Things the Right get right
- Thread starter Corpsey
- Start date
firefinga
Well-known member
Admit it, Luka. You are only in it for the 10 000 posts
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Luke, I think you've got fundamentally the wrong end of the stick. You keep talking about the phenomenon of safe spaces and no-platforming like it's a) a wholly justified reaction to, and b) the only alternative to having universities as basically an extension of 'public' school, all loud braying posh white boys and nothing else. Now I know you've started studying just recently but you hadn't been to university before that, correct? I started at university 17 years ago (a sobering thought in itself) and it wasn't like that at all, and this was years before anyone had heard of a 'safe space'. And this wasn't Oxbridge but it was still one of the relatively 'posh' universities.
So I think you're wrong when you say it's nothing more than allowing other sorts of voices to be heard in debate. When in fact it goes far, far beyond that, to the point of saying that no voices are welcome in the debate unless they're expressing an opinion from a narrowly prescribed range - such that it's not a 'debate' at all, just a room full of people telling each other how right they are. The Left has dominated student discourse since forever, at least the last fifty years - and yes, of course there are still loud braying posh white boys, especially at the older and richer Oxbridge colleges (and not like me, I mean actually posh and actually braying), but the irony is that they are the ones now saying they're being shouted down and excluded from discussion - and in some cases there may be some merit to that.
And as Benny points out, very often the people no-platformed are not even those dreaded straight white dudes but the 'wrong sort' of feminist or the 'wrong sort' of human rights campaigner. Have you heard of the Maryam Namazie/Warwick Uni case? And to take Benny's example of Germaine Greer - I happen to think Greer talks a load of old shite a lot of the time, but the decision not to let her speak on the grounds that her mere presence represented an existential threat to transsexual people is just ludicrous. I don't think these can be dismissed as a few irregularities in what is otherwise a really great system and a good idea.
So I think you're wrong when you say it's nothing more than allowing other sorts of voices to be heard in debate. When in fact it goes far, far beyond that, to the point of saying that no voices are welcome in the debate unless they're expressing an opinion from a narrowly prescribed range - such that it's not a 'debate' at all, just a room full of people telling each other how right they are. The Left has dominated student discourse since forever, at least the last fifty years - and yes, of course there are still loud braying posh white boys, especially at the older and richer Oxbridge colleges (and not like me, I mean actually posh and actually braying), but the irony is that they are the ones now saying they're being shouted down and excluded from discussion - and in some cases there may be some merit to that.
And as Benny points out, very often the people no-platformed are not even those dreaded straight white dudes but the 'wrong sort' of feminist or the 'wrong sort' of human rights campaigner. Have you heard of the Maryam Namazie/Warwick Uni case? And to take Benny's example of Germaine Greer - I happen to think Greer talks a load of old shite a lot of the time, but the decision not to let her speak on the grounds that her mere presence represented an existential threat to transsexual people is just ludicrous. I don't think these can be dismissed as a few irregularities in what is otherwise a really great system and a good idea.
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luka
Well-known member
https://www.goldsmithssu.org/pageassets/yourunion/governance/policies/Safe-Space-Policy.pdf
heres an exmaple of what these things look like. you can scoff, and i do, at asking people to use simple language and uncomplicated ideas lol, but otherwise whats the big deal?
heres an exmaple of what these things look like. you can scoff, and i do, at asking people to use simple language and uncomplicated ideas lol, but otherwise whats the big deal?
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
The bit about speaking slowly and clearly makes me wonder about the quality of English they expect in overseas students, I have to say.
I dunno, each individual bit sounds fine by itself. It's more the length and specificity of it that makes me uneasy. Like, as a white, male, native English speaker, I'd be worried about saying "Hello, my name's..." and inadvertently causing some mortal offence.
I dunno, each individual bit sounds fine by itself. It's more the length and specificity of it that makes me uneasy. Like, as a white, male, native English speaker, I'd be worried about saying "Hello, my name's..." and inadvertently causing some mortal offence.
luka
Well-known member
well we are middle aged men. each generation has to work this stuff out by themselves in their own way. i dont think it spells the end of free speech or western civilization or anything else. mistakes made will be corrected by the next generation who will make other mistakes of their own and so on and so forth ad infinitum.
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
Careful, or you'll trigger the poor soul, and you wouldn't want that on your conscience.
comelately
Wild Horses
It is quite funny to think on just how difficult it could be to express a to express a non-conformist thought as an Politics undergraduate at Sussex 20 years ago. I remember some poor young schmo coming to our Politics Society from another university, and getting basically killed for pointing out that it wasn't necessarily hypocrisy to send your children to private school whilst believing that they should be abolished. Glen Newey (blogs for LRB, John Gray accolyte) wisely, if perhaps somewhat cravenly, found himself in the role of this opponent. The whole event shocked me; it was my first and last time at that Society (Newey also found a new home pretty quickly afterwards if I recall correctly).
I don't really know because it's entirely possible our paths just never crossed again, but I remember a bright women in my first year politics classes who was definitely a Shire Tory at completely the wrong university; maybe she just hid in the library (not unlike myself), but it might have been better for her to leave and reapply to a more sympathetic institution.
I also upset some peeps in a US Politics seminar by devils-advocating against the weeny-liberal consensus once. It would have been tiring to do it a lot.
I don't really think about these things too much, but I tend to think that the kind of power games in play then and now echo the real world just fine - it's just that different people hold the power. And it's such a tiny thing - I know people pay a lot in fees these days, but I don't remember political societies being particularly central to student life to be honest; as far as I can tell, most students paid this shit little to no mind (and rightly so). And this was before YouTube. Getting no-platformed now pretty much guarantees you a sympathetic worldwide audience on the internet, which seems to me more than a fair trade.
This idea of a 'debate' where opposing ideas are sincerely engaged with has pretty much always been a fantastical notion, which, as suggested earlier in the thread, is something the Right generally understand perfectly well. Milo, for example, talks about the importance reason and evidence but has, when being less careful, stated that 'post-fact culture' is 'wonderful' i.e. feelings matter, but only the feelings of those who agree with him, or potentially could.
I don't really know because it's entirely possible our paths just never crossed again, but I remember a bright women in my first year politics classes who was definitely a Shire Tory at completely the wrong university; maybe she just hid in the library (not unlike myself), but it might have been better for her to leave and reapply to a more sympathetic institution.
I also upset some peeps in a US Politics seminar by devils-advocating against the weeny-liberal consensus once. It would have been tiring to do it a lot.
I don't really think about these things too much, but I tend to think that the kind of power games in play then and now echo the real world just fine - it's just that different people hold the power. And it's such a tiny thing - I know people pay a lot in fees these days, but I don't remember political societies being particularly central to student life to be honest; as far as I can tell, most students paid this shit little to no mind (and rightly so). And this was before YouTube. Getting no-platformed now pretty much guarantees you a sympathetic worldwide audience on the internet, which seems to me more than a fair trade.
This idea of a 'debate' where opposing ideas are sincerely engaged with has pretty much always been a fantastical notion, which, as suggested earlier in the thread, is something the Right generally understand perfectly well. Milo, for example, talks about the importance reason and evidence but has, when being less careful, stated that 'post-fact culture' is 'wonderful' i.e. feelings matter, but only the feelings of those who agree with him, or potentially could.
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comelately
Wild Horses
I don't actually see either of those two things. Do you mean she employs a metaphor? Come on, you have an Angular Gyrus.
What worries me is that people somehow think it is illegitimate for a rape survivor to protect herself to some extent from trauma, and that whether she exposes herself to viewpoints in opposition to values is really some matter of serious import.
In this instance, a lecture went ahead and was well attended. Some people made use of an auxillary resource which in effect supported the debate. I dunno, don't you see the irony of employing 'omg they had Playdoh!' as a debate point when you're trying to uphold the sanctity of the debate space? Seems really strange to me.
Problematic, innit?
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luka
Well-known member
The worrying sense I get, and it's amplified by the article Corpsey linked to on the nerd thread, is that people are advocating a society based on the dominance of the few on the assumption it's natural and right and preordained whereas my, admittedly utopian, feeling, is that if a society is leaving people out of the conversation, talking over and belittling them, it's a sick society. If universities are making attempts to model, on a tiny, inconsequential scale, societies which are radically more inclusive than those found in the wider world, well I find that encouraging and not remotely contemptible.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
I think its important not to conflate safe spaces and no platforming. The former is (or should) be about letting everyones voices be heard, the latter clearly isn't.
luka
Well-known member
Me too, which is why I've avoided your attempts to do so