4 ms·

Why is that important? Seems to me the most important detail is how ideological blindness led an entire college to make false accusations against innocent peopl

Why is that important? Seems to me the most important detail is how ideological blindness led an entire college to make false accusations against innocent people, and then double down when all facts came to light, to the point of losing $36M and all not apparently acknowledging that they were ever wrong. Isn't that weird? Isn't that really, freaking weird?? What does it imply about academics, society, racism, ideological capture? Gloaters gonna gloat. An "entire side of the political spectrum" would have gloated if the bakery had lost on appeal. Does that matter?

TMWNN 4y ago
>Why is that important? Seems to me the most important detail is how ideological blindness led an entire college to make false accusations against innocent people, and then double down when all facts came to light, to the point of losing $36M and all not apparently acknowledging that they were ever wrong. Isn't that weird? Isn't that really, freaking weird?? What does it imply about academics, society, racism, ideological capture? Indeed. Reading the comments on the New York Times article linked to the other recent HN discussion of the case, there are—among many forthright condemnations of the Oberlin administrators and students that caused this catastrophe for the college—more than a few comments lamenting how the worst outcome of this is that "Trumpists" will gloat. Not that a bakery faced six years of litigation (in the legal and public spheres) against the college with the billion-dollar endowment that is the closest thing to "The Man" in their small town, but that the commenters' own ideological enemies might be pleased by the court case's outcome.
puffoflogic 4y ago
> when all facts came to light Maybe you meant it harmlessly, but this phrase sets off my BS detector. It's invariably used to excuse bad behavior by people who knew better but pretended otherwise for political gain. It conflates when you personally learned the facts with when the involved parties learned the facts. See also: "no one knew Kyle Rittenhouse didn't murder a bunch of black people in a crowd until these facts came to light in the trial!" or "we didn't know that the Biden laptop was real until these facts came to light in 2022!" or "we didn't know the lab leak was a real possibility until new facts came to light!" In each case, the facts were already there for everyone to see, they were just ignored for political reasons until it was too late.
- rendall 4y ago
  Sorry, I don't understand what you're talking about. Kyle Rittenhouse didn't shoot any Black people. Oberlin doubled down even after "all facts came to light".

TMWNN 4y ago

>Why is that important? Seems to me the most important detail is how ideological blindness led an entire college to make false accusations against innocent people, and then double down when all facts came to light, to the point of losing $36M and all not apparently acknowledging that they were ever wrong. Isn't that weird? Isn't that really, freaking weird?? What does it imply about academics, society, racism, ideological capture? Indeed. Reading the comments on the New York Times article linked to the other recent HN discussion of the case, there are—among many forthright condemnations of the Oberlin administrators and students that caused this catastrophe for the college—more than a few comments lamenting how the worst outcome of this is that "Trumpists" will gloat. Not that a bakery faced six years of litigation (in the legal and public spheres) against the college with the billion-dollar endowment that is the closest thing to "The Man" in their small town, but that the commenters' own ideological enemies might be pleased by the court case's outcome.

puffoflogic 4y ago

> when all facts came to light Maybe you meant it harmlessly, but this phrase sets off my BS detector. It's invariably used to excuse bad behavior by people who knew better but pretended otherwise for political gain. It conflates when you personally learned the facts with when the involved parties learned the facts. See also: "no one knew Kyle Rittenhouse didn't murder a bunch of black people in a crowd until these facts came to light in the trial!" or "we didn't know that the Biden laptop was real until these facts came to light in 2022!" or "we didn't know the lab leak was a real possibility until new facts came to light!" In each case, the facts were already there for everyone to see, they were just ignored for political reasons until it was too late.

rendall 4y ago
Sorry, I don't understand what you're talking about. Kyle Rittenhouse didn't shoot any Black people. Oberlin doubled down even after "all facts came to light".