Times on activists threatening academics

[Igneococcus]

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/activists-thwart-work-on-gender-law-reforms-jx6lwd6tf?shareToken=228811c77bc80971bfe94c41286869c4

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 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.

anotherGCacademic
Rosa Freedman twitter: twitter.com/GoonerProf

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!

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.

Dr Jane Clare Jones summarises key events twitter thread:

"The Woke Stasi seems to have had a very busy week, so I thought I’d do a little round up. (I suspect this might have to become a thing).

#ThisIsTotalitarianism
#Edition1"

twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1056493733871525888

Yeah it’s posh kids doing this stuff
Working class. Not even on radar.
Don’t have time or inclination to bother with this shite
And stupid celebs who don’t care just wan5 their woke ness celebrated
And even more stupid politicians

How dare they think they have the right to try and ruin someone's career like that?

It isn't just the students tho' is it? There has to be a conducive context that allows those academics to be admonished like this or to have their careers threatened.

Because people in the real world have real things to worry about.

Paying the rent. Getting their kids in to a half decent school. Buying groceries. Looking after their granny who they can't get into a nursing home. Wondering how they will afford to retire. Working an actual day job...

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

Now there's a comparative literature dissertation waiting to be written.

Prof. Rosa Freedman:

"I have been thinking about why some students feel that it is okay to act abusively (sometimes criminally) towards one another and towards academics with whom they disagree on difficult and important issues.

Academia and academic freedom enables difficult discussions about issues affecting society, and allows for respectful and reasoned discourse and analysis based on specific evidence. That is the nature of the job, and it brings with it many opportunities and many responsibilities.

I work in highly contentious and politicised spaces, but in recent months I have experienced and witnessed things that I did not know existed in academia. The toxicity of these discussions, the shutting down of debates, the spurious and defamatory allegations, and the deeply personal attacks – this goes against everything we value in
academia.

So many academics refuse to engage in debate, so many have stated that they do not agree with academic freedom, so many have no-platformed and empty-chaired people with whose opinions they disagree, and so many have made spurious allegations without any specific evidence.

Little wonder, then, that students then view critical thinking, substantive knowledge, and debate as only being relevant in the classroom given that some of the academics (particularly senior ones) who teach them or whom they admire from afar use social media platforms to gaslight, intimidate, and spread spurious allegations about anyone who presents a critical or different opinion based on expertise and specific evidence.

One small example, this week is a law professor who works in the same building as me has publicly accused me of transphobia
without providing any evidence, and has refused to take down the online defamatory statement despite being challenged about its validity. This week I have been physically threatened, harassed and intimidated on campus.

When I look at how some academics are behaving online I do
think that they are irresponsible because they either do not realise or do not care about how their behaviour legitimises and emboldens impressionable young adults to behave in such ways."

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1055605167624732673.html

First of all I'm horrified once again that academia seems to be becoming ever more politicised, and rather than instituons of higher education being bastions of the open exchange of ideas they have rather become a locus of power that people are trying to grab to further their own agenda.

That being said feminists are just as capable of trying to wrestle this ball into their favour, as indeed happened with the vanishing of a paper on GMVH:

quillette.com/2018/09/07/academic-activists-send-a-published-paper-down-the-memory-hole/

In short a mathematical paper that delves into the notion that whilst men and women often average out in capability, there are more men at the tails of distribution, thus crucially more men occupy the bottom tiers of IQ, but also the top ones too. This notion can potentially challenge the feminist narrative of unrelenting sexism being the cause of fewer women in the top jobs, and one of the authors was hounded to remove his name from the paper and his career threatened.

My question is: Is it ok when feminists do it? Or is the spirit of free enquiry more important than any ideology? My lean is obviously the latter, but I'd be curious to see if anyone would be willing to step to bat for the former. The problem is as I see it is that there should be a clearer separation between politics and academia, as whilst your "side" might have control for a while once the precedent is set your ideological opponents will inevitably try to wrestle control and be able to use the same tactics you did.

If something challenges your view you should either be willing to change your mind or step up and construct a better argument. This doesn't appear to be occurring and we will all be left intellectually poorer if this trend gets any worse.

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

(You have to laugh else you'd do naught else but weep tears of blood.)

That being said feminists are just as capable of trying to wrestle this ball into their favour, as indeed happened...

This week, Professor Rosa Freedman had a student on campus shout at her that she was
“a transphobic Nazi who should get raped”

Professor Freedman is Jewish.

Background to her work:
Professor Freedman* researches on the United Nations, and has a number of interests within that area: human rights bodies, creation and implementation of international human rights law, accountability for human rights abuses committed by UN actors, and the intersection between international law and international relations. Rosa has published extensively on the United Nations Human Rights Council and on the United Nations Special Procedures system, as well as on the Haiti Cholera Claims and on sexual violence committed by peacekeeping personnel. She fuses doctrinal and empirical research methods, and she deploys interdisciplinary lenses to inform and underpin her findings and analysis. Her work has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, British Academy, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights, and the Society of Legal Scholars.

Thanks Rowan. Can see RFs lecture on human rights but no mention f JB.

Was told I shouldn’t influence students.

I find this a bit bizarre. When I was a student the lecturers presented their own perspectives on all kinds of things, from methodology to religion and politics. We were always free to disagree and explain why we took a different view to the lecturer's. Surely that's part of what academic freedom is about? I would hope that whether a lecturer is a trans rights activist or a gender critical feminist or someone who has no particular interest in the topic it should always be possible for students to debate the issues critically but respectfully. It's university, not parliament.

I'm so sick of seeing "could become a “hostile space” for trans students.".. these spaces are already hostile to anyone who takes a critical view of trans ideology, and I mean critical in the "we need to examine this via science/philosophy/facts/impact, etc" sense not in the imaginary "you don't want us to exist" strawman.

It's not anyone's job in an academic or workspace to code people who are deluded, threatening or gaslighting. If discussing the facts of reality and discussing an ideology makes these people weep then it's them that need to withdraw, it's nonsensical and entitled to demand everyone else shut up and pretend on their behalf.

But the space won't be made unsafe by critical discussion and we all know that. The only thing that makes the space unsafe are the threats of violence, bomb threats, threats against people's families and workplaces, that come from trans activists themselves. This is what needs to be dealt with. TAs that do this need to be investigated, disciplined, and prosecuted where their behaviour warrants it. Workplaces, universities, police that fail to do this are the problem and they need t strt being held to account for it.

We have rights too. We need an organisation of our own to handle fundraising for legal support for women targetted by TRAs.

coddle not code

www.economist.com/leaders/2018/10/27/who-decides-your-gender

This is so sad.
When I went to university we read lots of things across a range of views. We debate with peers and with our tutors.
When I trained to teach we were taught how to critically reflect and how to work out SLT bullshit, read between the lines on policy agendas, debate and challenge ideas (one seminar was on who decided which texts get studied in school? Does the curriculum enshrine privilege? It was a really excellent seminar).

In my classes now my GCSE students weigh up different critical viewpoints on big ideas.

It seems there's a cohoet of usually middle class or more affluent teens/early 20s who think the world should be their safe space and hearing a view that is anything other than 'well done have a good star you are so unique and your world view is the only one worth knowing' is somehow hate speech.
It does make you wonder how fragile their convictions are if simply hearing other perspectives is deemed damaging.

In my day students would get booted out for threatening staff.

This is what should be happening.

There is no evidence for example that Nina Edge has done anything wrong whatsoever. The uni should investigate the claims by the students and when (not if) they are found to be vexatious every one of those students should be disciplined and the white pube women should be sued for defamation.

The only reason TRAs are getting away with abusing women like this is that there are literally no repercussions for them.

I'm due to give a lecture this week on social constructions of gender and their implications for women's experiences in the cjs. I've been giving that lecture for the past 5 years. It's usually one that I and the students thoroughly enjoy - so interesting. But I'm dreading it this year, dreading the questions, knowing I will have to bite my tongue. The only academics really pinning their colours to the mast are those with well established careers and great research portfolios. Junior academics have no voice in this debate. I empathise so much with Cowardly Sockpuppet on Twitter.

I empathise so much with Cowardly Sockpuppet on Twitter.

I've only just seen that and it's unusual in that, so far, there's some interesting discussion and it hasn't become a pile-on (in either direction) as far as I can see.

threadreaderapp.com/thread/1055511561987674113.html

anotherGCacademic
Here's the link to the Rosa/Julie Bindel event: www.reading.ac.uk/15/about/newsandevents/Events/Event784746.aspx - happening tomorrrow. According to twitter Rosa is still being harassed & attacked for her well-evidenced, compassionately explained views.
Chatty Lion re speaking out, I think we could/should write to the university concerned in each case (to their Deans of Equality&Diversity or HoDs) in support of free speech/academic freedom, against bullying & harassment and asking how they will ensure that their staff are properly supported. Might be worth linking to the Times article but also to a transcript of a great talk that Raquel Sanchez gave last week at Uni Bristol Free Speech Soc (what a joy to know that such a thing exists).
8rosariosanchez.wordpress.com/2018/10/22/discurso-derecho-de-las-mujeres-a-la-libertad-de-expresion/
If you want to give the Society a thumbs up, they are here:
www.facebook.com/BristolFreeSpeech/ Restores ones faith!

JoanSummers
The two students who have been attacking Nina Edge are not in LJMU but in a London college apparently. There's been quite a twitter-fest with lots of people taking the time to explain the wider context of Nina's community activism and support for marginalised groups. In response these two young women (I assume they are women since they have female names but who knows) have just increased the vitriol and gloating. Distressing.