Hacker News Reader

Comment by burnished | Hacker News Reader

Its unclear to me the point you are trying to make. It reads to me that you think because that law does not apply here that the principles involved do not?

Your points about freedom of association are likewise illegible in this context.

View on HN

The principles outlined in the Bill of Rights are within the context of a relationship with a government that uses force to apply their actions without any higher recourse. Losing a job is different in magnitude than being sentenced to death or imprisonment.

So you wouldnt suggest that you should generally be able to know who your accuser is (the principle), but rather that is a standard we hold the process of whether or not some one can out you into a little box?

Thats coherent. I was originally thinking about this as a 'good for the goose, good for the gander' situation because the idea that you should generally speaking know who is accusing you and of what seems pretty reasonable.

Anonymous accusations are easy to abuse. They should be treated with a skeptical eye regardless of the context. Any institution that makes decisions on such accusations is going to be rife with petty, vindictive politics.

I don’t disagree. But “should” is different than “fundamental right”.

The original post wasn't saying that the bill of rights binds the behavior of this school in this case, but pointing out that the reason that's protected as a fundamental right in our constitution is that, given cover of anonymity, accusations are highly weaponizable—that's the reason that's included as a fundamental, enumerated right—which fact will apply to most any institution, whether or not it's legally required to allow one to face one's accuser.

Whenever an institution makes the decision to start taking anonymous accusations seriously, you can bet the bureaucracy of that institution has already been captured by precisely the sort of people who are eager to abuse such a system. To anybody else without such a malicious intent, the hazards of anonymous accusations should be obvious.

Be very careful when seeking to reform such a system, because those you are trying to disarm will use those very same bureaucratic weapons to stop you.

Yes. It is important to remain cautious of anonymous accusations since they can pave the way for the implementation of algorithmic prosecution or a zero tolerance policy.

Those don't apply to "at-will" employment - you have freedom of speech in that you won't be sent to jail, but you can easily be fired for something you say. That law actually doesn't apply here because the situation is different. This affects freedom of association because it supports the rights of individuals to form organizations, and also for the organization to deny membership, so the school has the right to remove a professor if the student body doesn't want them for some reason

so the school has the right to remove a professor if the student body doesn't want them for some reason

Yes, but is that a good idea? Latest example: the incident at Hamline University, where a student felt offended when he was shown Mohammed images in an art history class. These were not the CIA-sponsored Jyllandsposten kind designed to incite outrage but perfectly orthodox Persian and Mughal miniatures with scenes from the Islamic prophet's life. Universities have a purpose in society, and the at-will cater-to-students atmosphere really doesn't help that.

Also - freedom of association and freedom of speech, these are extremely valuable rights, they are necessary for the functioning of society and rightfully enshrined by the constitution. But what good are they if you can get fired for associating with the wrong kind of people (atheists? Satanic Temple?) oy saying the wrong this (perhaps the word "transsexual"?

It's a difficult problem that is not helped by facile "from first principles" analysis.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com