Today the New York Times published an op-ed by Emma Camp, a senior at the University of Virginia. The topic was stifling wokeness on campus, and as you can imagine it was not well received on lefty Twitter.
But it provides an interesting object lesson. David Roberts tweeted that the op-ed wasn't just bad, but practically a parody. I asked what was parodic about it:
"This one time, a friend of mine said something in class & a bunch of people disagreed with her" ... offered as evidence (the ONLY evidence offered) of some dark nationwide epidemic of self-censorship ... is the kind of thing I would write were I to parody this genre.
— David Roberts (@drvolts) March 7, 2022
But this is just wrong. Camp offered loads of evidence. You'll have to read the piece for yourself to get the context, but here's an abbreviated bullet list:
- Hushed conversations with philosophy prof.
- Friend lowers voice.
- Another friend fears a defense of Thomas Jefferson.
- Survey says 80% of students self censor.
- Feminist theory class about criticizing suttee. Eventually class discussions "became monotonous echo chambers."
- Brad Wilcox.
- Stephen Wiecek.
- Abby Sacks.
- Samuel Abrams.
Despite this, David's tweet immediately garnered hundreds of likes from people who obviously hadn't read the op-ed. They just saw something that seemed like a great dunk and added their enthusiastic support to it.
This is typical of Twitter, which is why we should all ignore it more than we do. Most Twitter pile-ons (of which this is only a teensy example) start with one person and are then amplified into tsunamis by vast crowds who know nothing about it aside from what that first person said. In other words, they're meaningless.
What's especially ironic about this one, however, is that the Twitter mob is doing exactly what Camp says she's experienced: they are dragging her so furiously that it makes her afraid to open her mouth in the future. And you can add to that a substantial number of people who are outraged that the New York Times would even publish this, which is also the kind of thing Camp is warning about.
None of this is to say that Camp is right. Maybe she's overdramatizing things. Maybe she's cherry picking survey data. Who knows? Maybe she's outright lying about some of the events she describes. If any of that is true, then have at her. But bring receipts.
Now, obviously Camp has not, in fact, been cowed by her treatment at UVa. She's writing about it in the biggest newspaper in the country! But that doesn't mean the dynamic she's describing doesn't exist. People who have never been the target of a woke mob can confidently proclaim that this is all just a myth, but those who have been in the crosshairs know perfectly well that it's very real. That's especially true for people who are less self-assured than the average blogger or Twitter user, both of whom famously love to mix it up in verbal arenas. Less contentious—or less verbal—folks are far more vulnerable to feelings of intimidation and far less likely to ever talk about it.
It's easy to nonchalantly dismiss the experiences of others. This is nothing more than asking people to be tactful. It's called "growing up." It's just people disagreeing with you. Self-censorship is a good thing. Maybe. It's certainly true that conservatives exaggerate wokeism for political reasons. But too many liberalish folks talk about this phenomenon—both in and out of the university context—to casually dismiss it as something that's entirely made up. It isn't, and it's a problem. The first step in fixing it is to at least admit that it exists.
"[t]hey are dragging her so furiously that it makes her afraid to open her mouth in the future."
And you are doing the rest of the work here, which is to try to insulate people from criticism.
"No, no,", you reply, "Criticism is fine. It is all this Twitter witchhunting, and the kids these days..."
And here's where we always end up: Yeah, and? Twitter exists. You can dislike it or hate it, but unless you're Vlad Putin or Jack Dorsey, you can't do anything about that.
Everyone has to deal with it. But only certain people seem to be asking for free passes from criticism. I'm sure they'll feel welcome at Bari Weiss's new venture.
Beyond that, I don't even know what Kevin is asking for. Be nice to centrists? Cut it out with all that hippity hopity jazz? Stop teaching social research to 20 year olds?
Seriously, what is the ask here? "Be polite" ain't going to work in today's environment, and asking kids to be less idealistic is the worst old-people idea I've heard in a very long time - I can smell the liniment cream and see the almond candy.
It goes far beyond mere criticism for too many people. You know that.
The issue is Emma Camp pitched herself as a campus liberal, but turned off by the Wokeness Monster; the exact kind of suburban woman that swung to Glenn Yungkins after being enamored of joebiden's alleged intent to return America to normal.
Then, it turns out, Emma Camp is a Reason intern. Truly, a campus liberal.
Yes! More fake CRT scaremongering. Because lord knows UVA is the epicenter of white privilege Bro Culture in Virginia. The woman posed right in area where the 2017 Tiki Torch rally happened.
"Classical liberal", e.g. right-wing libertarian.
Baby, you amaze me
You look so Disraeli
Nicotine n' gravy
That's the truly shocking thing. Female libertarians are god damn unicorns.
Maybe she's a Mary Kay Le Tourneau truther.
i don't have the energy in inclination at the moment to make the arguments about why i think everything you say here is wrong, i'm sure others will do that for me. but jesus, kevin, it's starting to feel like you're trolling your liberal readers with genuinely dumb, nonsensical reasoning to support your ongoing "the woke libs are ruining everything by being mean to republicans" narrative. it's growing tiresome.
In *my* experience, it's not a problem. No one ever tells me I need to be more woke.
The Governor of the Commonwealth outlawing curricula via enforced Executive Order strikes me as a far stronger threat to academic freedom in Virginia than the chilling effect of social sanction derived from UVa classmates being free to express their thoughts about her thoughts
And the Attorney General ordering the firing of UVA's counsel Tim Heaphy simply because he took a leave of absence to work as an investigator on the Jan 6th committee.
Jason Miyares: meet the Millennial Alberto Gonzalez.
Never heard of patronage?
Today is the day of Perpetua and Felicity,
https://i.redd.it/ovfx0fd6azl81.png
But don' t say gay or god will cry.
What do we do "when Johnny comes marching home again"?
Don't ask. Don't tell.
This is why I love to comment here. I don’t bother to self censor like I do in real life. But the truth is that no one cares what anyone else thinks. We certainly don’t care what strangers think. So all this allegedly stifled debate is of no consequence. If I say something bad about the US military, people tell me to bless myself (Ha! No they don’t).
Big deal. My opinion has no lasting effect on anything. I don’t use twits. I don’t use freak book or instant grief. Why would I do that? I get all the grief I need right here! Thanks!
Personally I’ve come to enjoy the destruction of peoples lives on social media. It’s the whole point.
Oddly enough, I like your attitude.
👍🏼
I'm on Kevin's side on this one. Yes, I am not thrilled the author is a Reason intern and thus likely a libertarian. Libertarians have a lot of silly views. (I once upon a time wrote the "Against" half of a "Libertarian For and Against" book.)
But I think what Kevin is rightly complaining about is the large number of seriously uncharitable interpretations of the op-ed among the Twitter critics, interpretations which portray the author as basically just saying "I said some controversial things and got criticized," leading to choruses of "Oh, boo hoo for you."
Yes, the critics are right that self-censorship is often a good thing, e. g. when people refrain from saying hateful things. But on a charitable read of the article, it's saying that there are many issues on which *reasonable people* disagree, but about which many people are refraining from stating their sincere and reasonable view, for fear of an angry overreaction.
It's true that the anecdotal evidence presented didn't prove that that is the case. But it's an op-ed, not a scholarly study. It seems legitimate to me for the NYT to print it, even though there are serious right-wing challenges too to the airing of reasonable opinions.
"But it's an op-ed, not a scholarly study."
This. It's one person's opinion. Opinions are like nose hairs--everybody's got 'em. Whether they're in the NYT or the WSJ, I feel free to ignore them.
it's an op-ed in the NY Times, not her college campus paper. i expect actual evidence for them to publish it. and of course, the idea that she gets a NY Times op-ed and then kevin complaining that "oh no! she's getting criticized on twitter, stop silencing these poor people" is just insanity.
"i expect actual evidence for them to publish it."
Why? Since when has that been a consistent standard at the NYT? They've been publishing right-wing claptrap at least since the US invasion and military occupation of Iraq.
yes, the ny times continues to fail to meet my expectations by publishing idiotic, unfounded op-ed such as this one.
the nytimes also publishes advertisements--do you also rail against them for the lack of objective evidence-based content in those?
Op-eds are not news. They are infotainment to give people more of an incentive to read the paper, and then supply a secondary market in Kevin Drums and folks like us commenting in threads.
The fact that this one in particular is a thinly-argued bit of twaddle from a college child makes it a bit more out of the ordinary, but it's otherwise par for the course with an opinion page.
if you see no substantive difference between paid advertisements and op-eds for purposes of editorial standards in the most prominent newspaper in the country then i can't help you.
Not everyone can publish an op-ed interview The NY Times (which is still considered to be the nation’s newspaper of record and easily the most prestigious publication in the country). It’s extremely difficult and rare to be published by the NYT. And unlike advertising, being chosen to write an op-ed carries with it the paper imprimatur and it’s prestige.
Yup.
The Sulzberger Advertiser is publishing a fancy girl from one of the top non-Ivy campii in America. This is a Pell Grant recipient from St. Cloud State or a GI bill recipient from Texas Southern.
*Not a Pell Grant recipient
It used to be difficult and rare to be published in the NYT because their standards were so high. Now, it appears that it is difficult and rare because you have to be a female libertarian masquerading as a liberal.
I valorize writers who provide meaningful insight that advances my understanding of the world, not just self-indulgent whiners who scrawl solipsisms. YMMV.
The last two decades have not been particularly good ones for the paper. The desire to include the most conservative viewpoints has been an immense mistake and has not persuaded conservatives test it’s on their side even as it’s cost a lot of credibility with everyone else.
Since William Safire promised Hillary's indictment on January 5, 1997, more like.
Actually, editorials get fack-checked just like everything else. That's standard journalistic practice, taught nationwide. Of course, there's no law against not fact-checing, and fact-checkers, like copy-editors were all too often among the first to go when somebody decided the local rag they had just acquired could be run 'leaner'.
OK BEDBUG
Oh my- this hurts: quiet conversations, self-censorship, hushed tones- sorry, it does sound like a parody. What is the real point of the story? If she wants to talk louder then talk louder- if she wants to have an opinion she should also hear others. Instead of only defending Jefferson, does she also acknowledge his flaws? Does she know what the life expectancy of certain slaves doing certain work (rice cages) at Monticello was? Less than a year. But Jefferson was an honorable man. Piffle.
“Rice cages”? “Less than a year”? Your information here is completely inaccurate.
The least we can do to honor the victims of gross historical injustices is to represent their lives accurately. Otherwise, we’re still obliterating them.
She wants to say the n-word when rapping along to Kendrick at the Super Bowl halftime show.
Hey, Raoul, I couldn't find the right googling combination to find 'rice cages' or horrific rice cultivation jobs with crazy mortality on Monticello. I resent you have put me in the position of saying 'hey, it doesn't look like it was 100% so bad, being a slave on montecello!' Thank you for that.
The only virtues a person should be aiming to signal in this kind of thing is the ethos for their argument and warrants for their evidence. I think that might be the problem people are trying to talk about that might just be real, judgment criteria for arguments regarding the quality of moral virtue expressed. It's not a line but a spectrum of judgment over a great constructivist project which aims to create a utopia through a language acquisition exercise into wokeness in the universities. While I largely agree with the mission, it uses normative social power instead of argument, which must be a bummer for the bigoted, backwards conservatives who stumble into philosophy class.
When I went on a tour at the Monticello about 6 years ago, I recall the guide inform us that a cage/basket device hovered over the rice fields held by a rope system and a slave was placed horizontally to harvest the rice and yes it was as brutal as it sounds. My memory may be fallible, but one thing for sure, compared with my first visit decades ago, there is no more whitewashing of history there anymore. If I find any written documentation I will post here.
Not on point but interesting article on rice cultivation in South Carolina in the 1700s at scseagrant.org. Search for rice. Obviously malaria was big contributor to the death toll.
Hey raoul. I didn't mean to give you such a hard time. It sounds like a kind of historical anecdotes that may have been arrived at inferentially, perhaps. Assuming Jefferson was median in his treatment might not be so implausible, but as a specific anecdote of Montecello it rings false. It makes sense if it came through on a tour. 'Studies have demonstrated an average mortality in this job of . . .' is not the way tour guides tell the story. What you're saying might as well be true. The point I think in this whole thing, though, is are colleges teaching the wrong values in argument? You stepped right in it giving an unsupported historical anecdote kind of proud like a peacock with how strongly it signals right thinking about Jefferson. Moral juissance.
But there is the constant exhibition of atrocities today, every day, and in globalization you are just as likely to be wearing clothes made by slaves as back then, eating the shrimp the caught under goad and burning. What is the purpose of showing that Thomas Jefferson is just was just as morally bankrupt as you or me? Well, that's my purpose, and I gave evidence. If you are morally superior to Thomas Jefferson, then how do you demonstrate it in the sacrifices you make? If you are not, then what is the claim in your argument?
That’s entirely plausible for the irrigation cultivation of “wet” rice, as in lowland South Carolina. The mortality rates were hideous, but that stuff was never cultivated at Monticello (or elsewhere in Virginia). Ironically, Jefferson tried to cultivate “dry,” or upland, rice because it was so much less brutal to human life and he thought if he could do it, others would follow suit. See https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/rice. It didn’t work, and of course the cultivation of tobacco and wheat was exhausting enough— never mind the ironies of a slaveholder trying to make slavery more bearable (and survivable). But the Monticello guide you remember was clearly describing the lowland-rice practices that Jefferson was hoping upland rice would render obsolete.
Before believing what Camp says it might be informative to find out what her actual political views are. Maybe she encounters opposition because she is a hard-core wingnut and actually advocates crazy things like Trump's claims of election fraud. She has interned for the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education which gets a lot of financial support from right-wing extremists:
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Foundation_for_Individual_Rights_in_Education
Anyway she does not seem to be any sort of politically impartial observer. If the Times wanted to do this subject right maybe they should have actually tried to find someone who is impartial, or paired her piece with one from a leftist.
The right has put itself into a position of advocating nonsense and denying reality in many respects. Anybody on campus who takes a standard Republican party line is certainly not advocating for free inquiry. Republicans are now supposed to swallow whatever Trump and state and local Republican leaders say. This is not to argue that there is no problem with "wokeness" in college, but the Republican party positions should not be given equal weight with the teaching of reality in college.
It's implicit in Camp's argument that the things she says in class deserve to be given a respectful hearing, and lots of fair-minded people would agree with her if they weren't so brain-washed.
It might also be the case that the rest of the class vigorously disagrees with her because she talks a lot of crap. Like a student I once knew whose contribution to any discussion was a recitation of banal Marxist dogma, which was cheerfully shouted down by the rest of the class while said student got angrier and more incoherent.
Maaaaaybe, but the examples in the column she gives don't sound like banal Marxist dogma.
I think that her point is less "when I talk about Stop the Steal, everybody gets mad at me and says 'Lady, this is chemistry class,'" and more "the range of socially acceptable debate is narrower than the range of what I consider reasonable debate."
As with nearly anything I hear from college kids, my reaction is mostly "wait until you're a grownup, kiddo," but I'd guess the chances of her being just a nutter whose peers are tired of hearing about her nutty idiosyncratic politics are somewhat low.
There was and is 0 legitimacy to anything to do with that. If she wants to argue it she is either stupid or lying.
I was too lazy to wait to get home to look at this on my wife's account, but really, after googling Emma Camp ------
I mean, is it that easy to get into the New York Times now? WTF is going on over there.
Just in case you were wondering whether Camp comes to this with an ax all ready to grind, the first non-paywall non-commentary case I found is a story about her where the following occurs.
1. Probably due to somebody posting a picture of themselves taking a dump or something, UVA sets a limit on the size of a poster you can put on the outside of your door.
2. The limit appears to be just shy of 8 1/2 by 11. Why this matters is unclear, maybe there is a shortage of scissors at UVA.
3. Camp puts a full 2' by 3' poster, a copy of the First Amendment, on her door, knowing that it breaks the regulations.
4. Get this -- Camp calls the administration to let them know its on her door.
Because .........
5. Camp then gets her phone out to film the campus cleaner uppers sent to take down the sign.
I mean, you aren't going to get some good video of some maintainence crew taking down the First Amendment if you don't call to report yourself first!!
https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2021/09/u-va-removes-lawn-resident-signs-posted-in-protest-of-new-hrl-signage-policy
And then she writes an op-ed about them taking the sign down!
Its just incredible. I swear, does Fox News own the NYT? Its like they just plant this stuff.
Camp is a fraud troll. Clear as day.
This is why it's called "the so-called liberal New York Times."
This seems pretty banal. It's been a while since college for me, but I would agree that a campus policy limiting door decorations to slightly-smaller-than-printout-size is inane, and protesting said policy with a first amendment poster isn't something I'd find fault with.
It's not the hill I would die on, either, though.
She's James O'Queef with smaller boobs.
(The Project Veritas guy has really porked up.)
Once again, there is no such thing as a Twitter mob. If your scared of a bunch of elitist AND Russian troll farmers, your a pussy. Camp needs to stop mumbling dialectical nonsense. You Don't gain my respect this way.
Those with unpopular views tend to be reticent about expressing them because lots of people vigorously disagree with them? So we should all ... what, exactly? Listen to lies, bigotry and creative fiction with an encouraging smile and mouth pious platitudes about Voltaire?
The most absurd aspect of Kevin's argument is that he spends half his time demanding that we pile on Fox until it gets cancelled.
I just retired after about 25 years of college teaching, and it does seem to me that students are more reluctant to speak up now than they used to be. Yes, fhis is anecdotal and subjective. But that doesn't mean it's wrong.
I think you are right.
Putting the Twitter nonsense aside, hasn't there always some mob-accepted discourse that everyone has to tiptoe around? "What do you mean you don't support the troops?!?!" I'm wondering if all the recent hyperventilating has more to do with who has seized control of narratives.
Emma Camp will sue you for comparing her to that hussy witch Natalie Maines.
Somebody please send Emma Camp the Fisher Price podcasting set:
https://youtu.be/4sLIaq8upV8
no need, she'll be doing the rounds on right-wing media shortly. maybe they can book kevin too, so he can explain the horrors of woke-ism and how we forced good, patriotic, god fearin' murkins to vote for trump with our evil communist ways.
"Even the liberal Kevin Drum..."
LOL.
Kevin Drum is Catbloggin' Mickey Kaus.
scheduled between greenwald and taibbi segments.
Good thing she's too old for Greemwald & Taibbi.
Camp confuses diversity with learning. We don't go to college to learn how the Earth is flat. We don't go to learn about creationism. We don't go to listen to White Supremecists tell us about the joys of Slavery. A lot of different opinions have been around for a long time and they've been taken apart and put back together again in multiple ways. We go to college to learn the best of these ideas that hold up to intellectual scrutiny. Yes, the less useful opinions that don't stand up to scrutiny become unpopular. And thus we shouldn't bemoan that some unpopular opinions garner backlash.
If you are unhappy with the backlash that your unpopular opinion is receiving, make sure you provide a well-reasoned defense of that opinion. Not just a claim that All Opinions Matter.
These comments are priceless. Over and over again, a wide range of writers/ journalists have given countless examples of how stifling college campuses have become. Yet the response here is Kevin isn’t much of a liberal and/or this is right wing exaggerations. Even if that were true, the right is winning the argument here. More and more people believe the Woke has gone too far in college and the corporate world. I sure as hell can’t stand the thought of the GOP getting into power again, but Democrats seem intent on insisting there’s nothing to see here all the way to getting their asses handed to them in the mid-terms.
I remember when Colin Powell said Bill Climpton was going top far trying to let poofters & rugmunchers serve openly in the military.
The rot began when Truman desegregated the military. That's when the Blacks started to object to being called the n-word. It's all been one long woke slippery slope since.
Thurgood Marshall?
More like, Theworst.
Yeah. I'd be upset about this oppression of her view if I believed a word of it. Just like I'd be outraged about child sacrifice in the basement of (slab built) Comet Pizza.
C'mon Kevin. You're a data guy. Except for a reference to a poll, which seems a bit shaky, this is all anecdote, and unverified anecdote.
I agree with not piling on, but I'd have lot more respect for both her and the Times disclosed she interned with a activist group funded by the likes of the Koch Brothers and the Scaifes: https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Foundation_for_Individual_Rights_in_Education
Did Elaina Plotz find Camp in a Georgia country club?
I am genuinely perplexed by Liberal resistance to the idea that Wokeness is a problem. At this point in time, we’ve been hearing about it, reading about it, or experiencing it for many years, and there’s just no question - none - that the situation exploded after George Floyd. Anyone denying that fact is out to lunch.
We’ve all heard about the data scientist who was fired for referring to historic voting patterns showing that violent race riots harm democrats (because god forbid anyone should reference empirical evidence).
We’ve all heard about the President of the Poetry Foundation (and magazine) who had to resign because of a statement in SUPPORT of George Floyd (because it wasn’t SUFFICIENTLY supportive).
We’ve all heard about the UCLA professor placed on leave (and, of course, accused of being a racist) because he reminded one student in an email that MLK jr. had a dream in which we are NOT judged by the color of our skin.
We’ve all heard of the YALE student who was recently investigated by the campus thought police (otherwise known as DEI) because he used the term “trap house” in a party invitation. And when the student would not send the apology letter written for him by the DEI office, his future career prospects were implicitly threatened by school administrators who now apparently spend their time curtailing free speech on campus.
And we’ve all heard of the USC professor who had some classes taken away because he warned his students that other languages, such as Chinese, have phrases like “NAY-guh” which sound like the N word. And his poor students complained of emotional damage, so of course the professor had to be removed.
These incidents were all so well publicized that I reference them here simply from memory. There are dozens more similar incidents that could easily be looked up.
And, by now, everyone - EVERYONE - has heard at least some of these stories. And they associate these stories with the left. And that is obviously - OBVIOUSLY - a problem for the left. You can complain all day that these are isolated incidents, or that Republicans are worse, but that will not change the fact that these incidents happen and that they are harmful to DEMs.
What to do? Denounce these incidents. Stand up for free speech. Obama has done that many times. Biden just forcefully denounced “defund the police” in his state of the union. Good for him. Defund the police is political poison. So is Wokeness. It’s obviously real, and it obviously needs to be denounced. So why do liberals apparently get upset when that’s pointed out?
That line from Bernie Sanders's "Dream Speech" is the only one GQPers know, & Yale traphouse guy was just pulling the contemporary version of a pimps n' hoes party that has been better left unsaid for sometime.
Try again.
In a country of 320 million people, social media has made it the easiest project imaginable to assemble a handful of anecdotes and call it a national trend. Right-wingers simply ignore the countless offences against decency committed by Trump supporters, and consequently they make little impact on public opinion. Reacting to every story about alleged "wokeness" by making sure everyone knows how much liberals deplore it is just dancing to the right's tune.
And I bet if you stopped random Americans in the street and asked if they'd 'heard of the YALE student who was recently investigated by the campus thought police (otherwise known as DEI) because he used the term “trap house” in a party invitation', the vast majority of people would give you a blank look. You're confusing political nerd TwitterWorld with the one where most people live.
So, you don't have any data then. Come back when you do.
FFS Kevin, people are lambasting this as a parody, because it is a parody (sadly like much of your writing has become as of late). Others have already mentioned the background of the author, which highly suggests that she didn't approach this with the intent of creating honest dialog, but with the intent of creating the type of response she got (seems she has pulled this kind of stunt before), knowing that that would be followed by nonsensical "but the left" arguments supporting her like you do here.
Having said that, the biggest problem with her article is that it provides zero context for every single example she mentions. It's nothing but red meat for conservatives and pseudo liberals (wink, wink) whining about cancel culture or "lefties" going too far.
Take her very first paragraph:
"Each week, I seek out the office hours of a philosophy department professor willing to discuss with me complex ethical questions raised by her course on gender and sexuality. We keep our voices lowered, as if someone might overhear us. "
I've worked in academia for the past 20 years, and during that time I've visited lots of campuses in various countries, and in my experience the no 1 thing that determines how loud people speak in an office is the office setup. Is the office shared with someone else? Are they open cubicles? Are the walls actual walls or just drywall? Are people working in the offices nearby? Any of these make people speak at a lower voice than if they were speaking at a cafe, a classroom, a park, or at home, and none have anything to do with being afraid of the topic being discussed, and all to do with making sure you don't bother the people around you. But she provides none of that context, she just insinuates it's due to fear, and lets people already supporting her position run wild with their imagination.
Here is another example:
"A friend lowers her voice to lament the ostracizing of a student who said something well-meaning but mildly offensive during a student club’s diversity training. "
Here again the implication is that it is fear of being criticized for their beliefs, but where did this interaction take place? Where they in the middle of class, or during a seminar, or while someone else was speaking, or while in a group that does not know the person being talked about? In any of these situations anyone with a tiny bit of manners would lower their voice not out of fear of the content of their words, but out of respect, knowing it's not polite to speak while others are speaking and others are trying to listen, or knowing it's not polite to discuss what happened to someone in front of strangers. Without the context it is impossible to judge if what she is saying is a valid concern or not.
And the pabulum keeps coming:
"Another friend shuts his bedroom door when I mention a lecture defending Thomas Jefferson from contemporary criticism. His roommate might hear us, he explains."
Is the roommate studying or otherwise occupied doing something that would be interrupted by listening to the two of them talkin, no matter the topic? Again, there is no context for how this interaction occurred.
It is a truly a cascade of nonsense:
"Students of all political persuasions hold back — in class discussions, in friendly conversations, on social media — from saying what we really think."
This is called being an adult, which she obviously hasn't matured to yet. Since forever humans living in society have learned that you can't just say whatever you think all the time. If a client gets on your nerves you can't call them idiots even if that is what you truly think. You can't start shouting profanities in a restaurant unless you want to get thrown out. At work you have to speak nicely with your coworkers even if you can't stand them. If you attend a wake you don't start talking ill of the death, etc. If you can't understand this is part of being a society, you still have a lot of growing up to do.
One more:
"In the classroom, backlash for unpopular opinions is so commonplace that many students have stopped voicing them, sometimes fearing lower grades if they don’t censor themselves."
What type of unpopular opinions? If you are in a history class discussing WW2, and you want to spout Holocaust denying anti-Semitic nonsense, you should get lower grades. Same if you want to call Evolution "just a theory" in a Microbiology class, etc. Far too many people think that all arguments should have the same merit or weight, and thus can't differentiate between having a truly unpopular opinion (like it happens in every scientific field whenever a new discovery takes place that displaces the prior knowledge) and simply being wrong by making nonsensical and easily disprovable arguments.
And yet one more:
"Ms. Sacks commented that she felt the film emphasized the title character’s physical strength instead of her internal conflict and emotions. She said this seemed to frustrate her professor."
Well, the film did focus a lot on her internal conflict and emotions (from the start Captain Marvel was told to keep her emotions in check and to clear her mind when fighting, and it wasn't until she finally let go of that control and allowed her emotions to run free at the end that she truly reached her powers' full potential). So what arguments what she using to defend her point? If all she did was say "I disagree with this" without really defending her view in a meaningful way, it is not surprising both the professor and her peers eventually became frustrated with her. But yet again, the author provides none of this context to validate her complaints. It's all red meat.
The whole thing is a caricature or parody much like the type of complaints regularly made by your average Fox News talking heads which are intentionally devoid of all context for the sole purpose of riling up the right and drawing criticism from the left, knowing that some in the media will still lazily accept it at face value and present their position as a valid argument even when it lacks everything that is needed for it to be one.
The hushed voices in the professor's office part makes me think there's some "Gin n' Juice" type same sex shenanigans going on.
Got bitches in the office hours getting it on, & they ain't leaving til six in the morn...
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. No one is entitled to mouth an opinion and have everyone else nod their heads, rub their chins and praise them for their sagacity. If you hold controversial or even downright stupid opinions, expect others to disagree. This is not cancelling, it’s debate. If your ideas can’t stand up to criticism then maybe your ideas are wrong.
This whole nonsense about cancel culture and wokeness is really too much. Stand up for your ideas or abandon them. Don’t whine about how everyone is mean to you because they don’t agree with everything you say or think.
Maybe I should enrôlé in a Catholic seminary and start espousing the tenets of Islam and then get righteously upset and scream foul”
When people shout me down.
Are Sohrab Ahmari?
Debate? That's funny. No examples at all of college speakers being deemed unacceptable all because they don't adhere to the current ideology of students. Mind you I'm not referring to someone like Milo Yiannopoulus, but lawyers/authors/journalists with very run of the mill political views.
Can't say I follow this nonsense closely (especially anything infected by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which definitely is a propaganda operation of the worst sort... do some research into the "controversy" they ginned up over a USC "business communications" professor who was teaching regular old English-speaking students how to say "umm" in Chinese - yeah, sure he was, I'm sure they desperately need to pay $50k/year to learn how to say "ummm" in Chinese, uh huh, tell me more -- and allegedly some black students complained about this because "ummm" in Chinese sounds a little bit like the n-word... but take note, when journalists and others - like the famous libertarian Eugene Volokh at UCLA law - tried to find any actual living black students who had complained, there were NONE to be found) but surely the worst example of this kind of thing I've heard about is what happened to Charles Murray up in Vermont. So interesting that Camp doesn't mention that case... I guess because Murray truly is an out and out racist and royalist and white supremacist and the FIRE folks would rather not have to defend those views
Bah humbug. These people got nothing, obviously.
We're supposed to take conservatives seriously about this when these are the people who think children should be allowed to carry concealed weapons in schools?
College students say stupid stuff all the time, and often face consequences for it. At my college many years ago there was a guy who insisted that Smashing Pumpkins was a bigger band than the Beatles. You can imagine how that opinion fared...today he'd probably whine about being cancelled.
Billy Corgan isn't as big of an asshole as John Lennon, at least.
Have to say...
How do you have moral and cultural maturation, how does civilization advance?
Sure you can have free and unfettered speech, from Buckley-Baldwin at Oxford to Southern crackers on the porch of a general store, but you see way more of the latter than the former. And when you do have the former, like the 1619 Project or CRT or honest challenge of what Western Civ did to the native people of the New World, most people *really* don't like have their sins and their unearned advantage shoved in their face.
One thing is clear to me: given their druthers, people in power/privilege/advantage/control *really* don't want things to change and will make every effort to discredit and attack change.
Camp is rooting for her tribe and "doing it well" and being published in the NYTimes....along with big pictures of herself beaming self-righteously. And, boy, is she self-righteous!
I'd feel much more impressed with her if she was challenging her own tribe's positions....which the Left does somewhat but the Right hardly at all.
THAT is the way civilization advances: seeing the mote in your own eye.
Whereas I'd say she's doing it extremely poorly. As proof, I point to her having to resort to blatant, in-your-face dishonesty. Shouldn't have had to do that if she had a case at all.
Emma's supposed experience pales in comparison to what me and my anti-war friends experienced in a variety of work, school and public locations in 2003. And unlike her, we were right.
If only Cindy Sheehan had said a false Republican belief in Critical Race Theory (No Child Left Behind?) had killed her son instead of a false belief in Weapons of Mass Destruction.
She is being challenged for the perceived wrongfulness of her ideas- which is what a liberal arts education is all about. Freedom to speak does not come with no consequences. Surely you understand that Kevin?
I don't often spouse my liberal views here in red state Tenn. because I cannot have a debate because all they do is cite FOX. And I took the Bernie sticker off my car after Trump lost out of fear.
We must remember: Kevin Drum is prolly still hurting over getting cancelled by CalTech.
FWIW my wife is an academic at an East Coast university. She believes there is a lot of self-censorship in her classroom.
Whereas I see little to none at all. And since I'm here, posting, my lived experience trumps hers ... in spades. You got a problem with that?