Hacker News Reader

Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

just for clarification, the speaker has a newsweek peace that rails against diversity, equality, and inclusion as a sinister regime that actually works against diversity and actually hurts the public trust. he then goes on to insist universities are 'diverse' enough, so dont worry about them. his citations are...tentative at best.

https://www.newsweek.com/diversity-problem-campus-opinion-16...

The guy also made a godwin claim about race and college admissions earlier in his career, so its probably fair to say that no matter how insightful any of your research is on climate change no one wants to give you the platform because your comprehension of social sciences is antithetical to the reason we care about climate change in the first place.

View on HN

How would you respond to this point then by the author?

>If every cringeworthy analogy to the Third Reich were grounds for canceling talks, hundreds of professors—and thousands of op-ed columnists—would no longer be welcome on campus.

It's a weak argument. First, there's a big gap between "canceling talks" and "no longer welcome on campus." Secondly, it's not like it was a recanted off-the-cuff remark or an ill-advised mailing list post dredged up from his grad student days - he published it in a national periodical[1] not two months ago. This at least suggests he's not a good communicator.

[1] With all the usual caveats about Newsweek today being a weird semi-propaganda arm of The Community and not particularly reputable despite its brand and reach. If that's the place you go to get published, maybe that's already a sign you don't have the banger essay you thought you did.

You'll admit that the category of 'anyone who has compared mainstream American politics to Nazism in a published article' is a pretty wide net though?

Although we find it distasteful it seems to be a pretty common refrain/analogy of those in politics & media.

> You'll admit that the category of 'anyone who has compared mainstream American politics to Nazism in a published article' is a pretty wide net though?

No, I won't. "Published an article in a national periodical about mainstream American politics at all" is already a really small net! "Did it in the past two months" vanishingly less so! "And is giving a PR speech for their university" and I bet we're down to population size ~1.

I think universities as a whole would be a lot better off if they stopped considering this body of op-ed-cum-think-tank-writers pretending to be journalists worthy of serious attention at all, Nazi comparisons or no. And I think it says a lot about Mounk's own social circles that he considers this behavior de rigueur.

> a very similar situation

You're saying university DEI initiatives are "a very similar situation" to the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. Do you really think this? Not only no difference in kind, but close in degree?

You seem to be adding in additional, somewhat frivolous conditions that none of the parties involved even alluded to. So yes that might drive down the number to a conveniently hard-to-research amount.

Let's start with your "2 months" figure. Who cited that as part of the reason for the disinvitation?

The timeframe and forum makes it fair to characterize this as his current, considered, strongly-held opinion. That has bearing on whether we consider this a situation of "we disinvited him because we don't want our PR handled by people currently advancing opinions contra political sensitive aspects of our university admissions policy" vs. "we disinvite everyone who made a cringeworthy analogy to the Third Reich" (Mounk's characterization).

That's what you think, but I'm asking who at MIT has taken that position re timeframe that you have evidence of?

You have moved the goalposts immensely from "is Mounk's conclusion about Nazi comparisons accurate?" to "do you have proof from the horses's mouth that MIT would not have done this had he written this 5 years ago?"

I was rate limited.

You brought up timeframe (and many other conditions) as a rebuttal to the author. I'm just pointing out that you can't be sure that any of those considerations even entered the minds of MIT's admins. I hope we can at least agree that this opaqueness is an issue and could inspire future, less-careful censors.

If you're taking a position of absolute radical skepticism, you should be asking the same questions of Mounk's claim to know MIT's exact conditions, not using such hearsay as your own argument's starting point.

Glad you agree you and Mounk have both made assumptions u can't back up.

Argue the argument, not the argumentator.

OP is literally criticizing the citations. Reading and comprehension are important.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com