Stanford student may need to ‘acknowledge harm’ for reading ‘Mein Kampf’
thefire.org
thefire.org
> This article hasn't framed the incident accurately at all. the incident was two theta girls posted a Snapchat story of them reading Mein Kampf as part of their costumes at a pregame and laughing, clearly in a joking way, not at all in a historical way. The joke was in poor taste which is why it got such a negative response (as it should). Obviously people can read Mein Kampf, but that's not what's contested here.
I imagine this story is going to get stupider.
What should the penalty be for laughing in a non-"historical way"?
The author was a better artist than writer, and you might remember how that career turned out for him.
And then it turned out that politics became his most successful career. People didn't like his art or writing enough to make a stable career out of those things, but they were more than happy to vote for him and then follow him into a disastrous, brutal war and also build extermination camps for murdering millions.
I think there's a lesson here about what kind of people go into politics, and how bad people are at choosing their leaders.
Seriously, if your remotely a decent person of any political stripe please consider running for a election. Especially if you don't want to. You'll do a lot of good.
And if you're not happy with these choices, why aren't you running?
If I see two ballerinas competing, and I'm not happy with either of them, me becoming a ballerina myself isn't actually a viable alternative.
The idea that anyone could be a good leader is incredibly ridiculous and myopic.
That being said, I’m not sure what general rule I would want to set if I was in charge of this policy at a university. It’s certainly a thorny issue.
Given that there are supposedly sorority sisters wearing costumes for which Mein Kampf is somehow a relevant prop, the book seems an odd detail to fixate on.
The only detail the article and anonymous source agree on is that Mein Kampf was the name of the book.
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/22/protected-identity-harm...
Rather than make a false accusation against someone (or any accusation, really) you vaguely allude to how they did something that "triggers a trauma response from [your] past" and gaslight/coerce/shame them into admitting guilt ("acknowledging harm"). That settles all dispute over the integrity of the allegation itself and then you can shake them down or litigate at will.
When did it become 1497 again? "You're a sinner! But we don't actually know that you did anything, so you need to confess your sins-- and repent!"
This precedes speech. This is the right to read. Stallman's essay [1] needs an update. But no books were burned so we're still the good guys, don't worry.
[0]: The ACLU Has Lost Its Way: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/aclu-johnn...
[1]: Once a Bastion of Free Speech, the A.C.L.U. Faces an Identity Crisis: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/06/us/aclu-free-speech.html
[2]: Requiem for the American Civil Liberties Union: https://www.newsweek.com/requiem-american-civil-liberties-un...
Tldr: under the new policy, they consider impact of the speech to marginalized communities before deciding to defend. Presumably this would exclude Skokie IL nazis, in contrast with their past record.
Credit to them for transparency by just publishing it after it was leaked.
The ACLU has a track record of defending the rights of the unfavorable, even irredeemable. Are there examples that lump them in with this nonsense?
[0]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/11/aclu-devos...
[1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/aclu-johnn...
[2]: https://newrepublic.com/article/163073/first-amendment-fire
The thing about the First Amendment, as it is now interpreted, is that it's a bit like how the law bars rich and poor alike from sleeping on park benches and under bridges. The speech of the privileged is tremendously more powerful than the speech of the marginalized. Allowing the powerful to say any old thing without fear of consequence poses a direct threat of harm to marginalized groups. Therefore, an absolute right to free speech is more threatening to the marginalized than a more measured approach wherein the right of the privileged to spew hate is far less defensible.
I suggest you read Andy Wingo's essay on this subject and let it really sink in: https://www.wingolog.org/archives/2017/09/04/the-hardest-thi...
Yes, the problem with free speech is people might advocate immigration policies other than "open borders for all". That cannot be permitted - France belongs to everyone.
Fortunately we have heroes such as Andy Wingo, that immigrate to France, then exclude the natives from employment if they suspect those natives don't want to share their homeland with even more immigrants.
Thus a virtuous cycle is born - the more immigrants that come, the more marginalized the closed-borders fascists become.
That’s Chase Strangio, part of ACLU leadership, fighting to ban a book she doesn’t like: https://www.iwf.org/2020/11/16/some-in-aclu-have-new-cause-b...
You might object that the ACLU also fights against book bans, and that Strangio wasn’t necessarily expressing official ACLU policy, and those would be good points. But the ACLU tolerates this kind of rhetoric and keeps this individual in a prominent position, representing the organization. There are other examples.
Even if you don’t like the book in question, surely the old ACLU, the one I used to support, would have no truck with book banning and book banners.
> That’s Chase Strangio, part of ACLU leadership, fighting to ban a book she doesn’t like: https://www.iwf.org/2020/11/16/some-in-aclu-have-new-cause-b...
It's worth noting here that the ACLU seems to have literally bought nearly all the online ad space on the New York Times over the past several weeks (at least), to pronounce in 72pt bold letters that you should support them to fight "book bans."
There is a major ideological gap between the Boomer and Gen X liberals and the Zoomers on this front. The former were focused on craving out a space for pluralism in a society where the elite institutions were controlled by religious conservatives. The Zoomers grew up in a world where the religious conservatives have mostly been driven out of the elite institutions. They wish to use those institutions to advance their own moral ideology.
This covers the ACLU specifically: https://nypost.com/2022/01/31/ex-aclu-head-ira-glasser-slams...
This article isn’t directly relevant to your point, but covers some of the culture clash: https://theintercept.com/2022/06/13/progressive-organizing-i...
I've been getting those vibes too. Preach tolerance when oppressed, and oppression when in control.
This is just the first link that popped up, but they're starting to at least back away from their track record:
https://reason.com/2020/12/20/would-the-aclu-still-defend-na...
> Retired since 2001, [Former ACLU Executive Director Ira] Glasser says he's worried about the future of both free expression and the organizations that defend it. In 2018, a leaked ACLU memo offered guidelines for case selection that retreated from the group's decadeslong content-neutral stance, citing as a reason to decline a case "the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others whose views are contrary to our values." Glasser fears that, by becoming more political and less absolutist when it comes to defending speech, the ACLU might be shrugging off its hard-won legacy.
And without seeing the image in question, and the context of why it was shared, it's kind of hard to say what's going on.
Political activist groups love to use FERPA to their advantage, and I bet this is that.
What does that matter? Why is a university trying to police how crass somebody is on social media? They didn't threaten or harass someone; they didn't call for genocide. They dared to...publicly make light of a historical atrocity? This is trending dangerously into "insufficient piety".
Specifically, one may draw a distinction between someone reading Mein Kampf and posting a selfie on social media with the book (it's not clear whether a selfie was involved but social media posting was). There's no issue with reading mein kampf, but if it's being used as a prop on social media for the purpose of Jew-baiting, I can see how someone would take issue with this and/or consider it an offence against a school conduct guide.
To take another example, I don't think there's any issue with someone learning or teaching how to tie a knot used to make a noose. But if someone throws a noose over a tree, poses in front of it & posts the picture to social media, that's a very different action. In the latter case, it would be dishonest to say they were censured "for tying knots," they would be censured for race baiting and making implied threats.
Your comment is confirmation (to me) that FIRE's headline & article are misleading. The article is making you think of someone "minding their own business" reading a book and getting in trouble. In fact, we don't know whether any reading occurred.
Someone's in trouble for (seeming too, details are unclear) using Mein Kampf as a prop in a social media post.
I'm disappointed in FIRE for going the misleading clickbait route here, I generally support their work.
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/22/protected-identity-harm...
[1] https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/22/protected-identity-harm...
Das Kapital, any civil war history covering the western campaign and it’s generals, anything covering civil rights, the Vietnam period…
There's a well-established hierarchy of sacred victim groups that have to be protected from "harm" (for an arbitrary and nebulous definition of the word) at all costs, and whose defense is one of the most pious expressions of in-group belonging.
Scientologists, Christians, members of political groups on the other side of the spectrum, and many others are not recipients of such benefits. Any form of affiliation with them, including consuming their respective literature, would likely get you excommunicated unless you do sufficient public penance once caught.
No one likes ugly sets.
Restorative justice practices are notoriously antithetical to the adversarial justice system we're used to dealing with. Assumptions we make in adversarial justice systems like open observation to ensure a public check on proceedings are not part of restorative practices. Even "there is one objective truth" are not implicitly part of restorative justice systems.
The existence and practice of alternative justice systems bring to light the mechanical sympathy between reality perception and justice systems. For those who subscribe to an ideology that contains a single objective reality, the idea that not everyone believes the same way can cause an intense counter reaction. I've seen this happen to people myself.
At the interaction between these two, there exists a sliver where we can say, if the book reader didn't want to be beholden to such systems, they could have voted with their feet and chose to educate themselves at a university which practiced a system of justice compatible with their beliefs. By choosing Stanford, they implicitly consented to the system Stanford uses, restorative justice ~et al~ etc.
This is a long way of saying, we may never know the nature of the harm.
et al is only used when listing people. When listing things we use etc.
And other people, including Stanford alumni and donors and other constituents, are saying that if this is the result of restorative justice, it's perhaps an experiment that has run its course in its current form.
[1]: Vyshinskii on Proletarian Justice: https://soviethistory.msu.edu/1924-2/socialist-legality/soci...
More than happy to hear your critique about indigenous justice systems though, since it's more relevant.
1. http://www.brattleborocjc.org/blog/indigenous-roots-of-resto...
If you're interested in why the idea of harms and complete community based justice can have unintended side effects, I highly recommend reading Rawls (Theory of Justice.) A really fun essay in this vein that I enjoy is Joreen's Tyranny of the Structureless if you're not familiar with it already.
Anonymous tip, possible to bring the parties together. No contradiction.
No one has to support or agree with ideas to delve into them, find their flaws and strengths (reality and people are mixtures of gray), and consider other perspectives. To avoid topics is one path to ignorance and decline.
- Das Kapital
- Understanding Socialism
- The God Delusion
- Bible
- Quran
- Mein Kampf
- Atlas Shrugged
- (numerous critiques of objectivism and its political-economic brand: libertarianism)
- Critique of Pure Reason
- The Social Contract
- Industrial Society and Its Future
- A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies
- The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
- Guns, Germs, and Steel
== And some fiction ===
- Howl
- Tropic of Cancer
- Four Past Midnight (yes, Stephen King)
- Maus
"Fuck You."
I would have assumed everyone would have rushed to check out copies of books this PIH deems harmful.
More concretely, PIH is described as a "reporting system." Are Stanford's librarians violating their confidentiality duty? (EDIT: Never mind, it looks like a public-reporting system [1] to the let the campus rabbi get upset at what students are reading.)
[1] https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/22/protected-identity-harm...
This is continual additional blow back from the woke, hive mind virus.
It's a childish rejection of authority. A spoiler instinct built into all of us which precedes "wokeness" by millennia. It usually manifests as children being snots and adults being insufferable. It's also entirely necessary for change, progress and revolution.
That have a dashboard where they apparently made some of the reports public (but it doesn't look like it's automatically updated). This was was interesting:
https://protectedidentityharm.stanford.edu/news/cords-potent...:
> What happened:
> On the morning of Monday, November 29 a student reported seeing two long cords that may represent nooses in a tree near the intersection of Campus Drive and Junipero Serra Boulevard, along the Lake Lagunita walking trail. What is being done:
> Updated as of 5/10/22
> Based on statements from staff and students, and photos showing the scene at Lake Lagunita, it was determined the cords in the tree had been in that location for several years prior to it being reported to DPS. Photos showed the cords in the tree dating back to at least June 2017. Separately, a former student reached out reporting their recollection that a rope swing used to be in that location. DPS closed the case on December 6, 2021, and the incident was not classified as a crime.
> Updated as of 11/30/21
> A student reported the cords to the Dean of Students Office early this morning. The Office immediately contacted the Stanford University Department of Public Safety (DPS), which promptly investigated the incident with a campus arborist. Based on weathering and tree growth around the cords, it seems that the cords had been attached to the tree for approximately 18-24 months. We cannot be certain whether the ropes were deliberately fashioned in the shape of nooses, or were part of an abandoned swing or rope ladder.
> The Dean of Students Office has connected with the student via telephone and email and will continue offering support.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/stanford-student-reported-for-...
and the school's newspaper's reporting on it (which is linked in both articles)
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/22/protected-identity-harm...
In which publication did an Office of Religious and Spiritual Affairs investigate a Protected Identity Harm Report after somebody read a book?
A) The Handmaid's Tale
B) 1984
C) Stanford Daily
I think it's possible to hold oneself to a higher standard and not play the outrage game by falling for hoaxes. At least in my eyes they would get much more credibility. But perhaps that's just not the world we live in anymore, and if you don't generate outrage hateclicks, you might as well give up.
We can do better than this whole got-em-advocacy regardless of what side you care for.
https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Foundation_for_Individ...
In this case, the discussion and the tenor of the conversation is almost certainly cherry picked to serve a particular agenda.
On its face, the actions by Stanford in this article seem...not good. But I also suspect that this is making a mountain out of a molehill for political gain.
There is more information in the a "Stanford Daily" article:
https://stanforddaily.com/2023/01/22/protected-identity-harm...
And an opinion article in the "Standford Review":
https://news.google.com/search?q=mein%20kampf%20stanford
It seems like this really is a molehill.
It's odd to watch what is a fairly consistent pattern of Americans being more concerned about the free speech implications of students being students than a likely next presidential nominee banning entire university courses and introducing the felony offence of having unvetted books in school classrooms as part of his culture war against "wokeness" though...
This is absolutely a molehill mountain propped up to generate outrage, which you can see manifest in these comments.
https://www.thefire.org/news/florida-school-district-removes...
https://www.thefire.org/news/fire-warns-office-missouri-secr...
https://www.thefire.org/news/texas-bill-targeting-diversity-...
https://www.thefire.org/news/florida-school-district-removes...
So there's at least some bipartisan criticism. This article seems to match with the stanford article... so do you have any criticism of the contents of this article?
In general, I am in favor of free speech and do not under any circumstances want to police what people read. (especially as reading Mein Kampf at a college would seem to suggest a certain course of study, rather than just recreation). But, I am not in favor of cherry picking incidents to drum up support for "holding people accountable" and making this into some kind of broader trend instead of isolated miscommunication.
I also acknowledge that Stanford has to address this and get it right. But, fire.org appears to be paid to generate this kind of content and that makes me mistrust their motives even if their content is fine.
It doesn't necessarily follow that they're playing for a team or using "free speech" in a bad faith manner. Academia created the discrepancy, FIRE is just documenting it.
Now, many of the organizers and funders of FIRE clearly have conservative leanings. But as far as I can tell, so far FIRE's advocacy has been just as principled and non-partisan as the ACLU once was. See, for example, FIRE pushing back against de Santis' retaliation against Disney: https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/ronald-kl-collins-first-a... Or this recent case opposing a school board's overly broad censorship of sexually explicit material in its libraries: https://www.thefire.org/cases/penncrest-school-district-bans...
But, yes, by appearances many of their high-profile cases involve liberal colleges, but that's because of the strain of pro-censorship ideology which has become prevalent in liberal circles, causing a dramatic swing in the left's attitudes regarding free speech. Today, advocacy for expansive free speech rights has largely fallen into the hands of a mishmash of cross-partisan people and organizations, more so than in the past, where support on the left had once been more prevalent. And funding, specifically, now seems to be coming more from the right. But if once upon a time the ACLU, whose membership and funding predominately came from the left--even decades ago, not to mention today--could do it, then there's no reason why FIRE can't.
OTOH, the ACLU did a 180 on free speech because over time too much of its membership and, especially, funding came from the left.[1] And the left's attitudes wrt free speech has changed. So hopefully FIRE will make it a priority to expand its funding and membership bases, so it's less susceptible to political shifts.
[1] This isn't a rant against the ACLU. They still do alot of good work. The ACLU has been having these debates in the public for years, and plenty of long-time ACLU supporters have become disenchanted with changes at the ACLU, including previous ACLU leaders, particularly wrt free speech. The reasons for changes at the ACLU are well known and not seriously disputed. The only disputes concern the philosophical justifications for the changes in policy.
Freedom of speech as a concept has become (in a very bizarre plot twist to anybody who's old enough to remember even the 1980's) a conservative standpoint, so it's safe to assume anybody who's defending it in the 21st century has at least conservative leanings.
I was thinking of reading Mein Kampf (I've never read it), but I'd never think to pose in front of it.
The complaint appears to be, a student was photographed reading the book, and the nature of the photograph caused a group of people to feel adversely targeted by it. The article omits the photograph, or even any real description of it, so we can't exactly judge for ourselves.
The PIH rules seems to be for addressing, "I'm not touching you"-style harassment. So without seeing the photograph, or hearing the complaints against it, I feel like the article is very one-sided.
Also, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education claims to be non-partisan, but apparently sponsors conservative action groups on college and high school campuses. Including one run by Charlie Kirk.
In other words the article hides critical information in order to create flame bait. This is what passes for "journalism" today.
It sounds like 2. which would be concerning to academic freedom, but if it's 1. then maybe they were young, insensitive, and made a mistake. I doubt Stanford is in the business of accepting Neo-Nazis as proof of diversity. Also, the politically powerful as many Stanford students' families are, they tend to be concerned about "doing everything perfectly" to not be screamed at, lose respect of, or be cut off from their friends or family for doing something to embarrass them.
This looks less like theology and more like Stanford's administrative bloat.
As for Mein Kampf,[4] it's useful to read it again today, along with a biography of Putin to understand where the Ukraine mess came from. There's an "our destiny is to rule the world" mindset. It's back.
[1] https://orsl.stanford.edu/
[2] https://med.stanford.edu/hhp/about/people/professors-and-lec...
[3] https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Stanford-gets-a-chaplain...
[4] https://archive.org/details/mein-kampf-by-adolf-hitler-ralph...
The linked article at "thefire.org" has a statement by the Rabbi about the incident which makes it seem like they're condemning reading Mein Kampf.
But then according to this article:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/stanford-student-reported-for-...
That same Rabbi clarifies that they don't want anything banned and people should obviously be allowed to read whatever books they like. End of controversy, lol.
OR IS IT?
Because then we have a tweet of a post by an anonymous source (not exactly a primary source lol) on another platform (fizz?) claiming the photo of the girls reading the book was part of a costume, and the controversy comes from that -- not merely reading a book.
https://twitter.com/barrydeutsch/status/1618697230382399488
It's just a quagmire of stupid and people jumping to conclusions. We can't see the photo, or even a good description of what it is, and nobody seems to want to ban books like other people are claiming.
OBVIOUSLY reading fascist and overall terrible publications "Protocols of the Elders of Zion", "Mein Kampf", etc. are important for understanding how the holocaust occurred and propaganda in general. I even read them as a curious teenager and came away with the impression that Hitler was a boring, weird, hateful little man. They don't just radicalize people on their own.
We don't know what is happening here. If it ends up being a snapchat with a super offensive title like "learning how to exterminate the jews with my girlies!" then mystery solved. And if not, then it should get followed and picked up by the ACLU and other civil liberties orgs. But for fucks sake lets not start picking culture war sides before we've even seen the photo or a complete description of it lol.
The universities have been ideological captured
Let all of this new Red Guard bend down in acknowledgement of the error of their ideology and their ways, let them make penance for their misdeeds and let them ever after be known for what they did, just like those who followed Adolf Hitler were marked: as traitors to humanity.
Yes, new Red Guard, that is what is being formed and with the same means as Mao formed his. He also used students for his purposes, bending them to his will by claiming they would be the guards of the new era, battling against "the four olds" of old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits.
Historian Frank Dikotter accurately summarises Mao’s logic in instigating the Red Guard and their activities: Mao went straight to the students, seeing in the young his most reliable allies. They were impressionable, easy to manipulate and eager to fight. Most of all, they craved a more active role (Dikotter, 2016).
Students in the modern "west" are just as impressionable and easy to manipulate as they were in Mao's China, maybe even more so. Just like so many pampered young people who have lived lives of luxury and abundance they crave for some meaning, to find a role for themselves in society where they get to stand out from the crowd. Once that role was to be found in climbing up the social ladder, in excelling in some field of study or in religion. Then a few things happened which lessened the value of those former goals. Some people just kept on climbing that social ladder until they lost sight of the rest of society from their heights, easily making 500 times as much money as the average person or more. They mistakenly took their financial prowess as a sign of wisdom. At the same time the value of religion, once a steadfast rock of society, dwindled through both the ascent of the age of reason but also because of the many scandals in which the large organised religions of the west were involved. Not that those religions are any worse than the other large religions - Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism among others - but the ascent of the age of reason and the freedom of expression and that of the press made it possible for these scandals to see the light of day. With that, religion lost its moral high ground. With the excesses of the capitalist economies which gave rise to the "1%" and now the "0.1%" of billionaires the system which floats all ships also lost some of its appeal, especially now that the cold war was "won" and the "evil empire" in the east was "vanquished". What, then, should a pampered student looking for a role as a shining knight in armour - whether that be a Saint George or Jeanne d'Arc - look for as a role model. What, indeed, better than an ideology which points out all the failings of current society while forgetting that those failings are the local lows in a plain of welfare which is far higher than it has ever been? An ideology which instead points at a mystical peak to be found somewhere at the end of the rainbow, never seen but prophesied by many? Mao clearly understood this and so does the current crop of ideologues. Get them young, bring them in and bind them.