site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

This may result in minor damage to Obama's influence within the Democratic Party, since he was very supportive of Gay throughout this process. (Alternatively, it may be evidence of his influence weakening.) I'd be curious as to whether the plagiarism or the anti-Semitism was the decisive factor, as there are significant examples of each that the Party does not consider to be disqualifying.

My guess--for what it's worth--is that a faction within the Party found Gay's defense of anti-Semitism to be seriously objectionable, and tried to get her ousted on that basis before she could do more damage to Harvard's institutional reputation with elite employers. When this failed, the considerable evidence of her plagiarism was leveraged instead. Plagiarism is considered the highest of high crimes within academia, in theory (and even occasionally, in practice!), so Harvard decided it could not weather the purely academic hit to its reputation as well.

Why not both? Some wanted her gone due to her Israeli comments. Some wanted her gone due to her plagiarism. Many probably wanted her gone for both reasons. The more target space you give your opponent the more vulnerable you become.

I agree that it was almost certainly both. My guess is that the anti-Semitism got the ball rolling, and prompted the additional publicity of her plagiarism, which is what finished her off. In particular, the drip-drip-drip of "hey, we found these two papers were plagiarized in part," "oh, and these three papers," and "also this other paper," kept the story fresh in a way that dumping the full list at once would not have.

Edit: typo