If Yascha Mounk thinks talking about “2+2” has a negative impact on the reputation of public health research during a pandemic, has he asked himself what negative impact his talk of “cancel culture” has?
By the way, I have a research article that argues persuasion isn't a useful concept. It presumes we want to leave it up to those we address to decide whether to take up our option and shift in the way we want them to shift. We don't. Because that would be description.
Persuasion as a term obfuscates the power we bring to bear in order to push--more or less forcefully--our addressed audience into the positions we prefer them to have. Much of that power is contained in how we address and position those addressed audiences.
Yascha Mounk's promotion of his Persuasion platform buys into the genteel notion of persuasion, which I think is outdated and inaccurate.
Mounk's tweet positioning Kareem Carr's 2+2 talk as contrary to what Mounk thinks his dean's vision for public health should be, exemplifies the power at play in trying to change someone's position--in this case directly the dean's, and indirectly Carr's--by casting them into it.
Someone tweeted a Riley Gaines clip at me today thinking it unassailably showed we should not teach about trans identities and experiences in schools. The question attached to it was, „Are you okay with enabling this kind of abuse?“
In the clip, Gaines talks about feeling mistreated in a photo op with Lia Thomas. They both won 5th place. Thomas was the tiniest fraction ahead, not enough to effect placement. But enough to say Thomas should hold the single available 5th-place trophy. Gaines got hers mailed.
Gaines gets tearful about the emotional effect it had on her that Thomas was holding the trophy which she had also won.
#NathanCofnas has written a response to recent journalistic articles critical of his appointment as Leverhulme fellow in philosophy at Cambridge. I was tempted to line up the terms he is using to give the impression that his work can't have been debunked.
So, let's do that. 1/
A: terms he uses to describe his own work
B: terms for the work of his critics
A: He works in "philosophy of biology and ethics" and his paper in a "highly respected philosophy and psychology journal" calls for "free inquiry into all possible causes of race difference" in IQ.
B: In response to that story, a "small group of philosophers" had "a meltdown" which is "its own funny story."
I'll leave out the description of his encounters with the journalists at the two news outlets; it's not as relevant to the characterization of his & others' research.
1. Do your white supremacists things. Write blog posts, tweets, articles in which you take white supremacist positions. Attend white supremacist rallies. Take photos with Nazi symbols. Whatever it is you like to do.
2. Do it repeatedly, perhaps more openly in public & more veiled in professional life. Do it enough until your students and colleagues are alert to it and your university administration notices.
3. When an investigation is launched, immediately contact FIRE. Let them in on the public parts.
4. Provide FIRE with receipts that show you engaging in public political expression. Indicate how people have noticed you doing so & have sent career-threatening emails to your uni.
Pit of a puzzle to me how one can say faculty *must* work to make their institutions more equal and inclusive, and then dismiss a request to sketch out how faculty do this work they *must* do as "purity tests" that open some mysterious yet unsavoury doors.
It's a sharp statement. The ministry's letter is egregious enough for the uni president to comment on it directly and critically. He explains that the minister has not followed through by meeting with the uni's executive and has instead put the matter into the public domain.
I think Canadian uni presidents should comment more often & more openly on how they are engaging with education ministers. Beyond simply saying that's behind closed doors. We should know what the issues are on which they disagree with ministry, on which they assert uni interests.
Four years ago, before he published his first #Quillette piece, before he signed on as editor to that same online magazine, #ColinWright wrote an email to #JamesLindsay in which he laid out the set of simple and basic ideas that continue to drive his anti-trans activism. 1/
1. You can be an academic—held to the quality of his evidence, the knowledge of the existing literature, & the soundness of his arguments—or you can be a "free-thinking intellectual." (To the point that having lousy evidence & no demonstrable knowledge shows "free thinking.")
2. Let's blame everything on the "trans activists." Let's call everyone who disagrees with anti-trans talking points a "trans activist." "Trans activists" are bad, it goes without saying. Let's claim they are in "denial of gender or sex differences."