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 -
I mean, I have to think a great many people realized his autobiographical tall tales were bullshit, but treated them as just that - the tall tales of an eccentric egotist, which academia isn't short on. Without evidence of his track record of actual plagiarism, I don't know that lying about being a world-class marathon runner should be a fireable offense for a humanities professor - and I don't find it implausible that most people honestly never made the jump from "this eccentric scholar is obviously bullshitting about his athletic abilities (etc.)" to "wait, could it be he's lying about his actual scholarly work as well?". Not a great reflection on the rationality of the average human being, either, but not implausible. There's a group mentality at work, if everybody treats this guy as a respected authority in his field, then what's more plausible: he's a slightly crazy genius whose quirk is telling absurd tall tales, or he's a laughably obvious fraud and you're the only one who's noticed? Past a certain threshold the problem becomes self-sustaining. Of course, I don't doubt that people being afraid to seem racist by calling him out was a factor, especially at the start to get past the threshold in question. But I don't think it was necessarily the only force at play, nor the most potent by the late stage at which the bubble was finally popped.
I would challenge you to identify 3 individuals who (1) are straight white men; (2) are or were professors at mainstream universities; (3) had publicly spun tall tales roughly equivalent to those of Jason Arday (i.e. numerous and highly suspect on their face); and (4) were nonetheless hired and/or promoted in spite of their autobiographical tall tales.
I'm skeptical that such individuals exist. And if they don't, it lends support to the hypothesis that Arday's race was the main factor. That either (1) people knew he was there just to be a black professor and therefore didn't care about this other stuff; or (2) were scared to death of saying anything negative about Arday for fear of being accused of racism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Ellis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Harvey_Briggs
"Roughly equivalent" has to do a lot of work and it has to reach back 40 years to find a third example.
Me too. Three bad matches might as well be nothing when you're looking at around a million candidates.
More options
Context Copy link
I don't really think it meets all your criteria, but closest I could search up was Prof. Joseph Ellis back in 2001, who not only lied about Vietnam vet service (including being a platoon leader) and civil rights activism, but also about scoring the winning touchdown during the last game of senior year for his high school football team (which he was not a part of.)
The problem is, those are all sort of plausible lies, even if it is a little weird to be an accomplished academic and still telling stories about your amazing high school football glory days. Honestly, he seems more like the type who is actually quite accomplished, but feels the psychological need to make up more grand and socially legible accomplishments to get the praise he feels he deserves, but isn't getting. A bit like Elon Musk getting caught lying about his video game accomplishments.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link