posted on February 06, 2020 07:51 PM by
u/Snugglerific
14
u/metachor25 pointsat 1581028479.000000
Especially when professors able and willing to advocate for a
particular position are thin on the ground on campus, the university
would invite guest speakers to take a given side in the debates.
“When no serious academic will consider your ideas, just have the
government force them to provide you with a platform.”
#justsmallgovernmentthings
Hopefully a serious academic could demolish those ideas, especially in formal debate where some youtube dimwit can't simply shout their opposition down with ad hominems and shitty motte and bailey arguments.
Since its a public and not private university, yes it does make good sense to say that they should offer a properly mediated space for the debate of controversial topics.
What is a properly mediated space?
One where each side gets the same time to speak?
And what are controversial topics? Topics with a mostly evenly split public opinion?
>What is a properly mediated space?
Something like [this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln%E2%80%93Douglas_debate_format) or [this](http://diphi.web.unc.edu/how-we-debate/) would be akin to what I had in mind.
>One where each side gets the same time to speak?
That helps, but I don't know that its required. Why do you ask?
>And what are controversial topics? Topics with a mostly evenly split public opinion?
To be honest, I think a topic with an evenly split public opinion probably wouldn't be the most contentious or controversial topic to discuss. Not to say that questions which divide the room evenly aren't good, but if there is ~50/50 division then neither side is taking a particularly unpopular stance since roughly half of the attendees or participants would be in agreement.
Lets say that, hypothetically, a debate over the legality or morality of abortion might split everyone 50/50, whereas a debate over the legality or morality of infanticide (say, within the first year after birth) would probably be far more challenging. Obviously this is a shitty abstract, but I hope it helps to illustrate my thinking on what makes a topic 'controversial'.
Why are those formats properly mediated and why should they be?
Why does it help if both sides get the same time?
So you don't want controversial topics but fringe topics.
That leaves you with an issue. How so you chose which fringe topic to discuss. There are far more fringe opinions than you could effectively make time for.
What is the value of debating fringe opinions over actually controversial ones that could lead to actual policy decision for example. Fringe opinions are by far less likely to have a significant impact on society.
What is the value of something being challenging to debate in the context of debates at universities and research?
> in formal debate where some youtube dimwit can't simply shout their opposition down with ad hominems and shitty motte and bailey arguments.
These people make a living by convincing people that any arena in which they can't utilize these tactics is a human rights violation. They wouldn't follow the rules of a formal debate and they would come off looking good to a certain demographic because of it.
That means the University of Iowa would put on debates and panel
discussions on issues like tax policy, religious liberty, the Green New
Deal, U.S. policy in the Middle East, immigration, single-payer health
care, etc.
this is a very famous ‘etc.’ it’s notably topics are
1. holocaust denial
2. climate change denial
3. racism denial
4. race realism
5. birds aren’t real and are government drones
6. israel should be nuked
7. israel should be given all the funding and jews in the world to bring about the apocalypse
8. time cube
9. someone else explaining time cube
10. vaccines cause austism
11. the sun moves around the earth
12. russia good
13. russia bad
13. Finland doesn’t exist
and finally, the most famous of all
the moon is made out of cheese
>birds aren’t real and are government drones
Hey, that one doesn't belong there. See, up here in Canada, we really know the score. We just have to be subtle about spreading the truth. 😉
[https://www.ravens.beer/stories/2019/7/2/birds-arent-real](https://www.ravens.beer/stories/2019/7/2/birds-arent-real)
I’m not understanding why its bad to have more frequent debate on
public campuses? Yes okay the sponsor holds views I disagree with, but
that doesn’t make this issue moot.
It's one of those things that sounds nice out of context.
First, it's not just debates, it's also lectures and panels. So Charles Murray could give a lecture on the virtues of superior cranial capacity unchallenged, unlike with the debate format.
Second, the way it's designed is actually to be a drain on university resources. Universities will have to front the money for these events and even cheap speakers can rack up expenses quickly if you're paying for things like plane tickets, etc. The bill in the OP in particular specifies that there will be no new hires for this hypothetical new office so it will also further strain administrative staff.
Third, making it completely policy-oriented is convenient for corporate sponsors as they already have hordes of "policy analysts" at ~~propaganda mills~~ think tanks lined up to do these things. On top of that, universities would now be paying their speaking fees more than they already do.
Fourth, even the better-sounding parts (providing content to the public for free) has ulterior motives. This part of the legislation is designed essentially for surveillance purposes, i.e., is your content ~~right-wing~~ "intellectually diverse" enough according to some lunatic state senator? This reminds me of the abandoned [Youcut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YouCut) program from the Tea Party days, which was proposed to have a feature that would let The People cut specific NSF grants via a centralized database, i.e., defund evolutionary biology and climate science.
The bills look very similar to the higher ed proposals in the [Powell memo](https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/powellmemo/) minus the Chamber of Commerce directly auditing textbook content.
Thank you for the serious and thoughtful reply. I'm half in the bag rihgt now, so leme get back to you later on because I agree with like 80% of this but not all of it.
>Especially when professors able and willing to advocate for a particular position are thin on the ground on campus, the university would invite guest speakers to take a given side in the debates.
In other words mandatory representation from unqualified individuals to represent bad fucking ideas
"campus freeze peach" is an old conservative dogwhistle that really means "we demand to have pro life and alt right rallies on university grounds without being protested"
"Free and healthy debate" is an old dogwhistle for "My shitty conservative ideas are equally as good as your progressive ideas and the government should step in to mandate that we present them as equally valid" when in actuality these ideas belong in the garbage bin of history with fascism, Toryism, royalism, neoliberalism, and so on.
Universities don't hold "debates" between flat earthers and conventional astronomers because it would be incredibly stupid, they don't hold "debates" about climate change because it's a fact, and so on. The intention of this law is to shoehorn conservative ideology into universities by state mandate under the pretense of free speech.
Then you challenge their qualifications, and/or field candidates of your own to defend the 'good' ideas. Frankly, you should be able to defend/present your beliefs coherently, especially when confronting someone you think is an "unqualified" representative of "bad fucking ideas".
If you're imagining a scenario where people like Ben Shapiro or Jordan Peterson get a platform on your campus, and you can't think of *anyone* who could absolutely wax their ass in a proper debate, then to me it sounds like a profound lack of intellectual rigor. These aren't intellectual giants we're dealing with, I'm willing to bet that your average grad student could completely hose them.
Again, it's a point of principle because debates present a context where each idea is equally valid.
We don't debate flat earthers/ evolution rejecters, and it would be misleading to the public to do so.
Not everyone attending debates is educated enough to understand this and bad actors use schemes, half truths, and rhetoric to win over crowds (see jordan peterson fans)
It's critical for the health of the public to present bad ideas as bad ideas, not as worth debating with good ideas.
Debate isn't how scientific/academic "truth" is achieved. It's achieved through consensus of experts. These things to some degree aren't on the table for discussion by your average Joes to "weigh the facts and make their own decisions" about evolution, Nazism, God hating gays, and so on. The academy has a public duty to take a stand against bad ideas and not to present them as somehow worthwhile.
>Again, it's a point of principle because debates present a context where each idea is equally valid.
Then embarrass them until they quit asking for a platform, instead of denying them one under the auspices that its beneath you to articulate why they're wrong.
>We don't debate flat earthers/ evolution rejecters
And those ideas have proliferated in the face of an opposition who smugly chortles and perhaps adds a barb about 'obvious stupidity'. Ideas are meant to be considered and reconsidered and challenged.
Peterson v. Zizek is a great example of this. Of course it was 'beneath' Zizek to debate Peterson, but he did and he came prepared, whereas Peterson didn't and looked like a damn fool when he couldn't even put names to the boogymen he constantly harps about.
Formal debates are actually a pisspoor method of determining truth, and there is zero guarantee that the correct position will "win". There have been many, many debates where creationists have won against actual scientists through superior sophistry despite their beliefs being utter bullshit.
There is absolutely no reason to privilege this objectively shithouse method of determining the truth of ideas. note that other forms of debates, like written exchanges, are signficantly better in that it's harder to drop bullshit in and win based on charisma, but will still privilege the better writer over the factually correct person.
>Formal debates are actually a pisspoor method of determining truth
Who said anything about 'determining truth'?
>There is absolutely no reason to privilege this objectively shithouse method of determining the truth of ideas.
This obsession with epistemic certainty is totally misplaced. I've never made any claims about 'truth' in any of my posts in this thread, so I'm not at all sure who or what you're responding to.
>Then embarrass them until they quit asking for a platform, instead of denying them one under the auspices that its beneath you to articulate why they're wrong.
If debates worked like this everyone aside from Marxists would be too embarrassed to go outside.
You're intentionally missing the forest for the trees, and the Peterson v. Zizek debate should be seen as a paradigm for how other such engagements would likely proceed if given the opportunity.
Since you're going to be willfully obtuse though, what other serious academics or intellectuals have been challenged to debate by these "IDW" types? Where are they (meaning the people pushing this kind of legislation) attempting to joust with actual professors, rather than overly wrought undergrads?
> You're intentionally missing the forest for the trees
No, it is you who is intentionally missing the forest for the trees. You've given exactly *one* example. My point is that if public debates led to correct ideas you'd be able to give many more examples than just this single dubious example.
Peterson left the limelight because he had addiction, not because he was 'owned' by a Marxist. Besides, Zizek is barely a Marxist, Peterson was treated with kid gloves. Let's see him debate a member of the Austin Red Guards or something.
What exactly is delusional about wanting to see a wide range of views debated in a college debate setting? If the Austin Red Guards have bad ideas, surely they'll lose in a debate, right?
I sometimes do actually, but that's beside the point and a poor deflection on your part.
>So does the academy.
'The academy' is precisely where such a comparison of ideas should occur, its absurd to think otherwise. It's the heights of intellectual laziness to act like someone's ideas are so bad that they aren't worth a response, and it absolutely cedes the field to them in a way that makes them seem far more coherent and reasonable than they truly are.
> 'The academy' is precisely where such a comparison of ideas should occur, its absurd to think otherwise.
And they did, and those ideas have lost. Again, and again and again. There are a lot of new interesting ideas to be debated, why do we have to keep debating the same old debunked ideas? It isn't so much intellectual laziness to say "we're not going to discuss creationism as a serious hypothesis any more" as it is pragmatism.
Because there will always be those who believe in those ideas, and they will keep demanding to be taken seriously, no matter how often you debunk them or how thoroughly you've disproved them.
>why do we have to keep debating the same old debunked ideas?
Because not everyone was around for the old debates, and also because academics are uniquely positioned to keep people abreast of why those old ideas "lost again and again and again".
>Because there will always be those who believe in those ideas, and they will keep demanding to be taken seriously, no matter how often you debunk them or how thoroughly you've disproved them.
You don't have to take them seriously to prove them wrong, especially if you have a firm grasp of the relevant history and can thus simply summarize the already proven arguments. My point is that these people will probably quit seeking formal debate if they are proven to be unwinnable. That's precisely why the IDW types tend to attack/argue with undergraduates, and not professionals.
I don't think one of us is gonna convince the other or even make much progress in changing our views on this.
I would like to make my final argument and then I'll leave you be:
Of course pseudointellectual grifters and propagandists prefer to "debate" with softer targets, but I do not believe that they will debate in good faith with anyone. They will use every kind of sophistry to their disposal, and when they formally lose a debate, they will declare victory anyway or claim that they were censored or the outcome was rigged and their audience will eat it up. They don't grow their audience with logic and citations, they grow their audience with attention. Formal debates give them that attention.
>I don't think one of us is gonna convince the other or even make much progress in changing our views on this.
Perhaps, but I'm interested in what you have to say.
>I do not believe that they will debate in good faith with anyone.
Again, Peterson v. Zizek seems a good counterexample, though I grant your point that outright dishonesty wouldn't be/isn't outside of their wheelhouse.
>They don't grow their audience with logic and citations, they grow their audience with attention.
Well, perhaps, but also by seeming to 'win' many of their arguments. That's something we could change. They seem to command a great deal of attention without engaging in academic debate, so I'm not sure getting mocked by scholars will help them much.
Can you quit editing all of your posts and adding more content? Either finish your thoughts and post them completely, or make separate posts, its not really reasonable for me to constantly have to doublecheck if you've added more content.
EDIT: you're going back and doing it again! How can anyone discuss something with you in good faith when you're reformulating your arguments behind their back?
If you can't deal with edited posts in a public space perhaps you're not ready to debate. Remember; if you were a serious thinker you would be able to deal with this.
I think pointing it out as dishonest and in bad faith, while continuing to make my own points, is dealing with it just fine. I didn't pack up and go home crying because the other user is a snake, I pointed out their snaky bullshit and stuck around long enough to make sure they quit.
EDIT: on second thought, falsely equivocating between this disingenuous back-and-forth style of argument on the internet, and a formally moderated debate hosted by a university, is fucking hilarious. If this is the best you've got then you came up lacking.
Firstly editing posts is a completely legitimate debate tactic. Secondly, you never proven that the poster in question edited anything.
Remember, debates on the internet are actually better than "formally" moderated debates, as it allows for upvotes, downvotes and hyperlinks.
I can't see that - I think you're lying and possibly posting in bad faith. Netizens of this subreddit, upvote me if you agree.
Insults such as "mong" only suggest that you have no evidence or reasoning to back you up.
Remember, I'm the one posting and willing to debate. You seem to have found refuge in petty insults. Not exactly convincing considering you were previously advocating for the power of debates.
>https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/esxu1f/bernie_posts/ffdxbou/
>If you don't like them you should be able to criticise their points in good-faith.
How consistent and principled, I'm glad to see you practice the advice you dispense.
I do think people should be able to criticise each other in good faith. That's why I are, in good faith, critising you, who argues in bad faith. My argument is simply that debates do not necessarily spread the correct opinion. If this were the case Marxism would be universal by now
>My argument is simply that debates do not necessarily spread the correct opinion.
I never said that they did, I said that such debates would provide an excellent opportunity to debunk and undermine the power of certain 'IDW' types (ostensibly these are the people whose opinions are absent from college campuses), most notably by revealing how shallow their analysis is- hence my repeatedly referring to the Zizek/Peterson debate. Peterson came out of that looking like a dolt, and his 'pull' in contemporary culture absolutely diminished afterwards.
>If this were the case Marxism would be universal by now
Where did Marx say that revolution would come from vigorous academic debate?
The point is not to 'debunk' an entire ideology or worldview, arguably an impossible task, rather it is to reveal specific individuals as anti-intellectual grifters who aren't capable of actually defending the beliefs they claim to hold, and whose relative 'prestige' was achieved through bullying inarticulate children.
If people want to see Spencer and his ilk get trounced in formal debate, and then preserve that defeat in video format for another five years, we should by all means let them.
> Peterson came out of that looking like a dolt, and his 'pull' in contemporary culture absolutely diminished afterwards.
I would argue that Peterson's "pull" declined for two reasons:
1. He was no longer a new commodity for glossy magazines to give uncritical features to.
2. He went to rehab and hasn't really been doing much of anything.
>Where did Marx say that revolution would come from vigorous academic debate?
He didn't - I'm saying the same. Debates don't necessarily lead to correct ideas.
>The point is not to 'debunk' an entire ideology or worldview, arguably an impossible task
This is not a impossible task - Marx did it in the 1800s.
>rather it is to reveal specific individuals as anti-intellectual grifters who aren't capable of actually defending the beliefs they claim to hold
I don't think this is as "revealing" as you assume it to be. Anti-intellectualism is, for many people, convincing.
>If people want to see Spencer and his ilk get trounced in formal debate, and then preserve that defeat in video format for another five years, we should by all means let them.
It's weird that people always hold this view for people like Richard Spencer, yet for someone like Bashar al-Assad it's "bombs away". He should be invited to Western universities to make his case.
I'm giving as good as I'm getting, so if you want quality discussion then you should step up to the plate and offer something which is worth serious engagement.
Trae_Snoozy and I didn't have problems disagreeing amicably, perhaps your being a snarky asshole from the outset has colored our exchange.
Lastly, arguing with some chapoid troll on reddit is a far cry from moderated collegiate debate, which is what I suggested. I know from your comments here that you suffer from willful blindness, and so I won't hold that oversight against you, but perhaps you should get your aide or support staff to post on your behalf until your eyesight improves.
>I'm giving as good as I'm getting
Where did I say anything equivalent to "mong"?
> so if you want quality discussion then you should step up to the plate and offer something which is worth serious engagement.
I have already given you a quality discussion. I have made the points that:
1. Editing is a legitimate debating technique.
2. You have provided no proof that any editing occurred.
>Trae_Snoozy and I didn't have problems disagreeing amicably, perhaps your being a snarky asshole from the outset has colored our exchange.
Where exactly was I "snarky"? What exactly does "snarky" mean? And even I were snarky, is it an illegitimate debate tactic?
>Lastly, arguing with some chapoid troll on reddit is a far cry from moderated collegiate debate
Firstly, no matter what you think of "trolls" (and I am not one) - they deserve a platform just like everyone else. I think it's possible to characterise Stalin as a troll, for example. Yet Stalin gave many great debate performances and contributed much to the public discourse. Now, I'm well to the left of 'chapo' - but again, I think they deserve a public platform.
Secondly, internet debate is far superior to college debates. That's why almost everyone debates on the internet, yet almost nobody debates at college.
>Editing is a legitimate debating technique.
Not in any formal collegiate debate that I'm aware of, and since this is what I was advocating for I'm left thinking that you're either offering a bad-faith response (most likely) or that you're legitimately too dumb to parse the conversation (possible, but slightly less likely)
>You have provided no proof that any editing occurred.
If you can't see which comments were edited then you are quite likely blind, they're marked with an asterisk next to the poster's name and the post ranking/score.
>Not in any formal collegiate debate that I'm aware of,
Remember that formal collegiate debates are only open to the most elite in our society. Internet debates are far superior. If that's what you were "advocating" for - then I'm sorry, you were advocating for a completely outdated format.
>If you can't see which comments were edited then you are quite likely blind, they're marked with an asterisk next to the poster's name and the post ranking/score.
Again - Can't see them. Simply saying "they're there" is not proof and I doubt would even meet the low standards of proof at your precious college debates.
>Remember that formal collegiate debates are only open to the most elite in our society.
Over a third of Americans now have a college education, and a benefit of hosting these debates at public universities would be to diminish their being viewed as elite institutions where 'regular' ideas don't get discussed.
>Again - Can't see them. Simply saying "they're there" is not proof and I doubt would even meet the low standards of proof at your precious college debates.
Are you on mobile, by any chance? They're [clearly marked.](https://www.reddit.com/r/help/comments/hq2ga/what_does_the_asterisk_after_the_time_posted_on_a/)
> Over a third of Americans now have a college education, and a benefit of hosting these debates at public universities would be to diminish their being viewed as elite institutions where 'regular' ideas don't get discussed.
Yes, and that "third" is the most elite Americans. Americans are also the most bourgeois/labor aristocratic nation on earth and rarely have correct political ideas. Like I said, if Americans listened to real analysis, they would all be Marxists by now. Yet very few American professors are Marxists.
And do you want to discuss "regular" ideas or correct ideas? Those are two separate things.
>Are you on mobile, by any chance? They're clearly marked.
I'm not on mobile and your link just sends me to a post saying they're marked with an asterisk. I don't see any asterisk.
That's idiotic, i don't think anyone 'gets off' on this work anymore than I think people 'get off' on doing chores like taking out the garbage. Regardless of whether you find it pleasing, it still has to be done.
I feel like you can if the rules are enforced and they aren't allowed to "knock over the pieces, shit on the board, and then fly away", hence my emphasis on a formal debate where the IDW aesthetic/projection of infallible superiority isn't sustainable due to their actually having to engage with interlocutors who aren't children.
I'm beating this drum a bit here, but the Peterson v. Zizek debate seems to me a perfect example of how these situations could play out if given the chance. Zizek ultimately obliged Peterson to acknowledge that his recurrent boogeymen (spoopy postmodern neomarxists) weren't actual people he could name, but were in fact merely creations of his own mind. Also, Peterson revealed that his 'deep understanding of Marxism' or whatever was really just a superficial reading of *part* of the Communist Manifesto. He was clearly out of his comfort zone, and it arguably set in motion his decline from the public limelight.
wow you edited in a lot more content here.
Even the "campus freeze peach" libertarian people documented that it was actually 'leftist' ideas that were most likely to get stifled- BDS Israe/pro-Palestinian positions being excellent examples of this.
>"Free and healthy debate" is an old dogwhistle for "My shitty conservative ideas are equally as good as your progressive ideas and the government should step in to mandate that we present them as equally valid" when in actuality these ideas belong in the garbage bin of history with fascism, Toryism, royalism, neoliberalism, and so on.
First of all, those ideas *are* equally worthy of consideration, you just think that this should culminate in their rejection. I agree with the latter half, fwiw. That said, if the ideas are such obvious trash then it shouldn't be hard to demolish them in formal debate, and shying away from that under the auspices that its not fair/proper/whatever to give them any voice makes you sound like a shrill puritan who can't articulate their own views coherently.
> That said, if the ideas are such obvious trash then it shouldn't be hard to demolish them in formal debate, and shying away from that under the auspices that its not fair/proper/whatever to give them any voice makes you sound like a shrill puritan who can't articulate their own views coherently.
Yeah honestly if evolutionists are so confident why don't they want to debate anymore? It's because they're actually *afraid* of creationist arguments, and aren't able to actually make a compelling case for evolution.
Will the public debate actually host a wide range of views? For example, will a debate on the war in the middle east invite government official in Assad's Ba'ath party to give their perspective?
Or is this just going to be democrats vs republicans like every single political debate in the US?
Debates in particular are often not terribly valuable educational fora. They favor slogans and charisma over legitimate intellectual engagement.
More generally, the big problem with this particular agenda is that it repackages "replicating current US political divisions" as "intellectual diversity." In fact, contemporary universities typically have lots of people who defend laissez faire/neoliberal economic positions etc. Because there is significant intellectual content (for better or worse) to those positions and the debate around them. Universities rarely have many defenders of young-Earth creationism, by contrast, because that family of views lacks intellectual content. Increasing the number of YEC people presenting on campus would thus increase some kind of diversity, but not "intellectual" diversity.
Is the intellectual climate of a university improved or undermined by increasing the number of QAnon or chemtrails events? Because these sorts of legislation would rank such as increased diversity.
Did you look at the actual model legislation? It's not about sponsoring more frequent debate per se—the operative elements are these:
> particular attention to inviting participants from outside the institution who hold perspectives on widely debated public policy issues otherwise poorly represented on campus
> honoraria, travel, and lodging expenses to participants in debates, group forums, and individual lectures organized by the Office of Public Policy Events, from outside the campus community
> Making publicly available a complete Internet-accessible video record of every debate, group forum, and individual lecture organized by the Office of Public Policy Events, mounting that video record on the Internet within ten in-session working days of the event in question, and maintaining that video record in a fully public, Internet-accessible form for at least five years following the date of the event
And, of course:
> funding for these offices can be taken out of the existing university appropriation
It's not about generating more frequent debate. It's about building a robust platform for Richard Spencer (or whomever) and making the public university system pay for it.
>>otherwise poorly represented on campus
So the trick would be to put forth representatives who are qualified to debate the topic, instead of contributing to the illusion that no one has ever considered the 'dark thought' of Shapiro, Kirk, Peterson, Spencer, etc.
>>honoraria, travel, and lodging expenses to participants in debates, group forums, and individual lectures organized by the Office of Public Policy Events, from outside the campus community
>>funding for these offices can be taken out of the existing university appropriation
So invite far-left guests and let the university pay to host an actual Marxist or Anarchist or what have you. This law would necessarily cut both ways, and its silly to think there aren't any radical voices who are deserving of a platform that your standard milquetoast liberal university doesn't normally offer.
> This law would necessarily cut both ways
In theory, sure. In practice, it cuts whichever way the Board of Regents (appointed by a Republican governor, approved by a Republican state senate) wants it to.
This is not good-faith legislation to promote debate and "viewpoint diversity" on college campuses (which, yes, I could get behind, for the reasons you've given and others). It's just partisan hackery.
I don't disagree about the capacity of regents and administrators to be conniving ratfuckers, but even if it is '"partisan hackery", this should be understood as providing a wealth of opportunities to articulate 'good' ideas while simultaneously embarrassing supposed intellectuals who can't even articulate their own 'bad' ideas with much rigor.
I guarantee you that it would only take a few instances of ostensible 'IDW intellectuals' getting completely trounced in debate for the demands to stop.
For example, Peterson isn't challenging people to debate him any more after Zizek proved his 'neomarxist postmodernist' boogeymen were entirely figments of his imagination, and that his actual command of Marxist literature was limited to a few paragraphs of the Communist Manifesto.
I just don't think we should be mustering any enthusiasm for legislation that was tailor-made for Spencer or Milo Yiannopoulos or whomever. I'm sure we can find wingnut opinions of every stripe represented on the campus of the University of Iowa—designing the legislation specifically to fund speaking tours for alt-right pseudocelebrities, instead of just letting the treasurer of the Young Republicans get up on stage and explain why only rich white people should be allowed to immigrate, suggests to me that it's not actually about intellectual diversity at all.
I'm not "mustering enthusiasm", I'm saying that this is actually a profound mistake on the part of those "alt-right pseudocelebrities" because it opens them up to serious challengers rather than overly emotional undergrads.
I get you, I just disagree with you. For all their falderol about "reason," that's not actually where their strength, or their appeal, lies. Sartre wrote this ages ago about Nazis specifically, but it applies pretty well to the whole current crop of far-right loons:
> They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past. It is not that they are afraid of being convinced. They fear only to appear ridiculous or to prejudice by their embarrassment their hope of winning over some third person to their side.
Fair enough, we can agree to disagree. While I recognize that its optimistic, I like to think that a formally moderated debate would make such disingenuous tactics difficult or impossible.
Also, if you follow this line of reasoning then surely we should be reacting far more militantly to those 'far-right loons', because of the real and profound threat they pose. If they aren't actually a real and profound threat, and if they can't simply force universities to give them an unchallenged platform, then I'm not sure the Sartre quote holds water here.
Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
I do think they’re a real and profound threat—I count Donald Trump among their number (I think his rhetorical style, such as it is, is a perfect example of what Sartre was writing about—there was an interesting profile of Rudy Giuliani in the NYT magazine recently that, convincingly, I think, identified his and Trump’s shamelessness, their total inability to be embarrassed or cowed, as their strongest political asset), and I think there’s a serious danger that he will effectively put an end to American democracy, most probably if he loses the coming election by a narrow margin.
“When no serious academic will consider your ideas, just have the government force them to provide you with a platform.” #justsmallgovernmentthings
That “etc.” is doing a lot of work…
Imagine a univeristy having to spend half its budget debunking flat earthism, forever.
as long as there are well organized records of horrible ideas and the associated bureaucracy necessary to maintain them, they’re not so bad, amirite??
I’m not understanding why its bad to have more frequent debate on public campuses? Yes okay the sponsor holds views I disagree with, but that doesn’t make this issue moot.