New Year Honours - Professor Stock, OBE

[DangerFrog]

Just spotted this in the New Year Honours list:

Officers of the Order of the British Empire (OBE)
Professor Kathleen Mary Linn Stock. Professor of Philosophy, University of Sussex. For services to Higher Education. (Lewes, East Sussex)

Excellent to see her getting some positive recognition!

www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/scotland/2778163/new-year-honours-all-the-incredible-people-recognised-in-the-2021-list/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

[Nonsensetower]

I actually thought that the letter revealed how weak their position has become. They had to admit that discussion of "sex and gender" is legitimate - just not in the way that KS is doing it. (huh?)

An open letter is not really covered by academic freedom as it is, by definition, not academic but advocacy work. There have been rather a lot of these open letters recently and, maybe, like so many of these open letters, it will be forgotten by tomorrow.

It would be interesting to look into the history of academics/intellectuals and open letters. Examples that come to mind are the J'accuse letter against the government in the Dreyfus affair in late 19th century France and also the letter by German academics supporting their government in World War I. But academics signing open letters to denounce fellow academics?

[Beamur]

How embarrassing that they've had to correct their letter as they were wrong. It's just bullying plain and simple.
I hope that people senior in the organisations that have had their names ascribed to this take a look and maybe contemplate the reputational risk of their paid staff signing up to open letters such as this.
Where I work we have to be mindful of that kind of thing. Your own opinion is one thing, ascribing that to an educational establishment is another.

[ArabellaScott]

Hahahaha!

[lionheart]

There is another letter in support of KS.

[ThatIsNotMyUsername]

They’ve had to correct the letter? Who the he’ll signs a letter - let alone a very public denunciation- without reading it through thoroughly?

Actually, I have a very nice bridge for sale in London... the contract is pretty long but you don’t need to read the small print...

[CaraDuneRedux]

That letter is such a disappointment... it is the most muddled crap imagineable. It seems to roughly translate to "we are in favour of freedom of expression blah blah... people should be allowed to express GC views blah blah... because we're not in favour of cancel culture blah blah... but Doc Stock still deserves a good hounding because reasons..."

Disappointed to see someone I used to know on the list.

[carlaCox]

There is a long tradition of philosophers writing public letters arguing against a rival philosopher's position. That's great, it's what academia is for. I'd be genuinely interested to read a proper, considered open letter written by a group of philosophers against the GC position. But no, it's just more condemnation and straw men. Embarrassing.

[ArabellaScott]

I see the witchfinders are now calling out people who haven't signed the letter. This is utterly chilling.

Also note that people who don't sign because the letter is inaccurate are 'fussy'.

[Siablue]

Peter Singer who argues in all seriousness that disabled babies should be killed at birth has never got this level of shit. They should be ashamed of themselves and embarrassed that that letter is wrong.
The man who organised it is clearly a massive mysoginst and his Twitter feed is a big long list of how women are doing feminism wrong.

[ThatIsNotMyUsername]

Wow. That’s pretty nasty. I hope some grownups take the toddlers to task. It’s like a bitchy clique at school...

[CaraDuneRedux]

@ArabellaScott

I see the witchfinders are now calling out people who haven't signed the letter. This is utterly chilling.

Also note that people who don't sign because the letter is inaccurate are 'fussy'.

Some of the responses on the thread are gold, though! I think it's fair to say it's gone down like a lead balloon.

[carlaCox]

some people are more fussy about whether particular details are right

This is from a Professor of Philosophy?! I'm actually laughing at loud. Fucking hell guys.

[ThatIsNotMyUsername]

Well it is philosophy and not maths... (sorry to any philosophers but as a fellow social sciences grad, I ‘get it’...)

[OldCrone]

Apparently, it's an 'anodyne statement'.


twitter.com/nathanoseroff/status/1346809183384047617

[Manderleyagain]

Oseroff (in the screen shot calling out people who haven't signed) is the one who had to retract defamatory statements about stock a year or two ago. There are some philosophers who have been 'anti-stock' with missionary zeal for a while.

On the issue of peer review - humanities journals are peer reviewed. Stock hasn't managed to get an article on gender published in a peer reviewed journal. Others have - I can think of 2 male philosophers who've had gender critical positions published after peer review - but they get a lot less crap from the philosophy discipline for it than stock.

[ArabellaScott]

A very personal witch-hunt, then.

What a grubby little man.

[RoyalCorgi]

I thought these people were supposed to be intelligent? How is it possible to be both so dim-witted and so sloppy about the facts and attain a position as a philosopher at a reputable university?

[thereplycamefromanchorage]

They are so fucking self righteous these people, and so utterly unaware of their misogyny.

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

A million years ago when I was a student (early 1980s, actually) academics in our department (Arts subject, high-ranked UK university, not Oxbridge) had a very nice life with good work/life balance. They had status in society, complete freedom to decide for themselves what they wanted to research, minimal teaching load, no REF, no student feedback, very little bureaucracy, gold-plated final salary pension scheme. No idea how the salary compared with other professional jobs but my impression was it was comparable with senior teachers and civil servants. We had several lecturers who commuted in once a week in term-time and worked from home the rest of the time. Some of them published very little in a long working life.

I remember the time another student and I were trying to fix a time for our regular tutorial with a lecturer. Eventually he said apologetically he could see nothing else for it, it would have to be 9am. This was unheard of. Nothing else in the department started before 10 and most of our lectures were at 11, 12 or 2. By 4pm the department was mostly empty.

In spite of this, I consider the education I got during those happy, relaxed years was beyond price.

Changed times. The pendulum has swung far, far too much. Academic freedom and enquiry can't possibly thrive in the micromanaged world of HE in the 2020s.

[Nonsensetower]

Wise words from W0nderD0g - academia has changed much, even compared to the early 2000s. Are bad conditions and crazy workloads making people self-righteous and aggressive?

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

My feeling is that the brightest and best who might have been attracted to an academic career in the past are now often deciding against it, but as I am not an academic maybe this is just blind prejudice on my part. Even putting aside the micromanagement issue, it's just not well paid enough for the workload these days.

[UppityPuppity]

Good response

‘how supposedly morally serious people can blithely shove poor, abused, imprisoned women under the bus for the sake of essentially, middle class manners in academia’

mobile.twitter.com/Miroandrej/status/1346786499480735744

Dr KS.

[ChattyLion]

That is a good response. As with anything- Brexit, Trump, the important work is about understanding why it’s happening and trying to work out how the fuck to get people back working together with less one-sidedly authoritarian political division, and more debate among colleagues.
That requires leadership to inspire consensus. I see fuck all of that in academia so I think there’s a really serious problem here. Some people are trying to making a careerist self serving virtue out of propping up a broken status quo and at the moment there’s no incentive for them not to do that. It’s not enough to write this off as Ivory tower nonsense, academics serve a purpose which we could benefit from.

[ArabellaScott]

YY, Chatty. Mirroring politics.

[SunsetBeetch]

This is good from Glinner's site.

grahamlinehan.substack.com/p/the-beclowning-of-academia?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMzI1Nzc0MywicG9zdF9pZCI6MzExMDM2MjgsIl8iOiJnbUc2bSIsImlhdCI6MTYxMDA0MDUwMywiZXhwIjoxNjEwMDQ0MTAzLCJpc3MiOiJwdWItNjczMDkiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.jTpCRV4j_NrAh3zwz0XCdmDtcN88sEb8bmptKNcytTw