I am okay with student protest and student union UGM motions that are voted on by students yes.
If someone who supports Likud and what Netanyahu has done somehow gets invited I am going to make my distaste known.
Richard Dawkins tells students upset by Germaine Greer to go home and hug a teddy
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I am okay with student protest and student union UGM motions that are voted on by students yes.
If someone who supports Likud and what Netanyahu has done somehow gets invited I am going to make my distaste known.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
No. kind of quoting Dawking himself a little bit there, sad you missed it.
People seem to want to argue the easy way out. I am not saying they don't have a right to protest, or make petitions, or voice their opinion. I am criticizing the method and to an extent questioning the rationale for the avenue they are choosing to do so.
Neoriceisgood
Member
... you might want to elaborate what you mean by this, cause the way it's worded sounds extremely unfortunate.
America is made up of individuals, you know?
And yeh, this also happened in the UK.
The old "sticks and stones" chestnut is factually incorrect in a world where trans people are more likely both to be murdered and to kill themselves because they are not accepted by the world at large.
ISWThunder
Member
Is it really a questionable tactic? What better way do these students have to protest than to take money out of her pocket?
That's the responsibility of the university. And it's up to the university which people they select, invite, let speak, partner with in order to give students opportunities to interact with these people. Someone somewhere in the vicinity of this university decided this woman, a noted feminist author, should give a lecture, probably about feminism.
Instead of framing this woman, or giving context, the immediate response was to call for a complete removal of the information this woman was to disperse, before it even happened. No chance to see what she would have said, no chance for other students to engage with her.
Again, they have the right to do this. But I think it is bad to do so. And it sits me badly these students would like to control that information flow for others. It's a very disquieting approach.
Tesseract
Banned
freeofgreed
Member
Except...this is the UK...
Again you keep saying this but whenever someone asks you to clarify you go right back to the protest.
When it comes to the scale of which is more problematic, students protesting (which is a problem because "reasons") or a bigot being given legitimacy. I'm always going to go with the latter as being much more problematic.
John Kowalski
Banned
seems counter intuitive to demand someone to stay away from a forum when that forum would give you the chance to relay your opinions directly to the same audience and to the speaker herself (or perhaps that is simply not the case, i don't really know)
that said terfs are not someone i'd make friends with
that said terfs are not someone i'd make friends with
Universities are not public places.
What's troubling about the protest that's germane (
sorry everybody!
Students circulate petition a petition, it is successful. Speaker pulls out.
If your point is that student activism can go to far or be destructive I wouldn't disagree with that, but it seems to have no bearing on this example or this thread.
Then it gets to the point where there will be a group of people protesting every type of view and nobody gets to speak ever because everything can offend everyone.
Neoriceisgood
Member
Small nitpick, but are universities public places? I know that a lot of educational facilities (particularly highschools) have fairly strict regulation regarding who's allowed to enter or not. (here in the Netherlands we even have little sings above the doors of some schools pointing out the law restricting uninvited people from just entering a school)
Slippery slope argument much?
Not every protest is succesful. In fact, if every single speaker ever got protested there'd most likely be an increased chance of universities just ignoring protests entirely.
BUNTING1243
Banned
Richard Dawkins is a smart scientist but a gross old man and Germaine Geer is a horrible person who shouldn't be paid to spew her hateful garbage. I don't understand what students protesting her is conterversal.
People aren't interested in a debate regarding trans identities. They just want to spew bigotry and hatred.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
It's a weird thread.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
I'm on the side of don't let Greer speak. It's like saying we should give room for creationists and global warming deniers. At a point we can say, "hey, you're not helping anything don't speak here." It's not exactly 1:1 but Bill Nye debating Ken Hamm is a good example of this.
ISWThunder
Member
If it's at your expense, then it's not counter intuitive at all. If she wants to actually go to a public place, she can talk about whatever she wants. But a paid appearance in a University building is not that.
Again: Germaine Greer's information and opinions are out there. She's written fucktons of books. She is not being censored any more than the university "censors" the homeless man outside Waitrose by not inviting him to speak.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
I mean, she can speak all she wants, she just chose not to, and OUTRAGE!
John Kowalski
Banned
...
you're right, they're not technically public, will amend (this is one of those expressions that i have trouble with because of cultural details)
Then it becomes an Orwellian dicatorship and that's doubleplusungood.
Slippery slope arguments are dumb.
Exactly. She's not promoting something to the general public through mass media or publication.
She's talking to college students, people equipped and training to critically examine ideas, even those which do not belong in public places ideally.
The 'no platform' argument is weak. At the end of the day, this is about silencing a person for their opinions and marking their viewpoint as illegitimate and not worthy of consideration. If this was a different university in a different country, say Russia, you might easily find a university where a majority of students protest the arrival of a gay rights activist. The only difference is that the people who support not giving platform to this lady believe that her views are bad while the gay activist's views are good. While that may be so, the assumption that you have all the answers and that your judgment can demarcate the borders of legitimate or illegitimate opinion is deeply illiberal and frankly dangerous.
Yeah, they've heard her opinions, and they're saying "no thanks, we're good"
The entire protest was centered around banning her from the university from giving a speech on a topic that had no bearing on the issue of contention. Essentially petitioning her to be banned due to a red herring.
One, I think that is bullshit(I laid out counter examples a few times now explaining my thoughts) and two, I think it is a cowardly way to deal with opinions they don't like.
Sho_Nuff82
Member
He's not wrong though. Had our fair share of controversial speakers in college. You want to challenge their world view? Do it with a mic in your hand with the rest of the campus watching.
JesseEwiak
Member
It's the student's money. If Greer or any other loony wants to be on the campus grounds and speak, so be it. I'd be against people trying to get her banned from the property, just as I'd be against the Russian university banning pro-gay people from speaking. But, if stupidly, the Russian university wants to ban the student union from giving a pro-gay speaker cash, OK.
As for the "you defeat ideas by giving open debate," I'd point out the most conservative nation politically among the First World is the one with the strongest free speech protections. So, maybe, when you allow bigots to speak openly, people believe them?
freeofgreed
Member
So what should have been done in this case then? Should the school have told the students they can't protest? Is that not also a violation of their rights?
Do you believe that the issues of trans women are irrelevant to a speech on feminism? Because I would disagree thoroughly, not least because her views on trans women (and biological determinism) would affect the content of her talk.
I had something half typed out but then I realise the crux of your response was "let people stay in their circle jerks and not interact with people of a different opinion" which is everything the world doesn't need for progress - two way street. So, let me do some meta-commentary on this whole thing and agree to disagree and have nothing change until the next time one of us enters into one of these topics with ideas of not endless repeating ourselves ad nauseum.
Greer publicly outed a trans colleague to the press when she was at Cambridge because she didn't like that a trans woman was elected Fellow of an all women college. Her argument is that "trans women are men". Her ideas are nothing new and she is a dangerous bigot.
She's welcome to stand in Hyde Park and spew her nonsense for free.
ISWThunder
Member
She is the one that created the association between herself and her shitty opinions. She doesnt get to just separate herself from it because she wants to speak about something else. She has to bear the burden of her opinions.
Students and/or gender studies experts should have given a flyer of leaflet describing exactly the flaws in her particular perspective on feminism, or something equivalent.
Basically, give this author a context and a frame. They should add more information, not try to remove it.
All we can go by is what has been reported, which is that the lecture did not involve trans issues.
"You are not a consumer, you are just paying us fucktons of money and putting yourself into debt for our services."
JesseEwiak
Member
So, how many "two way" conversations do you think women, transgender population, and people of color should have with people who think they're lesser human beings before they're allowed to say, "I'm done." I mean, if I can get an number, I'll give it to my friends who are sick and tired of defending their basic humanity.
Femmeworth
Banned
It's real easy for him to say that when it doesn't affect him. ¯\_(ツ
_/¯
It'd be easier to respect his position if there was some attempt at empathy.
_/¯It'd be easier to respect his position if there was some attempt at empathy.
Ha!
I understand this point of view. A topic made de facto taboo can be a scary thought, and I've seen some horrendous shit come out the supposed "left" camp.
But that's just not this kind of situation. I don't consider this the beginning of the end of free speech. This woman is a bigot that spreads hate speech. I don't think the banning of a actual bigot has ever led to any of history's atrocities or downfall of countries or creating a dark age. No one gets upset when creationism is barred from discussion.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
They're out there in the open, publicly expressing their opinions(about someone else's outspoken, hateful opinions), not backing down on something they believe in. They didn't actually censor anyone, or win some fight on infringing on some paid for freedom of speech at a university they attend.
Greer, on the other hand, cancelled a gig on her own volition because of that dissent, and apparently the paranoia induced potential for thrown tomatoes or something.
I dunno, she kind of sounds like the coward to me.
But if the talk is about feminism (which I assume it is, unless she's suddenly branched out into motoring or something) then her views on trans issues are relevant, even if only by omission. If she believes that the only way one can fight for women is by understanding women's experiences (and the only way to do that is to be born biologically female) then that will affect her talk.
It's the same way that if you're a creationist and you're talking about, I dunno, chemistry or something. If you believe that every element came from God that will change how you view things.
More Fun To Compute
Member
I think it's fair to say that she now doesn't want to talk about this issue at all. She certainly has influence. I guess if people don't think that she has anything worth hearing then you pay your money you make your choice. Not really sure that most people really care what the positions on most of the issues that are most important to her are anyway.
Was she invited to work at the university? To become part of the faculty?
There are many distasteful people in the world. I wouldn't want to see people creating an index so we can see who is allowed to speak and who is not.
I don't understand this argument. It isn't the student's money, it's the university's.
I think this is the attitude academics are actually afraid of. I've never met anyone who really has a problem with students protesting speakers, but a lot of people have a problem with administrations, and here I admit the situation is supposedly better in the UK, increasingly favoring students over faculty. The college is not the only reason for a University to exist.
The academy is not a product, you aren't buying pre-professional training or a degree. This weird commercial atmosphere that is so common in the US, and apparently moving over the pond, is really proving to be detrimental to the academy. For lay Americans it's a big part of the reason you're paying so much. It's also the reason why the US has this downright disgusting situation with adjuncts.
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