@James: I agree 100% with you on this issue. People need to stop making up stuff and defaming people. Let's just have a honest dialogue.

Perhaps Ogion is just being absolutely insufferable as a tactic to get conservatives to rethink freedom of speech.

He's more evidence of why the university system and PhDs turn people into rhetoric spouting ideologues.
University really is doing more harm than good right now imo.

Good thing we don't care about your opinion...
Or is that abrogating your fragile freedom of speach snowflake.

I don't understand your post. Sorry

I agree, the university system is so far-left it's unbelievable. Something should be done about it to introduce political diversity of opinion into the university system, but I don't know how to do that.

That is a conversation topic I could type about for hours. There are so many interesting aspects to that, and what leads different people to the different ideologies.
I think the university system is already starting to swing back a little though.

"I agree, the university system is so far-left it's unbelievable. Something should be done about it to introduce political diversity of opinion into the university system, but I don't know how to do that."

The university systems consists of extremists from all parts of the political spectrum. It's just that the media currently is pushing the left side for examples and it's been decades since they attacked the right wing academics that used to push their views.

Holocaust Denier - Arthur Butz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Butz
http://newvoices.org/2011/11/30/0120-2/

Right Wing University - Oral Roberts University - scroll down to near the bottom for examples of misbehavior:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_Roberts_University

I live real close to ORU :)

@ James. Sorry, it was brainbomb, not you. I was confused


The point generally is still valid though

hahaha i literall am less than a mile from ORU as we speak. they're super far right, however, compared to leftists, they're not the trend

https://econjwatch.org/articles/faculty-voter-registration-in-economics-history-journalism-communications-law-and-psychology

it's a LOT further to the left across the country

thank you Ogion

Priests "aka "riots" when a conservative sees a black person doing it aren't terrorism

Terrorism is shooting up people in a black church because they are black, or sikhs because they are Sikh, of women because they control their own bodies, or driving over protestors because they're protesting racism. NONE of what you cited gets anywhere near a definition or racism and much of it is pure fabrication

And the fact that you'd even bring such ridiculous arguments to defend white spupremacista makes out a pretty good case for racism, frankly.

As for how it stops police brutality, it's gotten America to finally wake up and smell the shit. Anyone with half a brain has known for decades that the "justice" system is profoundly racist, from cops on down. And no one outside of black America and a few liberals cared. Now at least people can't ignore it

My university was very much split down the middle, though my university also sat within a massively wealthy subdivision (13th wealthiest zip code in the US, I think?) and pulled many students from that area that lean conservative exclusively because they have a very limited idea of what it is like to struggle for money. They generally assume welfare is a joke and that poor people are poor because they're lazy and/or dumb. They also wear salmon shorts and do a bunch of cocaine, so it's safe to say I didn't exactly get to know them while I was there. Ever since unnamed trust fund kid asshole cried when his dad gave him a brand new $50,000 Cadillac instead of whatever the hell it is he wanted, I didn't really see any point to it.

The faculty at LFC had no problem staying unbiased politically, but they leaned left. I just don't think that that is really a problem. Students in college are definitely not the people that they're going to end up throughout their lives yet and they can easily be molded, but they're just as much shaped by other students, friends, family, etc. as they are by faculty. Likewise, they already have life experiences and opinions and those don't just magically go away during college, though maybe some people, myself included, learn to recognize that our life experiences are not universal. I can't fathom how that could be a bad thing. While some universities might trend strongly one way or another, probably left before right, that's representative of the younger generation as a whole. The university isn't doing that to us; we're doing that to the university. It's how we think and feel, and how we rationalize what's going on in the world. The only evidence that the university is furthering this is by silencing right wing authors, which happens somewhat regularly, but there is no factory school built to pump out socialists. That idea is absurd.

Universities became liberal when being violently anti-intellectual became a fundamental part of conservativism. For example, when denying evolution and climate change is a litmus test for conservativism then scientists become liberal almost by default

And it is somewhat understandable that an individual university doesn't want its name associated with anti-evolutionary thought or climate denial. The degree to which those two things exist and particularly in terms of climate change how much it will affect us going forward should be up for discussion, but denying their existence is just primitive at this point. The fact that universities end up feeling it necessary to silence their faculty, though, makes me wonder exactly why they didn't realize that, for example, a professor of science hasn't either come to realize the accuracy of basic sciences or done comprehensive experiments in the past to prove his own assertions by the time they get hired. That's what really bothers me.

Do you have any examples of universities silencing any faculty, outside of egregiously racist shot (and even then)

The reason you virtually never find scientists (except the occasional dingbat theoretical physicist) who deny evolution or climate change science is because there isn't a scientific leg to stand on on either position, so scientists don't take those positions. There isn't any silencing needed when there is consensus around the bloody obvious. Not a lot of flat earthers in that group either

oh yeah, "the climate hoax" people and "creationism is rad kids" have no place in these institutions

even if some places have an open political bias, i'm not too upset about it as long as they're transparent. it's why CNN bugs me but MSNBC i actually don't mind as much. CNN pretend they're "above it all" in regards to politics while MSNBC admit they've got some bias to the left, but they're going to stand by it.

universities for the most part don't hide bias, from what i've seen.

also, free speech on college campuses is on the RISE, not more and more under attack

https://www.thefire.org/spotlight-on-speech-codes-2017/

i mean... 40% isn't a small number, but at least it's moving in a positive direction

We should certainly learn from history, but we should not get bogged down in trying to make a perfect comparison.

@"Please condemn violence on both sides. We need to come together and condemn violence on both sides like President Trump said. Trump's condemnation of violence on both sides was great. Finally a guy who will condemn violence on the right and the LEFT."

That is like someone ranting about WW2 sayin that we must condemn both the violece of the Axis and the Allies equally, both are engaged in violence, so both are at fault.

It ignores so much of the reality, Trump has encouraged violence, through his words and his actions. He has exicitally told people to beat up protesters at his rallies (and that he would cover their legal fees). He pushed a dangerous ideological message to get himself elected, directed at white people blaming others.

This isn't some sporadic, and undirected movement. It has a cause. The Anti-fa likewise, they didn't appear from nowhere, their violence is a reaction to angry fascists trying to destroy what they hold dear about our democratic society.

We must come together and deal a serious blow to end this, or the violence will escalate.

The only example i can think of is Northern Ireland. In the late 60s a peaceful, no -sectarian protest/civil rights movement grew to prominence. And was severely repressed by the protestant run state (at the time catholics were not allowed into government jobs, but this movement included both catholics and protestants). The failure of the state to come to a peaceful resolution lead to 30 years of the worst violence Ireland has seen in hundreds of years, literally decades of sectarian violence, thousands dead, and eventually a difficult peace provess.

The US and white supremecists present a different challenge, but the anemic responce from Trump is not going to inspire people to follow him. In Northern Ireland the civil rights leaders lost control of the movement, the British army was sent in to keep the oeace between Carholic protesters and the protestant Police force, the situation degenerated to the point where everyone was split between those who choose violence on either side - because people lost faith in the ability of the state to resolve things witout violence. Both Loyalist/protestant paramilitaries, and Nationalist/catholic paramilitaries resorted to terrorist tactics. And everything went to shit. Because of a failure of politics, a failure of leadership and compromise.

I'm not really interested in doing through the archives of Google, so I'll give you the example that I can think of because I know someone involved even though it doesn't relate to climate change or evolution:

John McAdams of Marquette University in Milwaukee was fired and had his tenure revoked for speaking out against another member of the faculty, who attempted to shut down students who were opposed to legalizing gay marriage (in 2014, before SCOTUS ruled, though I personally don't think that matters because laws should still be perfectly well up for debate). The professor that McAdams was referring to (I don't remember er name) told a student that he should drop her class if he thought that gay marriage shouldn't be legal rather than discussing it openly in a philosophy class. She claimed that it didn't need to be discussed and said that the student's opinion was homophobic.

McAdams blogged about this incident, and the incident gained some notoriety in the media, so he was silenced, plain and simple. They revoked his tenure, which is amazing - you know how hard it is and should be to lose tenure - for calling out a professor that silenced a student. She was never penalized and I assume finished the grad program she was in at Marquette, but I don't know for sure.

You can look Professor McAdams up and find out all about it. It was pretty pathetic. Consensus or otherwise, there is no way or reason to shut down a debate entirely and there is no reason to silence a professor for calling out a colleague on her shit.

The ironic thing is that Marquette is a Catholic university that absolutely leans right, so if there was a place to find a debate about gay marriage, it would be there.

Except that we was suspended for publishing students' names tot argent them for harrasment on three separate occaisions. That's a suspension for misconduct, not for his political views

Apparently he is suspended pending an apology to the student, who received so much harassment based on his (apparently distorted) accusations the student had to withdraw

Nice

Way to purposely mislead people, Ogion. Way to fuckin go, man. I knew you would, too. I almost addressed it before you said anything, but then I remembered that I've called you out for trying to assume arguments I would make ahead of time in the past (your assumptions were wrong, whereas mine were right, but whatever), so I didn't. I wish I had.

As I said, the graduate student that you refer to **is the instructor in question**. You are acting as if the graduate student is only a student, which is patently and obviously false. Likewise, you're acting as if multiple students were involved, which is also patently and obviously false. If you're an instructor and you shut down free discussion of that sort, graduate student or otherwise, and you get called out, tough shit. If there's a plumber at my house and they flood my house, I'm gonna leave them a shitty review, and you know what? I hope that comes back to bite them. If someone is teaching a class and they stifle free and open discussion of views you personally don't like, I hope that comes back around too.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/education/2017/05/04/judge-backs-marquette-universitys-suspension-professor-john-mcadams-over-blog-post/101292186/

That's the most recent news I can find. She transferred. Is it the fault of John McAdams that his blog went viral, and that his new audience decided to play vigilante justice, or is it the fault of the people playing vigilante justice?

Given that the person involved that I know is someone who was and is still good friends with a student in that philosophy class, I'm quite confident that the story I presented is not "apparently distorted."

You asked for someone silenced by a university, not for someone silenced by a university for X reason. His "conduct" might not be the recommended course of action, but the only reason they acted against him in the way that they did was to save face. That's silencing.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-13/3-dead-dozens-injured-amid-violent-white-nationalist-rally

Driver had a long history of Nazi and white supremacy views. Group is distancing itself from him.

His own mother did the same when reporters (rudely) broke the news to her.

Apparently, you haven't spent any time working in academia or in any private setting. If McAdams had a complaint, the appropriate course of action was to take a complaint to the administration, not to expose a graduate student in his power to open harassment. That is unequivocally inappropriate, and he was suspended, not fired, for taking that route. That's called being fired for misconduct, not for speech.

Having looking into it more, with some additional description, actually, part of the reason he probably didn't do that, is because the graduate student actually handled the situation correctly. Given this notion that the student wanted to raise a lot of bullcrap about how children of gay couples "do a lot worse in life" (which is demonstrably false and is pure homophobic nonsense), the graduate student absolutely was correct in moving along swiftly to other examples and topics. It's called classroom management. The fact that the undergrad complained about not having a platform to grandstand about his homophobic views *that were not relevant to the principle* suggests strongly that the instructor had in fact a very good read on how the class would have gone had that been done.

In any event, the power dynamics are such that professors can't be running around badmouthing students in the public sphere, especially when it's predictable they'll open the student to harrassment. Yes, the student is a student and he has duties to his department's students. Period. It isn't like your stupid plumber, because you don't have the power to destroy that plumber's entire career and financial future. Sorry, but that fails to grasp how academia works.

So, yeah, you've got a right wing professor who screwed up and got reprimanded for it. Apparently he'd rather stay suspended, (with full pay, if I'm not mistaken) than admit that the way to handle this type of complaint is through university procedures, not through exposing the graduate student. This guy screwed up, and got suspended for it. That's not silencing.

I'll point out that the story you cited was of a judge finding that the McAdams had violated the terms of his employment contract. Q.E.D.

Actually
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/11/20/marquette-u-grad-student-shes-being-targeted-after-ending-class-discussion-gay

having found an article that describes the conversation in more detail based on a recording, Abbate is 100% right in how she handled this. You don't let people rant on with homophobic or racist stuff when there's another way to teach it. Sure, people have rights, but not to disrupt the classroom.