I would encourage you to read why Stallman resigned from MIT [1]. The emails that were “leaked” were not private discussions. They were sent to email lists that included everyone in CSAIL and to be frank, were awful.
He apologized for all this, though. His initial comments read, to me, as basically someone who is pretty clueless about those topics. But this is the exact kind of speech that should be protected- he wasn't trying to offend or antagonize people, but voicing his philosophy/opinions. He then heard other people's perspectives and they seem to have led him to him reassessing his own, which is how this sort of thing should work, instead of publicly shaming or what have you.
Personally, I wouldn't require or expect an apology either, but as the OP said, the discussion was sent out to CSAIL mailing lists which hardly seems like the proper venue. I don't think social graces are Stallman's strong suit, but most people would know blunt discussion of pedophilia/sexual assault in that manner would probably offend a number of people in this public setting - nobody signs up for those lists expecting this sort of discussion - so I think an apology was in order [but shouldn't have been a requirement to keep his position].
He was hypothesizing their motives, and definitely down-playing the severity of the abuses, which understandably could offend people who have been in similar situations. I think part of his message was "don't jump to conclusions" which is good, but he went a lot further than that. In a leadership role, he should strive to be as unoffensive as possible imho - he doesn't want to alienate people.
That makes sense. Then perhaps a "retraction" would be better with a statement it wasn't the correct forum for such a discussion.
On your second point however I must disagree.
I'm afraid being inoffensive is a losing battle. If people see you try to avoid offense they simply start nitpicking harder. Desire to not offend should never stifle academic speech.
No, I agree with you in general, and from an ideological point of view, but from a practical standpoint, you have to choose your battles - I think it's usually worth the effort, even when it seems tedious, to go out of your way to not offend people you're working with in order to reach your goals.
Plus, once you've offended someone, you have very little chance of influencing them. Once you've established mutual respect, people won't take things you say in bad faith, so discussing controversial topics can actually be a discussion instead of a heated argument.
People shouldn't, in general, have to resign for their mis-steps, even if somebody gets offended. Who benefits from a society where a mistake or unpopular view ends your career?
That depends heavily on the severity of the mistake or the nature of the unpopular view.
I personally like Google's approach to this internally: mistakes are to be expected and are often a sign of bad process, not faulty people. But egregious repetition of mistakes of the same kind indicates a failure to learn and grow that can slate someone for dismissal, and treating one's coworkers as less than human is also a short path to the door.
(There are some outliers also. Crafting yourself into a walking Title VII violation ties the company's hands regardless of whether they'd be willing to let an employee grow and change, because the law isn't structured that way).
But what if their unpopular views are rooted in evidence, yet goes against what's morally fashionable (at present)? Who would adjudicate this and why should we trust their judgement, especially when bad optics could become a concern?
For instance, biological sex is binary/bimodal for all intents and purposes. It is discrete, and very much not a spectrum. However, there are activists who are trying to override empirical findings to justify their ideas about gender (I have no horse in this race). Furthermore, their voices have found a home in organisations like big tech. In such a case, and given the zeal of these activists, wouldn't someone who remark that sex is binary (in a casual conversation about biology) be punished? Or to put it more precisely, how can we trust those in authority to fairly judge that the innocent remark made isn't a "mistake"?
In a climate where "speech is violence" and "intent doesn't matter", people are free to project their views onto others and accuse them of tall crimes. Without free speech, the case I've mentioned above seems likely to end up in unjust persecution. Unfortunately, my hypothetical scenario isn't theoretical, but has happened in academia already. The system you proposed doesn't seem immune to this.
> For instance, biological sex is binary/bimodal for all intents and purposes. It is discrete, and very much not a spectrum.
This is such an interesting example for why free speech protections are important, but good faith discussion culture is even more important.
The first sentence is correct, the second isn't, when taken literally. The overall thrust of the statement still has merit, but it pays to be careful about one's phrasing.
To be clear, biology is messy and there are exceptions, which is why biological sex is not literally discrete in the sense that, say, binary logic is discrete. But it's also fairly reasonable to say that this is one of those cases where the exceptions confirm the time: There is a spectrum, it's just incredibly focused around two points.
The two extreme groups around this discussion both completely distort this nuanced observation. On the one side, you've got people that pretend that because the bimodality isn't perfect, it doesn't matter at all (and saying that it matters is hate!). On the other side, you've got people who pretend that there is no nuance to the bimodality (and many of them do actually hate people who don't fit perfectly into the binary).
It's pretty frustrating (to put it mildly), and free speech or lack of it has nothing to do with why it's frustrating.
> The two extreme groups around this discussion both completely distort this nuanced observation.
AFAIU one group think gender should be a social construct, rather than a biological one. I don't this whole debate has even been about the 0.1%(?) who are not XX or XY.
> AFAIU one group think gender should be a social construct, rather than a biological one.
No, one group, pretty much without exception, recognizes that gender always has been a social construct, and that it has historically been socially constructed differently in different culture. The other side may or may not recognize that; that’s not actually the point of disagreement. The point of disagreement is that the first side things that the proper social construction of ascribed gender is to align it with the subject’s gender identity. The other side, whether they frame it in terms of “gender isn’t real, only biological sex is”, “gender should reflect biological sex”, or in any of a variety of other terms, believes that the correct social construction of ascribed gender is that it should be based on some aspect or combination of aspects of biological sex (often based on a stereotype that elides the fact that choosing different aspects of biological sex for this purpose would result in different assignments.)
[Members of the first group may, in fact, view gender identity as a biological sex trait, in which case their disagreement with the second group can be viewed as a disagreement over which aspect of biological sex should be the basis.]
> I don’t this whole debate has even been about the 0.1%(?) who are not XX or XY.
Not being XX or XY isn’t the only biological divergence from simplistic stereotypes of biological sex that occurs.
It's not just about XX or XY. It is about many other biological features that are correlated with XX and XY, but not 100% correlated.
Besides the big one (penis vs vagina) there are things like the rest of the reproductive system, breast size and functionality, brain structures, muscle function, bone structure, facial features, and others.
These develop at different times during fetal development, and don't have to all come out "male" or "female".
In programming terms it is like XX/XY is a master setting for a complex distributed system, and then there are a bunch of flags that control implementation of that master setting in various subsystems of the distributed system which are "supposed" to all be set if the master setting is XX and all clear if it is XY, but sometimes you end up with some set and some clear.
> AFAIU one group think gender should be a social construct, rather than a biological one.
No, gender critical people very much don’t want gender to be a biological construct - they find the idea of innate biological masculinity or femininity appallingly regressive. They prefer to think of men and women as primarily unique individuals, ones who are incidentally sexed purely for reproductive purposes ie not for social ones.
> AFAIU one group think gender should be a social construct, rather than a biological one
Gender is a social construct by definition.
This all starts with the purely descriptive observation that when you analyze the informal man/woman distinction that exists de facto in society, there is a component that is inherently biological (visible traits, hormonal differences, etc.) and a component that is arbitrary social convention (clothing, color schemes, etc.). Having different terms for those components helps, and so the first one is called sex and the second is called gender.
This is all purely descriptive and I don't think anybody reasonable has major disagreements about it on either side of this topic.
The question is whether and what kind of normative conclusions one can or should draw from the observation.
For example, very conservative folks would make the normative statement that gender expressions must align with sex (women can't wear pants, men can't wear dresses, that sort of thing). There are two major strikes against this position as far as I'm concerned: first, it's clearly very illiberal; second, even ignoring the illiberalism, it doesn't leave room for the few people who, through no fault of their own, don't fall neatly into the sex binary. Those folks are left in a Kafkaesque situation of having no real way of complying with such a rule.
Some trans activists also make questionable normative statements, such as "transwomen are women". That's a normative statement because it implies that the word "woman" should be used to refer to a person's gender instead of a person's sex. It's no wonder they clash with some feminists who point out that, while there may be significant overlap, the life experiences of transwomen are generally not the same as those of women (in the sex sense), and there are situations where the distinction matters.
>
It is discrete, and very much not a spectrum. However, there are activists who are trying to override empirical findings to justify their ideas about gender (I have no horse in this race).
"Lysenko's assertion that all science is class-oriented in nature."
Stalin Russia had Lysenko's Science. We have Critical Race Theory. Though not to the same extreme, we are seeing seeds of Ideology taking root in the west.
It sounds like you may be alluding to Damore's situation.
I had a side-row seat to that event, and that's what I meant by "Walking Title VII violation." For American law, the question of the capabilities of men and women is settled and a workplace is not the venue to question it.
Believe me, there were plenty in Google who were willing to give Damore a second chance, but (a) being offered that second chance, he refused to step back from his position and (b) the lawyers made it very clear the consequences for the company would be... Unfortunate, in the courts, if they were perceived to be supporting him.
(And, to be clear... None of that implies he was right, either. Sometimes, there are things you "can't" say because they're both wrong and hurtful, not because they're secret taboo wisdom.)
That sounds nice, but then look at James Damore. I don't think he treated anyone less than human. He had an unpopular opinion and Google cowered to activists
Due to the nature of Google's approach to self-management, his "unpopular opinion" immediately constituted creation of a Title-VII hostile work environment. Google didn't have a lot of options when he chose not to back down.
He can certainly support his opinion, but he can't do it in the context of an American workplace by law.
We don't have to guess because while a final NLRB ruling on the topic was not given (due to Damore withdrawing his labor complaint for unlawful termination), the published memorandum from Jayme Sophir regarding the case suggests strongly that judges would have ruled Damore's speech unprotected and, therefore, the termination legal.
"""
[] statements about immutable traits linked to sex—such as women’s heightened neuroticism and men’s prevalence at the top of the IQ distribution—were discriminatory and constituted sexual harassment, notwithstanding [] effort to cloak [] comments with “scientific” references and analysis, and notwithstanding “not all women” disclaimers... Once the memorandum was shared publicly, at
least two female engineering candidates withdrew from consideration and explicitly named the memo as their reason for doing so. Thus, while much of the Charging Party’s memorandum was likely protected, the statements regarding biological differences between the sexes were so harmful, discriminatory, and disruptive as to be unprotected.
"""
Both of those links straight up lie about what Stallman said. The first even accurately quotes him and then proceeds to directly lie about what it just quoted.
Still now I fail to see how these emails could be intrepreted any other way than someone being pedantic with legal terms. Not good timing, yes. But there is no trace of malice. You'll read this as a defense of epstein or child trafficking if you want to read it as such, not if you're reading what's written. Are people incapable of keeping their heads cool and holding off their a priori judgments when reading something?