***Official*** Free Speech Thread (2 Viewers)

[IvanKaramazov]

Upon becoming aware of Hiers’ joke, the chair of the UNT math department, Ralf Schmidt, emailed the entire department with a photo of the chalkboard and a message stating, “Would the person who did this please stop being a coward and see me in the chair’s office immediately. Thank you.”

While we're on the topic, this person might or might not be removed as chair, but he would definitely receive a little coaching from the dean.  But somebody much higher in the food chain had to sign off on termination, and that person should be thanking their lucky stars for the doctrine of qualified immunity because they really deserve to have a judgement lodged against them personally.

 

[John123]

While we're on the topic, this person might or might not be removed as chair, but he would definitely receive a little coaching from the dean.  But somebody much higher in the food chain had to sign off on termination, and that person should be thanking their lucky stars for the doctrine of qualified immunity because they really deserve to have a judgement lodged against them personally.

I dunno man.  Did you read the article? 
 

The court also denied qualified immunity to the UNT administrators involved.

“Any reasonable university official would have known that it was unconstitutional to discontinue [Hiers’s] employment because of his speech,” Judge Jordan said regarding the denial of qualified immunity.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Oh good, I didn't realize that the judge tossed QI in this case.  

Good.

 

[Rich Conway]

But that's the thing though.  Making a joke that doesn't land or being a little rude to a colleague isn't a fireable offense in academia.  It never has been according to the AAUP.  At most, this kind of thing might result in your department chair sitting you down and asking you to be a little nicer to folks.  That would be the maximal reasonable response.  You can't even see termination from here, not even as pretext for some other preexisting problem that this guy was causing (hypothetical -- a lot of these stories have very clear "there must be more going on here" vibes, but not this one).  

And besides, if somebody is actually bothered that much by having their ideas called "garbage," you are most definitely in the wrong line of work.  This is an area where the "suck it up, buttercup" standard definitely applies.  If you can't handle some guy tossing shade your way in the break room, good luck with Reviewer #2.  

Perhaps academia is a different world, I admit.  This would get someone at my office fired in a heartbeat; literally at every job I've ever worked.

I assumed from the article that the flyers were posted by a student, not a colleague.  I'd agree that being rude to a colleague is less of an offense in this context than rude to a student.

Surely, you'd agree that the action was unnecessary, inflammatory, and intended to denigrate?

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Perhaps academia is a different world, I admit.  This would get someone at my office fired in a heartbeat; literally at every job I've ever worked.

I assumed from the article that the flyers were posted by a student, not a colleague.  I'd agree that being rude to a colleague is less of an offense in this context than rude to a student.

Surely, you'd agree that the action was unnecessary, inflammatory, and intended to denigrate?

No, I don't.  This is the type of direct, harsh, and possibly not very nice criticism of ideas that directly supports the mission of higher education.  When a person can't say "This idea is garbage" at a university, it's time to turn out the lights.

 

[parasaurolophus]

Perhaps academia is a different world, I admit.  This would get someone at my office fired in a heartbeat; literally at every job I've ever worked.

I assumed from the article that the flyers were posted by a student, not a colleague.  I'd agree that being rude to a colleague is less of an offense in this context than rude to a student.

Surely, you'd agree that the action was unnecessary, inflammatory, and intended to denigrate?

Passing out flyers about microagressions would never happen. At literally every job I have ever worked.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Passing out flyers about microagressions would never happen. At literally every job I have ever worked.

This is an extremely good point.  In a normal workplace, the person who put out the fliers would be considered "the one who started it" in this situation.  (I like working in an environment where it is considered okay to distribute things like this on your own volition, but that's not normal.)

 

[Rich Conway]

Passing out flyers about microagressions would never happen. At literally every job I have ever worked.

What the flyers were for isn't really relevant.  Pretend it's a flyer about girl scout cookies.  If I write a sign saying to keep your garbage off the public bulletin board, I'd get fired.

 

[rockaction]

If I write a sign saying to keep your garbage off the public bulletin board, I'd get fired

Public bulletin boards are generally reserved for apolitical stuff like Girl Scout cookies if there even are public bulletin boards at work. At the place I worked at for quite some time, we had OSHA posters and those unfunny comic strips about the workday. Nothing else, really. Nothing that approached a microaggression harangue. 

 

[Rich Conway]

No, I don't.  This is the type of direct, harsh, and possibly not very nice criticism of ideas that directly supports the mission of higher education.  When a person can't say "This idea is garbage" at a university, it's time to turn out the lights.

I see this a lot different than saying "this idea is garbage".

If it were a sign for guitar lessons, a dog walking service, an invitation to after-school bible study, or virtually anything else, you would agree that calling the flyer out as garbage is inappropriate, in the workplace, higher ed, or anywhere else.  It's rude, intended to denigrate, and intentionally inflammatory.  It doesn't suddenly become "legit academic discourse" because you happen to disagree with the premise.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

What the flyers were for isn't really relevant.  Pretend it's a flyer about girl scout cookies.  If I write a sign saying to keep your garbage off the public bulletin board, I'd get fired.

Do you think most workplaces would draw a distinction between a) somebody bringing in the sign-up sheet for their daughter's girl scout cookies and b) somebody distributing ideologically-tinged propaganda?  

In my workplace, personally, these are both basically fair game.  But I doubt that's the case elsewhere, and my guess is that (a) gets way may slack than (b).

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I see this a lot different than saying "this idea is garbage".

If it were a sign for guitar lessons, a dog walking service, an invitation to after-school bible study, or virtually anything else, you would agree that calling the flyer out as garbage is inappropriate, in the workplace, higher ed, or anywhere else.  It's rude, intended to denigrate, and intentionally inflammatory.  It doesn't suddenly become "legit academic discourse" because you happen to disagree with the premise.

None of the things you mentioned belong to the same category as the fliers we're discussing.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

To answer the question that I think maybe you're asking, if a person wrote something hostile on a whiteboard about somebody's daughter's girl scout cookies, I would wonder if they were in need of some sort of mental health intervention.

If somebody wrote something hostile on a whiteboard about some video they saw on Fox News, it would be Wednesday.

I'm genuinely shocked that a poster is putting those two things in the same category.

 

[parasaurolophus]

What the flyers were for isn't really relevant.  Pretend it's a flyer about girl scout cookies.  If I write a sign saying to keep your garbage off the public bulletin board, I'd get fired.

What if dog really spelled cat?

You modified passing out political junk to putting an ad for girl scout cookies in the appropriate place at work. I mean thats a big stretch. 

But lets go there. Lets say that happened and then I put a paper right next to it that said "girl scout cookies are overpriced and taste like crap". What kind of garbage place do you work where that would get you fired? 

 

[IvanKaramazov]

It's also surprising to see somebody so eager to defend the bad actors in what is not even remotely close to an edge case.  This particular nonrenewal was sufficiently egregious that (at least for now) the chair isn't even protected by qualified immunity.  That's a federal judge telling you that this is one is so open-and-shut that the people in question can't plausibly claim that they were even acting in good faith.  That hardly ever happens.  

 

[Joe Schmo]

I didn't think the joke was that bad and give the prof credit for taking a stab. The 0 to 60 escalation to him getting fired was impressive in it's ridiculousness. Talk about being triggered...

 

[rockaction]

Bumping my own thread. I always wondered why Matt Yglesias was stuck on Substack after founding Vox. I thought he sold Vox. Turns out, he didn't. He simply signed a letter in defense of free speech in Harper's magazine and was sacked because one of the co-signers was J.K. Rowling, noted trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF for short). Taibbi, in his Substack today, contended that Yglesias left or was sacked for merely appearing alongside of Rowling. I remember that Emily (formerly Todd) VanderWerff raised a kick and spit about the letter, saying she'd been hurt and nothing could take it back, but I didn't know they had succeeded so swiftly in disarming a co-founder. 

This is where free speech stands today as a practical matter. It's getting so close to DEFCON whatever that I'm not even sure what to make of the fact that we no longer have honest discourse about anything. Couple institutional pressures (academia, media, and corporations) with real pressure against a free press from the political right, and we've got a significant problem on our hands. 

 

[IvanKaramazov]

Bumping my own thread. I always wondered why Matt Yglesias was stuck on Substack after founding Vox. I thought he sold Vox. Turns out, he didn't. He simply signed a letter in defense of free speech in Harper's magazine and was sacked because one of the co-signers was J.K. Rowling, noted trans-exclusionary radical feminist (TERF for short). Taibbi, in his Substack today, contended that Yglesias left or was sacked for merely appearing alongside of Rowling. I remember that Emily (formerly Todd) VanderWerff raised a kick and spit about the letter, saying she'd been hurt and nothing could take it back, but I didn't know they had succeeded so swiftly in disarming a co-founder. 

Yeah, this has been floating around for a while.  Ygelsias is a classy guy and doesn't talk about it much, but others do from time to time.  

In fairness, you never know what a person is like to work with until you've worked with them for a while.  Maybe the guy was a terrible boss and he was pushed out for reasons that were more defensible, but to my knowledge nobody has ever alleged that.  He just signed a milquetoast open letter that was also signed by a problematic person, and that was enough for the fundamentalists.

 

[Maurile Tremblay]

Why Matthew Yglesias Left Vox

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-and-medias-groupthink-problem/617102/

 

[rockaction]

Why Matthew Yglesias Left Vox

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/substack-and-medias-groupthink-problem/617102/

Saw this article after I posted. It's even-handed and fair. Yglesias gives a toned-down assessment of what happened and takes it in stride and with grace. It's still a sad indictment of our culture right now that he has to leave a pretty progressive magazine for questioning orthodoxies that they might be holding, orthodoxies that might be getting in the way of discourse and truth.