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Hypatia Transracialism Controversy

Loss Leader said:
A philosophy paper in a philosophy journal caused this much outrage?

The whole thing - article, response and counter-response - is a ridiculous waste of time.
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How is defending academic freedom a ridiculous waste of time?
 
madurobob said:
Yeah, I get that. And, has been pointed out upthread already, thats a gross overreach of the concept. Ive not yet read the original story, but the reactions to it seem a bit over the top, falling over themselves to be more offended than the rest to show how caring and open minded they are.


Caitlyn Jenner did. She sure did. But, she did it when she was Bruce. ;)
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And now unbruced and unbowed!!!!!
 
There needs to be another word to describe academics that actually do useful work, as opposed to the majority that comprises up-themselves pinko inadequates who can barely tie their own shoelaces and spend their time trying to justify their existence with obscure meaningless publications and indulging in incessant bitching in order to bolster their leftist credentials.
 
baron said:
There needs to be another word to describe academics that actually do useful work, as opposed to the majority that comprises up-themselves pinko inadequates who can barely tie their own shoelaces and spend their time trying to justify their existence with obscure meaningless publications and indulging in incessant bitching in order to bolster their leftist credentials.
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:confused: I got the rest of your post, but I don't know what the highlighted part means.
 
Emily's Cat said:
Thank you :D

That "up-themselves" was really throwing me off. I think I've heard a similarly intentioned "full of themselves".
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That's the polite version that doesn't include implicit reference to the arse.
 
I'm starting to realize this is just the eb and flow of history.

Conservative religious values held power for so long that questioning them became taboo. Now that liberal secular values have gained power we are doing the same thing.

I can only hope that eventually we realize it isn't the values that are the problem, but one side of a political spectrum having a disproportionate amount of power.

And this way, we will never really progress, one group will simply be **** upon, rally, gain power then **** upon the next group. An easy way to do this is to stop doing the garbage you hate the other side doing. But no one really wants to do that. They want to have their moment to stick it to those who have been wronging them.
 
sadhatter said:
I'm starting to realize this is just the eb and flow of history.

Conservative religious values held power for so long that questioning them became taboo. Now that liberal secular values have gained power we are doing the same thing.

I can only hope that eventually we realize it isn't the values that are the problem, but one side of a political spectrum having a disproportionate amount of power.

And this way, we will never really progress, one group will simply be **** upon, rally, gain power then **** upon the next group. An easy way to do this is to stop doing the garbage you hate the other side doing. But no one really wants to do that. They want to have their moment to stick it to those who have been wronging them.
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Look, this whole thing bothers me. The article was a legitimate attempt to discuss an idea. I get that people don't agree, but the silencing and whatnot is just sad.

That being said, come on. Disproportionate amount of power? In what examination of the United States and World, in general, can you arrive at a conclusion that left-leaning college professor have anything resembling power?

Maybe they can piss and moan and get an article removed from a journal, but beyond that, they are impotent. And comparing them to 4 millennia, at least, of theocratic dominance is just weird. When Milo Metropolis gets burned at the stake, maybe we can talk.

With you on this being stupid and that we need to defend a broader understanding of academic freedom, but let's try and maintain some perspective. Trump and the Evangelicals pushing "religious freedom" are, right now, a far bigger threat to actual free speech and free association.
 
baron said:
There needs to be another word to describe academics that actually do useful work, as opposed to the majority that comprises up-themselves pinko inadequates who can barely tie their own shoelaces and spend their time trying to justify their existence with obscure meaningless publications and indulging in incessant bitching in order to bolster their leftist credentials.
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I'm curious what your standards of usefulness are. Is all of philosophy useless?
 
Travis said:
1) I don't understand why people get upset over transracialism. It doesn't harm anyone so...have at it.
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Well beyond benefits such as the examples given in the thread it's a problem because of the victimhood based culture that it seems these people live in. Effectively transracialism is a "more privileged" person stealing victim points by claiming to be of a "less privileged" group.

William Parcher said:
The better descriptive term would be offensive, rather than violent.
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But that's old timey thinking. Violence now includes things like writing things that question accepted norms. Or just saying something that someone else finds "offensive". It's just like the old adage: sticks and stones may break my bones and words can do the same.

TraneWreck said:
That being said, come on. Disproportionate amount of power? In what examination of the United States and World, in general, can you arrive at a conclusion that left-leaning college professor have anything resembling power?
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I think it's a comment about how academia is very left leaning which means that the next generation of tertiary students will be taught from that worldview.
 
Wildy said:
I think it's a comment about how academia is very left leaning which means that the next generation of tertiary students will be taught from that worldview.
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The word "power" is used.

I would say a bigger danger to people's education are the savage cuts to budgets around the country. Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas....all dramatically slashed funding for higher ed. That will impact who gets to attend Universities and what those universities are able to do far more than a couple of stupid open letters to a journal 5 people knew about before this flare up.
 
TraneWreck said:
The word "power" is used.
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Substitute "authority".

A teacher doesn't have "power" over students in the sense that they can coerce them into action against their will. But they definitely have authority over them. They control the grades of those students, and at the very least they are recognized as the expert on the subject they are teaching. Thus, if a professor's personal bias and worldview leech into his/her classroom, it will be instilled in the thinking of the students under that teacher. Those students are much more likely to accept the ideology that is twined into the subject matter as an implicit element of the subject, than to be able to extricate the two.

Teachers influence how students think, both about the specific topic of the course as well as about how that topic intersects other aspects of the world. Teachers have some degree of authority and power over the mindset and beliefs of their students.
 
Emily's Cat said:
Substitute "authority".

A teacher doesn't have "power" over students in the sense that they can coerce them into action against their will. But they definitely have authority over them. They control the grades of those students, and at the very least they are recognized as the expert on the subject they are teaching. Thus, if a professor's personal bias and worldview leech into his/her classroom, it will be instilled in the thinking of the students under that teacher. Those students are much more likely to accept the ideology that is twined into the subject matter as an implicit element of the subject, than to be able to extricate the two.

Teachers influence how students think, both about the specific topic of the course as well as about how that topic intersects other aspects of the world. Teachers have some degree of authority and power over the mindset and beliefs of their students.
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Sure, that wasn't my point. I recognize the authority teachers do have. The point I made is how impotent that power is on a societal level.

Now, it's totally fair if I got sadhatter wrong. I read his post and I see a discussion of the "ebb and flow of history" and "one side of the political spectrum having a disproportionate amount of power" and I read that as being about dynamics broader than a classroom.

If all sad meant was within the context of a university, then I would partially change my claim. I would still argue that even within universities, the group actually holding the power are the conservative state governments attacking higher ed everywhere you look.

But yes, within an individual classroom, a doofy prof can cause problems. Or they can get your journal article revoked. In the ebb and flow of history, that doesn't strike as Khan levels of authority.
 
TraneWreck said:
Sure, that wasn't my point. I recognize the authority teachers do have. The point I made is how impotent that power is on a societal level.

Now, it's totally fair if I got sadhatter wrong. I read his post and I see a discussion of the "ebb and flow of history" and "one side of the political spectrum having a disproportionate amount of power" and I read that as being about dynamics broader than a classroom.

If all sad meant was within the context of a university, then I would partially change my claim. I would still argue that even within universities, the group actually holding the power are the conservative state governments attacking higher ed everywhere you look.

But yes, within an individual classroom, a doofy prof can cause problems. Or they can get your journal article revoked. In the ebb and flow of history, that doesn't strike as Khan levels of authority.
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Our modern society has progressed economically, socially, technologically and yes, philosophically, due to universities that promoted rational thought, robust debate, free inquiry, the skewering of sacred cows... this appears to be increasingly not the case in current day academia. To what extent will our civilization revert to a pre-rational, anti-free speech, pro-emotion tribal/religious type society which maintains a reasonable standard of living solely due to coasting along on an inheritance* whose achievements it could no longer duplicate?



* By inheritance, I don't mean simply infrastructure, technology and the like but also institutions and practices, such as constitutional rights, separation of powers, independent judiciary etc.
 
Giz said:
Our modern society has progressed economically, socially, technologically and yes, philosophically, due to universities that promoted rational thought, robust debate, free inquiry, the skewering of sacred cows... this appears to be increasingly not the case in current day academia. To what extent will our civilization revert to a pre-rational, anti-free speech, pro-emotion tribal/religious type society which maintains a reasonable standard of living solely due to coasting along on an inheritance* whose achievements it could no longer duplicate?



* By inheritance, I don't mean simply infrastructure, technology and the like but also institutions and practices, such as constitutional rights, separation of powers, independent judiciary etc.
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Again, my position is not that the reaction to the article was justified. It wasn't. I largely agree with you.

I am simply reminding people that there are much bigger dynamics at play, and while it's certainly valid to point out idiotic behavior wherever it occurs, perspective is important.

State legislatures are far more threatening to those things you mention than a handful of doofy professors behaving unprofessionally. It's a minority of a subset - people who have extreme beliefs and also lack the ability to prioritize teaching and sharing ideas over imposing their dogma.
 
TraneWreck said:
Again, my position is not that the reaction to the article was justified. It wasn't. I largely agree with you.

I am simply reminding people that there are much bigger dynamics at play, and while it's certainly valid to point out idiotic behavior wherever it occurs, perspective is important.

State legislatures are far more threatening to those things you mention than a handful of doofy professors behaving unprofessionally. It's a minority of a subset - people who have extreme beliefs and also lack the ability to prioritize teaching and sharing ideas over imposing their dogma.
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I'm not sure I would agree with this. It may be true that the immediate threat is from legislation... but I think that the larger, more lasting, more impactful threat is from the way that an entire generation's way of thinking and worldview is being formed by their educators.

Legislation is definitely a threat. But it's not exactly a secret that universities in general tend to lean more left than right, and that teachers at universities tend to be more liberal than conservative. It's not a secret that the left-leaning influence of those teachers has shaped the mindset of many students, producing a larger proportion of left-leaning younger people.

If the left-leaning teachers are leaning over a cliff... they're going to take their students with them. The effect of this sort of influence has much broader impact than legislation does. Legislation now has immediate effects, but can be countered by vote and action.

In this case, we have academics who are treating a philosophical article as if it constitutes both violence and actual harm - despite the fact that said article wasn't even inciting nor was it intended to be offensive. These are people who are teaching young minds that words = violence, and that being offended by something (no matter how inconsequential) gives one license to censor and silence another person!

I see a much larger, more far-reaching and long-term danger in that than I do in some limited legislation that can be challenged and fought through the exercise of free speech and due process.
 
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TraneWreck said:
Again, my position is not that the reaction to the article was justified. It wasn't. I largely agree with you.

I am simply reminding people that there are much bigger dynamics at play, and while it's certainly valid to point out idiotic behavior wherever it occurs, perspective is important.

State legislatures are far more threatening to those things you mention than a handful of doofy professors behaving unprofessionally. It's a minority of a subset - people who have extreme beliefs and also lack the ability to prioritize teaching and sharing ideas over imposing their dogma.
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Given a constant flow of new graduates grounded in enlightenment thinking, then offensive state legislatures pose a temporary threat that can be corrected. If the supply of 'good' graduates dries up, state legislatures will be only one of many endemic problems facing society.
 
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