thetans" with "whiteness").
- boppo1 4y ago
  Has anyone clearly outlined the parallels point for point? This discussion seems to go in circles because one group recognizes some similarities, and the other group say's "oh,so anything you don't like is communism, huh?" Which, to be fair, is an appropriate response given that a huge swath of American conservatives (FOX News brand) do call everything they don't like communism. I think we need some sort of quantification of the similarities to move this discussion forward because there's good faith and bad faith on both sides and without quantification, the good faith people can't find one another.
  - the_third_wave 4y ago
    Not one but several individuals have done just that, sometimes going into excruciating detail. James Lindsay (of the hoax grievance studies fame, co-author of "Cynical Theories" [1] - a book which goes a long way into answering this question) has lately made a career out of describing the ins and outs of these things [2 (and elsewhere on that site)]. Charles Pincourt (with Lindsay as editor) wrote Counter Wokecraft: A Field Manual for Combatting the Woke in the University and Beyond [3] which is a more practical description on how to combat this ideology where it has taken hold. There are many other sources but these are a good start. [1] https://cynicaltheories.com/ https://cynicaltheories.com/ [1] https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/ https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/ [3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59606831-counter-wokecraft https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59606831-counter-wokecra...
usrn 4y ago
I was dragged through it where I work and most of the ideas seem to come from early 20th century communism. His description is accurate. People have been complaining about the radical right lately but I feel like they forget that Hitler's thing was largely a reaction to early 20th century communism. This is in every way driving our current political divide in the US. It's not at all good. Maoism doesn't quite fit, it's more Trotskyism IMO but I think he knows most Americans recognize Mao better than Trotsky.

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 ago
It'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 ago
It'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]

tomohawk 4y ago

Sounds like Maoist struggle sessions to me.

TMWNN 4y ago

>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'? "Equity training", in this context, is more or less a struggle session (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session>) from Maoist China.

mlyle 4y ago
> "Equity training", in this context, is more or less a struggle session Yes, listening to someone drably read slides about trends in how people would like to be addressed and hearing about some behaviors that have been problematic in the workplace, as required for decades by regulations implementing title 6 and title 9, is exactly like a Maoist struggle session. /s

the_third_wave 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'? No, we - or at least I - do not decline to take seriously someone who (no doubt after many years of fighting the beast) uses a short and descriptive term for something which does in fact have many parallels with the way Mao organised students to take on established institutes. You may not like the comparison but that does not invalidate the fact that what goes under the term "equity training" oftens resembles struggle sessions. He could just as well have compared "equity training" to Scientology "training" intent on "rehabilitating the thetan" of a subject since there are parallels to those practices as well (just replace "body thetans" with "whiteness").

boppo1 4y ago
Has anyone clearly outlined the parallels point for point? This discussion seems to go in circles because one group recognizes some similarities, and the other group say's "oh,so anything you don't like is communism, huh?" Which, to be fair, is an appropriate response given that a huge swath of American conservatives (FOX News brand) do call everything they don't like communism. I think we need some sort of quantification of the similarities to move this discussion forward because there's good faith and bad faith on both sides and without quantification, the good faith people can't find one another.
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  Not one but several individuals have done just that, sometimes going into excruciating detail. James Lindsay (of the hoax grievance studies fame, co-author of "Cynical Theories" [1] - a book which goes a long way into answering this question) has lately made a career out of describing the ins and outs of these things [2 (and elsewhere on that site)]. Charles Pincourt (with Lindsay as editor) wrote Counter Wokecraft: A Field Manual for Combatting the Woke in the University and Beyond [3] which is a more practical description on how to combat this ideology where it has taken hold. There are many other sources but these are a good start. [1] https://cynicaltheories.com/ https://cynicaltheories.com/ [1] https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/ https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/ [3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59606831-counter-wokecraft https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59606831-counter-wokecra...

usrn 4y ago

I was dragged through it where I work and most of the ideas seem to come from early 20th century communism. His description is accurate. People have been complaining about the radical right lately but I feel like they forget that Hitler's thing was largely a reaction to early 20th century communism. This is in every way driving our current political divide in the US. It's not at all good. Maoism doesn't quite fit, it's more Trotskyism IMO but I think he knows most Americans recognize Mao better than Trotsky.