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

Seen that Antifa are trying to get Marduk shows cancelled. They said that they have white supremacist ties.

feel kinda bad cos I just saw them. isn't that largely Magnuss "Devo's" fault anyway

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1361348427256383&id=1136688033055758&__tn__=%2As

I don't know how antifa are organized or if you can blame them for pages like this
https://m.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=988567004597985&id=988558524598833
But is Pure Holocaust the only Immortal album not allowed. Summoning and Darkthrone? Seems badly researched.

http://www.metalblast.net/blog/the-blm-boycott-marduk/

metal band trying hard to be offensive offends the easily offendable, who would have thought

they have white supremacist ties

They're wearing Trump neckwear on stage?

what would we do baby
without Jews
sha la la la

The white supremacist ties thing is probably bullshit. Haven't found anything that backs it up.

The free speech thread is a clusterfuck so I thought I'd use this one to bring up the issue of Andrew Potter losing his position as Director of the Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill (but not his position as a prof) after writing an admittedly dopey column in Maclean's about the purported social malaise of Quebec. (The traffic fiasco does reveal some serious issues but I'm really not sure that 'social alienation' is one of them.) I'm not sure what I think about this situation: the uni tweeted something right after his piece was published, distancing themselves from his writing, which might be inappropriate. I'm not entirely clear on what his position at ISC entailed, tbh, but idk if writing a dumb column is reason to lose it (although it's not totally clear yet what happened). Hébert and Coyne take different positions.

This tweetstorm was a decent critique of Hébert, I thought.

imo the article was not a flagrant enough violation of academic standards and norms to justify his being fired but assuming he doesn't have tenure i think it's the institution's right to draw that line for themselves. i don't buy the now popular corey robin argument that all academics employed by the university should have their speech protected wrt their jobs except in cases where such a provision was explicitly drawn up in the contract.

McGill's statement.

I'm not entirely sure that these two passages can be reconciled:

The scholarly members of the university have the freedom to pursue research and artistic creation and to disseminate their results, without being constrained by political or disciplinary orthodoxies, monetary incentives or punitive measures as a result of their academic pursuits. They may exercise this freedom in the service of both the university and the wider society. When scholarly members of the university participate in public forums and debates, they should represent their views as their own.

The mission of MISC is to promote a better understanding of Canada through the study of our heritage and to support the study of Canada across the country and internationally. Professor Potter recognized that he had failed to uphold this mission and that the “credibility of the Institute would be best served by his resignation”.

The only way I might be able to see the uni's perspective is if Potter failed to represent his views as his own because of the tagline at the end of his column: "Andrew Potter is the Director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada." I doubt that really violates this clause, though.

don't buy the now popular corey robin argument that all academics employed by the university should have their speech protected wrt their jobs except in cases where such a provision was explicitly drawn up in the contract.

Why not?

bc institutions should have the latitude to hire and fire employees that it feels are doing a good or bad job fulfilling the institution's mission. when you represent your institution poorly that is grounds for dismissal. u might argue that non-job related speech shouldn't have a bearing on employment however that explanation disappears when it comes to the university (as opposed to some other industry profession) where there really is no easy way to distinguish between political speech that is within the purvey of the professor and that which is just his private opinion.

'institutes' are afaik pretty outward-facing units of universities anyway, where it's expected that scholarship will put on some kind of public face, so the demand for politico-institutional decorum is higher and there are probably few choices open to the containing institution to signal their intellectual or cultural bona fides to the surrounding political community, other than hiring and firing (anything else would be too fussy/inconsequential, and amount to a kind of political-sphere commitment in what is essentially a position for bureaucratic-academic functionaries skilled at drawing in donors and enhancing university prestige).

i think this is crazy. that article was not bigoted in any manner and it wasn't even necessarily disrespectful toward quebec. complaining about the city you live in, especially in hyperbolic terms, is a sign of affection.

it's a dumb decision from the university but maybe my expectations for our institutions of higher education are v low

Mordy do you ever reconcile your spiritual bent with your ideas about labor and consumer choice and think about where some of those things might converge? NB the fact that you would never proselytize might mean that this doesn't occur to you.

i think one informs the other. i want institutions to have broad latitude to organize themselves and their composition bc i want my religious institutions to have that freedom. generally speaking i err on the side of putting eggs in multiple baskets so i prefer a lot of distinct communities/models of social organization to one monolithic model, and that's before getting into the major concerns i have about the shared sociocultural space in the US. my opinion to this is afaict consistent with my opinions on freedom of speech as well - i want my speech to be protected so i take an expansive view towards allowing as much speech as possible.

Yeah but if institutions can fire people based on speech... ok

so i see the argument that your non-job related speech - say on facebook or in a newspaper - should have no bearing on your employment as better than the same argument applied to ppl who are professional speech generators (professors, media figures) since often the lines between private speech and public are completely obscured and certainly shouldn't include a newspaper article. but like if you're a religious figure employed by a religious institution and you start talking to people about how you no longer believe in god, even if it's not even posted on facebook or in a newspaper, i think that's pertinent to whether you're still able to carry out the mission of the institution - that seems intuitive to me.

Breadcrumbs back to Galileo

My advice is to always consider the existence of high school cafeteria levels of personal pettiness and cruelty, and crusades levels of zealotry when espousing any position on how people should be hired, fired and potentially punished for speech

someone is always going to be making the decisions. since no one at any level of social organization is immune to pettiness, cruelty and zealotry, it's better to have many smaller communities making their own decisions than one federalized decision maker.

So there should be no supreme judiciary authority to decide on whether or not to protect speech?

to protect it against state intervention for sure

i don't think policing discrete institutional decisions around speech + employment are even within the remit of the gov?

i find it v easy to imagine speech terrible enough that even if said outside the workplace would be sufficient to determine you didn't want this person working for you (and make that firing decision morally just). like if i went to a bar with an employee and he started talking about how in an ideal world we would commit genocide against various different ethnic/racial groups i wouldn't be like "this is disgusting and i don't want this person working with me any more but hate speech is protected free speech and he didn't say it at work so i shouldn't do anything about it."

There's no way that speech could be religiously motivated

institutions should have the latitude to hire and fire employees that it feels are doing a good or bad job fulfilling the institution's mission..

there are probably few choices open to the containing institution to signal their intellectual or cultural bona fides to the surrounding political community, other than hiring and firing (anything else would be too fussy/inconsequential, and amount to a kind of political-sphere commitment in what is essentially a position for bureaucratic-academic functionaries skilled at drawing in donors and enhancing university prestige).

i don't think policing discrete institutional decisions around speech + employment are even within the remit of the gov?

if you're a religious figure employed by a religious institution and you start talking to people about how you no longer believe in god, even if it's not even posted on facebook or in a newspaper, i think that's pertinent to whether you're still able to carry out the mission of the institution - that seems intuitive to me.

All of these are probably valid points but this also means that we can have an opinion about, and even take action in response to, the university's/Potter's decisions in a case like this, especially if it is an issue that could concern us, wrt those of us who work in academic institutions. If anything, it was made clear that his resignation itself was motivated by negative reactions from influential people, including the Premier. Maybe academic freedom is not, or should not be, absolute but, in the end, I tend to agree with Treeship (and Mordy) that the content of the column does not justify someone losing a directorship, and, if someone can lose his post for publicly expressing an opinion, supported by data, about the existence of social problems in a province that nearly everyone agrees has its share of problems, that does seem a bit chilling.

Like, I don't think that should be seen as fundamentally contrary to the mission of someone in charge of the "Institute for the Study of Canada", and, if it is, that seems like a problem.

Anyway, McGill principal Suzanne Fortier pretty much explicitly agrees with j.'s point:

It is anybody’s judgment if after an article like that, politicians would be happy to come to an event,” Dr. Fortier said. “That’s not pressure, that’s just reality.”

http://activehistory.ca/2017/03/shes-hot-female-sessional-instructors-gender-bias-and-student-evaluations/

this is not coddling related per se, but I guess this is the best thread for it? was thinking that some of the factors ppl have identified as causes of the polarising behavior discussed itt could also be factors here as well (treating students more like consumers with corresponding "the customer is always right" attitudes etc)

One of the rolling academia threads would be the best place for that but, yeah, there's a mountain of literature on the uselessness of student evaluations, the factor discussed in that article being but one of the reasons. I'm just thankful that I now teach under Program Chairs who agree.

A useful archive of some of the literature: http://studentevaluationsareworthless.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-student-evaluations-of-teachers-are.html

I guess I don't think they're useless/worthless, since they can provide very valuable feedback. However, they can make or break your career when you are sessional, since departments sometimes use them as the sole measure of someone's teaching, which is a highly inappropriate use for them.

I can't find the rolling academia thread either so: I'm not sure that that Vimy Ridge incident couldn't have happened to a male professor tbh. As a (non-white and at-the-time young-looking) male instructor, I will note that in my first 2.5 years of teaching, I received plenty of challenges to my authority, ranging from students openly chatting throughout every class, no matter how many times I asked them not to; students who obviously plagiarized telling me aggressively "I'm not taking a zero" before slamming the door; a student asking repeatedly "where are you getting this information? Is it just from the Internet?" to the point where I started including bibliographies with my Powerpoint presentations; students refusing to leave my office after fighting a grade (for frankly worthless work) for 20-30 minutes...

Rolling higher education into the shitbin thread

Ah, thx

i work at a university. before getting my permanent job i was in the temp pool. one of my assignments was doing data entry on a batch of student evaluations for the linguistics department. some of the shit students would write would be crazy, in terms of being extremely negative about instructors who were broadly popular. was also strangely common for both male and female instructors to get comments about how cute or hot they were

Moved the discussion to the shitbin thread.

i hate this thread title and fucking loathe "political correctness" gone mad bullshit but lately i have been getting very fatigued by some of the social justice communities w/ whom i interact online and in my professional field. i'm a poc and an underrepresented minority in my field (academic libraries) and i've been heavily involved in diversity & inclusion / social justice & equity efforts in various capacities, working to rectify issues around recruitment, representation, communication, etc. in my field. it has been exciting and rewarding work and on a personal level i have met a lot of wonderful people doing this work. it has been amazing to connect with other poc and underrepresented groups who have felt marginalized and who are now doing work to make our field more diverse, welcoming, equitable, and inclusive.

but lately i feel like the communities, at least in my field, that are talking about some of these things have devolved into such a bullshit "cool kids" cliquish thing in which there is a woke crowd who knows what's up and then all the rest are dumb mansplaining oppressors, there is no room for patience or thoughtful discussion or an awareness that people are still learning about these issues. there are major discussions about social justice and inclusivity happening right now at conferences and professional listservs, it is great, but there is also this dynamic i frequently see in which the second a straight white dude suggests anything that is not 100% on board w/ the standard SJ internet mileu - even if it is very thoughtful, respectful, considered - people flip out, give a bunch of one-liners, make rude comments, say shit like “oh great another straight white male" and subtweet, subtweet, subtweet. this is a small field, everyone knows each other, but people i otherwise respect a lot respond in public forums in such toxic ways and it frustrates me. i see people at all levels of power responding this way, including some very prominent library directors and administrators at huge institutions, and it just feels toxic, cliquish, and exclusive. how the fuck do you expect to gain allies if every time someone suggests something different your immediate response is a rude dismissal or subtweet? at a previous job, i was a member and then a chair of a D&I committee, and over the 4 year period i served on that committee i saw how slowly allies were formed, how much work, patience, and empathy it took from all parties. if some straight white dude (or other person) made a good faith criticism or comment, we would patiently engage, and in most cases those people would come around. they kept showing up to our events and listened in and learned a lot. i am not even talking about dumb or offensive comments - i get that at a certain point you just have to say “fuck you” to some of those, but when “fuck you” happens to people who are earnestly and thoughtfully questioning you and are making a good faith effort to engage, why should we expect those people to become allies?

:(

not like this is any shock but i think you're otm and this is such an odious thing about discourse on the left imo it's not just sj activists but ime pretty much all places where political activism meets the internet. when i meet ppl doing irl face2face activism they are some of the most genuine, thoughtful, listening ppl i have met and then pretty much every online space - twitter, tumblr, facebook - the loudest ppl monopolize the discussion with defensiveness, rage, smugness, etc. it's terrible for so many reasons - one is what you mention because sometimes interlocutors w/ arguments you're tired of / think are trolls are potential allies if treated right. another is one is that you can't know your enemy if you don't know what they have to say. but the truth is that the best reason is that epistemic humility is such an important virtue and this whole "i know the truth i don't need to hear dissenting opinions any more" is disastrous. i think also it has led the left to basically cede the entire discourse of convincing moderates to the right. (not to mention this whole nasty internecine conflict btwn the left and liberals which is surely productive for the future political success of any ideas that are important to us.)

epistemic humility is such an important virtue and this whole "i know the truth i don't need to hear dissenting opinions any more" is disastrous

do you think this is a relatively new thing with the left? I can understand how this particular form and the venue (the internet) appear novel, but I can't help being reminded of the countless internecine infights of previous lefty movements

it seems like atm in particular the daggers are all out prob bc u kno

"i get that at a certain point you just have to say “fuck you” to some of those, but when “fuck you” happens to people who are earnestly and thoughtfully questioning you and are making a good faith effort to engage, why should we expect those people to become allies?"

well, ultimately because it's the right thing to do. it's about the ideals and not about the petty fucking people sometimes involved. i get where things are at right now. there's been a time of exceptionally open conversation and that has had a tendency to devolve into hostile and demeaning bullshit and at a certain point it's necessary to cut off the conversation and retrench. and if that cuts het cis white males like me out, whatever, that sucks and i roll my eyes a lot, but seriously people like me need to learn how to shut our goddamn mouths and listen every once in a while. i'm a big boy and i'm not going to abandon my commitment to justice just because some people are into power tripping.

i'm not going to call them on it either, because it's not my place, and certainly you're in a better position to call people on their bullshit than i am... i'm out as far as trying to speak for disenfranchised groups, but i certainly wouldn't mind having you speak for me. :) but if you don't feel up for that, you know what, don't worry about it. i don't think the conversation is really any worse off for missing my voice right now.

Yeah, that's how I feel but there are times when it seems like people are pretending everything is okay within their ranks and I feel like I should stick up for someone or something but I'm not sure I'm well informed enough and I just keep my fingers crossed and hope better people will prevail, but it feels cowardly and irresponsible to say nothing sometimes.
So it's a relief when some people better people acknowledge that things are getting a little scary.

but seriously people like me need to learn how to shut our goddamn mouths and listen every once in a while

feel free to start anytime btw

the only thing that honestly disturbed me is when some "progressives" started going after people who are into bdsm. i've been through that shit already, and i'm not going for it again.

"but seriously people like me need to learn how to shut our goddamn mouths and listen every once in a while

feel free to start anytime btw"

you guys are as predictable as pink floyd fans. fortunately for you i don't really have much to say to pink floyd fans either.

Yes, you and I can speak for ourselves as white dudes who don't feel any further need to engage because of how woke we already think we are