Cont: Cancel culture IRL Part 2

[johnny karate]

I don't see why the "hand-wringers" need to take up the burden of proving a proposition they didn't argue.

As I explained earlier, the attempted cancellation of that particular gelateria was promoted by self-identified skeptics (and atheists) over events which arose directly from a skeptic convention. Since this is a forum for skeptics (rather than, say, Trump supporters) I'd expect that gives it extra salience here. Whenever I feel the need to debate issues with Trump supporters, I can always visit my in-laws.

It all continues to beg the question why anyone should give a ****, then.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Again it's the same paradoxical mobius loop of hypocritical double speak.

They want the Left punished for having standards they don't live up to a 100% theoretical perfect strawman version of so the Right can wallow in having no standards at all and it be seen as the same.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Both sides now

As usual, what happens on the fringes of the left and in the mainstream on the right are given equal weight so certain people can smugly proclaim "Both sides do it".

The ACLU wrote, "Restrictions on speech by public colleges and universities amount to government censorship, in violation of the Constitution. Such restrictions deprive students of their right to invite speech they wish to hear, debate speech with which they disagree, and protest speech they find bigoted or offensive. An open society depends on liberal education, and the whole enterprise of liberal education is founded on the principle of free speech."

I condemn making threats against public health officials (this was mentioned in a recent comment), and I have seen no one else in this thread condoning such things. Most of my examples in this thread come from academia, because that is where I work. One example was blatantly ridiculous but relatively harmless (cancellation of a rock at UW-Madison), but some carry more consequences. For example, a professor potentially losing his job over writing "n_____" in a test question where it was directly relevant is a non-trivial matter, both for him and for the educational system. Both sides do it; I wish neither side would.

 

[lionking]

The ACLU wrote, "Restrictions on speech by public colleges and universities amount to government censorship, in violation of the Constitution. Such restrictions deprive students of their right to invite speech they wish to hear, debate speech with which they disagree, and protest speech they find bigoted or offensive. An open society depends on liberal education, and the whole enterprise of liberal education is founded on the principle of free speech."

I condemn making threats against public health officials (this was mentioned in a recent comment), and I have seen no one else in this thread condoning such things. Most of my examples in this thread come from academia, because that is where I work. One example was blatantly ridiculous but relatively harmless (cancellation of a rock at UW-Madison), but some carry more consequences. For example, a professor potentially losing his job over writing "n_____" in a test question where it was directly relevant is a non-trivial matter, both for him and for the educational system. Both sides do it; I wish neither side would.

Well said. You are correct, but will be ignored by many here fixated only on the right wing cancellers.

 

[tyr_13]

The ACLU wrote, "Restrictions on speech by public colleges and universities amount to government censorship, in violation of the Constitution. Such restrictions deprive students of their right to invite speech they wish to hear, debate speech with which they disagree, and protest speech they find bigoted or offensive. An open society depends on liberal education, and the whole enterprise of liberal education is founded on the principle of free speech."

I condemn making threats against public health officials (this was mentioned in a recent comment), and I have seen no one else in this thread condoning such things. Most of my examples in this thread come from academia, because that is where I work. One example was blatantly ridiculous but relatively harmless (cancellation of a rock at UW-Madison), but some carry more consequences. For example, a professor potentially losing his job over writing "n_____" in a test question where it was directly relevant is a non-trivial matter, both for him and for the educational system. Both sides do it; I wish neither side would.

Why did you quote johnny? Your response doesn't seem to address anything he was saying.

There is no equivalency here. The right in the US has been cancelling teachers for generations. They are cancelling books and trying to give parents the right to get money for cancelling books and librarians. In many states they've already given themselves the power to cancel non-partisan election officials, and they've used it, levying baseless accusations then removing their power or their job. They've given themselves the power to cancel the results of elections. They've given people strong monetary incentive to cancel people for doing jobs as divers as Uber driver to reproductive doctor.

And they do condone the threats. The Big Lie is a mainstream GOP belief. 'Sure the election officials stole the Presidency to take over the country for the commies but don't threaten them!' is a nonsense facesaving position meant to mollify spineless 'moderates' who are looking for any excuse not to address real issues. You know, like 'both sides' is. Plus it doesn't even matter if some on the right do in earnest condemn things like the school board members being threatened in light of the fact that they're still the side doing it orders of magnitude more. They'll condemn but do absolutely nothing to stop it. Literally nothing besides say it's wrong. Not tell their law enforcement to do a damn thing about it, not tell these people making threats to their face that it's unacceptable, not cut such people out of their social circles; nothing. Meanwhile you yourself cite a major 'left wing' organization fighting for academic protections.

A professor wrongly being fired over the salient use of the N word would not be trivial to him, but compared to what the right wing is threatening even in just the domain of education it's absurdly trivial. One side wants to cancel academic freedoms and representative democracy, and is actively trying to. Not both sides. One side.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Why the **** are "free speech" advocates always so goddamn obsessed with white people not being able to use the n-word?

 

[tyr_13]

Why the **** are "free speech" advocates always so goddamn obsessed with white people not being able to use the n-word?

On one hand there are some people who actually do see the value in some discussions academically to be able to say the word. On the other some people see 'racism shouldn't detract from our education system and racists should be teach classes' as having the same merit as 'racism is correct and firing people for being racist is intolerant'. The overlap leads to many actual free speech advocates and those leveraging the popularity of the concept to defend their abhorrent ideas both pushing superficially for the same thing. It is an extreme example that isn't as rare as the former think it is because the latter aren't honest about it.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Unlearning Liberty

Why did you quote johnny? Your response doesn't seem to address anything he was saying.
SNIP
One side wants to cancel academic freedoms and representative democracy, and is actively trying to. Not both sides. One side.

In certain respects you have answered your own question, but let me expand a bit. One, when an public college or university does it, it is indeed censorship. Two, both sides do indeed engage in censorship. Not for the first time I will recommend Greg Lukianoff's book Unlearning Liberty. Three, I would be in broad agreement with the proposition that not all harms are equal in magnitude and that threats to academic freedom, while serious, are not as serious as some other dangers.* For various reasons, however, I don't discuss every incident, not the least of which is that becoming well informed on even one topic takes time. Yet I disagree with Johnny Karate's implication that most or all of the people who say that both sides are doing it are being smug, let alone that they are justifying inaction on one front because of what is happening on the other. I contribute to FIRE precisely because it is a nonpartisan organization.

The professor did not use the whole word, just the letter n and a string of underscores in a question that concerned racial- and gender-based epithets. Anyone who inferred from this question that the professor was himself a racist is making an extremely long extrapolation. I am not sure what the resolution of the Bright Sheng affair will be, but his offense was to show his students the film of Laurence Olivier as Othello.

*anyone who has read my contributions to the Covid-19 threads here can easily guess how I feel about treating public health officials badly in any manner whatsoever.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Well said. You are correct, but will be ignored by many here fixated only on the right wing cancellers.

lionking,

Your prediction was right on the money.

 

[tyr_13]

In certain respects you have answered your own question, but let me expand a bit. One, when an public college or university does it, it is indeed censorship. Two, both sides do indeed engage in censorship. Not for the first time I will recommend Greg Lukianoff's book Unlearning Liberty. Three, I would be in broad agreement with the proposition that not all harms are equal in magnitude and that threats to academic freedom, while serious, are not as serious as some other dangers.* For various reasons, however, I don't discuss every incident, not the least of which is that becoming well informed on even one topic takes time. Yet I disagree with Johnny Karate's implication that most or all of the people who say that both sides are doing it are being smug, let alone that they are justifying inaction on one front because of what is happening on the other. I contribute to FIRE precisely because it is a nonpartisan organization.

The professor did not use the whole word, just the letter n and a string of underscores in a question that concerned racial- and gender-based epithets. Anyone who inferred from this question that the professor was himself a racist is making an extremely long extrapolation. I am not sure what the resolution of the Bright Sheng affair will be, but his offense was to show his students the film of Laurence Olivier as Othello.

*anyone who has read my contributions to the Covid-19 threads here can easily guess how I feel about treating public health officials badly in any manner whatsoever.

You're not, in actually, addressing in a meaningful way what is being said though. You're talking past it. It's a red herring you're being taken off the trail over.

Both sides engage in censorship. It's wrong to do so. They don't do so equally. They are not both trying to end academic freedom, only one side is. As Joe points out repeatedly in these threads, and is absolutely correct about, one side failing to live up 100% to their ideals and goals just isn't the same as the side whose goals are to destroy those ideals and who actually do more to fail those standards. A careless elbow and a shiv in the kidney might both be 'assaults' but they're so different as to be absurd to lump them in the same discussion, yet that's the equal to what happens here.

It's a purposeful muddying of the waters that works on you specifically because you're trying so hard not to 'fall for' partisanship. I'm especially susceptible to the 'fallacy fallacy', and you might for various reasons fall for the 'Golden Mean' family more readily.

Let me put it another way; what criteria would you use to identify when focusing on the left wing censorship is being employed in bad faith to muddy the waters? Why is ahhell's reasoning that 'it deserves more focus because the left doesn't normally go for those things' so it counts as an 'escalation from the left' even if it's still worse in kind and magnitude on the right? What is different about this than for example saying 'the left' is escalating political violence even though it's still overwhelmingly coming from and growing on the right?

In short, you're using general truths applied to specifics cases to avoid a different general truth, and it's weird.

 

[ahhell]

Where and how is it escalating on the left? Because the "cancellations" I see that can be laid at the feet of the left are isolated incidents with significantly lower stakes, if they aren't outright laughable (see: Johnny Depp complaining about being "cancelled" while accepting a life time achievement award). Furthermore, there's no indication that "cancel culture" is a mainstream tenet of the left.

Meanwhile on the right, anti-First Amendment laws are being passed, election and health officials are being forced out of their positions, and books are being banned as part of a larger, organized effort for authoritarian control of our government and culture. The right is literally trying to cancel anything and everything that doesn't fit into their regressive and narrow orthodoxy.

As usual, what happens on the fringes of the left and in the mainstream on the right are given equal weight so certain people can smugly proclaim "Both sides do it".

Just to be clear, death threats against right wing politicians and public personalities isn't an escalation? Just, business as usually?

 

[Chris_Halkides]

old vs. new left

As Joe points out repeatedly in these threads, and is absolutely correct about, one side failing to live up 100% to their ideals and goals just isn't the same as the side whose goals are to destroy those ideals and who actually do more to fail those standards.
SNIP
Let me put it another way; what criteria would you use to identify when focusing on the left wing censorship is being employed in bad faith to muddy the waters? Why is ahhell's reasoning that 'it deserves more focus because the left doesn't normally go for those things' so it counts as an 'escalation from the left' even if it's still worse in kind and magnitude on the right? What is different about this than for example saying 'the left' is escalating political violence even though it's still overwhelmingly coming from and growing on the right?

In short, you're using general truths applied to specifics cases to avoid a different general truth, and it's weird.

I sense that I do not entirely grasp your line of thinking, but I will do the best that I can. Concerning the point in your original paragraph 2, I think that the old left was generally against censorship, but the new left has simply rejected those ideals, as opposed to not living up to them. Regarding your question at the beginning of paragraph 4, my current position is that if there were many more incidents of censorship coming from the right than the left wing, and if a right-leaning commenter said that therefore nothing should be done about the former until the latter were addressed, then I would be strongly inclined to assume bad faith. I would like to think about this some more.

Regarding the number of incidents of academic censorship, I heard Greg Lukianoff (president of FIRE) speak a few years ago, and IIRC he said that more came from the right than the left. However, the only recent examples I can think of at the college-level come from the left. High schools are a very different matter; Virginia's recent battle over Toni Morrison's novel Beloved comes to mind.

Regarding your second question, I would say that it is more disappointing coming from the left for the reason I provided above, not that it deserves more focus. I have participated in these two threads only sporadically, but political violence strikes me as being at the very far end of what I would classify as cancel culture, although I am not able to find a bright line.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Uncomfortable students at Sussex

I just read the article "Two plus two makes four" in the October 16th-22nd issue of The Economist magazine (it is probably behind a paywall). It covers an incident at the University of Sussex involving Professor Kathleen Stock's alleged transphobia. Lady Kishwer Falkner wrote a letter to The Times stating in part, "university is a place where we are exposed to ideas and learn to death with each other" and that students "do not have a right not to be made uncomfortable/. They can't say that because they feel uncomfortable, someone should be fired." Change the word "uncomfortable" to "unsafe" and this could easily be a description of what is happening in the United States. A quick Google search took me to a Guardian article which indicated that Professor Stock resigned.

 

[tyr_13]

I sense that I do not entirely grasp your line of thinking, but I will do the best that I can. Concerning the point in your original paragraph 2, I think that the old left was generally against censorship, but the new left has simply rejected those ideals, as opposed to not living up to them.

Why? What is it that makes you believe the 'new left' embraces censorship? This probably hinges on what 'censorship' means, but your cited passage argues that protesting speech is a good reason not to censor speech. Logically then students simply protesting the speech of others cannot in and of itself be the criteria for what the left is doing to censor education even if one did accept that college activists are representative of 'the new left' (as opposed to actual literal representatives).

What I most often see is people holding academics claiming academic protection but refusing academic rigour, then when their discredited ideas of little to no academic value are pushed without new evidence supporting it, they cry about being 'cancelled' or 'censored'. You would not advocate for not having standards at all, correct? What evidence should an institution accept is enough to allow a lecturer to advocate for forced-sterilization eugenics for example? Racial supremacy? These ideas aren't just unpopular, they're wrong as shown by evidence, and harmful as shown by history. Likewise I see people arguing that bringing in speakers of little credibility but highly contentious isn't worth the resources which can be spent elsewhere accused of 'censorship'. Now the perils of the 'heckler's veto' are known, but arguing the exact point of that line isn't 'censorship'.

Regarding your question at the beginning of paragraph 4, my current position is that if there were many more incidents of censorship coming from the right than the left wing, and if a right-leaning commenter said that therefore nothing should be done about the former until the latter were addressed, then I would be strongly inclined to assume bad faith. I would like to think about this some more.

Regarding the number of incidents of academic censorship, I heard Greg Lukianoff (president of FIRE) speak a few years ago, and IIRC he said that more came from the right than the left. However, the only recent examples I can think of at the college-level come from the left. High schools are a very different matter; Virginia's recent battle over Toni Morrison's novel Beloved comes to mind.

Well your chosen expert seems to know more than you would, right? Selection bias plays into what examples you can think of, and right wing educational institutions don't tend to get media coverage for their censorship as that's baked into their reasoning. And of course the kind of 'censorship' that can debateably be a label you could apply to some of the actions of left wing students and administrators isn't the same in magnitude, number, or kind to the legal efforts and successes from the right wing. Even just moving one's set to like for like, this 'public pressure' cancellation, the people screaming at school boards and making threats are overwhelmingly right wing. It's not like it's a close call here.

Regarding your second question, I would say that it is more disappointing coming from the left for the reason I provided above, not that it deserves more focus. I have participated in these two threads only sporadically, but political violence strikes me as being at the very far end of what I would classify as cancel culture, although I am not able to find a bright line.

If one, say ahhell, is bringing up threats of violence and violence as an 'escalation' of it from the left, then it would be rational to compare, right? And of course the actual risk from the threats should be.

The right are the ones actually killing people. Ahhell's argument is factually incorrect as johnny karate noticed. There are just not 'one of these for every one of these'. The right actually does shoot and bomb doctors. They pass laws requiring doctors lie. They shoot up Wal-Marts and federal buildings and synagogues and politicians and storm the Capitol at such a greater rate than the left that the threats from the right are of course, factually, much more credible. They threaten election officials and the police just pretend they can't do anything about it even when the reporters can find the people making the threats trivially easy.

So if the violence and threat of violence is related to cancellation as ahhell contends, it still isn't an 'escalation' by the left as the right has been doing it as long as I've been alive.

Or, as others have noted, 'cancelling' is just the vague term latched on to to define into existence a set of 'problematic' behavior that is deformed to whatever it needs to be in order to criticize left wing speech and exclude right wing. It only became a problem when the 'wrong' people got access to the power others have wielded forever.

 

[angrysoba]

I just read the article "Two plus two makes four" in the October 16th-22nd issue of The Economist magazine (it is probably behind a paywall). It covers an incident at the University of Sussex involving Professor Kathleen Stock's alleged transphobia. Lady Kishwer Falkner wrote a letter to The Times stating in part, "university is a place where we are exposed to ideas and learn to death with each other" and that students "do not have a right not to be made uncomfortable/. They can't say that because they feel uncomfortable, someone should be fired." Change the word "uncomfortable" to "unsafe" and this could easily be a description of what is happening in the United States. A quick Google search took me to a Guardian article which indicated that Professor Stock resigned.

Yeah, she resigned after getting some harassment from students at the university for her comments which were considered anti-trans. I think she also did not get support from her union, which I think is bad.

Anyway, after resigning, she took up a job at... The University of Austin, which is not actually a university at all. Sounds like a bad move in my opinion.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

I just read the article "Two plus two makes four" in the October 16th-22nd issue of The Economist magazine (it is probably behind a paywall). It covers an incident at the University of Sussex involving Professor Kathleen Stock's alleged transphobia. Lady Kishwer Falkner wrote a letter to The Times stating in part, "university is a place where we are exposed to ideas and learn to death with each other" and that students "do not have a right not to be made uncomfortable/. They can't say that because they feel uncomfortable, someone should be fired." Change the word "uncomfortable" to "unsafe" and this could easily be a description of what is happening in the United States. A quick Google search took me to a Guardian article which indicated that Professor Stock resigned.

Are we supposed to feel bad for these paper-skinned crybabies?

She decided to wade into a hotly contested social matter and voice an opinion, which predictably resulted in... negative opinions in return. She also got a lot of strong support from like minded individuals who agreed with her. Sounds like a normal day on the Free Market of Ideas.

Despite all the criticism and hot takes, it doesn't ever seem like her job was in any real jeopardy. She didn't get fired, she quit. Hope her tour of Grifter University is a profitable one.

 

[Lithrael]

I’d be interested to see a comparison of the kind of negativity that folks like this resigned professor have to deal with, versus the kind of negativity that half the board said was no big deal and basically her own problem anyway, for that main gamergate woman a few years ago.

I mean sure that’s just a tu quoque kind of thing but that seems to be the current conversation.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

hats off to censorship

Why? What is it that makes you believe the 'new left' embraces censorship? This probably hinges on what 'censorship' means, but your cited passage argues that protesting speech is a good reason not to censor speech. Logically then students simply protesting the speech of others cannot in and of itself be the criteria for what the left is doing to censor education even if one did accept that college activists are representative of 'the new left' (as opposed to actual literal representatives).

What I most often see is people holding academics claiming academic protection but refusing academic rigour, then when their discredited ideas of little to no academic value are pushed without new evidence supporting it, they cry about being 'cancelled' or 'censored'. You would not advocate for not having standards at all, correct? What evidence should an institution accept is enough to allow a lecturer to advocate for forced-sterilization eugenics for example? Racial supremacy? These ideas aren't just unpopular, they're wrong as shown by evidence, and harmful as shown by history. Likewise I see people arguing that bringing in speakers of little credibility but highly contentious isn't worth the resources which can be spent elsewhere accused of 'censorship'. Now the perils of the 'heckler's veto' are known, but arguing the exact point of that line isn't 'censorship'.

When students claim to have heart palpitations and call for tenured professors to be fired, they are play-acting and behaving in an illiberal way. It becomes censorship in the narrow sense of the word when a public college or university accedes to their demands. A public university cannot take off its government hat at will, or at least that is how I understand the law regarding censorship and public educational institutions. Your hypotheticals are so very far removed from any of the examples I provided that it is difficult to know how to respond ATM. I may come back to these issues if I have more time later.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

When students claim to have heart palpitations and call for tenured professors to be fired, they are play-acting and behaving in an illiberal way. It becomes censorship in the narrow sense of the word when a public college or university accedes to their demands. A public university cannot take off its government hat at will, or at least that is how I understand the law regarding censorship and public educational institutions. Your hypotheticals are so very far removed from any of the examples I provided that it is difficult to know how to respond ATM. I may come back to these issues if I have more time later.

Yes, if the university summarily fired Stock that would be a pretty serious breach of academic freedom. That didn't happen, and the university was quite firm in their responsibility to protect their professor's right to explore controversial topics. Surely "cancel culture" doesn't include toothless student protest efforts that totally failed, right?

Stock leveraged her "cancellation" into a position of higher prominence in an anti-trans organization (the LGB alliance) and seems to be gunning for a lucrative career as a grifter public intellectual outside the university.

It probably would have been better for Stock's career shift to "banished truth teller" had she been fired, but that didn't happen, probably much to her chagrin.

Following in the Baris Weiss footsteps of being "cancelled" into a better job entirely of their own choosing.

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Rocking in Wisconsin

Are we supposed to feel bad for these paper-skinned crybabies?

Paper-skinned crybabies might apply to students who get the vapors because they had to watch Othello, or because a rock (yes, you read that correctly) was referred to by an offensive name over ninety years ago. Although to be fair, it was a large rock.