Kamala Harris: Enjoy The Long Weekend

[CarolinaBengalFanGuy]

(06-17-2021, 05:42 PM)Dill Wrote: Thanks for responding, Wes.  Yesterday, I overwrote my first response to you. Today I am going to reply in two abridged posts, first addressing the issue speech in academia.

For the record, I do not hold up universities as “bastions of free speech.” Modern research universities are, rather, supposed to be bastions of academic freedom. This means certain kinds of academic speech should be protected from political religious censure (hence the role of tenure), but not disciplinary*/academic. Because the goal is to foster free inquiry, “offensive” or “divisive” speech is tolerated to different degrees in different venues within academia—in graduate more than undergraduate classrooms, and faculty lectures more than commencement speeches, etc. Fostering that goal includes teaching students to tolerate different/divisive viewpoints and language too. In consequence, such speech is often tolerated to a greater degree in academia than elsewhere. But I have absolutely not asserted that universities “should always be open to any and all discussion.” All political/religious views do not have equal right to place at the table. Astronomy depts. don’t teach Ptolemaic astronomy.

That said, I turn to your examples: there is something unclear about your position regarding them, as all seem to show free speech obstructed on campus by people who, following Hollo, think “hate speech should not get a pass or a second chance”; and who, like you, wonder why the “haters” still have their jobs.   The examples are to establish that I “have not been paying attention these last few decades.” To what?  I guess you are trying to show that U.S. universities are not “bastions of free speech.”

Does the severely reduced Evergreen State example show that? That school had a traditional “Day of Absence/Day of Presence” ritual from the early ‘70s, based on the play in which Black people disappear from a Southern Community leaving a gaping hole in its labor/culture. On the “Evergreen Day of Absence” minorities were invited to off campus workshops to discuss racial issues. White people attended workshops on campus to reflect on the absence of their peers. Participation was voluntary, followed by a “Day of Presence” in which all the community came back together to celebrate unity.

In 2017, after Trump’s election, a student faculty committee of some 200 people decided that that year they would invert the ritual and whites would be invited off campus. Also, there was recognition of multiple identities. E.g., some could identify as both white and black, attend workshops on both sites. (Here is how the change in form was presented to students: http://www.cooperpointjournal.com/2017/04/10/day-of-absence-changes-form/.)

One white professor objected to the proposed racial role reversal in a campus email, saying “phenotype” should never determine who should be allowed to speak or be on a campus. Though the policy only “encouraged” people to follow the reversal, he characterized it as “force.” Some students later disrupted one of his classes shouting “racist,” a video of it went viral, and the professor, in turn, went on Tucker Carlson (bad move for a professor accused of racism).  The amplified protest drew far right groups to campus to protest. Students counter protested, some barricading a building demanding the administration act.

This is one of the few recent campus conflicts which has risen to a level commonly seen in the ‘60s. When the dust settled, some 80 students were disciplined and 6 campus staff resigned, including Rashida Love, “ringleader” of the PC anti-racists. https://crosscut.com/2017/12/evergreen-state-college-racial-protests-professor-resigns-olympia.  Another resigned after accusing colleagues of racism and white supremacy. https://www.foxnews.com/us/evergreen-professor-who-made-anti-white-comments-resigns-gets-240g-settlement. And State Republican lawmakers proposed defunding the school altogether. The “Day of Absence” now appears gone for good, but this does not look like a victory for PC censorship. Other administrators, professors, and students on other campuses are studying this example to see what went wrong, as a model of how NOT to restrict free speech. 

You refer (no link) to a “Harvard professor” allegedly “fired” for suggesting students could think about Halloween costume without paternal guidance from the administration. You might be referring to Erika Kristakis, who resigned a position at Yale’s Silliman residential college after a year of “Halloween costume” controversy. Kristakis’ husband was not “forced to resign.” He stepped down from basically the same post, and stepped up to become the university’s Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science. So both still teach at Yale and hold administrative positions there, Erika in the same program which invited Dr. Khilanani to speak. While I would be more careful about burdening frequently victimized students with their own defense than the Kristakis, their positions on academic freedom align with mine, as stated above. So far as I can tell, the protests against them proved an embarrassment to the university and its program, spawning a range of books on “snowflake” students, as well as policy changes (which I am not clear on yet and so won’t speak on). No one was fired or “forced to resign.”

The "headmaster" controversy, which I find somewhat silly, is all about denying the relevance of context. The controversies around Shapiro are in part security concerns, in part deliberate provocation on Shapiro's part, and in part created by people who think "hate speech" should not be tolerated. Shapiro-style controversies are the daily fare of Fox news, but from my perspective, Academic freedom has been constantly under threat since U.S. universities adopted the research model in the 19th century.  Since WWII, the number one threat to that freedom has been the military industrial complex, in combination with the New Right's push to delegitimize universities, to reduce their funding to open them more to market forces, and to intervene directly in their curricula and hiring practices. A few "leftist" students and faculty challenging the status quo on a relatively few campuses is not a sizeable threat, when one considers "threat" from a longer historical perspective.

*”Disciplinary” as in standards specific to different academic disciplines and fields—Anthropology, Botany, Chemistry, Cultural Studies, Economics, Education, History, Law, Mechanical Engineering, Nursing, Physics, Etc.

(06-17-2021, 07:22 PM)Dill Wrote: Part II   "Full paragraphs" don't create enough context for the statements you selected to quote. 

E.G., when you write "there could be a larger point here and this could just be for emphasis," I can't help but notice you don't say anything at all about that possible larger point, and provide nothing from Khalinani's speech or learning objectives to suggest what it might be. THAT would be putting the quotes in context. But you are not even looking there, because you have supplied all the context you want to.

But your context cannot be the one Khilanani supplies, because hers requires that larger point or points. 

When you just trot out individual statements, or even a bare paragraph, you are inviting people to fill in their own context, what they believe they "already know" about "hate speech" or "institutional racism" and the like. So what they'll hear is not likely what Khilanani is saying. I.e.,

A. someone claiming that the basic work of dealing with negative effects of racism is emotional, not intellectual, and who wants POC to acknowledge and work through anger at whites, while arguing a large part of that anger arises from the fact that whites separate themselves from their own history of racism and deny the legitimacy of POC anger; but rather 

B. just another POC mouthing off white hate and getting away with it. 

When you say, apparently mimicking what you take to be my argument, "It's so important that colleges allow speech like this," it looks like "this" just refers to the decontextualized statements you have quoted, the "B" of your bare quotes, not the "A," of Khalanani's fuller argument and goals as speaker. It IS important that colleges allow A: a lecture on how the process of dealing with rage against white supremacy must, for POC, start with acknowledgement of that rage, however severe and scary, as well as acknowledgement that whites will deny the ground of that rage, or their maintenance/benefit from it (the "psychopathic problem" to which the title refers). 

Same with title. What is the "Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind" according to her? And more importantly, does she establish that that problem is a problem? It sounds to me like you are not asking those questions, not interested in the answers, but rather implying that title already invalidates any argument she might have. 

In any case, so far as I can tell, I am the only one on this thread who has attempted to reconstruct Khilanani's argument before passing judgment.* That seems to be your and Hollo's primary disagreement with me--that I would make the effort to do that, rather than judge immediately on the basis of bits and pieces. 

At this point, I'd like to see how her fellow professionals respond to her argument. I don't know much about child psychiatry and the issues for POC arising from white domination of mental health practice, and so am unable to tell whether Khilanani is breaking new ground, repeating what people already know but with more "colorful" language, or is pushing practice into regions without accountability.  

*However, I am having difficulty understanding the recording of Khilanani's lecture. And I haven't yet found a transcript of it. There are places where I can make nothing of 2-3 sentences in a row. I am forced to rely more on the interview which follows. 

Well good thing you didn't do that again.