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

"who can illuminate this issue for us.. wait! duh!!!! adam carolla"

Also invited is newspaper article commenter THE_TRUTH_HURTS

Carolla is apparently working on a movie about all this, but I thought real Americans hated Hollywood types telling them what to do?

he's made a career out of cosplaying a real american man, i guess that's close enough?

In response to the first question, he'll say, "Hey, lighten up!," crack open a Bud Light, and Journey's "Anyway You Want It" and/or Kenny Loggins' "I'm Alright" will start playing.

Siggy socky siggy socky hoy hoy hoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHYkHmpLiiM

Anyone know about the case of Samantha Bankston at Sierra Nevada College. This seems like might have the potential to be another real-world campus free speech issue but I haven't found much on it so far, other than this article, the linked change dot org petition, and a reddit thread: http://dailynous.com/2017/07/14/sierra-nevada-fires-philosopher-apparent-retaliation/

They keep going back to this well

Another data point (with more linked within) of a 'left' adjunct seemingly losing his livelihood because of stupid but dubiously actionable comments, many of which were made on private social media accounts: https://theestablishment.co/trumps-weaponized-base-is-going-after-academics-i-know-because-i-was-targeted-cf79d0f7fcb7

Rutgers is a piece of shit institution run by total assholes

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/books/review/mark-lilla-the-once-and-future-liberal.html?smid=tw-nytbooks&smtyp=cur&_r=1

As it turns out, Lilla himself could have used more rather than less introspection, a healthy dose of examining his own contradictions and biases. He laments that “American liberals have a reputation, as the saying goes, of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” If so, he has proved his bona fides as a member of the tribe. “The Once and Future Liberal” is a missed opportunity of the highest order, trolling disguised as erudition.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/how-howard-university-is-responding-to-high-school-students-wearing-make-america-great-again-hats/2017/08/23/da75cb20-8749-11e7-a50f-e0d4e6ec070a_story.html?utm_term=.56061026ea94&tid=sm_tw

“What those kids did to me is not going to stop me from supporting the president. This opened my eyes to fake news, to what is really going on, and it cultured me a bit,” Van Dee said. “Trump is not the KKK. He is not a Nazi. He is not a white supremacist.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/09/11/reed-college-course-lectures-canceled-after-student-protesters-interrupt-class

that all seems to be getting handled rather well actually

The class is going on, right? And it sounds like the people teaching it know what they're doing.

One lecture was cancelled and another was moved (by the prof) to the professor's office.

Serious question. How have the works in the syllabus 'been used over time to perpetuate violence against people of color'?

Serious answer: "violence" means whatever you want it to mean.

It doesn't seem to be addressed in any specifics in the article or any of the supplementary materials uploaded by the Reedies Against Racism.

I think we went over this in a mild CF on the free speech and creepy liberalism thread - basically Teh Discourse has decided what Mordy said, because who are you to say what violence is to the victim, which seems a little unfortunate considering it makes for easy-cheese potshots from assholes.

The best I can come up is that e.g. Crusades and imperialistic violence have been justified in the name of the Bible (although the violence has not been exclusively directed from white people to POC tbf)? This seems to be the syllabus btw.

xp

This is the full syllabus, prior to semester break at least. This is some kind of a full-year course.

http://www.reed.edu/humanities/hum110/syllabus/index.html#schedule

I mean, to some extent there is truth to the view that what we define as Western culture has historically been built on violence towards POC. Scholars have also preserved, celebrated, and promoted texts like these as the foundations of Western culture. So, if you regard Western culture as fundamentally racist and violent, there is a case to be made (not that I would necessarily be the one to make it).

Obv you could protest science classes on similar grounds.

But in the interim, throughout last year, a group of 12 to 15 students has occupied the class -- surrounding the lecturing professor in silent protest -- for each session.

I'd be pissed if I was paying Reed's insane tuition for a class where a protest like that was being allowed to go on.

I'm still figuring out liberal arts colleges tbh but... I think that maybe this sort of thing is part of the package deal that people are paying for...?

(Thankfully, no one has done this in my classes yet.)

i walk around when i teach so that would not work for me

then be sure not to teach anything oppressive

j. when faced with silent protesters

lol no my new gig is at a christian school

I regard human culture as fundamentally racist and violent, but that doesn't make me feel qualified to present a supplemental syllabus to people teaching a year-long 110-level course. That was the part of the article where I couldn't stop the reflexive eye roll. I think there are better ways to make the point, but whatever works for you, fellow kids.

It'd be good to hear a little more detail on the substance of the objections. The syllabus looks really crusty, boring and never-been-revised to my eyes; maybe the lectures are a really dynamic operation that deconstructs the operation of encountering the rest of the world through the eyes of Greeks like Herodotus (as delightful as he obviously is). Not putting words in the protestors' mouths but I could imagine that that's where a critique of epistemic violence might start, around the question of who gets to tell whose stories and who we accept as great and important (etc etc).

I mean the whole premise of these "Western Civ" type required courses for first-years is sort of what's at stake, right? One could argue convincingly that a course trying to introduce you to civilization, broadly speaking, might just as easily begin with six weeks in China or India or etc. The expansion of this course to "the Mediterranean" (which seems to just involve week after week of reading Gilgamesh?) might be a really awesome move that opens up tons of space in the lectures and discussions to challenge that implicitly Hegelian world-historical framework. Or it might just be lazy programming that someone got out of a high school textbook twenty years ago. (We had to read chunks of Gilgamesh in 11th grade but I assure you that the syllabus and content were overwhelmingly Eurocentric in all the classic ways.) Again, I have no idea, and I don't know the (very few) secondary texts on that syllabus - maybe they also do really important work, but we don't know because we're not in the classroom.

I completely agree, if it wasn't clear, Tombot. This does seem like a bizarre way to raise questions about the curriculum of a bog-standard intro humanities course. I did include more music by women and non-white composers and more recent music in this semester's music since 1945 course; this was motivated in part by student demand but they expressed that demand by, um, writing it on the course evaluations that they get to fill out in every class every semester.

i think that two/three constraints of this type of course - as humanities, not really scientific, gotta include more or less the purviews of academic disciplines in english, history, philosophy, art - and gotta do a big dose of greco-possibly-romanism (rome is in the second semester) - pretty much makes most of their choices for them. the first semester syllabus seems like it does about as well as you could do within that framework. more on greek predecessors, some time on non-greek rivals, shared frame for the introduction of biblical bridging material, smattering of contemporary questioning-the-tradition scholarship.

xxp reminds me that i've been meaning to look more closely at http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5655-africa-asia-and-the-history-of-.aspx this book having heard a few things about it and skimmed through it. seems a fine and important addition to any generic western civ class that wants to engage in a bit of autocritique

http://www.theolympian.com/news/local/article173710596.html

The Evergreen State College professor at the center of campus protests this spring will receive $500,000 in a settlement that was announced Friday.

Bret Weinstein and his wife, Heather Heying, resigned from their faculty positions effective Friday. The couple filed a $3.85 million tort claim in July alleging the college failed to “protect its employees from repeated provocative and corrosive verbal and written hostility based on race, as well as threats of physical violence,” according to the claim.

Weinstein had criticized changes to the school’s annual Day of Absence after white students who chose to participate were asked to go off campus to talk about race issues. He called the event “an act of oppression,” according to emails obtained by The Olympian. Weinstein later appeared on Fox News and wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal.

The incident led to protests and threats over allegations of racism and intolerance, pulling Evergreen into a national debate over free speech on college campuses. The campus was closed for three days in June and graduation was moved to Cheney Stadium in Tacoma.

New (embargo on remarks lifted): Sessions says the DOJ will file a statement of interest in a campus free speech case this week

— Betsy Woodruff (@woodruffbets) September 26, 2017

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/09/it-takes-a-nation-of-snowflakes/541050/

serwer serwering

that was excellent

good fodder for rolling explaining conservatism

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/11/the-surprising-revolt-at-reed/544682/

If Facebook is no place to debate Hum 110, what about the printed page? Not so much: During the entire 2016-17 school year, not a single op-ed or even a quote critical of RAR’s methods—let alone goals—was published in the student newspaper, according to a review of archived issues. The only thing that comes close? A clarification regarding a school dance:

[ RAR] requested that students, specifically white students, give a suggested amount of five dollars to RAR if they planned on consuming black and brown culture at the ball. This money, explicitly regarded as reparations, was collected at the door by student activists…. [ the ball organizer responded], “we are in support of Reedies Against Racism but want to make it clear that their event is unaffiliated with ours.”

lol

On the one hand I'm sick of the tone of coverage like this but on the other hand you couldn't pay me enough money to be 19 again

it's a pretty small school iirc

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/thomas-hart-benton-mural-indiana-1133765

A Thomas Hart Benton painting is at the heart of a controversy at Indiana University, where a student petition is calling for a mural depicting hooded members of the Ku Klux Klan to be removed from a classroom. In response, the school has stopped holding classes in the room, the largest lecture hall on campus.

Nearly 1,600 signatories are asking the school to take down or cover the offending panel from A Social History of Indiana (1933), also known as the Indiana murals. But others are speaking up in support of the artwork, contending that Benton was looking to draw attention to the evils of the Klan.

https://news.artnet.com/app/news-upload/2017/10/15667217698_fd4fc33e3f_b.jpg

i do wish these kids were .... smarter

i think it's clear that coddling isn't the issue. these kids aren't weak snowflakes. they feel emboldened and are expressing what they see is their political power to dictate terms to their institutions and professors.

What they hell kinda school has paintings in classrooms. We don’t even have windows!