Friends, a few people at the uni, the National Post, & Toby Young assert that "all speakers have a right to be heard" at Cambridge. Did you once apply to a Cambridge program and were rejected? Did you want a Cambridge-affiliated scholarship or fellowship and were turned down? 1/
Now is the time to get the Free Speech Union on your case! Ask them to write a letter protesting the intolerance you experienced, and help you push for that position, funding, or engagement you didn't get! 2/
Are there research fields at Cambridge on which you once opined in a podcast or blog, but in which you have no training or research experience? Wouldn't it be nice if you could get a uni office, some meals, and a lecture series? Fear not. That didn't hold #JordanPeterson back. 3/
Demand your reinstatement to the fellowship for which you are not qualified! You are a speaker, aren't you? You have a right to be heard. 4/
I got a chuckle out of this one. My friend here, @SwipeWright, professes his unadulterated excitement when someone tells him he is incorrect about something! He'll be positively enamoured if that person proceeds to provide an explanation. He just does not want to be wrong.
He is here to have his mind changed!
Strange though that he did not respond to these tweets. Wonder what went wrong there.
Dear Colin,
You're pretty wrong about this sex-based rights idea. I can explain what is wrong about it! In fact, I already did. Allow me to paste. Titillated to be able to provide you with this opportunity to have your mind changed!
Malcolm Gladwell setting the ground for . . . many jokes.
"They saw him masturbate during a work Zoom call, and they just assumed he had done something terrible! They never told us the details of what that terrible thing looked like. Just like a Catholic Sunday school wouldn't."
Expecting Steven Pinker to write one of his letters, Toby Young to comment, and #Quillette to pen an editorial criticizing this petition: “Some faculty members also questioned the wisdom of such a club; 13 of them signed a statement suggesting the club could polarize the campus.”
About a month ago, graduate students and postdocs wrote a letter with over-the-top demands to the department head of Dorian Abbot, angered by materials he'd posted questioning initiatives to increase diversity in his discipline of geophysics.
In light of the students' letter & its demands, Abbot's uni admin assured him that his position as a tenured prof was safe. The president wrote publicly in his support. Yet, Toby Young's Free Speech Union, Steven Pinker, #Quillette & authors kicked into high drama petition gear.
2) Pragmatically, this is bullshit. That people say they will do something under certain conditions in the future doesn‘t mean—when the future has passed—they did it in this way.
3) However you approach it, you need the person’s account & she needs to have said she’s resigning.
4) It’s clear Pedro wants to logic-muscle his way to an unsubstantiated, alternative way of seeing the world. That unsubstantiated, alternative way involves running roughshod over the first-person, substantiated account of the person in question, who happens to be a Black woman.
"That was one of my beefs with the BCSTA when I was a trustee: too much cheerleading, self-congratulating, toeing the government line, and too little focus on being responsive to communities. That culture continues, and it could well lead to the end of school boards here in B.C."
"More recently, trustees tell me the BCSTA’s orientation for new trustees advises that they shouldn’t speak to the news media or engage with the public on social media. Good grief. What’s the point of having local government if you don’t talk to the locals?"
Tho "it’s true the chair speaks on behalf of the board, individual trustees are elected officials who can & should speak as well, making it clear they're not speaking for the board. They need to be accountable to the public & keep as many communication channels open as possible."