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

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.

There's certainly a Nietzschean "genealogy of campus morality" critique waiting there for anyone who wants it.

" 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."

Agreed that you can't.

Do we agree that it's not even remotely desirable though.

Just pointing out that the students at Evergreen had some very really demands as well, including the disarmament of campus cops.

Do we agree that it's not even remotely desirable though.

Yes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cMYfxOFBBM

I feel like some of these student eyebrows should not be protected as free speech.

eyelashes

re the frequent rejoinder that they're just college kids and we have to cut them some slack
a. i was thinking back to my college days and i don't recall acting like this, or knowing anyone who did
b. presumably ppl who act like this in college and aren't corrected will just act like this as adults
c. fbofw ppl take college activism as metonymic for the left in general so it's not great

nb i've heard angela nagle discuss at least pts b + c

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DCtbtmmWsAAJKoL.jpg

Ah yes, for the intellectual glory days before postmodernism, when bigotry didn't exist.

Steven Pinker is way too smart to be referring to social phenomena as "inevitable"

yeah. the imprecision of "inevitable" was unfortunate. he probably should have chosen something like "ensuing". this wouldn't imply an almost Newtonian cause and effect connection between the two phenomena. but you are, to speak precisely, quibbling over a word of secondary importance which does not carry his point.

if you behave foolishly your enemies will inevitably have an easier time mocking you

yeah. the imprecision of "inevitable" was unfortunate.

To my eye, at any rate, it's a deliberate attempt to shift responsibility for people being assholes away from the people who chose to be assholes and towards the people who, apparently, left the otherwise-only-potential-assholes literally no choice but to enact their assholery.

But REASONABLE PEOPLE MAY DIFFER, I concede I may be putting too much weight on one word

i think it's more like ppl will always be assholes but if you didn't abrogate your credibility maybe u could better address them instead of turning them into a cool countercultural movement

tbf I remember not really caring for that book when it came out after loving "the language instinct" so maybe i'm letting my negative feelings about the book as a whole inflect my read of that quote

Steven Pinker is way too smart

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Monday, June 19, 2017 7:36 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not in evidence tbh

Not sure what to make of the Left's responsibility idea but I find it funny how many rightwingers act like the Left weren't babysitting them well enough.

Pinker isn't a right winger ime

it's a deliberate attempt to shift responsibility

rhetoric is like that and Pinker is a rhetorician as well as a scientist. rhetorically, the quote contains both a direct rational argument and a (submerged) emotional one. you're focusing one word that carries a bit of the emotional argument, and treating it as if it were saying one clear-cut thing, but that isn't how it works. your response is among a number of shades of possible emotional responses, which happens to be negative in your case, because it rubbed you the wrong way. that's a weakness in the rhetoric, but not in the reasoning.

Pinker isn't a right winger ime

― Mordy, Tuesday, 20 June 2017 17:42

I wasn't talking about him (I like Pinker), I was meaning the "you made us harass you" trolls and cranky broken records

I don't agree with everything this writer says but it provides a decent catalogue of recent cases where American contingent faculty have been professionally punished (including losing their jobs in at least two cases) for expressing views that offend conservatives in non-classroom situations. (Dettwyler posted opinions on social media. Durden appeared on Tucker Carlson's show, without even being identified with her professional/academic affiliation.)

Yeah, I took notice that two persons were fired in a day, both were leftwing, both were women...