Re:The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age
by michaelt on Monday June 22, 2020 @11:43AM
(#23601466)
Do you think there's any way universities can analyse living racist ideas, like a virologist analyses a deadly disease, handling it in an isolated lab and only through thick gloves?
Re:The University Is Like a CD in the Streaming Age
by pjc50 on Monday June 22, 2020 @12:41PM
(#23602281)
They can and they do .. but it has to be done in the third person and not by advocates. Effectively this is what "post-colonial studies" is about.
The opportunity existed to put statues of racists behind glass, for example, away from their positions of public prominence and celebration. I don't think too many people would object to the university of Oxford having a statue of Cecil Rhodes that they kept in a cupboard.
Allow people to point at one of the nonwhite people in the audience and say, "I don't think this person belongs in the country, who's with me?"
Because that's what it is: for one side, it's a debate with no stakes, but for the other it's their exclusion from the university and all the things that are subject to gatekeeping by getting a degree. Potentially for being allowed to live in peace, or live in the country at all.
Letting that kind of speech be platformed is just a more subtle way of hanging a "whites only" sign on your university.