Cont: Cancel culture IRL Part 2

No, it's not bad. Everything is fine, that's kind of the point isn't it?
 
John McWhorter on the Dorian Abbot affair:


The University of Chicago’s Dorian Abbot is a climate scientist with some vital observations about the sustainability of life on other planets. He planned to share them at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in its esteemed annual Carlson Lecture. But Abbot has also advocated race-neutral university admissions policies, including co-writing an essay in Newsweek arguing that race-conscious admissions criteria (as well as admission preferences for children of alumni and for athletes) should end.

Abbot’s invitation drew opposition from some students and faculty, and this year’s Carlson Lecture was subsequently canceled. In response, Prof. Robert George, who leads Princeton University’s James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, invited Abbot to speak at Princeton. But M.I.T.’s message had already been sent and seems hard to misinterpret: Abbot was not suitable for general consumption.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/opinion/wokeness-america.html
 
dirtywick said:
I read it, seemed most of your questions had little to do with cancel culture and I felt were probably best answers elsewhere by someone with a greater interest in them.
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As a general rule of thumb, if a topic is metaphysically and epistemologically murky, we should probably be less inclined to cancel people.

In which case, the 95% rotten tomatoes score, because everyone loved the special, is a good indication he’ll probably be back again. Unless we’re worried about the next-next-next special, which admittedly, who knows. The nebulous unnamed Chapelle critics cancel culture mob and the dozens of trans rights protesters with tambourines might have gotten their way.

Maybe that’ll make the fired Trump supporters, who undoubtedly also dislike trans people, and the people who know who will literally talk about any other topic but this one, feel better. Dave Chapelle has their back.
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As far as bringing Chappelle back, the price needs to be right. Someone released internal figures casting doubt on the profitability of his specials. As far as most the popular comic and the most popular podcaster teaming up for sold shows... right or wrong, the majority of Americans believe there are two genders, so a minority shunning the majority always seemed problematic at first glance. Over-representation in culturally influential industries and institutions helps with the shunning, but also threatens to stir a backlash from majorities feeling put-upon by "the homosexual trans agenda".
 
d4m10n said:
Everything is fine for the people who are "too big to cancel," as it were. Doesn't help folks like Kathleen Stock or Leslie Neal-Boylan.
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Your two examples of "cancel culture" are people, both who had tenure protecting their academic freedom, who voluntarily resigned because they did not like that their public comments invited public criticism.

The "cancel culture" phenomena in a nutshell, powerful people expect their free expression to be above criticism and react extremely poorly when that is not the case. Perhaps people who can't handle the heat should stay out of the kitchen.

The gatekeepers are extremely upset that the unwashed masses are allowed to call them morons.
 
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d4m10n said:
Would it be nearly impossible to make their work lives intolerable?
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Depends on what someone considers intolerable. Losing the respect of many of the people you work with and/or students is certainly a reasonable outcome for making public speech. Nobody is entitled to the respect of their peers.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Depends on what someone considers intolerable.
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How about death threats, campus-wide calls for removal, and your own union throwing you under the bus instead of defending academic freedom?

SuburbanTurkey said:
Losing the respect of many of the people you work with and/or students is certainly a reasonable outcome for making public speech.
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Not if the speech is true, or even arguably true. Philosophers are expected to explore such things from all available angles.

ETA: Where are you sourcing the bit about tenure from? I've made a good faith effort to find her tenure status, to no avail.
 
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d4m10n said:
How about death threats, campus-wide calls for removal, and your own union throwing you under the bus instead of defending academic freedom?

Not if the speech is true, or even arguably true. Philosophers are expected to explore such things from all available angles.

ETA: Where are you sourcing the bit about tenure from? I've made a good faith effort to find her tenure status, to no avail.
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There isn't academic tenure in the UK. Thatcher got rid of it. There is a distinction between permanent and temporary contracts, where the former is more difficult to obtain and provides reasonable job security. Academic freedom is protected under various laws such as Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights and s.43 of the Education Act.
 
d4m10n said:
How about death threats, campus-wide calls for removal, and your own union throwing you under the bus instead of defending academic freedom?

Not if the speech is true, or even arguably true. Philosophers are expected to explore such things from all available angles.

ETA: Where are you sourcing the bit about tenure from? I've made a good faith effort to find her tenure status, to no avail.
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The second person you cited, Leslie Neal-Boylan, was tenured faculty and was offered continued employment before she resigned.
 
d4m10n said:
How about death threats, campus-wide calls for removal, and your own union throwing you under the bus instead of defending academic freedom?
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The death threats are the only illegal and fully inappropriate part of that response.

“Cancel culture” is an inevitable and immediate consequence of living in a society that has both free speech and capitalism. It is literally one aspect (exclusively the stick, rather than the carrot) of the “invisible hand of the market.” The only things new about it is applying the term “cancel culture” and then framing it as a scapegoat for the economic consequences of one’s free speech instead of addressing the content of the criticism.
 
johnny karate said:
The other two examples are expressions of free speech, which I thought you supported.
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You need to distinguish here between two types of support.

1) Supporting the legalization of a message (e.g. Nazis holding a rally in Marquette Park in Chicago)

2) Supporting the message itself

One can say "Nazis ought not rally in Marquette Park," without affirming that they ought to be legally sanctioned for doing so.

Similarly, one can say that it was wrong to pursue #StockOut (since Dr. Stock did nothing wrong) while affirming the legal right of students to protest in that manner.
 
Cain said:
As a general rule of thumb, if a topic is metaphysically and epistemologically murky, we should probably be less inclined to cancel people.
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The more logically incoherent a belief system, the greater the need to smear and intimidate critics and suppress debate.
 
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Upchurch said:
My inability to correctly read colored lines on a graph aside, that appears to not be the case, or it is decreasingly so. Given the higher number of females to males in the US population, there are probably more trans men than trans women or, again, there will be.
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That would be true if males were trans women and females trans men at the same rate, which doesn't appear to be the case. Whether from outside factors (such as cultural) or a quirk of biology that doesn't seem to be true (there is some speculation that fetal development stages lead the apparent disparate rates).

Forgive me if I'm not seeing data in the link that actually address that directly. I'm going on a few smaller research findings that of course suffer from all the problems of studying a very small population that is repressed by threats of violence and accusations their existence is the same as blackface, an inherent transgression against women specifically even from people claiming to be funny allies. The overwhelming reason for 'de-transitioning' given is after all the violence and lack of acceptance from the surrounding community, but that kind of cancellation is fine if people 'don't understand' this human trait.
 
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