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Comment by wpasc | Hacker News Reader

I believe HN has both right and left leaning individuals, but I wonder if most people would condemn the practice of professors being ousted from schools for daring to challenge their students' "safe space" notions and microagressing them?

This is not an isolated event and universities skew heavily in one direction politically. Is it universally agreeable that the end of healthy debate in college is a really, really bad thing?

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Confronting controversial topics in the classroom is important, especially for a school of public policy. But I don't think it's good to assume that any debate being suppressed would have been healthy debate. in this particular case, the professor and the university are both being deliberately vague about what debate subjects were deemed to have been handled badly, and what kind of positions the professor advocated or endorsed, if any. With so little information, there's not enough evidence to rule out the possibility that the professor was bringing up important subjects but then fumbling the discussions in a way that gave some students a negative and unhelpful experience.

It's been my belief that many people get offended by opposing viewpoints because their beliefs--while perhaps correct--weren't firmly grounded in much evidence. A well formulated counterpoint forces us to refine our argument (or abandon it), and most people just don't seem very interested in doing that.

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” -- John Stuart Mill

I think there is a large amount of misunderstanding (and misinformation) about what safe spaces and trigger warnings are actually all about. They have also been subject to a certain amount of .. inflation? But the core ideas are important.

"Trigger" originally referred specifically to PTSD. There is a small number of students, such as women who have experienced sexual assault, for whom the subject is more than merely upsetting, it causes flashbacks and significant risk to short term mental health. They asked that they not be exposed to this material without warning. (Not that the material not be taught, nor even that it not be taught to them, but that they be informed in advance about the course content in order to mentally prepare for it)

> healthy debate

Healthy debate for whom? Do we need a debate about what constitutes a healthy and effective debate? Do we need to consider the validity of different modes of interaction? "Traditional" debate assumes a sort of weightlessness, that the issues involved are at a distance from the people having the debate. For things like sexual assault or abortion, or the racialisation of intelligence, it's people's actual experiences - well, for people other than the traditional professor class.

> microagressing them

Somehow I'm reminded of the debate over corporal punishment in schools, where pedagogical effectiveness takes a back seat to more primal ideas about punishment, conformity, and order. People used to be beaten for being left-handed, remember.

> it's people's actual experiences

First-hand experience gives you unique perspective that you can share with others, but doesn't make you a final authority on the matter. Once you shared your information with others (and assuming there's no trust issues involved), you're on equal grounds as to what to conclude from it.

1) "assuming there's no trust issues involved" is doing an awful lot of load-bearing there

2) One of the things that people keep starting "free speech controversies" over is the idea that some groups are intrinsically less intelligent or apt than others. When, as a member of such a minority group, you are confronted with this idea, what can you conclude from the suggestion that you are intrinsically less intelligent than your classmates?

- the instructor is right, and you should drop out?

- the instructor is prejudiced, so you will receive unfair marks?

- the instructor is wrong about this, and likely to be wrong about everything else?

> some groups are intrinsically less intelligent or apt than others

Do you have any specific examples? I am aware of controversies about some groups being on average more or less intelligent or more or less apt, but that has little to do with a) whether the variance is intrinsic or b) the capacities of any particular individual.

If the instructor is right about variance between groups, why does it follow that an individual should drop out? I wouldn't drop out of school upon hearing that on average Jews and people of Asian-descent are more intelligent than members of my ethnic group -- it is both true and irrelevant to my academic abilities or status, or whether the instructor is bigoted (they may or may not be, but making a true statement isn't evidence either way).

Depends on how the group is defined. I've found myself in the group of people defined as "with IQ score below 140" and you can say, with high degree of certainty, that I'm less intelligent than group of people "with IQ score at or above 140", but I don't lose much sleep about it.

Also, what exactly "intrinsically less intelligent" means? For example, I'm statistically more likely to be less intelligent than people of some ethnic background, but this effect is slight enough so that every time I'm compared to a person from this group (and he has to be randomly chosen, and I have to have no other information about him/her other than his ethnicity for this whole premise to work, btw), it's like 55%/45% in his favour, not 100%/0% - not a reason to drop out either.

I guess you should take a statistics class before taking this class so that you can understand that people are varied and different and not entirely defined by which groups they fit into.

EDIT: NB In case it is not clear I personally don't think that there are meaningful e.g. IQ differences between the (in my opinion totally arbitrary) groups of humans that people divide other people into where those groups are based on external characteristics.

> understand that people are varied and different and not entirely defined by which groups they fit into

Funnily enough when this idea is called "diversity" it's much less popular.

No, "diversity" would be more analogous to a mixture model. The parent comment was referring to a normal distribution.

People with a bonafide disability are entitled to register their disability with school officials and receive reasonable accommodations. These accommodations are necessarily individualized, after all virtually anything could be a flashback trigger for some or other person with PTSD.

The hordes of people without PTSD that have appropriated the language and our collective sympathy for those that suffer from it to further their own ideological agendas ought to be ashamed of themselves.

>> microagressing them

> Somehow I'm reminded of the debate over corporal punishment in schools, where pedagogical effectiveness takes a back seat to more primal ideas about punishment, conformity, and order. People used to be beaten for being left-handed, remember.

Can you provide some context to justify comparing microagressions with beating people with sticks?

Though it doesn't entirely answer your question, several philosophers of speech have identified no metaphysical difference between speech and non-speech, and some find the justifications for a law guaranteeing freedom of speech to be ultimately unfounded[0]. The issue for them is not whether speech causes harm (it does) but whether the harms are sufficient to allow some kind of regulation on speech; there is no evidence showing that speech "invariably causes less harm [than non-speech]". Several have argued this to be the case in the context of hate speech or pornography - it's conceivable their arguments may extend to widening current law (or college policy, since most discussion on the topic takes place in the context of universities[1]) to take into account microaggressions - which, as the researchers have noted, may not always be conscious[2].

[0] https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Bris...

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2696265?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...

[2] Sue, Derald Wing. Microaggressions and marginality: Manifestation, dynamics, and impact. John Wiley & Sons, 2010.

> it's conceivable their arguments may extend to widening current law (or college policy, since most discussion on the topic takes place in the context of universities[1]) to take into account microaggressions

Terrifying

From your 0th citation: "Please don’t cite or circulate it beyond the workshop."

Difference between "agression" and "microagression" is one of scale - and they are at a very different scale, hence the "micro". But the intent to hurt is common.

We can see even in this thread people talking about the need to "toughen" up students.

Some people who think that any form of physical hurt would be completely unacceptable still seem to think that emotional hurt is completely fictional and it's totally OK to inflict arbitrary amounts of it on people, then refuse to believe their own accounts of the hurt.

> Difference between "agression" and "microagression" is one of scale

No, you're comparing physical aggression with verbal aggression. Sure, the latter might hurt, but I think many (most?) people would agree that it's not just a difference "of scale".

> But the intent to hurt is common.

No, "microaggressions" are often accused even when there's no intent to hurt. E.g. asking a foreign-looking student "Where are you from?" - which is most often likely asked with genuine curiosity, and no ill intent whatsoever - even if you don't assume the person is a foreigner!

We teach our children that it's fine to be curious, but not to be rude. People we meet do not owe us any form of entertainment. If we get to know them and in the course of discussion they are inspired to share some details of their origins then we'll learn those details. If not we can just read a book.

I admit that society has been impoverished when rudeness is reframed as "microaggression", but that doesn't excuse the rudeness.

When did asking where someone is from become rudeness? It's an icebreaker question...

That has always been rude, but is especially so in today's political context. Immigrants of color know that lots of people in Western nations don't want them around. Random interrogations from random white people don't help them feel better about it.

Rudeness isn't the end of the world, but we should still try to avoid it. I don't get pissed off when adults ask me about or make stupid jokes in light of my obvious physical handicap, but I would still prefer that they not do that. Young children get a free pass, because I don't expect them to know any better.

The whole concept of "icebreaker" seems dubious. If you don't feel comfortable around strangers, that's your thing. It's silly to assume that anyone treasures your company enough that they want to become familiar.

I mean, that's the sort of question I'd expect to see come up in a "introduce yourselves to the group" icebreaker.

I don't think I'd argue that emotional pain isn't "real." I have felt negative emotions before, I know that negative emotions actually make me feel bad. I also don't think it's some kind of good thing to make people feel bad. Sometimes it's just a matter of good manners -- respect people, avoid offending them, etc. You are positing that when microaggressions occur there was intent, however, and this is obviously false. In fact, it is exactly the lack of intent that is the focus of most of the conversation -- unconscious bias being the main explanation for why the aggressor commited the micro-act that led to the aggrieved's injury. There is a strong analogy to physical pain here, yes -- we're talking about the arena of ideas where unpleasant conversations and thoughts are inevitable if one is going to become and educated person. In a physical arena, say athletics, a similar situation would be where a coach makes everyone practice until they feel micro-pain, like maybe fatigue in their muscles and shortness of breath, or bumps and bruises from normal contact.

Triggers in PTSD commonly involve things that causes stress rather than specific topics. Bright light, loud noises, and sudden movements. I have seen several times where Medical professionals that treat PTSD recommended bans against fireworks, as a very low bar in order to reduce such stressors.

A healthy debate around PTSD might include listening to professionals that treats PTSD and follow their recommendations.

The primary good universities provide to most people is not education, but signaling.

It basically doesn't matter what most students are taught since they will never have an opportunity to use it, and even if they did, they would not remember what they were taught, and even if they remembered they probably wouldn't be able to apply it outside a classroom context.

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