Nobody Can Take a Joke Anymore

[DanaC]

The freedom of people to be assholes is going to be intertwined with the freedom of people to call each other assholes.

Oh, well put.

[Happy Monkey]

Fogeys

[Undertoad]

WOW, she's made quite a turn!

Cos she wasn't saying that five years ago, when her TED talk got yanked and repeatedly apologized for! Then it was a whole different story!!

“Kudos to @TEDChris for making TED an unsafe haven for all! You’re a barnacle of mediocrity on Bill Gates’ asshole.” - SS on Twitter, facing a political correctness battle in 2010

[Happy Monkey]

Indeed

Silverman said personal experience helped her realize that she should avoid using certain words as punchlines. While she used to defend her use of the word “gay” as a stand-in for “lame,” she eventually realized, “I have become the guy from 50 years ago who said, ‘I say colored, I have colored friends.'”

[it]

Oh dear, I still remember that moment where you started seen her crack:

[Undertoad]

What would Obama say? I love that he acknowledges the problem.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...llege-students

"It’s not just sometimes folks who are mad that colleges are too liberal that have a problem. Sometimes there are folks on college campuses who are liberal and maybe even agree with me on a bunch of issues who sometimes aren’t listening to the other side. And that’s a problem, too," Obama said during a town hall on Monday in Des Moines, Iowa.

"I've heard of some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative. Or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans, or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women," Obama continued.

"I’ve got to tell you, I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of views," he said.

"Anybody who comes to speak to you and you disagree with, you should have an argument with them. But you shouldn’t silence them by saying, you can’t come because I’m too sensitive to hear what you have to say. That’s not the way we learn, either."

[it]

You know what terrifies me? That she's somehow right.

That in 30 years from now the idea that people need to be challenged by conflicting or disturbing points of view will be antiquated an unenlightened, thrown in the same bucket we've thrown racism and chauvinism and colonialism etc, overshadowed by new ideals and ethical interpretations that justify it all together in their own way, and yet we are missing on them in much the same way older generations missed on what we now take for granted. That in some way, this is just part of of society marching on.

I have seen people who are able to justify various stances that would be applicable here, and those justifications are not without merit.

One version of this is viewing the right to choose who is and isn't in your life as a rudimentary element of personal sovereignty. When pushed to extreme in the modern urban and online environments, means everyone is disposable, and if you have a conflicting view or narrative or understanding with someone, just find someone else instead. And yet it can still be justified - for disallowing or going against the ability to cut people off can be said to be supporting abuse. And yet when dynamics have one side and one narrative in one's mind, there also isn't much resistance for personal fairytales of good guys and bad guys... If so, how far of a leap it from that to a right to control the information you chose to expose yourself too?

Many people are now raised with that ability at the tip of their hands...

[DanaC]

I think for me, it is always a tonal thing. There's a big difference, for example, between an academic who has what many people would consider a racist interpretation or outlook - such as that black people are genetically less intelligent than white people, or that slavery as an institution was kinder than it was cruel, or that the holocaust has been grossly exaggerated - coming to a campus and expressing that view, and someone advocating racism as a social response.

Same with sexism, and any isms really. I think the people who make up a campus community have the right to contribute to the ethos and atmosphere of their institution. There is a very fine line, though, between protecting the intellectual safe space in which difficult and controversial things can be discussed and expressed and protecting away that space.

[xoxoxoBruce]

What the hell is an "intellectual safe" space? Isn't intellectual and safe diametrically opposed? I would think someone who is intellectual would be welcoming for examination any and all ideas, opinions, points of view.

Three cheers for Obama, he nailed it.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

What the hell is an "intellectual safe" space? Isn't intellectual and safe diametrically opposed? I would think someone who is intellectual would be welcoming for examination any and all ideas, opinions, points of view.

Someone who is promoting ideas that have been examined thoroughly and discarded, and who has shown no sign of having a new take on them, doesn't add anything. If the only result of having a particular debate would be to pad the resume of the person in question, and give them a veneer of legitimacy, then it may actually subtract.

That's not to say that every person who was invited to speak, and then uninvited due to student protest falls into that category, but that category exists.

[xoxoxoBruce]

But how do they know what the speaker will say until they say it? Track record? How do you know they haven't modified, or have more compelling evidence, for their position.
"Examined thoroughly and discarded" by whom, your teacher, your mentor, your friend, some "committee", or you? If it's not you, you're not receptive to outside ideas, and would seem to be a semi-intellectual.
Even if you think they're a one trick pony, you might be surprised you can learn something from them. If you are sure of what they will say, any disagree with them, that's fine, but does that give you the right to deny others the opportunity to hear and make their own judgment? That's McCarthyism.

[Clodfobble]

Not to mention that ignoring someone is almost always more effective. If they're really so universally disagreed with, no one will come to hear them speak anyway. And if lots of people will go, you just happen to think those people are all idiots, that's not remotely the same thing.

[DanaC]

University campuses were once not safe spaces for african americans - indeed they were not welcome there at all. A speaker whose sole purpose for appearing at a campus is to promote a return to a time where african americans are not welcome in campuses (and other places) threatens the safe space that the campus has (hopefully) become.

Now - you as a hypothetical black person do not have to attend that person's event. But there are other people there hearing, specifically, about how you as a black person should not be allowed to study with white people. It would be promoting racism and making the campus less welcoming of you.

Similarly - if the science department invited someone to speak on why women should not be welcomed into STEM fields - why they are fundamentally unsuited to such study - that plays into an existing struggle for legitimacy and acceptance into the intellectual space. You as a hypothetical female student, do not have to attend that event. But others are there hearing about how you should not really be welcome at all.

In both cases there are a number of people out there who believe that black people and women have no place in the campus community. They are fewer nowadays - but they were once the majority view in both cases.

There is a difference between people saying potentially offensive things and people advocating a closing down of the intellectual space to those they consider inferior. Which is why I was supportive of university students boycotting and expressing anger at a group who invited the leader of a nationalist party to speak to students - but wholly unsupportive of the furore that surrounded a professor of genetics who made waves a few years ago when speaking about his belief that each race is genetically geared to different intelligence levels.

One is a fringe view that is no doubt offensive to a lot of people, the others are using the campus to spread a damaging ideology that makes the intellectual debate unwelcoming of particular groups within it.


[eta] a more modern example might be if someone was invited to come and speak about LGBT issues and was advocating that gay people should be cured, and that transgender people are an abomination in the eyes of God. That is free speech that threatens the safety and intellectual freedom of a contingent of the campus community - a vulnerable contingent whose acceptance is still at times a battle and who face physical and psychological danger from people who espouse or adhere to those views.

A psychologist coming to a conference or debate to argue that homosexuality is a choice because of X research that he did is putting forward an unpleasant and out of touch argument - but they should be allowed to make that argument and others put the counter argument.

[it]

You know I have to ask Dana.... How do you feel about the following:

- The student's fight against allowing the Warren Farrel lecture.
- The effort for boycutting Israel in itself and the administration's response to it.
Both in the university of Toronto, both from 2012

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by traceur

You know I have to ask Dana.... How do you feel about the following:

- The student's fight against allowing the Warren Farrel lecture.
- The effort for boycutting Israel in itself and the administration's response to it.
Both in the university of Toronto, both from 2012

They're both interesting cases, I think. They are also very distinct.

The case for boycotting Israel and therefore Israeli speakers from participating in campus and other events is something that crops up a lot in the UK. The point there is rarely about wanting to block what is being said, so much as it is making a political statement about the wider culture the speaker nominally represents. It's a little like people boycotting South African sports during the Apartheid era. There are arguments for and against but they are not really arguments of free speech and acceptance of alternative views.

The Farrell lecture is a difficult one. I can totally understand why some people at that campus would not to host someone with such extreme views, and one supported by others of even more extreme views. I know I wouldn't want him or his ilk anywhere near me :P But - that kind of response is a double-edged sword. Without the protest, and without the likelihood of such protest, I suspect his event would have had fairly low attendance and be fairly low impact.

And if you're going down that route, then you really need to make sure your own house in order. Would those same people have objected to someone from the more extreme edge of the women's movement giving a lecture about how all men are inherently violent rapists and oppressors?


I think sometimes it is a mistake to make a noise about it. The same argument that says we shouldn't give, to go back to racism for example, fascistic political parties the oxygen of publicity and the legitimacy of debate by including them in the political debate scene, also really makes the case for not boycotting them in the first place.

I have very conflicted feelings on both of the examples you cite. I can see the arguments for and against boycotting them. Overall, I am in favour of college and university students shaping the ethos and contours of the intellectual space they inhabit. The downside of that is that most of those students are in their teens and early 20s and kids of that age who engage in politics tend to be very fierce about it. That's natural - it's a big part of becoming politically engaged and learning where you stand on things and what really matters to you. But it does mean that the responses to this sort of thing often lack nuance.