Last week, Jeff Dean, Google’s chief scientist and the lead for Gemini AI, came to the University of California at Berkeley to discuss modern AI research.
We need to call out all The Brown Shirts no matter what flavor they come in. "Protesters" is a misnomer and gives them a credibility they do not deserve.
Exactly … why can’t these disrupters be removed so that the person can be heard. Instead they are successful in their efforts and are thus emboldened. This is why it happens more
Any reason you failed to include the information about the number of speakers cancelled due to actions by / pressure from the activist left versus the number canceled due to actions by / pressure from the activist right?
It would also be helpful to understand what the percentage of “safety concerns” cancellations were based on actual or perceived threats from the left versus actual or perceived threats from the right.
Nice distinction (which unfortunately seems lost on a lot of the comments): The main fault here lies with the administrators. The problem is not protests, it's schools caving to the protestors' demands and canceling events, or allowing protestors to effectively shut them down.
Jeff Dean is woke. He is by far the most influential and powerful engineer at Google, but used that power to oversee a period in which Google systematically promoted and rewarded wokeness at all times and at any cost. He threw honest men like James Damore to the crocodiles in the hope the crazies would come for him last. Now his time has run out and the woke zealots are literally at his door. Will he self reflect? I don't know and don't really care. It's too late for Google, and for him.
Sergey Brin is in the same boat. Promoted leftism for years in his company, now being run out of his home state by California's retroactive wealth tax. Who could have known?
In that era leftism and woke garbage are basically the same thing. He was in the room when his staff were crying during an all hands because Trump had got elected. He said and did nothing. Now he is a Republican and has a Republican girlfriend. Too bad he didn't think of that ten years ago!
My son graduated from Swarthmore and we saw something similar: when the President spoke, they changed over her. I could not hear what she had to say. Its like a form of political theater. I would also say that they are disrupting an event that relatives and friends came hundreds of miles to see. Their efforts reveals people and doesnt create allies. They are in for a rude awakening when they try this in a workplace environment where the rules are much more clear. I wrote this a year ago: https://theologyandtechnology.substack.com/p/theology-corner-when-performative?r=2f8wkh
"The line is crossed when protest becomes a veto, when the goal is not to answer speech with more speech, but to ensure no one else can hear it, and incidents of that nature are becoming rampant."
Are they really "ensuring no one else can hear it" though? The pro-war voices can still be heard on a wide variety of media platforms. These students were protesting using their own campus resources, that they pay for, as the platform. Unlike the case for several students who faced immigration consequences for speaking against these wars, they can still speak - just not have a specific place they don't own provided for them to do so.
Of course, free expression on campus is a good thing. But the line can't be the same as the line drawn for government action by the first amendment. When you have a bunch of young hormonal people living together, some things really don't need to be platformed and amplified by the school. What about a speaker who denies that condoms prevent STDs? What about someone who advocates legalizing rape? Or joining ISIS? Does the school need to give them a stage too?
The campus cancel culture debate seems to revolve around views that some think should be acceptable and others don't. But that's not the point of free speech - the point of free speech is to protect the views that everyone wants to silence.
So you’re saying students are basically consumers? And because they’re paying they should be catered to? I guess that also means they should get all As no matter how bad their work. There should be no requirements, either, and if they want to smear shit on the walls, that’s ok. Because they’re paying for janitorial services.
Is that the rules McDonalds applies with its bathrooms?
I'd argue that smearing shit on the walls is more akin to the position that colleges need to allow people with terrible opinions to speak. Like McDonald's, colleges can set rules for their own facilities. To some, smearing shit on the walls may be speech, just like backing the slaughter of thousands of innocent people for a false sense of security is speech to some. Colleges can be free to regard both as disgusting. Go to some avant-garde art festival if you want to shit-smearing to be speech, or in the other case, say it at an AIPAC event.
So no free speech. Shut down people you do t like, even if your fellow students want to hear what the speaker is saying. Because mama says what baby wants baby gets. Got it
There's no free speech for pro-Hamas speakers to use campus platforms and there shouldn't be. I think you'd agree there shouldn't be, right?
Why do people think different when the murderer and victim are reversed?
The difference is power. The powerful use their power to demand the right to speak against the powerless. The powerless, when they seek to speak against the powerful, have no such power to execute on that vision.
These events make me very sad. If you don't want to hear a speaker, don't go. Just as if you don't want to read a book/watch a documentary/attend a drag show, whatever, don't do it. It's wrong to prevent other people from engaging in these activities that harm no one.
Most of my kids have graduated from college, but I still have one who needs to go. I'm now hoping that kid attends college somewhere other than the US.
We need to call out all The Brown Shirts no matter what flavor they come in. "Protesters" is a misnomer and gives them a credibility they do not deserve.
It seems easily soluble. Disrupt an event, get kicked out.
Exactly … why can’t these disrupters be removed so that the person can be heard. Instead they are successful in their efforts and are thus emboldened. This is why it happens more
Great piece.
Any reason you failed to include the information about the number of speakers cancelled due to actions by / pressure from the activist left versus the number canceled due to actions by / pressure from the activist right?
It would also be helpful to understand what the percentage of “safety concerns” cancellations were based on actual or perceived threats from the left versus actual or perceived threats from the right.
Nice distinction (which unfortunately seems lost on a lot of the comments): The main fault here lies with the administrators. The problem is not protests, it's schools caving to the protestors' demands and canceling events, or allowing protestors to effectively shut them down.
Zero sympathy. "I didn't think the leopard" etc.
Jeff Dean is woke. He is by far the most influential and powerful engineer at Google, but used that power to oversee a period in which Google systematically promoted and rewarded wokeness at all times and at any cost. He threw honest men like James Damore to the crocodiles in the hope the crazies would come for him last. Now his time has run out and the woke zealots are literally at his door. Will he self reflect? I don't know and don't really care. It's too late for Google, and for him.
Sergey Brin is in the same boat. Promoted leftism for years in his company, now being run out of his home state by California's retroactive wealth tax. Who could have known?
I don't care whether these people "self-reflect" either. I care about the consequences to all when the heckler's veto is indulged.
I agree with your first paragraph, but not with the claim about Brin.
And I am *not* denying his promotion of leftism.
Nor trying to deny you your schaudenfreude.
But promoting generally leftist stuff and promoting immoral oppressor-oppressed woke garbage is *not* the same boat.
In that era leftism and woke garbage are basically the same thing. He was in the room when his staff were crying during an all hands because Trump had got elected. He said and did nothing. Now he is a Republican and has a Republican girlfriend. Too bad he didn't think of that ten years ago!
My son graduated from Swarthmore and we saw something similar: when the President spoke, they changed over her. I could not hear what she had to say. Its like a form of political theater. I would also say that they are disrupting an event that relatives and friends came hundreds of miles to see. Their efforts reveals people and doesnt create allies. They are in for a rude awakening when they try this in a workplace environment where the rules are much more clear. I wrote this a year ago: https://theologyandtechnology.substack.com/p/theology-corner-when-performative?r=2f8wkh
"The line is crossed when protest becomes a veto, when the goal is not to answer speech with more speech, but to ensure no one else can hear it, and incidents of that nature are becoming rampant."
Are they really "ensuring no one else can hear it" though? The pro-war voices can still be heard on a wide variety of media platforms. These students were protesting using their own campus resources, that they pay for, as the platform. Unlike the case for several students who faced immigration consequences for speaking against these wars, they can still speak - just not have a specific place they don't own provided for them to do so.
Of course, free expression on campus is a good thing. But the line can't be the same as the line drawn for government action by the first amendment. When you have a bunch of young hormonal people living together, some things really don't need to be platformed and amplified by the school. What about a speaker who denies that condoms prevent STDs? What about someone who advocates legalizing rape? Or joining ISIS? Does the school need to give them a stage too?
The campus cancel culture debate seems to revolve around views that some think should be acceptable and others don't. But that's not the point of free speech - the point of free speech is to protect the views that everyone wants to silence.
So you’re saying students are basically consumers? And because they’re paying they should be catered to? I guess that also means they should get all As no matter how bad their work. There should be no requirements, either, and if they want to smear shit on the walls, that’s ok. Because they’re paying for janitorial services.
Is that the rules McDonalds applies with its bathrooms?
I'd argue that smearing shit on the walls is more akin to the position that colleges need to allow people with terrible opinions to speak. Like McDonald's, colleges can set rules for their own facilities. To some, smearing shit on the walls may be speech, just like backing the slaughter of thousands of innocent people for a false sense of security is speech to some. Colleges can be free to regard both as disgusting. Go to some avant-garde art festival if you want to shit-smearing to be speech, or in the other case, say it at an AIPAC event.
So no free speech. Shut down people you do t like, even if your fellow students want to hear what the speaker is saying. Because mama says what baby wants baby gets. Got it
There's no free speech for pro-Hamas speakers to use campus platforms and there shouldn't be. I think you'd agree there shouldn't be, right?
Why do people think different when the murderer and victim are reversed?
The difference is power. The powerful use their power to demand the right to speak against the powerless. The powerless, when they seek to speak against the powerful, have no such power to execute on that vision.
These events make me very sad. If you don't want to hear a speaker, don't go. Just as if you don't want to read a book/watch a documentary/attend a drag show, whatever, don't do it. It's wrong to prevent other people from engaging in these activities that harm no one.
Most of my kids have graduated from college, but I still have one who needs to go. I'm now hoping that kid attends college somewhere other than the US.
It’s pretty bad elsewhere