> On November 26, this suggestion became a mandate: The student was informed that he must be evaluated by psychological services before returning to classes.
You know that something’s wrong when someone is forced to be psychologically evaluated for asking uncomfortable questions. This entire story looks like something straight out of a dystopia.
Going to university in the USA these days sounds like an absolutely terrifying prospect, and doesn't sound very promising for the future of the country.
I went back to school to take a couple classes at a public school in a red state. It definitely has changed but it wasn't that bad.
My observations around this:
* Lots more platitudes. Nearly every teacher in the CS department had signs on their doors about being an inclusive zone or standing for social justice. Seems like it would have been easier to just make a big sign that says, "The CS department is inclusive and promotes equity."
* Early in President Trump's tenure they designated an area as a safe-space. This is honestly the first actual safe-space I had run into, despite hearing about them endlessly in culture wars news. I personally don't mind a politics free zone.
* I had to take a mandatory title ix training. It used words I don't normally bump into but have been targets for the right like "trigger warnings" and "microaggressions". I wrote the title ix coordinator (simply because it felt like a waste of time) and asked if I could skip it because I had already done 8 years of college without running afoul of school rules and she told me no.
That was about it. So I'm not sure how endemic the problem is but my anecdata was it's not too much to fret over. My personal sense here is that the media likes to report these stories because they are "man bites dog" stories.
There shouldn’t be any “sensitive” issues in a university context. These “universities” look more like re-education centers than educational institutions.
All those “sensitive” issues are plain ideological ideas and some people want those ideas to prevail by suppressing all conversation around them.
I think the discussion about this already over, i.e. it's now a part of the social contract that we don't question certain things, not because they're true or false but because of social cost of challenging them. For example, we know that the distribution of certain psychological traits in both genders is a bit different, but discussing it - either in the social context or the academia - is more or less a taboo in order to protect the vulnerable, and in part also because of the expectations of desirable traits in today society [0]. For the same reason, nobody in the right mind would organize a study of IQ differences between races, and if someone was stupid enough, their professional life in the academia (and probably beyond) would be finished.
In general, in the West any study of relationships between the aspect of the body (any inherent traits) and the mind/psyche is forbidden. A few years ago the Chinese published their famous study of facial traits of convinced criminals. [1] The result was that there were more variations from the mean among the convicts than the rest of the population. Of course everybody criticized the study as unethical and minority-reportesque.
The only danger I see is that by effectively renouncing to analyze any links between the body and mind we might lose some important insights, and the vulnerable groups could also greatly benefit from discovering these. But the danger that the result of this kind of research will be used against us is not negligible, as the history shows.
It's not actually taboo at all to discuss variation in psychological traits between genders. There are innumerable academic studies of gender differences in all kinds of domains. No-one, to any significant extent, is stopping these papers from being published, or calling for this kind of research to cease. Similarly, there are endless articles about gender differences in mainstream news publications.
What is controversial is using cherry-picked scientific results to tell just-so stories about why the gender distribution in certain fields is imbalanced.
The recent cultural trend towards radical liberalism is inherently dystopian. Fighting free speech, mandating psychological evaluation for questioning the main narrative. These are things that dictatorships and theocracies do
Is it necessarily radical liberalism that tends towards a dystopia? I was curious where this sentiment was coming from (I’ve read it elsewhere) and read some books on conservative philosophy (original post-enlightenment conservatism, not contemporary) and found it there too. It seemed like you could replace “radical liberalism” with “radical $ideology” including conservatism, the problem isn’t liberalism, it’s extremism.
That's a great point. My point was very specific, I didn't comment on whether or not other ideologies also lead to a dystopian end, or whether radical liberalism is the only one.
It's probably academic/semantic/subjective. Very interesting to think about
The reason why I personally flagged this story is not because it is outrage porn – I think it obviously is, but that's not why I flagged it.
I flagged it because it misrepresented the very source you now linked. Quote:
> For the purposes of ruling on Defendants' motion to dismiss, the Court accepts as true the following allegations set forth in the amended complaint and attached exhibits.
This court decision did not side with the plaintiff, nor has the court spend a second thinking about whether his allegations are or could be true. A motion to dismiss simply says "Hey, even if we take everything at face value here, this case can't win".
The article misrepresents this as the court siding with the plaintiff. That did not happen. I can't know if that's an honest misunderstanding or deception; but in any case it shows that the author did not understand the court decision, as he evidently didn't take into account the premise I quoted above.
The very fact that this comment has to engage in a theatre of objectivity (I can't know if that's an honest misunderstanding or deception; the post in flagged on some technicality despite intuition) when it is very clear this post is outrage porn is PRECISELY why micro-aggressions are a problem without fully stating it: coded language.
Once coded language is on the table, there is absolutely no statement that can be decided as misunderstanding or deception, and thus the gaslighting retort of "you, the accuser, must be misunderstanding/projecting", but also, the prevalent fear amongst certain non-Black males that "people will just make something up to get me"/"I will be
unprotected".
There's no satisfactory resolution to coded language in the legal domain because it is a purely ethical problem. The real problem in America isn't "them/the other side", its that no one, as far as I can tell, actually values or can actually imagine a world where we can and do live together without hegemony.
I'm very reminded of Neil DeGrasse Tyson arguing with Rogan on JRE about tourist litter in the Himalayas: you either value ending and cleaning-up the pollution, and all other solutions flow from this, or you don't. But everyone's just hand-waving the elephant in the room.
I missed the source on this and thought it said Reuters, but partway through I had to look back up because the bias was over there top. Only then did I realize it was Reason which explained the clearly one sided writing I had just read. For example there is no evidence presented that shows he remained calm, yet it was clearly stated that he did multiple times. While I have no reason to doubt it, I have no reason to trust it either.
I sensed the same one-sidedness in the writing. Fortunately, they link to the recording, which I highly recommend listening to if you're curious about all the nuances that can come through at the time that get missed in summaries.
I so often wonder with pieces like this: what am I missing? I mean, it’s hard to believe this was so one-sided and that he was a little angel through it all.
It could be, I suppose. And I am outraged if it is. But the question that keeps nagging me... is it?
It's perfectly possible that he was an obnoxious asshole in various ways through it all _and_ they were unreasonable in responding to him.
It's also quite possible for a university to act completely unreasonably in a conspiratorial way based on a culture of believing they don't need to obey the laws or statutes. (My university had a famous scandal a number of years ago where the person in charge of handling student sexual assault allegations simultaneously acknowledged in writing the legal obligation to report cases of possible danger to the community publicly (the allegation was of a group committing sexual assault regularly at parties) and that they weren't going to do it, after years of a reputation of covering up anyone foolish enough to report it to them, and said writing got leaked to the press. ...despite the massive public fallout from this at the time, the institutional result was to found a new org to handle sexual assault cases...and put the aforementioned official as the head of it.)
The judges ruling (allowing the trial to go ahead) says that the university claims that he made threats on web forums. They have never provided the proof to him or the judge.
These alleged threats were the basis for the banning from campus, but not the suspension. The claim is that they have been made after the suspension. A lawsuit should bring these into the air.
Listening to his questions, and the way he's asking them, he's clearly trying to provoke.
"isn't it out of my control what hurts somebody? I can punch the air, and if that makes somebody mad it's not really my problem or my fault, but if I punch them in the face and it directly hurts them I've incited at them, it's completely different"
"Where are you getting this basis from? How are you studying this, how are you gathering evidence and making presentations on it?"
There are ways to ask guests for more information about their methodology, and he failed.
Also, his core point -- there's no difference between microaggressions and unintentional rudeness -- is fucking stupid. So what if there's no difference? Changing the name from micro-aggression to unintentional rudeness doesn't change anything about how we respond when they happen.
I listened to the audio. He was a bit tactless, with some barely concealed contempt for the entire concept of microaggressions. I consider such contempt justified mind you. The thing to know is that Academics take themselves very seriously, and it is a foolish endeavour to cast doubt on their status.
This story reads a bit too outrageous. It's like a plot from a film like "God is Not Dead", with social justice warriors standing in for militant atheists.
This should raise a few eyebrows with any critical reader. And indeed, the article simply completely sides with the student and takes every allegation as already proven – going so far as discrediting the university's defence of what happened as "gaslighting".
For all we learn from the article, the student may have been increasingly hostile to a point that warranted suspension. Siding so completely with the student against the university seems to be very premature. Unfortunately, the author seems to suffer from a critical misunderstanding about what a motion to dismiss is and isn't. A motion to dismiss claims that a case can't be won even under the assumption that everything alleged is true. That's why the opinion takes everything the student claims at face value – because that's the bar for a motion to dismiss. The court did not decide that these events were factual; just that if they all were that the case has to go on.
I'm not commenting on what happened. I don't know. But the article feels quite manipulative, even under the assumption that the misrepresentation of the court's opinion is an honest mistake, this article tries to enrage the reader. Not the kind of content I would have hoped to see under a brand like "reason.com".
What is not on YouTube is literally every other part of the story. For what we know (as described in the article), it's possible that the student was always calm and rational, or that he screamed abuse at the top of the lungs to university staff; or anything in between. We simply don't know (as described in the article), so it's quite manipulative to describe the university refuting the student's claims as "gaslighting".
Please note that I said that siding completely with the student is premature. I stand by that. If everything the student alleges is true, it is an outrageous story. However, it is very clear that this article was written as outrage porn. So we should wait and see what the court conclude actually happened. After all, it's not like this is a timely case, the incident happened over two years ago.
I’m afraid that when the pendulum of public perception inevitably swings away from this insanity, a lot of the social progress we’ve done on discourse and tolerance will be lost.
If I’m reading this and saying “what these people are doing is evil, I’d like to affiliate with the opposite group of people”, I won’t have too many outlets that are not far right.
This has happened before. Read The History Man by Bradbury.
And what will happen is that being "politically unreasonable" will be unfashionable and the society will swing to an equilibrium once again. The extremists will leave or retire and the people who kept their heads down will say "they were a silly bunch". In the UK they were labelled "The Loony Left" and subject to much comedy.
To suggest that it's either one extreme or the other isn't how things will work.
@thinkingemote - Thanks for one of the best comments in this thread.
Also, part of the way this swinging back to equilibrium will work is by the left tearing each other apart with more and more demands to just accept the liberal orthodoxy handed down from on high. At each step along the way, more and more people will pop out and realize that the whole thing is flawed because it is based on the Appeal to Authority logical fallacy.
>Also, part of the way this swinging back to equilibrium will work is by the left tearing each other apart with more and more demands to just accept the liberal orthodoxy handed down from on high.
Already happening; see JK Rowling denounced as a "TERF", for example, despite having otherwise impeccable bien-pensant credentials.
I take the bus a lot in France and, in conversations I overhear, people don’t seem to mind being racist anymore, discretely but a bus is already quite public. And diverse.
I don’t know whether I have a bias about seeing this trait, but I think 10 years ago, people would at least keep social restraint. Something has definitely snapped.
It's the "inevitably" that worries me. Is it really inevitable? People are so scared to speak against these blatant abuses (because they fear losing their job, or being victims of a Twitter mob) that I don't see the public perception going anywhere, at least for now. If anything, I see these abuses being perpetrated more freely (but that might just be my perception).
Do those people try to be reasonable, or are they trying to disrupt the rest of society because, for example, they are bitter about it, have no hope, or hate the West’s evils so much that they’d rather take revenge on their own country, “for the good of humanity” (at least according to their ideology)? Which means, they are happy with pendulum swings, as long as it keeps us busy with aimless infighting, rather than being powerful and united in a war against, say, Koweit.
At one point, you have to ask whether they are trying to be logical, or whether they hope to throw despair, illogism and unfairness in all layers of society, because of entrenched hate of something.
I’ve read the lawsuit and it’s absolutely nuts. The student is being punished for asking reasonable questions that made the recipient “uncomfortable.” UVA needs to lose this case badly because their reaction has gone far beyond normal discourse and into suppression of reasonable speech. Just because you don’t like a question does not mean you can kill the messenger.
To be honest, the raw case is even worse than the article. Little excerpt :
> During Bhattacharya and Peterson's one-hour meeting, Peterson "barely mentioned" Bhattacharya's questions and comments at the panel discussion. Dkt. 33 ¶ 73. Instead, Peterson attempted to determine Bhattacharya's "views on various social and political issues—including sexual assault, affirmative action, and the election of President Trump." Id.
Why is it that conservatives like myself freely criticize as silly or insane the excesses of the Right (Jan 6, assertions that Covid-19 is a CIA PsyOp, Trump won the election) but the Left is so reluctant to be critical of its lunatic fringe?
I think it is because bad actors on the left are both powerful and vindictive -- even as this story illustrates.
Let's pre-empt the inevitable sub-thread: "This is a private educational establishment and they can do what they want. It is not censorship." and "If you have a problem with this, just start your own medical university".
This is why I'm glad I went to a small college with essentially zero extracurricular activity. We went to class, maybe hung out on the weekend, and that was it. No panels, no presentations, nothing. Not once was I ever screamed at by an angry student or handed any sort of flyer or pamphlet.
You know that something’s wrong when someone is forced to be psychologically evaluated for asking uncomfortable questions. This entire story looks like something straight out of a dystopia.