End of USA republic imminent?

[_RockSlider]

The concept of 'safe space' verses 'free speech' being mutually exclusive struck me in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRIKJCKWla4

it seems EAllusion would like this forum to be a 'safe space'.

Rock, you specifically contrasted having "safe spaces" with having "free speech" then characterized my posts as wanting this to be a "safe space" while simultaneously comparing me to Joseph McCarthy. I think it's fair to say you implied I attacked your free speech or demanded a safe space.

You are right, I added that sarcastic remark. It was intended to sting not to reflect that I was accusing you of censoring me. It was as explained, an interesting exclusive pair when the definition of free space was not the academic one, but the PC one.

[Guest]

EAllusion,

this question to you was pretty buried:

"how do you feel about an institution, say a science lab that does DNA research and declares a 'Day of Absence' where if you are not black you are directed to stay away. If a white scientist refuses to honor the black only today rule and shows up, is she a racist? Should she be fired?

And a followup question. Why would/should that research lab declare such a day in the first place?

[_RockSlider]

It was kind of interesting to note that Harris seemed guarded but leaning towards reparation where Weinstein was adamantly opposed to reparation verses reform. Call for vote, what do you guys think would be a good direction towards equality

[_Res Ipsa]

Hey, Rock. Hope you are well. I'd like to offer a little bit of context, if I may. Evergreen is not an elite private university. It is a public school. In fact, tuition is something like 2/3 of what it costs to attend the University of Washington or Washington State University. My eldest son graduated from there and I have two nieces who go to school there are are close to graduating.

To succeed there, students have to be extremely self-motivated. The education isn't spoon fed to students. I've known students who go there expecting a traditional university experience and who wash out very early. Students don't just take classes -- they plan a course of study in tandem with the professors, and often put together an individual major that may draw from many different areas of study. And if students put the effort in, they get an excellent education. Certainly as good as I got at a large university in California.

I know the incident you're referring to, and I think it was extremely unfortunate. The school is very left politically, but based on my own experience, what this particular professor experienced in that short period of time is not typical. But, from your description, it sounds like the guy is trying to build a career out of a bad encounter a few years ago with a group of students who got carried away. He's waving around every scary boogeyman on the left and trying to craft a story out of it that I don't think holds water. And he's got you and I'm assuming others worried that some kind of conspiracy involving BLM and critical theory is going to destroy the Republic (whatever that actually means).

As I understand it, the Day of Absence for years involved only white people showing up at Evergreen and the black folks staying away for a day. One year the black folks asked to flip the script, and everybody ended up going loony tunes, including white supremacists vandalizing it and threatening to shoot people. Not good days for anyone.

But, since the incident at Evergreen, has there been an epidemic of black folks demanding that their fellow white employees stay home for a work day? Is there actually a DNA lab where this happened? Did the black folks explain why they were asking their co-workers to stay home for a day? Did a white scientist show up anyway. Was she called a racist? Was she fired? Or is this a professor projecting the horrors of a dystopian future based on a terrible experience he had a few years ago?

And I am sorry, but I don't look to youtube for presentation of good ideas. Is there a transcript?

[_RockSlider]

Hey, Rock. Hope you are well. I'd like to offer a little bit of context, if I may. Evergreen is not an elite private university. It is a public school. In fact, tuition is something like 2/3 of what it costs to attend the University of Washington or Washington State University. My eldest son graduated from there and I have two nieces who go to school there are are close to graduating.

To succeed there, students have to be extremely self-motivated. The education isn't spoon fed to students. I've known students who go there expecting a traditional university experience and who wash out very early. Students don't just take classes -- they plan a course of study in tandem with the professors, and often put together an individual major that may draw from many different areas of study. And if students put the effort in, they get an excellent education. Certainly as good as I got at a large university in California.

Hey RI. It is good to hear from all of you, it seems like it's been a long time. In the congressional hearing Weinstein bounced back and forth in a discussion about some private verse public college examples and I obviously got that confused. I also got lazy with the word elite where I could not easily define how he explained how that college works. I suppose I should have a least used the word unique. I'm sorry for the misrepresentations here.

I know the incident you're referring to, and I think it was extremely unfortunate. The school is very left politically, but based on my own experience, what this particular professor experienced in that short period of time is not typical. But, from your description, it sounds like the guy is trying to build a career out of a bad encounter a few years ago with a group of students who got carried away. He's waving around every scary boogeyman on the left and trying to craft a story out of it that I don't think holds water. And he's got you and I'm assuming others worried that some kind of conspiracy involving BLM and critical theory is going to destroy the Republic (whatever that actually means).

I can't say as to Weinsteins motives and part of why I'm asking around here what people think. He mentioned that he had won a settlement and had bounced back professionally. I assumed he had taken work at another university. I have not researched what he has been doing since.

As I understand it, the Day of Absence for years involved only white people showing up at Evergreen and the black folks staying away for a day. One year the black folks asked to flip the script, and everybody ended up going loony tunes, including white supremacists vandalizing it and threatening to shoot people. Not good days for anyone.

Interesting, I did not pick up on this flip in what I have listened to and read.

But, since the incident at Evergreen, has there been an epidemic of black folks demanding that their fellow white employees stay home for a work day? Is there actually a DNA lab where this happened? Did the black folks explain why they were asking their co-workers to stay home for a day? Did a white scientist show up anyway. Was she called a racist? Was she fired? Or is this a professor projecting the horrors of a dystopian future based on a terrible experience he had a few years ago?

Bret notes around 24 minutes in that Nature, Journal of Nature, Science Magazine, Cal Tech etc. have all called for the STEM shutdown day a week or so back. See https://www.sciencealert.com/researcher ... lack-lives where they are indeed calling for whites to stay home. In quickly browsing that link I'm not seeing that a day has been set perhaps only being called for at this time, so it is yet unknown if a white scientist will show up (but bret did in the same circumstance), yet unknown if potential scientist will be called a racist and fired (but bret was in the same circumstance).

It was mentioned that people have been losing their jobs over publicly stating 'all lives matter'

My questions still remains however, for this call for a shut down or any future such calls. Heck they stand just as well as theoretical questions

You seem to be denigrating Weinsteins experience. Perhaps you could watch a couple of shorter videos and comment on them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cMYfxOFBBM
They basically held the president hostage as shown in the later half of the above 7 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRIKJCKWla4
Start at 1min 18 secs for the duration of the included video on the president.

And I am sorry, but I don't look to youtube for presentation of good ideas. Is there a transcript?

This is spread over several videos and articles as one might google 'Evergreen protest'

[_honorentheos]

Hi Rock,

Weinstein is one of a small number of professors who have become famous due to conflicts with students/University administrations over issues seen as promoting a left-wing agenda. Surveying the landscape for others, I think Jordan Peterson is probably the most widely known due to really hitting the media circuits. His public profile rose over opposition to Canadian laws regarding gender discrimination. He's fairly religious and his public positions seem to be largely grounded in religious conservatism. He got famous and is doing so well making money being a public figure, including having a best selling book, he suspended his teaching schedule.

My view of Weinstein is influenced by my view of Peterson which is, he is resisting change first out of gut instinct, and then using his education to confabulate the rationale for why. That said, the movements on colleges of self-righteous students who favor authoritarian imposition of their views over others is the mirror of this. And that happens. I mean, they're kids. The term sophomoric exists for a reason. It's another thing to seek for change, demand debate when the institution resists considering change, and standing up for that to happen. And I think a fair amount of what Peterson and that crowd decry is legitimate honest interest in seeking positive change that they ( especially Peterson) reject and cry "postmodernism!" or whatever their label of choice is when really their being resistant to change is based on no more reasonable position than it rubs them wrong.

The real question is in the role universities play in helping educate and direct that enthusiasm, curiousity, activism, and quest for wisdom in the path towards learning to learn. That seems to be where much of the smoke exists in the debates. It seems to me there is a lot of variety at that point between universities and student bodies, too. Marketplace of ideas and what, right?

[_EAllusion]

EAllusion,

this question to you was pretty buried:

"how do you feel about an institution, say a science lab that does DNA research and declares a 'Day of Absence' where if you are not black you are directed to stay away. If a white scientist refuses to honor the black only today rule and shows up, is she a racist? Should she be fired?

And a followup question. Why would/should that research lab declare such a day in the first place?

There's a few questions here. I think "day without" days are generally good and probably at their best in the context of immigrants whose contributions can be underappreciated. The day without latinos in Wisconsin a couple years back was legitimately great. Inverting that isn't something I like as a general practice as the whole point is to highlight the importance of classes of people in your life, though I can see if you inverted it and asked everyone else to skip work just one time you could turn something that has gotten stale into something significant again if these are done routinely. Routine is the enemy of awareness strategies. Coupling it with some form of outside of work awareness seems like a better version of "diversity trainings" that tend to be embarrassing, potentially counterproductive affairs, so killing two birds with one stone sounds like it could possibly work. It depends on how it is handled.

If there's culture of doing this and someone decides to go against the grain, they sound like they're a jerk unless there's some specific story explaining why they need to be at work that justifies something fairly simple. That's possible, so I wouldn't form a judgment until I knew more. Racist? Maybe, maybe not. Hard to know.

To the bigger issue, focusing on this specific story as a harbinger of censorious leftist takeover just doesn't make any sense. It's hard to even construct how you can get from point A to point B on this one.

[_Res Ipsa]

Hey Rock, thanks for the reply. No apology necessary. We all get facts sideways. I'll watch the shorter videos and get back to you. But I just wanted to note that the STEM Shutdown was not a day were white folks stayed home and black folks showed up at work. It was a call for a one-day strike by academics to show solidarity with black folks. The time at home was suggested to be used to think about and plan ways to reduce racism in academia. I saw folks of all races promote it on Twitter, and I'm confident that everyone in academia didn't stay home that day. I don't recall anyone claiming that people who chose not to participate were racist.

[_RockSlider]

I did spend too much time early on in listening to various Peterson debates. In briefly looking for what Bret has been up to the last three years it appears to be as honor suggests, he has moved to podcasting. It appears I have been caught up with a tempest in a tea pot as to the impending downfall.

However, the potential McCarthyism fear driven decisions and consequences of hot PC issues still concerns me and this thread has been good for me to consider and observe those things about it which justify for me that concern.

[_RockSlider]

Hey Rock, thanks for the reply. No apology necessary. We all get facts sideways. I'll watch the shorter videos and get back to you. But I just wanted to note that the STEM Shutdown was not a day were white folks stayed home and black folks showed up at work. It was a call for a one-day strike by academics to show solidarity with black folks. The time at home was suggested to be used to think about and plan ways to reduce racism in academia. I saw folks of all races promote it on Twitter, and I'm confident that everyone in academia didn't stay home that day. I don't recall anyone claiming that people who chose not to participate were racist.

No need for your review, I think honors above suggestions suffice. I've made enough noise. So this one-day-strike did happen?