This is an open thread. As well as discussing pretty much anything, you can also use this thread to self-publicize your stuff, or to publicize someone else’s stuff.
- What Do Campus Protesters Really Want? – The New York Times
Less than 10% ask for someone to be fired; 80-90% ask for things like more non-white faculty and better support for Black students. “Surprisingly rare, too, in the data are the buzzwords often highlighted in articles about campus activism: “microaggressions” appears in only 15 percent of petitions, and “trigger warning” isn’t used once.” - Even Lumberjacks Deserve Lotion: Gender in the Locker Room – The Toast
Awesome essay, thanks to Grace for the link. - An attempt at a polite discussion between a Sad Puppy and an Anti-Slater
Beginning with a post by Sad Puppy Stephanie S, and then a response by Standback. I think Standback’s response is flawed – he makes it sound as if the anger at Sad Puppies was entirely about motivations and not at all about substantive objections to slates, which I think is not true – but it’s nice to read two people attempting at respectful dialog. - The best book covers of the year, according to The Academy of British Cover Design.
Some of these strike me as wonderful; others I wouldn’t glance twice at. - Why Hamilton is Not the Revolution You Think it is | HowlRound
- Calculating US police killings using methodologies from war-crimes trials
In the end, the number the author comes up with is uncertain (or, “not a true estimate”). But the methods are still interesting. - Recent Study Shows Black Women Working in STEM Often Mistaken for Janitors or Secretaries
And an illustrative anecdote. - 101 Funniest Screenplays List
I don’t know why I find lists like this so interesting, but I do. Lots of good films on this list, as well as a few I thought were awful. (Wedding Crashers? Really? And how could they include that while leaving the much funnier Ruthless People off the list?) - Day care in the United States: Is it good or bad for kids?
A readable summary of some of the research. Short answer: It’s complicated. - Should Rhodes stay or should he go? On the ethics of removing controversial statues | Practical Ethics
- A better way to gauge how common sexual assault is on college campuses – The Washington Post
Instead of surveying 6000 students and getting low participation rates, survey 600 students and pay them $50 each for a high participation rate. - Obsession with Regression: Racial Discrepancies in Police Shootings
“These disparities are large, statistically significant, and and consistent with previous analyses — black Americans shot by police are more than twice as likely as white Americans shot by police to be unarmed, and more than 50% more likely to not be attacking.” - Make Buses Dangerous
The argument is that buses are so much safer than cars, that any safety features on buses which reduce ridership have a net effect of decreasing overall safety. Fun verging on nonsensical. - The Trouble with Transporters – YouTube
Scotty and Chief O’Brian are mass murderers! - Decision-Making under the Gambler’s Fallacy: Evidence from Asylum Judges, Loan Officers, and Baseball Umpires
Scott Alexander describes this well: “Just as a gambler who’s had a long string of losses might be more likely to expect a win next time, so a judge who’s had a long run of innocent people will be more likely to find the next person guilty.” - Speaking of… So Scott Alexander Says I’m A Jerk.
Because I created that “types of antifeminist” cartoon. I can live with this. - Noisy Poll Results And Reptilian Muslim Climatologists from Mars | Slate Star Codex
Why poll results showing that 5% of some group believe [some ridiculous thing] shouldn’t be taken at face value. - Syrian refugees in Canada got housed in same hotel as VancouFur furry convention and the children loved it | Americas | News | The Independent
- A letter in the Financial Times says that voting for Trump could be like voting for Hitler in 1933, but continued gridlock would be worse. WTF?
- Men of Their Times – Uncanny Magazine
Jim Hines on Lovecraft, Baum, and the limits of the “he was a product of his time” excuse. - How Both Sides of BDS Debate Get Oberlin Anti-Semitism Wrong – Opinion – Forward.com
- Muslims vote for a Jew! Some journalists make strawman of Sanders’ win in Dearborn — GetReligion
- Someone on Ebay is auctioning one of my earliest comics.
This is one that was printed via copy machine. It was done with my friend Paul Winkler, and also with the “Brian” who occasionally posts in comments here. My cartooning back then was terrible, but it is a genuine rarity, in that Paul and I only printed like 50 copies. - Inside the Protest That Stopped the Trump Rally – POLITICO Magazine
“The plan worked better than they’d ever imagined. Then the trouble began.” - Supercut of all the times Trump has called for violence at his rallies
- US Latinos seek citizenship so they can vote against Trump | The Times of Israel
It’s possible that this will turn out to be the biggest long-term effect of this year’s election. - 60 Stunning Photos Of Women Protesting Around The World
Fascinated, as always, by publication categories. The book cover designs (I thought I Am Henry Finch was the best, personally) have categories for children’s, YA, SFF, mass market, lit fic, crime/thriller, nonfiction, series, classics/reissue, and women’s fiction. On the one hand, I recognize that it’s a publishing category, and one that’s sometimes maligned, and one that has its own conventions, and I’m happy for those people to be recognized. But on the other hand…like, women are the majority readers of most of those other categories as well; it’s so weird that we segregate that section off.
(Also, I note, no category for romance.)
Also, in re the mention of the missed opportunity for genderbent casting in that criticism* of Hamilton, the casting call for Philadelphia does reportedly allow for this in two roles. Could be interesting!
*in the “critical analysis” sense, of course
Harlequin,
Sadly, the initial casting call for the Philadelphia production was changed (or the initial reporting was inaccurate, I’m not clear).
I suspected it was inaccurate, actually, which is why I put the “reportedly” in there, but I hadn’t seen the update–thanks.
It ought to be pointed out that Bernie Sanders was not the only candidate to do surprisingly well in Dearborn.
http://fusion.net/story/278602/dearborn-michigan-muslims-sanders-trump/
The BDS link continued to this. The dynamic is similar to the Clementine Ford case, though the public posting is much worse than one time “slut” and the tie to the employer is explicit and intentional. The class of the speaker is middle or upper class and the target is Jews, so the result is rather different.
Sebastian –
You can’t see any other possible difference that might account for Karega (whose antisemitic rantings are utterly loathsome) not yet being fired?
Like, you don’t think that Oberlin College might just have a different attitude towards free speech of employees – and specifically of professors – than a hotel chain has towards its employees?
I should add, I’d expect a college professor to have more class privilege than a hotel manager. But to me, your (Sebastian’s) statement seems to suggest that when the President of Oberlin (quoted in The Forward) wrote:
…you seem to be suggesting that he isn’t sincere about that, and that a belief in academic freedom couldn’t genuinely be part of the difference between the two cases.
(Also, I don’t think the problem is that professors at Oberlin are overly protected. I think the problem is that other people have too little freedom compared to Oberlin professors.)
“Academic freedom” is a class privilege. He could easily be sincere in the class distinction. Sincerity about privilege doesn’t erase it. My position all along has been that off work legal actions shouldn’t normally get you fired. That was most decidedly not the general take here when the Ford case was discussed and I was treated very nastily for suggesting it.
The key distinctions here are that the professors anti Semitic screeds are much worse and repeated by a privileged upper class woman, while in the Ford case, it was a one time statement of ‘slut’ from a lower class man to an upper class woman. There is no dimension on which Nolan’s behavior was worse, but for a large part of the commentariat here firing him was a great thing or at least not particularly bad (depending on the commenter).
I have not been following the Karega case closely, so I am wondering: Has she attacked a specific person in her antisemitic rants? This is not to defend or justify anything, but it would seem to me that, if she had, that would no longer be defensible on free speech grounds in the way that I understand Oberlin’s president is defending her right to say what she said.
Sebastian H writes:
If anyone would like to see the actual discussion to which Sebastian is referring, and decide for themselves whether he was “treated very nastily”, it can be found here.
I just re-read the thread myself. I can see yet without spectacles, and I see no such matter. I see a vigorous and interesting discussion in which people disagreed with you, but sometimes agreed with points you made, or thanked you for your contribution.
But no one need take my opinion, or yours. People can decide for themselves, because it’s all right there for people to read.
Grace
Speaking of free speech issues: Donald Trump’s volunteer contract forbids all criticism of Trump
The contract also calls on volunteers to limit their “employees” speech, and forbids them from changing their minds and volunteering for another candidate for as long as Trump might be running for President – not just in this campaign year, but in future years.
The contract is probably legally unenforceable – but of course, just the threat of a lawsuit can itself be a powerful deterrent.
@Sebastian H, Grace:
I didn’t go back and re-read it, but as I remember it, it was a heated argument, and since Sebastian was in the minority*, it may have been more distressing to him than to others**, but everyone kept things pretty civil.
*Depending on how you divide up the categories–if you divide them into “Clementine Ford is terrible”/”not terrible” [based on the incident in question] he was in the minority.
**This is not a dig at Sebastian–if I’m strongly in the minority I often just lurk.
*****
Somewhat related to #20, when I was at Boskone (Boston convention centered mostly on science fiction books, though fantasy/horror/genres related to science fiction also come up, and there are some panels about comic books, movies, video games, etc.) two Lovecraftian books were recommended by one of the horror authors (Jack Haringa IIRC?): Lovecraft Country and The Ballad of Black Tom. I’m particularly excited to read the latter, especially after seeing this interview with the author:
“Academic freedom” may well be a class privilege, but it’s, more importantly, a matter of contract and customary norms within academia that are taken very seriously by academics. I’m generally OK with bigoted asshats being fired for being bigoted asshats even if they limit their bigoted asshattery to statements made outside of work[1], but that doesn’t mean I believe that employers are somehow obligated to fire said bigoted asshats.
I remain willing to consider carving out more general protections for people getting fired for outside-of-work conduct, but the way these debates usually shake out is that a substantial fraction of advocates[2] are actually quite clearly interested in carving out special rights for people to engage bigoted outside-of-work conduct while not extending similar protections to people who are not engaged in bigoted outside-of-work conduct.
I’m convinced that Barry, Sebastian H. and the rest of the folks I’ve argued with this about at “Alas” have a good faith, content-neutral commitment to the idea that such firings are an serious danger to free speech. However, I think the cost of getting such laws passed would be that they would be great for protecting bigots who say reprehensible things, while doing little to protect people engaged in other, less reprehensible forms of political expression, and doing nothing at all to protect people who are engaged in completely innocuous, non-speech conduct.
[1] Indeed, I’m generally not particularly concerned about people getting fired over non-bigoted political advocacy.
[2] For one grimly amusing example, I recall some asshole Heritage Foundation blogger wringing his hands over Brandon Eich getting fired while complaining just as bitterly about the possibility of laws protecting people for being fired for their sexual orientation.
Well there was: “……from the guy who has REPEATEDLY dismissed women, womens’ expert opinions, and downplayed everything we said to draw false equivalencies. Yeah, get a mirror. It’s clear you are incapable of listening to women.”
There was the gender coded “Sebastian, dude, something is seriously wrong with you.”
There was “You’re a toxic energy suck and worth no one’s time.”
There was the following characterization of my argument “It amazes me, the way men will defend the misdeeds of other men. They might seem to vocally condemn those deeds — but we see through them. Their claims are lip-service, because when the chips are down, they will invariably defend the interests of the man and attack the women who stepped forward.
This has happened on this very thread, where I shared an anecdote, something that I experienced, which might be compared and contrasted with the topic of this thread, and was thus attacked, and accused of being “anti male” (and worse).”
But I don’t care about the attacks that much. I care about the tone of the thread. The tone of the thread was very much leaning in the pro-firing direction. The case above is MUCH worse. It is repeated anti-Semitic rantings in a public forum complete with barely veiled threats about actions that need to be taken against them. I realize that you can never really predict what is going to catch the fancy of the internet. My purpose in bringing it up was NOT to suggest that she be fired over her horrible anti-Jew out-of-work comments (though there is some hint that she is doing it in class as well). I’m suggesting that the privilege she has is a privilege that would be better to extend to everyone. You shouldn’t get fired from most jobs over off work activity.
…
You really want every job to come with tenure?
…
I’m a weirdo lefty hardcore worker’s rights sort and I don’t want every job to come with tenure.
Sebastian: Actually (and I don’t think you’d disagree with me), if she’s made such comments to students as part of her work, then IMO she should be fired. I’m very much against firing people for their off-work behavior, in most cases, but on-work behavior is something that employers should respond to. (There are many cases where I think an employee should be given second chances, etc., but a professor making earnest, extreme anti-semitic comments to a classroom is not one of those cases.)
But given the extreme pressure being put on Oberlin to take action – including from many Oberlin alumni and the Oberlin Board of Trustees – my guess is that if it could be proven that she’s made anti-semitic comments in class, she’ll wind up fired. (Although I imagine it also depends on whatever Oberlin’s lawyers are telling the administration in private.)
A MODERATOR NOTE TO EVERYBODY:
Regarding what happened in the old thread, I REALLY hate the sort of discussion where people are re litigating how people behaved on past threads. In my opinion, even a little of that sort of thing makes a board really unpleasant to be on; it has the effect of making flamewars last forever, rather then them being something people can get past. So:
1) I agree with Sebastian that some comments on the thread went afoul of “Alas” guidelines – and I said so on the thread, as a moderator. But the majority of the discussion, while heated, remained polite and substantive.
2) Everyone, no further arguing about people’s behavior on that old thread, either to criticize or to defend.
3) I do recommend that people follow Grace’s advice – if you’re interested, reread the old thread and see for yourself.
Point well taken, thanks.
I wasn’t thinking of tenure when I wrote that. I was thinking of the norm (which I’m stating imprecisely here, because I’m in a hurry) that people shouldn’t be fired for their political opinions and for things they say on their own time.
I would agree that in a world where I made the rules, she should get fired for making anti-Semitic remarks in class. And in a world where I made the rules almost everyone shouldn’t be fired for legal off work behavior.
Interestingly enough, tenure rules at most universities are strong enough that they are going to have trouble firing her with the way she is positioning the statements (she is saying that she is studying the marginalization of conspiracy theories and that stopping her from saying anti-Semitic things interferes with her research.)
But would tenure rules apply to her? I’ve read that she’s not tenured.
I posted in the Clementine Ford thread, and I also remember it is being mostly respectful with a few slips. I don’t think people should be fired for non-criminal off-work behavior, but I also don’t think Ford did anything particularly awful (she didn’t fire him!) and should not have been attacked for the outcome. While I think it would have been better for Nolan’s employer to have done something less punitive, I also would consider moving if I lived in an apartment building where Nolan had the keys and the managing company didn’t respond to his actions in some way that made me feel safe about that (which doesn’t have to mean firing him).
In this case, I think that in the absence of specific threats to specific people or using hate speech in the course of her duties, I think Karega is covered by academic freedom (though I definitely exercise my right not to listen to her!). Tenure is not the same thing as academic freedom. Tenure is used to guarantee academic freedom, but is also part of the job compensation for an academic–academics take their jobs knowing they have extra job security and therefore accept lower pay, fewer benefits, longer hours, etc as a trade-off when they agree to a contract. Tenure is offered to academics to help ensure that their freedom to research and educate is not abridged. Karega is listed as an Assistant Professor, and therefore is probably on the tenure track, but without tenure right now. She is still covered by Oberlin’s academic freedom policy. The same protections offered to Karega now also protected climatologists who in the 80’s and 90’s had no idea they might need their tenure protection 10 years later to keep their jobs!
I think Sebastian brings up a very valid point though. Academic freedom is not exactly a class privilege as it can’t really be separated from being a professor, but that doesn’t mean that class doesn’t also play a role. Class privilege definitely means that some people can say hateful bigoted things with few or no consequences.
Who Is Merrick Garland? | ThinkProgress
So basically, Republicans now have a choice of accepting a centrist (and rather old, for a Supreme Court nominee, at 63) candidate now – in which case, they’ll be kicking themselves if Trump wins the general election. Or they could turn Garland down and take a chance of someone much younger and somewhat more liberal being nominated by President Clinton.
I think this may be a bad misstep; the odds are very strongly in favor of Clinton winning the general election, and I think Democrats can do much better. But maybe Obama feels certain that the GOP won’t accept any nominee from him, and so just picked someone to be embarrassing for the GOP not to give a vote.
But maybe Obama feels certain that the GOP won’t accept any nominee from him, and so just picked someone to be embarrassing for the GOP not to give a vote.
That seems to be a good assumption.
But I also think if you’re the kind of person is concerned about the damage that gridlock and polarization are doing to American political institutions[1], this should be exactly the sort of thing you want to see. We have a divided government, and in order to fulfill its duties, the Executive Branch is offering the Legislative Branch a compromise nominee. Isn’t this how the system is supposed to work.
Also, who knows who Trump would nominate. I think we’d be more likely to see him nominate another Harriet Miers than another Antonin Scalia.
[1] I don’t know if you’re worried about this, but it’s pretty clear Obama is.
I love lists like #8 too, if only because they remind me of movies, books, albums, etc. that had fallen off my radar and that I might want to revisit. My initial reaction to a few of them are that A Fish Called Wanda deserves to be even higher than 20, Borat probably shouldn’t even be on the list, let alone as high as 29, and I’d forgotten how awkwardly funny Midnight Run is. Oh, and Shaun of the Dead definitely deserves better than 50th.
“Tenure is not the same thing as academic freedom. Tenure is used to guarantee academic freedom, but is also part of the job compensation for an academic–academics take their jobs knowing they have extra job security and therefore accept lower pay, fewer benefits, longer hours, etc as a trade-off when they agree to a contract.”
The idea that a tenured professor could get a higher paying job with better benefits and shorter hours is wrong except for a very few very specialty science fields. It isn’t a trade off, it is an additional perk.
It is probably just selection bias (we hear about the bad cases) but almost anytime I hear “academic freedom” being invoked I’m about to see a horrible case where the person really should be fired. However I’m conservative enough to stand by it because I see the extremely high value of academic freedom protections in the very rare cases (which to be honest I don’t think I have ever seen in my lifetime) where it is actually protecting legitimate but unliked research.
This is not accurate, and I say this as someone who chose a tenure-track faculty position over higher-salaried positions in industry and federal govt that would’ve required much shorter hours (both for family reasons and because I like what academia offers me, including teaching). I would say that across almost all areas of STEM, especially engineering, you could on average do quite a bit better going into industry if your goal is higher pay and shorter hours (maybe not with benefits like retirement and healthcare – we do pretty well in that regard, at least in the university system I’m in). My impression is that this is also true in a number of the social sciences, just based on what some of my colleagues have told me.
It’s true in humanities as well, or at least was last decade when me and my friends were in the job market. What you can’t do in those areas is get the higher-earning job and still work within the field you studied in. But there were plenty of higher-paying consultancy positions that had “a PhD in any field” as their qualification.
If Clinton wins the presidency and the Republicans lose the senate, I expect that the Republicans would be happy to confirm Garland quickly in the lame-duck session in December (indeed, Orin Hatch has said as much). The voters will have spoken!
But a moderate seems like a reasonable choice for a nominee in a strongly divided government. If the senate Republicans had participated reasonably in the process of selecting a new Justice, Garland is the sort of person we would have ended up with, in the same vein as Souter, Kennedy, or O’Connor. Yes, Democrats confirmed Thomas and Scalia and Rhenquist, but that was before the nomination process had become as partisan as it is now.
I’d much rather get a liberal justice appointed by Clinton and confirmed by a Democratic senate, but I think it makes sense politically for Obama to nominate someone the Republicans have no excuse for rejecting, rather than nominating someone I’d like. I’m not sure if I’d prefer Garland (who is a prosecutor judge, but has a long history of minimalism) to Srinivasan (who is more of a mystery at this point). I’d definitely have preferred Jane Kelly as Obama’s nominee, but the right-wing press would have dragged her through the mud very effectively.
It’s not that hard to find cases of attempted suppression that failed, or successful suppression that later resulted in legal judgments or settlements, on topics such as abortion (2015), climate change denial (2015), climate change (2010),disaster preparedeness (2003), sex (2003), or race (2001). I mean–yes, that’s over about 15 years, and academic freedom was rarely the only issue of concern in those cases. But that’s a result of about 15 minutes of Googling and my own memory. They’re not common (teaching is a more likely site of academic freedom disputes), but “ever in your lifetime” is really, definitely untrue.
“But there were plenty of higher-paying consultancy positions that had “a PhD in any field” as their qualification.”
Those jobs aren’t actually available to general PhD in any field people. The unstated job requirement for a huge number of consultancy jobs is “went to Harvard, Stanford or Yale so we can brag about the percentage of such graduates in our literature”. The class markers for consultancy jobs (of the type that humanities PhDs can get) are nasty.
I’m not saying that the tip top person couldn’t do well. I’m saying that the average person with tenure (especially in the humanities) didn’t trade tenure for pay. This is true in a lot of areas you might not expect (like psychology).
Obligatory Bernie spam: TLDR: The New York Times issued “corrections” to an article about Bernie Sanders changing the message of the piece to be much more critical of Sanders.
Other politics stuff:
from Lawyers, Guns, and Money:
Regardless of whether a given individual could or couldn’t get higher pay or better hours outside academia, tenure is still part of the overall compensation of that specific job. IAnd similar job security can be class based, but isn’t necessarily. Union jobs have similar, so a working class union employee has more job security, and depending on the contract, possibly more protection from being fired over off-work speech, than a middle class office worker or an upper class manager.
So, I don’t think academic freedom or tenure are really class privileges, any more than “a job where you don’t need to be away from your family for weeks or months at a time” is a class privileges. Long haul truckers and people working on ships or oil rigs lack it, but a fast food worker has it, while lots of middle or upper class jobs don’t.
My friend K.C. Williams just started this online magazine dedicated to social justice. Check it out! http://justnomore.com/
My great-uncle died last week and his funeral was on Monday. I’ve seen him and my great-aunt maybe 5 times in the last 10 years. They’re nice people who I’ve never been close to. Their daughter, M, has lived in SF for 4+ decades. When I first moved to Portland 20 years ago, I tried to be in touch with M. I tried to see her when I’d go to SF and invite her to see me when she came to Portland. She always canceled on me in SF and didn’t call me when she was in Portland. So I figured she wants nothing to do with me, especially when she invited my mom and sisters to her wedding but did not invite me. Okay, that’s fine.
Today I got a text from my sister letting me know that M was upset that I hadn’t called her. Which is weird since I don’t know her phone # or even her address. Calling M never crossed my mind.
Now I’m not someone who can be relied on to act as society expects one to in these situations, but I don’t think I’ve been out of line on this.
My question to those with an undoubtedly better sense of etiquette than I have is, am I completely wrong or is she looking for something that she shouldn’t be expecting?
Jake,
I don’t know if I’m the person you should listen to–I’m probably not super-etiquette-savvy–but I don’t think she should expect/assume a call from you (a card would be a nice gesture if your family members who were closer to her have her address, if you haven’t already sent one), and I suspect that she’s probably feeling angry in general and not averse to finding someone specific to be mad at.
I agree with ClosetPuritan. It sounds like M is being unreasonable. Which might be understandable if she’s being unreasonable because she’s distraught – but it’s still unreasonable.
I also agree she’s being unreasonable. But a card or call (if you can get your hands on her contact info) right now might be a good way to establish a relationship with her, if that’s still something you’re interested in…?
I’m awful at keeping in touch with people so I can completely sympathize with her on the lack of contact over the years. But suddenly being upset that you haven’t called after all that lack of contact doesn’t make much sense to me.