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

One thing that doesn't seem to get mentioned by the pro-Weinstein narrative is that this Day of Absence was entirely optional and required pre-registration.

http://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2017/06/02/19057135/what-we-know-about-the-lockdown-and-unrest-at-washingtons-evergreen-state-college

another one of those great situations where if you take a side you're automatically lumped either with an old tone-deaf professor or a bunch of dumb brats

I think both extremes come from a rather rapid delegitimization of institutions. In that sense the decline of academia is the canary in the coal mine. It's possible this current legitimation crisis is being driven by new communications technology, or it's simply just the "terminal phase"of the present organization of capital, but it seems clear that is what's happening. We are in a moment in which the"legitimizing beliefs" which ground institutions are nowhere to found.

xp to Treeship

speaking of evergreen, looking forward to the inevitable softening of treeship's stance on this in about 20 posts

Another outcome of legitimation crisis is that every action we can take, from our social media postings to our consumer choices, is then overladen with "political" consequences. The whole of everyday life becomes politicized.

From Weinsteins original email:

If there was interest in a public presentation and discussion of race through a scientific/evolutionary lens, I would be quite willing to organize such an event (it is material I have taught in my own programs, and guest lectured on at Evergreen and elsewhere). Everyone would be equally welcome and encouraged to attend such a forum, irrespective of ethnicity, belief structure, native language, political leanings, or position at the college. My only requirement would be that people attend with an open mind, and a willingness to act in good faith.

Sad lol...

We are in a moment in which the"legitimizing beliefs" which ground institutions are nowhere to found.

http://peterlevine.ws/?p=18594

... when things are going well, institutions offer attractive deals to citizens that they would be very happy to accept today. For instance, if unionized manufacturing jobs paid decent wages, people would like unions. If local government agencies had enough resources to provide consistently decent services, people would like government. If political parties were driven by volunteers (instead of swamped by money that flows to for-profit consultants who work for entrepreneurial candidates), people would engage with parties. And if a metropolitan daily newspaper offered the best available way to get news, sports, classifieds, and comics, people would subscribe, the subscription money would pay for journalists, and readers would trust the news industry.

But there are reasons that these institutions are not prospering. They all have competitors or outright enemies.

In that sense the decline of academia is the canary in the coal mine.

yeah, if the canary had personally leaked the carbon monoxide

We are in a moment in which the"legitimizing beliefs" which ground institutions are nowhere to found

i think ryan is on to something here and i also think a lot of this is technologically driven. similar to how digital technology is making past physical media meaningless we are deconstructing a whole host of previously accepted beliefs. in the past these beliefs were largely defined at the top and dictated by authority. whether they were genuine or coherent in of themselves was sort of not really an issue since there was no easy way to challenge that hegemony. now thanks to tech not only can everyone have input, but the discussions are occurring faster and faster, giving everyone open access but also weakening that original belief.

Bill Maher had a guy from Google on his show last night talking the ethics of what they do, and kept asking "How do you ethically manipulated people's beliefs". this rubbed me the wrong way cos it felt like he was connotating "beliefs" with social media/identity culture signifiers. i am not sure they are the same thing, and i think assuming they are is a bit dangerous and self-glorifying on the part of the tech industry. ultimately there is always a political element to what you make public. what you believe is something in and of your own experience, and what you choose to share invariably presents a simplified/commodifiable/calculatable version of that infinitely nuanced and ultimately unspeakable personal experience. at some point we are going to have to get real with this lost spiritual element to modern consumer/social/political culture and own up that these are just market-friendly approximations. in the meantime the global dialog will continue to deconstruct so much human posturing into its core absurdities.

there's lots that i don't get about the drive to undermine institutions, but the thing i get the least is the belief by the opponents of these institutions that they _benefit_ from the destruction of mediating forces. i understand that they're opposed to mediation, but they really seem to believe that their form of ideological purity is the only possible form of ideological purity.

unions did not succeed simply because everybody rationally agreed that giving rights to workers was a social good. a large part of that decision was concluding that unions were a more palatable alternative to open war between labor and capital.

Right, but in each and every country the world over, capital only came to that conclusion after labor showed a willingness to wage open war.

If there was interest in a public presentation and discussion of race through a scientific/evolutionary lens,

Oh god. Why did he think this would be useful in this context?

confirmed old white guy

presumably as a biologist he wanted to spread the gospel of race not being biologically real, that being the kind of thing that scientists think settles all issues

"to put phenotype aside and reject this new formulation"

Yeah it wasn't going to be a eugenics lecture.

I doubt that was the intent.

And even if he actually wanted to say 'constructivism, yay!' then clearly he could have formulated that less 'bell curve'-ish.

k3vin k.
Posted: June 3, 2017 at 9:45:47 AM
another one of those great situations where if you take a side you're automatically lumped either with an old tone-deaf professor or a bunch of dumb brats

Best to take the brave position of worrying about how you'll look

I get the sense from the Rogan interview that he sees himself as speaking for science and reasoned discussion and against postmodernism. So there's another way to read his intent here. By proposing this lecture on the science of race, in a context where the issues are rather orthogonal, being about inclusivity and safety for people of colour, he then gets to claim that the students aren't interested in actually listening to his conclusions and just assumed that it would be about the biological difference between races. When really it was just an irrelevant topic.

There's something on the events and mails leading up to the protests here: http://www.cooperpointjournal.com/2017/03/20/re-equity-inclusion-silence-and-fear-faculty-emails-reveal-controversy-over-race-and-diversity-at-evergreen/

If there was interest in a public presentation and discussion of race through a scientific/evolutionary lens,

oh cool -- back to the nineteenth and early 20th century

I think that lens has changed its basic shape since then. Human genome project and all that.

Weinstein took particular issue with one policy, put in place to encourage equity at Evergreen “faculty voted to require official, yearly reflections on our individual progress relative to racial diversity.” He appears to conflate this attempt to mend historical inequality and combat racism at Evergreen, with discrimination against white people, writing, “It is hard to imagine a person of color being flagged by a conversion panel, or as an internal hiring candidate, due to their yearly reflections revealing cryptic bias, or insufficient progress with respect to race. But it is all too easy to imagine a white person (whatever that is taken to mean) being challenged on this basis.” He continues that as a result of these and other diversity policies, “We have now imposed on ourselves a de facto hierarchy based on skin color, and hooked it directly to mechanisms of hiring, promotion and dismissal–empowering some, and disempowering others.”

this seems to be a reasonable opinion with which people with similar values can in good faith disagree. this guy voiced his opinions and his argument lost. i think being ambushed by a mob of students calling him a racist is a response that is a bit over the top

I should probably add that I agree that in this context, the scientific/evolutionary view of race is wholly irrelevant to the political, economic, and social dynamics of race. They exist in such different worlds they have only the barest sliver of overlap. That Evergreen prof no doubt feels very isolated and confused by that division. It's probably a byproduct of his living in the intellectual isolation of academia, compounded by the isolation of hard science from ordinary habits of thought.

high school teachers much have a laugh every time they hear about these poor victimized university professors.

You're a good dude, VHS, but I'm not sure where to start with that one.

reasonable people can disagree whether the policy he objected to would actually result in material harm to any professors, or whether his objection itself was silly. given the other dumb shit this professor seems to have said, it's a fair bet that his fears were probably unfounded. it's also fair to deduce that his whiteness prevented him from fully understanding the issue, which is something that can be said about pretty much every white person, myself included.

it is not reasonable to think that expressing the above-quoted opinion, or his misguided and tone-deaf response to the "day of absence" proposal, is grounds for losing his job

It's probably because he is racist, to be honest.

I'm glad you faced up to that honestly, Fred. I know how hard it can be to admit that a complete stranger could be a racist.

it's possible that he's a racist, but nothing he's said has risen to that level

He's gone on Fox News, so statistically, it's more likely than not that he is a racist...

very good argument fred

Maybe I should keep it to the 'post a controversial opinion' thread, but it seems to me a lot of media space is being spent either defending/berating 'tone deaf' professors, or defending/berating 'dumb of bunch brats' student activists, when I think there is more pressing matters when it comes to the education system in the US.

Possibly true but that's largely what this thread is about. I don't think that coverage of these issues is the reason why issues with e.g. public school funding in the US are being underserved. As for comparing the relative levels of victimization or exploitation, that discussion could go on for a long time (while probably remaining an apples/orange comparison).

I attended The Evergreen State College, although that was more than 35 years ago.

If it is anything like it was then, that professor could easily be the intellectual equivalent of the Boy in the Bubble. TESC is isolated physically, miles outside of the nearest small town of Olympia, Wa. It is isolated academically, in that it is an experimental school that rejects much of the structure of ordinary academia. In many ways it occupies a space on the outmost tip of a very long limb, away from most social and academic conventions. It's hard for outsiders to imagine the degree this is true of the place.

Notable alumni

• Macklemore

uh and matt groening, hello

Motto in English
Let it all hang out

Don't forget their mascot, thus the motto.

http://evergreen.edu/geoduck

and Lynda Barry!

k3vin k otm, dude's e-mail was dumb and he's doing himself no favors in his tour of PC MADNESS media, but it wasn't so offensive as to justify immediately demanding his firing and shouting "fuck what what you have to say" in response to his request for discussion.

People will always have different opinions. This opinion was not obviously bigoted -- only arguably rooted in privileged blindness, although I am sure you can find people of all backgrounds who would agree with him -- and so so the idea that its vocalization caused "harm" to students is just manipulative.

He's gone on Fox News, so statistically, it's more likely than not that he is a racist...

― Frederik B

i didn't know you worked for google

Fred you are a blight on us all

"hey black people let's be cool about this and put phenotype aside"

i can totally understand waking up one day and going "hey why are WE the ones leaving?"

what followed sounds like it didn't quite work out tho

i mean, he seems kind of clueless, but i don't think anything he has said is objectionable enough for him to lose his job, which is what the protesters want. you can't have universities with faculties made up 100% of people who agree 100% with every tenet of the social justice/intersectional left, whatever you want to call it.

the protesters at this school are suspicious of anyone that isn't part of their movement--who doesn't talk about stuff exactly like they do--regardless of their actual sympathies. it doesn't seem like this approach is very promising for people who want a more equitable society--it's just going to fuel more factional conflicts and scramble the battle lines.

again, this seems like a marginal issue compared with all the other horrible things happening in our society right now -- with the fact that we have a malevolent narcissist in the white house, a man who won by running a campaign based on racism -- but i think it would be a mistake to dismiss it, it's not a coincidence that this is emerging at the same time our friends on the right have embraced a politics of pure resentment.

That goes to something I've seen elsewhere, that a lot of emotional fervor that goes into these brouhahas is re-directed political anxiety both as a result from and causing a lack of power in any greater institutional setting.

Like this is born of despair for not being able to affect anything on a material level, but also a result of continued habits that deemphasize or destroy collective action to change things.

It's the presumption that shaming people changes the system what produced 'em.