Should people who attend Nazi conferences get government funding?

[noblegiraffe]

Ok, provocative title, but it's hard to distil this situation into a few words. Yes it's about Toby Young.

News has come out about a secret conference held for the last few years at UCL. Invite-only, secret and small, it has apparently been attended by a neo-nazi and a paedophilia supporter. The conference is apparently about the inheritability of intelligence but has also looked at race and intelligence and eugenics.
The Telegraph details the conference here: www.telegraph.co.uk/education/2018/01/10/ucl-launches-eugenics-probe-emerges-academic-held-controversial/

It appears that Toby Young was one of the invitees to this secret invite-only conference. Aside from writing misogynistic tweets, he has also written an article supporting 'progressive eugenics'. The Guardian talks about Toby Young's involvement here:

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jan/10/ucl-to-investigate-secret-eugenics-conference-held-on-campus

Given that the attendees were aware of the unacceptable nature of their discussions so held them in secret and that the fact that the conferences are now banned and are being investigated, it's clear that something pretty unsavoury has been going on.

Toby Young has resigned from his position on the board of the Office for Students, and it appears his resignation may be linked to these revelations. Toby Young also pulls in a fat salary as Director of the New Schools Network. The New Schools Network is a charity, but it receives the majority of its funding from the DfE. Surely his position there is also untenable?

[snoofy]

Toby claims to have a strong desire to help the poor and vulnerable in society.

Do the figures for pupil premium and SEN in the WLFS back that up?

[thecatfromjapan]

I think we need to find the paper he gave where he wrote anecdotally on the conference.

Isn't it interesting that he didn't use his position as a journalist - with an interest in eugenics - to explore the troubling relationship between right wing groups, right wing ideology, and the risk of laundering those views through relationships with legitimate academia? I guess that wasn't as interesting for Toby Young. Or as pressing a problem as looking for breakthroughs that might 'help' the undeserving poor not to breed less than optimal workers.

[noblegiraffe]

cat it's here: ac.els-cdn.com/S0160289617302763/1-s2.0-S0160289617302763-main.pdf?_tid=db7ed48e-f72a-11e7-8468-00000aacb35e&acdnat=1515715090_a4382ca50193c6a4274ca2dff1fc0aeb

I promise that's not a dodgy link!

[thecatfromjapan]

Thank you, noble. I think that's going to be something I read tomorrow.

[HarveySchlumpfenburger]

It became clear that having said those things, I couldn’t serve on the Office for Students without causing an almighty stink that would render it unable to do its job.

Yes, it’s definitely the response to those comments that’s the issue, not the fact that having said those things makes you unfit to hold the position.

[thecatfromjapan]

By the way, as a long-term fan of 'Law and Order: Special Victims Unit', I am struck by the similarity between Toby Young's excuse explanation of his attendance at the conference and the classic john response when brothels are raided in the series: "I was just looking/doing research."

Yes, Rafa. He really, really doesn't get it. At all. His outrage at all the silly people finding this appalling is utterly genuine. Silly us. Silly little people. We really are a hindrance to the great project he is undertaking.

[noblegiraffe]

'I just popped in for a few hours' to the highly secretive invite-only conference where the location wasn't revealed till the last minute is a bit like 'I just fell onto my vacuum cleaner' isn't it? A casual insouciance to try to hide a real effort.

[noblegiraffe]

It pointed out that in 2015 and 2016 this conference had been attended by someone described by the Southern Poverty Law Centre as a ‘white nationalist and extremist’. It even dug up a blog post by one of the attendees in which he tried to justify child rape. It described all these people as my ‘friends’.

Dude, you're still following this guy on twitter. It's hard to believe that you have never heard of him and have no idea of his work when you've been following him for ages - he's way down your list of follows.

[Piggywaspushed]

To be fair, I follow Donald Trump

Who is this Dr Thompson who he does admit to knowing, who runs secret right wing conferences?

I am actually beginning to wonder whether he wanted the OfS job just so he could attend wacky conferences in the open and help out his 'right wing fruit cake' mates!

[noblegiraffe]

I follow some anti-echo chamber types too, but then I wouldn't deny all knowledge of them while still following them on twitter.

Here is Dr James Thompson:

cheesegratermagazine.org/2018/01/10/read-shocking-sexist-racist-tweets-ucl-professor-host-eugenics-conference/

How about this tweet 'The lower intelligence group orients Left bc it is populated disproportionately by Leftist beneficiaries (economic and racial minorities)"

[PricklyBall]

Well quite, noble. My ideca of avoiding being trapped in a left wing echo chamber is to take out a subscription to the Torygraph. Young's appears to be. .. rather moreeextreme.

[LooseAtTheSeams]

Thanks noble for the thread and well done to the student journalists who exposed this awful group. Anyone who seriously claims not to see the inherent problem with a secret conference of eugenicists (!) shouldn't be employed in Education or journalism!

[Piggywaspushed]

Thanks noble . I guess the bigger question is how on earth did that man become a professor!!?

[noblegiraffe]

What really pisses me off about this is how it is being framed as Left versus Right and you can see that in the James Thompson tweet (the left are thick ha ha). Toby Young’s dig at the end about Corbyn just shows who he thinks his opponents are and why.

Well, actually Toby, I have some concerns about Corbyn being around anti-semites too actually, so no that doesn’t let you off the hook. And actually, you probably also don’t think it’s fine for Corbyn to do that, so you should examine your own behaviour in that light.

It’s not about Left or Right, ffs, it’s about not validating extremist views. If you don’t hold them yourself, then don’t hang around people who do without loudly condemning them. And FFS don’t call the people who do condemn them and your uncritical association with them a ‘lynch mob’ or a ‘witch hunt’ or whatever trite phrase you can come up with to trivialise valid concerns. Think more deeply than that for once in your life.

[Clavinova]

secret conference of eugenicists

Not sure how secret these conferences are:

I've just googled 'Emil Kirkegaard and Intelligence Conference' and there's a brief, 3 page website set up by Kirkegaard - promoting the 2015 conference - with the venue clearly stated as UCL, the dates, a list of topics/papers to be discussed, plus asking for further submissions on Intelligence. I don't wish to link to this man.

Those silly tweets by Dr Thomson seem to be responding to papers published by other people, including one commissioned by Credit Suisse.

[noblegiraffe]

Not sure how secret these conferences are

Well UCL didn’t know about them and are now investigating, plus Toby Young talked about the cloak and dagger stuff to get to them.

Hardly open and reputable.

[thecatfromjapan]

It’s not about Left or Right, ffs, it’s about not validating extremist views.

I think this is so important, Noble.

Fortunately, some Conservative MPs spoke out about his appointment, which (I think) was so important because it makes clear it's about something more crucial than 'right', 'left', 'Conservative', 'Labour': it's about what is acceptable; what must (continue to be) considered extreme.

[showersinger]

Well, actually Toby, I have some concerns about Corbyn being around anti-semites too actually, so no that doesn’t let you off the hook. And actually, you probably also don’t think it’s fine for Corbyn to do that, so you should examine your own behaviour in that light.

Well said, noble.

Mr Young:
You're right, a journalist has all the right in the world to sit at the back of a eugenics secret conference. What you're missing is that it's WHAT he does afterwards with the information he has gathered that matters. It's what he does and what he publishes about it that shows whether he is someone deserving of a public position, a say in education policies and a salary of 90K out of tax payers money.

[LineysRunt]

I would say Toby Young could be lying about not knowing about the extent of the views of Emil Kirkegaard.

[LooseAtTheSeams]

Yes, sorry, my use of 'secret' was based on the information that the conferences were deliberately arranged to avoid UCL knowing about them and the lengths the participants went to in order to ensure that only a closed group even knew they were taking place.
Also, it isn't acceptable for Young to say don't point the finger at me, look at Corbyn. That's a whole other issue and people can and should raise it, but it isn't what's under discussion here. As opposition leader, Corbyn isn't running any schools or advising government bodies. Young is responsible for his own words and actions, including the conference papers he gives. (For that matter, I don't care where Polly Toynbee's children went to school - it must have been a long time ago anyway!)

[noblegiraffe]

Argh his article has been annoying me all day. It’s the long drawn-out whine of a petulant child.
‘He was doing it too’
‘Sir said it was ok’
‘She did [something irrelevant]
‘You’re all bullies and you’re picking on me.’

What’s missing is the bit where he condemns extremist views and says that if he had known the background of the attendees and the type of material produced, he wouldn’t have attended. The bit where he understands people’s concerns.

But he doesn’t. He is, in his head, a martyr for free speech.

[LooseAtTheSeams]

noble exactly! That's it in a nutshell. He's blaming mean people on twitter (the irony!) when it appears that he only resigned after the student journalists and Private Eye contacted him for comment.

[Peregrina]

In short, he resigned when he was found out. Otherwise he would have carried on.

[showersinger]

It's the eternal discussion over freedom of speech.
TY says he's a journalist. But he's a journalist with an agenda. His agenda is to open public debate, specially in universities, to the issue of hereditary intelligence and his "progressive" eugenics in particular. The problem is that this kind of debate escalates and can have - has had - catastrophic consequences. It's interesting how he keeps mentioning socialist regimes and the way they dealt with dissenting opinions, but he never mentions nazi policies and how they were the unavoidable result of those opinions. He claims that one must allow for all views to be voiced so one can fight them and rebuke them, but we all know how that goes, don't we. You let a Holocaust denier publish a book, what you achieve is a following. In other words, you get more Holocaust deniers, no less. So yes, there are certain things one suppresses - or regulates - for the sake of humanity's welfare and that's OK with me. One may believe in hereditary intelligence, one may believe in gender and racial differences, but I'm still waiting for a good policy to come out of a public debate on any of these issues. And it's not TY's progressive eugenics. God, it really isn't.

[thecatfromjapan]

Completely agree with noble and showersinger.

I would also add that, despite Toby Young banging on free speech being all about exposing these ideas to debate - and implicitly, either rebuttal or adoption - when the rebuttal comes, he absolutely refuses to accept the legitimacy of that rebuttal.

And that, of course, opens onto a big problem with Toby Young's notion of free speech. Because people who speak occupy different positions in a real not idealised society with regards to their speaking position. Some speech has access to more money and power to disseminate and promote it than other speech. Some people have more power, fame and reach than others when it comes to their speech.

So someone like Toby Young has more space and power - and, alarmingly, legitimacy (gifted to him by his political friends) - to disseminate his views.

And the outcry against that can be - and has been - dismissed by many of Toby Young's friends and supporters. And can be ignored as illegitimate hysteria by Toby Young.

100 women on the internet, complaining about misogyny = 1/4 of a Toby Young? Less?

I guess the objections to his eugenicist musings carried a little more weight. But evidently not so much that Toby Young considers it anything other than trivial, small-minded yelling.

He really doesn't get it. He doesn't understand that this is a real-time rebuttal of his agenda - and where it might lead.

And that is very worrying. And, I think, shows a real problem with his idea of an idealised space of 'free speech'. Power imbalances actually mean he can't and doesn't have to recognise the legitimacy of speech opposing his.

And the reality of those power imbalances is another reason why giving in to the idea of free speech offered to us by the likes of Toby Young is potentially quite dangerous.

It's very frustrating seeing someone - some people - with a great deal of access to speech themselves describing rebuttal of what they are saying as censorship.

It's not censorship. The Toby Young's of this world are not censored. His speech has way more of a platform than anything any of us are going to say or write. He is experiencing rebuttal. The fact that he describes this - feels this - as censorship tells us that he experiences any kind of objection as illegitimate. And, sadly, he has the power to impose this.

With that kind of entitled, deep-seated sense of ownership of the spaces of speech - which is based in enormous privilege, and simply does not recognise the objecting speech of the less powerful as legitimate - there can really be no real debate.

And that is why his notion of some dream place of 'free speech', where repugnant, extremist ideas can be aired, then rebutted, is flawed. He, and others like him, only recognise certain speakers, and certain viewpoints, as legitimate. Ultimately, it really isn't debate that he is pursuing. It's dissemination and acceptance. He really can't recognise the real-time enactment of debate and rebuttal because it's not coming in a form he recognises as having value.