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Mar 29, 2019 • 28 tweets • 7 min read
A short thread about right-wing movements in different countries setting up ways to "report" teachers and academics accused of being too left-wing.
In the Netherlands, this is making a few headlines at the moment. The FvD was the biggest party in the recent regional elections.
In Switzerland, the SVP had also set up a website where you could report your left-wing teachers.
20min.ch/schweiz/news/s…
In the United States, an organisation called Turning Point USA has a "Professor Watchlist"with the names and pictures of academics accused of being too left-wing.
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
In Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland also had its own delation portal (thanks @kai_arzheimer) spiegel.de/lebenundlernen…
In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi said that "left-wing teachers were destroying family values".
lastampa.it/2011/04/16/ita…
Same practice in Brazil; an MP of Bolsonaro's party asked students to send videos of teachers 'indoctrinating' them into leftist ideologies.
oglobo.globo.com/sociedade/educ…
Here's Bolsonaro himself sharing one of these videos.
See also this piece by @donmoyn on how "left-wing academic craziness" is manufactured in right-wing circles heterodoxacademy.org/academic-freed…
This episode of @ThisAmerLife was excellent on this: thisamericanlife.org/645/my-effing-…
By the way, the organisation that set up the "Professor Watchlist" is coming to the UK
In Austria as well. The FPÖ is now in government.
Hungary, of course.
Canada.
My humble opinion: First, if you believe in free speech, whatever your political beliefs, I don't think a climate where anything you say may be "reported" or shared with mobs of anonymous Twitter users is conducive to it.
It is quite symptomatic that all the replies saying this is a good thing come from anonymous accounts.
Second, you really don't understand how education works if you think teachers can "indoctrinate" students into anything. I really wish I could indoctrinate students into reading my syllabus or doing my readings.
Third, students are aware that teachers have political opinions. This doesn't mean that students shouldn't voice opinions that they think the teacher will disagree with.
I tell students that I strongly prefer (and give higher grades to) an argument that I disagree with but is coherently argued, backed with facts and original than something that slavishly reproduces what I said in class, or that I would agree with but is unclear and lazy.
Fourth, I think that some advocates of "free speech" confuse the freedom to voice certain opinions and the right to have these opinions unchallenged.
This lecturer at the Free University of Amsterdam was informed by a student that there was a discussion on the student WhatsApp group about reporting him to the "left indoctrination" line set up by Baudet's party, and that he "should be careful".
The AfD tried to censor an academic paper studying their parliamentary practice.
wzb.eu/en/press-relea…
Similar thing happened in Italy.
On the Lega seeking to ban a monograph analysing the Lega:
independent.co.uk/voices/italy-f…
Data shows a surprising campus free speech problem: left-wingers being fired for their opinions
vox.com/platform/amp/p…
In the United States, more left-wing professors have been fired for their political speech than right-wing ones.

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More from @alexandreafonso

alexandre afonso Profile picture
Feb 14
A thread about a peculiar interaction about social privilege on Dutch television.
Author Joris Luyendijk is invited to one of the biggest talk shows in the country, Buitenhof, to talk about his new book. The book is an exposé of how the Netherlands is dominated by people like him: white, male, straight, highly educated, with privileged parents.
He says it's a problem. Luyendijk adopts a fairly confrontational style, highlighting for instance the privileged social background of the host, another white man. He says that being a white man who did not experience discrimination makes him less suitable as an interviewer.
Read 20 tweets
alexandre afonso Profile picture
Feb 13
Here's a farce: *80%* of the votes of the Portuguese diaspora in Europe in the last legislative election have eventually been declared invalid. publico.pt/2022/02/10/pol…
By default, Portuguese nationals had to vote by mail. The law requires the photocopy of their ID to be sent alongside their vote. This information didn't get through because many did not.
At first, PS and PSD had agreed that all the ballots would be counted. The PSD changed its mind, and all the votes in the voting stations where ballots with and without ID had been mixed were declared invalid.
Read 5 tweets
alexandre afonso Profile picture
Feb 12
Here are 5 out 7 members of the cantonal government of St-Gallen, Switzerland, plus its chancellor. ImageImage
Via @BorisBusslinger
Actually, 86% of the population of St-Gallen are middle-aged white bald men with glasses and dark hair.
Read 12 tweets
alexandre afonso Profile picture
Feb 8
A thread about social privilege in the Netherlands.
J. Luyendijk has a new book in which he argues that Dutch society is dominated by people with 7 characteristics:
1. male
2. white
3. at least one highly educated parent
4. at least one parent born in NL
5. straight
6. had classics education in high school
7. university educated
I thought I would try to see if there was a way to measure this with data: how privileged are people with these characteristics in the Netherlands? How many people are there who "tick" the 7 boxes?
Read 23 tweets
alexandre afonso Profile picture
Feb 8
Een draadje (in het Nederlands ) over @JORISLUIJENDIJK's #7vinkjes met data.
Ik vroeg me af of er een manier was om de rol van deze "vinkjes" in Nederland met data te meten. Hoe geprivilegieerd zijn mensen met 7 vinkjes eigenlijk? Hoe groot is dit groep?
nrc.nl/nieuws/2022/02…
Om dit te meten gebruik ik de laatste 3 beschikbare rondes van de European Social Survey. Dit is een grote sociale enquête in veel Europese landen over politiek, arbeid en levensomstandigheden. europeansocialsurvey.org
Read 22 tweets
alexandre afonso Profile picture
Feb 6
A thread on why I think that the lessons to be learned from Portugal and the victory of Antonio Costa for the European left are quite limited (after reading this piece by @jonhenley) theguardian.com/world/2022/feb…
In a nutshell, Portuguese social democracy looks more like European social democracy's successful past than its successful future. Image
That's because the class structure of the Portuguese electorate looks a bit like the one of other West European countries a few decades ago (and like some CEE): a higher proportion of skilled and manual workers, the traditional electoral base of social democratic parties Image
Read 13 tweets

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