Thousands register for geophysicist’s lecture after MIT caved to ‘Twitter mob’
nypost.comI'm glad Princeton has decided to host this. It seems somehow worse that MIT cancelled a science talk since if one of the most respected engineering schools cannot resist calls for censorship by a twitter mob then who can?
Thinking about why academia is especially susceptible to this, it seems like most faculty and staff there are in a position not unlike a high priest or clergy member in that they wield a lot of power as long as they are in the organization but have little or none in their own right and if they lost their position the likelihood of regaining it is very small. So what they all want to minimize is the risk of gaining the attention of a vengeful twitter mob. Its not like there is really a corresponding gain to the individual for standing up for academic freedom to balance the equation.
Implying MIT administration isn't part of that very mob.
I mean, MIT also has him speaking. It's just not a talk to the public but is limited to graduate students and professors.
> MIT told him it was canceling the lecture to “avoid controversy” after students and recent alumni demanded he be uninvited because he’d recently argued academic evaluations should be based on merit.
Damn, I assumed he said something racist maybe, but this is what the issue was about, I just lost all respect for MIT.
I think that may be an over-simplification; the following paragraphs from the article clarify they are talking about admissions:
> He and Stanford University professor Ivan Marinovic had argued in a Newsweek op-ed published in August that current diversity efforts — known as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — at universities violated equal treatment.
> Instead, they proposed a framework called Merit, Fairness, and Equality where "university applicants are treated as individuals and evaluated through a rigorous and unbiased process based on their merit and qualifications alone."
In my opinion, the current system is put in place to try to address inequalities that the applicants outside of the educational institution had faced.
It's not a perfect solution, but I think that not having it in place may result in a student roster that would be increasingly conformed by the children of those who have benefited the most from economic inequality.
I would say fix this elsewhere.
If you think that the issue is economic inequality impeding their development, this sort of fix is at best a hack that draws fire in other ways, especially from those with egalitarian values.
An enforced racial criteria is the definition of systemic racism. It's literally a system around judging people on their race and doling out advantages on that race.
There is this weird notion floating around the "identity politics" crowd that says that relying on merit is racist and prejudicial.
> There is this weird notion floating around the "identity politics" crowd that says that relying on merit is racist and prejudicial.
No, that's not the idea.
The idea is that things some people characterize as “focussing on merit” actually focus on the outputs of processes influenced substantially by (direct and structural) racism and other non-merit biases as well as merit.
And yet it was over eight years ago that GitHub removed their meritocracy rug. It's not weird, or new, nor limited to a fringe crowd, but embedded for years within Silicon Valley tech companies and YC startups.
This is race related in the same way that saying "All Lives Matter" is racist. It's not about the words that are stated, it's about the context as well.
When people are protesting about racial injustice toward some minorities, saying "All Lives Matter" is dismissing their concerns. It's like when someone goes to the police department saying "You need to protect me from a murderer" and an officer goes "Yeah, we need to protect everyone from murderers." Yes, that's true, but that's not a very helpful response to someone asking for help.
Likewise, the whole academic evaluation based on merit dismisses the idea that our current "objective" means of academic evaluation may not be as objective as they should be when considering race. Yes, we should evaluate students based on "merit" but we need to reconsider whether our current methods measure "merit" accurately.
So I'm trying to navigate the personal cognitive dissonance I'm facing after reading your comment.
Would you agree that "All Lives Matter" is racist because it's derisive of "Black Lives Matter" the proper noun? The sentiment that all lives are important is not racist, and it's also not mutually exclusive from BLM's message. If anything, they align right?
BLM is saying Black lives matter just as much as any other life. Black people should not be treated as second class citizens. They're not claiming Black lives matter _more_ than others.. that _would_ be racist.
A true merit based evaluation would be.. just that - based on merit and not racial background, sexuality, age, political affiliation, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, or even the schooling you've received. To give any group preferential treatment would be not based on merit.
It is amazing to me that a handful of people on twitter can get people cancelled, while thousands of people can march in the streets (such as in many parts of Europe, or in New York City) and be completely ignored.
It’s because it is less about the size of the mob and more about the institutions where they have infiltrated or have sympathizers. MIT could have just ignored the loud minority of voices here but they didn’t because some decision maker happens to be on their political side. It’s the “long march through the institutions”, where professional positions of power are subverted slowly to support an ideological cause (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_march_through_the_insti...).
People marching down a street make for boring news until the crowd is truly massive and/or violent… baseless and/or partisan quips that can be cut and pasted are easier to broadcast and amplify, for whatever reason. And apparently there’s is a never ending supply of the latter.
I agree but would extend it by saying boring news is not news. It's doesn't get covered because it's boring. There isn't a boring news section on papers, or blogs. Except for the mining and civil engineering broadsheets!
News is new. Interesting.
> mounted a Twitter campaign to cancel a distinguished science lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology because they disagreed with some of the political positions the speaker had taken
So we're past the point of looking for racism. Even political opposition, or a viewpoint you don't agree with merits cancellation?
Of course! Even saying nothing is now grounds for canceling. Don’t you remember “silence is violence”?
Registration link (the topic is "Climate and the Potential for Life on Other Planets"): https://princeton.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aBSONFUDTJGsxH...
>“We felt that with the current distractions we would not be in a position to hold an effective outreach event,” Professor Robert van der Hilst, head of the MIT department, said in a statement.
Wow - there was a time when one went to college for debate and dissent. It's the best way to hone one's intellectual sword.
No wonder universities churn out so many people unprepared to cope in the real world :p
Twitter represents the views of a tiny portion of people and the platform by nature optimizes for outrage in that nuance is hard to capture in the small word count.
This Twitter mob has also affected stand up comedy. In Dave Chapelles new special he talks about it a fair amount.
I also find it delicious that despite the Twitter mob's continued outrage his special is kicking ass.
If more people would just ignore the Twitterati we'd all be a lot better off.
99.9% of the people registering aren't actually going to attend and don't care at all about the content of the lecture.
Princeton has exceeded their "Zoom quota" once and had to increase it to accommodate additional registrations. Is there some limit that they absolutely cannot exceed? Will they have to close registration at some point?
If so, then many people that were interested in the content of the lecture will be unable to view it. So... he is effectively going to be cancelled by the anti-cancellers.
I haven't yet seen an upper limit with a Zoom seminar (you just have to coordinate with them in advance for large events) but there may indeed be one.
It would be interesting to see the actual numbers that end up attending it live.
And you can always record the zoom and put it up on something like YouTube, Rumble, Bitchute, etc. afterwards. Pretty hard to cancel ALL of those services.
Sample size of 1, but the cancellation had an alum tell me his "brass rat felt heavier", and that he relegated it to his desk drawer, at least for now.