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Comment by geezerjay | Hacker News Reader

Free speech always posed the risk of persecution. This isn't news. The risk is only mitigated if a culture is developed to accept different opinions and frown upon those who feel the need to punish those who express different and opposing viewpoints, but that's a very unstable equilibrium.

In this day and age where all public statements are stored ad eternum, it only takes a change in heart in how free speech is handled for an inoquous statement made in the past to serve as an excuse to punish you in the future.

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I'm inclined to agree with you about this not being new. But, I feel that in the past, a good portion of the persecution and censorship came from the powers that be. And when mobs did gather, it was usually against a widely despised person (be he right or wrong). But now, the Internet and the anonymity it affords allows for the formation of virtual mobs against ideas or people even when society is evenly split on the matter and authorities are not in the mood to persecute.

Professors have always needed extra protection for free speech, and at least in theory, tenure was that protection.

However, over time, tenure turned into a career goal-post rather than a necessary security blanket, and it's basically lost all of it's enforcement credibility, e.g., tenured professors are fired/"resign" all the time after making comments that are viewed as racist/sexist/etc.

So now that it's clear that tenure doesn't protect professor, it's not surprising that they turn to other methods, anonymity being an obvious one.

Invoking anonymity is everyone's right, but it's still sad. Professors are supposed to embody the ideal of free and open thought, and by publishing their works anonymously, it's a sorry and self-enabling acceptance of their own irrelevance.

We have authorities willing to persecute. The difference is just that such authorities are no longer owned by the public. Social media companies are the authorities.

To elaborate a bit on why I say this: Since Social Media became uniquitous as a communication medium, I have found no more helpful way to process this in just political terms than to recognize the role of social media as a virtual urban plaza. For the last 7-8 years that I have used that metaphor, it has persisted in leading me to what I believe is the most respectable and ultimately healthy assessments of the terms it should operate under.

Interestingly, the plaza had a more complicated relationship with anonymity and pseudonymity because, outside of one’s community, one could not be recognized or traced. Nonetheless, learning about the history of this is surely helpful here.

Persecution and people disagreeing with your ideas are different. Why should we suppress the free speech of those that disagree? Protest is a legitimate means of speech.

- Protest is a legitimate means of speech.

Not really, not in an academic context at least. Counter-arguments are a legitimate response to an argument, while protest is, at best, a way of expressing political disagreement: but academic discussion should strive to be as free as possible of politics. Maybe political protests against academic personalities and theses should simply be not allowed.

What are ideas if not political? The concept of an academia free of politics is absurd.

Everything can be political, and ideas can always have political consequences and the people that advance them always have political persuasions. But the arena of academia is that of logic and reason, not of political convictions. So even if everything has a political connotation, the whole point of science and academia is to try to keep that out of the way, and use cold reasoning instead. A protest can show that you don't accept an idea, not that an idea is not worth being accepted.

A protest can also be an expression of the view that an academic is clouding their judgement with their own politics, or simply behaving unreasonably in a manner which has nothing to do with scientific enquiry or their subject matter.

Blanket bans on protest are just as inimical to free and open discourse as blanket bans on discussing certain subject matter.

- an expression of the view that an academic is clouding their judgement with their own politics

How is that not an ad hominem attack?

- or simply behaving unreasonably in a manner which has nothing to do with scientific enquiry or their subject matter.

This can be implied by the discussion of the ideas; stating "you are behaving unreasonably" is, again, not an argument. Protests are manifestations of personal and emotional involvement- I don't see what these things have to do with scientific inquiry.

Out of curiosity, have you actually attended a university? Because I can assure you that a lot of things professors do and say (for better and for worse) have little or nothing to do with scientific enquiry, and that lectures and seminar programmes seldom have the fluidity to incorporate extended discussions on the merits of an academic's recent behaviour, treatment of students or allegedly overtly racist media comments. Especially not if they're a hard science programme. I don't think all protests have merit or are carried out in an acceptable manner, but I also don't think professors are such special snowflakes that all criticism of their actions is off limits unless specifically solicited in their classes, and I certainly don't think you can dress blanket censorship of unauthorised criticisms of them in the clothes of free speech.

> I can assure you that a lot of things professors do and say (for better and for worse) have little or nothing to do with scientific enquiry

We have been talking so far of censorship of ideas and of "academic context", which doesn't necessarily coincide with the university building. My point, from which I might have strayed a bit in the thread, is that protests are irrelevant to the academic discourse (again, not "what professors chat about during the day") and as such they should be considered exclusively disruptive, and certainly not a way of making any sort of point. Shouldn't university, in general, also teach students to present their cases and conclusions in a cogent manner, as opposed to picketing a hall and shouting?

Then there is of course the case of bad behaviour or mistreatment of students: but what does it have to do with "controversial ideas" and public protests against them? It's a matter for disciplinary committe and investigations about actual individual facts, not about general statements and beliefs.

Angry mobs are rarely the height of reasoned and considered discourse.

Political convictions are as in the area of logic and reason as academia. How else are we supposed to find the proper ways to elect representatives, and how else are those representatives to come up with and carry out their programs? The argument would work better if it were for the separation of religion and academia, faith and reason.

TBH, I find that most of the people making an argument to remove politics from things are using "politics" as a euphemism for something other than elections and governance. When HN experimented with a ban on "politics," it explicitly excluded the operations of government from the definition of the term.

> TBH, I find that most of the people making an argument to remove politics from things are using "politics" as a euphemism for something other than elections and governance. When HN experimented with a ban on "politics," it explicitly excluded the operations of government from the definition of the term.

So maybe we need a new term. Something to separate "politics as in mechanics of governance and related systems" from "politics as in partisanship, ideologies, and all the other bullshit that's entirely opposite to reason and rationality". Both HN and academia needs the former, not the latter.

>but academic discussion should strive to be as free as possible of politics.

That's a specific ideology that says that, not a law of academics.

Tons of academics, and very respected ones, would argue that everything is politics, that academics should involve themselves in the struggles of their era, and so on (including, of course, in their academic work).

Try that line in France, for example, and see how far it goes...

Why do you assume it is limited to 'people disagreeing'? See http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/23/can-things-be-both-popu... for examples.

As brilliant as ever.

> In this day and age where all public statements are stored ad eternum, it only takes a change in heart in how free speech is handled for an inoquous statement made in the past to serve as an excuse to punish you in the future.

We don't have to refer to the future, this is already happening now if you have conservative views.

You’re not wrong, but this has nothing to do with the parent’s comment. He was saying “in the future” metaphorically, not literally in the future of society.

"Conservative" views that are punished somehow always end up being racist, sexist, homophobic or some combination of those.

According to whom, though?

There are a lot of people out there absolutely chomping at the bit to label things racist or sexist.

Outright unambiguous racism is one thing, disagreement with the activists is another.

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