Links - 19th February 2020 (2)

Professor’s Angry Tweets on Gaza Cost Him a Job - The New York Times - "“Professor Salaita’s approach indicates he would be incapable of fostering a classroom environment where conflicting opinions would be given equal consideration.”... “It’s about feeling safe on campus,” Noah Feingold, a member of a pro-Israel student group, told The Forward. “This is a professor who tweeted that if you support Israel, you’re an awful person.”... Cary Nelson, an English professor and a former president of the American Association of University Professors, who has been an outspoken advocate of academic freedom in the past, gave strong support to the university’s decision. Mr. Nelson told Inside Higher Ed that he knew of “no other senior faculty member tweeting such venomous statements — and certainly not in such an obsessively driven way.”“There are scores of over-the-top Salaita tweets”... Mr. Salaita “was a prominent campaigner for the American Studies Association’s decision to boycott Israeli academic institutions last December.” In fact, Mr. Salaita even wrote a post for The Electronic Intifada in May headlined “How to Practice B.D.S. in Academe.”"
Apparently it's okay for pro-Israel students to feel unsafe
Is it against academic freedom to oppose the hiring of someone who opposes academic freedom?

Tweets Cost Professor Steven Salaita His Tenure. And That’s a Good Thing. - "“You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not,” Salaita wrote shortly after three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists, “I wish all the fucking West Bank settlers would go missing.” Another tweet applied just as much nuance in declaring, “Zionists: transforming ‘anti-semitism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.” Subject that last utterance to a close reading—an exercise that passes for rigid and original thinking in most American universities these days—and you learn that the author approaches anti-Semitism with the one-two punch of unreality: It doesn’t exist—hence the quotation marks—and if it does exist then it’s nothing to be ashamed of.There’s much more where that came from: fantasies about Benjamin Netanyahu wearing a necklace made of Palestinian children’s teeth or about Israel resurfacing Atlantis only to colonize it, categorical refusals to condemn Hamas, and the ever-nuanced statement that anyone supporting Israel during the war in Gaza was “an awful human being.”... how deliciously ironic it is that the champions of academic freedom riding to Salaita’s defense did it by boycotting his university, a blunt tactic that, in this case, causes much more harm to the principle of academic freedom than the incident it wishes to protest... Anyone still wondering whether Salaita ought to have a teaching job should play the parlor game of reading his tweets and replacing references to Jews and Israelis with blacks, gays, or women. Should an American institution of higher learning employ someone who tweeted, say, that black Americans were “transforming ‘racism’ from something horrible into something honorable since 1964”?"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Punishment and Justice - "‘There is a theory here, basically social democratic theory that that crime is a function of poverty and misery. But it doesn't seem to me to be borne out by the fact that in an era of immense increases in wealth, far, great improvements in housing, stability of employment, that actually crime has increased enormously if you compare crime in this country now with the level of crime, for instance, during the Great Depression, especially among the poor, it's much higher. I don't think that theory works. Any examination of it makes it look silly’
‘Except that the knife crime statistics all tell us that it's within poorer areas, predominantly. Why are we punishing, or why is it morally right to punish people who have been failed by society for society’s failings?’
‘You may be mistaking physical policy for moral policy, which is two different things. There is a huge amount of moral policy in this country. And you can't have any discussion about that without also discussing the dismantling of the married family and the disappearance of fathers from the lives of young men, which has been a gigantic change in life… And the other thing you have to discuss is the total abandonment by the police and the courts and the government of any attempt to control the use of mind altering drugs, which is a major factor in a large amount of violent crime because particularly marijuana is associated very strongly both with mental illness and correlated very strongly with violent crime, we do nothing whatever to deter its possession’"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of Risk - "I knew something had changed when I came back to BBC television news from a rather dangerous foreign posting in Africa. I'd spent four years at times risking my life on an almost daily basis without my bosses seeming overly concerned. Yet the first thing I had to do back in the London newsroom was fill out a hazard assessment form in case I had to climb a ladder. The health and safety movement is not new, you can date it back to the Factories Act of 1833. But of late it's been gathering momentum, to the point where some say it's hampering our lives as well as protecting them. You used to be able to guarantee that Bonfire Night would go with a bang, but no longer. Sainsbury’s has banned the sale of fireworks. Others will follow, citing human injuries and animal fright. Footballers could soon be stopped from heading the ball, Scotland's in the lead, after a report suggested it might make them more prone to dementia. Oxford University Students’ Union has voted to stop applause at its meetings. Clapping can make people nervous, they say. It's easy to scoff, to say health and safety has gone too far. But this is also the week the preliminary report on the Grenfell disaster has been published, which some see as a powerful argument for saying it's not gone far enough...
‘[I’m] worried about authoritarians increasing the range of things that they tell us that we shouldn't be doing. And I'm concerned that young people who are forbidden from taking risks may turn up to lack the moral fiber that they need for life and that society needs them to have too’...
[On nudging] ‘What's interesting also is you look at public sentiment too, which I know is not the highest measure, you might say of morality but it's not a bad place to say, well, you get overwhelming support not only for changing the default on pensions amongst the people who opt in, but amongst the large majority of people who opt out. 75% still say I'm glad you set the default that way around, right.’"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of Voting - "Old tribal loyalties seem to be breaking down. When I first voted in the 60s, more than 80% strongly identified with a political party. Only half the voters in the last three elections voted the same way each time. A moral question here: is that good or bad? What is better, to vote for ideas or outcomes out of ideological fealty or utilitarian consequence? People are being urged to vote tactically, not so much for who we want, but against who we don't. Even some MPs are saying we should vote for their party's opponents. Is that right? When we're alone in the booth? Is it okay to vote for self interest? Or should we have the wider interests of society at heart? And why should we vote at all if we despise the lot of them? Is abstaining a moral position? After all, if you continue to vote for the lesser of two evils, things should get better, shouldn’t they? Or at least not as worse as they might have done"

BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, The Morality of Genetics - "‘There's a philosophical thing called the expressivist objection to reproductive technologies, which is the view that if you make the decision to have children without certain characteristics, then you're somehow impugning or expressing a pejorative view of existing people who do have those characteristics. And I do not agree with that philosophical position, I do not think that one follows ineluctably from the other.’… ‘The parent could be consenting to the treatment, but the offspring hasn't consented, and nor have future generations that are affected by the genetic change. Do you agree with that?’...
‘None of us consented to be born, to be ourselves in the circumstances we were. To me it's a bit of a nonsense to expect or worry about the absence of consent from an as yet non existent person.’...
… ‘Private education, the ability of wealthy people to choose to buy an advantage for their child in the real world, I could see that being applied to the economics of genetics in the future. That you could have richer people choosing to give their children advantages. And that's going to shape society, isn't it?’
‘Well, any new technology is liable, especially medical technology, is liable to be taken up by the better off in the first instance. I mean, that's the fault of you know, general inequality, not the particular medical technique. But the truth is, is that in genome editing, especially novel forms of genome editing, it's much more important to do things well than to do them first. And rich people who are going to avail themselves of sort of, early versions of it, they may not actually be getting what they think they are.’"

Study shows how different types of college dormitories can affect grades - "some parents believe that apartment-style living spaces -- as opposed to the more traditional rooms lined down a single corridor -- will benefit their children. But many students find the apartments make them lonely, despite giving them more privacy and space... The black first-year students who lived in the corridor-style dormitories -- those with more opportunities to socialize among similar peers -- ended up having higher GPAs than those who were housed in the apartments, with an average 2.3 GPA compared to a 1.9.  The differences were less pronounced among white students, but those who lived in the traditional residence halls had higher GPAs -- an average 2.9 versus 2.8 for the apartment dwellers."

zoë on Twitter - "A 5-year-old girl in Vista sold hot cocoa and cookies to pay the lunch debt of 123 students"
"What is more heartwarming than a story about child labor helping 5 year olds pay off debt"

miss-andrie: I’m sure I’d feel the same way if I... - I Will Eat Your English - "Reminder that acne doesn't make you ugly. a heart full of hate does."
"I’m sure I’d feel the same way if I was a skinny white girl with blue eyes and blonde hair"
"this girl posted a picture featuring her cystic acne uncovered, something that’s extremely stigmatized, in order to make a statement and spread positivity.that’s it. that’s all she did.she didn’t say she was the face of people with acne or act like she has it harder than other people. she just shared a feature that i’m sure she’s been shamed for and has struggled to love.she’s literally 17-years-old and you’re 27. stop being a dick to kids when they haven’t done anything wrong."
If you're an anti-racist, everything a white person does is wrong

Why they Put Potatoes on Frederick the Great’s Grave - "Frederick Wilhelm, the Soldier King. He loved military parades and drills, and even tried to breed his own special regiment of tall soldiers called the Potsdam Giants (which also sounds like a terrific baseball team). He was so enthusiastic about breeding his own regiment of super-tall Europeans that he indicated to talent scouts that he was okay with kidnapping reluctant but tall men. When he was ill or particularly depressed he would order a couple hundred servicemen to parade through his bedroom until he felt better. By the time of his death one of every nine Prussian men were in the army, not including 40,000 mercenaries.In addition to a militaristic bent, Frederick Wilhelm also aimed to inject a decent work ethic into Prussia. He used to wander around Berlin with a cane beating people he thought were acting lazy. He would deliver his rallying cry, “Prussia needs you– now!” along with a sharp whack to the head. Then lecture the aggrieved about how they ought to be knitting, or that young men should be marching or taking guns apart and putting them back together instead of sitting around playing cards. If a minister spent more than an hour preaching on Sunday it was considered excessive and the preacher was fined. On one occasion a peasant saw him and ran the opposite direction, so Frederick Wilhelm chased him down and asked why he had run away. When the man replied he was afraid of the king, Frederick Wilhelm shouted “You should love me!” and proceeded to beat him senseless with a cane.On top of his belief that the whole of Prussia should be in a constant state of workaholism, Frederick Wilhelm was immensely frugal to the point of selling the royal yacht and firing all of his court musicians. Sometimes, if he thought a woman was dressed too extravagantly on the street, he would rip off her clothing. For kicks he wrote a manual for literally every single civil servant in Prussia, detailing what their exact duties were. Fun guy.He was also a terrific dad. While “the soldier king” never actually declared war on anyone (far too expensive), he wanted Prussia to be in a constant state of ready-to-fight. And so he groomed his son, Frederick, to grow up as a great military strategist... Each day young Prince Frederick was awoken by the sound of a cannon going off outside of his window. At the age of six the king gave him his own regiment of children to drill and order around... Schloss Sanssouci, was Frederick’s Summer Palace and ultimately the site of his burial. Frederick had never been particularly fond of his wife, and so instead elected to be buried alongside his trusty greyhounds, which he usually named after the King of France’s mistresses in order to anger the man."

Frederick the Great, potatoes and the art of rebranding - "Frederick II of Prussia (also known as Frederick the Great) was looking for ways to feed his nation and lower the price of bread. He proposed the potato as a suitable new addition to the nation’s diet.But peasants resisted growing it. They said that potatoes looked dirty and had no taste.So King Frederick decided to rebrand it as a royal vegetable, planted a royal field with potato plants and ordered his guards to protect them.Now here’s the real kicker — the guards were instructed to pretend not to notice in case local peasants tried to steal from the King’s garden.Before long, peasants started stealing these “royal potatoes” and growing them in secret. And boom, suddenly everyone was eating potatoes."

Slavoj Žižek: Human sexuality is innately perverse - "Many politically correct feminists aggressively dismiss Freud and psychoanalysis in general as outdated. I myself was recently attacked in Austria as an old white man who hasn’t read a book for 30 years. What they are effectively doing is repressing Freud’s basic insight, that of a split or divided subject and of the unconscious – the fact that people in general don’t know what they want and don’t want what they desire... sex “in itself” is not a domain of joyful pleasures distorted from outside by relations of domination and violence, the sadomasochist component is constitutive of it... human sexuality is in itself perverted, exposed to sadomasochist reversals and, specifically, to the mixture of reality and fantasy. Even when I am alone with my partner, my (sexual) interaction with him / her is inextricably intertwined with my fantasies, i.e., every sexual interaction is potentially structured like “masturbation with a real partner,” I use the flesh and body of my partner as a prop to enact my fantasies. We cannot reduce this gap between the bodily reality of my partner and the universe of fantasies to a distortion opened up by patriarchy and social domination or exploitation – the gap is here from the very beginning... as part of the sexual intercourse, one partner asks the other to go on talking, usually narrating something “dirty” – even when you hold in your hands the “thing itself” (the beloved partner’s naked body), this presence has to be supplemented by verbal fantasising... In December 2916, upon learning of the sudden death of Carrie Fischer, Steve Martin tweeted: “When I was a young man, Carrie Fisher was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. She turned out to be witty and bright as well.” There was an immediate backlash – Martin was accused of “objectivising” Fischer, of focusing on her physicality instead of her talents or her impact – one user on Twitter replied: “I think she apprised to be something higher than just being pretty. How do you want to be remembered?” So Martin deleted his tweet. The accusation seems to me ridiculous since Martin clearly locates his fascination with Fischer’s beauty into first encounters, and then immediately moves in “witty and bright” – the whole point of his tweet is that she was MORE than just beautiful. However, more important is that in our (and in all) societies there are historically-specific prevalent notions of beauty, and that is a woman (or a man!) outstandingly fits these criteria, s/he is noted as beautiful or (which is not always the same, of course) sexually attractive.To prohibit talking about this, noticing it, means suspending not just “objectivisation” but sexuality as such. The sad trauma of those who are “ugly” and find it difficult to get attractive sexual partners is thus not only not resolved but just ignored and in this way continues its subterranean work, leading to possible explosions of envy, frustration, etc. Incels are here much more honest: they openly admit their ugliness and try to enact it playfully as a positive feature."