SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Charles Murray, controversial author of The Bell Curve, which promoted links between intelligence and race, was shouted down by protesters at Middlebury College last Thursday. PBS reports:
Murray had been invited by Middlebury's student group affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank at which Murray is a scholar. [...] Prior to the point when Murray was introduced, several Middlebury officials reminded students that they were allowed to protest but not to disrupt the talk. The students ignored those reminders and faced no visible consequences for doing so. [...]
After the students chanted for about 20 minutes, college officials announced that the lecture would not take place but that Murray would go to another location, which the college didn't name, and have a discussion with a Middlebury faculty member — livestreamed back to the original lecture site.
According to Middlebury officials, after Murray and the professor who interviewed him for the livestream attempted to leave the location in a car, some protesters surrounded the car, jumped on it, pounded on it and tried to prevent the car from leaving campus.
Other sources note that political science professor Allison Stanger, who agreed to moderate the discussion, was attacked while accompanying Murray to the car, ultimately requiring treatment at a hospital for neck injuries caused by protesters pushing her and pulling her hair.
Murray himself later gave an account of his experience on the AEI blog. He emphasized that Middlebury's administration and staff displayed in exemplary ways their encouragement of free speech:
Middlebury's stance has been exemplary. The administration agreed to host the event. President Patton did not cancel it even after a major protest became inevitable. She appeared at the event, further signaling Middlebury's commitment to academic freedom. The administration arranged an ingenious Plan B that enabled me to present my ideas and discuss them with Professor Stanger even though the crowd had prevented me from speaking in the lecture hall. I wish that every college in the country had the backbone and determination that Middlebury exhibited.
But Murray notes that the outcome was very different from his previous controversial appearances:
Until last Thursday, all of the ones involving me have been as carefully scripted as kabuki: The college administration meets with the organizers of the protest and ground rules are agreed upon. The protesters have so many minutes to do such and such. It is agreed that after the allotted time, they will leave or desist. These negotiated agreements have always worked. At least a couple of dozen times, I have been able to give my lecture to an attentive (or at least quiet) audience despite an organized protest.
Middlebury tried to negotiate such an agreement with the protesters, but, for the first time in my experience, the protesters would not accept any time limits. [...] In the mid-1990s, I could count on students who had wanted to listen to start yelling at the protesters after a certain point, "Sit down and shut up, we want to hear what he has to say." That kind of pushback had an effect. It reminded the protesters that they were a minority. I am assured by people at Middlebury that their protesters are a minority as well. But they are a minority that has intimidated the majority. The people in the audience who wanted to hear me speak were completely cowed.
The form of the protest has been widely condemned even by those who vehemently disagree with Murray, as in the piece by Peter Beinart in The Atlantic that claims "something has gone badly wrong on the campus left." He argues strongly that "Liberals must defend the right of conservative students to invite speakers of their choice, even if they find their views abhorrent."
Meanwhile, student protesters have responded with their own account, disclaiming the hair-pulling incident as unintentional and "irresponsible" but condemning the Middlebury administration for their "support of a platform for white nationalist speech." They further claimed "peaceful protest was met with escalating levels of violence by the administration and Public Safety, who continually asserted their support of a dangerous racist over the well-being of students."
Personal note: My take on all of this is that the actual subject of Murray's Middlebury talk has been lost in the media coverage, namely his 2012 book Coming Apart, which (ironically) is a detailed discussion of the problems created by a division of the intellectual elite from the white working class. He explicitly dilutes his previous connections of social problems with a black underclass by noting that many of the same issues plague poor white communities. While his argument is still based on problematic assertions about intelligence and IQ, the topic of his book seems very relevant given recent political events and issues of class division. There's some sort of profound irony in a bunch of students at an elite school refusing to allow a debate on the causes and results of division between elite intellectuals and the (white) working class. I personally may think Murray's scholarship is shoddy and his use of statistics frequently misleading (or downright wrong), but I don't see how that justifies the kind of threats and intimidation tactics shown at this protest.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @04:49PM (11 children)
this is about schools becoming safe-spaces where there is no room for critical thought, no room for anyone to have a different opinion, not even in jest. and if you truly don't see how dangerous this is, you're as fucking retarded as the marxists who started this in the first place.
Lol. That line of bullshit was quickly put to an end when all the conservatives dropped Milo Pedopoulos like a hot shit because he went full-NAMBLA. [soylentnews.org]
Turns out all that rhetoric about critical though and different opinions didn't mean anything when it came to their safe-spaces. As always, the real snowflakes are the people screaming "snowflake!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @05:36PM (3 children)
yeah... no, as I said this has nothing to do with Milo, this issue has been going on for a LOT longer than any of that, even comedians are giving up on going to campuses, Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher talking about this come to mind, but there is a lot more than just that.
calling somebody a snowflake in response to being called a snowflake is not an argument when the one group is trying to silence any discussion that they don't agree with, say all you want about conservatives, but they aren't using pepper-spray on the elderly, or destroying their own neighborhoods because their feelings were hurt.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday March 08 2017, @08:00PM
say all you want about conservatives, but they aren't using pepper-spray on the elderly, or destroying their own neighborhoods because their feelings were hurt.
It's bad enough that some of them think it's okay to disallow someone from giving a speech because the person holds some views that they are highly offended by, which is something that they criticize the universities for doing. It's hypocritical to complain about how universities sometimes take away people's platforms for holding offensive views and then turn around and do the same to someone else for kinda-sorta-not-really questioning the age of consent. Milo, the conservatives who turned on him, the universities that keep canceling speeches because someone holds views that are considered offensive to some, and the people who become violent to stop people from speaking are all cowardly, and arguing about which is worse is useless. In some of these cases it's legally acceptable to cancel someone's speech for any reason, but it's about the principle of speaking freely, which is far broader than the legal implementation of free speech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @08:47PM (1 child)
> say all you want about conservatives, but they aren't using pepper-spray on the elderly
Uh, actually they literally are.
Video of tump supporter pepper-spraying nasty-ass old-man trump supporter. [viceland.com] Action starts about 4 minutes in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09 2017, @12:31AM
in that video, the guy who pepper sprayed him is literally NOT a trump supporter, or did you miss the line "get over it, you lost?"
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday March 08 2017, @08:02PM (6 children)
As always, the real snowflakes are the people screaming "snowflake!"
There are plenty of "snowflakes" in both groups. Many of these people are also hypocritical and are unwilling to recognize that others on their 'side' are guilty of the same things as those on the other 'side'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @08:49PM (5 children)
False equivalency.
The people screaming "snowflake!" as an insult are only on one side.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday March 08 2017, @08:59PM (4 children)
False equivalency.
I never said that each side was exactly alike. I'm tired of seeing the "false equivalency" retort being trotted out every time someone so much as suggests that both sides have flaws. I'm not required to painstakingly analyze just how flawed each side is exactly in order to make accurate observations. This is mostly just a tool of partisan hacks who only want to see criticisms of the 'other side'.
The people screaming "snowflake!" as an insult are only on one side.
What "side", exactly? Are you playing us-vs-them team politics? There are countless 'sides'.
But even if that is true, it's irrelevant. If we take into account how these people are using the term "snowflake", then both sides have such people; it doesn't matter if one side uses the term more often or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 08 2017, @09:10PM (3 children)
I never said that each side was exactly alike. I'm tired of seeing the "false equivalency" retort being trotted out every time someone so much as suggests that both sides have flaws
Oh, blow me. You trotted out "both sides have snowflakes" in response to the point that the people screaming snowflake are snowflakes themselves.
Your "I never literally said that" deflection is a cop-out. You fucking-A meant that. Otherwise there was no point in disputing the original claim.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Wednesday March 08 2017, @11:47PM (2 children)
Oh, blow me. You trotted out "both sides have snowflakes" in response to the point that the people screaming snowflake are snowflakes themselves.
I replied to this: "As always, the real snowflakes are the people screaming "snowflake!"" The "real snowflakes" part would seem to imply that their complaints about snowflakes are not valid, as if only the 'side' that complains about snowflakes has actual snowflakes. Correct me if I am wrong.
Your "I never literally said that" deflection is a cop-out.
No, it's just correct.
You fucking-A meant that.
You cannot decide what I meant. If you're going to try to do that, then go talk with an imaginary friend, because speaking to someone who tells me what I think or meant is a complete waste of time.
Otherwise there was no point in disputing the original claim.
I disputed it because the wording made it seem incorrect. You failed to consider all the possibilities and this led you to erroneously assume that I must have responded in that way for one and only one reason.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 09 2017, @08:41PM (1 child)
You cannot decide what I meant. If you're going to try to do that, then go talk with an imaginary friend, because speaking to someone who tells me what I think or meant is a complete waste of time.
If you fail to communicate your intent and then your attempts to clarify are wholly unconvincing then why should anyone talk to you?
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday March 10 2017, @01:34AM
If you fail to communicate your intent
I don't think I did. You simply failed to read what was actually there, choosing instead to read into things that simply did not exist.
and then your attempts to clarify are wholly unconvincing
Like I said, go speak to an imaginary friend if you're going to pull that nonsense. You're hardly being any better than a religious nutter who asserts that all atheists actually do believe in god in their hearts. I don't need you to tell me what I think, but if you're going to be that dishonest, I can play that game as well.