Academics - WTF is going on?

[FloraFox]

www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/feb/02/goldsmiths-comedian-kate-smurthwaite-free-speech-show-feminist-campaigners

What fresh hell is this? Members of the feminist society at Goldsmith threatened to picket this feminist comedian because they disagree with her views in prostitution. So the SU cancelled the show.

See also the article that's linked about universities going mad banning things.

What's going on?

SEB, I think the SU have done two things wrong:

1. Not got a trained equality and diversity officer to give the student from the comedy soc legal advice.

1. Issued a dishonest statement about what happened.

I disagree with other policy decisions they have made too. Refusing to support commemoration of the Holocaust on the grounds that it is 'Eurocentric and colonialist.'

I suspect cock up over conspiracy in this instance. I feel a bit sorry for all involved.

almondcakes Goldsmiths held an event commemorating the Holocaust last week.

I was at the meeting at which the motion to which you refer was discussed. The original motion specified several specific memorial events, all of which were European (thus ignoring e.g. Rwanda) and would have made events mandatory, which is not the SU's role.

People at the meeting suggested that the motion be redrafted to make it more inclusive, for example including the Transgender Day of Remembrance and non-European genocides.

An SU officer offered to work with the proposer on a new version of the motion but was rebuffed. The proposer then wrote an unpleasant and dishonest internet post saying that we'd refused to commemorate the Holocaust.

Sunshine but the SU did refuse to commemorate the Holocaust by making the commemoration conditional on commemoration of other events which were not agreed. Why couldn't people at the meeting propose a separate motion regarding commemoration of other memorial events?

There may have been a cock-up over the handling of the event and the calculation but the underlying problems, IMV, are the decision by LSE femsoc to reach out to GU femsoc to encourage protest over KS's previous statements and the decision by some GU femsoc members to picket or protest the event for the same reasons.

Sunshine, both the original motions are available to see online, as are the comments from the SU officer involved.

Goldsmiths had an event last week where over 100 people attended a memorial service.

www.eastlondonlines.co.uk/2015/01/holocaust-memorial-day-service-at-goldsmiths-college/

www.goldsmithssu.org/news/article/6013/Goldsmiths-SU-holds-successful-Holocaust-Remembrance-event/

Flora The SU didn't refuse to commemorate the Holocaust. It refused to focus on the commemoration of 4 specified events. It was suggested that the motion be resubmitted to be more inclusive, rather than submit a separate motion.

Thanks almond I've just looked again at the motions and this was the original proposition: 'The Student Union shall organise commemorative events for students and members of the public on Holocaust Memorial Day (27th of January), on the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism (23rd of August annually), on the Holodomor Genocide Memorial Day Act (4th Saturday in November, Annually) and on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (24th April annually).'

The revised motion, submitted in November, was more inclusive and less specific (i.e. didn't say exactly which events should be commemorated) and allocated an annual budget for commemorations.

All these "feminists", the ones who are horrified by swerfs how many of them are out there getting themselves jobs at the Spearmint Rhino?

And yes - we probably will put it on somewhere else in London soon. It will be part of the Leicester Comedy Festival and hopefully the Brighton Fringe.

Well I wish her good luck with that as Brighton feminism is just teaming with "sex positivity"

Do you notice liberal feminist always seem to shout hardest when they have a male backer? Pimps telling them prostitutes really want to be prostitutes. And transwomen defining what it means to be a woman.

FuckOffGroundhog what/who do you mean?

People might be interested in this THE article about 'safe spaces'.

I'm not sure I see the difference Sunshine but I don't know what the revised motion was. I don't agree with refusing to commemorate something worthy of commemoration for any reason, especially not tying it to unrelated events. I wouldn't attend any of those other memorial days in the original motion. Was there any attention paid to what those days are actually about? What about National Famine Commemoration Day for Ireland?

FuckOff I agree. It's almost like they want to be cool girls, or something.

The only people I'll be listening to when it comes to debates around prostitution are exited women. Not pimps, not their hand maidenly supporters, but women like Rebecca Mott and Rachel Moran.

And apologies DWH for thinking you hadn't read KS's blog, it's clear now that you merely failed to understand it.

Flora there was a long debate and I may have forgotten some of the finer points. But it wasn't a case of refusing to commemorate the Holocaust (or those other days, which I hadn't heard of) - it was refusing to commemorate those 4 events at the exclusion of anything else.

The revised motion was much more inclusive. And, as per my links, GS held its biggest ever Holocaust Memorial service last week, which is grand.

The revised motion is at this link, dated November 2014. www.goldsmithssu.org/representation/studentassembly/

I'm not the SU's biggest supporter but I think they made the right decision on the remembrance motion.

And (back on thread topic) I agree with FuckOff. Sigh. I am an undercover radfem at university.

Sunshine I don't see how in the original motion, these commemorations were to the exclusion of anything else. I would have supported the original motion if it only mentioned the Holocaust. The motion that was passed seems pretty pointless but it's good that GS did have a Holocaust Memorial in the end.

I see there's a prostitution motion on the same agenda, full of pimp lobby myths.

I will also only be listening to exited women. It's no coincidence that all this "listen to sex workers" nonsense focuses on a small group of women working as escorts some of whom want to progress to be pimps or manage brothels. They don't speak for women in street prostitution or in brothels. They only speak for themselves (as was clear in Laura Lee's testimony in the NIA).

I think you'll find that this is a common definition for the specific term "safe space".

Here a university 'safe space' is a physical location in a university, not an ideology covering the entire grounds of the university. It is accepted that if you have opinions contrary to the guidelines of that safe space you either do not go there or you keep your opinions to yourself while in it. Outside those safe spaces while on university grounds you are not bound to keep your mouth shut about, say, how you feel about TERF. That is why I thought what you were talking about was a physical safety issue.

How you frame such a far reaching 'safe space' kind of gives me the chills, I am not sure how it could possibly exist without causing all manner of problems in limiting discourse and debate on university grounds.

Flora there was a very long (1 hour) discussion at the time. It was felt the original motion was too limited, and it all got a bit involved. I'm glad it's sorted tho'.

The pimp lobby shit was why I swerved the debate in November. I'd have been as welcome as a fart in a lift.

Thanks for posting that article, Calamitously - I have been completely puzzled by the fact that this semester our departmental lecture listings have suddenly got "trigger warnings" on lectures that apparently deal with "potentially upsetting" issues. I'm on leave and have been nonplussed as to why this is needed. We're a particularly squeamish and generally craven, orthodox and unexciting lit/philosophy department, it's not like there are lectures filled with provocative photos or triggering discussions (would that there were, it might mean someone exciting had actually been appointed for once). I honestly can't think why students need trigger warnings on lectures on the history of seventeenth century rhetoric and similar. What do they need protecting from that they can't just decide not to attend in the first place? I had no idea all this was going on.

Fifth wave initiative cherubimandseraphim.

I don't see how safe space policies can work anyway when surely one person's safe space is another person's unsafe space. In a world where we are meant to respect religion but some religions consider homosexuality a sin, for instance, how can we avoid either gay people or religious people feeling unsafe? Except by avoiding all mention of either, but then you wouldn't feel exactly safe if you were constantly having to watch your speech to avoid mentioning important parts of your identify on pain of being censured.

But how do you learn to think, if you avoid all the potentially upsetting and controversial subjects? Isn't that why people go to university?

www.spiked-online.com/free-speech-university-rankings/results

Goldsmiths gets a red rank. It appears you have some rather troubling student union cultures in many of your universities. Reading up on things like No Platform banning nietzsche reading clubs I suspect some unions have become detached from the students they purport to support.

cherub I love your description of your department! Seriously though, what are students supposed to do with this information? What if they choose not to attend class? If they have been warned about this and choose not to attend because they might find it upsetting, can they claim they shouldn't lose marks because of the missed coursework?

I had a prof who had a particular interest for the law surrounding warnings. She thought that by giving a warning, you are admitting the potential for harm and therefore rather than being excused from responsibility for the harm, you are accepting a responsibility to minimise the harm. (Her theories were a lot more complicated than that but I've tried to summarise.) Where would that leave universities if they are warning students about possible upset and the students choose to avoid the upset?

countess and ebear I agree with you. I don't see how a space could be free of offence unless no-one said anything that was at all challenging or interesting. I understand the need to stop or create safe space from what Buffy describes as "white, male privileged young men run amok, pissing off (and hurting) others; and preventing the exercise of free speech" and I saw plenty of that when I was at university. But I don't think the solution is absolute or black and white. We need to find the line where speech causes harm (not offence) to groups of people who are structurally disadvantaged rather than making blanket bans based on offence or no bans based on free speech.

cross post with Buffy.

Really? Women were pole dancing at a Freshers' Fair.

I think there is a distinction between carrying out an activity, having offensive images, making offensive remarks about someone etc and discussing whether something is right or wrong.

That is surely rather like the national system of having laws of behaviour but allowing people to legally discuss those laws.

Student unions (by which I mean Goldsmiths as that is the one whose minutes etc have been linked to) seem to be banning discussion of issues as breaking safe space policy.

cherub having trigger warnings on lectures has been informally discussed at GS.