How do you decide what's anti-american and pro-american? The Iraq invasion for example, anti or pro-american?
If I didn't use the Internet I wouldn't know what the term 'anti-American" meant. Nobody I know uses that word and no books I read or movies I watch mention it too. It is a term that I've encountered only on the internet. As a result, my connotation of the word depends largely on how the internet uses it.
On the websites I visit, the term "anti-American" is usually used to justify hate against minorities or some other segment of society. I'm sure it is used in different contexts too (in other parts of the internet), but not on the parts of internet I usually browse.
The red scare didn't need Facebook to get started.
Claiming something is un-American is fine. We're (mostly?) red-blooded Americans here.
However, pointing at something and saying it's un-American and expecting the crowd to gasp in horror and join you in denouncing it, is a very clear signal of a Fox-news-or-something-deadened brain.
I think Americans would have a different association with the word though.
I’m sympathetic to the idea that the university as an institution should maintain neutrality. However, at the same time, individual professors, students, and even administrators should be protected by the university when engaging in speech.
1. shouting down anyone with a different view
2. requiring "loyalty oaths" from the staff
3. harassing others who disagree with them
4. trying to block roads and otherwise impede people from going about their business
that is anti-American.
And who are you to tell other Americans what's American or not? That assertion is what is fundamentally un-American. It's everyone else's country as much as yours.
> 4. trying to block roads and otherwise impede people from going about their business
That is the fundamental nature of protest, stopping people from going about their business. The whole point is that the issue is being ignored.
Suddenly, all protest is suspect in our great democracy.
They infringe on our rights. Do you really believe there is a right to harass others?
> What does it have to do with the US in particular?
It's the US that has a Constitution, a Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, etc. Of course, any other nation is free to adopt them as well, and become American.
> And who are you to tell other Americans what's American or not?
I'm an American. I have relatives that fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WW1, WW2, and the Korean War. In particular, these are my father's opinions, very strongly held by him. I did not earn them like he did in combat, but he's gone now and so I carry on. He told me once that he fought so I wouldn't have to. Never forget that our freedoms were all paid for with blood, lots of blood.
> It's everyone else's country as much as yours.
Yes. I see people all the time eager to throw away our rights that were so bitterly fought for. The Constitution also has a lot of checks and balances meant to make it difficult to for people to throw it away.
> all protest is suspect in our great democracy
You can protest all you like. But our freedoms do not include the right to impede other peoples' rights to go about their business.
If somebody tried that today, they would (and should) be liable for the cost of the tea. There is no right to destroy other peoples' property.
It depends on your definition of "harass", but yes, absolutely. You have a right to express, including through protest, your opinions to others who don't want to hear them.
Specifically, there is no right to not be harassed. There are laws against certain forms of it, but that's not a 'right' in a traditional sense, like the right to free speech, or 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.
Obviously, 'harassment' is such a broad term, it's a way to censor and oppress and especially to silence anyone who disagrees with the status quo. They must allow the status quo to continue or they are harassers.
>> And who are you to tell other Americans what's American or not?
> I'm an American. I have relatives that fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WW1, WW2, and the Korean War.
The other people are Americans too; you have no extra rights there. What you or your relatives did gives you no extra rights at all under any law or democratic custom.
> I see people all the time eager to throw away our rights that were so bitterly fought for.
That's what I see you advocating, trying to suppress dissent that you don't like.
> our freedoms do not include the right to impede other peoples' rights to go about their business.
They absolutely do, again depending the definition of "impede". That's what protest is, and you can see it in protests going back centuries. It's a free country and you're going to have to deal with people doing things you don't like.
Also, it's an argument for the status quo - going about their business may mean impeding others' rights. As the admittedly over-simplistic example, slave merchants impeded others' rights, and impeding the merchants protected rights.
I explicitly wrote otherwise.
> slave merchants impeded others' rights, and impeding the merchants protected rights.
I'm sadly amused that you interpret an assertion that all have a right to liberty is a right to enslave people. It's not a very clever argument, I see it all the time. I was hoping for better from you.
If that isn't indoctrination, I'm not sure what is.
Indoctrination isn't bad, and students should be able to have a choice between whether they want to get indoctrinated by the types of people who created the nuclear bomb, if they want to get indoctrinated by hippies, or if they want to get indoctrinated by a church-funded university.
Education is inherently ideological, and the market is really leaning toward hippie faculty at the moment. Allowing market forces to do what they will seems fine. It'll come back around eventually, and in the meantime, state school kids are doing what prestigious university students are too good for. Look at Anduril, which is far more impressive a defense achievement than anything that's come out of Caltech since before you were a student.
Sure. But I draw the line when people try to force their anti-American agenda on people.
> Look at Anduril, which is far more impressive a defense achievement than anything that's come out of Caltech since before you were a student.
Caltech is a very small university.
> Education is inherently ideological
My education at Caltech was nearly entirely math, science, engineering, etc. I don't see that as ideological. I did get a palpable sense from the profs that these subjects were exciting.
I never heard any defense propaganda from the Caltech faculty, none at all. JPL was there, but not a single soul pushed me to apply for a job there.
The only propaganda I recall was my economics professor pushing Marxism, and if you didn't regurgitate his Marxist views on the exams, you received a bad grade. I learned my lesson, and instead satisfied the social studies requirement by taking business accounting - something useful.
This doesn't happen, though; there are a lot of universities that love pro-American sentiment in professors. A university deciding to be anti-American seems fine, and quite American. As an employer, it should be able to choose who it wants to offer positions. No one is forced, they just fail to incentivize prestigious universities in maintaining their employment under conditions they desire.
It would have been less surprising if the out-group started using it as an insult and the in-group still claimed it as a badge of honor. I wouldn't have guessed that the in-group would have abandoned it so readily.
You never understood the meaning of the word, then. Woke is a synonym for "enlightenment." Indeed, the notions of wokeness echo an earlier philosophical revolution we continue to call the Age of Enlightenment.
Who, with a serious face, will claim to be enlightened? According to the Buddhism I studied, there was never a surer method to identify a fool.
Wokeness was never worn as a serious label. Wokeness may be acknowledged, be that applied to a person or a concept. The only time I've heard anybody self-proclaim wokeness is literally in self-mockery. He's woke, she's woke, that's woke, stay woke, but never I'm woke. So I'd make one edit to your first sentence: it was not uttered with pride, it was uttered with respect. And people still do that today.
So there was nothing to abandon. Nobody identified that way. And now wokeness is now a boogeyman. It means whatever anybody wants it to mean. Nevermind that this fight has been raging since the 17th century, but it's got a new name now and hey you can sell fear with that.
This made laugh.
I never heard it uttered with pride. I saw it graffiti'd on walls.
maga
Don't be surprised: It's standard conservative messaging tactics going back years. Take something valuable to their enemies an demonize it through endless repetition. The Democrats and liberals have tried to avoid every fight, and so it works every time. I'm not exaggerating to say that I predicted 'woke' would be demonized too.
IIRC, someone recently published conversations among some conservative groups where they planned their messaging around it (not an unusual tactic) and specifically what would be effective.
What are some other examples? "Politically correct" comes to mind, but IIRC that didn't turn nearly as fast, or as definitively.
When conservatives attack liberal institutions, like they are now attacking universities, is that un-American?
> making it hard for an elite institution like Harvard to adequately address an extreme anti-semitism problem
It is just one partisan side's claim there is some extreme problem, and that Harvard is not addressing it. I haven't heard the claim that someone is preventing them - the conservatives have been blaming Harvard.
(I'll note that the conservatives couldn't give rats ass about anti-semitism; they heavily trafficked in it for years, many prominently. They are only trying to attack an 'American institution', higher education.)
> If it makes people feel worse about living in the United States and tries to impose any concept of original sin onto an American citizen, as is the case with a lot of "woke" propaganda, it is anti-American.
It's un-American to make people feel bad? What about the people you are making feel bad? If the original sin is true, should we hide from the truth? We can't admit our mistakes?
Every fundamental hard science started controversial. In some circles, they still are. Do we stop teaching heliocentrism because it's the devil's work? Who decides?
Indoctrination is the opposite: providing stock answers and refusing to elaborate. Using social pressure and authority to shame students and block their questions. Its purpose is to instil deference and obedience -- to enlist more soldiers for war -- not to enrich the spirit.
When students are going to school and leaving with improved skills, life experiences, networks, and more critical thinking...it's teaching. When students leave with a chip on their shoulder to disrupt the United States and attack its institutions and reputation and even cause problems, without any actual skill acquisition or increase in critical thinking, it's indoctrination.
I think we're deluding ourselves if we think we can give people critical thinking and not have them question the consequences of colonialism, or slavery, or the industrial revolution, or manifest destiny, or homeland security, and which of those consequences should be kept and which should be torn down.
(There's a pretty good book on this subject, actually: among other things it touches on, The Myth of the Rational Voter [2007, Bryan Caplan] notes the stark difference in voting habits among those with and without a college education. Does that mean all college education includes indoctrination, or does it mean learning critical thinking causes people to think critically to similar conclusions, or perhaps both? And at another level of abstraction: if you're a policymaker and you want people to vote in the way they tend to do when not college educated, aren't there incentives to cast education itself into doubt?)
There is no reason to talk about anything besides the class, in the class.
Can we mention Einstein in physics 101? His faith and politics is too far, surely, but are they really entirely unrelated to his science? What about Heisenberg? Bohr? Oppenheimer?
One could mention all above physicists and more in Physics class but talking about how Einstein was misogynist would not be topic for Physics class.
Einstein as a misogynist might not be appropriate, but how about as a Jew in Nazi Germany? Is the phrase "God does not play dice with the universe" indoctrination? Can we discuss the Solvay conferences? The first Solvay conference is likely the most important gathering of scientists in modern history. The third? Indoctrination.
What about Galileo and the church?
I guess my point is that history is messy, and not scientific. Does this mean we should remove dates from science classes?
"Die Quantenmechanik ist sehr achtung-gebietend. Aber eine innere Stimme sagt mir, daß das doch nicht der wahre Jakob ist. Die Theorie liefert viel, aber dem Geheimnis des Alten bringt sie uns kaum näher. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, daß der nicht würfelt."
There are a number of different translations, but one is:
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the "old one." I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.
It is relatively easy to understand both the context and meaning of what Einstein said, especially if you read his numerous other works. The objection to some of the key underpinnings of Quantum Mechanics was something he mentioned a number of times.
They key here is that you can explore and understand what Einstein was talking about without digging deep into the meaning of a god, or his view of religion. The concepts of Quantum Mechanics are complicated enough to keep any undergrad or grad student busy for a lifetime.
But, in the context of this thread... Is it physics? I'd say no! It's metaphysics at best and really more along the lines of history and philosophy. That would make it indoctrination by many of the arguments in this thread! (I intend this to be a somewhat uncharitable interpretation.) My argument is simply that classification is hard.
And again, this should be one of the easier field to classify! To bring it back to my linguistics example, can you imagine trying to discuss African American Vernacular English without leaving the confines of linguistic theory?
Then two cities got wiped off the map in intentional runaway nuclear reactions.
A whole generation of physicists learned the hard way that if you don't make hard sciences at least a little like those types of things, you may lack the framework to realize when you're being co-opted into a machine that kills... That "pure" science takes huge moral risks if it believes itself to be detachable from the world it is trying to explore.
Credit where credit is due, they responded to the new challenge (https://pugwash.org/).
p1 - treat physics as a discipline p2 - two cities get wiped off the map
There are many more variables that are relevant here, and in times of justified war like WW2 things are different. Consider a war scenario where your physicists spent all their undergraduate study time learning about identity politics and writing political preambles on their papers in order to get their papers even looked at.
Freedom of speech is the first amendment, and even though it is counter intuitive, criticizing america, it’s institutions, and especially capitalism is fundamentally american speech - quite possibly the most american thing you could possibly do in the eyes of the founders.
Colleges of sciences and engineering rarely would have lecturers venture down that road anyway, except in courses about society, history, and philosophy embedded in those schools, so I don’t think it’s a problem in any case, and your characterizations are being overblown.
Other research areas will be inherently fuzzy on that. That’s almost tautological - the people teaching history, philosophy etc… are going to have an opinion because they wouldn’t even be teaching unless they were passionate about the field.
Furthermore, these types of things replace real learning on math and science and history and other things that have volumes of education available sans these ideas.
"Secure borders" is such a vague phrase - in various courses you can learn about the history of borders, the political theories and history of nation states and concepts of human rights, the socioeconomic drivers of migration, etc. There's no "Open Borders 101 Class", and confidently proclaiming that "They learn these things from someone" is a huge red flag.
You CAN hear about "Border security" from politicians of various persuasions, but as far as I can tell there's not a lot of ideological (or really any kind of) consistency to be had from them.
Statistics published by federal agencies show miniscule levels of threats at the border compared to domestic threats. "Threats" abroad is and always has been a dogwhistle for Pentagon funding and expenditure, and that's not even addressing the question of how the US can reasonably expect to have jurisdiction in such cases rather than addressing these things diplomatically.
> realistic takes
Normative stance with absolutely zero authority. That is, until you make it clear what you consider "realistic". Dollars to donuts it's going to be cribbed directly from institutional (read: tautological) "common sense".
This conversation has already happened millions of times before. You're not actually addressing things in a way that moves the conversation forward.
Domestic policy, especially around jobs and employment, has been hostile to domestic workers. The US re: management of the economy does not correctly account for inevitable immigration, so the response is a reactionary one to conditions that could and should have been anticipated. We can make room in our economy for more workers because we know how to improve productivity: capital investment into productive enterprises.
The way we do capital investment today is largely by incentivizing private investors to take ownership of shares in companies, but as we've seen that creates perverse incentives around maximizing shareholder value -- see: massive layoffs of late, commonly justified by the phrase "wages are up to half of expenditure". It's a direct consequence of fiscal policy and the way the economy is structured. This doesn't even address things like wealth and income inequality, which are for this discussion out of scope.
What about a more holistic approach, with public money invested and public ownership of companies? This puts the companies in a context where they are measured not just by pure microcosmic profit measures, but by their contribution to GDP as well as exports. The government uses different functions for optimizing different metrics than private citizens. Free marketeers pretend that private investment can achieve the same macroscopic goals but we've seen exactly how and how often those assumptions, hopes, and dreams fail to be borne out in reality.
With more public investment, and easier paths to citizenship, US productivity re: GDP and exports would skyrocket if implemented correctly. American exceptionalists would come full circle to the ideals of earlier times by creating strength through diversity on the shoulders of a "nation of immigrants". What's more American than that?
All of this goes against institutional common sense, but even that's somewhat besides the point, because the point is that GP just assumes that their view on the matter is obviously and absolutely correct so the conversation ended before it ever began. To echo the pithy and trite tone of GP: know-it-alls and pooh-poohers are un-American.
You're not worried about indoctrination. You're worried you won't be able to be the one to indoctrinate.
One would think that this is an important point to teach the students. That all histories have bias, even the ones with which you agree.
Phonics, math facts, sentence structure: some of these should be indoctrinated at an early age, so as to enable later on the higher levels of inquiry that represents true intellectual freedom.
On the other hand, you have some people trying to sell "woke kindergarten" aaaand...its not going well for the students and their ability to reach academic goals consistent with early primary school.