The Real problem with cancel culture

[The Brain]

So MIT is a joke. Good to know.

[garbon]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/why-latest-campus-cancellation-different/620352/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR1aBPV2tVCBdG6NfpQxWUf0EuCZaVXTw83dKPm7oyWQrDB-p-hr10M7OAA

The latest in the ongoing embarassment of cancel culture in higher education.

Summary: Well known climate scientist is invited to give a lecture at MIT about his research, which he accepts.

Twitter mob finds out that he contribute to a Newsweek article in the past arguing against the utility and advisability of affirmative action in admissions and hiring of faculty:

Back in August, Abbot and a colleague criticized affirmative action and other ways to give candidates for admission or employment a leg up on the basis of their ethnic or racial identity in Newsweek. In their place, Abbot advocated what he calls a Merit, Fairness, and Equality (MFE) framework in which applicants would be "treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone." This, Abbot emphasized, would also entail "an end to legacy and athletic admission advantages, which significantly favor white applicants."

Meanwhile, Abbot's beliefs about affirmative action, right or wrong, are similar to those held by the majority of the American population. According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, for example, 74 percent of Americans believe that, in making hiring decisions, companies and organizations should "only take qualifications into account, even if it results in less diversity"; just 24 percent agreed that they should "also take race and ethnicity into account in order to increase diversity." Similarly, in a 2020 referendum on affirmative action, 57 percent of voters in California—a very liberal state that also happens to be majority minority—voted to uphold a ban on the practice.

So, a professor and noted scholar on climate change was dis-invited to speak because the twitter mob demanded it. Because of course he must be some kind of racist is if is against affirmative action.

The kicker here however is that he wasn't invited to even talk about affirmative action! Climate change has nothing to do with his views on the subject at all, and he was not planning on even bringing the Newsweek article up...because he would be talking about climate change, not affirmative action.

Not that there is any such thing as cancel culture of course.

Yep sounds like his ability to participate in society is now over.

[Berkut]

As long as he has not actually been put in prison or shot, I guess there isn't anything to worry about.

[DGuller]

Yep sounds like his ability to participate in society is now over.

I find your blasé attitude about clear examples of punishing people for wrongthink deeply disturbing.

[Josquius]

That sounds dumb yep.
But hardly being executed in the street.
You're looking the wrong way for examples of the dangers of cancel culture.

[PDH]

I find your blasé attitude about clear examples of punishing people for wrongthink deeply disturbing.

People have always been punished for "wrongthink" in social groups.  It is one of the functions of those groups to monitor itself.

The issue is as Berkut has pointed out, that there is a suddenly appearing and not yet understood method of a very small group able to demand quite vocally that their interpretation of correct for a larger group, an that needs to be addressed right now.  That is not how societies have worked in the past.  Either we are seeing a seismic shift in how social groups function, or this twitter outrage will be understood, internalized, and not long be the flashpoint it is now.

I myself am not a sage, I can't say how this will turn out, but being in the center of it creates a sense of both danger of the unknown, and a wait an see attitude - and those are incongruous enough to make it tough to do.

[The Brain]

Society has AIDS. There is not a functioning immune system to deal with disruptive elements.

[PDH]

Society has AIDS. There is not a functioning immune system to deal with disruptive elements.

That may well be, and it has been so before.  In that case there are Times of Troubles ahead as something new is remade or we all go away.

[garbon]

A man couldn't speak once and the world has fallen?

[The Brain]

A man couldn't speak once and the world has fallen?

[Berkut]

A man couldn't speak once and the world has fallen?

So now the argument has moved from "there is no such thing as cancel culture" to "there is such a thing, but it's actually fine"?

[DGuller]

A man couldn't speak once and the world has fallen?

More accurately, many men and women can't speak candidly ever on certain issues if their opinion is not the correct one, because they get to see examples of what happens if they do.  Our world as we know it depends on freedom of speech (the concept, not the First Amendment), so it can indeed fall when that's not longer the value we live by.

[Barrister]

The kicker here however is that he wasn't invited to even talk about affirmative action! Climate change has nothing to do with his views on the subject at all, and he was not planning on even bringing the Newsweek article up...because he would be talking about climate change, not affirmative action.

Not that there is any such thing as cancel culture of course.

So it's not just that the thing he was going to talk about (climate change) was unrelated to his Newsweek article (affirmative action).  I don't think anyone would object if a university declined to give a recognition to a noted scientist who was also a vocal holocaust denier.

The problem is that opposition to affirmative action is actually a position held by the majority of people in the US.  It is very much a legitimate topic for public debate.

This is one of many examples of a smallish group of university-aligned progressives trying to impose a minority position on the majority through social media pressure.

[garbon]

A man couldn't speak once and the world has fallen?

So now the argument has moved from "there is no such thing as cancel culture" to "there is such a thing, but it's actually fine"?

A man being disinvited to speak is now a culture?

I thought the complaint was that people were having their lives ruined.

[DGuller]

The problem is that opposition to affirmative action is actually a position held by the majority of people in the US.

I think that's a dangerously narrow definition of the problem.  It implies that it's okay to punish someone if their opinion is not held by the majority of people.  Just a couple of decades ago, that would get you canceled for advocating for gay marriage.