This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The response to Tao's article pointing out times he's talked about politics before in the past is interesting to me, because nowhere at all (that I know of) has Trump or his administration stated that he is targeting funding over a professor's personal beliefs. And yet somehow it seems everyone just takes it for granted, of course it's targeted government punishment coming down over personal wrongthink they say, Tao's beliefs are definitely relevant to the cuts.
Very odd, I don't think I've seen this happen much before where even the main defenders are like "ok yeah we all think Trump is lying but the libs deserve it. It's obviously angry revenge first and foremost"
As others have already noted, Tao isn't specifically targeted here. UCLA got its funding cut on the basis that it was illegally discriminating on the basis of race in admissions and creating an anti-semitic environment (among other things, UCLA sat back and allowed pro-Palestinian protestors to block Jewish students' access to classes, something which it resolved with a settlement of $6 million dollars). Then Tao throws a shitfit.
The broader issue here is that academia serves a couple of interrelated functions. The first is performing research and discovering truths about the world that can be used to help others down the line. The second is one of using academia to "liberate" people socially based on a certain political ideology, which the proponents of said political ideology conflate with the first aim because they have already subscribed to a number of tenets their opponents don't hold. This kind of thing has serious knock-on effects in academia, where people will often discriminate against conservative candidates - in fact only 18% of respondents within academia state they would not discriminate against conservatives, and that's only capturing what they are explicitly willing to state; the actual prevalence of bias against conservatives is probably higher. Papers that support the liberal instead of the conservative view are more likely to be published instead of file-drawered. Etc.
In effect the left turned academia into their political tool, and made it such that it was impossible for conservatives to defang them of their influence without also indirectly crippling knowledge-producing institutions. This puts conservatives in quite the bind - every time they wage war on the institutions that also serve as factories for leftist propaganda, they also run the risk of stopping up legitimate research and can be attacked on that basis. It's a situation the left created, not the right, and one can hardly blame the right for deciding "fuck it, we're going to flamethrower everything anyway".
I agree! So it's really odd that everyone keeps seeming to mention his personal political beliefs. It feels like they want it to be a story of suppressing the wrongthinkers so they can justify why their censorship is special.
Yes, I think this feels odd to people who actually believe that balance and harmony can be brought back to academia by playing within rules and norms that have been finely tuned in these places to achieve plausible deniability and leftist creep simultaneously.
"Why don't we just separate the real world truths these people discover from the political ideology they have a religious-like attachment to?"
The ideology and the institution are now inseparable by design. That's why.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't think most of the people making this argument believe Trump is doing it because he specifically wanted to penalise Tao. They're just making the point that Tao did insert himself into the culture war and can't claim he was Just A Normal Guy Doing Research Things until politics found him, that in the "tranquil past" he did not solely "focus on technical or personal aspects" of his own research, teaching, and mentoring, nor did he "leave the broader political debate and activism to others".
I mean the context here is Tao expressing disgust at the Trump administration's supposed imposition of politics upon academia and thus crippling it, something which is difficult to see as anything other than exceptionally hypocritical when Tao himself actively participated in the politicisation of academia (the open letter). The point of bringing it up is not to justify Tao's defunding but to respond to what he wrote about it.
More options
Context Copy link
His public political beliefs have been mentioned because the article claimed he tried to stay out of politics. He did not, not even in his official capacity.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No, this is not quite correct. Everyone is acknowledging that even if the government were punishing Tao in particular (and they are not, they are targeting the university in general), then Tao has already voided his right to principled protest. In terms of defense in depth, Tao's motte was already invested with demolition charges, by his own rotten hand.
So you agree with the woke leftists that professors and researchers with "bad opinions" should be punished even if it's not irrelevant to their work?
Making this comment once is fine.
Two or three times, maybe there's a use case.
Copying and pasting it to this many different people is obnoxious.
They're all making the same general point so how is it obnoxious? I'm wishing to clarify with different people their views on censorship.
You got thorough responses from multiple people here. You could have made one reply pinging the others (@[username]). Or even made all the replies you did, but link them back to this one: "see discussion here." I recognize it's kind of awkward either way.
The problem is that most people who copy-paste a response in 8 different spots are not interested in holding 8 nigh-identical conversations. Better to pull them back into one location.
Yeah no matter what way it is awkward and will still inevitably devolve into separate discussions regardless unless I make the assumption that everyone is a hive-mind and will continue to have similar responses to follow-up posts without divergence.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There is an "@" function to send alerts to people you're not replying to. For instance, you can summon me by saying "@magic9mushroom" (quotes not required).
Then they could all respond to the single post.
That will still inevitably devolve into separate discussions regardless unless I make the assumption that everyone is a hive-mind and will continue to have similar responses to follow-up posts without divergence would it not?
Sure but the chaos would be limited to a single subthread instead of being scattered everywhere
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No. I would be perfectly happy to live in a world where some woke professors and some conservative professors sniped at each other at conferences and from offices across the quad, but otherwise left each other alone. This, in theory, is what tenure and the notion of academic freedom are.*
The Left was not content to live in this world, and across the generations took over the universities, installed their own apparatchiks in administrations, systematically discriminated against disfavored demographics, anathematized and drummed out opposing voices, instituted political litmus tests in hiring and publishing, and created a climate of fear on campuses where the vast majority of students parrot political lines they do not believe in order to avoid social and personal blowback.
If we cannot have an academy run according to our preferred rules - academic freedom, properly understood - then at a minimum we will live according to the woke's rules applied evenhandedly. Perhaps with enough rounds of tit-for-tat, we will be able to reach a new harmonious equilibrium.
So how do you feel about a situation like this? https://x.com/pjaicomo/status/1958124476001861948
Do you believe the left would be justified with removing Tom Macdonald for his "the devil is a democrat" speech because the right wing started with saying legal residents don't have protections?
I don't think so because I have principles about free speech that apply regardless of who started it, but if I understand you correctly revenge is a perfectly suitable argument for going against one's words.
It appears nobody has attempted to deport Tom Macdonald for that video. As I understand the law, one may only be deported for First Amendment protected activity on the personal (that is, not delegated) determination of the Secretary of State that it compromises a compelling US foreign policy interest. This means that "The Devil is a Democrat" is not deportable -- Macdonald would in fact be on thinner ice if he criticized Canada, as that would implicate US foreign policy interests, though it is unlikely Rubio would make such a determination.
This has nothing to do, however, with the Tao situation. And that particular law seems like it's going inevitably to head to the Supreme Court.
More options
Context Copy link
The Left already is doing such things while mouthing banal principled platitudes, and has been for decades. It has won them near-complete control of the knowledge-making and -legitimating institutions in the country, including academia, journalism, with significant inroads into corporations and the legal profession. It has enabled the Left to take its social program from radical fringe to state-enforced orthodoxy. They have hijacked bureaucracies, lied about their intentions, ignored or subverted laws they did not agree with, including court decisions, and more.
They did these things not even for such a good reason as revenge, but instead out of pure will-to-power.
Remove the beam from thine own eye before complaining about the mote in another's.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
No. As I just said, the point is irrespective of if they should be punished. The point is that regardless of whether or not they should be punished, they have no right to object on principle.
If you willingly join an army that refuses to take prisoners, and just executes all surrendering enemy forces, then you don't get to cry when you get summarily executed instead of taken prisoner - regardless of the moral positions of the enemy forces.
This is pure "your rules, applied fairly".
If Tao objects to this, then perhaps dear Terry ought to evolve his moral universe beyond the level we expect from elementary schoolers. As far as complaints go, "He hit me just because I hit him first!" is the mark of a particularly dull and narcissistic child.
Tao was part of the government and was cutting grants to wrongthinkers? I didn't know that. I guess he got what was coming to him then.
Feel free to reread my prior posts, and the other ones people are posting in response to you.
More options
Context Copy link
In a roundabout way, yes. He signed a letter that was used to support policies that funneled money and grants away from non-progressives to progressives.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The other way to look at it is that the whole thing is so riven with enemy collaborators that you throw a rock in what is ostensibly the field that needs politics the least and the people you hit are also complicit so fuck it, carpet-bombing is called for.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link