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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: 4, Insightful) by Hartree on Thursday April 13 2017, @11:15PM (7 children)
"There is a 0% chance of any right winger whining about free speech having any understanding of what it means. "
You can get that 0% by having such an extreme internal picture of what a "right winger" is that no real human qualifies.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by ikanreed on Friday April 14 2017, @12:37AM (6 children)
Nope, it really is that bad. The USA has no sane right wing. Does not exist. Other places do, but here there's no definition of right-wing that both adequately captures the relevant political movement and isn't defined by being full of shit.
Liberals, leftists, apoliticals, and centrists can be just as bad, but there's only outright defined by their abject rejection of actual reality.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @01:43AM
Yes, the party of Bill Clinton, Anthony Weiner, Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer has the monopoly on not being creepy.
sure thing [pulse.ng]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Friday April 14 2017, @03:04AM (1 child)
Has any political color theme any reality connection anymore? One might suspect most of them has been wrecked with entryism and various groups with the most crazy ideas has been given resources so as to wreck the discussion climate and interpersonal relations.
Right, liberal, left, apoliticals, and centrists do they really mean what people think anymore?
There will always be assholes. But when the whole climate is that of suspicion and distrust. It's not efficient. Kind of like some interests groups want people to not be able to freely discuss and associate....
You can say anything you want but we will screw your economy and character assassinate. That's fake freedom.
Almost like DDR and various totalitarian states.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @05:53AM
Has any political color theme any reality connection anymore?
Yes, yes there are.
However, telling yourself otherwise is a sign of your color being disconnected from reality.
Its that same old pre-fascist bullshit that everybody is equally bad so you are justified in being a moral failure too.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 14 2017, @08:55AM
Sure it does, it's what people inside the US call "left wing".
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday April 14 2017, @11:47AM
Nope, it really is that bad. The USA has no sane right wing. Does not exist. Other places do, but here there's no definition of right-wing that both adequately captures the relevant political movement and isn't defined by being full of shit.
What part of "You can get that 0% by having such an extreme internal picture of what a "right winger" is that no real human qualifies." did you not get? Stop wasting your time with extreme straw men.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday April 14 2017, @04:01PM
No sane right wing? Did you forget about Democrats?