[noemon]

The second link referring to Cambridge leads to a webpage asking me for a subscription so it impossible to verify if it is an issue.

Yeah, the Telegraph has a paywall though I thought it has a free allowance of up to certain articles. No problem, here is the full article:

My god, are these the people we’ve been afraid of all this time? Cambridge University academics, those well-known defenders of conservatism, have seen off an attempt by a tiny band of radicals to impose a policy of blanket censorship on campus. In the process, they have revealed that the “woke” activists are not, as they claim, a grassroots movement commanding overwhelming majority support, but a small sect of fanatics. This sect has been defeated, roundly, abjectly, in its own intellectual breeding ground.

The argument began in March. Under pressure from the Cambridge student union, university authorities decided to introduce a new “statement on freedom of speech” that, in true Orwellian fashion, did the opposite of what its title suggested. It would have required that everyone on campus, scholars, speakers and students, “be respectful” of “differing opinions” and “diverse identities”. What this “respect” should entail was not defined, but it is clear that it would not mean respecting the “differing views” of Cambridge fellows like Noah Carl, who was fired last year for defending sceptical attitudes towards immigration and arguing for free scientific inquiry into genes and intelligence. The new policy, for example, listed various grounds on which the university could ban speakers, including the idea that they might threaten the “welfare” of anyone on campus, again without defining what this meant.

Alarmed at the implications, a philosophy don called Arif Ahmed decided to take a professional risk. He was already on the advisory council of an outfit called the Free Speech Union (as am I), but he had not yet done anything to attract special attention from woke activists. Nonetheless, he set about gathering 25 signatures from fellow academics needed to force a vote on the matter. Doing so was not easy. Academics were afraid of being attacked by the same mob who had gotten Dr Carl fired. Eventually, however, he reached his target.

He and his allies tabled amendments to the policy, replacing the demand for “respect” with a requirement for “tolerance”, deleting the list of reasons to ban speakers and replacing it with a commitment to allow all speakers so long as they didn’t break the law, libel or harass anyone. At this point, Cambridge could have decided to negotiate. It would have been a straightforward matter for the university council to endorse the uncontroversial idea of “tolerance” or else solicit the views of its faculty and students outside the coterie making the decisions. Instead, the council dug in.

Months later, Cambridge finally staged the vote. The result, thought to be unprecedented in its 800 year history, was a monumental defeat for the university bigwigs. Out of nearly 1,700 academics who voted, just 162 supported the new policy. Over 200 voted for no change and 1,316 voted to introduce the tolerance policy proposed by Dr Ahmed. His allies ranged from radical feminists to Christian conservatives, libertarians and old-school Left-wingers worried about the free speech rights of university staff. If vice chancellors were MPs, then Cambridge’s Stephen Toope has just become the Michael Portillo of the academic world.

Like Portillo in 1997, Professor Toope ought to be feeling thoroughly ridiculous. The strident woke activists, who argue that “speech is violence” or biology is “transphobic”, turn out to be a tiny minority even among the faculty of Britain’s most famously reformist academic institution. They have been winning battles to disinvite speakers and fire people not by broad-based support, but by convincing institutional elites of their power using aggression and intimidation. Like a chump, Cambridge’s top governing body fell for it.

Thankfully, in this case, the university rulebook took the decision out of their hands. But that isn’t usually how it works. The usual playbook is for activists to bamboozle administrators and PR departments with petitions, threats and online pile-ons, frightening, guilt-tripping and shaming people into submission. Those who refuse, like Sophie Watson, a radical feminist Cambridge student who supported Dr Ahmed’s campaign, find that erstwhile friends “have simply stopped talking to me”, leaving her with “a sense of unease” on campus.

This “unease” is a potent weapon. Rather than make their case in open argument, the enemies of free speech prefer to isolate their opponents, attacking their backgrounds and labelling them untouchable “bigots”. If their attacks seem beside the point under discussion, it is because they are not aiming at the point. They are aiming at the opaque levers of power wielded by corporate procedures and human resources departments.

But the Cambridge vote gives reason for hope. The woke activists aren’t as powerful as they seem. They play on a sense of fear and people’s need to belong. But it turns out that they, in fact, are the aberration, the affront to decency and reasonableness, whose power comes only from our belief in it. What if universities, multinationals and public bodies, confronted with a demand to fire someone for questioning “white privilege”, debating colonial history or reading Right-wing newspapers, simply said “no”? Perhaps the sky wouldn’t fall in.

The Free Speech Union has been trying to turn the tide of attacks on free expression, often by writing to public or corporate bodies to point out their obligations under their own codes of conduct or their legal duties to employees. Sometimes, you have to fight procedure with procedure, defining and enforcing the laws that protect our freedoms, especially when a person’s livelihood is at stake.

Ultimately, however, the argument against “no platforming” and its ilk will be won by the very thing it tries to suppress: open debate. Most people don’t subscribe to gender or critical race theory or intersectionality or whatever other ideology these activists deploy. They understand the world is complex, that most “categories” of people have some good and some bad in them. Once our bureaucratic elites grasp that they are being petitioned by a tiny but noisy group of extremists, perhaps they will find the courage to withstand the assault. Our institutions are cowering before a paper tiger.

[late]

I guess, but I don't think anyone has been caned to almost death in Congress or that there has been open warfare in Kansas (yet? This is what I want to avoid when I say I want a strong government response to the pursuit of politics through other means). The slide towards the US Civil War would be more like the slide into WWII in Europe I think.

This is despite what happened at the Capitol - the first red scare (McCarthyism was a feature of the second one) had bombings in Wall Street, for instance.

Have you forgotten the attempt on Whitmer's life already? How about the more recent attempt to decapitate the government (excepting Trump, of course), a week ago?

These are all rough analogies, one might illustrate one aspect of the current crisis, and another might illustrate another aspect.

But they are all going to be limited.

[Pants-of-dog]

The bit discussing Homer's Odyssey seems to imply that The Odyssey was gleefully banned. This is not the case and the Disrupt Text movement explicitly rejects banning and censoring books. Since nothing is being "cancelled", this is not an example of cancel culture.

https://disrupttexts.org/lets-get-to-work/

WHAT IS #DISRUPT TEXTS?

WRITTEN BY TRICIA EBARVIA
#Disrupt Texts is a crowdsourced, grass roots effort by teachers for teachers to challenge the traditional canon in order to create a more inclusive, representative, and equitable language arts curriculum that our students deserve. It is part of our mission to aid and develop teachers committed to anti-racist/anti-bias teaching pedagogy and practices.

We believe that literacy is liberation. By developing students’ literacy skills, we support their ability to critically read and navigate a democratic society. To be literate in today’s world, students must develop empathy and an understanding of a diversity of experiences.

We do not believe in censorship and have never supported banning books. This claim is outright false. It is a mischaracterization of our work made to more easily attack us, serve an agenda, and discredit the need for antiracist education. Teachers and schools determine curriculum for any number of reasons, and in fact, we know that censorship and banning efforts disproportionately hurts LGBTQIA+ authors and BIPoC authors are already underrepresented in the publishing industry.

[Prosthetic Conscience]

What we actually find out about Cambridge is not that it involved "students [who] sought to redefine the terms "respect", "safety" & "welfare" in an attempt to cancel out various opinions", but that it was the university leadership (apparently with input from student unions) deciding that people in the university ought to show "respect" for others, and their opinions. Oh no, the horror! And the end result was they should show "tolerance" for people and opinions, instead.

I ask you, is that really what our collective political energies should be focused on?

As for the Eton teacher and whether his video contained anything sexist - an analysis in The Spectator (also paywalled after a couple of views):

Last week Eton College made the controversial decision to sack an English teacher after he refused to take down his YouTube video entitled ‘The Patriarchy Paradox’. In the 30-minute lecture, Will Knowland argues that the patriarchy results from biological differences rather than social constructs and that the system benefits women.

Eton’s decision is not, as many people would argue, an attack on free speech and fundamental liberties. It is an attack on foolishness.

If Knowland’s intention had been to encourage healthy academic debate, then there are many other outlets he could have chosen: an assembly, a debate, or one of his English lessons. Putting up a YouTube video in which he made contentious statements, often without evidence, and then refused to take it down (despite being asked to, apparently multiple times) is not bravery; it is self-serving and self-sacrificing.

Eton is right to err on the side of caution. In many ways, Knowland forced the headmaster’s hand; if Simon Henderson did nothing, the school could be open to an investigation from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. How you feel about that question is really a separate issue — the point is whether, given the circumstances, Eton was right to sack Knowland.

Most teachers’ contracts clearly state that they must not do anything that would bring the school into disrepute. Knowland must have known exactly what he was doing by posting a video that is so provocative and partisan.

His ideas are clearly worthy of discussion, but his failure to present them in a nuanced or balanced way, and to distance his own views from those he was purporting to examine, put the school in an impossible position.

The crux of his argument seems to be that biological differences mean that men’s role is to procreate, provide, and protect (2:50). He then cherry-picks numerous examples as to how this has benefited women, for example, the fact that ‘men invented over 90 per cent of the world’s inventions’ (10:40). This may be true, but this claim lacks any analysis, or even acknowledgement, that there are myriad other factors — social, historical, political, economic — that explain why this is the case. Again, these ideas are clearly worthy of examination — but Knowland failed to rigorously examine them.

Many of his examples are also drawn from animals; an elephant seal’s mating ritual may be interesting (23:15) but it’s not a particularly strong explanation for gender roles in 21st-century western society. Some of his claims are also just factually dubious, like the assertion that ‘anthropologists have never found a genuine matriarchy’ (27:40).

If Knowland had truly wanted to treat the video as a pedagogical exercise, then he could have presented the lecture very differently. Even just peppering the script with a couple of questions and counterpoints would have made it seem more educational, and less like a personal tirade.

Instead, it is full of opinions masked as facts, and sweeping generalisations like ‘a world without men would be awful for women’ (9:33) — without saying the opposite is also true — or that ‘biologically speaking, the idea that men exert power over women is nonsense’ (22:24). Where to even begin with such an assertion?

Furthermore, his masculine heroes are deeply troublesome. Fictional characters like Thor (3:45), King Leonidas from 300 (18:36) and Bane (25:44), are hardly realistic exemplars for young boys. He also tells his audience that boys can’t ‘show vulnerability, talk about [their] feelings and wear rainbow laces if they’re dead’ (23:42), just one of numerous examples where Knowland seems to encourage violence as a natural, if not healthy, outlet.

He then uses a clip from Goodfellas of Henry Hill beating up his neighbour for molesting his girlfriend as evidence that ‘male aggression is a biological fact… whether we like it or not’ (25:42). He also seems to agree with Scarface’s Tony Montana’s observation that ‘first you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women’ (29:12), as if psychotic, murderous, cokehead gangsters are a valid voice of reason.

It is notable that many of Knowland’s arguments would not look out of place on an incel Reddit forum. Knowland repeatedly says that women use their sexuality to their advantage, stating that they can ‘exploit their power of sexual choice to get males to compete to do things for them’ (22:32). This is classic incel rhetoric: believing that women use their sexual appeal to manipulate and control men, and that if men can’t get sex, it’s because of women withholding it from them. This is a terrible message to teach teenage boys. The problem is not a discussion of such claims, the problem is with Knowland’s presentation; his lack of analysis, his failure to question the assertions made in his video. If this incident raises questions of free debate, then where's the debate?

This video also hardly challenges predispositions. Having been a young female teacher at an all boys’ school, I know that sexism is rife in these institutions. Many boys refuse to engage with feminist ideas — even though they believe in equality of opportunity — because of its associations with man-hating and radicalism. Knowland’s video ends with a quote from the radical feminist Andrea Dworkin, who apparently represents all feminist views, where she ‘advocates incest and paedophilia’ (30:25). If this is what young boys associate feminism with, no wonder they reject it.

Knowland is free to keep posting this thinly-veiled misogynistic propaganda on YouTube, but that doesn’t mean he is free to keep being a teacher at the same time. Whether what he says is unlawful or not is almost irrelevant; you can hardly blame Eton for wanting to distance themselves from commentary which is so incomplete, ignorant, and lacking in intellectual rigour.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/eto ... l-knowland

Seems pretty damn sexist to me. And so full of shit that you really have to worry about the standard of education he was capable of giving. High fees deserve high standards.

The bit discussing Homer's Odyssey seems to imply that The Odyssey was gleefully banned. This is not the case

Yeah, one high school took it off the English curriculum. Fair enough; it's not an original work in English, and there's limited time. It's a bit of fantasy about a guy who took 10 years to get home, because he spent 8 of them screwing a couple of supernatural broads. And then wreaks terrible revenge on the men who assumed he was dead, and his wife a widow whom they could try and marry, and thus take the power Odysseus felt was his by right. It's well known in literature, but that doesn't mean it must be studied. There are more moral arguments relevant to the modern world in Spiderman or Captain America than the Odyssey.

[Ganeshas Rat]

Hate of Homer is an example of cancel culture. "To challenge the traditional canon in order to create blah-blah-blah" is an example of cancel culture. It's ideas and thoughts that just can't appear in a sane person's mind. Just that they say 'to challenge the traditional canon' in the way like it's the most obvious and rational thing to do that requires no further explanations, like it's entirely clear that's a good thing, shows the example of cancel culture.

Yeah, one high school took it off the English curriculum. Fair enough; it's not an original work in English, and there's limited time. It's a bit of fantasy about a guy who took 10 years to get home, because he spent 8 of them screwing a couple of supernatural broads. And then wreaks terrible revenge on the men who assumed he was dead, and his wife a widow whom they could try and marry, and thus take the power Odysseus felt was his by right. It's well known in literature, but that doesn't mean it must be studied. There are more moral arguments relevant to the modern world in Spiderman or Captain America than the Odyssey.

It must be studied by the same reason the alphabet should be studied (even though it's not originally in English and a bit obsolete). That people know the root of the literature is pretty important because without it people can't correctly understand everything that builds upon that (90% of culture literally). Rooting it out is somewhat like gouging a man's eyes for their own good. Or rather cutting out their tongue. Yes, you can't speak now but look we challenged the traditional feelings for you to get the modern ones. Here's underskin magnets for fingers. Yes, you can't talk with other people now but you will feel electric fields, man! You are now probably able to communicate with bees. Or pigeons! What a deal!

[Pants-of-dog]

As for the final example of the Jewish Canadian student, I am not sure which side of that debate is supposed to be the cancel culture. And this seems like an offshoot of the Israel/Palestine debate, which is about identity politics but also so much more. It is reductionist to assume that this is about identity politics.

If people think challenging traditional canons is cancel culture, then they are engaging in doublethink. Challenging accepted ideas and ways of looking at things is the very opposite of narrowing ideas and limiting expression.

[noemon]

@Pants-of-dog If you want to claim that the details in my OP reported by the WSJ, are lies then you would need to provide evidence to that effect instead of simply dismissing them as a lie:

Some universities in the US have now cancelled Homer's Odyssey, Shea Martin, who is described by the website called LoveliteraTea as a “queer, Black teacher, researcher, and organizer who dreams and works toward liberation with teachers and students across the country,” Tweeted “be like Odysseus and embrace the long haul to liberation (and then take the Odyssey out of your curriculum because it’s trash),” in June of last year.

“Haha,” replied Heather Levine, an English teacher at Lawrence High School in Massachusetts. “Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!” she added triumphantly.

Levine had no comment when Gurdon contacted her regarding her WSJ story, telling Gurdon that to even ask about the issue was “invasive.”

Even Homer Gets Mobbed
A Massachusetts school has banned ‘The Odyssey.’

A sustained effort is under way to deny children access to literature. Under the slogan #DisruptTexts, critical-theory ideologues, schoolteachers and Twitter agitators are purging and propagandizing against classic texts—everything from Homer to F. Scott Fitzgerald to Dr. Seuss.

Their ethos holds that children shouldn’t have to read stories written in anything other than the present-day vernacular—especially those “in which racism, sexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of hate are the norm,” as young-adult novelist Padma Venkatraman writes in School Library Journal. No author is valuable enough to spare, Ms. Venkatraman instructs: “Absolving Shakespeare of responsibility by mentioning that he lived at a time when hate-ridden sentiments prevailed, risks sending a subliminal message that academic excellence outweighs hateful rhetoric.”

The subtle complexities of literature are being reduced to the crude clanking of “intersectional” power struggles. Thus Seattle English teacher Evin Shinn tweeted in 2018 that he’d “rather die” than teach “The Scarlet Letter,” unless Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel is used to “fight against misogyny and slut-shaming.”

Outsiders got a glimpse of the intensity of the #DisruptTexts campaign recently when self-described “antiracist teacher” Lorena Germán complained that many classics were written more than 70 years ago: “Think of US society before then & the values that shaped this nation afterwards. THAT is what is in those books.”

Jessica Cluess, an author of young-adult fiction, shot back: “If you think Hawthorne was on the side of the judgmental Puritans . . . then you are an absolute idiot and should not have the title of educator in your twitter bio.”

An online horde descended, accused Ms. Cluess of racism and “violence,” and demanded that Penguin Random House cancel her contract. The publisher hasn’t complied, perhaps because Ms. Cluess tweeted a ritual self-denunciation: “I take full responsibility for my unprovoked anger toward Lorena Germán. . . . I am committed to learning more about Ms. Germán’s important work with #DisruptTexts. . . . I will strive to do better.” That didn’t stop Ms. Cluess’s literary agent, Brooks Sherman, from denouncing her “racist and unacceptable” opinions and terminating their professional relationship.

The demands for censorship appear to be getting results. “Be like Odysseus and embrace the long haul to liberation (and then take the Odyssey out of your curriculum because it’s trash),” tweeted Shea Martin in June. “Haha,” replied Heather Levine, an English teacher at Lawrence (Mass.) High School. “Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!” When I contacted Ms. Levine to confirm this, she replied that she found the inquiry “invasive.”

“It’s a tragedy that this anti-intellectual movement of canceling the classics is gaining traction among educators and the mainstream publishing industry,” says science-fiction writer Jon Del Arroz, one of the rare industry voices to defend Ms. Cluess. “Erasing the history of great works only limits the ability of children to become literate.”

He’s right. If there is harm in classic literature, it comes from not teaching it. Students excused from reading foundational texts may imagine themselves lucky to get away with YA novels instead—that’s what the #DisruptTexts people want—but compared with their better-educated peers they will suffer a poverty of language and cultural reference. Worse, they won’t even know it.

Mrs. Gurdon writes the Journal’s Children’s Books column.

Shea Martin's and Heather Levine's tweets are also easily discoverable:

I ask you, is that really what our collective political energies should be focused on?

You have clearly read me very wrong. I am not saying that it should, I am saying that it shall regardless, of what you or I think.

I obviously think not, but what I or you think is irrelevant. This is something that is happening regardless of what we think, we will be called to discuss and express our views just like with any other political issue.

Obviously there are great many things that I believe should not happen but they're happening anyway.

[Ganeshas Rat]

If people think challenging traditional canons is cancel culture, then they are engaging in doublethink. Challenging accepted ideas and ways of looking at things is the very opposite of narrowing ideas and limiting expression.

Doublethinking is to see what happens and call it 'challenging accepted ideas'. No, the people in cancel culture are people who fear to make even a step without direct order, who are driven by monkey pack instincts and even then are able to do what they do only with full support of all estates: administration, corporations, medias.. And the people they attack are actually the ones who challenge accepted ideas. Let's say the current agenda is that 'Homer is shit, Jemisin is a writer, it's a good thing to drive everyone who doesn't agree to madness, bankruptcy and suicide". And it's screamed on each corner, written in every newspaper, pushed further by thousands of 'voluntary helpers of good' and then I write a totally opposite opinion. And Mark Zuckerberg bans me one and half minutes later. Who of us is challenging accepted ideas?

[Pants-of-dog]

Please note that none of my posts say or imply that the WSJ lied.

The cited piece is an editorial, and like any editorial, it is an opinion piece representing the views of the author and is not considered a factual piece for which the paper could be held liable. In this particular case, it is the belief of Meghan Cox Gurdon that this is censorship. She seems to be a children’s book reviewer. Her grasp of wha censorship means is questionable.


Please note that the tweets cited seem to be two teachers discussing what they are teaching in their own classes. Unless the idea is to force these teachers to teach the Odyssey or other canonical books, it seems that teachers should be allowed to create their own book lists for their classes.

—————-

@Ganeshas Rat

I am not sure what your argument is.

Can you please rephrase it in a simple sentence that makes verifiable claims?

[wat0n]

Have you forgotten the attempt on Whitmer's life already? How about the more recent attempt to decapitate the government (excepting Trump, of course), a week ago?

These are all rough analogies, one might illustrate one aspect of the current crisis, and another might illustrate another aspect.

But they are all going to be limited.

Indeed but let's not pretend this kind of tension is unprecedented in the US, and let's use history to keep some perspective. I can call your attempt against Whitmer and the storming of Congress with the assassination of McKinley in 1901, which was antecedent to the first red scare itself, and the 1919 bombings throughout the US that also targeted key federal authorities:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Unit ... t_bombings

But you can't compare that with having a Senator caning another one and almost killing him in the Senate floor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caning_of_Charles_Sumner

Along with open warfare in Kansas in the 1850s.

[Ganeshas Rat]

Can you please rephrase it in a simple sentence that makes verifiable claims?

To attack dead people is an accepted idea. They wouldn't dare to cancel Homer if before this there was no wave of destroying memorials. Memorials of people who are guilty of not knowing the modern political situation (because they died hundreds of years ago) or because they have wrong skin color. The society ignored it (as Prosthetic Consicence formulated it: there are more important things, global warming) therefore legalizing it. Now there's cancelling Homer. It is an accepted idea now to spit on a grave of someone who is smarter than you. People who oppose cancelling Homer are the ones who challenge accepted ideas.

To verify that it is really accepted is simple. As I said in the original message to your quote of their explanation, there is no discussion about whether Homer is good or bad. This piece is already written as if everybody knew that Homer is bad. They only explain that is ethical to cancel a bad author because <some unrelated reason; because it's January>.

[Pants-of-dog]

@Ganeshas Rat

As far as I can tell, you have no argument. Instead you have a series of negative beliefs about the Disrupt Text people based on your preconceived notions about progressives in general.

Have a good one.

[Ganeshas Rat]

Disrupt Text is just another name, because these people love to change names (for some reason). 3 years ago it was called Post-Meritocracy, 6 years ago it was called something else. The idea is always the same: fame (and other benefits) should be distributed based not on talent but with some other criteria (sexual orientation for example, though it could be anything. In the USSR it was wrong social strata of parents). And I am just defending the right of pupils to get quality education (not what their teachers consider quality based on their own religious beliefs). There's a reason why standards exist and you probably wouldn't want to eat food that challenges the traditional canon (palm oil instead of butter). But you defend this for food for thoughts which is a bit more important.

[JohnRawls]

I don't think so. People talking about "cancel culture" are moaning about people who get their speeches at a university cancelled, keep their jobs there, or corporations withdrawing advertising unless someone is chucked off a website. It's not about whether the person gets to vote or not - that's "democracy". Notice all the examples in the OP are about schools (an elite private one, at that), and universities and groups inside them.


Can you point to these constitutions, please? Remember that the examples given are not about government actions. The one you've concentrated on is in a private school. I don't think there are many constitutions that say private schools can't insist on the public pronouncements of their teachers fitting the schools' ethos.


It is for the USA, but not many other places, I think. But again, that's for government action; much of the USA also has laws allowing employees to be fired for whatever reason a private employer feels like, unless it's explicitly protected areas like race.

Hmmm, you seem to be correct. I have read about the 14th amendment in the US for example and it indeed does apply to only public institutions. It is illegal though according to the Civil Rights act of 1964 it seems. (Title 7) So the general idea still applies.

[late]

Indeed but let's not pretend this kind of tension is unprecedented in the US

and let's use history to keep some perspective. I can call your attempt against Whitmer and the storming of Congress with the assassination of McKinley in 1901, which was antecedent to the first red scare itself, and the 1919 bombings throughout the US that also targeted key federal authorities:



But you can't compare that with having a Senator caning another one and almost killing him in the Senate floor:

Good grief, try to focus. I added another analogy, that's hardly pretending this is unprecedented.

I don't think the anarchists and communist movements make for a good analogy. Except to point out this is not unprecedented. Which I wasn't saying.

So a violent mob assaulting the capitol is not equal to a caning?? Kinda doubt that...

[wat0n]

Good grief, try to focus. I added another analogy, that's hardly pretending this is unprecedented.

I don't think the anarchists and communist movements make for a good analogy. Except to point out this is not unprecedented. Which I wasn't saying.

So a violent mob assaulting the capitol is not equal to a caning?? Kinda doubt that...

Are you comparing the actions of a mob with those of an actual Senator?

I think we can agree we expect more from Senators than from a mob.

I don't see why the analogy between anarchists a century ago and all the radicalized groups today is such a bad one. The ideology may be different, yes, but is bombing Wall Street radically different from bombing a Federal building in Oklahoma? At least as far as the objective elements of the events are involved, not that much.

[Unthinking Majority]

Some universities in the US have now cancelled Homer's Odyssey, Shea Martin, who is described by the website called LoveliteraTea as a “queer, Black teacher, researcher, and organizer who dreams and works toward liberation with teachers and students across the country,” Tweeted “be like Odysseus and embrace the long haul to liberation (and then take the Odyssey out of your curriculum because it’s trash),” in June of last year.

“Haha,” replied Heather Levine, an English teacher at Lawrence High School in Massachusetts. “Very proud to say we got the Odyssey removed from the curriculum this year!” she added triumphantly.

Book burners think they are the heroes. What a world we live in. They should read Fahrenheit 451. It would be funny if they burned that book.

A couple of days ago it was reported that a Canadian-Jewish student in London pressed charges against his London university for failing to protect him from "anti-semitism".

The issue: he was branded a 'Zionist' by fellow students during a heated debate for supporting Israeli policy and some of these same students supported the BDS movement, apparently he broke down and so he decided to leave uni to return to Canada and then sought a refund for his fees, initially the university offered him a token of £500 for his "emotional trauma" so he then decided to press charges on them. He won and was awarded £15000 in compensation by the university.

Apparently when you enter the 1st year of university everyone's balls are clipped off and then these people are shrunken into 3 year old tantrum criers.

Imagine if China and Russia starts war with NATO and these young people are drafted and they flee the battlefield crying because somebody called someone a "Zionist". They should just invade right now. After they mop the floor with these armed Trump imbecilities our only defenses would be gone.

[Unthinking Majority]

The Trump riots and BLM riots were done almost all by young morons. Our youth are truly brain dead morons. Society has failed them.

[Ganeshas Rat]

Read Disrupt Texts manifesto by the way. Let's see their points.

We believe that literacy is liberation. By developing students’ literacy skills, we support their ability to critically read and navigate a democratic society. To be literate in today’s world, students must develop empathy and an understanding of a diversity of experiences.

We believe that literacy is love. We believe that literacy is kindness. We believe that literacy is compassion. We believe that literacy is God. We believe that literacy is an automatic meat grinder. We believe that <defined word> is <any positive word>. Those phrases can be built in hundreds and they never mean anything. Just sounds pretty and that's all. So let's ignore it.

So 'we support their ability to critically read'. Does banning Homer (at least his books, ones of the most important books in history) help to read critically? Hiding some information is not the way you develop critical thinking, vice versa, feeding one-sided info leads to lack of it. Or a sight of a man who lived three thousand years ago in a different country and is still known for his works is not diverse enough? It would be quite useful to read thoughts of people of different ages and sights to get bigger picture (even if you personally don't agree with them). So while it's a good claim, what they do is opposite of this principle.

We do not believe in censorship and have never supported banning books. This claim is outright false. It is a mischaracterization of our work made to more easily attack us, serve an agenda, and discredit the need for antiracist education. Teachers and schools determine curriculum for any number of reasons, and in fact, we know that censorship and banning efforts disproportionately hurts LGBTQIA+ authors and BIPoC authors are already underrepresented in the publishing industry.

This trope is called lamphanging. It's when an author tells the story, feels it has a weak point and then makes the story refer to this weakness (somewhat like saying to their reader: yeah, I'm not stupid, I noticed it too). They do not believe in censorship and have never supported banning books, however they did censorship and supported banning books with applauses, as the twitter dialog about Homer shows. Yes, there's a dozen of tricks: it's not a censorship, it's bagumba, bagumba is absolutely identical to censorship but isn't censorship; removing a book from recommended reading is not censorship, because everyone can still take it in a library (we are the ones who tell to people what they should take in a library through recommended book lists). And they somewhat defended themselves by declaring they are not for censorship, then going and doing censorship. It's called a lie. Look what they do, not what they say.

We believe that literature provides access to a diversity of experiences by providing “mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors” (Bishop, 1990) to develop empathy and understanding. A curriculum that does not reflect the diversity of human experience does a disservice to all students.

So they put racist authors in their lists? Or it is 'They can choose any color as long as it's black'? They just talk about diversity but effectively ban any authors who incline a bit in any direction from their point of view.

We believe that no curricular or instructional decision is a neutral one. For too long, the traditional “canon” — at all grade levels — has excluded the voices and rich literary legacies of communities of color. This exclusion hurts all students, and especially students of color.

No curricular or instructional decision except this one maybe? Or we have a paradox. But anyway, this is the standard postmodernist idea: no truth exists, nothing is right, everything is wrong, nothing exists and anything can be anything, there is no sense and there will never be. Which is, in its turn, a standard nihilist idea. Nihilism is destructive ideology that leaded to multiple victims and is just dangerous for society and its own members (they are prone to suicide). No need to say that it is a moral duty of anyone who has at least a grain of empathy in their souls to fight against this cancer.

But let's see. 'This exclusion hurts all students, especially students of color'. Aren't students of color hurt by excluding Homer? Sounds like a privilege that only white children read masterpieces. Shouldn't students of color read the best books, the ones who were written by people who knew how to write books, not people whose only achievement is their color. I already gave an example on this: Jemisin is a modern famous author, three Hugos. And despite that she has troubles with connecting words in sentences. Recommending her works to anyone is to hurt them. It would be racism and mysoginia to make them a pass based on the fact that they are written by a black woman (because it supposes that women can't write good in principle and need leg-ups to compete). Don't hurt students of color and let them read great books.

We believe that critical analysis of all texts helps students become stronger thinkers. Each of us has studied, taught, and continue to teach from canonical texts, just as we also make intentional choices about teaching, pairing, and centering BIPOC voices.

But you excluded Odyssey and the critical analysis of it. And you are glad about it. So 'all' is wrong. Critical analysis of some texts is better than critical analysis of some other texts. All animals are equal but...

[Prosthetic Conscience]

I ask you, is that really what our collective political energies should be focused on?

You have clearly read me very wrong. I am not saying that it should, I am saying that it shall regardless, of what you or I think.

I obviously think not, but what I or you think is irrelevant. This is something that is happening regardless of what we think, we will be called to discuss and express our views just like with any other political issue.

Obviously there are great many things that I believe should not happen but they're happening anyway.

I find your OP is unhelpful. It seems designed to get more attention for the silly spats in universities. You describe a pretty sexist video as "the teacher's portrayal of traditional sexual norms"; claim " students sought to redefine the terms "respect", "safety" & "welfare" in an attempt to cancel out various opinions" when it seems to have been about the university calling for "respect" rather than "tolerance"; claimed that some universities have "cancelled" the Odyssey, when in reality one high school took it off their curriculum (and it boils down to 2 women agreeing it's "trash"); and described a student demanding his year's fees back after mistreatment by his fellow students as "pressing charges". He never "pressed charges", whatever you wanted that to mean; he did get his money back (that year, the fee for a Master's in International Studies and Diplomacy was £21,725, so £15,000 is in the region of what he may have paid before he left). All your exaggerations seem designed to heighten the feeling that "cancel culture" and "identity politics" are a major problem.