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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 17, 2023

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There seems to be a small movement by Republican lawmakers to put legal pressure on the excesses of woke universities.

The STEM Scott writes about several bills up for consideration in the Texas state senate:

This week, the Texas Senate will take up SB 18, a bill to ban the granting of tenure at all public universities in Texas, including UT Austin and Texas A&M. (Those of us who have tenure would retain it, for what little that’s worth.) [...]

The Texas Senate is considering two other bills this week: SB 17, which would ban all DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs, offices, and practices at public universities, and SB 16, which would require the firing of any professor if they “compel or attempt to compel a student … to adopt a belief that any race, sex, or ethnicity or social, political, or religious belief is inherently superior to any other race, sex, ethnicity, or belief.”

Florida is considering a similar bill, HB 999, that would place restrictions on DEI-related initiatives and majors at public universities. Already the effects are being felt at SLACs like the New College:

We have seven or eight tenure-track candidates coming up for tenure this year. Everyone has a positive recommendation for tenure. The next step is supposed to be the Board of Trustees, which in April will approve or deny tenure. Traditionally, the Board of Trustees just rubber-stamps the tenure based on the recommendations that are made. Now, recently, President Corcoran has met with the president of our union to recommend that the candidates withdraw their files before it’s too late. My interpretation is that Corcoran suspects there’s probably a non-negligible proportion of the trustees who want to make an example out of those people and deny them tenure. The trustees as a whole, Corcoran and DeSantis want to turn our institution into something different. And in order to do that, they need to hire new faculty. The best way for them to hire new faculty is to get rid of the faculty who they can fire without breaching contract. So that means firing the tenure-track faculty. [...]

The most likely thing to happen is that they’re going to impose some changes on the curriculum. It’s not clear exactly what form and with what faculty input, but they’re getting rid of gender studies and critical race theory—they have said that publicly many times. The law, HB 999, is hopelessly vague. There’s so many things that could fall under the umbrella of gender studies and critical race theory, and we don’t know what programs, classes or parts of a given syllabus are likely to be illegal if it passes. We don’t know if that will mean we will have to submit our syllabi to the provost or the president or the board, or what authority they will have.

I'm in a bit of an odd place with regards to these issues. I don't fit neatly onto the woke "how dare you attack our most hallowed and sacred institutions!" side, nor the anti-woke "stop teaching this pinko commie crap to our kids!" side.

I really do have an almost naive faith in free speech for all, even for my worst enemies. Despite being an avowed rightist, I not only want leftists to be able to speak, but I want them to be platformed! I want to help you get the word out! I think our public life really should play host to a diversity of viewpoints. I think the university should be a hothouse of strange and controversial ideas. By all means, keep teaching CRT and women's studies and black studies and whatever else you want. I know that leftists don't extend the same courtesy to me, but that doesn't invalidate the fundamental point that I should extend that courtesy to them. Even just beyond extending formal charity to my political outgroup, I actually enjoy a lot of this type of scholarship and I find value in it, I like Marxist literary criticism and the obscurantist mid-20th century French guys and German phenomenology and all the rest of it, and I think it should continue to be taught and studied on its own merits, even if I don't necessarily agree with the politics.

But! It really is hard sometimes. When things like this happen, when a book chapter that was, by all accounts, a completely anodyne explication of the official party ideology, whose only crime was that it didn't go far enough in advocating the abolition of all gendered pronouns, is met with public humiliation and a tarnishing of the reputation of the author... it does make my blood boil and it's hard to maintain my principles. It makes me want to go "ok, yeah screw it, ban all liberal arts programs at universities, I don't care, whatever, I just want these people to lose." I'm on their side on a lot of the key object-level issues and I still want them to lose! That's why I constantly feel like I'm of two minds on these questions.

In spite of all the problems with the modern university, I still think it's important that we have at least one institution that acts as a countervailing force to utilitarian profit-maximizing techbroism. The university as it stands now leaves a lot to be desired. But if the choice is between the university we have now, or nothing, I'll stick with the university.

I actually enjoy a lot of this type of scholarship and I find value in it, I like Marxist literary criticism and the obscurantist mid-20th century French guys "

Literal...fucking...pedophiles. And not in some nebulous Qanon/Epstein way either. But honest to god tenured philosophers like Foucault signing their name to petitions to abolish the age of consent so they can rape kids freely. Something I think you know already. The fact you call yourself an "avowed rightist" is not the least bit surprising. With friends like these...

Anyways, I'm done. I already suspected the Dead Internet Theory to be partially true, and now with AI, it 100% will be. I'm doing my level best to decrease my time and usage of the internet, and I strongly suggest everyone here do so as well. I would love to be able to sit down and read an actual book again for more than an hour. Take care guys.

  • -12

Socrates was a pederast, at least as suggested by Plato. And Plato himself seems to have been ambivalent toward pederasty, at least in his earlier works. Shall we toss them out too? What about Turing, whose castration followed an inappropriate relationship with a teenager?

What about Turing, whose castration followed an inappropriate relationship with a teenager?

wait, what?

Chemical castration. See https://spartacus-educational.com/Alan_Turing.htm#section12

In December 1951 Alan Turing met Arnold Murray, a 19-year-old unemployed man while walking the streets of Manchester... Turing and Murray were found guilty. Murray was given a conditional discharge. Turing was placed on probation, which would be conditional on his agreement to undergo hormonal treatment designed to reduce his sex drive. He accepted the option of treatment via injections of stilboestrol, a synthetic oestrogen; this treatment was continued for the course of one year. Turing wrote to his friend, Philip Hall: "I am both bound over for a year and obliged to take this organo-therapy for the same period. It is supposed to reduce sexual urge whilst it goes on. The psychiatrists seemed to think it useless to try and do any psychotherapy." The treatment rendered Turing impotent.

Note that I think Turing's actions are eminently understandable here and he gets my full sympathy. One of the best things about the advance of gay rights is that people are now more able to find appropriate partners.

I'm pretty sure everyone here is familiar with the story of Alan Turing's chemical castration and subsequent suicide. The (evidently false!) assertion that Turing was a pedophile as the novel part of your statement.

Did I call him a pedophile? Just pointed out that he had an age-inappropriate relationship with a teenager, which is true.

The broader point is that sexual peccadilloes don't matter one way or another in terms of the value of someone's work, and (secondarily) cultural context matters. In the case of Foucault etc, they lived in a milieu where society hadn't yet decided that having sex with a teenager who was not yet of age was the Worst Thing Ever.

Did I call him a pedophile?

You responded to someone complaining about defenses of actual, non-rhetorical pedophiles, by arguing that Socrates was a pederast, and that Turing had an "inappropriate relationship with a teenager". If you weren't attempting to imply he was a pedophile, I'm at a loss for why you brought him up. It doesn't seem that the age of the relationship was actually what made it inappropriate, which was certainly the implication I took.

I am not friendly to the LGBT community, but ‘had an inappropriate relationship with a teenager’ is a strange way to describe dating a 19 year old, apparently consensually, who he held no actual position of power over.