Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

seize the means of knowledge production

The notion of reverse racism is a myth. Silencing white stories does not change what it means to be white in this country, and it certainly does not impact public policies that continue to privilege white people.

if silencing white stories does not change what it means to be white in this country and does not impact public policies then what exactly is the point of doing it?

Second, it is true that not all whites live a privileged life. However, even poor whites have the privilege of whiteness even if they are unable to see it because of their inability to put Wonder Bread on the table.

it's a good thing you can eat privilege if you're hungry

if silencing white stories does not change what it means to be white in this country and does not impact public policies then what exactly is the point of doing it?
--Mordy

Um learn something maybe? It is a class.

lol as if this kind of shit has anything to do with learning

The questions -- really, belligerent interrogations -- you posed in class today seem pertinent both pedagogically and epistemologically

that's a lot of polysyllabic words in one sentence – and an opening sentence

xp Oh university classes are about what then?

xp LOL total flashback for me.

some university classes are about scholarship and learning. others are about imparting political values. sometimes broader abstract paradigms are useful for better understanding reality, but when reality is in service to the paradigm and not vice-versa i can't consider that "learning."

You have a very narrow definition of learning is all I'll say to that.

technically speaking all life experiences constitutes learning but i'm using the term in a less flexible way to explicitly mean the kind of study that has historically characterized the academy

it's the difference between teaching an ideology by assigning reading of its main proponents and understanding its historical + social context and teaching an ideology as the correct political platform for students to follow. you can do the former and have students decide after reading marx that they are really marxists, but the latter is indoctrination not pedagogy imho.

straight fire, no doubt

lol that essay was absolute garbage although i enjoyed the reflexive contempt for the white underclass. but i cannot imagine having any sympathy for ppl taking a 'race & ethnicity' class and not knowing exactly what sort of thing theyre getting themselves into. just take a intro geology course or something

(xp to Mordy) Perhaps without much evidence I am imagining her class being the former, and her students responding by "you are trying to indoctrinate me into hating white people by asking me to do the reading," in much the same way that parents across the US believe that their schools are indoctrinating them into becoming Muslims by teaching about the existence and history of Islam. But I concede that I have that image of her course because it's the image it suits me to have, it could just as well be as you suggest.

I couldn't finish that thing. If her prose is this leaden, I have more sympathy for her students.

i took similar types of classes in undergrad (on various provocative ideologies) and never got confused between the text and what the professor believed. if someone thought a text we read was racist the professor might've opened it up for discussion and pushed back but never would've become so entangled in the material that it became clear that they were teaching their own beliefs. i even took a class on poverty taught by a major scholar of social work + american poverty and he was able to interact w/ conservative students in productive + not personal way. it was obvious from reading any of his books where his political sympathies were but it didn't interfere with his ability to be a somewhat neutral proxy for understanding the material.

and he was able to interact w/ conservative students in productive + not personal way.

But it's a two-way street. I'll bet part of the reason he was able to do that is that the conservative students were respectful and engaged with the texts, instead of skipping the reading and then getting in touch with the prof personally to tell him that his course was prejudiced against job creators.

like it seems to me that if the students were pushing back on this professor that the readings were racist, she could have interacted directly with their concerns in the classroom within the text. "show me what sentences specifically bothered you," etc. but instead she chose to shame them in a public statement which implies to me that she was trying to do what the students accused her of.

also it's super easy for me to believe that it went down that way bc a lot of this doctrinal ideological social justice material is clearly polemical + political, so it's not hard to believe that the person teaching it was polemical + political as well.

it's tricky, but I think if you don't at least model a kind of Weberian "value neutrality" (which itself can then be reflexive and self-questioning) then you've failed to really create a pedagogical space, or a space in which actual teaching and learning can happen, and it's not surprising that students will respond to polemical or political provocations in kind. to create that kind of value-neutral space (which is of course constructed and itself beholden to particular politics and values) is the entire point and benefit of higher education. it's not as simple as a naive endorsement of "keeping politics out of the classroom" but i think you've got to buy into the classroom as a particular space with its own subject positions and possibilities for knowledge that also in no way proposes itself as the objective or "right" point of view.

but then i also think people's politics are not amendable to change from a frontal assault.

when I teach "normative" things my approach is confuse the students as to what are my own views. like, I'm happy if half the class thinks I'm a staunch conservative. after some particularly intense terms I've wondered what my own views really are. inhabit the texts, lose yourself in them. "authentic" polemics in the classroom sounds so boring to me, both as a student and as an instructor.

The questions -- really, belligerent interrogations -- you posed in class today seem pertinent both pedagogically and epistemologically

that's a lot of polysyllabic words in one sentence – and an opening sentence

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, March 17, 2016 9:41 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the professor who wrote that sounds awfully full of herself and convinced of her own righteousness. i'm sure some of her students are turds but this seems a case of it takes two to tango.

in other words,

but I think if you don't at least model a kind of Weberian "value neutrality" (which itself can then be reflexive and self-questioning) then you've failed to really create a pedagogical space, or a space in which actual teaching and learning can happen, and it's not surprising that students will respond to polemical or political provocations in kind

yes.

After further reflection I think my optimistic mental model of what her course is like is not really compatible with her choice to write an open letter bagging on her students instead of taking it up with them in person

epistemologically and philosophically!

Her students had belligerent interrogations in class as well as hollow stares and silent voices?

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/dxPVyieptwA/hqdefault.jpg

"their inability to put wonder bread on the table" reads to me as a classist jeer at ppl who are presumably too poor and ignorant to shop at whole foods or whatever

After further reflection I think my optimistic mental model of what her course is like is not really compatible with her choice to write an open letter bagging on her students instead of taking it up with them in person

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Thursday, March 17, 2016 11:03 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, otm, obviously she's right on the merits of her course content, but there's a difference between having that knowledge and having the skills to get people to think about challenging ideas in real ways.

eephus! also otm upthread that students at the university level need to meet profs halfway by doing the readings and not dismissing ideas out-of-hand, something anyone teaching on race, gender, or sexuality has to deal with all day every day

ime students doing the readings was a problem for every humanities class no matter what the major or ideological perspective

hasn't changed!

yeah. i had some blank stares this morning and the assigned reading was just a philip k dick novel, so i empathize with anyone teaching the kind of stuff that the course in question was about. (on the other hand, maybe it gets them riled up in a way an old novel simply cannot match...)

yeah, good point xp @alfred

when I teach "normative" things my approach is confuse the students as to what are my own views. like, I'm happy if half the class thinks I'm a staunch conservative. after some particularly intense terms I've wondered what my own views really are. inhabit the texts, lose yourself in them. "authentic" polemics in the classroom sounds so boring to me, both as a student and as an instructor.

this is otm btw and i tried to do this when i teach and continue to try to do this whenever i read.

i once complained to a mentor professor that my latin american politics prof was too conservative, and was basically told that I had been totally duped.

cuz Latin American politics profs are famously accused of conservatism

lol the one conservative in the field :p but i can imagine if you're a student you might not know

haha yeah, i was a callow 19-year-old, thought i knew better and was further left than most everyone else. I was also happy to judge others quickly, and likely to take the aforementioned "Weberian 'value neutrality'" as right-wing.

cuz Latin American politics profs are famously accused of conservatism

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, March 17, 2016 10:21 PM (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i took a bunch of latin american literature courses that were all related to some political event/movement, so we always ended up talking politics. the profs seemed pretty left-leaning. what do you mean by conservatism? is defending indigenous rights and talking about how the us treats latin america as their backyard conservative? i got the sense that if you weren't on the indigenous peoples' side you were heavily questioned

this was in canada, by the way

he was being sarcastic

I was being sarcastic.

oh ya i tried reading upthread to get some context, sounded strange!

are you being sarcastic.

i just unkilled half of the users in this thread

makes sense

now.

https://camo.derpicdn.net/e55aab1348897449395cdbeb1aaa6dc2c4f252ab?url=http%3A%2F%2Fdata.whicdn.com%2Fimages%2F60407330%2Foriginal.png

yeah, if you guys know a trick to getting students to do the readings consistently, whatever the content, let me know

the "trick" is to teach texts assuming the students haven't read them. when teaching a text I enact it, read passages as needed, my hope is to spur a few students to read it later. ime in USA it's better at better unis ; when I worked in brownbackistan it was way worse.

yes—that and constant tiny quizzes on basic content to incentivize them

The shift in ed-tech seems to be interactive text with micro-assessments built in that teachers can monitor but i imagine that would get pretty tiresome for the kind of students who just want to get on with the reading.

I don't bother with constant quizzes because I'm lazy & hate grading. & (as a rationalization?) think that you can't teach good work habits in college, like if a kid doesn't care by then, then it's not my problem, I'm there to teach to the kids who care. the value of a usa college degree isn't much anymore, and whoever looks at grades (anyone?) knows that a B may as well be an F, so I don't sweat it: whittling down the As "matters", so I make it hard to get an A, and don't care beyond that. this is all in the usa, it's way different in france, guess I'd say better but I'm still too new to say for sure.