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Open letter denouncing the "restriction of debate".

I know Sam Harris as a debater in favour of atheism, but am surprised to see him mentioned in this kind of light.

Is there a handy example/explanation of why he merits this kind of implicit disapproval?

I've never heard of any of them, but a quick Google finds this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Harris

'Glenn Greenwald has claimed that "[Harris] and others like him spout and promote Islamophobia under the guise of rational atheism." Greenwald claimed that Harris' Islamophobia is revealed by his statements such as: "the people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists", and "[t]he only future devout Muslims can envisage — as Muslims — is one in which all infidels have been converted to Islam, politically subjugated, or killed."[60]

Harris has criticized the way the term Islamophobia is commonly used.[61] "My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences, but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people",[62] he wrote following a disagreement with Ben Affleck in October 2014 on the show Real Time with Bill Maher. Affleck had described Harris' views on Muslims as "gross" and "racist", and his statement that "Islam is the Mother lode of bad ideas" as an "ugly thing to say."[63][64]'
 
I’ve now finished watching Vuk’s YouTube links and I definitely call ‘bullshit’ here. Revisionist bullshit at that. The whole thing is an entirely one-sided post-rationalisation cut and edited to portray the white university establishment as ‘victims’ and offering zero background, context, platform or opportunity for reflection to the minority students who clearly felt so uneasy that the whole thing kicked off in the first place. If you really want to discuss ‘cancel culture’ start by explaining why no black student voices at all were allowed to reflect and discuss these events? All that was on display here were the wounded egos of now sacked staff. There was even some emotional music cued-up behind their bleating!

The “documentary” maker, Mike Nayna, has form too. He was involved in the ‘Sokal Squared’ hoax (Wikipedia) which attempted to belittle and dismiss certain civil rights causes effectively by trolling science itself. That featured a certain James A Lindsey who’s name cropped up here recently. I can’t recall the exact context, but I certainly remember feeling the linked content was so whiffy I had to google the author, hence my learning the name.

tldr; don’t waste an hour and a half of your life on this crap!
 
fundamental error of attribution alert

weisntein just before ground zero: highly-regarded, lefty professor for almost 2 decades.

he is then is terrorized for taking a moral anti-racism position that idiot students call racist, forced to uproot with wife (who was prof at same college).

in the aftermath, he has a few conversations with libertarian grifters -- i actually saw some of that and he ALWAYS maintained his leftist integrity. hangs out with ben shapiro? ffs! you've just "proven" the most absurd cancel culture hypothesis.

yet the cause must be that he was a secret racist deep down and nothing to do with upheaval of his life????

fundamental error of attribution

matthew, i know you are way smarter than that.

bret weinstein is a more decent person than anyone on this forum.

Obviously I didn't mean meant "hangs out with" in a literal sense, although he is clearly an intellectual ally of those people. I am sure he is not a racist.

I also haven't cancelled him at all and even recently listened to his Unity 2020 idea recently on Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan. He seems a nice enough man but he screams white privilege and has this weird intellectual approach to racism that at the very least is just going to make people angry. He is probably very confused about why his gently spoken, reasonable views make people angry but it seems very obvious to me.

But mostly I don't care at all about Bret Weinstein or Evergreen. In the grand scheme of things, it all just seems staggeringly irrelevant and inconsequential.
 
@vuk I watched it. On balance, I agree with Tony L. It's a clearly partial account of what happened and has no more claim to be definitive than the HuffPo article you were so quick to dismiss. My overall impression is that this is a highly unconventional college that tried to do something different about racism. Some people dug their heels in and it got out of hand. I don't think it's possible to draw broad conclusions about free speech, threats to Western civilization, etc. on this basis. It would be interesting to know how the college is getting on now.

Anyway, I jotted down some thoughts while I was watching so here they are in raw form...

Part 1:
Weinstein comments how most peope at the Canoe Meeting were swept along on a wave of shared delusion. Only he, and a few other brave free-thinkers were immune. Sounds arrogant. How does he know this?

Part 2:
"Asking a black student for evidence of claims of racism is itself racist". Ambiguous - there is some force in this if it means scepticism and doubt about claims of racism should not be one's first reaction. Racism can be subtle, yet pervasive and it can be hard to pinpoint (any single incident might sound insignificant and easily dismissed - it's the accretion of multiple small incidents that does the damage, but this is hard to communicate).

The idea that there should be no place for Weinstein to defend himself against charges of racism - I disagree with this.

The list of what student protestors want looks quite reasonable (note that only six students wanted specific individuals removed).

Would be good to see some of the texts mentioned. For example, here's the equity plan that started this: https://evergreen.edu/sites/default/files/equity/documents/FINAL 2016-17 Strategic Equity Plan -- FOR CAMPUS-1.pdf, Where is Weinstein's email? What, specifically, did he object to?

I'm not a post-modernist. I'm a scientific realist, but other interpretations of science are available (e.g. the interpretation of quantum mechanics has been dominated by non-realism - "shut up and calculate"). This addresses @Tony L's point about the Sokal hoax and its spin-offs. It's not the knock-down argument against cultural studies it's usually presented as - all academic journals rely on good faith from authors; if a physicist were determined to get some bogus science past an editor I'm sure he or she could, and I'm equally sure that physics journals publish a fair amount of relatively low-grade work.

Key question about halfway through part 2 - should Weinstein be sanctioned (even dismissed) for not buying in to the equity plan in its entirety? Tough. If his refusal to buy in is an expression of underlying racist attitudes that can be independently evidenced, then yes, of course. Otherwise, we're in the realm of what organisations do about people who don't follow their rules, which is more fluid.

Part 3:
The protestors take the retirement cake ("it's full-on Lord of the Flies")! No comment.

Weinstein refers to "virtue-signalling". Now there's a tell.

Monologue to camera around 11:00. Maybe the first time a black student is presented speaking calmly. Mixed feeling - I agree with stuff about needing to be heard but not sure about his insistence that the college is there to serve the students (influence of neoliberal ideas on education is evident). Eloquent and heartfelt speech though.

Weinstein's closing statement is self-aggrandising. It turns a local disagreement about diversity that escalated rather dramatically into a fundamental threat to civilization.
 
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@vukit's a clearly partial account of what happened

given that weinstein himself is not only subject, but also used by the director to lead the narrative, it is definitely a partial account but that's not hidden in any way. what is totally impartial is the all the recorded video, which i have been stressing all along. sure, you could argue about editing, but we are "treated" to very long stretches and a cigar is a cigar. it boggles my mind that anyone can watch that and not be outraged by the disgusting abusive behaviour on display, not to mention the parody-level, often illiterate, woke jargon.


The idea that there should be no place for Weinstein to defend himself against charges of racism - I disagree with this.

that, on it's own, should be more than enough to condemn all involved.


The protestors take the retirement cake ("it's full-on Lord of the Flies"! No comment.

...but you've actually made a massive comment, if i understand correctly (and i have read the book).


Weinstein's closing statement is self-aggrandising. It turns a local disagreement about diversity that escalated rather dramatically into a fundamental threat to civilization.

it's an odd inversion to say this mild-mannered academic is self-aggrandizing and, in the same sentence, depict a vindictive mob shouting off-the-scale hyperbole about racism that would have one believe students were being lynched as having a "local disagreement". i thought you said lord of the flies?


on a personal note...
judging by the "likes" (which i am not really a fan of, btw) on the taibbi post and a few private messages, i'm going to guess there are people here who agree with me but are afraid to say anything -- and rightly so! my ongoing participation is admittedly pathological. there are still a few people left here i have known for 2 decades, some that i visited on a trip to the UK in 2001. that's basically the reason i stick around, not because i enjoy the ongoing abuse and being an ideological outcast.
 
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Borrowed from a fellow Doctoral student:

'There is a good book on this topic called 'Conversable Worlds', written by Jon Mee. It illustrates how in the 18th century there were two main paradigms of conversation.

On the one hand, to Addison and Steele, conversation served to define circles of equals who, through their polite conversations, could constantly re-confirm among themselves certain sets of values perceived as morally acceptable, excluding otherness; politeness became effectively the means to establish a 'safe zone', where difference is suppressed.

On the other hand, to Isaac Watts & the culture of Rational Dissent, this is hypocritical, since it sacrifices honesty and truthfulness to achieve a false state of agreeableness. Conversation is instead meaningful when it implies the endeavour of elaborating something new out of the collision of difference- since it is when 'new Thoughts are strangely struck out' that 'the Seeds of Truth sparkle and blaze'. According to this model, conversation's purpose is not conservative, but creative: not to engender bubbles of like-minded individuals that repeat the same words and lines as if from a script written by the representatives of cultural authority, but to produce and improve our knowledge and understanding of the world. But this latter model requires a serious willingness to listen and to be open to others which scares us, because otherness is a threat to fragile identities.'
 
Borrowed from a fellow Doctoral student:

'There is a good book on this topic called 'Conversable Worlds', written by Jon Mee. It illustrates how in the 18th century there were two main paradigms of conversation.

On the one hand, to Addison and Steele, conversation served to define circles of equals who, through their polite conversations, could constantly re-confirm among themselves certain sets of values perceived as morally acceptable, excluding otherness; politeness became effectively the means to establish a 'safe zone', where difference is suppressed.

On the other hand, to Isaac Watts & the culture of Rational Dissent, this is hypocritical, since it sacrifices honesty and truthfulness to achieve a false state of agreeableness. Conversation is instead meaningful when it implies the endeavour of elaborating something new out of the collision of difference- since it is when 'new Thoughts are strangely struck out' that 'the Seeds of Truth sparkle and blaze'. According to this model, conversation's purpose is not conservative, but creative: not to engender bubbles of like-minded individuals that repeat the same words and lines as if from a script written by the representatives of cultural authority, but to produce and improve our knowledge and understanding of the world. But this latter model requires a serious willingness to listen and to be open to others which scares us, because otherness is a threat to fragile identities.'
Not so different from the conflict in a forum where those that believe it should be a mutually affirming lovefest denounce any dissenting voice as a troll and seek to have them cancelled.
 
PFM is a tightly moderated, homogeneous, middle class, genteel corner of the internet. The idea that people feel intimidated into silence here is odd. Are such people scared of their local librarian?
 
given that weinstein himself is not only subject, but also used by the director to lead the narrative, it is definitely a partial account but that's not hidden in any way. what is totally impartial is the all the recorded video, which i have been stressing all along. sure, you could argue about editing, but we are "treated" to very long stretches and a cigar is a cigar. it boggles my mind that anyone can watch that and not be outraged by the disgusting abusive behaviour on display, not to mention the parody-level, often illiterate, woke jargon.

that, on it's own, should be more than enough to condemn all involved.

...but you've actually made a massive comment, if i understand correctly (and i have read the book).

it's an odd inversion to say this mild-mannered academic is self-aggrandizing and, in the same sentence, depict a vindictive mob shouting off-the-scale hyperbole about racism that would have one believe students were being lynched as having a "local disagreement". i thought you said lord of the flies?

on a personal note...
judging by the "likes" (which i am not really a fan of, btw) on the taibbi post and a few private messages, i'm going to guess there are people here who agree with me but are afraid to say anything -- and rightly so! my ongoing participation is admittedly pathological. there are still a few people left here i have known for 2 decades, some that i visited on a trip to the UK in 2001. that's basically the reason i stick around, not because i enjoy the ongoing abuse and being an ideological outcast.
Vuk, I won't reply in detail* but a few points:

1. The fact that this is one side of the story matters. The doco makes no attempt to present the other side of the story and nearly always presents the students as an angry mob. The one exception is the rather thoughtful black student in part 3.

2. More seriously, the doco makes no attempt to explain in detail what was at stake. What was the background to the equity plan? What aspects of it did Weinstein object to? And how did he express that disagreement? Several emails are mentioned but we're never informed of their content and tone. It's frustrating to watch a 1.5 hour documentary and emerge with little clue of what this episode was all about.

3. For these, and other reasons, I'm not willing to dismiss the students as talking "illiterate, woke jargon", even if I would not express myself that way. If nothing else, they are expressing something about racism in the USA that has become ever more obvious during the Trump presidency. And maybe there were specific issues at this college that brought things to boiling point - because the doco makes no attempt to explain the context, it's impossible to say.

4. I suspect this is a generational thing. I've never been a shouty anarchist type and I'm certainly not that way inclined now I'm in my 50s, but some people are and I don't instinctively condemn them for it. As far as I can tell the students were loud, rude and verbally aggressive some of the time (as you suggest, who knows how this was edited) but I didn't see any sign of physical violence or even damage to property (apart from grafitti). Like matthewr said, students are gonna student.

5. Yes, Weinstein comes across as mild-mannered and reasonable. But, if you really feel someone is complicit in systematic oppression that reasonableness can make you feel completely hopeless - how do you ever get someone who is essentially comfortable with the status quo to work with you to change it? This hopelessness can easily turn to anger. This is the dynamic I observed on the forum I mentioned but without the anger (the black members became invisible again).

6. I'm genuinely curious about how the college is now. Have things returned to normal and are they just getting on with implementing the equity plan, or what? If they are, it suggests there was something unique about the dynamic with Weinstein and we can't draw general conclusions about the students being "woke snowflakes" or whatever.

I guess the main difference between me and you is that I'm not willing to dismiss the voices of these students. I want to dig deeper into what went on and why but the documentary offers no explanation.

Anyway, stick around, the regular abuse must be a drag, but the forum would be a duller place if you left.

*Damn! I replied in detail.
 
It made no attempt whatsoever at defining background context. It is so obvious there is a whole lot more to this than what this preposterous safe white academic elite wishes to select, edit and revise long after the fact. I’m infinitely more interested in what got the students to that point of combustion and rage in the first place, and for that we need to know what occurred in preceding months and years. No one flips-out to that extent without some real underlying reasons. The Huffington Post article is infinitely more use as it does at least place the incident into a wider local context of rising race intolerance and alt-right white supremacy. I’m honestly annoyed I wasted so much time on the “documentary” as it was typical low-grade YouTube echo-chamber shite with zero interest in actual journalism or investigation. Basically just a platform for a sacked lecturer to rewrite history in his own self-image. Interesting subject though, if for no other reason than the way the incident has been weaponised by people with quite ugly illiberal agendas.

PS I’m very much minded of Drood’s post upthread citing a forum experience (elsewhere) where a load of people ‘whitesplained’ racism to such a tedious extent those who were impacted actually left. I genuinely want to hear the student perspective. To be honest I don’t give a shite about Weinstein, I’m sure he’ll get endless jobs sitting next to Jordan Peterson on ‘topical’ chat shows etc or whatever. I want to know whether the folk who were clearly so angry and upset are ok now? I want to know what tipped them to that point and whether anything has changed for the better since?
 
@droodzilla

just quickly ;-)

in the year that followed the incident, i believe there was a ~30% drop in enrollment, but i don't know what the current situation is.

i am still genuinely struggling to see how something so obviously outrageous for me, seems acceptable to you. even though i am bit of loud and direct person myself, i absolutely detest violent confrontations,. i know that this was exclusively verbal abuse (which is a type of violence), but IMO, there is always a sense of implied physical threat. although i can certainly understand an uncontrolled, spontaneous reaction to some truly racist act, what happened here is absurdly disproportionate. it's like going into an hour long tirade against your partner because he/she spilled a bit of coffee on the counter.

i also get the impression that some of the answers/explanations you are searching for and feel were over looked by the director actually don't exist. it's like grasping for a rational account of what's going on behind the scenes of a hostile, rage-filled twitter pile-on. there really is no background. that's part of the problem.

let me also throw a crazy idea out there, inspired by matthew's characterization of the pfm demographic. this is just a feeling, but i am getting the sense (given all the race talk of the past several weeks) that some live in a social world so homogeneous and white, that they hesitate to say or infer very much about people of colour, imagining some special sensibilities they can't possible have access to. my life is nothing like that. i just made a quick list of the 10 people closest to me and only one is a white anglo. there is no tippy-toeing with me and i treat everyone the same way. just throwing that out there, fwiw. i may be totally off base.

finally, the odd thing about weinstein is he's so morally "proper", i would be terrified of saying the wrong thing in front of him and getting cancelled. that's partly why the affair at evergreen is totally kafka-esque for me. weinstein should be leading the woke brigade.
 
i am still genuinely struggling to see how something so obviously outrageous for me, seems acceptable to you. even though i am bit of loud and direct person myself, i absolutely detest violent confrontations,. i know that this was exclusively verbal abuse (which is a type of violence), but IMO, there is always a sense of implied physical threat. although i can certainly understand an uncontrolled, spontaneous reaction to some truly racist act, what happened here is absurdly disproportionate. it's like going into an hour long tirade against your partner because he/she spilled a bit of coffee on the counter.

Have you ever at any point in your life seen any person or group of people turn to such anguish and rage instantly without any provocation? Likely not. I know I never have, though I have certainly seen that sort of incident *after* provocation. As such should you perhaps not have the basic intellect to grasp the video report is incomplete? That it has clearly been cut and shut to suit one particular agenda? That the underlying causes likely built up for months or years were deliberately omitted as they did not suit the clearly partisan purpose of the film? Really this is basic media studies stuff. Ask yourself why were all black student voices (bar one in pt III which looked like it had been grabbed from YouTube or wherever without context) excluded from this reflection and analysis? Why were we denied hearing their account?

PS You “I have black friends so can’t be a racist” comments really are utterly pathetic, as is your projection as to who the rest of us are. You really don’t have the slightest clue.
 
Have you ever at any point in your life seen any person or group of people turn to such anguish and rage instantly without any provocation? Likely not. I know I never have, though I have certainly seen that sort of incident *after* provocation.
Do they not have sportsball where you come from?
 
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To be honest I don’t give a shite about Weinstein, I’m sure he’ll get endless jobs sitting next to Jordan Peterson on ‘topical’ chat shows etc or whatever.

wow, you virtue-signal likes there's no tomorrow, then launch into a nasty, empathy-free attack. as for peterson, i keep pointing out that you are very much like him in terms of your economic and political beliefs. someone else noticed that recently too:

So let me see if I am following this correctly: Vuk is putting forward an intersectionality argument and Tony is, er, Jordan Peterson? :)
https://pinkfishmedia.net/forum/threads/trump-part-19.238724/page-79#post-4030102


I want to know whether the folk who were clearly so angry and upset are ok now?

awwww, how kind and compassionate.


I want to know what tipped them to that point and whether anything has changed for the better since?

they have largely-vague existential misery, like all of us, perhaps a bit more, and then something happened that allowed them to vent their unfocused anger at an actual target, with lots of bad philosophy (a lot of it probably from evergreen) to back it all up. if you really think the most hippy, touchy-feely, wokester college in the universe had a genuine racial problem that was causing people pain, what f-ing kind of utopia is your normal?
 
Do they not have sportsball where you come from?

That for me is a blind-spot. I have never had the slightest interest in sport! I don’t understand the appeal or the ugly tribalism that accompanies it, though yes, good point. I have certainly seen very real (multiple ambulance-grade) football violence as I used to live right in the heart of a city centre and it occurred beneath my window, though that is also fuelled by alcohol.
 
PS You “I have black friends so can’t be a racist” comments really are utterly pathetic,

is that what i was saying or is that your projection? you keep insinuating that i am racist -- why is that? is that OK? is it kind?


as is your projection as to who the rest of us are. You really don’t have the slightest clue.

as i confessed, i don't really know, was just throwing out the idea.
 
is that what i was saying or is that your projection? you keep insinuating that i am racist -- why is that?

I have no idea if you are or not, in fairness very likely not, despite you often dismissing civil rights issues etc as a trivial ‘identity politics’ or whatever. I do however know you hold some remarkably whiffy views towards LGBT folk and their rights and liberties. You have made that much abundantly clear.

PS If you bring dubious illiberal views here I will rip them to bits. Every time. I will not host anything I view as bigoted. This is all covered in the site AUP. Live with it or go. I don’t really care. No other choice on the table.
 


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