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Cancel culture IRL

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angrysoba said:
What are you not understanding about this? He is not "bringing up a topic for classroom discussion".
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You've literally no way of knowing this to be true. It could be he's being deliberately provocative in order to get a classroom discussion going, trying to discover who is willing to go a bit beyond introductory chem in order to argue against the lab leak hypothesis. It could be he's doing exactly what my Trump-loving uncle is doing on Facebook, that is, signaling political affiliation. We could assume the latter (as you evidently do) but in an academic setting, we ought to err on the side of academic freedom, for the reasons given by FIRE.
 
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angrysoba said:
What are you not understanding about this? He is not "bringing up a topic for classroom discussion".
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Remember back in the early 2000s when there was this huge right wing outrage about professors who were "dangerous" because they were too political and teaching things not relevant to the topic of the class?****

Of course, that all goes out the window when it comes to making right-wing political statements.....

****At the time, I admit that I did that. In my chemistry class, I expressed my disappointment at the discontinuation of one of the comic strips in the campus newspaper.
 
pgwenthold said:
Of course, that all goes out the window when it comes to making right-wing political statements...
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You can make this partisan if you want, but I've argued that both right- and left-wing profs should enjoy the benefits of academic freedom.
 
d4m10n said:
You've literally no way of knowing this to be true. It could be he's being deliberately provocative in order to get a classroom discussion going
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About chemistry? Really? That is what you are going with?

Actually we literally do know this to be true because it was a syllabus for chemistry not social science, and what he wrote was in the classroom safety protocols. This is already established.

You should stop using conspiracy theory techniques (and make no mistake, "cancel culture" is a conspiracy theory). The continual moving of goalposts, pulling fake facts out of thin air, and increasingly twisting yourself into a pretzel has become obvious as you become desperate to avoid backing away from a position that you must by now have realised is completely untenable. How much longer are you going to be proudly wrong?

What this professor did is akin to writing racist slogans on a lecture room whiteboard in a chemistry class, and what you are doing is defending him
as "making provocation statements to provoke discussion" on a subject that has absolutely nothing to do with the subject being taught.
 
d4m10n said:
Once again you are comparing openly pejorative language to a place name. This doesn't make any sense to me.
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Honestly, how can you not see that calling Covid-19 the "Wuhan Flu" is an ethnic slur on the Chinese, every bit as much as calling AIDS the "gay disease" is a slur on homosexuals?

If what you say is true, and you really can't see it, then you are already too far down the rabbit hole and beyond help.
 
So I ask again, why did Syracuse suspend this professor but not the one who made vile comments about 9/11 being an attack on the patriarchy and ( in my view) at least somewhat justified?
 
smartcooky said:
Honestly, how can you not see that calling Covid-19 the "Wuhan Flu" is an ethnic slur on the Chinese, every bit as much as calling AIDS the "gay disease" is a slur on homosexuals?
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Asked and answered upthread. Place names have been paired with outbreaks for decades if not centuries.
 
d4m10n said:
Asked and answered upthread. Place names have been paired with outbreaks for decades if not centuries.
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And black people were enslaved "for decades if not centuries"
And women were not allowed to vote "for decades if not centuries"
And Homosexuals were discriminated against "for decades if not centuries"

If you think that calling coronavirus the "Wuhan Flu" or the "China Virus" is acceptable, then that makes you a racist, every bit as much as if you called a black man the n-word!

Just because something has been Societally normal practice "for decades if not centuries" does not mean it is right, and does not mean it is still acceptable now.

Not that you will bother reading, because I would not expect you to be open to reading something that might upset your worldview, but its here anyway....

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05...bola-hendra-zika/12262472?nw=0&r=HtmlFragment

"According to Dr Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director-general for health security, "the use of names such as 'swine flu' and 'Middle East Respiratory Syndrome' [have] had unintended negative impacts by stigmatising certain communities or economic sectors" and "certain disease names provoke a backlash against members of particular religious or ethnic communities, [and] create unjustified barriers to travel, commerce and trade".​

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/28/us/disease-outbreaks-coronavirus-naming-trnd/index.html

Infectious diseases throughout history have been named for geographic locations where they were thought to have originated: Spanish flu, West Nile virus, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, Zika and Ebola, to name a few.

By that logic, it may seem that there's nothing inherently wrong with referring to the novel coronavirus as the "Wuhan virus" or the "Chinese virus," language which President Donald Trump has used and defended using. Wuhan is, after all, considered the first epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak that has since become a global pandemic.

But the past has shown naming diseases after places can have negative consequences for nations, economies and people.
Here's why scientists and scholars say these naming practices are problematic.

• It can be inaccurate or misleading
• It can stigmatize or harm people
• It goes against guidance from health experts

These headings expanded on in the link​
 
d4m10n said:
Zubieta has published in at least one journal "at the interface of chemistry, biology and medicine." Seems likely to me that he may have academically informed opinions on the open question of whether the novel coronavirus originated in a Wuhan laboratory, presumably as a result of CCP negligence.
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According to this, it was intended as a joke about political correctness.

“My intention was to mock the euphemistic conventions of PC culture rather than the Chinese people or their great heritage and traditions,” Zubieta said. “The actions of the university in placing me under suspension and in practice seemingly supporting the accusations of racism and Sinophobia are deeply disturbing.”
 
smartcooky said:
If you think that calling coronavirus the "Wuhan Flu" or the "China Virus" is acceptable, then that makes you a racist, every bit as much as if you called a black man the n-word!
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You are comparing a linguistic convention which has only been associated with racial denigration in the last year or two to a word which has been used to put African Americans down for generations. This is just off-the-rails and I cannot believe you expect me to take the comparison seriously.

Do you assume the NYT meant to put Han people down when they published on the "Wuhan Coronavirus" only a little while ago? If not, why can't you extend that charity to other people?
 
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smartcooky said:
And black people were enslaved "for decades if not centuries"
And women were not allowed to vote "for decades if not centuries"
And Homosexuals were discriminated against "for decades if not centuries"

If you think that calling coronavirus the "Wuhan Flu" or the "China Virus" is acceptable, then that makes you a racist, every bit as much as if you called a black man the n-word!

Just because something has been Societally normal practice "for decades if not centuries" does not mean it is right, and does not mean it is still acceptable now.
Click to expand...

So as a passing thought... Are you aware that MERS stands for "Middle East Respiratory Syndrome"?
 
Elaedith said:
According to this, it was intended as a joke about political correctness.
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Well it wasn't a good joke, but at least he managed to make his university bureaucracy look ridiculous.

If he'd merely mocked 9/11 victims for upholding kyriarchy then he'd be in the clear. [emoji14]
 
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d4m10n said:
You are comparing a linguistic convention which has only been associated with racial denigration in the last year or two to a word which has been used to put African Americans down for generations. This is just off-the-rails and I cannot believe you expect me to take the comparison seriously.
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Six years actually. If you bothered reading any of information I have provided for you, you would have realised that the WHO guidelines were put in place 2015. Clearly, you ignored it.

d4m10n said:
Do you assume the NYT meant to put Han people down when they published on the "Wuhan Coronavirus" only a little while ago? If not, why can't you extend that charity to other people?
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I make some ignorance among journalists.

I will not make any allowances for university Professors who ought to know better
 
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smartcooky said:
Six years actually. If you bothered reading any of information I have provided for you, I have posted for you, you would have realised that the WHO guidelines were put in place 2015.
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And yet you'll find references to "Wuhan Coronavirus" on the WHO website in 2020. It's almost as if they don't think it's anywhere nearly as bad as racial slurs.
 
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d4m10n said:
Do you assume the NYT meant to put Han people down when they published on the "Wuhan Coronavirus" only a little while ago? If not, why can't you extend that charity to other people?
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Because a lot changed in the first few months of the pandemic. The virus didn't even have an official name when the NY Times was writing about the Wuhan coronavirus, which of course is quite different from "Wuhan flu" or "Chinese Communist Party virus". It should not be surprising to anyone that information can mean the difference between an innocent act and a negligent act, and that new information can arise and be disseminated very quickly. This is just...basic.

I don't extend him any charity because I see no reason to be charitable. He knew what he was doing--mocking an understandable concern about unwittingly stoking xenophobic stigma as "political correctness". Stick to the much stronger argument that he should have been permitted to be an *******--that's the more important principle at stake, anyway.
 
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