Links - 6th July 2019 (1)

Is Safetyism Destroying a Generation? - "Historically, campus censorship was enacted by zealous university administrators. Students were radicals who pushed the boundaries of acceptability, like during the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in the 1960s. Today, however, students work in tandem with administrators to make their campus ‘safe’ from threatening ideas... it is not just the American mind that has been coddled. Consistent with Haidt and Lukianoff’s findings in the United States, there has been a substantial increase in youth mental health issues in other Anglosphere countries such as Britain and Australia... La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia almost banned sex researcher Bettina Arndt from speaking about sexual assault issues on campus. While the university reversed their earlier decision, it nevertheless informed students that counselling would be available – solidifying the idea that the mere existence of a contrarian voice necessitates therapy. Students have continued to demand censorship of Arndt on the basis that her ideas make them feel ‘unsafe’."

The “Campus Free Speech Crisis” Ended Last Year - "So, if not self-censorship, and if probably not new laws or policies, what does explain the changes on campus last year? Well, protests and deplatforming are tactics, and like all tactics, they tend to lose their effectiveness over time. What first has the advantage of novelty becomes familiar and, eventually, anticipated. Often this triggers a cycle of tactical innovation and adaptation, in which the targets of activism develop their own counter-tactics in response. Campus politics is no different. By now, university administrators, student organizations, and controversial speakers themselves all have a wide repertoire of tactics at their disposal to counter disruptive student activism. Common examples include increased security, invite-only ticketing, and preemptive affirmations of university values, all of which were deployed throughout 2018... the broader national political climate may be an even more important factor. Few observers truly appreciate how deeply the culture on campus is shaped by events taking place off it, which is why I suspect there is too little recognition that many of the events of 2016 and 2017, when concern about the “Free Speech Crisis” was at its height, were tied to the presidential election."

Controversial Speeches on Campus Are Not Violence - "the psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett, a highly respected emotion researcher at Northeastern University, published an essay in The New York Times titled, “When is speech violence?” She offered support from neuroscience and health-psychology research for students who want to use the word “violence” in this expansive way... Chronic stress can cause physical damage... “gossiping about a rival,” for example, or “giving one’s students a lot of homework.” Both practices can cause prolonged stress to others, but that doesn’t turn them into forms of violence... If students are repeatedly told that numerical disparities are proof of systemic discrimination, and a clumsy or insensitive question is an act of aggression (a “microaggression”), and words are sometimes acts of violence that will shorten your life, then it begins to make sense that they would worry about their safety, chronically, even within some of America’s most welcoming and protective institutions... People do not react to the world as it is; they react to the world as they interpret it, and those interpretations are major determinants of success and failure in life... diversity training, when not carefully and sensitively implemented, can create a backlash, which amplifies tensions... The social psychologist Jean Twenge has just written a book, titled iGen (which is short for “internet generation”), in which she analyzes four large national datasets that track the mental health of teenagers and college students... Lines drift mildly up or down across the decades as baby boomers are followed by Gen-X, which is followed by the millennials. But as soon as the data includes iGen—those born after roughly 1994—the rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and suicide spike upward... if social media is the biggest cause of the mental-health crisis then the solution lies in changing the nature or availability of social media for teenagers. Making the offline world “safer” by banning the occasional stress-inducing speaker will not help.We think the mental-health crisis on campus is better understood as a crisis of resilience. Since 2012, when members of iGen first began entering college, growing numbers of college students have become less able to cope with the challenges of campus life, including offensive ideas, insensitive professors, and rude or even racist and sexist peers. Previous generations of college students learned to live with such challenges in preparation for success in the far more offense-filled world beyond the college gates... This is why the idea that speech is violence is so dangerous. It tells the members of a generation already beset by anxiety and depression that the world is a far more violent and threatening place than it really is. It tells them that words, ideas, and speakers can literally kill them. Even worse: At a time of rapidly rising political polarization in America, it helps a small subset of that generation justify political violence... In a 2010 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit—Rodriguez v. Maricopa County Community College District—Chief Judge Alex Kozinski noted “...the urge to censor is greatest where debate is most disquieting and orthodoxy most entrenched…”"
So is it violence to demonise white people all the time?
In other words, if you're told you're being oppressed, it's a self fulfilling prophecy

Like the Campus Thought Police - "Smith College police chief Daniel Hect was put on administrative leave after becoming an object of campus hate. Chief Hect’s crime was ‘liking’ (not writing) tweets that fall outside of academia’s ever shrinking zone of toleration. Behold the offending tweets:
“Stay the course Pres. Trump”
“BUILD THAT WALL!!”
“The National Rifle Association wishes you and your family a very Merry Christmas!”...
If you are not familiar with Twitter, know that liking doesn’t always imply support... Imagine you are a Smith student who supports Trump, his wall, or gun rights. How comfortable would you now be speaking up in class? Even if you know your professor doesn’t punish heresy, you should fear that your fellow students might."

Vietnamese community rallies together to fight back against Sudanese gangs terrorising their shops - "Young Vietnamese people are vowing to take action after video of their elders being attacked by thugs went viral.The shocking footage shows people, believed to be shopkeepers, defending themselves with chairs against a group of men of African appearance.Screaming, shouting and smashing can be heard as the group of Vietnamese people try to push back against the group, who allegedly attacked them after asking for a cigarette and being rejected... Another Vietnamese man said it was 'time to prove who we are'.'This message to all Vietnamese people in west Melbourne!'You rather just stand there and watch your children or family member been [sic] robbed, bashed, raped then do nothing - or join us to protect our love [sic] one from this.'... Another message claims the men of African appearance had come back after the fight and stolen from customers... The woman claimed the men of African appearance did not 'deserve' to be in Australia, and claimed her immigrant community had done a better job of assimilating than the one the alleged attackers belonged to. 'Why we let them in, feed them and give them money for making trouble to us, what is the Australia law?' she wrote.'It's not fair - we are working hard, paying tax and support these mother f***ers.'"

Ten scams tourists face in Vietnam - "Most countries in SE Asia f‌ind ways of scamming western tourists. In most cases these experiences are more insulting than they dangerous.Sometimes they are cheeky although there are situations that could claim your entire travel budget, not to mention a brush with the law... Many prices for food, toiletries, and other items in small shops are usually made up at the whim of the shopkeeper. Never assume that a price is the same as you paid yesterday. Always use shops that display their prices."

How Real Is Systemic Racism Today? - "It is unfortunate that the political climate in the US has for many years been strongly opposed to even the possibility that behavioral traits are in any way pre-determined. Best-sellers like Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers (2008) claimed that persistent hard work—the “10,000-hour rule”—will propel anyone to success, with the implication that there is no such thing as natural talent. We could all compose like Mozart if we just practiced long enough. The playing field of the nature-nurture debate has not been, and is not now, level. Honest writers on this topic have been attacked and their employment threatened by unfair attacks on their purely academic, non-ideological writing. Moderate, evidence-based views—IQ is a product of nature as much as nurture, “racial” groups differ in IQ—are caricatured as racist extremes. The view that IQ is genetically fixed—like an instinct—is in fact held by none of the leading researchers in this field. Yet it has been used to stigmatize distinguished scholars such as Linda Gottfredsen and Charles Murray.Philosopher Michael Levin was called an unabashed white supremacist following the publication of his 1997 book Why Race Matters. His crime was to take too seriously the fact that blacks and whites as groups differ in terms of IQ and possibly other socially relevant psychological measures and that these differences should be taken into account in evaluating racial disparities... Fear of treatment like this from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and similar groups with a political agenda and no interest in understanding the complex issues involved has, in effect, shut down research on endogenous racial differences as a cause of racial disparities... Young males are more likely to act violently than older ones. The black population tends to be younger than the white. Does controlling for age reduce the black-white disparity? No doubt other relevant variables should be examined. The point is that the incarceration disparity may have a non-racial cause... a charge of “racial discrimination” can be justified only when other possible causes of disparities have been eliminated... Systemic racism is a poor concept. First, it is almost impossible to prove, because racism is discrimination without any reason other than race. To prove discrimination, all other possible reasons—reasons like differential ability, interests, criminality, etc., as in the examples I gave earlier—must be eliminated... in practice not only are they not eliminated, efforts to explore these other causes are actively suppressed. So, the second, and perhaps most important, problem with the charge of systemic discrimination is that it deflects attention from the proximal causes, endogenous as well as exogenous, of the racial disparities that led to its invention... The beauty of “systemic racism” is its air of permanence. It is here forever, and its victims must be compensated in perpetuity. It has become the elusive and inexpugnable cause of all the ills of people of color. And it provides an endless supply of ammunition for those whose careers depend on the persistence of racism. It has become a cause of racial division rather than part of the cure. It should be abandoned."

WSJ: Facebook Pressured Palmer Luckey to Vote Libertarian, then Fired Him for Trump Support Anyways - "Lucker’s firing appeared to be the start of Silicon Valley’s extreme liberal bias being questioned by the masses. The issue of Silicon Valley’s liberal bias became so well known that Zuckerberg was even grilled by Ted Cruz during a hearing before Congress about Luckey’s firing"

Distorted Campus Assault Math - WSJ - "Forty-one percent of Tulane’s undergraduate women have been sexually assaulted since arriving on campus, the university reported last month. That’s a shocking statistic, but is it true? The number is worth breaking down because Congress may soon require all colleges to use similar surveys to inform their practices.One problem is how broadly Tulane defines sexual assault. The school goes beyond rape or attempted rape to include any form of unwanted sexual contact, including a stolen kiss or hug. The latter may be unwelcome but are they assault? This definition helps explain why nearly 38% of female undergraduates and 16% of males said they’d been victims of unwanted sexual contact... Students were asked if they agreed with the statements, “I don’t think sexual violence is a problem at Tulane” and “there isn’t much need for me to think about sexual violence while at college.” Disagreement indicates that sexual violence is a pressing issue. But students who agree risk being seen as ignorant or uncaring, which some campuses and activists say is evidence of a “rape culture.”Self-selection almost certainly occurred to some extent. Tulane highlights its large pool of 4,500 respondents. But the university boosted participation by offering “incentives for Greek organizations, residence halls, and graduate/professional schools” to recruit members to take the survey... Among students who said they were sexually assaulted, 73.5% of undergraduate women and 86.7% of men said they were incapacitated by alcohol, not force. Tulane never defined how many drinks render someone incapable of consent, leaving that to the discretion of students... U.S. military sexual-assault prevention training sessions recently claimed “one drink means you can’t consent.” The U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals said in 2016 that this standard was a “legally-inaccurate proposition.”... Stanford student Rhea Karuturi described how female students suffered from “rape anxiety”—the perception that “when you’re walking, when you’re going somewhere new, whatever—that there is a danger you could get raped.” Increasingly, campus-climate surveys tell women they’re in perpetual danger, though federal crime statistics suggest they’re safer from sexual assault in college than off campus"