SANITYChristopher Rufo makes sure 2024 gets off to a great start: Sets up a bounty system for catching plaigarism and other academic fraud in university leadership. This might make a lot of diversity-hires crap their pants

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[–]JulienMayfair 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

Congress is hauling university presidents in to demand they shut down free speech.

More broadly, it's become a tit-for-tat game. It was leftist academics who started calling for safe spaces and speech codes in the 1990s. (I know because I was in graduate school with them.) What's become rather glaringly obvious is that speech codes and their applications have become extremely biased in favor of some groups and against others. The point behind Stefanik's questioning was really that the decision has been made that Jews aren't the right kind of minority they would need to be to qualify for the same protections as "BIPOC" and TQ+.

The best outcome would be for universities to have a reset back to the less restrictive campus speech rules of the 1980s, and that's where the university presidents fell into the trap set for them. They were deliberately placed in a position where they couldn't both defend freedom of expression and defend restrictive campus speech codes. And we could all seem them trapped and stuttering, unable to articulate principled, coherent answers.

From what I've seen, Gay's failure to cite some sources is probably minor, so they got her on technicalities. The bigger problem is how campuses privilege the sensitivities of some students over others in an attempt to perform social justice while stifling freedom of speech.

[–]Q-Continuum-kin 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I largely agree with you but I'll also add that the Kent state massacre happened and this is the government attacking students because they went against the war machine. The government doesn't care about safe spaces but you protest foreign policy and you get your school officials hauled in front of Congress.

[–]JulienMayfair 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

protest foreign policy

Yeah, but college students have been protesting U.S. foreign policy for decades with minimal reaction from the government. And if those college presidents had been able to defend their actions on principle instead of giving non-answers to direct questions, it wouldn't have gone so badly for them. Everyone watching could tell that they were being evasive. They embarrassed themselves by being so clumsy about it, and we expect better from presidents of prestigious universities.

[–]Q-Continuum-kin 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The MIT president gave a better response. I heard a good take today from Ryan Grim that some people get into majors as "busy work" in order to reach some other position in life... For example you want to be in a "leadership" role but a prerequisite is having a PhD in a related field. So the person pushes through the degree and doesn't really care about the research. They just want the piece of paper so they can apply for other positions. The Harvard president seems like she might have fit that description.

[–]OuroborosTheory 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

interestingly that's part of my thesis on how "SJWism" became so big in the 10s: there weren't any protests about foreign policy under Obama (and that was only partly because he was The First Black President): no marches for the hundreds of TWOC (triple Progressive Stack score!) murdered by narco-police in Honduras, not a damn thing against Libya, Syria, Yemen

of course college is where everyone's told they're the generation that'll set things right, that now is the time when they have the time and certitude to protest SOMETHING: but instead we got shit like "those privileged janitors on campus hanging the TP underhand is ABLEIST" blasts air horn at anyone asking why

[–]OuroborosTheory 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

it all sort of throws a high relief on the whole "someone crapped on me a hundred years ago, now I, who have never endured this, have full license to chimp out on people unrelated to the said crappage nowadays"; it's no different from the rich undergrad screaming in Christakis's face 2016 vs. the latte chick tearfully begging the bored safety officer because she felt her life was in danger from a protest across the quad, it's just that one was given a literal award and the other mocked