[Kaiserschmarrn]

No, that would be assuming we both made the same logical fallacies and made no arguments.

I have presented arguments:

You have made no arguments. At best you've put forward your biased interpretation, but mostly your posts were a selection of strawmen, logical fallacies and ad hominems.

Your weird assumption that alll progressives love victim narratives is wrong.

Victim culture and victim narratives are the basis of progressive ideology. You demonstrate this very nicely across plenty of threads on this board.

[Pants-of-dog]

I have one question.

Is it all right for progressives to criticise conservatives?

If the answer is yes, then this whole thread can be dismissed as just a victim narrative, because that is the only.penalty Shepherd dealt with for expressing her views.

If the answer is no, then this thread is just a victim narrative justification for taking away the free speech rights of progressives.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

I have one question.

You are pretending to have a question. In reality, you are again setting up a strawman argument.

Progressives criticise conservatives 24/7. In fact, in academia a critical stance towards conservatives and their positions and ideas is the default. Additionally, at least in some academic fields progressives are also happy to discriminate against conservatives.

This thread is about progressives imposing their social justice ideology on curricula and universities as a whole. In this particular case they were trying to restrict the type of subjects students could be exposed to. Shepherd's professor made it clear in the recording that students need to be taught how to think about positions like Peterson's before they can be exposed in a neutral way to videos like the one shown by her. That is, he was quite open and frank about his intention, so your claims are at odds with what the person who called the meeting actually says himself. This is the last time I'm explaining this or anything else related to this thread to you, unless you respond constructively.

[Pants-of-dog]

How is my question a strawman?

[Kaiserschmarrn]

As usual, you seem to be deliberately obtuse. My last post should make it clear why your question is a setup for a strawman. This board is not a progressive university, so you cannot expect that everything is spoon-fed to you. It does require users to give posts and topics at least some thought.

[Pants-of-dog]

Please note that you did not explain how my question was an incorrect description of your argument. Instead, you argued that universities are oppressing conservatives.

If this thread is about how progresives are imposing their social justice ideology on universities, then the example of Shepherd is not a strong argument to support this claim.

This is because she was not punished for showing this video in class. If there was such a conspiracy by egalitarians to impose equality (which would be perfectly consistent with the tenets of liberal democracy), then these supposed conspiracists are doing so very poorly by continuing to allow Shepherd to work there and teach classes.

It seems that the entire sum of your evidence for such a conspiracy is the words of a single professor discussing the fact that Shepherd did not contextualise the video or show how it had anything to do with the subject matter she was supposed to be teaching. These are valid criticisms for any lecture, regardless of content, and to assume that it is actually about the content is to assume things that are not apparent.

Finally, the words of the professor, which you rightly point out as criticising her, are simply criticisms that are not further supported by any punishment or censorship. If the problem is that Shepherd was criticised like this, then my question is not a strawman but is instead directly addressing your argument that such criticism amounts to “progressives imposing their social justice ideology on curricula and universities as a whole”.

[Drlee]

Do we have an objective source yet?

I'm sorry. You believe direct quotes from a tape of the interview is not objective?

[Pants-of-dog]

I'm sorry. You believe direct quotes from a tape of the interview is not objective?

I believe that the editorial in the OP is not objective, and I have already shown in this thread how media bias was decidedly against the professor and uncritically supporting Shepherd.

I have also pointed out that the unguarded and unscripted words in an informal discussion are not indicative of a society wide conspiracy to suppress conservative voices in academia.

Finally, I have also pointed out that the only punishment suffered by Shepherd were these comments in the aforementioned discussion. This lack of any official punishment or censorship also contradicts the idea that progressives are hunting for heretics in the halls of higher education.

[Bulaba Khan Jones]

Why do you object to people discussing this case on its own merits? Not everyone is claiming it's part of a wide-ranging conspiracy.

Additionally, I don't see the problem in discussing an incident of harassment this case demonstrated, where a student was wrongfully brought before a school official through lying on the part of the professor or official who made a false claim about there having been a complaint lodged.

[Pants-of-dog]

Why do you object to people discussing this case on its own merits? Not everyone is claiming it's part of a wide-ranging conspiracy.

I have no problem discussing this case on its own merits, whatever they may be. The reason I am addressing the conspiracy theory that there is a widespread movement in academia to silence conservative voices because I was accused of making a strawman when I described it as a threat to academic freedom and freedom of speech.

Additionally, I don't see the problem in discussing an incident of harassment this case demonstrated, where a student was wrongfully brought before a school official through lying on the part of the professor or official who made a false claim about there having been a complaint lodged.

Why do you define it as harassment? It was a single conversation in which no personal attacks were made, and it was not part of a pattern of intimidation, and did not seem that anyone intended to cause Shepherd any upset, nor was there any threat.

As to whether or not she was wrongfully brought before the professor for whom she was acting as a teaching assistant, she did deviate from the curriculum and taught a class on why we should not use trans pronouns instead of doing her actual job. While I would not want to generalise from my own work experience, when I did something other than what I was supposed to do, I would then have a discussion with my supervisor about what I did wrong. I did not find this to be an example of being wrongfully brought before an official.

The professor may not have been purposefully deceiving Shpeherd when he said there was a conplaint. It is logically possible for an informal, verbal complaint to have been made and for the subsequent investigation to say that there was no record of a complaint. Both of these statements can be true. This would be consistent with the idea that the university did not consider this event to be significant: the university would not give much importance to an issue that did not cause a formal complaint.

[Ter]

The reason I am addressing the conspiracy theory that there is a widespread movement in academia to silence conservative voices because I was accused of making a strawman when I described it as a threat to academic freedom and freedom of speech.

It is quite clear that it is not a conspiracy theory.
There are plenty of instances where conservative speakers (Horowitz, Yannopoulos ...) have not been able to speak at universities because of loud protests and intimidation.

[Pants-of-dog]

It is quite clear that it is not a conspiracy theory.
There are plenty of instances where conservative speakers (Horowitz, Yannopoulos ...) have not been able to speak at universities because of loud protests and intimidation.

Assuming this claim is true, which is doubtful for certain events, it still does not support the claim that the faculty and staff at universities are part of any such conspiracy to silence conservatives, unless you are assuming that it is the university faculty who are secretly organising and attending these mobs.

[Drlee]

I think that there is no doubt that college professors are more left leaning than right. At least as a group. Certainly there are a myriad of studies to show this is true.

University of Toronto survey
From the University of Toronto poll:

This survey asked 1,634 full-time employed faculty members at four year institutions across the U.S. However, the sample was largely limited to full-time social-science and humanities professors, which skewed it:[3]
All professors Ivy League professors
'Liberal' 72% 87%
'Moderate' (whatever that means) 13% 0%
'Conservative' 15% 13%
Liberal professors by discipline Humanities 81%
Social Science 75%
Engineering 51%
Business 49%

So that is not an issue in dispute. They are.

The real question is "how do they act on their beliefs".

In this case it is clear that the professor was out of line.

Is this common? I think it likely that it is but probably not to the extent many on the right would like us to believe.

All of that said. Why is it that anyone believes that a professor should be held to some objective standard? We hire (or ought to hire) professors to be the best and the brightest. They ought to teach the truth as they see it. Of course it is hard to teach one philosophy without teaching opposing views. Nevertheless, these professors should teach the truth as they see it and if one solution is, in their considered opinion, better than another they ought to point that out to their students.

When it comes to politically correct issues like gender labels and unisex bathrooms, that should not be something with which professors to be unnecessarily burdened, beyond maintaining an atmosphere in the classroom consistent with a good learning experience. Some of the gender neutral demands amount to little more than silliness and distraction. When it comes to the classroom it is the student's job to sit there, shut up and learn. Not to natter on about what to call a homosexual, transgendered Episcopalian bishop.

[Pants-of-dog]

I think that there is no doubt that college professors are more left leaning than right. At least as a group. Certainly there are a myriad of studies to show this is true.

So that is not an issue in dispute. They are.

The real question is "how do they act on their beliefs".

In this case it is clear that the professor was out of line.

Is this common? I think it likely that it is but probably not to the extent many on the right would like us to believe.

All of that said. Why is it that anyone believes that a professor should be held to some objective standard? We hire (or ought to hire) professors to be the best and the brightest. They ought to teach the truth as they see it. Of course it is hard to teach one philosophy without teaching opposing views. Nevertheless, these professors should teach the truth as they see it and if one solution is, in their considered opinion, better than another they ought to point that out to their students.

When it comes to politically correct issues like gender labels and unisex bathrooms, that should not be something with which professors to be unnecessarily burdened, beyond maintaining an atmosphere in the classroom consistent with a good learning experience. Some of the gender neutral demands amount to little more than silliness and distraction. When it comes to the classroom it is the student's job to sit there, shut up and learn. Not to natter on about what to call a homosexual, transgendered Episcopalian bishop.

Why would you say that the professor was out of line?

Please note that the class was about writing skills and not about gender studies. It was an English course designed to help people write better essays, etc.

In this context, it would seem that simply following the university and provincial ethics code would suffice maintaining an atmosphere in the classroom consistent with a good learning experience. And that Shepherd’s uncontextualised introduction of the transgender pronoun debate was not something with which the professor should be unnecessarily burdened, amounted to little more than silliness and distraction, and was specifically about what to call a transgendered person.