Times on activists threatening academics

I still see it as the Red Guard meets Porterhouse Blue - it's our poshest kids doing this!

It's a little known fact that Chairman Mao had a teddy bear called Aloysius.

Another one, reading about 'The Cultural Revoution' this sunny autumn Sunday.

I still see it as the Red Guard meets Porterhouse Blue - it's our poshest kids doing this!

anotherGCacademic
Rosa Freedman twitter: twitter.com/GoonerProf

I spent a week at a uni recently and found fewer fashion trailblazers there now than when I was a student. And this was an art school! Boring old sheep.

I’m an academic and it is chilling.

Can’t find a link for the Freedman/Bindel event in Reading. Can anyone help. Pm if easier. I’d like to show support.

I really feel for someone facing unemployment - I have bills to pay, child to support, pension to pay into - and I've got to eat! I've had periods when I've not worked and had no dole, no mummy and daddy to bail me put (well they could but I couldn't ask them for gods sake).

These little shits know nothing of life and treat it like a game.

There seems to be no consequences to them and there should be. They need lessons in real life. It whatever fluffy rainbow crap they are learning off social media. They shouldn't be in higher education as they don't seem to have the brains.

Another one, reading about 'The Cultural Revoution' this sunny autumn Sunday.

Exactly fekko It isn’t about someone’s genuine experience of transphobia and them seeking justice for it, it’s about someone playing Caesar with someone else’s livelihood for their own entertainment and gratification.

(Hauls out stack of books on Maoist China. Strains back, settles down for a good long Sunday read...)☕️🍪🍪📚📚📚🤓

It's all getting a bit 'Cultural Revolution'.

(Removes glasses, walks into lamppost)

They aren't experiencing anything though are they? I read on Twitter that he/she/bot isn't at the college anyway.

Professional shit stirrer and I'm sure they have a list of people to go after. Then someone will go after them. They will squeal like mad and cry 'victim'.

Terrible. When I was a full time student I cared about passing my course and having a good time with my friends.

I can’t imagine being pleased that you’ve got someone sacked or disciplined for having an opinion. People I know who have experienced actual discrimination haven’t felt smug and crowed about it when they’ve got an outcome, they’re bruised and exhausted.

I'm not sure facts checked by the BBC are worth the paper they're written on, given the BBC's demonstration of never ending bias.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3296433-BBC-Bias-Collecting-Examples-here

This silencing of academics is, to me, one of the most chilling aspects of this whole insane debacle.

In my day students would get booted out for threatening staff. Is it because the precocious little shits are now 'consumers'?

This is what BBC fact check has to say on the matter

The methodology used for this exercise is extremely limited, looking at events featuring outside speakers, book bannings, and course changes. What is not examined is how academics are threatened, harassed, prevented through the peer review system from being able to fund or publish research in certain areas, the effect of Stonewall influencing institutional policies with their definition of transphobia as not believing in gender identity, etc.

I think the lawyer on BBC breakfast was Funke Abimbola

funkeabimbola.com/external-roles

This is what BBC fact check has to say on the matter:

Spectator article on this:
'The BBC is wrong: university censorship is definitely not a myth'
Tom Slater
blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/10/the-bbc-is-wrong-university-censorship-is-definitely-not-a-myth/

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3296433-BBC-Bias-Collecting-Examples-here?

I suppose I was being flippant Datun but it seems I was actually close to the mark. I can absolutely see the importance of asking students how they feel about the quality of their education - I'm sure pre tuition fees, there were some pretty dreadful tutors around (and probably still are) and I can see that one aspect of the fees system is that the universities are perhaps held more to account. But the danger is that if students are exposed to viewpoints they disagree with, they may see that as being 'bad teaching' and campaign to get that suppressed. Which perhaps underlines the point about these students being so young - I know at that age things seemed so black and white, I just didn't have the maturity to consider alternative viewpoints and how they might also be valid. And perhaps crucially I wouldn't be able to articulate what the difference was between a controversial view (as GC is seen as now) and one that was dangerous and likely to stir up hatred.

I started university in one of the first years of fees and I would never have dreamed of trying to get an academic removed who had been teaching for probably longer than I had been alive just because I disagreed with them! I still wouldn't because I believe in free speech and if you can't debate controversial issues at a university where can you?

I think the lawyer on BBC breakfast was Funke Abimbola. It wasn't very clear what she thought, but seemed to be saying that the research should be done so stopping it was a bad thing.

It's one thing encouraging rigourous debate, and allow for objections to be aired about potential speakers.

It's quite another to think that “a transphobic Nazi who should get raped” is in anywhere near the same ballpark.

More on James Caspian, who I believe is crowdfunding a judicial review of the decision by Bath Spa University:

www.theguardian.com/education/2017/sep/25/bath-spa-university-transgender-gender-reassignment-reversal-research

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3129659-Update-from-James-Caspian-on-his-case-against-Bath-Spa-University-to-be-allowed-to-research-detransitioners

And Just one example of where robust academic research is really urgently needed (but I could have picked from 1000s of threads on here..we can all probably name several examples of what needs research attention around these issues).

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3313760-Up-to-150-youngsters-treated-with-puberty-blocking-jabs-might-not-even-be-transgender

I think that any commentator that doesn't fully take on board and focus on th fact that Professor Rosa Freedman was shouted at by a student on campus where she works,

“a transphobic Nazi who should get raped”

something is seriously amiss.

This statement from the OP article is woefully inadequate:

"A Reading University spokesman insisted the event would go ahead and said the university would try to ensure “healthy and respectful debate”.

He added: “We respect the right of our trans staff and students to self-identify their gender and we have a track record of support for LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] staff and students.”

Lang I don't suppose you caught the name of the lawyer?

I didn't, sorry! I think it will be on BBC News again at 9.30?

She said that she had several transgender friends and that all the issues needed proper scrutiny so that rights for them could move forwards, or words to that effect, and the denunciations by campus activists were unhelpful to that end.

It may not have been a direct question about the price of the beer, but it was satisfaction with that side of the 'experience'.