Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

they tell you that. i've never had to kick anyone out (the one time i might have tried was in my very first class, and i didn't quite know how to pull off dressing down a couple of serial class disruptors well enough to induce them to leave). but i've always wondered what exactly you're supposed to do if the student says, no way, i'm not going anywhere. students tend to defer magically to your authority, and if it's an actual class situation, i would suppose there might be some amount of shame and flight-response connected to being called out in front of everyone and asked to leave for their sake. but students are equally well acquainted with completely disregarding the teacher's authority, so who really gives a shit if someone is telling them that by the power vested in them by the university of so-and-so, they're kicking a student out of class?

Based on what's been reported so far, kicking the kid out of the discussion portion of the class seems entirely unjustified. And the suggestion that he was making others "feel unsafe" should only have been made if he was behaving in an actionably threatening manner. Otherwise, it amounts to a soft form of slander, a handy tool for ostracism of the inconvenient.

So, a jerky student maybe voiced some unwelcome/trollish views in an open classroom discussion. If he was dominating the room, then it was the professor's job to moderate and control the discussion. If he continued to behave disruptively and wouldn't respect the professor's authority, then that would have been a good reason, after an appropriate series of disciplinary steps, remove him from the conference. Not because he gave voice to unpopular views, but because he made it difficult for others to productively contribute.

I've had to ask a student to leave in two cases, one for medical reasons, and, yes, one rebellious group (an early morning summer course) suddenly deferred to my authority.

i.e. s.clover otm:

it does sound to me like the professor lost control of their classroom

I want to go to where all you guys went to school it sounds amazing these free open discussion journeys towards the truth. I went to a 4-year college and a 2-year college and both of them were just sitting and listening to the teacher and then taking tests.

Also this is a private school. I can't go into McDonalds and start projecting videos of chickens in cages.

Is $55k not a lot of money to you truth-seekers?

Do I get a discount on my liberal arts tuition if there is a vocal holocaust denier in the class?

I'm sorry if I sound crude here. I am bias because I take great offense at his insistence that the lower class cannot make great art.

^ Several of the things he's accused of saying strike me as blatant devil's advocacy, positions taken for purposes of inquiry & debate. And, as mentioned upthread wr2 Aristotle & moral culpability, likely germane to the texts discussed.

Oh great another performance artist.

Maybe he could change the conversation to aether as a proposed fifth element.

yeah, maybe

Maybe he could change the conversation to aether as a proposed fifth element.

Depends on context: e.g. in a philosophy of science course or any theory course reading e.g. Thomas Kuhn, this might not be amiss.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

http://reason.com/blog/2015/03/19/male-students-non-pc-views-on-rape-stati

goole linked that only a few posts ago

Reason's history on race relations might influence how willing an African-American student is to engage with them in good faith, tbf. Not that this kid doesn't sound like a nightmare on all other fronts.

http://www.jehsmith.com/1/2015/03/the-joke.html

By contrast the body of Wolinski's work, I believe, shines with humanity and sensitivity: virtues that are rooted in his experience as a Jew in France in the '68 era, and for which he was assassinated. Honestly, I read Wolinski and I do not think of the Front National. I think of Gargantua, and the Decameron, and Don Quixote: works that face up to the absurdity, fragility, and grotesquerie of human existence and of social life, rather than trying to screen these out, as authoritarians do. I'm an anti-authoritarian, and in this I take myself to be defending a particular strain of leftist politics. I think by contrast that the dominant strain of leftist politics at present, at least in the anglophone world, is frighteningly authoritarian, and deeply misguided.

the dominant strain of leftist politics at presentthroughout history, at least in the anglophone worldacross the globe, is frighteningly authoritarian, and deeply misguided

fixed that for ya

I have an essay in the current issue of Harper's Magazine on the Charlie Hebdo attacks, on the disgraceful reaction of the so-called left in the anglophone world, and on the importance of satire. It is behind a paywall, unfortunately, and I can't reproduce it here.

gutted about that bro

ngl, Kind of very slightly warming to True for that response to Reason.

On a somewhat related note, I recently talked to one of the people responsible for marketing American Sniper (and other Warner Bros. productions) to French audiences. "That must have been a challenge," I said, "with all the American jingoism and so on." Her reply? "French audiences appreciate films by talented directors that show the world from the perspective of morally compromised characters. They recognize that this is one of the highest aims of the cinematic art, and are mature enough to engage with a film at this level without agreeing with the political views of its maker." Honestly there are moments when I think to myself, "At last, I'm in a country for grown-ups."

first dispatch from the country for grown-ups:

http://tabletmag.com/scroll/188412/french-mayor-bans-oscar-nominated-muslim-film

how is french law set up such that a mayor can force a privately owned theater to pull a movie?

(it looks like an isolated and kind of abortive incident.....sorry actually, not sure it's terribly relevant)

Something about smugness of the French cineastes sent me out looking for trouble.....looking forward to that Harper's article, with which I expect to disagree.

fuck this 19 year old creep for thinking he can get away with acting like real life is reddit or 4chan

Adam Bruneau's edit otm, of course, but as leftists, we have reason (and perhaps an obligation) to be especially wary of the authoritarianism that arises from within our own ranks.

some leftists are pro-authoritarianism

https://dov5cor25da49.cloudfront.net/products/383/636x460design_01.jpg

And 19 year-old creeps were playing amateur Socrates in class discussions long before the internet existed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnQ_WDtBhvI

I think you would be hard-pressed to find a leftist that was 100% anarchist in their beliefs. People generally think murder being illegal is a good thing, for instance. But it would be a mistake to infer this means every leftist is pro-authoritarian.

Just wish these guys would pick more important issues. Shutting down guantanamo or enacting banking reform or campaign finance reform. Instead we are talking about 19-year old trolls and essayists that wish they lived in France.

tbf, this thread is specifically dedicated to low-stakes nonsense

It's going to take some serious work to convince me there was some uniform "leftist" response to the CH shootings. It was just a few months ago and I recall plenty of disagreement. The closest thing to a consensus WAS the "always defend free speech, dammit!" response --- those who argued anything else had to tread carefully instead of just making one good principle the sole guide.

No authority figure in the Occupy Wall Street either.

Contenderizer, thanks for reminding me!

Right wing response was an undivided & unambiguous defense of free speech (with a large side of Muslim-bashing). Leftists were more inclined to hedge, e.g. ILX thread.

max tweeted out the final bit of that reason post

michelle shocked answered him

https://twitter.com/mshockedrox/status/578814639858810880

sup internet!

XP don't forget the Bill Maher liberals

Anyway, after a browse down memory lane on the CH thread here, I just want to pay tribute to my favorite post from that discussion:

its just so... french. they can't even have normal racism like the rest of us loser countries. they have to have some refined triple-distilled artinsinal grown from only one village with special soil you-can't-even-understand-the-flavor sophisticated racism.

― celfie tucker 48 (s.clover), Saturday, 10 January 2015 16:59 (2 months ago) Permalink

Yeah that is classic

http://nyti.ms/1IbzI2F

Nice enlightenment praxis. Good article, too.

i had a classics class with the columbia student quoted in that article. he was pretty knowledgeable but never seemed to be responding to anything anyone else said and just launched on long, righteous speeches any time he was given the opportunity to talk. we're still friends on facebook, and he posted his response to the safer space thing. it was really awful, i don't think it's a coincidence that the author chose not to quote it. someone slips a flyer under your door saying "hey, let's try to challenge homophobia in our dorms when we encounter it" and you launch into an epic essay about the defence of intellectual liberty. iirc it ended with the phrase: "this is a dangerous space... a very dangerous space." such an asshole. his facebook posts are half about how atheism is the biggest problem facing the world today, which he ties into some great thesis he has about a crisis of morals and faith in western society, and half your typical mordy ilx posts.

goes without saying that the illiberalism is wrong and has no place in universities, but i wonder if articles like this & that chait one are blowing it up for spin. i wonder if the illiberal stuff is a trend or if they're just the extreme (and unfortunate) outliers in the general trend of universities trying to make more inclusive spaces. these articles all have a suspicious lack of voices from members of the groups themselves. i suspect they're mostly pretty reasonable (modulo college). everyone i have ever talked to about trigger warnings basically has the same opinion, that there's no hard or fast rule about it but it's something teachers should keep in mind. someone enrolled in a university english class should be able to read anna karenina without "tw: suicide," but a teacher should warn their students before showing a film with a graphic rape scene. that kind of thing.

the safe space at brown described in that article sounds like a right-wing caricature of safe spaces; puppies and pillows and soothing music. granted i've never gone to an american LAC but that's not at all representative of what the term referred to at my alma mater, or in the other public spaces that use the title that i've encountered. ime it just means the people who run the space hold themselves accountable to the people who use it, and will kick someone out who is making members of oppressed groups uncomfortable. again, no one thinks every space should have that policy, but it makes sense for some spaces to, right? as long as there are large numbers of ppl who use racist or homophobic language & humour, it kind of makes sense for there to be spaces for queer people & poc to go where they don't have to hear it. can we assure that rules are never applied overzealously? no, of course not. but i question the motives of these articles highlighting a subset of incidents where they are and calling it the norm

How come these trollwavers never do this in public school, these are all private universities?

i've never been in a 'stress relief zone', which i believe they've been having on campuses more and more often (esp. around finals time) since i went to school in the late 90s, but i got the impression from the description of that safe space that it was combining the no-triggering no-aggression function of a safe space with a de-stress function, probably because they had the puppy videos and whatever around from their already existing de-stressing student wellness office?

yeah they had the play with puppies thing during finals when i was in college, but it had nothing to do with safe-spaces

I see the article as pushing back against a set of related arguments:

1) We are made unsafe by exposure to ideas & language that trouble us.

2) A student's sense of threat or offense in response to such exposure therefore requires administrative intervention.

3) For safety's sake, public discourse on campus should be carefully moderated to ensure that no one feels threatened or offended.

4) In pursuit of this, it is reasonable to exclude or otherwise censor controversial voices.

I think it's worth opposing (or at least interrogating) every part of this construction.

is anyone making those arguments though? like, is there a group represents any or all of those arguments? like, is this an argument actually being had, outside of inside the minds of journalists who write these pieces? all the articles i've read about this take isolated incidents of students overzealously applying social justice principles and extrapolate from that a movement of people who want to limit public discourse on campus.

because there are none mentioned in that article, or in the jonathan chait one. i just reread it and checked.