> I'm aware that it's a huge violation of social norms for me to say publicly that I think whites, or males, are being discriminated against.
Probably because it's blitheringly stupid to assert something that is demonstrably not true and also staggeringly insulting to people who are actually discriminated against.
I have been in similar circumstances at my university where critical servers were made inaccesible during ongoing research. So I understand Dr. Povey's frustration first-hand, but breaking into the building (and the protest) was an escalation unbeholden to a professor.
The banality of some student activist causes gets to me too and often politics do not align. However educators need to show patience and decorum.
It betrays a very honest and straightforward lack of sophistication on the professor's part. He should have called the police anonymously and told them he believes there may be a protestor armed with a gun. Then a SWAT team would have cleared the building much more safely, being prepared for the very real possibility one of these people were armed. If you are familiar at all with Baltimore you appreciate how likely this danger actually was.
Well, it was a building Povey ordinarily had a right to be in until protestors illegally chained all external doors shut. So, calling it "breaking in" is a sorta backward way to think about it, in my opinion. His right to be in the building was curtailed by people who did not have a right to be in the building (or at least did not have a right to exclude access).
As for the university explicitly telling him not to try to enter the building, that may be the case, but keep in mind that his personal work and career were being compromised by an illegal act that had dragged on FAR beyond reasonable accommodation (the sit-in had been ongoing a month and the chaining of doors went on over a week). Just because he was curently a Hopkins employee doesn't mean that his research was owned by Hopkins. Universities aren't like regular companies. Hopkins had a duty to him to provide safe and reasonable accommodations for his work. The grant money he obtained probably had a large payment to the university for these accommodations. Hopkins failed to uphold their end of the bargain with him by pussyfooting around blatantly dangerous and illegal activity by protestors.
What he did was imprudent, maybe even fireable. But unless the students who incited this all are also expelled (I'm pretty sure they weren't), then this would be a significant injustice against the professor due to selective enforcement of policy against some but not all Hopkins members.
Also, seeing Hopkins' sleezy firing letter makes it obvious that there is no good faith on the part of the university. You can tell by how it is written in "you admitted that we had to fire you!" style, that they grossly and intentionally mischaracterized statements he made to appease university lawyers. Dr. Povey doesn't look great, but Hopkins looks like a place where no decent person should ever hope to work.
there are many things said by American progressives
where if you replace "white patriarchy" and "women
of color" with "Jewish capital" and "Aryan youth",
and add a picture of a blond boy and a swastika
or two, you'd have a very serviceable Nazi
propaganda poster. Think about it.
[ponders it in deep silence in the Gendo Ikari pose...]
Ok, I thought about it.
So.. progressivism is basically Nazi propaganda, and white men are being persecuted like Jews by an evil cabal of all progressives, women and people of color.
No, sorry, not buying it. The author is a bigot and a manchild.
Right.. does he really believe he is experiencing a level of persecution like being a "gay Jew in the Nazi party" for his whiteness? He doesn't know what it means to be persecuted.
I think this post perfectly captures white privilege. Getting fired for breaking into a university building, endangering students, then writing a blog post filling in the details about how the left is anti-white. All while he's able to land another (presumably) cushy private sector job.
Breaking into a university building with a large group of other people, obstructing publicly-funded research, and creating a dangerous environment for hundreds of others without winding up in jail is an example of "protestor" privilege, for only certain values of "protestor".
Mouth-breathing children have been performing these stunts with increasing regularity and chutzpah because they know they have no skin in the game, and it is for the same reason that these "protests" are embarrassingly ineffectual. They manage to take out a few exceptionally honorable hot-heads who are unwilling to genuflect towards the idiocy, and then the hot-heads transition into a cushy tech job with twice the pay and respect.
17 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 48.0 ms ] threadProbably because it's blitheringly stupid to assert something that is demonstrably not true and also staggeringly insulting to people who are actually discriminated against.
It was demonstrated in this exact incident.
The banality of some student activist causes gets to me too and often politics do not align. However educators need to show patience and decorum.
As for the university explicitly telling him not to try to enter the building, that may be the case, but keep in mind that his personal work and career were being compromised by an illegal act that had dragged on FAR beyond reasonable accommodation (the sit-in had been ongoing a month and the chaining of doors went on over a week). Just because he was curently a Hopkins employee doesn't mean that his research was owned by Hopkins. Universities aren't like regular companies. Hopkins had a duty to him to provide safe and reasonable accommodations for his work. The grant money he obtained probably had a large payment to the university for these accommodations. Hopkins failed to uphold their end of the bargain with him by pussyfooting around blatantly dangerous and illegal activity by protestors.
What he did was imprudent, maybe even fireable. But unless the students who incited this all are also expelled (I'm pretty sure they weren't), then this would be a significant injustice against the professor due to selective enforcement of policy against some but not all Hopkins members.
Also, seeing Hopkins' sleezy firing letter makes it obvious that there is no good faith on the part of the university. You can tell by how it is written in "you admitted that we had to fire you!" style, that they grossly and intentionally mischaracterized statements he made to appease university lawyers. Dr. Povey doesn't look great, but Hopkins looks like a place where no decent person should ever hope to work.
Seriously: someone who thinks he can make a coherent argument invoking "gay jews joining the Nazi party" doesn't belong on any unversity's faculty.
Ok, I thought about it.
So.. progressivism is basically Nazi propaganda, and white men are being persecuted like Jews by an evil cabal of all progressives, women and people of color.
No, sorry, not buying it. The author is a bigot and a manchild.
Mouth-breathing children have been performing these stunts with increasing regularity and chutzpah because they know they have no skin in the game, and it is for the same reason that these "protests" are embarrassingly ineffectual. They manage to take out a few exceptionally honorable hot-heads who are unwilling to genuflect towards the idiocy, and then the hot-heads transition into a cushy tech job with twice the pay and respect.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html