The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

xp that's more or less what a lot of it has been about anyway re the mizzou players, keyes, but w/ an overlay of 'they should be grateful'

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/race-and-the-free-speech-diversion

"During the debates over the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Senator J. Lister Hill, of Alabama, stood up and declared his opposition to the bill by arguing that the protection of black rights would necessarily infringe upon the rights of whites. This is the left-footed logic of a career Negrophobe, which should be immediately dismissed. Yet some variation of Hill’s thinking animates the contemporary political climate. Right-to-offend advocates are, willingly or not, trafficking in the same sort of argument for the right to maintain subordination. They are, however, correct in one key respect: there are no safe spaces. Nor, from the look of things, will there be any time soon."

i can't remember if that was linked already or not. but it's good on the diversionary tactics going on.

xp that's more or less what a lot of it has been about anyway re the mizzou players, keyes, but w/ an overlay of 'they should be grateful'

― j., Thursday, 12 November 2015 16:22 (11 minutes ago) Permalink

The idea that D-IA football scholarships give "poor minority students a chance to go to college" is a particularly insidious lie, or perhaps a 1/4 truth.

this topic gets the most specious analogies. i think there are some important differences between opponents of the Civil Rights Act and right-to-offend advocates (which just means people who are pro free speech). if you bought that analogy you'd have to consequently say that banning offensive speech is morally equivalent to passing the Civil Rights Act. does anyone on the left really believe that?

The freedom to offend the powerful is not equivalent to the freedom to bully the relatively disempowered. The enlightenment principles that undergird free speech also prescribed that the natural limits of one’s liberty lie at the precise point at which it begins to impose upon the liberty of another.

this is horrific

not sure only certainly people are "pro free speech". everyone uses that language.

the phrase "free speech" has been abused by both the right and the left in this debate. The first amendment only prevents the government from infringing your speech. It doesn't say Yale can't have a code of conduct, or that you can't complain to your dean about being bullied, or that someone can't discourage you from wearing Halloween costumes designed to humiliate and mock others, and it ALSO doesn't differentiate between the rights of different groups based on power. I agree with the sentiment that the freedom to challenge power is more important than the freedom to mock, but this has little to do with the first amendment.

maybe i misunderstand but "The enlightenment principles that undergird free speech also prescribed that the natural limits of one’s liberty lie at the precise point at which it begins to impose upon the liberty of another," seems to be claiming that the principles that undergird free speech only allow free speech as long as it doesn't impose on someone's right to not be offended aka it is trying to limit free speech. i thought most people would agree that free speech exists within the natural limits of one's liberty whether it offends or not.

I don't know how to locate or decipher an "enlightenment principle." But nothing in the constitution or US law prevents students from demanding action from their university in response to harassment and intimidation, nor prevents the university from responding.

that quote kind of loses me at "precise point"

xxp mordy the construal (as you know) is that speech can become harmful and thus impose on another's liberty

and that therefore such speech should be banned

what speech being banned are we talking about here? or is this purely hypothetical?

I'm inclined to agree w Tombot re: priorities here (which is maybe why I have v little to say on this thread)

it sounds to me like he's claiming that free speech does not protect any speech that offends someone else (thus the idea that right-to-offend speech is not covered by enlightenment values of free speech)

i take "impose upon the liberty of another" to mean something more serious than just being offended.

what then? what speech is currently legal that he believes we should make illegal and why should i be in favor of curtailing any more speech than we already do?

No one has actually raised "making illegal" any speech afaik

another thing about that qutoe. i don't see much discussion about what the enlightenment's values are, or why they would matter. it seems like something strictly for academics, as they probably are the only ones who decide the current course of 'the enlightenment project' anyway

i guess the way you're reading that sentence is that enlightenment principles undergird the law that upholds free speech as well as a kind of separate ethics of speech and while offensive speech violates the latter the author doesn't necessarily mean it should alter the former? bc that seems like a problematic distinction in that if free speech laws are an ethics issue, and you're undermining those ethics, you're just going to end up with a question of why this is legal anyway.

i don't see much discussion about what the enlightenment's values are, or why they would matter.

see this entire thread and the other one!

is that what's going on here?

well it's not Kant and Foucault but...

ryan do u think of foucault as particularly embedded in an enlightenment values discourse?

i thought this thread was about Atlantic articles on trigger warnings

Mordy: his essay "What is Enlightenment?" (a response to Kant's of the same title) is becoming a pretty standard text. It's well worth reading.

^will check out

i thought this thread was about Atlantic articles on trigger warnings

― AdamVania (Adam Bruneau)

it's about...the AMERICAN MIND

i think ryan is right that the subtext of both these threads is the question of what exactly constitutes the value of free speech and how/if it should be limited in what circumstances. if we were mostly european and not american we'd probably be discussing holocaust denial laws too.

i guess i just thought the enlightenment was about a lot more than that, but maybe i need to shut up and educate myself a little more

i still say it's mostly a question for academics, as they are probably the one's who will ultimately be deciding the course

LOL - http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/11/11/raise-voting-age-25-yale-missouri-protests-political-debate-column/75577468/

conservatives are flipping out about that cobb quote for the wrong reason. he's trying to say that enlightenment values don't countenance bigotry, which, lol

free speeeeech

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/11/11/missouri-senator-aims-to-block-students-dissertation-on-abortion.html

As a reminder, this started because Yale administrators merely ADVISED students not to wear offensive costumes -- no ban or censorship was at issue. In response, it was a white adviser who complained "American universities were once a safe space not only for maturation but also for a certain regressive, or even transgressive, experience; increasingly, it seems, they have become places of censure and prohibition." IMO it sounds like it's the white kids who are coddled.

this started because after the white adviser wrote her response email (which contains afaict zero bigotry) some students accused her and her husband of making them feel unsafe

maybe upper class whites are just more tuned into passive aggression. like, "we ask that you please consider..." basically means "FUCKING DON'T" in a lot of contexts, institutions, families...

accused

isn't this a form of speech? speech that must be free to be expressed?

i mean free speech gives the political right the ability to organize a broad anti-educational campaign that stretches from presidential debates to the article you read in the airplane on the way to said debate

yes - has anyone here said that they shouldn't be allowed to express themselves? by contrast, the students who complained have said that she should be fired for expressing herself. i defend people's right to illiberal opinions but we also get to say that they are wrong about how we want to organize our society.

school: please don't be racist this halloween, we don't need this shit
house master, responsible for student life: ohhh can't we be? just a little? for fun, like in the old days?

just in case it's not clear - i am not calling for any consequences of any sort for the students who yelled in that video and the advisor's husband or who called for them to be fired. i just think they're morons.

goole, do u think that you are accurately representing her email or maybe not so much?

this is all people objecting to things other people are saying about things that may or may not be true. its meaningless idle bullshit. as an American i support the right of them to print it but i can call it out and support the right of others to call it out. thats what free speech is.

should the woman be fired for writing her email? i come down on 'no.' it's meaningless to me but probably not to her.

if anyone is being coddled it is writers who spend their days pontificating maybe indulging in some sad nostalgia for their youth but now they are wise and have read theory so thats the knife they use for their self pain pleasure

i dont know its not our place to say who should be fired and not. its not a bloggers or an articles place either. its up to the people they work with.

i think you can give a judgement of personal opinion - do you think she should be fired due to her email or not?

sorry dont mean to derail but i was feeling El Tomboto earlier