Month: January 2021

University of Chicago student says that the purpose of our school’s free-speech policy is to perpetuate white supremacy

January 26, 2021 • 10:45 am

I’m suffering vaccine side effects today, so posting will be light. But I should be right as rain by tomorrow. I am at work, but not firing on all cylinders. Bear with me.

The University of Chicago is famous for its principles of free expression, which include the Report of the Committee on Free Expression pledging “commitment to free and open inquiry.”  The Chicago Principles, as they’re called, have been adopted by about eighty American universities, and are a point of pride for our school. (They simply mirror the courts’ construal of the First Amendment on our private campus, which needn’t adhere to that Amendment.) The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) ranked our University #1 in the 2020 Free Speech Rankings.

But lots of students aren’t too keen on the Chicago Principles. The one below, who wrote an op-ed in the student newspaper, the Chicago Maroon, would have us abandon those principles. It’s the usual argument: “free speech” enables “hate speech” and racism.  But the problem with the anti-free-speech stand, so prevalent these days, is glaringly obvious in her piece. Click to read it:

Ms. Hui is in fact a rising student leader, even as a first-year student. She interned for Elizabeth Warren, worked for Planned Parenthood, and is part of an organization on campus that connects students to politicians. In other words, she’s likely to be influential after she graduates. She’s clearly on the Left, which makes it even more worrisome that she is so adamantly opposed to free speech, which is traditionally a position of the Left.

And yet Hui’s also fallen victim to the anti-First-Amendment virus, seeing students as malleable automatons subject to being swayed by “hate speech” and bigotry. Her solution: make herself (or someone like her) the arbiter of acceptable speech, ban those who purvey “hate speech”, for students should not be allowed to hear that stuff, and scrap the Chicago Principles—and probably the First Amendment as well.

Were I an undergraduate here, I would resent the implication that I’m so pliable to argument that I can’t be allowed to hear speakers like Steve Bannon (you can, after all, skip their talks). I would resent the notion that Hui, or others like her, should be allowed to determine which speech should be heard. And I would resent the idea that she thinks that the First Amendment enables bigotry, and its implementation in liberal colleges is a deliberate attempt to turn students into white supremacists. (I am not making this up.)

Like most liberal arts schools, the University of Chicago is liberal, with, I’d guess, 90% of the faculty falling on the Left end of the spectrum.  But, observing that both Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz went to Ivy League schools (Stanford and Yale Law for Hawley, Princeton and Harvard Law for Cruz), Hui concludes, for reasons that baffle me, that these two quasi-insurgents were the product of a liberal education deliberately designed to turn young people into Nazis and Klan members. Do I exaggerate? Read this (my emphasis):

It is not that [Hawley and Cruz’s] education failed them—their education did exactly what it was meant to do. It prepared two budding conservative minds to go forth into the corridors of power—to disguise bigotry as love of country, hate speech as meaningful debate. You see, despite constant claims to the contrary, elite institutions are not liberal bastions that engender “woke” minds; rather, they propagate white supremacy by justifying racism as intellectual discourse. The University of Chicago is no stranger to this phenomenon—in fact, with its “Chicago principles,” our school has become a leader in framing hateful rhetoric as par for the course in the pursuit of free speech. These principles bolster and enable the next Ted Cruzes and Josh Hawleys and harm marginalized students, who are told that their rights—their very humanity—are up for debate.

If Chicago is turning out people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, it’s escaped my notice. Yes, we have a beleaguered titer of conservative students (they’ve founded their own newspaper, the Chicago Thinker), but they’re not white supremacists. I haven’t seen any “hateful rhetoric” on campus so long as I’ve been here—that is, unless you construe speech about abortion or the Israeli/Palestine situation as “hate speech.”  If Hui is simply objecting that our school produces conservative students, well, my advice to her is to live with it. Not everybody is going to turn out like Hui, which is why we have politics in the first place.

And here, avers Hui, is the result of the Chicago Principles, which itself mirrors the First Amendment. Note her low opinion of our malleable students and the view that people like Steve Bannon simply shouldn’t be given a platform because they might influence students.

By following the Chicago principles, the University effectively legitimizes and encourages students who may share similar bigoted ideologies. When a Booth professor invited noted white supremacist Steve Bannon to participate in a debate on campus, President Robert Zimmer stood by the invitation, withstanding pressure from student protests outside Booth and a widely circulated letter signed by 122 UChicago faculty members urging him to rescind it. Thankfully, Bannon never stepped foot on campus, though the University certainly made their stance on hate speech clear. Acknowledging that the antisemitic, homophobic, alt-right nonsense Bannon has espoused throughout his life has some academic worth or intellectual merit is categorically absurd. For a young person with hate in their heart to see a man like Bannon espousing his intolerant views behind a podium with the UChicago coat of arms is dangerous and potentially radicalizing. For an immigrant, for a person of color, for a member of the LGBTQ+ community to see that, it is devastating, an assertion that their personhood is not natural, but something to be “debated.” When elite institutions treat people like Bannon as academics—with something to teach, with something valuable to say—it not only validates and potentially propagates such bigoted thoughts, but also signals that the University’s commitment to academic inquiry is more important than the safety of marginalized students an

Yeah, President Zimmer should have banned Bannon, for Bannon purveys “hate speech”. That should keep our students from being molded into little Nazis! (In fact, suppressing conservative speech doesn’t make it go away, it just drives it underground.) Zimmer did exactly what he should have: adhered to the Chicago Principles and refused to ban a speaker who was not violating the First Amendment (n.b., Bannon never came). See my 2018 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, defending Bannon’s right to speak, though I despise the man: “Hate speech is no reason to ban Bannon”.  Truly, Hui seems to have no idea that students can think for themselves—that they can hear a man like Bannon, or a woman like Christina Hoff Sommers—and come to their own judgments. She wants to force them to think her way by banning speakers she doesn’t like.

The problem, of course, is that one person’s “hate speech” is another person’s free speech—speech worthy of debating. Even if you think Bannon is odious, exactly why should we censor him? And who else should we censor? And who should be the censor? It’s clear: someone who has Hui’s values. In the end, her views boil down to the old saw, “Free speech for me, but not for thee.”

Finally, Hui conflates speech that directly and predictably incites violence (Trump’s speech before the Capitol siege falls into this class)—speech not falling under First Amendment protections—with “hate speech” that doesn’t incite such violence. The conflation arises because Hui, like many on the far Left, sees speech as violence:

My peers at the Thinker may think me hypocritical, then, for wanting to reimagine free speech on campus. It is, after all, these very principles that affirm my ability to openly criticize the administration, or, say, call for the abolition of the University. But my words—radical as they may be, disagreeable as they certainly are to some—do not do any harm. They do not inspire hate or fear. In short, they have no capacity for violence. And now, more than ever, we are seeing how the latent violence wrought in language can speak (or tweet) violence and death into the world.

And so we see that Hui’s definition of “hate speech” is “speech that inspires hate or fear”, in other words, speech that some find odious and offensive. (Note that she sees words as a form of “latent violence.”)

Hui ends her piece with the “yes, free speech is good, but. . . ” trope.  Safety before speech! But I’m not aware of a single student at my University who has been physically hurt or objectively rendered unsafe by somebody else’s speech:

What is so-called “intellectual intolerance” compared to the kind of intolerance that incites hate crimes? It is no longer a matter of students feeling comfortable—now, after an insurrection at the Capitol, after a year marked by racial injustice and police brutality, it is a matter of students being safe.

We’ve seen the consequences of elevating hateful rhetoric—we have seen it now in the highest echelons of power. It begins in our classrooms, where the Trumps and Cruzes and Hawleys are given the tools they need to acquire and keep power, even if it means promoting fascism and white nationalism. The next Ted Cruz could be walking through the quad right now. The future Josh Hawley might be playing devil’s advocate in your Sosc class. We can prevent such radicalization by reexamining the Chicago principles and prioritizing safety over absolute free speech.

When you hear the word “safe,” run for the hills, because censorhip is following close behind.

What I find ineffably sad about Hui’s piece is that I admire her Leftist activism, and because she’s clearly smart and committed to causes I favor. But along the way she’s come to think that the First Amendment, and the foundational principles of her own University, are not only harmful and violent, but designed to create bigots.  If our University instituted an orientation seminar on free speech and the meaning of the Chicago Principles, perhaps Ms. Hui wouldn’t have such a negative take on the foundational tenets of her own University.

I end with a question for Ms. Hui:

“Who would you have decide which people are allowed to speak at the University of Chicago, and which should be banned?”

Winter ducks!

January 26, 2021 • 8:45 am

Some ducks are stubbornly hanging around Botany Pond this year, though most left when the weather got cold and the pond largely froze over. (The only open water is above the bubblers.) But one pair came back two days ago and, mirabile dictu, stayed overnight in the heavy snow we had last night.  It is a bonded pair: a drake and a hen, and of course I have to feed them. It’s very sad that they have only a bit of open water to swim in, and when I feed them on the frozen surface, they regularly repair to the water to wash down the duck food.

We need a name for this pair in case they hang around. Suggestions below, please.

Here’s Botany Pond about half an hour ago. Can you spot the mallards?

Here they are! (Poor focus due to low light, mandating a shutter speed of only 1/10th of a second):

A chilly hen (not Honey!):

Duck tracks:

All the leaves are gone, and the sky is gray:

Got any good names for this drake and hen?

Readers’ wildlife photos

January 26, 2021 • 8:00 am

We have another themed post by John Avise. His notes and IDs are indented; click on the photos to enlarge them.

Birds with Blue Plumages

Blue is a rather rare color in avian plumages, and when present is typically not due to blue pigments, but rather to a scattering of light by the microscopic structure of feathers, especially when a dark melanin layer overlies small air cavities and keratin particles in a feather’s micro-structure.  Such light-scattering is called the Tyndall effect, which I’ve read is also the physical process that makes the sky appear blue despite the absence of blue pigment in the atmosphere.  I can’t claim to understand exactly how such light-scattering works, but perhaps a physicist in the readership can enlighten us.  In any event, I love birds that include blue in their plumages, several of which appear in the following photographs, all taken in North America.

Western Bluebird, Sialia mexicana:

Mountain Bluebird, Sialia currucoides:

Eastern Bluebird, Sialia sialis:

Blue Grosbeak male, Guiraca caerulea:

Blue Jay, Cyanocitta cristata:

Florida Scrub Jay, Aphelocoma coerulescens:

California Scrub Jay, Aphelocoma californica:

Steller’s Jay, Cyanocitta stelleri:

Lazuli Bunting, Passerina amoena:

Painted Bunting, Passerina ciris:

Tree Swallow, Tachycineta bicolor:

White-breasted Nuthatch, Sitta carolinensis:

Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Polioptila caerulea:

American Kestrel, Falco sparverius:

Black-throated Blue Warbler, Dendroica caerulescens:

Blue-throated Hummingbird, Lampornis clemenciae:

Belted Kingfisher, Ceryle alcyon:

Blue-winged Teal, Anas discors:

Little Blue Heron, Egretta caerulea:

Great Blue Heron, Ardea herodias:

Tuesday: Hili dialogue

January 26, 2021 • 6:30 am

Good morning and top o’ the week to you: it’s Tuesday, January 26, 2021: National Peanut Brittle Day. It’s also National Green Juice Day, International Customs Day and, in Australia, Australia Day (see below).

News of the Day:

Ceiling Cat help me; I’ve taken several people’s advice and subscribed to the Wall Street Journal in a desperate attempt to get more objective news coverage. They had a $4/month offer for digital access for a year, but I think the offer has now expired now. But I am NOT a Republican!! I now subscribe to the NYT, the Washington Post, the WSJ, and Andrew Sullivan, and contemplating subscribing to Bari Weiss’s site. I also subscribe to the paper and digital editions of the New Woker, but I’m thinking of canceling that. I can no longer abide their sanctimonious wokeness.

At least I don’t have to rant about the President’s missteps now that Trump is gone. But I just watched (I’m writing this on Monday evening) the House formally deliver the article of Trump’s impeachment to the Senate. It was all very dignified and formal; the trial begins February 9. The Guardian has a liveblog with background information. It’s rankling to hear chuckleheads like Marco Rubio kvetch about the process being divisive—after Trump spent his entire Presidency being divisive, finally calling for the people to rise up against legitimate election results.

It’s the 125th anniversary of the New York Times Book Review, and they’re celebrating by highlighting notables who reviewed other people’s books in that section. Here’s a list; click on the link to go to the review:

And we’ve been fortunate to feature the writing of so many illustrious figures in our pages — novelists, musicians, presidents, Nobel winners, CEOs, poets, playwrights — all offering their insights with wit and flair. Here are 25 of them.

H.G. Wells | Vladimir Nabokov | Tennessee Williams | Patricia Highsmith | Shirley Jackson | Eudora Welty | Langston Hughes | Dorothy Parker | John F. Kennedy | Nora Ephron | Toni Morrison | John Kenneth Galbraith | Nikki Giovanni | James Baldwin | Kurt Vonnegut Jr. | Joan Didion | Derek Walcott | Margaret Atwood | Ursula K. Le Guin | Stephen King | Jhumpa Lahiri | Mario Vargas Llosa | Colson Whitehead | Patti Smith | Bill Gates

Worried about the coronavirus mutants, their transmission, and, especially, the ability of the vaccines to stop them? There’s some cause for worry, as the Washington Post reports.  But you must still get your jab. Booster shots may be in the offing, too, and we may need yearly shots, as we get now with the flu.

Finally, today’s reported Covid-19 death toll in the U.S. is 420,999, an increase of about 1,700 deaths over yesterday’s figure. We may pass half a million deaths in less than a month. The reported world death toll stands at 2,151,139, an increase of about 10,700 deaths over yesterday’s total, or about 7.4 deaths per minute.

Stuff that happened on January 26 includes:

  • 1500 – Vicente Yáñez Pinzón becomes the first European to set foot on Brazil.
  • 1564 – The Council of Trent establishes an official distinction between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism.
  • 1788 – The British First Fleet, led by Arthur Phillip, sails into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) to establish Sydney, the first permanent European settlement on Australia. Commemorated as Australia Day.

Stalia! Stralia! Stralia! Here’s Monty Python with their “philosophers sketch” (I can’t find the original online):

During Prohibition in the 1920s, you could still get a doctor’s prescription for “medicinal alcohol”. Here’s a blank form for one (note that you could fill in “kind of liquor”:

  • 1885 – Troops loyal to The Mahdi conquer Khartoum, killing the Governor-General Charles George Gordon.
  • 1905 – The world’s largest diamond ever, the Cullinan weighing 3,106.75 carats (0.621350 kg), is found at the Premier Mine near Pretoria in South Africa.

The diamond, shown below, weighed about 1.4 pounds, and was split into nine stones (picture below that). The biggest of these is the Star of Africa, now sitting in the British Sovereign’s Sceptre.

  • 1911 – Glenn Curtiss flies the first successful American seaplane.
  • 1926 – The first demonstration of the television by John Logie Baird.
  • 1945 – World War II: Audie Murphy displays valor and bravery in action for which he will later be awarded the Medal of Honor.

Murphy, below, won every single combat medal produced by the U.S. Army. He was only 19 when he did the deed that won him the Medal of Honor. He was killed in a plane crash at the age of 45.

Look at all those medals! (The one around his neck is the Medal of Honor.)

  • 1950 – The Constitution of India comes into force, forming a republic. Rajendra Prasad is sworn in as the first President of India. Observed as Republic Day in India.
  • 1965 – Hindi becomes the official language of India.
  • 1998 – Lewinsky scandal: On American television, U.S. President Bill Clinton denies having had “sexual relations” with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

Notables born on this day include:

  • 1880 – Douglas MacArthur, American general, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1964)
  • 1905 – Maria von Trapp, Austrian-American singer (d. 1987)

Here’s Maria von Trapp teaching Julie Andrews, who played Maria in “The Sound of Music” to yodel:

  • 1908 – Stéphane Grappelli, French violinist (d. 1997)
  • 1925 – Paul Newman, American actor, activist, director, race car driver, and businessman, co-founded Newman’s Own (d. 2008)
  • 1944 – Angela Davis, American activist, academic, and author

Here’s Angela Davis as I remember her in the Sixties and early Seventies; she’s now a Professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz:

  • 1946 – Gene Siskel, American journalist and film critic (d. 1999)
  • 1958 – Anita Baker, American singer-songwriter
  • 1958 – Ellen DeGeneres, American comedian, actress, and talk show host

Those who flatlined on January 26 include:

  • 1823 – Edward Jenner, English physician and immunologist (b. 1749)
  • 1893 – Abner Doubleday, American general (b. 1819)
  • 1943 – Nikolai Vavilov, Russian botanist and geneticist (b. 1887)
  • 1962 – Lucky Luciano, Italian-American mob boss (b. 1897)
  • 1973 – Edward G. Robinson, Romanian-American actor (b. 1893)

Here’s Robinson as the crime boss Rico in the movie “Little Caesar” (1931)

Meanwhile in Dobrzyn, Andrzej tells Hili that the mice, snug in their burrows, are subsisting on stored food.

Hili: What are mice doing now?
A: Taking out reserves from their refrigerators.
In Polish:
Hili: Co teraz robią myszy?
Ja: Wyjmują zapasy z lodówki.

All Bernie memes today! Is there no end to these? From Ant: “Sanders Style.” Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!

Oy! Yet another, from Jean. Recognize the show?

And a third; an album cover sent by reader Barry, who marvels that nobody thought of this before:

The Queen echoes a real sentiment about the transphobia of Miley Cyrus. The original comment is from Out magazine.

No end to Bernie. This is from Simon:

And another from Simon: parrot taunts kitty. That cat looks damn frustrated!

From Phil. I don’t know who Rod Hull is, but this is pretty funny:

Tweets from Matthew. Bernie is everywhere!

A hamster wheel for a tardigrade!

I’m sure I’ve posted this before, but it’s worth seeing again. Sound up: they are so happy!

Even thought they’re vicious killers, stoats are still adorable.

A great book on freedom of speech

January 25, 2021 • 1:15 pm

I’ve just finished a book that I recommend very highly to anybody interested in freedom of speech and expression. In fact, of all the books I’ve read in the last few years on this topic, this is up there at the top with Mill’s On Liberty.  The more recent book, Kindly Inquisitors: The New Attacks on Free Thought, first appeared in 1993, and that’s the edition I read. I see, however, that Amazon is selling a 2013 “expanded edition” with a foreword by George Will (click on screenshot below), and I haven’t yet seen that one. (It’s only $14.07 in paperback, and is published by The University of Chicago Press.) The Amazon sample shows that Wills’s foreword is short, but that Rauch has also inserted an afterword.

Nevertheless, the earlier edition is still highly relevant. In fact, although it’s 27 years old, you wouldn’t know that from its contents, as it’s completely relevant to today’s Zeitgeist. The author, Jonathan Rauch, is an author currently working at the Brookings Institution and is a contributing editor at The Atlantic. He’s also openly gay, which he mentions several times at appropriate places in the book.

I should add that the book is remarkably well written for a semi-academic tome, and is a pleasure to read.

Rauch’s thesis is pretty much a defense of untrammeled free speech as limned by America’s First Amendment to the Constitution, and a defense of extending of that Amendment into venues that don’t necessarily have to adhere to it, like private schools and colleges. It’s also an admission that yes, free speech can be offensive and even harmful (to feelings only!), but that that’s okay, for the benefits of free speech palpably outweighs emotional damage. (Needless to say, Rauch doesn’t consider speech to be “violence”, a topic already bandied about in 1993).

A very brief summary. At the beginning, Rauch lays out four principles about who should decide what speech is permissible. I quote his alternatives (p. 6):

  • The Fundamentalist Principle.  Those who know the truth should decide who is right. [JAC: Plato’s position.]
  • The Simple Egalitarian Principle: All sincere persons’ beliefs have equal claims to respect.
  • The Radical Egalitarian Principle: Like the simple egalitarian principle, but the beliefs of persons in historically oppressed classes or groups get special consideration.
  • The Humanitarian Principle. Any of the above, but with the condition that the first priority be to cause no harm.
  • The Liberal Principle. Checking of each [person’s claims] by each through public criticism is the only legitimate way to decide who’s right.

Many seem to feel that the proper policy is a combination of principles 2 through 4, but Rauch’s position is the “liberal principle,” which he spends the rest of the book justifying and defending.  That principle, which he also calls “liberal science” because it involves debate and cross-checking of claims, is summarized by two tenets (p 46; the explanation is mine:

A.) No one gets the final say. All truth claims are tentative, skepticism is prized (this is like science), and you can never reach a point where all further criticism is useless or prohibited. There can be no end of discussion, though some claims, like the chemical formula of liquid water, are as close to absolute truth as one can come. But for debates about things like affirmative action, abortion, and so on, one can never say that the discussion is settled, and, indeed, for claims like these, there are no absolute truths, only prescriptions that can be more or less useful to society. But those prescriptions can not only be discussed with reason, but informed by science itself.

B.) No one has personal authority. That is, there can be no arbiter of truth or of what speech can be tolerated. That is a form of censorship and authoritarian Diktat that is incompatible with societal progress.

As you can see, Rauch believes that completely free discussion—and that includes much of what is considered “hate speech”—is the best possible way to advance society, and to arrive at what truths can be grasped. This is pretty much Mill’s position, but Rauch’s book is a useful (but not complete) substitute.

As for “hurt” and “offense”, which are used to weaponize speech and gain power over others, as we saw in the previous post—Rauch simply dismisses them as valid complaints. Here’s a passage on that issue (p 19):

Somehow the idea has grown up that “liberal” means “nice,” that the liberal intellectual system fosters sensitivity, toleration, self-esteem, the rejection of prejudice and bias. That impression is misguided. The truth is that liberal science demands discipline as well as license, and to those who reject or flout its rules, it can be cruel. It excludes and restricts as well as tolerates. It thrives on prejudice no less than on cool detachment. It does not give a damn about your feelings and happily tramples them in the name of finding truth. It allows and-here we should be honest-sometimes encourages offense. Self-esteem, sensitivity, respect for others’ beliefs, renunciation of prejudice are all good as far as they go. But as primary social goals they are incompatible with the peaceful and productive advancement of human knowledge. To advance knowledge, we must all sometimes suffer. Worse than that, we must inflict suffering on others.

The suffering, of course, is mental, not physical, but Rauch’s response to people like those who accused the American Mathematical Society of “harm” and “offense” would be: “Suck it up; you’ll live.”

This sentiment has been echoed in more recent years by Stephen Fry, Christopher Hitchens, and Salman Rushdie.

Here’s Hitchens:

“If someone tells me that I’ve hurt their feelings, I say, ‘I’m still waiting to hear what your point is.’

In this country, I’ve been told, ‘That’s offensive’ as if those two words constitute an argument or a comment. Not to me they don’t.

And I’m not running for anything, so I don’t have to pretend to like people when I don’t.”

Stephen Fry:

“It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more. . . than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what.”

Well, it does have a purpose: to gain power over other people as well as attention.

Salman Rushdie:

“Nobody has the right to not be offended. That right doesn’t exist in any declaration I have ever read.

If you are offended it is your problem, and frankly lots of things offend lots of people.

I can walk into a bookshop and point out a number of books that I find very unattractive in what they say. But it doesn’t occur to me to burn the bookshop down. If you don’t like a book, read another book. If you start reading a book and you decide you don’t like it, nobody is telling you to finish it.

To read a 600-page novel and then say that it has deeply offended you: well, you have done a lot of work to be offended.”

All of us should have some version of these sentiments at hand! At any rate, I importune you to read Rauch’s book.

American Mathematical Society excoriated for creating a fellowship for black mathematicians, but not yet giving it a name

January 25, 2021 • 11:15 am

Speaking of Wokeness, remember that one of its symptoms is that if you do something in line with the tenets of Critical Theory, but don’t adhere to them 100%, you’re going to get slammed anyway. And you can never predict why and how The Outraged will come at you.

Here’s a ludicrous but sad example. The American Mathematical Society (AMS) recently created a fellowship “to support the research and scholarship of mid-career Black mathematicians.” That is good, right?

Not so fast. In their haste to announce the fellowship, the AMS didn’t yet name the fellowship, even though the details and application process haven’t even been revealed.  And so the Twitterati got to work on this thread and, clearly, contacting and excoriating the AMS for its “disrespectful” action. You can see some of the tweets on this thread, and I’ve put a few below.

It’s not enough to criticize the AMS for what the offended perceived as a hamhanded action (I don’t see it that way); they also hinted darkly that the lack of a name—and the fellowship will get a name—is an “intentional aggression”! How twisted do you have to be to think that the creation of a fellowship for black mathematicans is an “intentional aggression” because it wasn’t yet named?

If one were charitable, one would presume, as is certainly the case, that the fellowship will have a name by the time people start applying for it. But charity is not part of Wokeness.

What happened? The proper response would have been, “Chill people; we’ve just announced it. The name will come soon.” Instead, the AMS issued this groveling apology:

Look at that! They apologize for not yet issuing a “proper, respectful, and Council-approved name”. They even apologize for causing “hurt and anger.” My response to that would be “suck it up; you’ll live.” The AMS is spineless, abasing itself before the dubious claims that there was harm. Anger? Yes, of course. Hurt? Maybe, but the hurt is in those who are ready and willing to be hurt; in fact, they’re looking to be hurt, knowing that if you claim hurt and offense, you get your way. This is all a way to leverage power. And if you reward outrage, the obvious outcome is more outrage. 

h/t: Luana

Counterweight: A new liberal but anti-Woke site

January 25, 2021 • 10:15 am

Helen Pluckrose and her associates have just started a new site that will appeal to many here, especially those who may get in trouble for criticizing the Woke.  It’s called “Counterweight“, and its motto is “Weighing in for liberalism.” I suppose its name comes from the fact that it counters the narrative of Wokeness and Critical Theory (remember, Pluckrose was one of the two authors of Cynical Theories, a must-read book), and because it remains a liberal site, dedicated to civility and humane values—but not to the tenets of Critical Theory! Their methods of combat appear to include Politeness but Firmness.

Click on screenshot to go to the site:

Counterweight exists for two reasons. First, to help those who are in trouble with the Offense Culture, who are getting canceled, and who need advice, assistance, lawyers and other professionals, and so on. In addition, they’re putting out material to counteract “Authoritarian Critical Social Justice” (the theory that I refer to as “Wokeness”).  They have pretty impressive resources already.

Here’s their mission statement:

The leadership team is here, the academic affiliates are here (I’m one of them, and honored to join the impressive crew, which includes Steve Pinker, Sam Harris, Sarah Haider (btw, Haider just started a subscription Substack site, some of whose content is free), Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Alan Sokal, and others), and there are nine partner organizations, including Letters, Areo Magazine, the Free Speech Union, and Critical Discourses.

Further, there’s a YouTube channel, which already has six videos, including this introductory one:

Finally, you can follow Counterweight on Twitter and Facebook.

Helen is extremely dedicated—an anti-Woke force of nature—and I have high hope for the organization. At least start following them on social media, and be aware that the organization exists.