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Jeffrey Sachs @JeffreyASachs
, 9 tweets, 3 min read Read on Twitter
Here’s ⁦@CathyYoung63⁩ making the case for the campus free speech crisis. Her evidence? The fact that comedian Nimesh Patel was ejected from the stage at Columbia last week.

Here’s my evidence for the contrary. nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-ope…
In March, Ann Coulter spoke at Columbia without any real disruption. Ten protesters shouted slogans outside. They were from an off-campus group.

columbiaspectator.com/news/2018/03/2…
A month before, Anthony Scaramucci came to Columbia, also without incident.

columbiaspectator.com/news/2018/02/0…
When Candace Owens came in January, no protesters even bothered to show up.

columbiaspectator.com/news/2018/01/3…
Same with Dennis Praeger.

columbiaspectator.com/news/2018/04/1…
But best of all is Mark Krikorian, who was so miffed by the lack of protesters at his Columbia event that he complained about it: “What am I? Chopper liver?”

mlive.com/news/ann-arbor…
All from 2018. All at Columbia. And bafflingly, all disappeared into the ether without any comment from the campus free speech commentariat.
Some have argued that while free speech controversies are rare, they are disproportionately clustered in elite universities.

Maybe. But Columbia in 2018 is a horrible poster child for that argument.

One last thing. With so few campus disruptions in 2018, you’re about to be told by a lot of people that that’s only because so few controversial speakers were invited. In other words, self-censorship.

Don’t you believe it.
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I’d reframe this. One rarely asked, but quite legitimate, question is this: What do we owe to our allies? If structurally oppressed people are going to say that their allies have an obligation to defer to them (politically, epistemically, etc.), what is owed to them in return?
It’s a big thing, asking someone to entrust their energy and political judgment to you! I think Jade Schaff (Oberlin) wrote something about this, but can’t find it now. Anyway, it’s a legitimate issue that will not/should not go away.
To be clear: I don’t mean “what is owed” in the “what do we get in return?” sense. Rather, what obligation of care, of consideration, of caution does such a relationship create for the allied-with party?
Read 4 tweets
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This doesn't mention me directly, but it's obviously directed at me. And since it reflects the objections that many people had to my thread, it merits a response.
Objection #1: What about Trump/Orban/Brexit/Bolsonaro?

What about them? Yascha knows better than anyone that the illiberal/authoritarian turn in consolidated democracies long precedes contemporary SJW activism. See Brownlee 2002, Wright 2008, Levitsky and Murillo 2013.
As for populism in Europe and the United States, that too predates any kind of social justice activism. In fact, its rise is probably due much more to neoliberal failures (e.g. austerity) than left-liberal ones.

books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr…
Read 7 tweets
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The SJWs Are Winning and You're All Just Going to Have to Deal With It: A thread.
Reading this @JohnHMcWhorter piece is an exercise in vertigo. The central claim is that "third wave anti-racism" (i.e. the broad nexus of PC, social justice, and ID politics) is doomed to failure. That the aims are good, but strategically it's a dead end.

theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
This is a common view among centrist liberals and libertarians: "Yes, racism and sexism are serious problems and must be addressed, but the SJW Left is going about it all wrong. In fact, its tactics are actually making these problems worse, not better."
Read 23 tweets

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Fyi & I assume I'll need a trigger warning for TERF related posts ahead dealing with recent events & other stuff here on twitter. I won't include the gab stuff regardless because it's so bad I was actually frightened reading it.
TERF thread incoming!
Theres too much going on right now to share everything I've come across recently from the "GC a.k.a TERF" crowd. As mentioned a couple weeks ago these folks were building a bonfire where their internal rage was turning external towards the trans & gender binary groups of people
Read 33 tweets
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ALERT: The Trump administration has a plan to drastically curtail protests in DC, shutting down space in front of White House, charging massive fees, & banning stages & sound systems for rapid-response demonstrations. Deadline for comments? Monday, Oct 15: regulations.gov/document?D=NPS…
As the @ACLU writes, the proposed "Fee requirements could make mass protests like Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic 1963 March on Washington and its “I have a dream” speech too expensive to happen." This is what the Trump admin is proposing, right now.
aclu.org/blog/free-spee…
Since the morning after Trump's election through the present, I'm one of many people who have protested outside the White House, on the 25-foot sidewalk area where no permit is needed. Trump admin's plan? Block off 80% of it.
Read 20 tweets
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I'm writing about Haidt and Lukianoff's "The Coddling of the American Mind" and it's interesting how many disconnects there are between their thesis and their evidence. They started with a problem - speech being threatened on campus - and went looking for causes.
The causes ultimately aggregate into what they call "safetyism' where children have been overprotected by parents seeking to prevent them from being harmed, physically, psychologically, etc They believe this overprotection results in students who lack resilience and fear conflict
There's a lot of conflating of overblown parental worries about physical safety v. psychological well-being, but the sum total is that they believe students require more freedom, more agency, more practice at the things that help them be resilient.
Read 10 tweets
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For some bizarre reason I decided to read this article; I feel like I should send @conor64 a bill...anyway, here are a few (in no way comprehensive) thoughts:
We've already beaten to death how JP's not really being "misrepresented" nearly as often as he or his stans claim.
Also the SSC review of his book was...oddly useless. I disagree w/SSC a fair bit but find his writing to be exhaustively precise, but his review...didn't have anything to say in JP's defense that I could find? It was quite bizarre.
Read 30 tweets
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We're going to hear about Supreme Court opinions in a minute or two, and I want to address one issue in #MasterpieceCakeshop that has been badly obscured by the bakery: That case is not and never was about free speech or free expression. Because of what acutally happened
Here is what actually happened. Facts. The gay couple walked in. Introduced themselves and said we want a cake for “our wedding.” The did not discuss what would be on the cake, the decoration, the color, the artistry, or even whether the bakery would participate in the wedding.
We know this happened because THE PARTIES AGREED IT HAPPENED. You don't have to believe me, go read it for yourself. Here's a link to the findings of undisputed fact. Check out paragraphs 5, 6, 7, 8.
aclu.org/sites/default/…
Read 15 tweets
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I will respond to the @JeffreyASachs thread, asserting that "there is no campus free speech crisis" in a few weeks, after I have had time to go thru the datasets in detail. For now I just want to note 3 points:
[Sachs thread is ]
Point #1: There are conflicting data on changes in the AVERAGE view about tolerance of offensive speech. Twenge looks at Am. Freshman Survey, says that change is real. See ch. 9 of iGen:
Point #2: Even if there were no change in AVG view across 4,700 campuses, that does not mean there is no change at the small minority of 4-yr more elite residential schools where the "anecdotes" mostly come from.
Read 6 tweets

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