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The latest manifestation of the conservative targetting of academia is the Professor Watchlist, created by the "activist organization" Turning Point USA, founded by rising star Charlie Kirk. It's stated purpose is to "watch" professors "who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom"
Of course, this is not new. David Horowitz has written a book called The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America . HeterodoxAcademy.org has rational articles discussing the liberal slant to modern college campuses. Nicholas Kristoff writes an interesting piece on the same topic. However, with the election of President Trump, the stakes may have been raised. A professor in California has gone incognitio after criticizing Trump in the classroom and receiving death threats.
But more important is how the attempt to blacklist liberal academics has actually backfired. George Yancy [not the George Yancey from the Kristoff piece above] published a response, "I Am a Dangerous Professor" in the New York Times, and since then it seems to have become de rigueur for all academics to get their name on the Professor Watchlist in order to cement their tenure. An entire hashtag on Twitter has taken form: #trollprofwatchlist! People have taken to mocking the list by suggesting candidates such as Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi, and Jesus, not to mention Socrates, who obviously belongs.
Charlie Kirk may not be dangerous, but he did start this list. I am watching him now.
[Editor note - This story was substantially rewritten for balance. As always, the original submission is available at the link below.]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jdavidb on Tuesday December 20 2016, @02:21PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @02:33PM
> Nowadays the new word for it is "fake news" which means "I disagree with the conclusions this writing wants me to hold."
Well, that's the reactionary definition.
The progressive definition of "fake news" is factual incorrectness.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @03:20PM
The progressive definition of "fake news" is factual incorrectness.
Correct. We've always been at war with Eastasia.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:00PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Tuesday December 20 2016, @03:46PM
Well, that's the reactionary definition. The progressive definition of "fake news" is factual incorrectness.
I see people of all sides declaring stuff fake simply because they disagree with the author. I see a bunch of people who never went through all the "fact or opinion?" lessons I had to go through in school.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jdavidb on Tuesday December 20 2016, @03:50PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @03:56PM
> And then right after I posted this I had an email from someone saying that a particular term is "fake news." How can a term be fake news?
Convenient that you neglected to mention the "term" or the context.
Seems to me you absolutely know your outrage is based on bullshit but can't stand the light of critical scrutiny.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday December 20 2016, @07:53PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 20 2016, @10:46PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @01:56AM
He's right. You are wrong. And that's because, despite your lies, he's talking about the context around the term "election hack." If that phrase had zero contextual meaning then you'd be right. But it is loaded with meaning that refers to the current election and what the russians did with respect to it.
So my question to you - where you deliberately lying and you really knew all this deep inside, or was your post really a confession of your own ignorance?
I'd like it to be the former because that would be proof you actually understood what people were talking about and actively chose to lie in order to persuade. It a shitty way to persuade but at least it means you are operating on the same cognitive level as most of us. But if it is the later, it means you believe your own bullshit and really aren't fit to comment at all. Which would mean that arguing with you is fruitless since these are topics that you will never really grasp. Like square trying to convince the other flatlanders there really are more than 2 dimensions.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Wednesday December 21 2016, @05:38PM
No, and I haven't stopped beating my wife, either.
I literally don't care if the election was "hacked."
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @04:09PM
Well, if I saw an article which made prolific use of the terms "thetan" and "Xenu" in a positive / non-ironic context then I could be pretty sure it was an article about how wonderful Scientology is, and so I probably wouldn't want to waste any more of my time on it.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 21 2016, @02:20PM
That's a conceit. There are lots of facts in the world, and cherry-picking those which support your narrative is not the acme of truthfulness, either. The major complaint of those levelling the very double-edged charge of "fake news" is that they cherry-picked other facts that supported a different narrative. They're mad that their scheme to rig the outcome didn't work.
Trying to back-pedal now, to try to redefine what they meant by "fake news" as something legitimate, is transparent and unsupported by research or experience. Humans have always traded in rumor, and claiming that rumor altered the outcome is risible. Reading wild rumors in email chains from my looney tunes relatives did not sway my vote in the 90's, and they have equally negligible impact on my when they're delivered via social media.
It's also profoundly patronizing for the champions of the "fake news" to tsk-tsk, tutt-tutt about the poor little dears, the Independents, who were led astray by said rumors. They are not children, they're not stupid, and they don't need some self-interested sack of pricks to tell them how to think.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday December 20 2016, @04:03PM
No, fake news was(and continues to be) absolutely a thing. There's no need to inject opinion into it.
Idiots sharing and resharing their outrage about a protestor being paid to protest Donald Trump that was provably made up just for clicks that massively outperformed real news. Especially on the right wing. The only two groups I see whining about how the backlash against fake news are people who are stuck deep in a false-reality driven bubble and positively insane libertarians who value the right to deceive and see corporations bowing to public pressure as "economic terrorism"
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday December 20 2016, @04:52PM
Your precious "real news" stands revealed as utterly untrustworthy. Your precious legacy media have attained single digit trust numbers, comparable to Congress itself. And still you plow on ahead, oblivious to events in the real world, certain of the rightness of your Holy cause and sure that if you and your allies only yell "RACIST!" and "NAZI!" and such a bit louder you can still win.
May you languish in the wilderness for decades like the Conservatives did. They (until recently I counted myself in their number... sadly) too knew they were right and couldn't understand how they kept losing, how the country refused to see the wisdom in their policy prescriptions, how they, the Party of Abraham Lincoln, were now the racists.
I woke up, realized much of what Conservatives accept as absolute Truth is in error and, along with the whole Alt-Right, am embarked on a new journey to figure out what really is true and what is not. But just discarding a few of the stale dogmas of Conservatism inspired the country to not only give Trump a chance, they have given Republicans top to bottom a chance to prove themselves. Which of your most cherished ideas are you yet ready to question? The answer to that question, answered millions of times across the left will decide now long you stay on the outside howling in rage.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday December 20 2016, @05:02PM
And the exact unhinged response I was expecting. Lookit that.
You're insane. The fact that the media in general doesn't do a great job doesn't excuse you running off to fringe sites that utterly invent stories. I really do appreciate your motivation for intentionally misinforming yourself, but it doesn't make your worldview any less predicated on outright fabrications. You're full of shit, and the only excuse that your conspiracy-added mind can come up with is "You were unfair calling literal nazis nazis, WAAAH".
Fuck you Jmorris. You are absolutely part of what's destroying the country.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @05:51PM
Found a jew rat.
How many Shekels do you get for your demonic work?
Its either that, or you're too young and naïve to know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @05:48PM
OK. You go ahead and take that long journey. Just so long as it takes you somewhere that you can't post here.
And my prediction is that buyer's remorse will set in within a year. Remember, you read it here first on SN!
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 21 2016, @02:29PM
jmorris is a guard rail on the bounds of SN discussion. If he goes, then people could sail right over the edge of the cliff.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday December 20 2016, @07:54PM
No, fake news was(and continues to be) absolutely a thing.
I can't see where I said otherwise. That doesn't change the fact there are a lot of people crying "fake news" when they disagree with opinions.
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:41PM
I acknowledge how I was unfair to your post. I've just already been sick of the level of genuine misinformation permeating society for about the past 3ish years.
I started feeling like conspiracy theorists were winning online spaces towards the beginning of 2014, and it's gotten worse and worse, and the bullshit surrounding the presidential election amplified it to an unreasonable and insane degree.
I know we saw the beginning of it it with 9/11 truthers in 2k4-2k5 and birthers in 2008, but the floodgates for just utter nonsense have really flung open and we get pizzagate, paid protestors bullshit stories, anti-semitic conspiracy theories, invented murder-suicides attached to the email thing, hillary sold weapons to ISIS, Pope Francis endorsing Trump, and so many more (I sincerely tried to look for a left-leaning piece of made up bullshit so I could pretend I'm balanced, and I failed. I know there were a couple)
Regardless of whether people shout it unreasonably to maintain resistance to cognitive dissonance, there's something utterly broken going on here, and it's way worse than it has ever been.
(Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday December 20 2016, @08:49PM
ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday December 20 2016, @10:56PM
Correct answer. 100%.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 21 2016, @09:34AM
I sincerely tried to look for a left-leaning piece of made up bullshit so I could pretend I'm balanced, and I failed
That's because you buy into the conspiracies. The Patriarchy. GamerGate. The 23% wage gap. MRAs. Trump. The Pink tax. Untested rape kits.
And of course, the current hot conspiracies: Russian hackers, and fake news.
(Score: 2) by Hawkwind on Wednesday December 21 2016, @11:39PM