In honour of a new academic year:

Why I find the word 'PROBLEMATIC' problematic:

A Thread 1. What do academics mean when we say (as we so often do) that some person or statement of affairs is PROBLEMATIC?

We're not saying that it's a problem.

Rather we're saying (or suggesting) that it rests UNEASILY with--or even violates--our prior commitments.

1) Academic colleagues I otherwise admire have a tendency to, well, *sneer* when the issue of ‘viewpoint’ diversity comes up as below, especially when it comes to conservatives.

I have THOUGHTS and some anecdotes. 🧵

https://twitter.com/conor64/status/1379530257116491777

2) The well-documented dearth of conservatives in the American professoriate is presented as evidence of their intellectual inadequacies (i.e. political conservatives are "flat-earthers" who can't pass peer review)

Paging @mattlodder

1) Last week, I made the case for ‘free speech’ as parrhesia — the Ancient Greek word for ‘saying it all’.

https://twitter.com/tmbejan/status/1283732314657300480

2) I argued that critics of ‘cancel culture’ are right to worry that the right to speak one’s mind freely, without favor or fear, is under threat.

But as I explain in my 2017 Atlantic essay, cancel culture’s defenders care about free speech, too -- but as 'isegoria'.

1/ It’s also worth asking today: what exactly makes speech “free”? 2/ The sense in play in the current debate about ‘cancel culture‘ is that of parrhesia. In Greek, it means literally “saying it all”—that is, speaking one’s mind, what one likes, when one likes, and to whom.