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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: 0.22s | 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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1. kurikuri ◴[04 Apr 25 20:59 UTC] No.43587542[source]▶
This false equivalency, if you honestly believe it, is shallow at best.

The ‘left’ has identified speech that is likely used to belittle or negate someone else’s existence and will appropriately label it as hate speech. Any structural changes to make these words frowned upon have taken years to get into place; people were allowed to adjust (and the length of time to do so is ridiculous in its own right), and what little change has happened did so in a way where the people who must change are barely inconvenienced. There have been few legal repercussions for the use of hate speech by anyone with a modicum of power. Sure, you could identify a few, but there are a ludicrous number of flagrant violations of any such laws (which are few) which go unpunished. The ‘left’ here being any sane member of society which has publicly pointed out that certain words are singularly incendiary.

Meanwhile, the grifters of this ‘right’ have conned the honest conservatives into believing that DEI is a term of hatred against conservatives. The ‘right’ has identified that they wish to say whatever without punishment and are structurally creating a cost for using inclusive language in any official capacity. The grifting part of the ‘right’ also doesn’t mind breaking any semblance of stability for everyone else. The ‘right’ here being the near-narcissistic people who have happened upon positions of privilege and believe that they are superior, have earned it, and that only those similar to themselves should ever attain such a position in the future.

But no, you have reduced your observation to ‘two sides are banning words.’