←back to thread

A university president makes a case against cowardice

(www.newyorker.com)
450 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 03 Apr 25 12:29 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
necubi ◴[03 Apr 25 23:48 UTC] No.43576821[source]▶
Oh hey, Wesleyan on HN! I’m an alumnus (matriculated a year or two after Roth became president). Wesleyan has a rich history of activism and protest, and not always entirely peaceful (Roth’s predecessor, Doug Bennet, had his office firebombed at one point).

I’ve had a few opportunities to speak with Roth since the Gaza war started, and I’ve always found him particularly thoughtful about balancing freedom of expression with a need to provide a safe and open learning environment for everyone on campus. In particular, he never gave in to the unlimited demands of protestors while still defending their right to protest.

In part, he had the moral weight to do that because—unlike many university presidents—he did not give in to the illiberal demands of the left to chill speech post-2020, which then were turned against the left over the past year.

I don’t see any particularly good outcome from any of this; the risk of damaging the incredibly successful American university system is high. Certainly smart foreign students who long dreamed of studying in the US will be having second thoughts if they can be arbitrarily and indefinitely detained.

But I hope the universities that do make it through do with a stronger commitment to the (small l) liberal values of freedom of expression , academic freedom, and intellectual diversity.

replies(7): >>43578254 #>>43578551 #>>43578928 #>>43579619 #>>43582082 #>>43585458 #>>43586399 #
kevingadd ◴[04 Apr 25 06:27 UTC] No.43578928[source]▶
People are being abducted off the street for writing tame op-eds and we're still complaining about the left chilling speech post-2020? What are we doing here?
replies(4): >>43579250 #>>43580751 #>>43581013 #>>43587658 #
decimalenough ◴[04 Apr 25 07:24 UTC] No.43579250[source]▶
The left banning the use of certain words and the right banning the use of certain words are flip sides of the same coin.

Of course, if you point that out, you get yelled at by both sides.

replies(8): >>43579289 #>>43579321 #>>43579360 #>>43579383 #>>43579749 #>>43579804 #>>43583320 #>>43587542 #
kevingadd[dead post] ◴[04 Apr 25 07:34 UTC] No.43579321[source]▶
[flagged]
nomonnai ◴[04 Apr 25 07:46 UTC] No.43579374[source]▶
It's not an equation in what it does to people. Yes, abduction is worse than being yelled at.

However, it's pointing out that the general principle has been established: "People whose opinion I don't like can be banned from society." At first, it's only removing individuals from public discourse (cancel culture), then it's removing people physically (deportation).

This is always the endgame of eroding core liberal values. This has been pointed out to the illiberal left time and time again, to no avail.

replies(3): >>43579455 #>>43579588 #>>43580473 #
1. clonedhuman ◴[04 Apr 25 10:58 UTC] No.43580473{3}[source]▶
Part of the problem here is that you're abstracting the actions of a handful of relatively powerless people to a principle: "People whose opinion I don't like can be banned from society." The 'I' here is, from your framing, the 'left' or something.

Strawman. The fired people you're talking about weren't banned from society by the people pointing them out on the internet. If someone's on an international flight yelling racial slurs and causing a commotion, and someone else publishes video of that person yelling racial slurs on an international flight, it's not the people commenting on the video who fired that person from their job. It's their employers. What would be the alternative? No one takes video of the person yelling racial slurs? Or, if the video is posted, no one comments on it? Or, maybe, the person yelling racial slurs could simply avoid losing their employment by not yelling racial slurs on a flight full of people with their phones out? Or maybe the employer could choose to ignore the negative publicity and keep the person on staff despite the risk to their revenue? Who exactly is the responsible party here?

I generally find it pointless to point out that 'right' perspectives suffer from a lack of practical logic--pointing out the fundamental irrationality of a position rarely changes the mind of the person holding that position. But, your position ignores power differential between people--your argument is a matter of 'principle,' but this isn't fundamentally about principles.

Is your argument then that a person yelling racial slurs on a full airplane shouldn't have their employment threatened by their behavior? That their employer shouldn't fire them?

replies(1): >>43585008 #