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from the I'm-not-touching-this-with-a-ten-foot-pole dept.
The Guardian has a fascinating piece entitled Sexual paranoia on campus – and the professor at the eye of the storm. There is a lot going on in this article/interview and it touches on a lot of different issues in both society and higher-ed in general. Some choice quotes:
But you do end up making strange bedfellows. The people supporting free speech now are the conservatives. It's incomprehensible to me, but it's the so-called liberals on campus, the students who think of themselves as activists, who are becoming increasingly authoritarian. So I'm trying to step carefully. It's not like you want to make certain allies, particularly the men's rights people.
Kipnis's original essay was provoked by an email she received about a year before, informing her that relationships – dating, romantic or sexual – between undergraduates and faculty members at Northwestern were now banned. The same email informed her that relationships between graduates and staff, though not forbidden, were also problematic, and had to be reported to department chairs. "It annoyed me," she says. The language was neutral, but it seemed clear that it was mostly women this code was meant to protect. She thought of all those she knew who are married to former students, or who are the children of such couples, and wondered where this left them. It seemed to her this was part of a process that was transforming the "professoriate" into a sexually suspicious class: "would-be harassers all, sexual predators in waiting".
On a personal note, when I interact with students (which is every day), it's always either with an open office door, or in a public area. So as not to be discriminatory, I do the same for all students, men, women, or others. This sort of culture on campuses does make everyone suspicious of everyone else and it makes it hard to trust others. Students can't trust the instructors because they might "do something", staff can't trust the students because even a false accusation can be career ending, so there's this overall chilling effect that occurs when what should be a collegiate environment turns into an us vs them thing. This is definitely worse in some places than others, but there is an undercurrent of it everywhere. I applaud Laura Kipnis for bringing these issues to the light -- if we're going down this route, it should at least be a conscious community decision rather than bureaucratic policy handed down from University Counsel and risk assessment teams.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Friday April 14 2017, @04:22PM (2 children)
To preface this, I'm left enough to see Bernie Sanders as a moderate. Anyway, when I first heard about Milo and how he was a nazi sympathizer I went to track down exactly what he said -- I spent a couple hours on youtube listening to numerous talks he did, searching for various permutations of "milo" and "nazi", but I didn't find anything shocking. And yes, I did listen to the entire Joe Rogan thing.
I don't agree with the vast majority of Milo's economic positions, but he was funny and he could articulate his position well. Mostly, he struck me as a comedian whose politics are opposed by many more leftward leaning people, including myself, but I didn't find anything demonstrating he was a nazi sympathizer and the pedo thing seemed wildly overblown and taken out of context (although it being some time ago now, I can't recall exactly what led me to this conclusion and all I remember is the conclusion I reached for myself).
I do find it deeply concerning that speech is becoming so highly regulated in modern society and even more concerned that it is ostensibly left-leaning people pushing for such restriction. They seem to forget that when speech is regulated by whoever is in power, you end up with some serious shit -- like McCarthy and Hollywood blacklists. It's like how all through Obama's admin, all the neocon stuff he did (coddling Wall St/banksters, war, drones, NSA, 4th amendment, due process free execution, etc.) never got a real airing. It's like no Democrat ever thought "What would Cheney do with this executive power grab?" And now we have Trump and they're freaking out. In a similar vein, the people on the left advocating restrictions on speech, have forgotten that they may not always be the ones in power, and should be a little more circumspect on restricting speech as a form of future self-protection.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @05:08PM (1 child)
I do find it deeply concerning that speech is becoming so highly regulated in modern society
That is the contrafactual narrative of the right. There is more free speech today than ever before in the history of america.
As broadcasting has democratized, places that had been previously necessary forums for ideas no longer serve that role. When anyone can post a video on youtube or a blog on wordpress and have an audience of millions of people the importance of hosting speakers is no longer so much about maintaining the free flow of ideas as it is about endorsing ideas. There is a transfer of reputation from the institution to the invited speaker (and vice versa) that was not as much of a factor when there weren't any other ways to reach an audience. Its no wonder that people are concerned about the co-opting of that institutional reputation by those who advocate for dehumanization of minorities.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday April 14 2017, @08:39PM
So in other words, any institution should avoid hosting anything controversial. For all the verbosity in your post, your argument boils down to this: "Never host a talk on a controversial topic." What shall we call this? NeoMcarthyism sounds about right but please, weigh in.
Secondly, how do people become adept at defending or articulating a position, if they never face challenges? Institutions of learning should not be places where people are coddled into incompetence.