Hacker News Reader

Comment by umvi | Hacker News Reader

Caltech cancelled Robert Millikan (the founder), so it wouldn't be unprecedented for Apple to cancel its founder(s) as well.

View on HN

I'll be happy if it happens, but I'm not holding my breath. Abuse is literally in their corporate DNA. I guess if his vitriol was universal, maybe that makes it more palatable than hate targeted at one group? What a world.

And for the record, I'm not a fan of purity tests or waiting for Superman. Just because they haven't scrubbed Jobs doesn't mean they are unfit to have made this move.

And Albert Ruddock (a donor and trustee, I think), to the point that they're renaming Ruddock House. Some of us are very unhappy about this decision, given that the name "Ruddock" has a much stronger association these days with the House than the person.

wow you serious. What was Millikan's unforgivable sin?

Well, he promoted and personally supported the forced sterilization of people. And he was, even by the standards of the time, a HUGE racist. Just some little stuff, no big deal. You can't say anything these days!

Millikan wasn’t the founder of Caltech.

How do you cancel someone who is already dead?

> How do you cancel someone who is already dead?

There’s thousands of years of “cancel culture” history of doing that:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damnatio_memoriae

I guess my point was more in the, "Are we actually calling everything 'cancel culture' now?" vein, but I'm still going to read the wiki article cuz history is cool.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com