At one point, religious institutions were the main source of knowledge and philosophy. If they were cancers, what would you call the rest of society back then?
Harvard is not venturing into protected class type scenarios, because racists and assholes aren't protected classes.
You also seem to miss the difference between private policies and law, which seems odd, because I'm usually defending the use of law to affect private policies, such as banning certain discrimination. I believe that having policies on what can be said belongs in an institution of learning. For example, if you teach Aristotelian physics in a science class, I believe you should be fired.
You seem to think that the offending comments were reasoned positions that could profitably be argued with. Arguments with people who are wrong can be useful. It may force you to clarify what you think. I loved reading William F. Buckley, Jr., back in the day, although I think I agreed with him maybe twice. Arguing with people who aren't going to back what they say with reasons is not useful.
If a school didn't accept someone because they supported same-sex marriage, I'd figure that that was the school's decision, and it would lower my opinion of the school. Dark skin is a racial characteristic, and race is a protected class, and race is something people are born with and can't change. I'm a lot happier with discrimination on the basis of what people do than on the basis of what they are.
I assume you're equally disapproving of what happened to the Dixie Chicks' career after they came out against the invasion of Iraq.
I also suggest reading the comments before commenting on them. Several people have maintained that Harvard did the wrong thing and that free speech was abridged.
I have no idea what you mean by your last sentence. The First Amendment applies to government action, and certainly a court that would apply it to a private institution would be activist.
Freedom of speech means I'm free to say what I want. By extension, it means I'm not going to face criminal charges for it.
Think about what would happen if speech were without consequences. It would be absolutely pointless. Whenever I say something, I intend my speech to have certain consequences, although many times I get different consequences.
Really? I haven't observed that in my left-wing friends and relatives. There's this whole class of "leftists" out there that people claim to know of that are completely beyond my personal experience.
One school making a unilateral decision about a single incident is definitely not enough to create a "slippery slope" scenario.
Sure it is. You can create a slippery slope scenario out of almost anything. You may be confusing this with slippery slope scenarios that aren't stupid.
Nobody's barring them education. There's plenty of places to get a bachelor's degree that aren't Harvard. Harvard is not set up to teach stupid people. Harvard also isn't the only place to be socialized.
Are you saying that stupidity and rudeness should not have consequences? That, when I invite people to my house, I have to have a token stupid asshole there?
The cold hard truth is that some opinions and views are better than others. I'm going to suggest that "we should try to address the causes of poverty" is a better opinion than "we should kill all the blacks, Jews, and Muslims".
I find your description of what would happen to a Christian college ludicrous. Minor Christian colleges have expressed all sorts of stupid views, and they routinely get away with it, because it's their right. That's why I'm not impressed with small Christian colleges, and that of course is my right.
We have freedom of speech and freedom of expression. We do not have the right to speak anywhere we want, nor to make anyone listen.
Without actually digging into this, I'd imagine the comments were more in the form of trash talk than arguments. In that case, there would be no suppression of controversial ideas, since the comments wouldn't exactly be idea-heavy. People who make those comments often can't be reasoned with, and the only value of engaging them would be in convincing others that the trash talkers were in the wrong, and if that's generally accepted there's no reason to invite such people into Harvard. I wouldn't allow bigoted trash talk in my house. If these were people actually providing support and reasoned argument for opinions some considered abhorrent, then I'm wrong, and please disregard this paragraph.
You also talk about Lenny Bruce being arrested, and compare it with people being kept out of Harvard. These situations are not parallel.
The problem is that some comments aren't worth refuting. The people who make them will continue to make them indefinitely. You can see that happening on Slashdot. They add nothing to the conversation. At some point, you have to just decide you're not going to deal with that crap anymore.
Obviously, we don't want to forbid people from saying what they like (with exceptions like slander and incitement and copyright) in their own fora, but Harvard is a private institution, and can decide that certain assholes aren't worth having around.
Based on 2014 figures (the latest I found when I looked), US per capita health care is three thousand dollars more expensive than the next most expensive one (Switzerland). I think saving most of a trillion dollars a year does count as less expensive, and I think most people would want less expensive health care.
Some people say we can't do what every other developed country in the world already does. I think those people are dishonest or spineless defeatists.
The way Scrum works is, among other things, to have fifteen-minute standups that are focused. One way Scrum fails to work is to have standups that last over an hour and accomplish nothing. That will also discourage the developers, and the particularly good ones will go to a company that doesn't use buzzwords to excuse interminable meetings and constant harassment.
If I had four hours of meetings a day, I'd find another job. I already mentally mark the end of the last meeting of the day as time to get serious work in.
Clinton's mishandling of data was investigated, and was found to be the sort of thing that is never prosecuted. Where should the FBI have gone from there? The collusion of the DNC was the private actions of a private organization, and involved nothing illegal.
If the police could prove massive flushing was going on, they might have a case for destruction of evidence, and that testimony would be relevant in a trial. (You don't have to be caught with illegal drugs to be convicted, although it's a lot easier to convict if you are.)
You do not in general have to cooperate with a search warrant. You do not in general have the right to impede it.
If this becomes personally significant to you, of course, I strongly suggest finding a real lawyer, rather than a guy who frequently opines on the law.
You appear to think that it's completely up in the air, except that anyone who disagrees with you for whatever reasons must be going along with groupthink? Is that a reasonable summary of what you said?
In almost all democracies, the election is decided by getting the most votes, and they seem to be free societies. The jobs of the Electoral College were to allow slave states extra power in electing Presidents, keeping popular unqualified people out of the office, and keeping creatures of foreign powers out. I didn't see any of those purposes being fulfilled.
I've punched far too many cards in my time, starting with FORTRAN as an undergraduate. My only objection to not punching cards any more is that the boxes, when emptied, were useful.
Slashdot Mirror
I was never admitted to Harvard, and I don't think my life was destroyed by that.
At one point, religious institutions were the main source of knowledge and philosophy. If they were cancers, what would you call the rest of society back then?
White male heterosexual cisgender privilege seems normal to me, and I'm not happy that other people don't get it.
Harvard is not venturing into protected class type scenarios, because racists and assholes aren't protected classes.
You also seem to miss the difference between private policies and law, which seems odd, because I'm usually defending the use of law to affect private policies, such as banning certain discrimination. I believe that having policies on what can be said belongs in an institution of learning. For example, if you teach Aristotelian physics in a science class, I believe you should be fired.
You seem to think that the offending comments were reasoned positions that could profitably be argued with. Arguments with people who are wrong can be useful. It may force you to clarify what you think. I loved reading William F. Buckley, Jr., back in the day, although I think I agreed with him maybe twice. Arguing with people who aren't going to back what they say with reasons is not useful.
If a school didn't accept someone because they supported same-sex marriage, I'd figure that that was the school's decision, and it would lower my opinion of the school. Dark skin is a racial characteristic, and race is a protected class, and race is something people are born with and can't change. I'm a lot happier with discrimination on the basis of what people do than on the basis of what they are.
I assume you're equally disapproving of what happened to the Dixie Chicks' career after they came out against the invasion of Iraq.
I also suggest reading the comments before commenting on them. Several people have maintained that Harvard did the wrong thing and that free speech was abridged.
I have no idea what you mean by your last sentence. The First Amendment applies to government action, and certainly a court that would apply it to a private institution would be activist.
Freedom of speech means I'm free to say what I want. By extension, it means I'm not going to face criminal charges for it.
Think about what would happen if speech were without consequences. It would be absolutely pointless. Whenever I say something, I intend my speech to have certain consequences, although many times I get different consequences.
Really? I haven't observed that in my left-wing friends and relatives. There's this whole class of "leftists" out there that people claim to know of that are completely beyond my personal experience.
Sure it is. You can create a slippery slope scenario out of almost anything. You may be confusing this with slippery slope scenarios that aren't stupid.
Assholes are not a legally protected class. I haven't seen any legislation introduced to make them one.
I'd think that people who demand a definition of "asshole" tend to be assholes who want to skirt the definition.
Nobody's barring them education. There's plenty of places to get a bachelor's degree that aren't Harvard. Harvard is not set up to teach stupid people. Harvard also isn't the only place to be socialized.
Are you saying that stupidity and rudeness should not have consequences? That, when I invite people to my house, I have to have a token stupid asshole there?
The cold hard truth is that some opinions and views are better than others. I'm going to suggest that "we should try to address the causes of poverty" is a better opinion than "we should kill all the blacks, Jews, and Muslims".
I find your description of what would happen to a Christian college ludicrous. Minor Christian colleges have expressed all sorts of stupid views, and they routinely get away with it, because it's their right. That's why I'm not impressed with small Christian colleges, and that of course is my right.
We have freedom of speech and freedom of expression. We do not have the right to speak anywhere we want, nor to make anyone listen.
Without actually digging into this, I'd imagine the comments were more in the form of trash talk than arguments. In that case, there would be no suppression of controversial ideas, since the comments wouldn't exactly be idea-heavy. People who make those comments often can't be reasoned with, and the only value of engaging them would be in convincing others that the trash talkers were in the wrong, and if that's generally accepted there's no reason to invite such people into Harvard. I wouldn't allow bigoted trash talk in my house. If these were people actually providing support and reasoned argument for opinions some considered abhorrent, then I'm wrong, and please disregard this paragraph.
You also talk about Lenny Bruce being arrested, and compare it with people being kept out of Harvard. These situations are not parallel.
The problem is that some comments aren't worth refuting. The people who make them will continue to make them indefinitely. You can see that happening on Slashdot. They add nothing to the conversation. At some point, you have to just decide you're not going to deal with that crap anymore.
Obviously, we don't want to forbid people from saying what they like (with exceptions like slander and incitement and copyright) in their own fora, but Harvard is a private institution, and can decide that certain assholes aren't worth having around.
Based on 2014 figures (the latest I found when I looked), US per capita health care is three thousand dollars more expensive than the next most expensive one (Switzerland). I think saving most of a trillion dollars a year does count as less expensive, and I think most people would want less expensive health care.
Some people say we can't do what every other developed country in the world already does. I think those people are dishonest or spineless defeatists.
The way Scrum works is, among other things, to have fifteen-minute standups that are focused. One way Scrum fails to work is to have standups that last over an hour and accomplish nothing. That will also discourage the developers, and the particularly good ones will go to a company that doesn't use buzzwords to excuse interminable meetings and constant harassment.
If I had four hours of meetings a day, I'd find another job. I already mentally mark the end of the last meeting of the day as time to get serious work in.
Clinton's mishandling of data was investigated, and was found to be the sort of thing that is never prosecuted. Where should the FBI have gone from there? The collusion of the DNC was the private actions of a private organization, and involved nothing illegal.
Not everyone. Studies have shown that a large minority of humans are honest and won't steal even when it's easy and undetectable.
If the police could prove massive flushing was going on, they might have a case for destruction of evidence, and that testimony would be relevant in a trial. (You don't have to be caught with illegal drugs to be convicted, although it's a lot easier to convict if you are.)
You do not in general have to cooperate with a search warrant. You do not in general have the right to impede it.
If this becomes personally significant to you, of course, I strongly suggest finding a real lawyer, rather than a guy who frequently opines on the law.
You appear to think that it's completely up in the air, except that anyone who disagrees with you for whatever reasons must be going along with groupthink? Is that a reasonable summary of what you said?
In almost all democracies, the election is decided by getting the most votes, and they seem to be free societies. The jobs of the Electoral College were to allow slave states extra power in electing Presidents, keeping popular unqualified people out of the office, and keeping creatures of foreign powers out. I didn't see any of those purposes being fulfilled.
Thank you for the addition.
I've punched far too many cards in my time, starting with FORTRAN as an undergraduate. My only objection to not punching cards any more is that the boxes, when emptied, were useful.
I'm positive they would object.