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https://twitter.com/BrandonWarmke/status/1953127335550480836

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Brandon Warmke

@BrandonWarmke

Jul 14

Brian Leiter writes: "viewpoint diversity is irrelevant in serious academic disciplines" and "academic disciplines presuppose the unequal worth of different viewpoints, and the job of scholars is to assess those viewpoints, and discount the unworthy ones."

A few thoughts. 1/

This is fine as ideal theory. But what happens when a discipline--say sociology, gender studies, or philosophy--comes to be dominated by ideologues who regard as unworthy many moral, empirical, and political viewpoints that fall outside the narrow range of accepted views? 2/

Does that discipline therefore become "unserious"? Is sociology, gender studies, or philosophy an unserious discipline? How confident should we be that all the views regularly discounted in these fields are in fact unworthy? How would we know this? 3/

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Brandon Warmke

@BrandonWarmke

May 30

“Over the past few decades, Americans have redefined “harm,” “abuse,” “neglect” and “trauma”…

This cultural shift has contributed to a new, nearly impossible standard for parenting…

We’ve held our own parents to unreachable standards, standards that deep down, maybe, we know we ourselves would struggle to meet.”

“Today, parents still have obligations to their children. But it seems the children’s duties have become optional.”

“One video, with close to a million likes, cites introversion as a symptom that can be explained by flawed parenting: “Growing up is realizing that ‘strict parents’ are just abusive parents who robbed us of our childhood and turned us into introverts.””

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Brandon Warmke

@BrandonWarmke

May 13

“Here are my dozen suggestions for how Democrats might persuade my hand (and the hands of similarly-minded Americans) to gravitate toward the “D” on the 2028 ballot.”

“If your message only works when shouted, you won’t persuade me.” 1/

“If you reflexively ignore or reject what I say, you won’t persuade me.” 2/

“If you use the F-word and the N-word to describe your adversaries, you won’t persuade me.” 3/

Read 13 tweets

Brandon Warmke

@BrandonWarmke

Mar 31

1/ A college president recently wrote an op ed arguing that colleges need to be more honest with themselves.

The problem is the op ed isn't being honest, either:

2/ We get data showing that many faculty are willing to discriminate against conservatives and an admission that professors needlessly politicize their classes:

"Taken together, those survey results suggest that some of the most intense pressure to conform to political orthodoxy comes from within the academy."

This is true. The solution?

3/ "The solution is neither more regulation nor more denial. It is sitting in front of us: Colleges and universities should retreat from politics and renew our core mission of teaching, learning and discovery."

Great, who will be in charge of this renewal?

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Brandon Warmke

@BrandonWarmke

Mar 4

1/ Philosopher Joseph Heath on the five dogmas of DEI

1. Race Is A Social Construct
2. Stereotypes Are False
3. Racism Is Not Innate, But Learned
4. Majority Privilege Is Unjust
5. Racial Disparities Are Unjust (Per Se)

2/ "In every canonical use of the term, race is determined by ancestry, and ancestry is a straightforward biological concept."

3/ "the way that many anti-racism educators have tried to encourage this caution is by telling students that these beliefs about groups are stereotypes, and that stereotypes are simply false, not just as universal generalizations, but even as claims about averages, probabilities, or frequencies."

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Brandon Warmke

@BrandonWarmke

Jan 29

There are relatively few defenses of immigration restrictions in the philosophy literature. Which is weird because every nation has them.

So most philosophers have little idea what the arguments could even be. And when they do finally encounter push back on open borders, their total self-confidence in a view that's never really been challenged and in a policy that's never been tried takes over. The usual response is just immediate dismissal or name-calling.

One thing I like about this debate about immigration in this volume is that it shows how poorly the open borders positions holds up under scrutiny.

By the end, the defender of the "open borders" position has conceded that welfare would have to be restricted or limited for immigrants, they wouldn't be able to vote, and no men aged 18-34 would be allowed to migrate freely. Remarkable concessions for lovers of freedom.

global.oup.com/academic/produ…

There are some views that philosophers hold very confidently that I can at least work myself up into seeing what justifies the confidence even though I strongly disagree.

But open borders? I've never understood how someone could be so confident in a massive change to the global social and political order--one that's never been tried and no one has really any idea how it would happen.

I take it that this was in part Tristan's point here. Naturally, defenders of open borders are unwilling to even admit they don't really know how things would turn out.

x.com/TristanJRogers…

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