Revoking one's admission to Harvard is a really rough way to teach the lesson of what you're supposed to and not supposed to say. College is the time to not only learn new ideas, but also to un-learn things that you may have learned in a toxic environment. I can say that I certainly did, and it's only fair that we allow others to fail in a similar way.
I believe that actions like this only further foster the alt-right and do a great disservice to our current political atmosphere. These kids have no positive way to understand their punishment - they have been reprimanded by a power that controls their fate, without warning. The odds that they'll "learn" from their "mistake" is highly unlikely.
Comparing this to fascism is a little heavy, but not out of line.
At the same time, I have a bit of a personal story. When I was in 8th grade, I made a Facebook account, and uploaded a random picture with a random caption involving rape - at the time my friends and I used the word like when you beat someone at a video game... Yeah it was pretty bad. My mom found the picture and responded by screaming at me and basically taking my computer away for a while, and my Facebook deactivated for much longer. I didn't understand at the time why it was such a big deal (maybe more explaining could have happened) but that interaction both makes me cringe every time I think about it and might have been the best thing to happen to me. Maybe getting the acceptences revoked is just the kick in the ass that they need.
Universities used to use the term "in loco parentis": I can see a deferral of admission being a suitable equivalent of screaming and taking the computer away.
You can't tell me this is at all equivalent to calling someone "gay"
Maybe getting the acceptances revoked is just the kick in the ass that they need.
1) Get yelled at by an authority figure, or
2) Have your acceptance rescinded
I guarantee all of them will choose option 1. By the way, you're very lucky to have a parent who cares enough to teach you valuable lesson.
If we set out to send mixed signals about maturation to college students we couldn't have done a better job
> College is the time to not only learn new ideas, but also to un-learn things that you may have learned in a toxic environment.
Despite my counterpoint above, you are of course right. I knew of one very aggressive student at Harvard who went around putting posters up of dead fetuses to protest abortion and was against gay marriage - his family was extremely right wing, and that's what he was brought up to believe. Now he's out of the closet, living in SF, and is one of the most liberal people I know. That story may sound clichéd, but I promise you it's true.
But at the same time, there must be a line drawn somewhere, surely? If I write an extremely offensive admissions essay claiming immigrants are sub-human I shouldn't expect to be admitted.
But at the same time, there must be a line drawn somewhere, surely?
But posting offensive memes on the internet isn't illegal. Saying racist/sexist things isn't illegal. It's certainly something to have a conversation about, but not to totally alter their future.
If I write an extremely offensive admissions essay claiming immigrants are sub-human I shouldn't expect to be admitted.
You imply that media condoning racism, and sexual violence can be justified.
Perhaps "redeem" is a better word choice there.
You imply that sharing memes in a private group is equivalent to a KKK meeting or actual sexual assault.
Bear in mind that this argument is not intended as an argument for "thoughtcrimes" to be made illegal, it is made as an argument for creating and encouraging strict rules against this behaviour in privately-owned spaces. Facebook is not a 'public space', they just choose to give you those rights.
No, it doesn't, and you literally have no ground to make this argument. You're welcome to try linking "research" that supposedly suggests "this something or other" and then I'll be happy to point out how they don't actually make your case, if you wish.
> The only way we are going to remove sexual assault and racism from the world is for every one to understand that these things are never acceptable in any context.
And yet none of these students committed a hate crime or assaulted anyone. It's almost as if thought policing were useless and someone who's evil will do horrible things because they want to and not because "something something bad environment", just like a good person (the overwhelming majority, thankfully) won't do them, no matter the context.
And, guess what, your country has come a long way from the segregation of the 60s without needing to ban jokes. And nothing says this trend won't continue. Of course, the regressive left and the reactionary right are trying their damnedest to put setbacks or even make you walk back, but let's hope they're just noise that will die out eventually.
> Thus, while not equivalent, allowing it to be condoned in private groups is directly contrary to our goals as a society.
No, it isn't. Happiness isn't and shouldn't be mandatory. You're free to call someone out or leave if someone makes a joke you don't like, you don't get to tell them to not make it.
> Bear in mind that this argument is not intended as an argument for "thoughtcrimes" to be made illegal
Yes it is, but your rationalization isn't the worst I've read. Still incorrect, obviously.
If you are a private company, such as an american university, or facebook, you absolutely do get to decide to tell people not to make jokes, and you absolutely do get to make hiring decisions based on bad jokes.
> It's almost as if thought policing were useless
This is not thought policing, this is looking at someone's jokes and attitudes towards People of Colour and women and deciding as a private company if you want a toxic person, someone who thinks that it's alright to joke about sexual harassment, in your private space.
> someone who's evil will do horrible things because they want to and not because "something something bad environment"
There are no evil people, there are only people who have been brought up in an environment where the actions they have taken are acceptable. What, you think people who do evil things are genetically predetermined to do them? It's rubbish. Hundreds of psychopaths have been born and never hurt a fly, it's about upbringing and social rules, rather than some "innate need to do 'bad'".
> And, guess what, your country has come a long way from the segregation of the 60s without needing to ban jokes.
Actually, the country I live in, like most European countries, has hate speech laws. We no longer have quite as bad a problem with racism as the US does.
> And nothing says this trend won't continue.
The 915 surviving and growing white supremacy hate groups, along with the 'alt-right' (The leader of the alt-right has openly written that he wants to exterminate black people), says otherwise. That young people feel that they can support such openly racist and anti-PoC movements, says a lot about the atmosphere today.
> but let's hope they're just noise that will die out eventually.
I'm pretty sure they said the same thing about the National Socialist Party...
> No, it isn't. Happiness isn't and shouldn't be mandatory.
We're not making happiness mandatory, we're making blatantly abusive speech against the law. I mean, it should be covered under the various "harassment" legislation, but shrug apparently not.
Funny, serial killers still exist and will continue existing, even though society has condemned that for a long, long time.
Yes, some people are born with their wires misshapen, just like there're people born deaf. What? Did you think that the brain was, somehow, our only organ that couldn't get messed up since birth?
> What, you think people who do evil things are genetically predetermined to do them? [...] Hundreds of psychopaths have been born
So, are they or are they not born? You're contradicting yourself.
> Actually, the country I live in, like most European countries, has hate speech laws. We no longer have quite as bad a problem with racism as the US does.
Yeah, you keep telling yourself that. A friend of mine (hailing from my latin american country) and the refugee crisis tell me otherwise. If so-called "hate speech" is banned openly, it just happens behind doors, using so-called "coded language".
> The 915 surviving and growing white supremacy hate groups, along with the 'alt-right'.
So do TERFs, the militant branch of BLM, AntiFa, etc. If we're going to judge by fringe groups, they just happen to be more visible every day on both sides. And they don't represent the majority, it's as if they were called "fringe" for a reason.
> I'm pretty sure they said the same thing about the National Socialist Party...
And it did die out. Some people might be itching to call anyone they disagree with "nazis", but they aren't.
> We're not making happiness mandatory, we're making blatantly abusive speech against the law
Funny how you earlier in this very same comment said that you weren't arguing for thought policing. Glad you decided to become honest at the end.
> I mean, it should be covered under the various "harassment" legislation, but shrug apparently not.
Harassment requires a victim. Yanow, someone being harassed.
---
Anyways, you contradicted yourself twice, and one of those times was the very same thing you pretended you weren't arguing for. That's just dishonest argumentation, meaning this discussion is pointless, so I won't engage you further.
Cheers.
As a gay person who has suffered quite a bit of discrimination and bullying from other people and who hails from a different Latin American country I advise you to stop being offended on behalf of other people. Nobody needs this patronizing attitude. It literally helps nobody.
> Comparing this to fascism is a little heavy, but not out of line.
Are these students already not submitting themselves to be judged by Harvard's exceptionally high standards? This isn't some good state school and these aren't students who have earned their place by paying taxes and getting good grades. If Harvard sees this kind of behavior, decides that they made a mistake when choosing these students (they want students who will represent them well for the rest of their life, and character is very much in play during college admissions)... I think it's more than fair to say that these students should lose their place to someone who hasn't so easily proven themselves as a risk to Harvard's brand.
Learning that your actions have consequences and that no one is responsible for facing those consequences but you is more valuable than any other single lesson they'd have learned in college. And they didn't even have to pay tuition to find that one out.
In that light, why not consider the character of the people it decides to bring into its community? And once it has decided to consider character, what justification can their be for limiting themselves to only considering manicured (and sometimes manufactured) personal statements and letters of recommendation rather than available data that might have a chance of being actually revealing?
Would you object to the Catholic Church looking into the social media histories of candidates for the priesthood?
This is an aside, but I don't entirely agree. The tax exemption Harvard receives on its massive endowment is, per undergraduate, worth much more than the direct government subsidy public universities receive per student. UC Berkeley alone enrolls more low income students than the entire Ivy League combined (this is true of several UCs). Harvard also gets a monumental amount of funding directly from the federal government, and while much of this is in the form of research grants, it is allowed to redirect a substantial portion of this to operating costs.
Harvard gets this government favored status (in many ways, far more favored by the government than a "public" university, which has many more obligations) precisely because it is ostensibly acting in the public interest.
Some context for those interested: Berkeley enrolls approximately 30k undergraduates; the Ivy League combined enrolls approximately 60k. The most commonly cited cutoff for "low income students" is recipients of federal Pell grants, which are (roughly speaking) available to US citizen or permanent resident undergraduates with a family AGI of <$50k.
According to https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges/rankings/national-unive... from US News, 34% of Berkeley undergraduates receive Pell Grants. (Berkeley's own website claims 32%.) This is the second-highest of the top 25 national universities, behind only UCLA at 38%. As a result, there are approximately 10k students receiving Pell grants at Berkeley.
According to the same source, the percent of recipients in the Ivy league ranges from 31% at Columbia to 13% at Yale. Overall across the eight schools, it appears to be approximately 18% and slightly shy of 11k students.
From a preliminary examination, it appears that the claim is indeed true for other UC campuses (of which only UCLA is a top 25 university) but not Berkeley as stated. The UC system makes the claim about five campuses other than Berkeley: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/half-new-uc-stud...
The claim may have been true five years ago, as reported here: http://news.berkeley.edu/2012/01/17/freshman-apps/
There are two ways to fix this problem--assuming one thinks it's a problem.
One would be to leverage the myriad benefits we provide to do more to ensure that these organizations are acting in the public interest. That's a pretty tall order though. We'd be looking at a ton of new laws/regulations/bureaucracies to make tens of thousands of determinations. In this particular case, it's not clear to me that Harvard isn't at least not acting against the public interest.
The other way would be to eliminate the tax advantages and let the chips fall where they may. Again, assuming one thinks there is a problem, that seems the preferable solution to me.
But that's a pretty huge penalty. High school kids do stupid shit. There are some people there who lost their admission who probably were very lucky to get into harvard, who don't have 10 other ivy league schools to go to.
And neither is schools denying access for those they deem undesirable. Fifty years ago, if information about a candidate participating in unsavory activities reached the admissions office in some manner and they were able to verify it (or not, it's really up to them whether the rumors themselves are bad enough), they could, and I'm sure did, use that to deny admission to candidates.
> But that's a pretty huge penalty.
That happens all the time. Life isn't fair, and Harvard admissions certainly aren't "fair", by whatever standard you can come up with. They specifically admit candidates on a very diverse set of criteria, which includes things such as the promotion of multiculturalism, because it's believed that exposure to different types of people provides an overall benefit to the student body. It should come as no surprise that if they are willing to admit otherwise lesser scholastically qualified candidates to promote this facet of the Harvard experience, they would be just as willing to reject people on the same grounds. Put simple, grades and SAT scores are not all that matters, and just as a college may reject you after admission has been granted if your last semester of High School has horrible grades, they may reject you if they discover evidence that they think you are not the type of student they want attending.
> There are some people there who lost their admission who probably were very lucky to get into Harvard, who don't have 10 other ivy league schools to go to.
Nobody has to go to an Ivy league school. In the same way you can screw up a big test and get a bad grade in High School, you can screw up your image and how you are perceived morally. They screwed up, and at least one avenue was closed to them. Their life may be different, but it's not like they are being jailed. They can go to some other school. I'm positive people have been rejected and even expelled for Harvard with less evidence. Their life will go on, and if they were able to get accepted to Harvard I'm sure they'll do okay going somewhere else, as long as they can curb whatever impulse caused this incident (whether it be ignorance of how it would be perceived, too much acceptance of peer pressure, or actual racism. I'm sure it was slightly different for each of them).
> "The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group."
They were being deliberate shit heads. This wasn't a private chat, this was intentionally sharing offensive content with the explicit purpose of ruffling feathers and pissing people off.
To call this a "private chat" is misleading - this was essentially a public forum for an incoming class to share content and these 10 students should have had zero expectation of privacy. If I were on the AdCom, I wouldn't have kicked them out for posting objectionable content, I would have kicked them out for being sheer, utter morons.
There are some ignorant thoughts that have almost entirely fallen out of the collective consciousness (in terms of serious belief, not abstract discussion of the past). (As a random example, there are vanishingly few ignorant people left who genuinely believe that disease is a punishment of the wicked that should not be interfered with, "ostracize the lepers", etc.) There are many more that need to.
If you think that some people are inherently "lesser" than others and can be treated as such, that's wrong. If you think that it's OK to assault people, that's wrong. Whether that turns into violent action or not, it still pervades other actions and societal structure, and it's the source of more subtle discrimination; that it has gone as far as being written and conveyed in ways that influence others makes it more than just thoughts. It's a good thing to influence society in ways that make people who think and write and talk and influence others in that way less successful, favoring people who don't, and over time find that fewer people think that way.
Because the same power that makes it possible for institutions to do that also gives us a check on those institutions. It seems entirely fine for an institution to look at the kind of person they're accepting and be selective in this way. If we start seeing institutions be selective for things we don't want to see selection on, we can push back on those institutions. There's no slippery slope here.
We're not talking about violent suppression of free speech. We're talking about non-violent exercise of the right to free association, to shun racists and sexists.
Authorities, especially institutions of higher learning, shouldn't be in the business of policing their student's speech. That's not "culture." That's oppression. Using bad actions in the service of good is still a bad idea.
If you think that some people are inherently "lesser" than others and can be treated as such, that's wrong.
I sure think it's wrong. But policing that thought by policing speech that results from it is also wrong.
If you think that it's OK to assault people, that's wrong.
Is Harvard going after the "punch a Nazi" memers and advocates with as much vigor? As a liberal, I find that much more distrubing because in that case people are dressing up bad actions and teaching young people to think of them as somehow good and socially redeeming. Is that what we want? Jingoistic ideologues who can commit guiltless violence, supposedly in the name of your values and love? (Ironically, the most used word to describe an emotion at the Nuremberg rally filmed by Leni Reifensthal: Love.)
that it has gone as far as being written and conveyed in ways that influence others makes it more than just thoughts.
Yup. That's called speech. So what you want is authoritarian control of speech. In institutions of higher learning. Like Berkeley, maybe?
Consider HN: we have down votes, comment flagging, and moderators. That is very much the policing of speech. Would you consider this oppression?
Absolutist argument? Where do you get that? Who's being absolutist? What evidence do you have that I don't have "a line?" Do you have any evidence that I support people yelling "fire" in a theater? Please provide your evidence, as I do take an absolute stand against people putting words and positions onto others on HN with no evidence.
It ignores any sort of context or nuance and generally shuts down discussion.
So are you basically saying it's okay to engage in partisan thought and speech policing of political viewpoints of graduating high school seniors by trolling through their social media?
Consider HN: we have down votes, comment flagging, and moderators. That is very much the policing of speech. Would you consider this oppression?
No. I don't get instantly excluded for voicing an opinion. Instead I get feedback. There's the difference. Is there a real flow of information? Is there a real marketplace of ideas? Or is it, "put up or shut up?" That's the difference.
I considered that to be an absolutist argument. I think there are contexts in which authorities (EDIT: non-governmental authorities) can police speech in a way that is not oppressive. And not just the usual "shouting fire in a crowded theater" sense. If you are using a public forum to be disruptive and is detrimental to the other students, it can be appropriate to levy some sort of disciplinary action. If you start shouting racial epithets in a crowded theater, for example, I think it is appropriate for you to be thrown out. So the line is not clear cut, there is a level of subjectivity at play.
> So are you basically saying it's okay to engage in partisan thought and speech policing of political viewpoints of graduating high school seniors by trolling through their social media?
In this case, the students posted the offensive material on a public forum moderated by Harvard staff. I wouldn't consider this "trawling through social media".
> I don't get instantly excluded for voicing an opinion. Instead I get feedback. There's the difference.
So if Harvard had put these students on academic probation or something instead, you wouldn't necessarily have a problem? That's something I can get behind. I thought you were opposed to any action being taken against these students of any kind.
I considered that to be an absolutist argument
That item just on happens to be on the other side of my "line." By your logic, anyone who has a position on the wrong side of your "line" is "absolutist." I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I think there are contexts in which authorities (EDIT: non-governmental authorities) can police speech in a way that is not oppressive.
Sure. There's definitely a line. The point at which authority, even non-violence based non-governmental authority, can be used to suppress dissent through societal and/or economic coercion, there is a moral line which has been crossed. It's even built into human psychology. The psychological threat of exclusion from a group is very strong, because in the prehistoric past, exclusion from the group was tantamount to a sentence of slow, lingering death. An organization using such a fear to enforce a political view is crossing a moral line parallel and nearby the moral line crossed by an organization (or an informal association of "activists") using the fear of violence to do the same.
So if Harvard had put these students on academic probation or something instead, you wouldn't necessarily have a problem? That's something I can get behind. I thought you were opposed to any action being taken against these students of any kind.
Sure. I wouldn't be "getting behind" that, but I wouldn't be "up in arms" against something like that, since it is temporary and non-exclusionary.
Nope. Say anything you like. Learn to live with the consequences, which can and should include rejection by widespread parts of civilized society, and bask in the solitude. The crickets will surely enjoy your free speech.
You shouldn't go to jail for it, but you can't demand that other people like it.
Those of us who have qualms around consequentialism find this efficacy not reason enough to regard such behavior as exemplary of virtue. Those who do not have such qualms might be well advised to consider, from a utilitarian perspective, the ultimate outcomes which recent history has shown profligate use of this tactic to produce. And those who try to disclaim the grasp their political and cultural tendency has on power would do well to remember that this is, always and only, a tactic of hegemony, without which it cannot work at all.
In any case, as I said before, I like the honesty.
Framing bigots as "political opponents" has some efficacy as a tactic too, given people's allergy to politics. It's sad that this has, especially recently, become equated to politics. "How should we organize government", or "are certain functions better handled by government" are reasonable questions of politics. "Should we treat some people as less than other people" is not a question of politics, it's a question of humanity, that should be orthogonal to politics. It's possible to be toxic anywhere on the political spectrum, and it's possible to be decent anywhere on the political spectrum.
How about framing political opponents as "bigots"?
If the article was "withdraws acceptances for people who advocated X political belief" (e.g. "less funding for universities", "less power to teachers' unions", "private healthcare", take your pick of things that the average university faculty is likely to disagree with), I'd be right there arguing against that; all of those are reasonably debatable topics in the right forums. Which is exactly why there's no slippery slope there: when it's something worth defending, there's no shortage of defenders. So why does there inevitably spring up an army of defenders to support bigots? There's no "first they came for" argument here; first they came for the bigots, and then they stopped and threw a party.
(On a technical forum, in particular, there ought to be an appreciation for historical pattern matching; today "bigotry against outgroups" looks a lot like yesterday's "bigotry against outgroups", and it really shouldn't be a battle that has to get re-fought for every outgroup. One of these days I have hope that people could simply complete the pattern and skip the next dozen instances of it. It's the same battle every time, all the arguments look the same, and the right and wrong answers are always the same.)
At this point, I don't feel like there are any new arguments to make here. I think both of us are well aware of the arguments, I don't think either of us is particularly inclined to change their stance, and I see little value in going through the motions. All the arguments either one of us might reasonably make are posted elsewhere. So, in the interests of the honesty you've expressed an appreciation for: let's stop wasting each others' time.
> today "bigotry against outgroups" looks a lot like yesterday's "bigotry against outgroups"
In every case, bigotry against an outgroup relies upon defining members of whatever outgroup is targeted by their membership in that outgroup, and nothing else. People being basically decent as we are, the only way to support the argument that X outgroup has got to go, is by first establishing in the mind of one's interlocutor the certainty that membership in X outgroup is so bad, so utterly and uniquely exclusive by nature of every possible countervailing virtue, that in this specific case it is reasonable - indeed, that it's righteous - to mete out to members of X outgroup treatment whose infliction upon anyone else would be iniquitous in the extreme.
Such a concept is not easy to establish, people being basically decent as we are. Recent history recommends one method as especially efficacious toward that end - that of inventing or selecting a name generally used in reference to a given outgroup, and then investing not the members of that outgroup directly, but rather that name in itself, with all the opprobrium that can be laden upon it. The nature of the name isn't so important; be it a demonym, an ethnonym, a name of choice, or a slur, what matters is that it be generally understood outside the targeted outgroup that the group is the object of the name. Then, by making people despise the name, you can make people despise the group, as well.
There is a subtlety here - it's very hard, people being basically decent as we are, to convince one human being to look upon another not as a fellow deserving of at least some basic modicum of decency, but rather as a disease upon the body politic, meriting excision therefrom by methods otherwise too brutal or mean to be seriously contemplated. But language is the tool we use to understand the world around us, and it should be hardly controversial in the modern age that, by modifying the way we understand language, one may modify the way we understand our world. By investing a name with contempt, therefore, we can heap contempt upon those whom that name describes, much more easily than we could achieve the same end without the same semiotic indirection.
Don't you think it's interesting that you've spent your entire participation in this thread inveighing against "racists" and "sexists" and "bigots", and making very clear that those whom you so describe, you have no problem seeing excluded from social and professional life by means which you'd consider totally unacceptable if applied to those whom you do not place in the categories those names describe? I think it's interesting.
But, as you've rightly pointed out, we are getting awfully abstract, and should bear in mind the situation we're actually talking about here. In that connection, I also think it's interesting how broadly you define these categories you're using. We are, after all, talking about some eighteen-year-old jackasses, which is to say some eighteen-year-old men, who have posted some deeply tasteless and shameful meme pictures on Facebook, mostly in a private group.
That such behavior should be firmly discouraged, we agree; I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I would regard disciplinary probation - that is, preemptive advancement to strike two of the notional three, with one more incident of misconduct resulting in summary expulsion - as a proportionate response. Where we part company is in that you find such a response arrantly insufficient. Nothing will do by you but that these young idiots be, not given the opportunity to learn from the gravity of their error, but instead totally and permanently ostracized, from society and from the professions - which is to say, they should be permitted no friends, and they should be permitted no opportunity to pursue whatever careers they might have gone to Harvard to begin. Because they posted some deeply tasteless and shameful meme pictures on Facebook, mostly in a private group.
You're right that we shouldn't forget what we're talking about here. But I think that's precisely what your words show you to have done. You're not talking about some eighteen-year-old jackasses who have perpetuated and played into some truly shitty stereotypes in front of God and everybody, and should be firmly swatted for so doing - but should also be given the opportunity to demonstrate that they have derived a salutary lesson therefrom. You're talking about "racists" and "sexists" and "bigots" as though the subjects of the discussion were, not some young damn fools who, like most young men, enjoy shit-stirring and seeing what they can get away with before someone reins them in, but rather a klavern of hardcore Klansmen long since beyond susceptibility to reason. You speak here as though there were no distinction to be made between the former and the latter, and that simply is not true.
You seem a sensible and thoughtful enough person, and I can't imagine that you are simply not at home to nuance in general - rather, I think the names you're using, and the opprobrium which attaches to them, have blinded you to the nuance which obtains here. Do you think that's very likely to be the only nuance to which you've made yourself blind?
But, of course, that's your problem, to which you'll attend or not as you so choose. It's not the sort of thing with which I'd be comfortable, or one which I could easily compose with a desire to understand, as best I'm able, the world as it actually is, the better that my actions therein be more virtuous than the converse. Should I so err, I'd like to think someone would bring it to my attention. But perhaps you feel otherwise, and in any case I've probably abused your patience just about long enough. "Just about" - one last point and a link, and then I'm done.
You may at this time be inclined to argue that, while I'm not wrong in general about the fashion in which outgroups are demonized by means of those names which apply to them, I am wrong to be concerned with your having done so in this specific case, because, in this specific case, the group you so attack actually deserves it.
And I'm sure you believe that's true! So, after all, has everyone else who has ever deployed this method against anyone. But perhaps this happens simply to be the first time in human history that that claim has had merit.
Finally, the link - I'm hardly the first person to speak on this subject, to say nothing of well respected. If you won't hear it from me, then, perhaps you'll be interested in this not totally dissimilar formulation, which predates mine and originates with someone who I gather is generally held in good regard: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
I have seen, first-hand, across multiple communities, the effects of attempting to include everyone, including those who hate others and make them feel unwelcome, versus the effects of creating a community that actually feels welcoming. See also the interminable arguments about codes of conduct. This isn't an abstract question for me.
I'm going to skip responding to the arguments that I consider entirely addressed by the above.
> I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread that I would regard disciplinary probation - that is, preemptive advancement to strike two of the notional three, with one more incident of misconduct resulting in summary expulsion - as a proportionate response.
If the argument in this particular thread was along those lines, a matter of degree rather than one of action versus inaction, then that would come across a lot more reasonably. A general reaction of "of course this behavior shouldn't be tolerated; what's the best way to address it and make it stop happening everywhere" would be entirely reasonable. (There are interesting questions there, such as the value of attempting to fix deep-seated problems in 10 people versus the value of demonstrating consequences to a larger set.) This branch of the thread, however, has not led in that direction. I had not thus far commented on whether another response might have been appropriate; as a matter of fact, I'd consider either response perfectly fine.
> You're talking about "racists" and "sexists" and "bigots" as though the subjects of the discussion were, not some young damn fools who, like most young men, enjoy shit-stirring and seeing what they can get away with before someone reins them in
> We are, after all, talking about some eighteen-year-old jackasses
...who were applying to Harvard. If we want to paint the full picture of context here, I think saying that Harvard has higher-than-average standards is perhaps an understatement.
The terms refer to entire classes of behavior, not only the most extreme examples of such. It includes people who commit the most horrific acts of violence, people who make communities unwelcoming to specific genders/races/etc, people who repost hateful images and jokes, and people who try to put on their best cherubic faces and defend them in the most flowery and elaborate language. There are most certainly matters of degree and nuance, and not binary; one can be "more sexist" or "less racist", unlike "more dead"; they're comparable adjectives. That doesn't make the labels inapplicable.
And I find that using those terms tends to get people who might otherwise dismiss labels like "offensive" as "political correctness" to actually think about what they're defending. (I also find it an interesting choice by the original article to use "offensive" in the title rather than a more specific term; I think that makes a noticeable difference in framing.) Using them does not imply a lack of nuance; if you consider the terms themselves entirely un-nuanced, perhaps you should consider whether and why you find it appropriate to attempt to minimize their actions by avoiding the labels.
I would also suggest that, while there are extreme members of such groups that might revel in such labels, there are many people who might take pride and glory in being called "offensive" yet flinch back from being called "sexist" or "racist". Using more precise terms like those gets more people to question their behavior.
> http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
I've read it, more than once. I'm rather amused that you're sending it, considering it ends with:
> The worst thing that could happen to this post is to have it be used as convenient feces to fling at the Blue Tribe whenever feces are necessary.
But in general, I'll end with one point I think we can agree on: nuance is useful. I think it's reasonable and self-consistent to handle increasing degrees of bad behavior with anything from correction (of varing degrees of gentle), this-is-your-first-and-last-warning, or immediate exclusion, depending on malice and damage. (The best communities I know don't jump to exclusion on the majority of first offenses; those are just the most high-profile cases.) I think it's reasonable to have stricter reactions to business leaders and candidates for high office than, and less strict corrective actions for others, based both on how much opportunity they should already have had to learn and the damage they could do if unchecked. I think it's reasonable that some people are willing to take the time to educate and attempt to correct, and others simply don't want to deal with the associated toxicity in the meantime; I don't see either as more virtuous, they're just choosing where and on who to spend their time. I see no hypocrisy in treating groups whose actions hurt others differently than groups commonly hurt by such actions; attempting to equate the two is a common tactic by the former, that also often sounds abstractly appealing to people in neither group.
I'm all for that. But when people have gotten to the point of excluding those who are perfectly fine with "live and let live" and one starts harassing them, then things have gotten quite out of hand. Your desire to ostracize -- there is no hate here for you? Honestly? I don't expect an honest answer from you, but know in your heart, that if you have hate in it, then you should be included in those who hate others and make them feel unwelcome.
And I find that using those terms tends to get people who might otherwise dismiss labels like "offensive" as "political correctness" to actually think about what they're defending.
Look, just because I advocate for people being able to do what they want in their own bedrooms doesn't mean that I advocate [insert particular action here]. Defending speech doesn't automatically make you an advocate for what has been said. In fact, that very fallacy is used by authoritarian regimes to justify their censorship. For like the 6th time, get a clue. I'm not defending what you're reacting against. I'm saying that how you propose to react against it is a bad idea and if it spreads will itself foster more injustice.
The worst thing that could happen to this post is to have it be used as convenient feces to fling at the Blue Tribe whenever feces are necessary.
What is the Blue Tribe going to do to get the other parts of the Blue Tribe to stop being secretly hateful authoritarians?
I see no hypocrisy in treating groups whose actions hurt others
For one who decries both hypocrisy and false equivalence, this looks a lot like you're engaging in a bit of it yourself. Ostracizing people from organizations deemed important by society and important to people's lives and careers carries a lot more consequence than some college aged kid posting some memes. Is it because they're the children of privilege? Hereditary blame is one sure sign that your thinking has reached toxic levels of tribalism and othering.
Nice to find a point of common ground.
> But when people have gotten to the point of excluding those who are perfectly fine with "live and let live"
"those who are perfectly fine with 'live and let live'" is more or less the definition of the group that welcoming communities welcome. What exclusion are you referring to, here? Because it isn't what was discussed in the article, nor anything I've advocated, nor anything I've seen advocated elsewhere in the parts of this overall comment thread I've read.
> Your desire to ostracize -- there is no hate here for you?
I don't desire to ostracize; I desire an absence of hate. The ideal case would be that nobody has hate to spread; attempting to limit the damage done is a fallback position.
> I'm saying that how you propose to react against it is a bad idea and if it spreads will itself foster more injustice.
I'm not (here or anywhere) suggesting exclusion as a first and only resort. I'm suggesting that it's an entirely valid tactic for people unwilling to learn to "live and let live", to make things more pleasant and welcoming for those who do. To paraphrase the description of an anti-harassment team in one community I'm fond of, de-escalation is always the first resort.
> Ostracizing people from organizations deemed important by society and important to people's lives and careers carries a lot more consequence than some college aged kid posting some memes.
I don't have the impression that the entirety of the groups were excluded; it sounded, from the article, more like they were excluding ringleaders and people who specifically stirred things up. I might also hold a different opinion if there was some genuine sign of recognizing the screwup and attempting to improve that was being ignored in favor of putting on a show. But as long as we're talking about the consequences to people's lives and careers, also consider the other students they'll interact with over the coming years, not just those 10 students.
> Is it because they're the children of privilege?
Nope. And I'm not sure where in anything I posted you would have gotten that from.
Let's take this in another direction, please. You suggested elsewhere in this thread that you'd have been fine with some form of academic probation. That also suggests that you'd be fine with the consequences of such if the behavior continues. So if this is just a question of degree, then as far as I can tell we're on the same page and disagreeing about positions not actually held. As posted here and elsewhere, I'm similarly in favor of de-escalation and proportional responses. Bans and exclusions are near-last resorts, to use with 1) people who show no indication of recognizing and changing their behavior, or 2) people who would be put in a position where they could do a lot of damage. This isn't "screw up once and you're excluded for life", and if you thought that's what I was advocating, then let's just chalk it up to limitations of the medium and move on.
People can change, though it's not necessarily the job of everyone and every group in society to put up with them while they do.
does it really work? it seems to work in-so-far-as it purges specific communities of specific people. it doesn't remove those people from larger society and it most certainly doesn't change their mind. it makes them feel aggrieved to the point where they lash out with redoubled violence. it radicalizes people into extremists where before they may have merely been insensitive now they will be resentful and hateful.
backlash is a real thing and we ignore it at our own peril.
I'll take that; that's progress. If the only effect is to improve such communities, that's a good enough reason. And if we can get people to stop making "but free speech!" arguments against it, and start talking about free association, it'll have a much more widespread effect.
Here's what this kind of thinking has done in the US: The left has crammed themselves into cities, effectively reducing their voting power outside of those cities. This sort of thinking has been "effective" -- in that Donald Trump is now president.
And if we can get people to stop making "but free speech!" arguments against it, and start talking about free association, it'll have a much more widespread effect.
What you want, is for "your side" to infiltrate virtually all of the ruling boards of all non-governmental organizations in society and have them start enforcing your particular views, on pain of marginalization and expulsion. We in the US once had that widespread condition with the form of the belief system called "Christianity" and such tactics were often used to try to coerce so-called "proper" behavior from atheists, homosexuals, and polygamists. Would you justify having such widespread social coercion once again, because this time, supposedly the "correct" side would win?
Progress throughout history has been made through commerce and people coexisting and really talking to each other. One group enforcing its will over another has always resulted in overt injustice, or covert injustice -- even in the case of the Civil War. (The victims I have in mind in that last reference are all black people, despite the clear progress of abolition.)
I'm all for people talking about "free association." Infiltrating all of the ruling committees of otherwise politically neutral non-government organizations and issuing edicts for what you shall believe, on pain of expulsion, is not at all supporting of or supported by the notion of "free association" -- anymore than using one's status and authority to get someone else to say yes to sexual intercourse is truly consensual sex. True freedom is truly consensual choice, and it's not really consensual if the big motivator is fear.
But no, you have not described what "I want" at all. What I want is for people to stop hating each other and hurting each other. Failing that, I'd like people who hate others to do as little damage as possible, and I'd like as little interaction with them as possible, because quite frankly, life's too short.
In the long term, yes, someone needs to be doing the job of educating people, and instilling better values; it really shouldn't be hard to convey a simple value system that covers tolerating the next dozen groups and not just the last dozen groups, because the patterns are just not that hard to match. I certainly agree that fear is not the best motivation, nor is it ideal. But it is not the job of every last person in society to exercise the patience of a saint and try to fix such problems on an individual basis; it's hard enough to try to fix them at scale. Exclusion is not ideal, but as a near-last resort, it helps with damage control.
As an aside, I also find your use of the term "infiltrating" interesting; that has fascinating ingroup/outgroup connotations for who you consider infiltrators versus who belongs. That's not meant as an attack, nor am I suggesting you intended the choice of words as one, just an observation.
A government that is ruling through fear has lost its moral justification. That you'd just say it's not the best nor ideal -- I find this highly suspect. You'd really take a grudging, fake consensus, over just giving people the opportunity to talk as they will and live and let live? It really is analogous to taking fake consent for sex!
I'd like people who hate others to do as little damage as possible, and I'd like as little interaction with them as possible, because quite frankly, life's too short.
You don't have to look far to find the depredations of people in authority who secretly hate. I'd like hateful authority to do as little damage as possible, and I'd like as little interaction hateful authority as possible, because quite frankly, life's too short. (Not to say that all authority is hateful, of course.)
As an aside, I also find your use of the term "infiltrating" interesting; that has fascinating ingroup/outgroup connotations for who you consider infiltrators versus who belongs.
There is a pattern of "activists" and media critics doing this to various spheres of interest, and to specific organizations, as well as explicit talks in political groups about doing exactly this. I think "infiltration" is a very apt way of describing such insincere political-agenda driven behavior in a non-political group. As for who belongs: Those who are primarily and genuinely passionate about the area of interest.
The poor, the downtrodden, the beleaguered -- people like that have their passions, and they are often the most stalwart and pure in their interests. Very often, for these reasons, they produce the best art. It's no wonder then, that they react to "Carpetbaggers" with passion and vehemence. It's not so different when it comes to interest groups of the affluent. If you want society to make progress, then enable as much sincere, passionate interaction as possible. Balkanizing society into strict divisions based on political viewpoint is exactly the wrong thing to do. Fostering a society where people can interact with those of different viewpoints is the right thing, and this will require the ability to interact with those of highly differing viewpoint -- just so long as it's all live and let live. The version of "tolerance" where it's alright, just so long as everyone agrees with me -- this is just like the "multiculturalism" of many Muslim and Christian fundamentalists, who are all for tolerance, so long as everyone converts to their religion.
In other words: People you very strongly disagree with should find it impossible to maintain a social and professional life, until they stop disagreeing with you. For a society that values consensuality and freedom, this is shortsighted and naively self-centered thinking. Who in the world are you to judge? For much of the 20th century, the majority in supposedly "enlightened" societies prosecuted such a program against homosexuals. Many people doing this even thought to themselves that it was alright, because it was a choice -- just as I've read you advocate about other people's personal philosophy and political thought.
That's not a violent action, that's a highly effective non-violent action.
The human instinct around exclusion from a group is very strong. In prehistoric days, exclusion from the group was tantamount to a sentence of slow, lingering death. For this reason, when a group of people crosses the moral line of using such coercive tactics to enforce their will on another group, they are very close to the parallel moral line involving violence.
Freedom is consensuality. Consensuality can clearly be violated through power and social/emotional pressures that fall short of physical violence. A social/political movement that seeks to enforce its will against those it labels as "wrong thinkers" does not truly believe in consensuality.
Throughout history, such actions are only "highly effective" in contexts where there is effectively absolute political power, and even then, the authorities must escalate even beyond violence to assert their will. Short of that, we know from history that coercion always produces backlash. If you are truly on the side of justice, then you will eschew all forms of injustice, even when they are supposedly for the good. If you are truly for consensuality, then you should strive to convince your political opponents. It's not for me to know one way or another, but if you have devolved to the point where you have given up convincing, and only want to ostracize and shame them, then everything I know about human nature suggests to me that you are in danger of dehumanizing others in your heart and placing yourself above them. Historically, anyone who gets to that point has made the same mistake in their heart has become an opponent of social justice. It is exactly this mistake that was made against homosexuals, jewish people, and black people in the 20th century US. (Note the specificity of context/location when formulating your response.)
Those are certainly "other words", but ones that present an entirely incorrect picture of the post you're responding to.
In summary: it's not in any way hypocrisy to treat people and actions that harm others differently than people and actions that don't. And it's a really common derailing tactic to equate the two, and try to treat both as similarly "oppressed groups". (It's also a tactic that tends to produce arguments that sound quite appealing in the abstract, especially if you're of a mind to seek broader patterns and categories, which is not an uncommon trait here.)
I'll also note, in brief, that I'm not advocating a zero-nuance policy of immediate exclusion for the slightest offense. That's not a supportable position, and certainly not the one I hold. I do, however, consider exclusion a perfectly reasonable approach for maintaining more pleasant, welcoming communities. And it's not the job of every such community to put up with people who would make it worse, or to attempt to correct such people.
For one who decries false equivalence of equating some non-violent action to violence, I find your application of "harm" here a real stretch, and a bit hypocritical besides!
I'll also note, in brief, that I'm not advocating a zero-nuance policy of immediate exclusion for the slightest offense. That's not a supportable position, and certainly not the one I hold. I do, however, consider exclusion a perfectly reasonable approach for maintaining more pleasant, welcoming communities. And it's not the job of every such community to put up with people who would make it worse, or to attempt to correct such people.
I wonder if you're the sort of person who would advocate that a non-political group make a political statement, then make everyone sign or make some sort of pledge in support of it and throw out those who don't. Such behavior called a perfectly reasonable approach for maintaining more pleasant, welcoming communities is every bit as hypocritical as and toxic as 80's frat boys doing the enforced-fun aggression, questioning your sexuality, then gay bashing you if your answer doesn't satisfy them.
You talk elsewhere about being too abstract. The chief emotional dishonesty here in our blue tribe, is the degree to which hate and emotional aggression actually rule the tribal, othering behaviors. I've been racially harassed to the point where police had to get involved. The epiphany that I had sometime afterwards, was that there was a real joy, real glee to those "poor white trash" kids. In their minds, I'm quite sure, that they were making the world a better, more "real" and beautiful place, at least for the "real" people. Now I look over at others on the left, and I see essentially the same thing.
Have you dehumanized others in your mind, in your heart of hearts?
I don't think it's unreasonable to use the term to refer to non-physical harm. I'm certainly not equating it to violence.
> I wonder if you're the sort of person who would advocate that a non-political group make a political statement, then make everyone sign or make some sort of pledge in support of it and throw out those who don't.
If you mean a political statement like the support of a political candidate or party: no, absolutely not. (And that's an area where I've definitely seen the kind of tribal behavior you mentioned, and I'm not a fan of it.)
If you mean a statement like a code of conduct, attempting to create a welcoming community (which I don't consider political), then: still no, but I'd require people to abide by it whether they signed it or not. For the purposes of the community, I'd prefer that they're doing so because they believe in it, but I'd settle for them following it because they want to participate in the community more than they want to be hateful.
> The chief emotional dishonesty here in our blue tribe
"our" is broadly speaking incorrect here, though I certainly share its values with respect to tolerance.
> is the degree to which hate and emotional aggression actually rule the tribal, othering behaviors
I've certainly seen some of that. Not a fan. But given a limited amount of time and energy with which to change the world, I don't see that as very high on the list of priorities.
Are you claiming that fear of ostracizing isn't in the same general category as the without-violence-but-convincing threat of violence? I don't see how you can honestly say they aren't both in the category of severe. (I've personally dealt with both.) There doesn't have to be any equivalence for my objection to stand. The factual, even physiological truth, is that both of these are highly emotionally severe and stressful. Any activism that cares about its moral compass needs to be very wary if it finds it's only accomplishing a doppelganger of its goals through such emotionally severe and threatening means. Something is just if it appeals to people's inner sense of justice. Accepting a facsimile of that because you can make people fearful enough to play along -- something is very wrong here!
But given a limited amount of time and energy with which to change the world, I don't see that as very high on the list of priorities.
The real trick is to be able to really change the world, instead of having it change you into one of the villains. Civilization has started to figure out that violent coercion only leads to destructive cycles. Our culture now needs to also start making the same realization about short-of-violent coercion.
For that matter, exclusion is typically entirely reversible, given appropriate reasons to do so.
More importantly, however, you're focusing on the effect on the excluded, and ignoring their effect on others.
If you're asked to be quiet in a library, you're not being oppressed; even if you're talkative by nature, you can manage to shut up so others can ready and study. If you don't, you'll be asked to leave, or ultimately made to. But that doesn't mean people in the library go around with that fear and threat as the ultimate reason, any more than people go around with 'I might go to jail' as the only thing stopping them from injuring someone.
The same goes if you're participating in a community with a code of conduct that makes it welcoming and comfortable. Even if you're naturally toxic and obnoxious, hopefully you can manage to suppress that tendency in order to participate in the community. If not, you'll be asked to leave, or ultimately made to. But people participating in the community don't have that at the forefront of their minds all the time. That's largely the point.
Having found that much of the modern world has quite effective protections for free speech and free association, authoritarians have learned this "one weird trick" to hide their activities. Here's the dishonest trick: Just because it's not in the set of rules enforced by city, county, state, and federal officials, then it's not censorship. That's the same as saying that anything you do is OK, so long as it's not against the letter of the law somewhere.
The whole point of free speech is to prevent authority from chilling dissent and coercing fake-agreement through fear and power. How does it matter if that sort of thing is happening through non-government organizations? Our country and most of the western world has a long history of oppressing groups largely through such non-government oppression. The manner in which homosexuals were oppressed is almost the same manner in which you would like your political views enforced. Do you know what people used to say about this? "You shouldn't go to jail for it, but you can't demand that other people like it."
You shouldn't go to jail for it, but you can't demand that other people like it.
There were laws against homosexuality in the western world, but the societal enforcement mechanisms were operating with far more frequency in the 20th century. There were laws suppressing black people, but the instances of societal enforcement mechanisms were far more frequent than arrests. Far more people read the posted sign or subtly got the funny vibe than were arrested. In many places where there were no specific laws against being Jewish, there were many, many instances of people being excluded from the best connected clubs and social circles on this basis. What you want are these kinds of societal enforcements operating, but on the basis of your particular ideas of what's right and wrong. So long as no one is being injured or killed, and no state "monopolizers of violence" are at play, then it's okay.
It's not okay. If you are trying to force instead of convince then you are being a crappy, oppressive person. History is full of such people, most of whom thought they were doing right. In the same way, history is full of crappy violence, committed by people who thought they were fighting for justice. Thankfully, civilization has made progress, and we are now in the process of groups giving up violence as a means of enforcing their will. Similarly, we as a civilization are better understanding that groups of people using other forms of societal pressure to enforce their will short of violence are also oppressive. What you are advocating is that same kind of crappy non-consensual illusion of agreement, and justifying it because governments aren't doing it, and because in your mind, it's "might for right."
Convince, not force. Consensuality should be at the core of any 21st century intellectual's morality, and true consensuality is never begrudging.
> people read the posted sign or subtly got the funny vibe
Or the bigoted meme? It's a great argument; you might consider exactly which point it's a great argument in favor of.
I am amazingly uninterested in arguments for why it's important to support racism and sexism, or in attempts to paint racists and sexists as an oppressed group that needs protection, or in attempts to equate freedom of association as equivalent to violence, or in attempts to call it "your particular ideas of what's right and wrong". Enjoy beating up that strawman as long as you like, but it has little to do with any actual position I'm advocating.
I am amazingly uninterested in "aguments" where you put words in other people's mouths. Where do I support racism and sexism? Please provide a quote. (Big fail for you here!) As it so happens, I'm a liberal non-heterosexual brown person. Violence is wrong, no less so if it's done against vile, violent people. Coercion is wrong, even if it's done against people I dislike. The suppression of free speech is wrong, no matter who is talking.
in attempts to equate freedom of association as equivalent to violence
It's certainly not equivalent to violence. However, it's still fake and crappy if you're just interested in getting your way, and have reduced certain other human beings in your mind to some status where their consensuality doesn't matter. That's the whole reason why democracy is the best form of government we have so far: it respects consensuality the best out of every other system we've tried.
"your particular ideas of what's right and wrong". Enjoy beating up that strawman as long as you like, but it has little to do with any actual position I'm advocating.
So your ideas of "social justice" are better than everyone else's? You claim to have some sort of line to "the truth?" A close friend of mine received some sort of award and several hundred dollars for her work in social justice, and she agrees with much of what I have said.
You said yourself in this very discussion that you want "your side" to infiltrate all of the organizations and force the certain people you think are "bad" because they disagree with you. You want society to run in this way, and even if it just succeeds in creating pockets of people who think like you, that's great. Well, that's exactly what you said, and my position is precisely this: Thinking this way is crappy and it's emotionally dishonest. It creates an oppressive fake "consensus," and it convinces absolutely no one. The kind of society it would create would be just as truly about "justice" as the Christian religion dominated society of the 19th century was truly about "Christian values" -- only on the surface! This is my position, and exactly this. The only "straw-manning" that's been done has been yours. You are the one philosophically advocating coercion. Honestly, does the thought of coercing all of those horrible people to leave groups not strike you as righteous vengeance? Are you honestly free of hate of people in your heart?
I agree with many of your political aims, but be honest with yourself: Your position is weak someplace, and thus you have turned away from convincing and towards coercion.
In the era where they saw disease as a divine punishment, most people no doubt held this belief as well.
In reality, moral standards will shift around as they always do, some parts will lose their luster and others will be strengthened. New standards will emerge and make our current progressive ideals seem distant and alien, the same way we look at medieval ostracism.
After decades of denazification and tabooisation of national socialism and anything related, we still have a shocking proportion of Nazis in Germany. Openly self-identified Nazis, only a fraction of a percent, but people who agree with statements like "A strong leader (Führer) would be better than democracy" or "Jews are foreign bodies in the German people" - 15-20% according to some studies. And it's not talked about much, but in my opinion we have a bigger problem with right wing terrorism than with islamic terrorism here.
In the US, it is similar. Decades after the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King, rampant racism again, people flying the confederate flag, white people killing black people.
What do I want to say with that? People often wish back the past few decades, before social media, which seemed more "civilized". I honestly think now, no, people were not more civilized, we just kept a tighter lid on what people thought.
I don't want to hear the racists, bigots, sexists either... but just silencing them does not seem to actually change peoples minds.
And also (I say this as a left-wing/liberal), I myself want to have a space where I can just say what the fuck I want, without consequences. "It is not my revolution" if I can't say idiotic things in private.
(Edit: And of course, you are right, and I agree with your comment. Please don't view this as a refutation, but as a second-order correction :-))
This wasn't particularly private. There had to be some sort of invitation, but it wasn't like the participants all knew each other. The offline analogy isn't a few friends over your house for dinner, it's speaking at a birds of a feather session at a conference.
Do you think Harvard would have rescinded the acceptance of an admitted student, if one of his high school friends forwarded a one-to-one email the admitted student had sent him which contained one of these memes? I tend to think not.
I didn't read past this. Were you under the impression that thought policing is only a matter of fiction? You don't read world news, do you? I wouldn't be surprised since only an echo chamber would spouse this kind of view but you should read a little more about places like North Korea.
Thought policing is not a good thing, it will never be a good thing.
I found your argument unconvincing and your conclusion not adequately supported. I have read history and I do not believe your interpretation is correct.
In general, it's important to note that the separate between speech and action isn't as clear cut as you assert, especially speech made in a public forum. Speech affects others, and words can be used to cause others pain or discomfort. Speech has direct consequences on others just like any action, and this must be considered. Which isn't to say that speech doesn't deserve broad protections, of course.
That seems to me a reasonable middle ground between on the one hand doing nothing, which I agree would be a highly questionable decision even from the purely cynical perspective that anyone accepted to Harvard may reasonably be expected not to violate the eleventh commandment in such damnfool fashion and if they don't already know that then they better get on learning - and, on the other hand, rescinding these prospective students' acceptance, with the concomitant potentially very significant impairment of their lifelong prospects, on the basis of they posted some tasteless images to a private Facebook group.
This was a university-moderated and maintained facebook group. There was absolutely no expectation on the part of the posters that Harvard could not read their words. You can get expelled for public speech on campus too.
Again, Harvard did no "surveillance" here. They found these kids because they were posting garbage on Harvard's own forum.
> "The founders of the messaging group demanded that students post provocative memes in the main group chat to gain admittance to the smaller group."
Probably depends how offensive you were. But yeah, sure you could. I am absolutely positive there are some prospective freshmen at Harvard who have had their admission rescinded based on their behavior during the pre-frosh weekend. Such incidents tend to be less publicized because they involve a single student, and there's normally an embarrassment factor involved.
Once you are on campus and admitted it would be more difficult...it would depend on the context. Certainly people have been kicked out (or rather, "asked to leave") based on sharing offensive material and memes, but in the cases I know of it was because that material was targeting specific individuals / people.
Not to mention that filth like this serves as a kind of canary in the coalmine - if one can make jokes about violence against minorities without fear of repercussions, then that bodes well for ideas actually intended to be taken seriously.
Racist shit is "wrong speech". If I have friends who start uttering racist shit, and I can't talk them out of it, they are no longer my friends. (This has happened precisely once, no regrets. Thanks, Fox News, for poisoning an old man's mind.)
Posting racist memes is wrong, saying racist things is wrong, thinking racist thoughts is wrong. How did we get here, that racism falls under the scare-quotes version of "wrong speech" and not actually wrong speech??
Or have absolute free speech. You can't be cherry picking stuffs.
Also, "Free speech" refers to the fact that the government cannot bust in to your house with a SWAT team and arrest you for speaking something that they don't like. Private companies can enforce whatever speech rules they like, and that doesn't interfere with the free speech of the individual. They can walk outside and state those things. There are already numerous hate speech laws covering the fact that the first amendment does not mean that you have a right to say whatever you want in a private space.
I don't disagree with Harvard's decision, or any decision made by a private institution or person.
I disagree with the notion that certain types of speech or thought are universally wrong. Personally - I believe racism is wrong - but I disagree with the notion that it's "wrong think". It's simply a different world view.
To re-iterate: I don't agree with what the students said or did. I agree with Harvard's decision. I don't agree that protecting someone's right to speak freely and openly supports their agenda.
One that states that people with more melatonin are fundamentally inferior and should be subservient to people with less melatonin. It is a point of view that is objectively and morally wrong.
I wonder whether you would support the right of people to state that PoC should be sterilized, or the rights of people to call people to attack PoCs. Because that is what more and more people have been calling for in America. That is what Richard Spencer, one of the leaders of the alt-right, advocates.
The problem with these 'different world views' is that even without directly stating that people should attack minorities, these statements lead to people beating up black people on the streets. The more these ideas and 'world views' are accepted, the more acceptable it will become to think and state such things, leading to a resurgence of people who think that PoCs should be murdered. That will then directly impact the probability of someone acting upon those beliefs.
The reason why the rest of the world does have as bad a racism problem as America, is because they took steps to alienate people who had such views.
To answer you question - Yes, I would support the rights of people to state whatever they wish. I also support the rights of individuals such as you or myself to call those people morons, and to not associate with them.
Suppressing speech, and demonizing people for their views (no matter how "objectively wrong") does not solve any problem. It only breeds hate and contempt and radicalizes people more.
Of course there is. If I have the world-view that I am the most successful person in the world, yet 90% of people have not heard of me, then that world-view is false. If I have the world-view that climate change is just something made up the scientists to get more funding, then that world-view is false. If I have the world-view that some people are inferior because of their skin-colour, then that world view is scientifically false. As best as we can objectively measure, those world-views are false.
> Suppressing speech, and demonizing people for their views (no matter how "objectively wrong") does not solve any problem.
You are incorrect, and you mistake how facism works. Facism is not after the truth, facism is not after peace. The only peace that facism, and facists want, is peace through the absence of justice. The only goal of white supremacists, is to create a world in which PoC either no longer exist, or are subjugated. They will abuse any system and platform that you give them, to spread their philosophies and ensure more people join their cause. They continue to be a thriving community because the educated population have ignored them out of politeness. The sole goal of them is to further their philosophy. The only way we can stop that, is by depriving them of platforms from which to speak their hate.
Let us not forget the last time we tried to bargain with white supremacists. Several deals were forged, and as soon as the facists had got a firm position, they went back on the deals and moved into Poland, and meanwhile began exterminating parts of their populations that they deemed inferior. The only reason they were able to do that was because they were ignored and thus tolerated by the educated population.
If you think I am being paranoid, let us look at what the leader of the large political movement called the "alt-right" stated only a few years ago:
""""Instead of asking how we can make reparations for slavery, colonialism, and Apartheid or how we can equalize academic scores and incomes, we should instead be asking questions like, "Does human civilization actually need the Black race?" "Is Black genocide right?" and, if it is, "What would be the best and easiest way to dispose of them?" With starting points like this, wisdom is sure to flourish, enlightenment to dawn. """"[0].
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20120216183528/http:/www.alterna...
Everyone knows that. Nobody (except the most ill-informed) dispute it. But the First Amendment is not and was never intended to be the end-all and be-all of free speech. Freedom of speech is a value held by society. The First Amendment is a legal protection afforded that value in law.
When people and organizations start clamping down on speech, yes, that is a violation of the principle of freedom of speech, even if it has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Yes, there has to be a reasonable balance between your freedom to associate with people who say obnoxious things and their freedom to say obnoxious things. Nobody disputes that either.
But there's been an increasingly clear trend of people being banished from workplaces, universities, and other spaces because of their speech, people who would not have been so punished in the past. Part of it is the Internet puts our words in a public space, accessible to everyone. Part of it is the Internet foments mobs of offended people who come after you. Part of it is that people seem to be becoming more and more intolerant of dissenting views.
This is an extremely dangerous long-term trend. It points to a more factious, divided populace. It points to eventual government restrictions on speech. Authoritarian governments rarely start out by banning speech everyone supports. They start banning speech everyone finds dangerous and offensive. Having Brownshirts beating up Communists for their speech ends with Nazis rounding up Communists.
> There are already numerous hate speech laws covering the fact that the first amendment does not mean that you have a right to say whatever you want in a private space.
Care to point these laws out?
Also worth pointing out that Harvard receives a lot of public dollars, so it's not the canonical private institution. Remember when everyone freaked out that the salvation army wouldn't employ openly gay preachers (but would employ homosexually in any other role) because though they were a private entity, they received NYC tax dollars, and then everyone freaked out when the SA announced that they would decline those tax dollars and reduce the scope of their work in the city accordingly?
So, yes, I'm quite comfortable with this hill. It has a nice shining city on it. Shame its originators abandoned it. (They never really liked it anyway.)
Do you have an actual argument, or are you just whatabouting?
Such as?
The government can't arrest you but people can shun you.
Relevant xkcd, as always!
This is no different than students posting offensive material on a physical message board on some main through fare on campus.
Edit: Actually, it's somewhat unclear to what degree and what material was required to be posted on the main chat, and what portion was in a separate private chat (still likely associated with Harvard in some way?). The article is unclear on these points. Harvard still has the right to gate admissions how they like (and they state that includes "moral character"), so if they are able to determine you are participating in actions they don't approve of, then they have grounds to reject you or revoke your prior acceptance. Just as if they Google'd you on your initial application and found verifiable and unsettling information.
There has never been, there never should be, and most likely there never will be (no matter how your crowd fights for it) such a thing as wrong speech. At least not outside of totalitarian states.
As long as anyone accepts the concept of wrong speech, anything can be labelled that, and wars can explode over the littlest thing.
At the same time it's somewhat hypocritical of the school to do this as their attitude towards sexual assault on campus is pretty lenient.
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/6/9/harvard-clery-sta...
On the one hand, yeah, that shit is offensive and I'm not too keen on elevating a person who makes jokes about sexual assault or violence against minorities.
On the other hand I'm terrified at the creeping surveillance society that has institutions examining all of our utterances for "wrong speech", which is much too close for comfort to "wrong think", which is much too close for comfort to "wrong person".