The New Intolerance of Student Activism

[OttoVonBismarck]

I'm mostly okay with both emails. The Yale email was phrased as a request, "think about these things before dressing up", nothing more. Basically a plea to "be nice", but you have the option to not be nice. My only nitpick with it would be the two bullet points on "deeply held faith traditions" and "deeply held cultural beliefs." To be frank, a lot of good has come of not respecting both of those things, if we took the default that we shouldn't express ourselves in ways that violate deeply held religious beliefs or cultural beliefs then the Enlightenment never would've happened, women would still be seen as chattel, and other such nonsense.

I'm more open to the idea that  blackface rarely serves any valid purpose, and is mostly just racist and rude. But mocking religion and cultural traditions should actually be encouraged by Yale, not discouraged. But again--the email is just a request, I think Yale is free to make such requests.

The second email largely just says that people should be able to act obnoxiously--and I agree with that too. I don't really think Yale or Christakis deserves condemnation for the opinions they expressed in their emails.

[The Minsky Moment]

Isn't the pushback email taking the position that people in fact have a right to be assholes, and other people don't actually HAVE to get offended by it?

I think the original "Hey, lets not be assholes" email was fine.

And I think the "Hey, you don't actually have to get all bent out of shape over people being assholes, and honestly, learning how to deal with different viewpoints is kind of important too" pushback email was fine as well.

I think this is more nuanced than that. Most ethnicity-based Halloween costumes are in fact not equivalents of black face, as the original email was implying.

Right so then it becomes a question of using one's judgment.  Apparently there had been problems in the past about that.  Hence the letter saying use good judgment.

Total dog bites man story, nothing to see.  I'm glad Berkut caught the irony of a piece ostensibly about hysterical over-reaction which itself is hysterically over-reacting.

[The Minsky Moment]

Oh I agree. To me this isn't really about the first email as much as the fact that the guy got pilloried for the second email by some angry bitch.

So a young black woman got angry in public and the video got uploaded to YouTube and that is the cause for outrage??
I see outbursts like that every week involving cab drivers etc just walking around in midtown Manhattan.

[crazy canuck]

Oh I agree. To me this isn't really about the first email as much as the fact that the guy got pilloried for the second email by some angry bitch.

So a young black woman got angry in public and the video got uploaded to YouTube and that is the cause for outrage??
I see outbursts like that every week involving cab drivers etc just walking around in midtown Manhattan.

You could retire if you put those on Youtube

[grumbler]

So a young black woman got angry in public and the video got uploaded to YouTube and that is the cause for outrage??
I see outbursts like that every week involving cab drivers etc just walking around in midtown Manhattan.

Are angry cab drivers also "more a cause to fear for the future than ISIS?"

[alfred russel]

Are angry cab drivers also "more a cause to fear for the future than ISIS?"

Probably, since my demise is more likely to be connected to the former.

[Admiral Yi]

So a young black woman got angry in public and the video got uploaded to YouTube and that is the cause for outrage??
I see outbursts like that every week involving cab drivers etc just walking around in midtown Manhattan.

You went to college.  How many times did you see a student screaming at a professor in public?

[Martinus]

It gets better:

Black Lives Matter protesters berate white students studying at Dartmouth library

Roughly 150 Black Lives Matter protesters reportedly stormed a library at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, Thursday night to berate students studying there for their supposed racial privilege.

The Dartmouth Review, an independent newspaper at the private Ivy League college, reported that protesters marched into the Baker-Berry Library shouting profanity and berating white students

Protesters reportedly shouted "F– you, you filthy white f–-" "f– you and your comfort" and "f– you, you racist s–."

"Throngs of protesters converged around fellow students who had not joined in their long march," The Review reported. "They confronted students who bore 'symbols of oppression' such as 'gangster hats' and Beats-brand headphones. The flood of demonstrators opened the doors of study spaces with students reviewing for exams. Those who tried to close their doors were harassed further. One student abandoned the study room and ran out of the library. The protesters followed her out of the library, shouting obscenities the whole way."

Men and women were pushed and shoved by the group, the newspaper claimed.

One woman was reportedly pinned to a wall by protesters who shouted "filthy white b–-" in her face.

The tactics, tone, and words of the Black Lives Matter protesters eerily mirrored everything they claim to stand against," writes The Review. "The long list of their clear oversteps should spark a moment of reckoning for every honest onlooker, and especially those who have sympathized with their movement to this point."

One video taken from the incident, published by Campus Reform, showed the contentious scene when dozens of people chanting "black lives matter" overtook an area of the library. One woman is seen raising her middle finger at the camera, while another confronts the camera-holder on whether he believes black lives matter.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/nov/16/black-lives-matter-protesters-berate-white-student/#

[garbon]

Okay yes, that is unequivocally awful and detrimental.

[garbon]

Btw, is it just me or does the Washington Times site look like crap with all the advertisements everywhere?

[Valmy]

That makes no sense. I guess they were mad that people were studying and not out there marching?

And what is a 'gangster hat'? Man it would suck to pay an assload for overpriced headphones like Beats only to discover they are symbols of oppression.

I don't know. The whole thing sounds too absurd to believe.

[Martinus]

I used to think that SJW may be misguided or sometimes heavy handed but that ultimately their intentions are right ones. Now I am not sure any more.

I am coming to a conclusion that they are simply antisocial assholes who have found a socially acceptable way to bully and attack people with impunity. It seems to me that they do not seem to be interested in spreading their message or convincing the unconvinced to their cause - they seem to be solely interested in destroying other people for some more or less imaginary wrong.

[grumbler]

it is the nature of a mob to take on the worst characteristics of its worst members, because individual members of the mob think that they aren't responsible for their actions; the rest of the mob is.

Mob mentality is as present on electronic media as in face-to-face. 

We even see its vague echoes here: Berkut or I or someone like us says something that is correct but unpopular, the usual gang indulges themselves in the usual dogpile, then Minsky agrees with us and the same dogpile scrambles to agree with him.  It is fascinating and amusing.

Nothing we do here has any real comparison with what is happening in the case cited, or the virtual lynching of Tim Hunt, but there are a lot of people here that cannot say that they'd never be part of an online mob.

[Valmy]

I used to think that SJW may be misguided or sometimes heavy handed but that ultimately their intentions are right ones. Now I am not sure any more.

I am coming to a conclusion that they are simply antisocial assholes who have found a socially acceptable way to bully and attack people with impunity. It seems to me that they do not seem to be interested in spreading their message or convincing the unconvinced to their cause - they seem to be solely interested in destroying other people for some more or less imaginary wrong.

You know how it is. The most radical and extreme members alienate and purge the moderates in any movement. Lafayette was once in the Jacobin club.

[The Minsky Moment]

I used to think that SJW may be misguided or sometimes heavy handed but that ultimately their intentions are right ones. Now I am not sure any more.

Marti there is nothing new about this - in fact is minor league, pussycat kind of stuff compared to student antics during the protest heyday of the late 60s.  It is the sort of "transgressive" adolescent behavior that Christakis was talking about in her poorly judged email. 

Funny though that Dr. Dre is now the fount of symbolic oppression.