Thinking about why academia is especially susceptible to this, it seems like most faculty and staff there are in a position not unlike a high priest or clergy member in that they wield a lot of power as long as they are in the organization but have little or none in their own right and if they lost their position the likelihood of regaining it is very small. So what they all want to minimize is the risk of gaining the attention of a vengeful twitter mob. Its not like there is really a corresponding gain to the individual for standing up for academic freedom to balance the equation.
Damn, I assumed he said something racist maybe, but this is what the issue was about, I just lost all respect for MIT.
> He and Stanford University professor Ivan Marinovic had argued in a Newsweek op-ed published in August that current diversity efforts — known as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — at universities violated equal treatment.
> Instead, they proposed a framework called Merit, Fairness, and Equality where "university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone."
In my opinion, the current system is put in place to try to address inequalities that the applicants outside of the educational institution had faced.
It's not a perfect solution, but I think that not having it in place may result in a student roster that would be increasingly conformed by the children of those who have benefited the most from economic inequality.
If you think that the issue is economic inequality impeding their development, this sort of fix is at best a hack that draws fire in other ways, especially from those with egalitarian values.
An enforced racial criteria is the definition of systemic racism. It's literally a system around judging people on their race and doling out advantages on that race.
No, that's not the idea.
The idea is that things some people characterize as “focussing on merit” actually focus on the outputs of processes influenced substantially by (direct and structural) racism and other non-merit biases as well as merit.
When people are protesting about racial injustice toward some minorities, saying "All Lives Matter" is dismissing their concerns. It's like when someone goes to the police department saying "You need to protect me from a murderer" and an officer goes "Yeah, we need to protect everyone from murderers." Yes, that's true, but that's not a very helpful response to someone asking for help.
Likewise, the whole academic evaluation based on merit dismisses the idea that our current "objective" means of academic evaluation may not be as objective as they should be when considering race. Yes, we should evaluate students based on "merit" but we need to reconsider whether our current methods measure "merit" accurately.
Would you agree that "All Lives Matter" is racist because it's derisive of "Black Lives Matter" the proper noun? The sentiment that all lives are important is not racist, and it's also not mutually exclusive from BLM's message. If anything, they align right?
BLM is saying Black lives matter just as much as any other life. Black people should not be treated as second class citizens. They're not claiming Black lives matter _more_ than others.. that _would_ be racist.
A true merit based evaluation would be.. just that - based on merit and not racial background, sexuality, age, political affiliation, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, or even the schooling you've received. To give any group preferential treatment would be not based on merit.
News is new. Interesting.
So we're past the point of looking for racism. Even political opposition, or a viewpoint you don't agree with merits cancellation?
Wow - there was a time when one went to college for debate and dissent. It's the best way to hone one's intellectual sword.
No wonder universities churn out so many people unprepared to cope in the real world :p
This Twitter mob has also affected stand up comedy. In Dave Chapelles new special he talks about it a fair amount.
If more people would just ignore the Twitterati we'd all be a lot better off.
Princeton has exceeded their "Zoom quota" once and had to increase it to accommodate additional registrations. Is there some limit that they absolutely cannot exceed? Will they have to close registration at some point?
If so, then many people that were interested in the content of the lecture will be unable to view it. So... he is effectively going to be cancelled by the anti-cancellers.
It would be interesting to see the actual numbers that end up attending it live.
And you can always record the zoom and put it up on something like YouTube, Rumble, Bitchute, etc. afterwards. Pretty hard to cancel ALL of those services.
