Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

I agree the TA didn't behave appropriately in this situation, btw! But, you know, if a student cheats on my final exam, and I punch him out, I still get fired, even though the student definitely did something wrong.

I don't think he should lose his job at this point. The issue imo is procedural. According to the allegations in the dean's letter, this is at least the third instance of this prof's writing negatively about a Marquette student on social media, using the student's name. Evidently he was "asked, advised, and warned" not to do so again. But what procedure was put in place for addressing future failures to heed these warnings? None is mentioned. If job loss was among the threats of continuing the "unadvised" behavior it should have been made explicit (clearing the requisite administrative hurdles of course). Given the high legal stakes of this letter one ought to infer that it was not explicit. Thus he should not lose his job at this point.

I think that of all places, an ethics + philosophy class needs to be a totally open space for ppl to express their opinions. Even offensive opinions.

― Mordy, Tuesday, February 10, 2015 10:24 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I dunno I agree in theory but I'm less and less enamored with classrooms and higher education more generally being seen by students as an arena for the "expression of opinions."

― ryan, Tuesday, February 10, 2015 10:37 AM (1 hour ago)

the difficulty is that they have to in order to humanistic studies to be humanistic, but often they start out with such lamely held opinions, and such attitude over their entitlement to hold opinions for virtually no reasons at all, that it's not very effectual to try to engage with them when they do express their opinions

I agree with Euler that procedural issues are critical here. But I expect the dean of the college knows what those procedural issues are! The letter doesn't say "clean out your desk and be gone by Monday morning," it says they're starting a process. If there are steps you have to go through and a series of warnings that you have to put in writing in order to fire a tenured professor, my guess is that either a) that those steps have been taken and those warnings done; or b) this is the first of those steps, starting the way towards an eventual termination.

True, this is just the start of the procedure.

I expect the prof to win.

Social media has really been a mess for universities, which have housed blowhards since Plato but only now does their blowhardness get an audience outside of campus. Though I've read some hilariously mean reviews in philo journals over the years...

the difficulty is that they have to in order to humanistic studies to be humanistic, but often they start out with such lamely held opinions, and such attitude over their entitlement to hold opinions for virtually no reasons at all, that it's not very effectual to try to engage with them when they do express their opinions

― j., Tuesday, February 10, 2015 12:57 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was my experience at a liberal arts college. i wanted to hear what the professor had to say but instead was often treated to discussions of whether freud "went too far" or if there is any "point" to faulkner

treesh, reminds me of this classic morgenbesser

you know, though, that everything in pedagogy has been encouraging these developments for decades now right? Supposedly having professors lecture is retrograde, creates passivity, etc., add cliche of your choice .... compared to the awesomeness of student verbal exploration while the teacher 'facilitates discussion'

my pedagogical bias was heavily formed by attending yeshiva where the model of learning was primarily done in pairs of students preparing material, and then lectures with a lot of give-and-take between the students and teacher.

Sounds good. Mine was formed by being a history major in the 80s, where there was a lot of lecturing but still, I don't think we felt like passive recipients and the give and take between teachers and students was pretty involved.

I'm trying not to go all good-old-days here, but I think the pendulum has gone so far to one side that we shouldn't be surprised that we get treeship's description of having to listen to kind of lame student takes on material they hadn't really absorbed yet. I'm all for student input, just give them more to have an input on first!

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair

caek posted an excellent yin to the sokal affair's yang a while back about computer generated articles making it into science journals

the misuse of the language of trauma has invaded my home in a very challenging way

when you drink directly from the soy milk receptacle and then put it back in the refrigerator, that's, like, triggering to me?

Hoos are you still living in a collective?

so yes i am still living in said space

essentially there are interpersonal conflicts that are being cloaked in the language of critical theory and trauma recovery. we were recently asked to house an eastern european asylum seeker while her legal status was sorted out. this is the kind of thing we've done many times in the past 4 decades of the house.

one housemate is going through an impossibly difficult few weeks as acts of prejudice and racism are taking her life to pieces. in the matter of just a couple of weeks she's suffered from a lost job (where prior to her early contract release the boss told her "as a white person i feel oppressed by your presence"), a sibling being slapped with an absurd "deterrence" jail sentence, and the collapse of an art project she spent the last two months on.

into this mileu comes the asylum seeker. her request to stay is universally accepted by all except the aforementioned housemate, on the grounds that SHE is currently in need of asylum from the trauma of racism, and she has "had bad experiences with eastern europeans being racist before," and so having an eastern european in the house at this time would make her feel emotionally unsafe. she is NOT sorry if this makes everyone else uncomfortable, because she is tired of "privileging white comfort over black safety, and as Lorde tells us, ' 'Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare'!"

this is said, its worth noting, in response to a housemate who is eastern european--its understood that in fact disagreements between these two is precisely what's being referred to by "eastern europeans having been racist towards me before."

to circle back more explicitly to the thread subject, she has also ~expressly forbidden~ that housemates discuss matters of race when she is present because those discussions may trigger her. to ignore this injunction, we've been told explicitly, is to be racist. this is difficult, given that the house is an important node in activism in a primarily black city, but we'd like to support her well being. that desire remains in place, but its become more difficult to know how to do this in light of all of the above.

where prior to her early contract release the boss told her "as a white person i feel oppressed by your presence"

this seems like a crazy thing for a boss to tell an employee. was there a context for the remark - like maybe yr roommate was doing some of these things in the workplace, possibly acting/speaking hostilely towards the white ppl she works w/?

lol mordy cmon. what is the point of calling that story into question in this context?

Do you have any associates that can act as, like, PoC/BW mediators?

Seems like you might need someone who can help yr roommate prioritize/perspective-ize who can do that from a couple of intersections?

we're going into mediation (for the second time in 9 months, hooray!) in a few weeks.

Sigh.

oh, you meant that Lorde.

hah.

lol mordy cmon. what is the point of calling that story into question in this context? just curiosity. she sounds like she's hostile among friends/colleagues in the co-opt. she might be bringing that attitude into work too.

like i have no doubt there's tons of racism in the workplace but it probably doesn't generally get expressed as: "as a white person i feel oppressed by your presence"

not to mention that if that's really exactly how it went down i'd think she has a super strong discrimination case?

only with corroboration of the quote from other sources

Good luck Hoos, that sounds tough.

its just exhausting to be a party to, and to be perfectly frank no one in the house is willing to challenge the politics of her claims because no one wants to meet "i have had an awful and racism-filled month" with "but you totally decontextualized that audre lorde line and are clearly using the political edge of your thinking as a bludgeon to get your way here"

Yes. We have a self-proclaimed leader in some circles here whose views about women and LGBTGNC members are causing problems, but any scrutiny of his ideas is labeled racist...sooo.... Not sure how the organizing community is going to handle it but it's obv going to have to come from some deeply intersectional members.

jargon: now in its nth century of wrecking the Revolution.

xp

i recently joined a collective that runs an art/performance space and this

essentially there are interpersonal conflicts that are being cloaked in the language of critical theory and trauma recovery.

is _exactly_ what's been going on. your situation sounds much more intense with the refugees and race dimension (i guess ours has a race dimension but the dispute is between two women of color.) the tension level is insane. instead of just allowing it to blow up & let it all out it's all super formal & diplomatic social-work language. last meeting we had a 30 min discussion to find out whether we were all using the same definition of "accountability." everyone's always setting a boundary or starting an accountability process, except in a really passive aggressive way. "i'm setting a boundary" "ok well then i'm setting a boundary, too." i hate being the str8 white guy rolling my eyes at it all "what is this, portlandia?" (i mean not that i am literally doing that i mostly just sit and nod approvingly during meetings) but i can't imagine that this is the use this kind of language was created for. frustration compounded cuz we're getting kicked out of our space and should really be spending energies towards fixing that problem instead of whatever is going on here

casting one's feelings about external reality as a true image of external reality always feels so right to the person who is doing it. good luck sorting it all out, hoos.

she has "had bad experiences with eastern europeans being racist before," and so having an eastern european in the house at this time would make her feel emotionally unsafe. she has "had bad experiences with eastern europeans being racist before," and so having an eastern european in the house at this time would make her feel emotionally unsafe. she has "had bad experiences with eastern europeans being racist before," and so having an eastern european in the house at this time would make her feel emotionally unsafe. she has "had bad experiences with eastern europeans being racist before," and so having an eastern european in the house at this time would make her feel emotionally unsafe. she has "had bad experiences with eastern europeans being racist before," and so having an eastern european in the house at this time would make her feel emotionally unsafe. she has "had bad experiences with eastern europeans being racist before," and so having an eastern european in the house at this time would make her feel emotionally unsafe. she has "had bad experiences with eastern europeans being racist before," and so having an eastern european in the house at this time would make her feel emotionally unsafe. she has "had bad experiences with eastern europeans being racist before," and so having an eastern european in the house at this time would make her feel emotionally unsafe. she has "had bad experiences with eastern europeans being racist before," and so having an eastern european in the house at this time would make her feel emotionally unsafe.

are you planning to move out of this place anytime soon

interpersonal conflicts that are being cloaked in the language of critical theory and trauma recovery

this is what every rightwing asshole thinks is going on whenever anyone uses this language, sucks to see their viewpoint validated

and yeah Hoos idk how you deal with living there

xxp

crut otm

hoos, that's the most insane story I've read in weeks.

amazing

And to be clear, neither I nor anyone else in the house think she is being insincere--just that she's wrong about the forces at play here, but we don't really have the language to make that case.

I can type something up if you think its help but...

haha ty dmac but i think we will muddle through in our way

Peter Tatchell and Mary Beard seem to have been particularly targeted on Twitter (apparently 100s of messages over the last 24 hours) for signing this:

http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2015/feb/14/letters-censorship

Quite a few of the names on this list (Ditum, Criado-Perez, etc) are seem as red flags by trans / sw activists.

*seen*

Her views on the sex industry found hostility in a minority of the Goldsmith’s Feminist Society, and Smurthwaite alerted the Comedy Society to the potential for a protest of some sort. The show was cancelled and a statement put out by the Comedy Society: "Despite many complaints from students about the content of Kate’s act in the past we were planning to go ahead with the gig until Kate told me 24 hours before that there was likely to be a picket with lots of students and non students outside the venue. I couldn’t verify this. Up to this point we had only sold eight tickets so I decided to pull the plug."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/society/11386478/Kate-Smurthwaite-the-comedian-who-confused-no-interest-with-no-platform.html

She take a different line in her blog, naturally:

http://www.cruellablog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/goldsmiths-and-me-full-story-proof.html

Not just a different line to be fair. She has screengrabs of the whole conversation. The Goldsmiths promoter botched the whole situation and then tried to make her look bad.

In July 2010 Smurthwaite protested at the lavish funeral of writer and renowned user of prostitutes Sebastian Horsley with a sign reading "Where are the horse-drawn carriages for the VICTIMS of prostitution?",[21] attracting both praise and criticism.[22]

waht

xp: good catch