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Colin Mills

@OxSoc

19 Jun

@LSEGenderTweet

A short thread on how scholars should behave when they think they disagree with something. May be of interest to @LSEGenderTweet. 1) Let's assume me & my mates think there is something wrong with a body of thought - say for instance Gender Critical Feminism. 2) First we might>>

read & think about some of the work that constitutes that body of thought; 3) We would probably discuss it, first informally, perhaps in a seminar, even in a symposium; 4) We'd discover that, because they are not The Borg, different GC scholars believe and maintain somewhat >>

different things. Perhaps they agree about certain basic facts but have quite different attitudes towards those facts & draw somewhat different conclusions about what, if anything should be done in response to them. That's life, because, you know, human variety. 5) We might >>

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Colin Mills

@OxSoc

24 Feb

https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1364536847070875648

I imagine the blokia are prepping their, hang on, wait a minute, that's just some random person on the internet who got it wrong thing. If only it was. Here is a professor at a major UK university writing the same in an academic journal. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108… >>

https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1364536847070875648

Read the first paragraph. That's all you have to do. The same untruth, the same strategy of misdirection. And when challenged what do the editors do? Nothing. Some waffle about Popperian debate, only an opinion piece, blah blah. Excuse me, but I thought Popper's point >>

was you attack the strongest point of the rival argument not make up an entirely different argument & attack that. Maybe I'm just not up to date with the latest thinking in the philosophy of science. And then the matter of the discourtesy of not citing the article you >>

Read 6 tweets

Colin Mills

@OxSoc

20 Feb

I want to tell you a story. It illustrates the low level, but unpleasant hassle faced by academics holding views deemed unacceptable by self-appointed defenders of public safety. I'm not going to name names. I'm not interested in facilitating a pile on. The abused is>>

robust and capable of looking after themself. I was sent a screenshot of the abuser's protected twitter narration of the incident. I've also seen it tweeted on here. I've no idea how it was leaked. I've not seen its authenticity challenged. >>

So to the tale. Dr X organizes a seminar with a symposium panel under the auspices of a Faculty in a large well known UK university. Dr Y who is a member of the university with a legitimate interest in the subject matter of the panel registers to >

Read 20 tweets

Colin Mills

@OxSoc

19 Feb

A banal thought. The test for the limitation of speech in the public sphere must ultimately be some notion of harm actually or potentially caused. So the important questions are what kinds of harm should we care about, who gets to decide, how do they decide and what sort of >>

evidence and argument is admissible. Arguing about abstract conceptions of free speech or preemptively shouting, "no debate" obscures the constitutional conference type of discussion that might help us deal more rationally with the practical issues. Of course if you are wedded to

a "there is no problem, it's all confected" view then this will seem irrelevant. On the other hand if you're actually faced with the claim that the presence of speaker X on the platform, or even the very idea of speaker X, makes a person or class of persons feel unsafe, then

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Colin Mills

@OxSoc

18 Feb

Things ain't simple. It's perfectly consistent to believe the following: 1) a government appointed free speech czar is a terrible idea & undesirable 2) many members of academia don't notice or feel any restriction on the free expression of their views 3) some members of academia

are subject to systematic campaigns of harassment because of their views, in some cases simply for stating undeniable facts (not "facts") 4) Circulating lengthy public denunciations, calling for someone to be disciplined or fired, deliberately misrepresenting what they say,

encouraging frivolous complaints or boycotts are not normal ways of conducting academic arguments and go far beyond the norms of academic free and fair exchange; 5) Some academics deny that such things take place because it suits them not to see it 6) Some are silent because

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Colin Mills

@OxSoc

15 Feb

The idea that between 1841 and relatively recently the Census authorities were completely agnostic about what the population thought the target of the sex question was is ludicrous and shows a complete lack of historical imagination. From 1841 the head of household filled

in the schedule and a census enumerator checked and amended the return. If you want to call that "self-report" fair enough, but all the questions were answered by self-report in that sense. This does not = self-id. It is completely implausible to believe that historically there

was any quantitatively serious divergence between the recorded answers to the Census sex question and biological sex as proxied by what was written on birth certificates after civil registration was introduced in 1837. When reality changes, as it undoubtedly has (though we >>

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