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A university president makes a case against cowardice

(www.newyorker.com)
450 points pseudolus | 2 comments | 03 Apr 25 12:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.423s | source
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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.

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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?
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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.

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hellotheretoday ◴[04 Apr 25 07:43 UTC] No.43579360[source]▶
Except one side of the coin complains on twitter and maybe gets you fired from your job whereas the other side of that coin systematically removes over a hundred million dollars of research grants based on language and is literally disappearing people for their writing

but yeah, same thing. sorry someone put you through the absolute hell of saying they/them at work

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jajko ◴[04 Apr 25 08:21 UTC] No.43579598[source]▶
Extremism on any side is bad, period. 'But they are worse' is sort of moot point and most people don't care about details, you simply lose normal audience and maybe gain some fringe.
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immibis ◴[04 Apr 25 08:53 UTC] No.43579775[source]▶
Telling your employer you were a dick is extremism?
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hellotheretoday ◴[04 Apr 25 10:11 UTC] No.43580205[source]▶
You can’t win with these people. They don’t care if they aren’t personally impacted. The “sjw boogeyman” that could theoretically impact their cushy livelihood matters more than the very real right wing government that exists right now and is disappearing people.

But as long as they can still say the n word on twitter and call of duty everything will be okay. Who cares about those disappeared people anyway, they weren’t even citizens

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hsiuywbs630h ◴[04 Apr 25 16:46 UTC] No.43584933[source]▶
Listen, this is not theoretical. In my realm, we had people getting in trouble for otherwise benign speech, because someone's feeling matter more than basic.common sense. The pendulum has swung pretty hard not because sjw bogeyman, but because it has gotten to the point people skilled in ignoring corporate idiocy had enough AND the chronic complainers were demanding increasing superpowers.
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1. adamc ◴[04 Apr 25 18:40 UTC] No.43586231[source]▶
"Getting in trouble" at work and being disappeared are so freaking different that there is no discussing it. If you cannot see a difference, you are blind.
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2. iugtmkbdfil834 ◴[05 Apr 25 00:13 UTC] No.43589090[source]▶
Hmm. Allow me to offer a counter perspective. You are arguing for a complete dismissal of someone's point of view, because you perceive the presented argument to be not an appropriate comparison. However, your response is that the conversation should be shut down and not address the points given. I do not think anyone in this thread is arguing it is not happening. Some of us are actually saying that there is a quite a slippery that we were taken down on. If it helps, it did not start in 2018 ( although some tactics did escalate in that period ).

And, I might add, in US, your work is not just your work. It is your healthcare, your network, your family's wellbeing. If you do not see why some of us consider it an issue, you, if you allow this blatant repetition of your phrase for a specific effect, are blind.