Cancel Culture is Girl Culture - by Louise Perry - "Differences between male and female desire for sexual variety, for example (also known as sociosexuality), could be represented as overlapping bell curves. Women with an unrestricted sociosexual orientation exist, but they are rare. To run with the comparison with male and female height, someone very sexually adventurous like Aella should be thought of as the equivalent of a 6 foot woman. When I spoke about this sociosexuality difference between the sexes at a literary festival a couple of years ago, a woman in the audience reprimanded me during the Q&A. What she objected to, specifically, was my use of the word “abnormal” to describe people at the tails. It was “unkind”, she said, to use that kind of language. I pointed out that, since I was talking about a normally distributed trait, the word “abnormal” was the correct technical choice. Was there some synonym that she would prefer? Outlier, unusual, anomalous? None of these were acceptable, she said, since they all served to make some people feel “excluded.” So I sat there onstage, condemned as unkind for expressing a statistical truth. In a sense, I was the abnormal person in that interaction – that is, unusual for a woman. When it comes to most of the major psychological sex differences, I am typical of my sex. I am more agreeable, risk averse, and neurotic than the average man, and I also have a restricted sociosexual orientation (or, colloquially, I like being monogamous and vanilla). I’m generally more interested in people than in things. I regard spending time with my children as more important than my career, and have turned down a lot of professional opportunities as a result (one of the causes of the gender pay gap). I cry easily, particularly in response to the suffering of vulnerable people and animals. I enjoy sewing, interior design magazines, and cooking. I have no interest in watching sports. But on one crucial point, I am abnormal. When behavioural scientist Cory Clark appeared on my podcast earlier this year, she spoke of the tendency for women to prioritise being kind over being truthful – a tendency that I don’t share. A tendency that I regard, in fact, as very bad and very stupid, which apparently makes me unusual for a woman."
WARMINGTON: Naming stadium after Rob Ford a catalyst to stop cancel culture - "No politician can be judged by one moment or one speech or decision. Ford was a man of the people. He put money back in their pockets and brought some commonsense spending acumen to City Hall. All the other leaders who have had their statues taken down and names struck from history also did great things for Canadians. Eradicating them is not the answer. How they are handling the Ford stadium renaming is the answer. Rob felt this way and was supportive of renaming Toronto’s ferry dock after former federal NDP leader and councillor Jack Layton, whom he may have disagreed with politically but respected."
Sean Penn, Conan O’Brien Denounce Cancel Culture, Calling It ‘Soviet’ - "“Empathy is a very important word and also forgiveness,” said O’Brien. “We found that someone did something in 1979 that is now not appropriate. They’re dead to us.” O’Brien went on to describe cancel culture as “very Soviet,” saying, “People can also be forgiven. If they even need forgiving. What happened to that?” Penn agreed with O’Brien, calling the practice “ludicrous.” In illustration, Penn brought up Alexi McCammond, editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue who was fired after only a few weeks on the job for anti-Asian comments she tweeted as a teenager. “When we’re destroying careers like that, what are we really achieving? What are we doing?” the Oscar-winning star of films like “I Am Sam” and “Mystic River” wondered. The two men then turned to how the trend is impacting their particular genres of show business with Penn pointing out that he would no longer be considered for a part like groundbreaking gay activist Harvey Milk because he’s straight... He then warned that the Left has pushed the cause of “representation” too far. “When you have a period of evolution that certainly has an opportunity for people who have had less opportunities to move forward. That has to be supported, and yet in this pendulum swing society that we’re in, you wonder at some point if only Danish Princes can play Hamlet. It is, I believe, too restrictive. People are looking for gotcha moments and to criticize.” O’Brien likened Penn’s experience to the current tendency among late-night talk show hosts to make comedy political—a trend he has pointedly resisted because, he said, it can lead to “losing your way” when it comes to being funny"
Stephen Kershnar and the Importance of Unaskable Questions - "Who knew that philosophy—the domain of dusty libraries and fading leather armchairs—could still be this controversial?... So, what was the cause of the controversy? During the podcast, Kershnar had asked us to consider that not every case of adult-child sex ought to be morally impermissible. Contrary to almost every vitriolic criticism, he did not argue that all cases of adult-child sex ought to be permissible—just that there may be some cases that are. He did not deny or trivialize the suffering of victims of child rape (which he maintains is unequivocally wrong), and he certainly did not encourage or endorse paedophilia, nor any other action that may harm children. Since he began publishing his thoughts on this topic in 2001, he has argued that the case for the criminalization of adult-child sex is plausible (although he discusses the problems with this policy on our podcast). He has repeatedly and unambiguously stated that he is not a paedophile, and that he personally finds adult-child sex disgusting. Nevertheless, Kershnar believes that one of the tasks of an ethicist is to scrutinize the moral justifications for societal taboos. It is insufficient to merely assert that a kind of behavior is wrong—we ought to try to understand why it is wrong. This question is particularly important with respect to the most incendiary topics since the social enforcement of taboos means that such questions are seldom asked. He asks them precisely to challenge assumptions that are deeply held but rarely challenged. Why are we so certain that (for instance) adult-child sex is always wrong? Why exactly is it wrong? Is it wrong under any circumstances? And what harms are committed? During our podcast discussion and in his written work, Kershnar explores consent-based arguments and utilitarian accounts, and finds neither to be convincing justifications for a blanket moral prohibition of adult-child sex. Although Kershnar has suffered unwarranted—and possibly irreparable—damage to his career prospects and reputation, a number of prominent philosophers and academics came to his defense. Highly respected nonpartisan groups such as FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and the Academic Freedom Alliance, and influential philosophy bloggers, including Brian Leiter at Leiter Reports and Justin Weinberg at the Daily Nous, vehemently defended Kershnar’s First-Amendment and academic-freedom-related rights. On February 4th, FIRE published the text of a letter it had sent to SUNY Fredonia president, Stephen Kolison, protesting the university’s treatment of its own professor. It was signed by many of the world’s leading writers and academics—including Jeff McMahan, Paul Bloom, Peter Singer, Nadine Strossen, Eugene Volokh, and Keith Whittington. The arguments of these supporters, along with those of his attorney, Barry Covert, offer a stalwart defense of Kershnar and have provided vital resistance to his cancellation. As the hosts of Brain in a Vat, we regularly invite guests to defend positions with which we disagree, just as we disagree with Kershnar’s. The entire point of this kind of philosophical discussion is to explore disagreement and the robustness of reasoning we take for granted. But an increasingly disturbing trend in universities generally, and philosophy departments specifically, demands the vilification of offensive views and dissenting voices to ensure that no such discussion or debate can be allowed to take place at all. Academic freedom is obviously valuable when it is exercised to protect discussion of questions about which disagreement is generally tolerated. But it is particularly important to protect discussion of topics that disturb us, and which ask us to question our most fundamental moral axioms. Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, argues that academic freedom requires faculty and students to be able to engage in intellectual debate, on or off campus, without fear of censorship or retaliation. They must have the right to challenge views, but not to penalize anyone for holding them. Faculty must have substantial latitude in deciding how to teach their own courses, and to research topics of their choice. The political, religious, or philosophical beliefs of politicians, administrators, and members of the public must not be imposed on students or scholars. There are many reasons why academic freedom is so valuable, but the following four are among the most important:
1. Truth
2. Democracy
3. Autonomy
4. Transparency...
Defending freedom of expression necessarily requires the toleration of views that many reasonable people find distasteful, but it does not require a defense of the views themselves or their value—the free expression of opinion is important, precisely so that the value of the opinions expressed can be debated and determined"
Many things considered true or uncontroversial today were once taboo topics
Judge aims to kick-start talks between Fredonia, professor - "SUNY Fredonia remains in a stalemate with the philosophy professor administrators banned from campus two years ago following his comments about whether adult-child sex is always wrong."
It's interesting that the response to fears of violence is not to penalise the violent, but those that the violent hate
Americans Are Self-Censoring at Record Rates - "In the 1950s, many social scientists worried that efforts by Joe McCarthy and his allies to root out left-wingers were creating a “silent generation” of Americans who were afraid to share their political opinions in public. To test whether or not this was really the case, Samuel Stouffer, a Professor of Sociology at Harvard, decided to conduct an innovative public opinion survey. “Do you or don't you feel as free to speak your mind as you used to?” he asked a representative sample of Americans. Back in 1954, the answer Stouffer got was surprisingly reassuring. Only about one in eight Americans at that time felt scared to speak their minds. As McCarthy’s influence on the country waned, there was little evidence that he had managed to manufacture a voiceless generation. But since the 1950s, answers to that same question have become a lot more worrying. The last time the question was asked, the percentage of Americans who fear speaking their mind had grown by threefold. At its high point in 2015, nearly half of all Americans reported that they do not feel free to express their opinions... Three of the clearest findings from our research are negative in nature. First, one might suspect that many people are afraid to speak out because they fear the coercive force of the government. But the data suggest that this is not the case... Second, there is no clear partisan pattern. The percentage of Democrats who are worried about speaking their mind is just about identical to the percentage of Republicans who self-censor: 39 and 40 percent, respectively. Finally, there is no clear relationship between the intensity of people’s views and their tendency to self-censor. Not only are those with right-wing views as likely to self-censor as those with left-wing views; moderates are just as likely to self-censor as those who fall on either end of the ideological spectrum. So what does predict who is reluctant to speak up? The answer is that Americans are more likely to self-censor the more urban and educated they are. In a surprising reversal of the usual trends of political participation, in which citizens who have more resources feel more empowered to take an active role in civic life, it is the urbanites and the highly educated who are most afraid to speak their mind... Far from becoming more comfortable with how to express their views as they become more educated, Americans who go to college appear to learn that they should shut up if they disagree with their peers... Decades ago, Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann wrote about what she called the “Spiral of Silence.” If they dare to speak up, those holding minority viewpoints get rebuffed... The spiral of silence need not be instigated by an oppressive government determined to quash dissent. Rather, it can arise spontaneously when the social norms governing interpersonal interactions provide insufficient support for those who are in the minority—either in the country as a whole, or in some local context—to feel comfortable expressing their views. That is why high levels of self-censorship should be treated as an ominous warning sign. They signal the development of a culture of orthodoxy that is animated by a false sense of certainty about what is true and what is false—and a proud intolerance of those who might dare to voice an opinion that conflicts with the mainstream."
Left wingers are afraid of the circular firing squad of the left too
Weird. The left keep claiming higher education is good because it promotes an engaged citizenry
Meme - Trevor Conner: "I've been tempted to go through all the laugh reacts to find anyone who has their workplaces public and make a few calls"
Why left wingers always mock those who don't have their faces on their profiles or use their real names - because they can't try to get them fired
Thread by @XVanFleet on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Real life struggle session of General Peng Dehuai, one of the 10 CCP marshals and chief commander of the Chinese army in Korean War. What was his crime? He challenged Mao’s Great Leap Forward policy (1958-1961) which killed up to 50 million peasants. Did the Red Guards who struggled against Peng know about the fact and history? Nope!! They were never taught the real history just like today’s American students. All they were told that Peng was a counter-revolutionary and “orange man bad”. That’s enough to trigger their deepest hatred for him! Gen Peng had to endure more than 100 struggle sessions like this one in the video and his ribs were broken from beatings. The man next to Peng was Zhang Wentian. His crime was that he agreed with Peng. All the Red Guards were discarded after their usefulness was no more. Some were killed by the military and the rest sent to labor camps to be re-educated through physical labor to become “real” Communists! That the cycle of the revolution!!"
The American Soviet Mentality - "Mehdi Hasan, a columnist with the Intercept, opined to his 880,000 Twitter followers that it would be strange if Weiss retained her job now that Bennet had been removed. He suggested that her thread had “mocked” her nonwhite colleagues. (It did not.) In a follow-up tweet Hasan went further, suggesting that to defend Weiss would make one a bad anti-racist—a threat based on a deeply manipulated interpretation of Weiss’ post, yet powerful enough to stop his followers from making the mistake. All of us who came out of the Soviet system bear scars of the practice of unanimous condemnation, whether we ourselves had been targets or participants in it or not. It is partly why Soviet immigrants are often so averse to any expressions of collectivism: We have seen its ugliest expressions in our own lives and our friends’ and families’ lives. It is impossible to read the chastising remarks of Soviet writers, for whom Pasternak had been a friend and a mentor, without a sense of deep shame. Shame over the perfidy and lack of decency on display. Shame at the misrepresentations and perversions of truth. Shame at the virtue signaling and the closing of rank. Shame over the momentary and, we now know, fleeting triumph of mediocrity over talent. It is also impossible to read them without the nagging question: How would I have behaved in their shoes? Would I, too, have succumbed to the pressure? Would I, too, have betrayed, condemned, cast a stone? I used to feel grateful that we had left the USSR before Soviet life had put me to that test. How strange and devastating to realize that these moral tests are now before us again in America. In a collectivist culture, one hoped-for result of group condemnations is control—both over the target of abuse and the broader society. When sufficiently broad levels of society realize that the price of nonconformity is being publicly humiliated, expelled from the community of “people of goodwill” (another Soviet cliché) and cut off from sources of income, the powers that be need to work less hard to enforce the rules. But while the policy in the USSR was by and large set by the authorities, it would be too simplistic to imagine that those below had no choices, and didn’t often join in these rituals gladly, whether to obtain some real or imagined benefit for themselves, or to salve internal psychic wounds, or to take pleasure in the exercise of cruelty toward a person who had been declared to be a legitimate target of the collective. According to Olga Ivinskaya, who was Pasternak’s lover and companion during those years, the party brass, headed by Nikita Khrushchev, was only partly to blame for the nonpublication of Doctor Zhivago. The literary establishment played an important role as well... You could join in condemning a neighbor at your cramped communal flat, calculating that once she was gone, you could add some precious extra square meters to your living space. And yet even among this dismal landscape, there were those who refused to join in this ugly rite. A few writers, for example, refused to participate in demonizing Pasternak. And is it karma or just a coincidence that most of these people—many of them dissidents, who were outside the literary establishment—remain beloved among Russian readers today, while the writings of the insiders, ones who betrayed and condemned, have been forgotten?... Those who join in the hounding face their own hazards. The more loyalty you pledge to a group that expects you to participate in rituals of collective demonization, the more it will ask of you and the more you, too, will feel controlled. How much of your own autonomy as a thinking, feeling person are you willing to sacrifice to the collective? What inner compromises are you willing to make for the sake of being part of the group? Which personal relationships are you willing to give up?"
The Real Reason Cancel Culture Is So Contentious - The Atlantic - "consider a 2021 Mother Jones article with the headline “Roxane Gay Says Cancel Culture Does Not Exist.” Indeed, that’s precisely what Gay, a best-selling feminist author, tells her interviewer: Cancel culture, she says, “is this boogeyman that people have come up with to explain away bad behavior and when their faves experience consequences. I like to think of it as consequence culture, where when you make a mistake—and we all do, by the way—there should be consequences.” Yet in the next breath, Gay seems to acknowledge that punishments are not being meted out fairly: “The problem is that we haven’t figured out what consequences should be,” she says. “So it’s all or nothing. Either there are no consequences, or people lose their jobs, or other sort of sweeping grand gestures that don’t actually solve the problem at hand.”... The writer Wesley Yang has published videos, tweets, and essays fleshing out his theory that “cancel culture” is how activists pursue “the politicization of everyday life, the rule of didacticism in art, and the installation through coercive means of a dysfunctional new moral system by a tiny and unaccountable elite.” Have any of the critics who dismiss cancel-culture concerns made a commensurate attempt to flesh out which punitive social norms are desirable, to define “accountability,” or to specify when it is warranted? Americans will never achieve consensus about exactly which behaviors are beyond the pale—or what should happen to those who violate accepted norms. But even contested yet clearly understood rules (like the comedian George Carlin’s famous seven words you couldn’t say on TV) are better, if adopted provisionally by institutions or consistently adhered to in public discourse, than an alternative in which taboo lines are so murky that all manner of adjacent speech is chilled and many people refrain from speaking publicly at all for fear of unwittingly transgressing. In some cases, the standards are kept vague because more specific ones would be indefensible. If you want to know which faction is abusing its relative power in a given sphere of society, ask who sees no problem with opaque taboos versus who is worried that they will unduly stifle speech."
Words That Kill - "in the 1980s and ’90s didn’t conservative Christians pioneer the concept of advertiser boycotts? Yes they did, and my first L.A. Times op-ed (1995) was about just that, as I slammed the religious right for initiating boycotts based on the perceived moral failings of TV shows. I criticized that kind of thing back when some of you were still riding your tricycles. So when I explain the difference between old-timey advertiser boycotts and present-day cancel culture, know that this has been my beat for a while... The 1980s/90s boycotts failed because there was no potential for crossover. If your campaign has a narrow focus (“I raised my boy to go ‘praise Jesus’ but now because of Metallica he goes ‘attaboy Beelzebub’”), and if you can’t widen your appeal, your movement will stall. The boycotts of old tanked because there was no “hook” with which to involve those who didn’t share the belief system of the boycotters. “Cancel culture” is different in that regard. Cancel culture revolves around the concept of “killing words.”... In January 2006, two things happened in the same week: There was a government-sponsored antigay pogrom in Iran, and Gene Shalit gave a negative review to Brokeback Mountain. Guess which one the bullies of GLAAD used for an outrage crusade? The Iran killings went unmentioned, but Shalit was viciously attacked as a “homophobe” and “defamatory bigot.” Just because he reviewed a movie (which was his job). Shalit’s son shot back, writing an open letter to the leaders of GLAAD basically saying, “Why are you doing this? You know my dad’s the exact opposite of a ‘homophobe.’” But for Gene Shalit, the psychological distress of being targeted as a gay-hater was too much. He caved, issuing a tearful apology and promising to improve as a human being. That the bullies broke a good man is clear, but the important question is, why did they target a good man? Well duh, because they knew he’d break. The Iranian mullahs wouldn’t have caved. When it comes to gays, they have no conscience or empathy. You can’t crack them, so you don’t try. Instead, you go after the good folks, because good folks don’t want to be tarred as haters. Or murderers... Dave Weigel, reporter for The Washington Post... got Shalited by the tranny mob. The melee began when Weigel foolishly thought he could analyze politics (that this is his job is no more protection for him than it was for Shalit)... Weigel replied with a link to a Gallup poll showing that a clear majority of Americans (regardless of gender or age) believe that “transgender” athletes should play on the team of their birth gender, not their “chosen” gender... Weigel was analyzing political strategies (again, that’s his job). But the damage was done. The tweet went viral, with every hate-filled shemale on Twitter slamming Weigel for “transphobia.” The initial onslaught consisted mainly of “victimized” trans folk telling Weigel to “fuck off” and kill himself (lots of “go kill yourself” tweets). But soon the angle switched to “you’re killing people,” because Weigel’s words were either getting trans kids killed or compelling them to kill themselves... Wow…not just murder but genocide? Sieg Weigel! See the difference between 1980s/90s boycotts and today’s cancel culture? Thirty years ago, the boycotts were about spirits, souls, and saviors. Nonbelievers had no reason to play along. Today’s cancelers don’t ask you to accept their ideology; they’re telling you that your words are murdering those who do. You don’t have to accept the premise that men who think they’re women are women in order to believe that men who live by that pseudoscience might commit suicide if you question their dogma. I find Hinduism laughable. Now, if you tell me “mock Hinduism and Ganesha will weep,” I’ll joke away. But tell me “mock Hinduism and a child will immolate himself,” I might refrain. When Dave Chappelle was mobbed by protesters at his alma mater last year, the cancelers chanted, “Your comedy kills.” Once you popularize the notion that words—from a comedy routine to simple political analysis—“literally murder,” the debate moves beyond free speech. Think of it like this: If you ask the average gun owner, “Do you believe in the right to bear arms?” they’ll say yes. But if you ask, “Do you believe in the right to shoot a child?” of course they’ll say no. That’s how the American left regards speech. They’re all for the First Amendment, sure. You have a right to speak. But you have no right to murder with your words. The popularization of the notion of “killing words” has changed the game, because even those who, on principle, reject censorship will almost always cave when faced with a “murder by words” charge... the young biological (a.k.a. actual) women robbed of their athletic careers by men in wigs have lives too. Weigel simply acknowledged a political reality: Many Americans worry that those girls’ lives are not being respected as much as the lives of the trans athletes. To shut down that debate is to say that the lives of those young women are unworthy of discussion. They don’t matter. Over the past 15 years there’s been a correlation between a dramatic rise in teen girl suicide (the male/female teen suicide gap is almost closed for the first time ever) and schools forcing “trans acceptance” on kids... correlation ain’t causation, we all know that. But journalists with reputations and jobs to preserve are unlikely to study the question objectively; unbiased examination of any issue can’t occur if one potential conclusion will lead to firing, unhirability, social media bans, and death threats... you say words kill? I say silence kills. You say Dave Weigel’s tweet caused a tranny to slit his wrists. Can you prove it? If I were to say that a teen girl committed suicide because she was told to shut up and stay silent after a tranny flashed his junk at her in the locker room, my claim would have as much validity as yours. Stalemate. It’s all theoretical. Murderous speech, or murderous silence. Which is true? Well, only one side doesn’t want to talk about it. Make of that what you will."
A boycott is something one or one's own group does. Cancelling is trying to force other people's hands
Reality has a known transphobic bias
The TRA cope will be that TERFs deserve to kill themselves because they are "transphobic" and don't want to be flashed by MTFs - harm claims can only be weaponised in one direction
Meme - @beta.co_: "So we shouldn't have popular criticism because some people might be fired?"
And Lo, He Is On God @PandasAndVidya: ""Popular criticism" for you people means literally speaking to their manager, Karen. If it was just criticism, we wouldn't be having this wonderful discussion. But it isn't JUST criticism, is it. Karen.
@beta_co_: "So all criticism must end then, because an employer could overreact and fire someone for a trivial reason?"
And Lo, He Is On God @PandasAndVidya: ""it's just criticism" they cry, as they call the employer. "it's just criticism;" they cry, as they call the school. "it's just criticism," they cry, as they contact the domain registrar. "it's just criticism" they cry, as they post the home address. "it's just criticism," they insist, as they contact the bank. "it's just criticism," they insist, as they contact the payment processor. "it's just criticism," they insist, as they gather outside the house. "it's just criticism;" they insist, as they gather the kindling. "it's just criticism," they shout, as they swarm the car. "It's just criticism," they shout, as one fires into the passengers. "it's just criticism,* they shout, as they shatter the windows. "It's just criticism;" they shout, as they drag them out."
How to fight back against 'cancel culture' | The Spectator - "When Evergreen State College turned hooligan in 2017, the shock was not that American universities contained students unsuited to any education outside a correctional facility. Nor, frankly, was it a surprise that the college president George Bridges was so supine that he ended up begging the student protesters to allow him to go to the bathroom to pee (‘Hold it’ was the advice given by one hoodlum). What was surprising was that even when the professor who had inadvertently caused the breakdown (leftwing, Bernie-supporting, lifetime Democrat Bret Weinstein) was physically threatened, repeatedly defamed and finally chased off campus for good, not one of his longstanding colleagues took any public stance in his defence. Solidarity — perhaps the noblest aspiration of the political left — was totally absent. And these academics and administrators were not living in 1930s Moscow, but in 21st-century Washington State. In case after case it has been the same. The problem is not that the sacrificial victim is selected. The problem is that the people who destroy his reputation are permitted to do so by the complicity, silence and slinking away of everybody else. So here is an idea. How about we start to encourage the return of what Susan Sontag once (unusually memorably) called ‘a little civic fortitude’? That we encourage people to stand up in defence of people who are being defamed? It has been suggested before. Last year after Jordan Peterson and the late Roger Scruton suffered attempted bulldozings in quick succession, Niall Ferguson wrote in the Sunday Times that perhaps public intellectuals and academics in the West ought to develop some policy like Nato’s Article 5: that is, a ‘one for all, all for one’ policy. The only problem with which, as Ferguson conceded, is that it is not as clear as it is with Nato who is in and who is out. In the intellectual Nato, who is France and who is Ukraine? Who are the Baltic states and who is Georgia? So here is my own reduced solution. Simply stand up for your friends, colleagues or allies when you know that they are being lied about. It seems so simple and so obvious a thing to do, and yet it is a habit in exceptionally short supply today. When that semi-literate mob claimed Bret Weinstein was a racist, why did his and his wife’s colleagues not stand up and say, ‘Hang on a second. I’ve known these people for decades. You come for the Weinsteins, you come for me.’ Or even just, ‘I happen to know they are not racists, so take that back.’ When Nicholas Christakis was surrounded by a screaming mob of Yale students we could have expected that Yale would be so avaricious and weak that it wouldn’t expel each of those students that very evening. But why did Christakis’s colleagues not rise up that night en masse to say, ‘Excuse me, but however much money they are paying, students should not be allowed to threaten, insult and intimidate academics’? Why is it that in so many areas of public life, from the lecture hall to the comedy club, when the mini-mob comes, the adults just vacate the room?... fighting for something you love will always give you an advantage over someone fighting because of hate. There is a happy by-product of this, by the way: when you fight to defend your friends, you let them know something that you might otherwise forget to tell them."
