Richard Dawkins tells students upset by Germaine Greer to ‘go home and hug a teddy’

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So you'd be okay with controlling what kind of viewpoints/perspectives/information college students are able to interact with? That's rather disturbing.

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.
 
Yes you do, and they have every right to express their feelings on this woman and protest her.... See how this works?

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.
 
Seriously at times i don't get America..
An hate Spiel is bad and should never be allowed, conversely you allow guns in the hand of pretty much everybody.. You really live by the pen (and the tongue) hurts more than the sword, i guess...

America is made up of individuals, you know?

And yeh, this also happened in the UK.
 
We can gree or disagree with her speech, but i don't think that it can hurt anyone in itself..

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.
 
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.

Is it really a questionable tactic? What better way do these students have to protest than to take money out of her pocket?
 
But the university do that anyway. By inviting ANYBODY they are taking a stand as to what kind of viewpoints students are able to interact with. And for that matter, it's not like the viewpoints of the speaker magically disappear if they're not given a platform in a specific place at a specific time.

People are allowed to protest. Staggeringly, universities and other private institutions don't have to listen to them.

That's the beauty of free speech.

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.
 
Is it really a questionable tactic? What better way do these students have to protest than to take money out of her pocket?

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While i don't agree with greer, not because i'm overly sympathetic of the lbgtqia movement or an activist in that direction, but simply because i think that everyone is Free to be what he/she wants to be... I must admit that i don't understand the whole hate Spiel against her opinion..
Opinions are opinions, she's not torching trans, she's only expressing, in an uncouth way make no mistake, her dislike (that can even be a fake dislike to get just some public attention)..
Last time i checked someone should be able to express his own view so far it's not about lynching/killing people or any minorities..
We can gree or disagree with her speech, but i don't think that it can hurt anyone in itself..
And frankly someone in the univ might profit since i expect that given the controversial topic, greer should be able to present ideas in an organized way, lest she wishes to be devoured by a swarm of young minds..
If we still have to worry about stupid argument tarnishing human minds, then we have an a mountain between us and mutual understanding of difference that is simply too big to over come..


Seriously at times i don't get America..
An hate Spiel is bad and should never be allowed, conversely you allow guns in the hand of pretty much everybody.. You really live by the pen (and the tongue) hurts more than the sword, i guess...

Except...this is the UK...

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.

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.
 
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
 
seems counter intuitive to demand someone to stay away from a public place when that very public place would give you the chance to relay your opinions directly to the same audience and to the speaker herself

that said terfs are not someone i'd make friends with

Universities are not public places.
 
I think the manner in which protest and disagreement is being conducted is often troubling, yes.


Take my former school for instance, LSU. About 5 years ago a group of students, led by the college Republicans, then a conservative activist group got a teacher nearly fired because they felt his lecture where he told some students that refusing to tackle global warming will lead to blood on their hands was wrong. They passed a petition around to get him fired, protested his lectures. Asked students to drop his class. From a friend that was close to him he was strongly considering quitting. He ultimately didn't but he felt he no longer had the safety to speak about global warming on campus for a while. Maybe even still.

What's troubling about the protest that's germane (
sorry everybody!
) to this thread though?

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.
 
I disagree entirely with what Dawkins is saying. University funds shouldn't be going towards spreading ignorance. A speaker at a school doesn't come just to have a laugh, they get paid fairly well for their appearances. In that context a group of students has every right to protest a decision like this one.

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.
 
seems counter intuitive to demand someone to stay away from a public place when that very public place 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

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)

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.

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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
seems counter intuitive to demand someone to stay away from a public place when that very public place 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

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.
 
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.

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.
 
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.

I mean, she can speak all she wants, she just chose not to, and OUTRAGE!
 
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)

...

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)
 
My personal tutor has a sign outside his office saying something like "you are not a consumer and we are here to challenge you, not merely satisfy you". So yeah, she's a horrible human being, but Dawkins is still right.
 
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.
Then it becomes an Orwellian dicatorship and that's doubleplusungood.

Slippery slope arguments are dumb.
 
Universities are not public places.

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.
 
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 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.

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.
 
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.
 
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.

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?
 
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.

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?
 
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.

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.
 
Only idiots who don't understand what censorship really is are going to trot out that chestnut. Again, she is a published author and is regularly on TV, nobody is censoring her ability to spew nonsense, she's being doing it since the 70s. Anyone who wants to read her words or hear her speak can do so. That doesn't mean all universities are obliged to give her a platform to promote herself to help her sell more books and further her brand and pay her money to speak.

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.
 
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.

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.
 
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.

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.
 
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?

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.
 
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.

All we can go by is what has been reported, which is that the lecture did not involve trans issues.
 
My personal tutor (at Cardiff University, heh) has a sign outside his office saying something like "you are not a consumer and we are here to challenge you, not merely satisfy you".
"You are not a consumer, you are just paying us fucktons of money and putting yourself into debt for our services."
 
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.

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.
 
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.
 
greer has a history of being extremely acerbic, obviously her views on transgendered people are anus but demanding that she has no platform because of them is stupid imo.
 
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.

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.
 
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.

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.
 
All we can go by is what has been reported, which is that the lecture did not involve trans issues.

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.
 
I'm just going off of the OP. If she's not talking about trans issues, then people raising the "need to be challenged" defense are completely irrelevant.

Regardless, there are other experts in women's studies that do not use their influence to spread hate speech. It would be better (i.e., more ethical) to pass over Greer for someone else.

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.
 
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.

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.
 
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.

I don't understand this argument. It isn't the student's money, it's the university's.

"You are not a consumer, you are just paying us fucktons of money and putting yourself into debt for our services."

"Also, buy all these expensive textbooks designed to fall apart after a year for our classes."

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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