Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
This is a great video showing a renegade baby raccoon refusing to enter its tree hole den. Mom is frustrated and makes repeated attempts to stuff the little bugger in, going so far as to grab it on the head with her teeth (this doesn’t look like a felid scruff carry!). She finally wins after a long struggle—after all, that baby carries half of her genes and has to be secured.
The television sports network ESPN has been accused before of injecting ideology into its sports coverage. I can’t speak to that, as I neither follow the network nor am a big sports fan. But its latest move, one that can’t be seen as anything other than boneheaded, was to reassign an announcer scheduled to cover a football game livestreamed by ESPN on its digital network.
The game was between the University of Virginia and my own alma mater, The College of William and Mary. U. Va. is located in Charlottesville, where, as you know, violence recently erupted over the planned removal of a statue of Confederate army commander Robert E. Lee.
The name of the broadcaster originally scheduled to cover the game is Robert Lee. He’s Asian American, and was recently promoted at ESPN.
As CNN reports, ESPN “embarrassed itself” by “trying to avoid an embarrassing ordeal”—removing Lee from the broadcast and reassigning him to another livsteamed game, one between Youngstown State and Pitt, two Pennsylvania colleges.
CNN:
The website Outkick the Coverage broke the story — with a headline invoking a popular conservative nickname for ESPN, “MSESPN,” which derides the network as the sports equivalent of the liberal talk shows on MSNBC.
The headline said, “MSESPN Pulls Asian Announcer Named Robert Lee Off UVa Game To Avoid Offending Idiots.” The story was so popular that the site’s servers were overloaded on Tuesday evening.
ESPN subsequently said in a statement that its executives “collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding.”
“In that moment it felt right to all parties,” the network said. “It’s a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play-by-play for a football game has become an issue.”
From ESPN’s perspective, the executives were trying to guard against Lee becoming a punchline, given that he shares a name with a Confederate general.
They foresaw memes and headlines “Robert Lee marches into Charlottesville.” Moving Lee to a different game was seen as a way to support him.
Few people defended ESPN’s decision: after all, the announcer’s name is “Robert Lee” and nobody in the U.S. calls the general “Robert Lee”—it’s always “Robert E. Lee.” Here’s the difference:
This is ridiculous, a gross overreaction that ESPN could have avoided simply by leaving Lee to broadcast the game as scheduled. Perhaps there would have been a few comments or jokes, but we can’t go walking on eggshells because an Asian-American is named “Robert Lee.”
Subsequently, as reported by PuffHo, ESPN “clarified” their decision, saying it wasn’t to avoid offending people or to be politically correct, but simply to protect Lee himself (who could of course have asked to be reassigned) from “social hectoring and trolling”. Here’s the spin given by ESPN after they were already mocked for their decision.
New: internal memo from ESPN prez John Skipper about the Robert Lee decision pic.twitter.com/3yFk4hbDRb
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) August 24, 2017
I’m pretty sure that what happened here was that Lee expressed “trepidation” only after ESPN confronted him with the issue—and perhaps spun it to him that he could be vilified on social media. And, as a rising person at the network, of course he’d take the assignment change urged on him by the network. Huffpo notes:
“We mutually agreed to switch,” an executive at the sports channel told HuffPost contributor Yashar Ali in a statement, referring to Lee. “No biggie until someone leaked it to embarrass us and got their way.”
I wonder whether there was any coercion about the “switch”. And even if there wasn’t, Robert Lee should never have been made a pawn in a political game.
Or, I suppose, ESPN could “suggest” that he change his first name.
I’m still horrified that more than one commenter on my site has said (or implied) that “first-strike” violence is justifiable for odious people like white supremacists and Nazis. I simply can’t fathom the desire to hurt another person because of their speech, or think that such tactics could accomplish any worthwhile aims. Yes, white supremacists and Nazis may themselves want to attack blacks, Jews, and the like, but we’re supposed to be better than they. I can live with people criticizing my views on free will, music, and the like, but it’s much harder for me to see violence promulgated or approved of on this site.
With that digression, on to the topic, which is germane. (I almost wrote “German!)
I haven’t disagreed with much that philosopher Peter Singer has said, as he’s a clear-thinking Leftist and an empathic man who’s carefully considered the views he holds. Nor do I disagree with his short piece at The Syndicate: “Is violence the way to stop racism?” His answer is “No!”
Singer begins by construing Trump’s remarks about “both sides” being to blame for Charlottesville’s violence more “charitably” than have others. After making a clear statement that there is obvious moral inequality between racists and white supremacists on one side versus anti-racists on the other, Singer gives a possible interpretation of what Trump said:
Rather than putting the racists and anti-racists on the same footing, Trump was saying that both sides were to blame for the violence that broke out. In support of that claim, he said that some on the left “came charging with clubs in their hands, swinging clubs,” and added: “Do they have a problem? I think they do.”
That statement still ignores the fact that a white supremacist used his car as a weapon, with lethal results. Nothing comparable was done by any of the anti-racists.
While I didn’t construe Trump’s remarks like that at the time (and I still think he was avoiding indicting bigotry), I still saw both sides as culpable for the violence. Clearly, only one side was culpable for murder, but there were a lot of fights and beatings. And just as clearly, some of the anti-racists were to blame, for it’s now clear that many (not all!) of the counter-protestors came spoiling for a fight, ready to do battle. Yes, perhaps more of the supremacists carried guns than did their opponents, but guns weren’t used. Can we even apportion who is most to blame for the violence? I don’t see how: I wasn’t there and can’t even figure it out from the news I’ve watched.
But that doesn’t matter, nor do both sides have to be equally to blame. What is clear is that the Left holds some responsibility for initiating violence, and yet many refuse to admit it, pointing to the car murder. To do that is putting your fingers in your ears and saying “nah nah nah nah.” The far Left is becoming more violent, and those closer to the center seem more willing to condone violence or turn their heads to it.
That’s unacceptable. It’s not only morally unacceptable, since I see no justification for beating up someone for what they say, but, as Singer points out, it’s tactically unacceptable, as he doesn’t see violence achieving anything for the Left. I agree.
Singer (my emphasis):
In interviews, antifa activists explained their position. “You need violence to protect nonviolence,” said Emily Rose Nauert. “That’s what’s very obviously necessary right now. It’s full-on war, basically.” Other antifa activists said that it is not unethical to use violence to stop white supremacists, because they have already, by stirring up hatred against minorities, caused violent attacks on individual members of those groups.
. . . Let’s grant that the antifa activists are right about the irrationality of hard-core racist fanatics. It remains true that in the United States, and other countries where elections are the path to power, the far right can achieve its goals only by winning over middle-of-the-road voters. Even if many of these voters are also not completely rational – few people are – they are not likely to be won over to the anti-racist cause by seeing footage of anti-racists hitting racists with clubs or throwing urine-filled water bottles.
Such images convey, more than anything else, the idea that anti-racists are hooligans looking for a fight. Dignified nonviolent resistance and disciplined civil disobedience are more conducive to demonstrating a sincere ethical commitment to a better, non-racist society than clubbing people and hurling piss at them.
Violent resistance is particularly dangerous in the US because some states allow anyone to carry a firearm. In Charlottesville, a large number of white supremacists paraded through the streets dressed in camouflage and carrying semi-automatic assault rifles. If the antifa activists are going to match the racists in violence, will it be possible to hold the line at clubs? How long will it be before the deadly weapons now openly on display are also used?
I’ve heard justifications for Antifa-style violence based on history: that antifacists fought against Hitler in Germany and pro-Hitler groups in England. But, as several readers have already pointed out, that analogy breaks down, and Singer tells us why:
Some antifa activists trace the origin of the movement to groups that fought against fascists in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s. In Germany, in the years before Hitler came to power, the Nazis’ paramilitary Sturmabteilung (Stormtroopers, also known as the “Brownshirts”) beat up, sometimes fatally, Jews and political opponents. In self-defense, the left responded with its own militias: the Communist Party’s Red Front Fighters and the Social Democrats’ Iron Front.
The result was an escalation of street violence, and a sense, among the wider public, that law and order were breaking down. Many came to believe that a firm hand was required to restore order and stability. A firm hand was exactly the image that Hitler was trying to project, and as the violence worsened, the Nazi vote rose. We all know how that tragedy played out.
Is it far-fetched to think that history could repeat itself in this way? To antifa activists who see violence as the answer to the far right, it should not be. They are the ones who are drawing the historical parallels. The Times quotes an antifa activist: “If we just stand back, we are allowing them to build a movement whose end goal is genocide.” If that is the danger, we need to find a better way of combating it than the tactic that so plainly failed in Germany.
Well, I’m not very worried about a new Nazi Party in the U.S., as, like Pinker, I see that as increasingly unacceptable. What worries me more is that Trump will act in a Hitlerian fashion by quashing people’s civil rights. Even the American Civil Liberties Union seems to be reconsidering its position on defending the right to utter “hate speech.”
Now is not the time for the Left to give in—after all, we’ve had white supremacy and the Nazi Party with us for some time, and they haven’t grown despite consistent enforcement of the First Amendment. (Trump has made them more visible rather than swelling their ranks.) Rather, it’s time for us to hold the line on free speech, as Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ did in her statement yesterday.
_______________
UPDATE: this is what happens when violence is “normalized”; you get criminals saying that felony assault is justified against a non-aggressive “neo-Nazi” (click on screenshot to go to article):
Did you find them in the photo sent by Diane G.? There were three, and they’re circled below:
Carol T. Christ, an academic (an English scholar specializing in Victorian literature), became the Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley in March. Yesterday she issued a superb statement about free speech at Berkeley, a school that’s lately been embroiled in issues of no-platforming and even violence around proposed right-wing speakers like Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos. In my view, Berkeley hasn’t yet taken a very public or strong stand in favor of free expression, especially because that campus was the home of the “Free Speech” movement in the mid-Sixties. My own school remains the beacon and the model for supporting free speech among American universities.
Someone sent me Christ’s statement, which was posted on Milo Yiannopoulos’s Facebook page (does that make a difference to you?), but I also found it on the Berkeley News. It was sent to “the campus community”. The bolding in her statement is mine.
From: “Carol T. Christ Chancellor”
Date: August 23, 2017 at 8:48:26 AM PDT
Subject: Free SpeechDear Students, Faculty and Staff,
This fall, the issue of free speech will once more engage our community in powerful and complex ways. Events in Charlottesville, with their racism, bigotry, violence and mayhem, make the issue of free speech even more tense. The law is very clear; public institutions like UC Berkeley must permit speakers invited in accordance with campus policies to speak, without discrimination in regard to point of view. The United States has the strongest free speech protections of any liberal democracy; the First Amendment protects even speech that most of us would find hateful, abhorrent and odious, and the courts have consistently upheld these protections.
But the most powerful argument for free speech is not one of legal constraint—that we’re required to allow it—but of value. The public expression of many sharply divergent points of view is fundamental both to our democracy and to our mission as a university. The philosophical justification underlying free speech, most powerfully articulated by John Stuart Mill in his book On Liberty, rests on two basic assumptions. The first is that truth is of such power that it will always ultimately prevail; any abridgement of argument therefore compromises the opportunity of exchanging error for truth. The second is an extreme skepticism about the right of any authority to determine which opinions are noxious or abhorrent. Once you embark on the path to censorship, you make your own speech vulnerable to it. [JAC: These are the canonical arguments for allowing “hate speech”]
Berkeley, as you know, is the home of the Free Speech Movement, where students on the right and students on the left united to fight for the right to advocate political views on campus. Particularly now, it is critical that the Berkeley community come together once again to protect this right. It is who we are.
Nonetheless, defending the right of free speech for those whose ideas we find offensive is not easy. It often conflicts with the values we hold as a community—tolerance, inclusion, reason and diversity. Some constitutionally-protected speech attacks the very identity of particular groups of individuals in ways that are deeply hurtful. However, the right response is not the heckler’s veto, or what some call platform denial. Call toxic speech out for what it is, don’t shout it down, for in shouting it down, you collude in the narrative that universities are not open to all speech. Respond to hate speech with more speech.
We all desire safe space, where we can be ourselves and find support for our identities. You have the right at Berkeley to expect the university to keep you physically safe. But we would be providing students with a less valuable education, preparing them less well for the world after graduation, if we tried to shelter them from ideas that many find wrong, even dangerous. We must show that we can choose what to listen to, that we can cultivate our own arguments and that we can develop inner resilience, which is the surest form of safe space. These are not easy tasks, and we will offer support services for those who desire them.
This September, Ben Shapiro and Milo Yiannopoulos have both been invited by student groups to speak at Berkeley. The university has the responsibility to provide safety and security for its community and guests, and we will invest the necessary resources to achieve that goal. If you choose to protest, do so peacefully. That is your right, and we will defend it with vigor. We will not tolerate violence, and we will hold anyone accountable who engages in it.
We will have many opportunities this year to come together as a Berkeley community over the issue of free speech; it will be a free speech year. We have already planned a student panel, a faculty panel and several book talks. Bridge USA and the Center for New Media will hold a day-long conference on October 5; PEN, the international writers’ organization, will hold a free speech convening in Berkeley on October 23. We are planning a series in which people with sharply divergent points of view will meet for a moderated discussion. Free speech is our legacy, and we have the power once more to shape this narrative.
Sincerely,
Carol Christ
Chancellor
This is an absolutely wonderful statement, and emphasizes again the need for those of you who worry about “hate speech” to read Mill’s great work On Liberty. I agree with Christ 100%, both with her arguments about the need for not restricting even speech one deems odious, and about the unacceptability of responding with violence. When Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak on campus last February, his talk was canceled by the University because of violent demonstrations by outside “masked agitators”—in all likelihood Antifa adherents—who caused over $100,000 in damage. Since Ben Shapiro and Milo have been invited back this fall, I’m pretty positive that Antifa and like-minded thugs will once again try to shut their talks down. Christ promises they will be dealt with harshly (she means with the law, of course), and I’m glad to hear that. Shapiro is far more serious than Milo, and far more worth hearing, but if somebody doesn’t like their talks, don’t go to them. As Christ says, “Respond to hate speech with more speech.”
I have no truck with readers who have called for violence against those uttering what they see as “hate speech”, so don’t call for violence on this site. The only justifiable violence in demonstrations is in pure self-defense, and that means no carrying weapons when you protest.
And good for Dr. Christ for making such an uncompromising statement. She’s the highest official at Berkeley, and she has power. I love the idea of a “free speech year,” which will surely stimulate a lot of discussion. And believe me, students need that discussion.
Count on an English scholar to cite Mill!
h/t: Orli
Reader Diane G. sent a photo in which you’re not only asked to spot the animals, but tell us how many you see. The reveal will be at 11 am Chicago time. Her notes:
My adult daughter, Liz, sent me this pic…taken at one of the lovely trails in or near Grand Rapids, MI, where she frequently walks her d*g. (For the record, she also has two rescue cats and is currently fostering a foundling kitten. 🙂 )
I was able to find the frogs with just a slight effort (one’s blatant, of course!), but they are definitely cryptic; I doubt your average passerby would notice them unless they moved.
Go to town and put your answers below, including your count. (Click photo to enlarge.)
The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “sing”, came with the note, “It’s been a while since we did an X-factor strip.” It forms an argument for freedom of speech, and remember that Christians and especially Muslims consider criticism of their faith to be “hate speech”. For those who call for punching Nazis, should Muslims and Christians be able to call for punching Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris?
