Duke Medical prof. calls mandatory equity training “Maoist political propaganda” | Hacker News Reader

Duke Medical prof. calls mandatory equity training “Maoist political propaganda”

dukechronicle.com

55 pointsLionTamer68 comments

> Mercado pointed to Cullen's claims that "male homosexuals played a critical role in the early spread of HIV in the USA, especially in [San Franscisco, Calif.] and [New York City, N.Y.]" and that "the promiscuity of African women who then gave British sailors HIV...allowed HIV to spread to Europe" as examples.

Aren’t these claims true? It seems odd for a medical student to not be familiar with early HIV/AIDS. And to present these as examples of homophobia exposes this person’s lack of knowledge in areas they should be knowledgeable. And to criticize someone with wrong criticisms shows poor judgement.

I think this is included to show how some of the complainers are silly and misguided.

I’m glad they include specific examples because it’s hard when articles just quote non-qualified sources as saying someone is X-ist.

It really matters how it’s presented. But we don’t know those details. All we get are insinuations.

If you want to assume horrible things about this professor you now can. As bad as your imagination allows.

Good point, the context is important. If I wanted to sho someone was a homophobe, I would provide that context. Since the accuser didn’t do that it’s much more likely that the accuser is stupid than the lecturer is a homophobe.

They have a few quotes from the lecturer that talks about this and provides more detail and it seems like it was presented factually. There’s probably some recorded copies as he said he frequently gives that lecture.

You don't see the ridiculousness of blaming the spread of HIV to Europe on the promiscuity of African women and not the British sailors who came half way around the world to have sex with them?

That said, google returns no hits for either of these statements outside of articles repeating the claim from TFA so I'd be wary of the accuracy of the quote.

This is not blaming the spread on anyone. It’s describing how HIV spread. There’s no full knowledge of how it spread from Africa to Europe, the US, and the rest of the world. There are a few accounts of real people, like the referenced sailor that spread.

There’s actually a pretty good dramatization from HBO in the 90s called “And the Band Played On.”

The lecturer referenced in the article is an HIV virologist researcher.

>This is not blaming the spread on anyone

Yes it is. Specifically on the promiscuity of the African woman that allowed it to spread to Europe.

That is a factor. One of many. It was important in understanding the origins and how it originally spread. Especially since originally it was considered only a gay disease and knowing that it was spread originally by women to straight sailors is important to know. The promiscuous part was important because it was many partners that allowed HIV to spread. If people were monogamous then it wouldn’t have spread as much.

This is not assigning blame specifically. It’s discussing the origin of a disease.

The disease very likely would have spread in different ways as it’s hard to know what would have happened. But this vector occurred.

Would you rather it not be known and discussed?

>This is not assigning blame specifically. It’s discussing the origin of a disease.

If you point at a character flaw and say that it allowed to spread a disease that's assigning blame. Not assigning blame would use neutral language and sound something like "British sailors spread HIV to Europe after contracting it from African prostitutes".

>Would you rather it not be known and discussed?

This is so slimey. Nobody is saying it should not be discussed and you know that.

First, promiscuous is not a character flaw.

Second, the promiscuity is an important factor in the spread. So it’s useful information to understand what happened to defeat future diseases.

People should be treated with compassion and shouldn’t be assigned blame for things. But if a characteristic is relevant, it should be shared.

I meant that would you prefer that we not discuss how the women who were part of the early spread were promiscuous? Or that we leave out the transmission chain?

>First, promiscuous is not a character flaw.

Call a woman in your life promiscuous and let us know how it goes

>character flaw

the other commenter was not insulting the African women. You are the one connoting promiscuity with negativity.

Sadly we are only seeing bits and pieces of the emails. Roughly it’s going:

““My initial reaction is I refuse to engage in left-wing Maoist political propaganda workshops and, as a tenured faculty, that is my choice,”

Response on Twitter:

“[the professor] expressed reactionary rhetoric for many years now, and is set to retire soon.”

“Yet another reminder that despite someone's contributions to a field, or the money they might bring in to an institution, academic administrators do themselves and future scientists a great disservice by keeping these types of people around for the long haul …”

If that’s the worst of the professors rhetoric … then so what?

He's rejecting the groupthink. That means he needs to be removed.

Yeah I expect to be fired and professionally scandalized if I were to call equity training Maoist too, and expose such confident ignorance in my understanding of what either word means.

I think it depends on the training.

If it'd DiAngelo style "separate people by skin color then have the white people stand up & admit guilt and the brown people stand up and admit they can't get ahead" then yeah, I'd draw comparisons to struggle sessions too.

But if it's like "hey your hospital serves this particular community that lots of challenging patients come from and we're going to talk about some of the history of how they were displaced from a different neighborhood (or something) and still fighting a particular uphill battle for these identifiable reasons X, Y, Z." then obviously it's helpful and I'd embrace it.

There is some seriously poisonous stuff masquerading under the 'equity' banner alongside some seriously necessary stuff.

Well, either the professor in question has "a history of xenophobic, homophobic and racist behavior," or he does not, and I suppose people affiliated with Duke Medical might care about that in some way. But. For the love of God, can we not simply decline, on Hacker News, to take seriously a man who arbitrarily specifies that equity training is 'Maoist'? There is nothing interesting to say here. There is nothing to learn. This is a beef some of us here want to have, but there are plenty of other places to have it. Everyone is aware that every single form of corporate training is more often than not going to be garbage produced as part of a grift profiting off of the underlying ideal. People are not monsters for hating mandatory extraprofessional training. The real monsters here mostly stay in the woodwork these days. Do not give them an excuse to come out.

“For the love of God, can we not simply decline, on Hacker News, to take seriously a man who arbitrarily specifies that equity training is 'Maoist'?”

It’s exaggeration, but that doesn’t mean he should be written off.

The real problem is there’s little detail or context.

It's not an 'exaggeration' so much as an explicit guarantee that he does not know enough about Maoism or equity training to have an interesting opinion about either one of them, and to be honest I found nothing particularly insightful in any of the rest of the largely incoherent article's quotes. We are in "grad students chide old man for yelling at cloud" territory here.

The real problem is that this is simply an excuse for people to air their own grievances. It is news of literally no interest to anyone otherwise.

It's exaggeration in the same way liberals called Trump-era policies "Hitler-esque", which is to say a totally useless epithet that betrays an ignorance of the referenced history.

Sounds like Maoist struggle sessions to me.

>But. For the love of God, can we not simply decline, on Hacker News, to take seriously a man who arbitrarily specifies that equity training is 'Maoist'?

"Equity training", in this context, is more or less a struggle session (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Struggle_session>) from Maoist China.

> "Equity training", in this context, is more or less a struggle session

Yes, listening to someone drably read slides about trends in how people would like to be addressed and hearing about some behaviors that have been problematic in the workplace, as required for decades by regulations implementing title 6 and title 9, is exactly like a Maoist struggle session. /s

> For the love of God, can we not simply decline, on Hacker News, to take seriously a man who arbitrarily specifies that equity training is 'Maoist'?

No, we - or at least I - do not decline to take seriously someone who (no doubt after many years of fighting the beast) uses a short and descriptive term for something which does in fact have many parallels with the way Mao organised students to take on established institutes. You may not like the comparison but that does not invalidate the fact that what goes under the term "equity training" oftens resembles struggle sessions. He could just as well have compared "equity training" to Scientology "training" intent on "rehabilitating the thetan" of a subject since there are parallels to those practices as well (just replace "body thetans" with "whiteness").

Has anyone clearly outlined the parallels point for point? This discussion seems to go in circles because one group recognizes some similarities, and the other group say's "oh,so anything you don't like is communism, huh?"

Which, to be fair, is an appropriate response given that a huge swath of American conservatives (FOX News brand) do call everything they don't like communism.

I think we need some sort of quantification of the similarities to move this discussion forward because there's good faith and bad faith on both sides and without quantification, the good faith people can't find one another.

Not one but several individuals have done just that, sometimes going into excruciating detail. James Lindsay (of the hoax grievance studies fame, co-author of "Cynical Theories" [1] - a book which goes a long way into answering this question) has lately made a career out of describing the ins and outs of these things [2 (and elsewhere on that site)]. Charles Pincourt (with Lindsay as editor) wrote Counter Wokecraft: A Field Manual for Combatting the Woke in the University and Beyond [3] which is a more practical description on how to combat this ideology where it has taken hold. There are many other sources but these are a good start.

[1] https://cynicaltheories.com/

[1] https://newdiscourses.com/tag/critical-education-theory/

[3] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59606831-counter-wokecra...

Hey thanks this is useful! Saves me some time on having to start with doing it myself. I know some people whose minds are slowly being taken over by this ideology, it's like watching a zombification. I'm not kidding, it's like talking to people I don't know or recognize, their assessment of very basic things is more and more removed from reality.

In his netcasts James Lindsay has lately been going a bit heavy on the XXX is communism as well which probably does not help him in getting his message across. While there is truth to the origins of the movement he is criticising being found in and/or influenced by radical socialist and communist spheres his constant claims of 'Marxism' or ´Communism' make it (too) easy to dismiss him as 'yet another extreme-right crackpot' or one of the other epithets bandied around so often nowadays. He is a better writer than he is a verbal communicator so I'd advice you to read before you listen. It also saves you from having to endure him trying to pronounce German words, a language which he does not master but which plays a large role in the history of the ideas which have led to the current ideological witches' brew.

I was dragged through it where I work and most of the ideas seem to come from early 20th century communism. His description is accurate. People have been complaining about the radical right lately but I feel like they forget that Hitler's thing was largely a reaction to early 20th century communism. This is in every way driving our current political divide in the US. It's not at all good.

Maoism doesn't quite fit, it's more Trotskyism IMO but I think he knows most Americans recognize Mao better than Trotsky.

Ironically, the responses in that article are perfect examples of a standard denunciation during the cultural revolution. Pick some examples of speech/jokes that deviate from the party line and treat the "perpetrator" like a criminal.

So the professor is correct and Duke seems to have degenerated into a horrible environment.

Oh! Welcome to the American private university. (Don't worry, the American public university and the international university are not too far behind.)

Smile and nod during the re-education and all will be well comrade :)

me during mandatory company trainings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onZRb2aTlj4

Something that always bugs me with stuff like this. The people in favor of these trainings and woke stuff in general make this claim that they are doing it because they are so deeply compassionate and have a ceaseless drive to do the right thing. But they never actually try to be compassionate or make situations better. Here's the response from a supporter

> "In the below figure, we see a textbook example of a tenured faculty member whose grasp on human decency is on par with his grasp on the reply-all function," wrote MGM doctoral candidate Jeffrey Letourneau in a reply-all email obtained by The Chronicle.

Is this guy the standard bearer for decency? Going into full on personal attack mode when someone disagrees with you.

Isn't his whole gripe with this other guy a lack of decency? How does this not strike everyone as disingenuous?

In the same way some people say they are "color blind" and people who reject that under the pretense that it would be racist to be "color blind". The people who are "actively anti-racist" think of the world in strictly racist terms.

Being aware of racial differences is not the same as being racist...

So you don't believe people are equal?

Not unless we do the proper work to make it so. Values prescribe where we want to go, not where we are today or the history we came from. Thus I expect a doctor who is treating someone of my ethnic background to take into account any differences which would benefit my medical outcomes.

Since you're talking about the example of healthcare, you're saying people from different races are physiologically different? If they're physiologically different, are they somehow less capable of high functioning abilities?

Or is their health a function of socioeconomics? If it's socioeconomic, then Nigerian-Americans and other socioeconomically successful immigrant groups should be positively discriminated as to be equitable to disadvantaged socioeconomic groups such as Vietnamese-Americans and Filipinos Americans. Or, for the purposes of appearing diverse, tech companies and universities include Nigerian-Americans in their statistics of black employees and Southeast Asians in with other Asians ?

>do the proper work to make it so.

What, specifically, is the proper work?

How, specifically, will we know we have been successful and the work is completed?

And people with "eyes" are always talking about the things they "see," always shoving that in the faces of people who claim they don't have to "have visions" to understand the world!

You're comparing people who are aware of a problem and trying to raise awareness with people who actively deny it. And claiming harm is being done to the denialists.

For what it's worth, there is also a common problem with people who want to impose themselves on others via their righteousness. But that happens across the political spectrum.

> You're comparing people who are aware of a problem and trying to raise awareness with people who actively deny it. And claiming harm is being done to the denialists.

This is circular reasoning. The same can be said by the opposition.

> And people with "eyes" are always talking about the things they "see,"

That is, in their own terms, Ableism

> people who are aware of a problem

More 'people who are intent on creating a problem to serve their own needs':

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support — kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as "racists." [1]. That whole line is a quote from an essay written by Thomas Sowell, conveniently put away as "acting white" [2], having "internalised whiteness" or being "a white voice in a black body". 80 years ago people referred to "der ewige Jude" when talking about their scape goats, it did not end well. History is there to be learned from, not to be repeated if at all possible.

> And claiming harm is being done to the denialists

Harm is a word out of their own dictionary [3] still waiting for a good definition. It is not generally used by those who oppose "woke" activism other than in jest.

> For what it's worth, there is also a common problem with people who want to impose themselves on others via their righteousness. But that happens across the political spectrum.

"They are doing it as well" is whataboutery and not the issue at hand here so let's keep it out of the discussion.

[1] https://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell072512.php3#.X30VU5...

[2] https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-acting-white/

[3] https://newdiscourses.com/translations-from-the-wokish/#H

Well, you are right if you are sticking up for a person with - according to the article - a history of transphobic and racist comments and so on.

However, it does serve as a warning to folks getting ready to take his class and would like to avoid their lifestyle being crapped on as part of a lecture or every time they visit a door. Additionally, it provides a reason the professor didn't want to take the class: You know, because they might tell him he cannot be openly transphobic.

Additionally, most of the folks I've met would still think he deserves things like food and housing and medical care as a basic human right, which he may or may not find scarce if he loses his job.

Food and housing are not human rights, like freedom of speech. People have to actually work to grow food and build homes. But in affluent societies we have a moral obligation to ensure that those who are incapable of working have food and housing.

That's just not true. Poor people have less speech than rich folks, especially in 'right to work' states, where you can get fired for basically any reason. Children have no right to free speech in the US, including self-expression (If you cannot say 'no' to religion and be heard and not punished, you do not have free speech).

Viewing housing and food as basic human rights just dismisses other folks: We need those to live and to work. This isn't really the same as speech.

Personally, I do think the comic is valid commentary on transgenderism and identity as a whole. Obviously, transphobic people would find it funny as they would interpret it as mockery. So, by posting the comic, you are bundling yourself with a bunch of bigots. However, if you look deeper in the comic, what is part of your identity? You have people bringing courts to recognize their younger age [1]. So, simultaneously, we have inspirational posters like "age is a choice" but legally it is how many times the Earth has gone around the sun while you were on it. Likewise, one can identify as a man/woman/etc (which is ok) but then it is unreasonable to enforce them to use the XX bathroom or the XY bathroom (monosomy and multisomy can use whatever). Anyway, I don't want to stoke a flame, just want to point out that the identity question is rife for debate. Funnily, without the public engaging in debate, I believe the world of athletics is being forced to resolve these questions [2].

[1] - https://www.aarp.org/disrupt-aging/stories/info-2019/legally...

[2] - https://www.skysports.com/olympics/news/15234/12617837/thoma...

Yes I'm sticking up for him, even after you lob out cancel words. When racist is is redefined to mean "anti-racist" , then sure I'll stick up for "racism".

Ah. Right wing. Even if you don't consider yourself as such - as you are repeating the rhetoric. I very much doubt we'd agree on much.

This is an outrageously stupid. argument. I'm wrong because I'm on the other side as you. And I don't get my own say in which side I'm on.

Yeah you're right. I don't think we'd agree on very much.

> Going into full on personal attack mode when someone disagrees with you.

I think it's funny how you make this into firing the first "shot"-- when making a snarky reply-all and having comics posted outside your office that reject other peoples' identities is no big deal.

Where do I talk about who's firing the first shot? I didn't and I don't think that. You're just inventing a version of what I said that is easier for you to respond to.

Sure, this guy is responding to what the original professor said. And he's being notably more aggressive. And my point is that if you're main motivation was being driven by compassion, that's not how you'd act. That's not what he's doing though, he's trying to damage someone he disagrees with to score points for what he perceives to be "his team" and doing it under a false facade of compassion.

It's just a gang fight. He's trying to damage the other team to support his team. So at least don't be surprised when the other team fights back.

> And he's being notably more aggressive.

I don't agree. I think the second that you decide to reply-all and call equity training Maoist propaganda, you're being pretty damn aggressive. I also think that having comics that ridicule other peoples' identities posted outside your door is not so awesome or unaggressive.

The training is likely Duke's implementation of training requirements under Title 6 and Title 9 to continue receiving federal funding, and the professor's attendance is almost certainly contractually required. Deciding to reply all and lecture everyone about it is pretty cheap and aggressive.

>> "In the below figure, we see a textbook example of a tenured faculty member whose grasp on human decency is on par with his grasp on the reply-all function," wrote MGM doctoral candidate Jeffrey Letourneau in a reply-all email obtained by The Chronicle.

> Is this guy the standard bearer for decency? Going into full on personal attack mode when someone disagrees with you.

In this context "human decency" is a more like a euphemism meaning "on board with our political program."

Though I suppose this could also be a case where someone is so deluded think the only way to be decent it to be on board with their political program.

The term "hate" can also frequently be read similarly.

And now watch as the school finds some reason to fire him.

Tenure will protect him, no?

I'm not following these things because I realize I really don't want to spare the time to dig deeply enough down the rabbit hole to find the truth. However, it doesn't seem difficult at present to find a workable pretence for firing most tenured professors.

I haven't done any research as to if the Princeton Black Justice League really did engage in harassment of opponents, as former tenured professor Joshua Katz alleges. However, it does seem that Katz's claims that the group harassed opponents is what led Princeton to re-open its investigation into Katz's consensual relationship with a student, for which he had already been disciplined. It's entirely possible Princeton was right to re-open its investigation and right to fire a tenured professor over it, but the timing of the re-opening and firing casts a lot of doubt as to Princeton's motivations, and this doubt over motivations also casts doubt over impartiality of the findings.

The problem is virtually none of us are as virtuous as we tell ourselves, and the older we are, the more history there is to use to damn us. "Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something to hang him." --- Cardinal Richelieu.

It's a big problem that Dr. King's extramarital affairs these days would probably be enough for the FBI's COINTELPRO to get him cancelled. It's a big problem any time attacking the messenger's past (or, to a lesser extent their present) is a very easy way to silence the message, and the spirit of our age seems particularly bad in this regard. It also seems that the zeitgeist is particularly vulnerable to criticisms of a group's methods being deliberately twisted to look like criticisms of the group's stated goals.

then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31563667

Duke Kunshan University (DKU) needs to reply to this professor's screed.

DKU is a Chinese-American partnership of Duke University and Wuhan University to create a liberal arts and research university offering academic programs for students from China and throughout the world. If DKU and the Chinese Ministry of Education have no objection to this characterization as “left-wing Maoist political propaganda workshops”, then so be it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Kunshan_University

The whole article shows what happens when there's no economic growth: people eat themselves. The woke stick is used very well by younglings to smack old people.

These younglings will be experts at leaving no trace. After they have passed though an institution, will anything of worth remain?

Soon it will be standard MO for people in high position to use attorney for any communication. Saying something yourself, showing some personal facet, even a joke, is a dangerous thing.

Society is now a dark forest. Shh, be quiet.

In the darkness and silence of the void, no one can tickle my neurotic anxieties, or at least I'll believe so in the moments before they issue forth again from the only thing left.

And here I thought Mao killed the counter-revolutionary teachers rather than giving them tenure and having them whinge about training. My bad..? Maybe I'm the one who misremembers the actual historical events we refer to when calling things Maoism?

Not in most cases. Typically they would just subject said teachers to struggle sessions and public berating. Eventually offenders could be driven to suicide, or their students could be incensed to beat their teachers to death.

It's beyond the pale that being driven to suicide or beaten to death is the experience trans people face and that he's equating a training course as being the same.

> Maybe I'm the one who misremembers the actual historical events we refer to when calling things Maoism?

Yes, you are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Precursor

Perhaps I've fallen on my own sword

But also I was thinking of this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_August

Another example of how dinosaurs still walk the earth. While he might be tenured, Wikipedia says he’s 71, and I’m sure there’s something about retirement age in the department. Or, as an md, he probably has two parts to his salary: that of a senior professor and an uplift to make up for what a senior md could make in private practice. I suspect the latter part is independent of tenure.

And if it was truly Maoist, he’d be looking at a few years in the tobacco fields for criticizing the thought police.

Edit: judging by the speed this got down rated, I feel pretty confident about the right/libertarian bias to HN. Guess it’s useful providing test cases. And I imagine this guy is chuckles to deal with when working with the women in the department. Too many years, perhaps, being god in academia?

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