I thought we were broadly against colleges and universities banning politically incorrect speech. Wasn't that a huge talking point 2-3 years ago? Didn't we bring back freedom of speech?
Who is "we" here? I can't count how many times I've argued against just an apparently broadly-held view that free speech ends at the first amendment and isn't a general principle that should be practiced at, eg., universities. Looks like when I argued that here, I was told that I should pick a different term for the principle of free speech in order to disambiguate from the first amendment (they recommended calling it 'my personal content preferences').
Likewise uncountable is the number of times I've said normalizing free speech restrictions against the other side will come back to bite you once they're (inevitably, especially given these tactics) in power.
I can see how 'pro-speech' might have appeared to be a right-leaning position when violations were typically against right-leaning expression, but I never got the sense that either side really gave a damn.
I've heard an uptick in derogatory terms being thrown around recently and while unsurprising, it sure is sad.
Recent events...
- Went to a concert, an underage kid with a fake ID couldn't get a beer, turned to me and goes "Isn't this guy a f----"
Uh... well, he may be making your night less enjoyable, but I don't see why gay people have to catch strays cause of it...
"I don't think I'd call anyone that" was my response, and "it's okay to be gay" was a follow up
- My boss said something was retarded. I'm a bit wishy washy on the r-word myself as, while I'm friends with people with Down Syndrome and other maladies, it never occurred to me to relate the word to them (especially since they're generally really very nice people)
It's similar to how I never associated the word spaz with... I dunno what it is... multiple sclerosis or whatever, apparently that's a very common association in the UK, but I'd never heard of it (the association)
But now I've stopped using it entirely, although in this case I did not correct my boss (who I respect as a person and enjoy working for very much)
- One of my other friends called something "gay" recently
"Don't call things gay bro" was my response. As my mom explained to me in sixth grade "even though you don't really even have an idea what it means to be gay, when you say that negative things are gay, you're implying that being gay is negative, but gay people just are themselves and don't deserve that"
I became the "don't say gay kid" at school after that and I'm damned proud of it
All these losers trying to turn back the times to put gay people back in the closet give me "peaked in middle school" vibes, and it's sad to see that it's also slowly becoming normalized with people who I don't even think have that inclination or care to say prejudiced shit again too
Imagine fearing the consequences of "people are not gay by choice, but because they are each halves of a eight limbed cartwheeling sphere". Young minds cannot handle such dangerous rhetoric
When even an old independently wealthy dude whose favourite pupil thought some people are slaves by nature is too "woke", who can we teach? Dick and Jane?
(oh, I see the problem now; they're supposed to be implied to be, by strategic omission, old independently wealthy slave-owning dudes who were into the flute girls?)
PHILOSOPHY 101
by Gray and Sharp
See Dick.
Dick thinks about people.
See Jane.
Jane thinks about events.
See Spot.
Spot keeps a close eye on the two intellectuals.
It really begs the question of, how much is this obsession with controlling others' gender actually going to end up negatively impacting the US's competitive edge in higher education? Between this and firing qualified TAs who did their job, we're well beyond just impacting gender studies majors at Evergreen College. How much longer until it cuts into mathematics, merely because an author was part of the reigning administration's monster of the week?
It’s an issue, but a small part of it. The funding cuts and immigration barriers have already laid foundations for a massive harm to the US’s edge in research and education.
The US got the bomb in large part because the Nazi intelligentsia didn't like Jewish physics. If the person who unifies the four forces is transgender, will the US recognize and teach it?
For a different professor, there's Dr. Bob Altemeyer, who wrote a book in 2006 (after 40 years of research) that includes a section on evidence-based deradicalisation[0] of authoritarian followers, pp240-245: https://theauthoritarians.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/The... (for objections, see [1])
That's nonfiction, and anachronistic. As far as fiction in the correct setting goes, I'm drawing a blank, and I even had to read things like "At the Bridge" and "The Tin Drum" in school (as well as watch dokus like "The White Rose" and "Triumph of the Will"[2]).
Most stories I know are of the unrepentant[3]; maybe I can dig some repentant ones up later?
You too may be a big hero
Once you've learned to count backwards to zero
"In German, und Englisch, I know how to count down
Und 我学习中文!" says Wernher von Braun
EDIT: (haven't been using that Gemini, sorry)
Schwarzenegger's neighbours retreated into the bottle[4]:
Ps: Repentance is one of the things that sell better as science fiction.. (Linebarger?)
Not to be dismissive, just "providing" another perspective while I take a walk to think about that:
In the other bidirection..
If Steve and Ive grokked each others' Jobs..
(You could complete the couplet but I may or may not recommend it)
Edit: Atticus would have been more convincing (to me) if he was more ex-Confederate officer and less Mary Sue
Ps2: deprogramming (ie something that could be applied to Scott Locklin.. I have read his Optiksy takes while thinking about his quasiracist ones.. & tentatively conclude that the Buxton [e: dissonance] angle^W ansatz is in the realm of.. plausibility)
Ps3: there's the Peenemuende slave Labor museum^W monument. Compare German (P/Tin Drum) and Japanese (??? sporadic priests^W Buddhist chaplains I guess) tatemae?
Ps4: maybe one could leave it up to American initiative/dynamism* to uncover more of these living [prep]aradoxes.. I highly doubt it could scale (even after defocusing from ORs)
Let the king decide what to read in his universities and you are good. It's also hard to stomach how the professor said he doesn't teach "ideology" but the administration doesn't even bother to refute this or anything. They just stubbornly repeat their allegations and confront him with an ultimatum.
It's almost like the bullying is trickling down, right?
Not to minimize the significance of this but prohibiting a portion of a reading is like slapping a "parental warning" on a Rap CD in the 90s -- if I was an undergrad, I'd only want to read those excerpts more.
The undergrads won't hear about it. The material will just silently not be on the syllabus and they'll never know. In this case the interference has broken containment, but this won't be the norm.
I'm gradually tuning out Hacker News, because it persistently tries to ignore the politics that are destroying the United States and freedom of enquiry.
There is a dead comment below that tries to raise an argument but was killed instead. This is no longer a place to go to discuss ideas.
I am a former student and graduate of this department at Texas A&M. I just called The Association and informed them that I consider this completely unacceptable and will not consider donations to the university unless this policy is reversed.
I would encourage fellow like-minded Aggies to do the same.
Drs Austin and McDermott are surely spinning in their graves right now.
It's wild how there's so much overlap between the faction that wants to champion "European culture" and "Western civilization" and the faction that will do things like this.
For those like me wondering what in this syllabus they should be looking at, the key bit is the required reading in the middle of the second page: "Plato, excerpts from Symposium" instead of just "Plato's Symposium".
Edit: weird. On the app I'm using ("Harmonic") it redirects to a syllabus PDF. But when I open in a browser it opens to an article.
“ Dr. Peterson said he would reluctantly alter the course and replace the disputed modules with “lectures on free speech and academic freedom.” But he was angry, he said, as well as bothered by the sense that students would receive a less rigorous, challenging education in his classroom. ”
Quite sad to see the school administration get compliance here.
34 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 56.2 ms ] threadhttps://web.archive.org/web/20260107085450/https://dailynous...
Likewise uncountable is the number of times I've said normalizing free speech restrictions against the other side will come back to bite you once they're (inevitably, especially given these tactics) in power.
I can see how 'pro-speech' might have appeared to be a right-leaning position when violations were typically against right-leaning expression, but I never got the sense that either side really gave a damn.
A thing you can right now do is read it (1-2 hours): https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1600/1600-h/1600-h.htm#link2...
Or just the two sections in question:
Aristophanes’ myth of split humans (7 minutes): https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/eros/platos-other-half
Diotima’s ladder of love (20 minutes) https://people.wku.edu/jan.garrett/103/jowett_symp_A.htm
Recent events...
- Went to a concert, an underage kid with a fake ID couldn't get a beer, turned to me and goes "Isn't this guy a f----"
Uh... well, he may be making your night less enjoyable, but I don't see why gay people have to catch strays cause of it...
"I don't think I'd call anyone that" was my response, and "it's okay to be gay" was a follow up
- My boss said something was retarded. I'm a bit wishy washy on the r-word myself as, while I'm friends with people with Down Syndrome and other maladies, it never occurred to me to relate the word to them (especially since they're generally really very nice people)
It's similar to how I never associated the word spaz with... I dunno what it is... multiple sclerosis or whatever, apparently that's a very common association in the UK, but I'd never heard of it (the association)
But now I've stopped using it entirely, although in this case I did not correct my boss (who I respect as a person and enjoy working for very much)
- One of my other friends called something "gay" recently
"Don't call things gay bro" was my response. As my mom explained to me in sixth grade "even though you don't really even have an idea what it means to be gay, when you say that negative things are gay, you're implying that being gay is negative, but gay people just are themselves and don't deserve that"
I became the "don't say gay kid" at school after that and I'm damned proud of it
All these losers trying to turn back the times to put gay people back in the closet give me "peaked in middle school" vibes, and it's sad to see that it's also slowly becoming normalized with people who I don't even think have that inclination or care to say prejudiced shit again too
(oh, I see the problem now; they're supposed to be implied to be, by strategic omission, old independently wealthy slave-owning dudes who were into the flute girls?)
That's nonfiction, and anachronistic. As far as fiction in the correct setting goes, I'm drawing a blank, and I even had to read things like "At the Bridge" and "The Tin Drum" in school (as well as watch dokus like "The White Rose" and "Triumph of the Will"[2]).
Most stories I know are of the unrepentant[3]; maybe I can dig some repentant ones up later?
[0] dereactionalisation?
[1] some discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24786278
[2] if I am overly paranoid, maybe it's because it's difficult to see anyone's GOAT propaganda these days and not compare it with Riefenstahl; she made the https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TropeCodifier ?
[3] including, but not limited to:
Oberleutnant (as he was then) "Kongo" Müller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Müller_(mercenary) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGAUW1ZF2xI
Generalmajor Reinhard Gehlen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinhard_Gehlen#Gehlen_Organiz... https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/bnd-bundesnachrichtendienst-n...
SS-Sturmbannführer Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#American_car... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zcU85O82XE ("doctor were-ner von brawn")
(see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38759207, and elsewhere on HN, for wholesale vs retail sellers)
lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEJ9HrZq7Ro
EDIT: (haven't been using that Gemini, sorry)Schwarzenegger's neighbours retreated into the bottle[4]:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_P-0I6sAck
[4] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/85221-atticus-said-naming-p...
Not to be dismissive, just "providing" another perspective while I take a walk to think about that:
In the other bidirection..
If Steve and Ive grokked each others' Jobs..
(You could complete the couplet but I may or may not recommend it)
Edit: Atticus would have been more convincing (to me) if he was more ex-Confederate officer and less Mary Sue
Ps2: deprogramming (ie something that could be applied to Scott Locklin.. I have read his Optiksy takes while thinking about his quasiracist ones.. & tentatively conclude that the Buxton [e: dissonance] angle^W ansatz is in the realm of.. plausibility)
Ps3: there's the Peenemuende slave Labor museum^W monument. Compare German (P/Tin Drum) and Japanese (??? sporadic priests^W Buddhist chaplains I guess) tatemae?
"L": https://archive.ph/dtf2U
Ps4: maybe one could leave it up to American initiative/dynamism* to uncover more of these living [prep]aradoxes.. I highly doubt it could scale (even after defocusing from ORs)
*https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46000060
It's almost like the bullying is trickling down, right?
I'm gradually tuning out Hacker News, because it persistently tries to ignore the politics that are destroying the United States and freedom of enquiry.
There is a dead comment below that tries to raise an argument but was killed instead. This is no longer a place to go to discuss ideas.
I would encourage fellow like-minded Aggies to do the same.
Drs Austin and McDermott are surely spinning in their graves right now.
Edit: weird. On the app I'm using ("Harmonic") it redirects to a syllabus PDF. But when I open in a browser it opens to an article.
Quite sad to see the school administration get compliance here.