How woke illiberalism is killing the academy | Hacker News Reader

How woke illiberalism is killing the academy

spiked-online.com

62 pointsjseliger23 comments

‘education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think’

Good luck with that in the current climate of social media raised, anxiety-ridden student body.

even the comments here. it looks like most people dismissed this without giving it a chance. the amount of "we cant tolerate this type of thinking here" really only enforces the point the article makes, despite its provocative title turning people off before they understand that.

Personally, "its (author|publication) is biased in a way I dont agree with" seems like MORE reason to read it, not less.

Aldaily chose it as its Essay & Opinion of the day today. https://aldaily.com/ (After today, this link will work - https://aldaily.com/archives/2020-03-08/ )

>Although the 87 professors who demanded that the invitation to Bannon be revoked asserted that they represented ‘the breadth of the University’s intellectual community’, in fact 36 of them – nearly one-third – teach at either the school of social work (20) or in the English department (16).

Considering the topic Steve Bannon, I'm baffled it wasn't more. But besides, I'm more baffled the author attempts to disclaim concern for platforming Bannon with a mere third of "automatically reject-able" professors, and then continues the argument with less than a sixth.

Is this meant to convince me of anything?

And the author's only previous piece was another "long read" on wokeness. I'm smelling an axe to grind.

Can we just not be having the same discussion over the same article, over and over again?

Worth checking out the track record of the source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiked_(magazine)

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spiked

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/dec/07/us-bil...

Are you requesting people confirm that Spiked is approved by a specific orthodoxy before reading the article and judging for themselves?

Reputation of a source matters. An anti-vax publication would rightly get a negative reception here too. This is Hacker News. People shouldn't be posting garbage like this. Go to Reddit.

You have to be suspicious when a British magazine starts complaining about Chicago University.

I'm sorry I meant University of California, Hicago.

Yeah, I believe in an orthodoxy called "fact checking" and "not being funded by agenda-pursuing, climate change denialist billionaires"

Can you specify exactly what we should be looking for here? To put it another way, what moved you to post this comment with this content? There must be some takeaway you expect readers to have. What is it?

Even Rational Wiki, which is hardly unbiased, doesn't consider it an extreme or unfactual source.

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