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

Heinous fireable speech or being bad at your job as house master? If her job is to protect the students well being and creates safe residence for them and she's instead antagonizing some at the behest of others it seems clear she's just not very good at her job as house master and it's not really a question that her continued work there might be worth questioning, ppl are fired for way less all the time

One also said she was "disgusting" iirc.

I don't see this as being about free speech in a legal sense. It's a debate about social norms. The activists want really restrictive norms, such that the dean's mildly worded email would be seen to be on a continuum with racism, to the point where one's job could be put in jeopardy. I guess I think a culture that functions that way sounds shitty, like the default would always be to interpret people's words in the least charitable way possible.

I mean: neither of us really knows the actual dynamic and we're just speculating on it bc of anxieties about "social justice warriors" wanting to "silence" those they disagree with, but it's completely conceivable that there's nothing unreasonable about the students' concerns!

Wow some students feel offended [at an innocuous email] and you think that means she is bad at her job and should be fired. Your employment hinging on the offenses taken by an undergraduate student is pretty much a zero security job.

i hear the toaster in her hall is full of crumbs

the "innocuous email" is the one she responded to!

You can't think of any situation in which a person's sensibility regarding race might make them a bad fit for that job?

I think what's weird about the current campus youth movement, to the extent that it really exists, is that it looks a lot like an anti-authoritarian movement, but actually seems to be calling for the establishment of a better, more righteous authority -- us and our fair unbreakable social norms, not you and your bullshit unbreakable social norms.

Also it should be mentioned that the email was met with immediate backlash and had few vocal supporters. It didn't really do much damage. It seems to me that the activists already won on the ground of offensive costumes being understood to be uncool by the Yale community. What they seem to want is not change but total deference to their new consensus, which seems less reasonable.

Btw, want to restate I think the activists are right to want to discourage ppl from wearing offensive costumes. My issue has to do with their disproportionate response to someone who lightly objected to elements of their position

So your concern TWU is that the people upset about the "just a bit of blackface, be cool" housemaster is that they're not being radical enough

it's not that weird - left-wing totalitarianism has always had a campus cache. xxp

deej you've basically ducked the question in twelve different ways which is essentially why i stopped replying to you before. do you believe that this email deserves to get this woman fired?

and if not - does threatening someone's job over something that they said that is inoffensive constitute an attempt to suppress speech that disagrees w/ you?

@ treesh her response email is such a troll, "if you respond to this and disagree then you're overreacting by definition"

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/194874/person-up-yale-students

That is one way of looking at it; the other way is that the students' position boils down to "society's assumptions and rules expect us to be [X] and we want to force society to recognize and acknowledge that we are [ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ]"

They are not looking to overthrow American society as it currently exists; they are demanding that society accepts their input as being as valid and important as the input from the demographic that has largely defined its parameters and actors over the past two and half centuries.

^ this piece argues that the yale protesters "aren't radical enough." It's not a weird position. They want institutional muscle to back up their worldview.

Sorry xp

People in all kinds of jobs say things in emails that make the boss think, "this person isn't right for our organization" literally every day. They're not a team player, they're not working well with others, they are not knowledgeable. Whatever. If your job is housemaster, and you say things that seem to reflect negatively on your ability to do your job well, of COURSE it's fireable. Not every time coworkers or customers complain = they should be fired...but sometimes it does mean that, which is why customers or coworkers or students complain

That this is controversial at all is a red herring

I think what's weird about the current campus youth movement, to the extent that it really exists, is that it looks a lot like an anti-authoritarian movement, but actually seems to be calling for the establishment of a better, more righteous authority -- us and our fair unbreakable social norms, not you and your bullshit unbreakable social norms.

This is the gist of Freddy deBoer's argument, at least a piece of it: students seeking administrative redress when administrators shouldn't be their friends.

That's Freddy's ex post facto rationalization of being annoyed by student protesters IMO but maybe I'm just "casting aspersions"

x-post In a sense, Deej, yes -- "you aren't fit to be my mom" vs. "fuck this shit, none of you people are my mom". But I still think the conservative backlash is a bigger threat to humanity at this point.

That's Freddy's ex post facto rationalization of being annoyed by student protesters IMO but maybe I'm just "casting aspersions"

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Friday, November 13, 2015

I'm not a fan of his but I'm quoting a piece he wrote in September, way before this shit.

I'm kinda glad I had whiskey with dinner and then vomited all over this thread because it made me realize I have some shit to unpack about this stuff in general. Some insufficiently examined conclusions / assumptions about campus protests based on my own college experience AND I think I learned some wrong lessons from growing up and going to school in the southeast, i.e. some institutional racism is just unfixable, so worry about other stuff if you can, shit like that.

I think J0rdan's piece on Gawker about this was actually very good btw

thank you tomboto

this is excellent:

http://chronicle.com/article/When-Free-Speech-Becomes-a/234207

― goole, Friday, November 13, 2015 4:04 PM (2 hours ago)

this is by far the best thing i've read on the yale thing, thanks for linking

I thought it was pompous bullshit and I really don't like that particular use of the term "violence" but as above I have some attitudes I bring to the table.

I liked this comment from an LGM thread:

This, by the by (which I sort of posted on below) is a liberal/leftist split that goes back literally to before most of us were born, in which the liberal position is “Listen, you guys are angrily and hastily jettisoning what I consider to be core societal values in pursuit of laudable goals” and the leftist position is “Those core societal values are being wielded as a cudgel against oppressed groups, and as such their value is negative. And by starting this intraleft argument out in public you only strengthen conservatism, which would love to be having a conversation about whether we’re actively dangerous or simply wrong.”

Paris attacks end coddling (maybe Ozymandias plan?):

Judith Miller ‏@JMfreespeech 4h4 hours ago
Now maybe the whining adolescents at our universities can concentrate on something other than their need for "safe" spaces…

makes sense -- she listened to Bush administration whining about Saddam for a year

Bush "kept us safe" too

https://twitter.com/SteveKrak/status/665294956987179008

ffs

the shock and senseless horror of a balcony shooting in a crowded theater must be similar to the same from an unmanned aircraft in your home town. the accusation of ideological complicity from the perpetrators similarly chimerical.

Not even interested in going into this on Twitter, why signal-boost her horribleness, but that Judith Miller tweet made me want to push the red button on the entire human race, jfc

"a lot of people were murdered in conditions of unimaginable horror, this is just the newspeg for my culture-war zing I've been looking for"

"Did you notice I put free speech right there in my Twitter handle? That's because I'm so daring that my free speech is in danger from the prudes who don't get me"

Alfred Soto ‏@SotoAlfred 10h10 hours ago

@JMfreespeech makes sense -- you listened to Bush administration whining about Saddam for a year

It's all double stupid because the kinds of racism and bigotry that the Yale and Missouri and other students are fighting is the *exact same* bigotry and racism that makes Muslims in Western countries targets for radicalization by terrorist groups. When one side is offering "Go back to where you came from" and calling you a terrorist and a camel jockey and whatever else; and the other is offering acceptance and glory and martyrdom and the approval of Allah himself, which one would you choose?

It's all double stupid because the kinds of racism and bigotry that the Yale and Missouri and other students are fighting is the *exact same* bigotry and racism that makes Muslims in Western countries targets for radicalization by terrorist groups.

no, no it's not. sorry.

oh ok well if you say so

Erika Christakis did 9/11

Fine, it's a *manifestation* of the same kinds of bigotries. Or, maybe not. I'm sure people who would consider wearing blackface costumes or making poop swastikas will humbly refrain from wearing "suicide bomber" costumes or sarcastically referring to the "religion of peace" when terrorist attacks occur.

i guess i'm just not sure of the point you are trying to make outside of some "bigotry is the same everywhere" banality. i don't mean to be rude or dismissive, i just don't get.

Today's a bad day to be drawing really shit parallels and its a bad day to overreact to really shit parallels. Peace.

sarcastically referring to the "religion of peace" when terrorist attacks occur.

everyone should mock the phrase "the religion of peace".

as in the very concept

or "war on terror"

https://www.aclu.org/blog/speak-freely/racial-justice-and-free-speech-are-not-mutually-exclusive

CLearly whatever I'm trying to say, I'm not saying well, which is a common failing of mine, so I'll drop it.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18603/amherst-college-students-are-occupying-their-library-right-now-over-racial

http://inthesetimes.com/images/made/images/12231600_879585002130823_1462052527_n_850_478.jpg

I noticed that the NY Times and Breitbart are trying to slander activists by claiming they wanted their struggle to be more important than the events in Paris. They used two anonymous accounts and one who said the opposite to prove this.