Here’s another, more insidious iteration of the complaint that campus leftists stifle free speech.
If this guy isnt being paid by Koch money somehow, I’d be very surprised. I suppose he could be just a useful idiot. At any rate, he does sound like a horrible teacher.
One student raised her hand, and we had a brief yet insightful interchange. I then scanned the screen looking for hands or other indications that other people wanted to contribute to the discussion. That’s when another student sat up straight in her chair, pulled her computer closer to her face and let me have it. “Yeah, I just gotta say I find this piece very dehumanizing and inappropriate,” she said angrily. “I find it extremely offensive.”
I listened patiently, nodded and said, “Wow,” “Thank you for your candor” and a few other things in an attempt to acknowledge her concerns. In that instant, however, my orientation toward her shifted. Whereas before I had regarded her as a fellow traveler on the road to greater understanding, I now saw her as a bomb that could detonate at any moment. When she didn’t respond further, I stole a glance at some of the other students, and they looked exactly as I felt: shocked. I mustered the presence of mind to ask if anyone else wanted to add anything. Clearly there was more to say, much more. But nobody said a word after that.
Okay dude, so why didnt YOU say more? Like, ask her why she said that. And then ask others to respond to her explanation. Or ask what hypothetical others would likely say in reponse. No one said you nor anyone else couldn’t say anything in response.
Free speech is that student not expressing her opinions is an interesting take.
Yes - not exploring her opinions is a failure of the teacher and was a lost opportunity for the exploration of ideas. Perhaps he might have learned something.
Yeah. It’s an infuriating take on the topic, and I’m surprised Inside Higher Ed fell for it.
Also very vague, as usual. I mean, just what was the offensive piece about? No description. How have these radical students shut down discussion of ideas? No explanation, just this one vague example.
So once again, the complaint is about a stifling atmosphere that scares off anyone with a dissenting opinion, caused by like, a sinister poltergeist or something, which is apparently infecting more and more people on campuses, causing them to what scowl? frown? at others, cowing them into quivering submission. It’s such bullshit, yet Inside Higher Ed follows The NY Times by publishing another faux-sincere complaint about it.
What does a student getting upset in class have to do with social justice again?
Like where is he even drawing a parallel here?
Students get upset sometimes. They probably touched on something painful and personal for that student. Maybe they were grieving. Who fucking knows but a single student being upset in class and this person not being able to deal doesn’t say shit about anyone but the teacher’s classroom management skills.
Then he tries to warp it into a hobby horse? What an ass.
He doesn’t exactly say, but the implication is that he and everyone else in class felt intimidated, like they would get in big trouble for expressing the slightest disagreement, let alone for further drawing her out. Because (supposedly) she’s one of a growing zombie mob whose brains have been taken over by “CSJ.” Critical Social Justice, cousin I guess to CRT.
Maybe he was also afraid that he’d get reprimanded for teaching a piece that advocates what…sex with children? The revival of slavery? Again, he doesn’t even say what the offending piece says.
He doesn’t even identify the piece so his readers can assess if it was actually offensive to them and such a response was the kind most people and even his peers would find offensive.
His position is that having an opinion that the work he presented can’t be called offensive is ridiculous. If he was teaching about the Protocols of the Elders of Zion that the work is offensive and students should be able to say so while studying that history is not stifling speech- it’s part of his job to explore those reactions to the material.
Especially so when - as he acknowledges- “ but on that day, the COVID infection rate was well over 15 percent”. His students are going through the greatest pandemic in the last century- and that he’s unable to provide an environment where difficult discussion can occur is his failure- not hers.
Explore that! What made the student feel that way and why?
I’ve started including a section on the post-Civil Rights white supremacy movement, as a direct response to the Jan. 6th insurrection… but since I’m teaching mostly kids of color, I let them know they can opt out of that week’s materials and lectures, and have an alternative assignment. I have them watch a video on the Turner Diaries, which is pretty upsetting material (though the person reviewing the book does a great job breaking it down). It matters to cover difficult aspects of history, but the kids need to know that they can opt out of it, too. I don’t know what their lives have been like, or if they’ve personally had some experience with this kind of thing, so letting them out of it seems best to me. But for people willing to engage with it, I think it’s important to see the roots of Trumpism (or one of the roots, at least).
I skimmed the article and I’m not sure the author actually read Termination Shock. If they did, they went in to it with a serious bias.
This part is just wrong
One of the central premises of the novel is that, over the coming decades, wokeism has advanced to such an extent—in tandem with the increasing severity of climate change—that conducting scientific discourse in the public realm has become untenable.
The Greens are mentioned a few times, as opponents to doing major fuckery to the environment. But the biggest “evil” is definitely the ppl who refuse to move away from oil. Stephenson really hammers down on that. it is very clear the drastic measures taken to reduce global warming are only necessary due to oil interests blocking all the more reasonable approaches. The book didn’t strike me as terribly libertarian either.
ETA: also, I’m not sure if it’s an author’s fault when billionaires take his depictions of dystopian societies and say “hey, that nightmare is a great idea! Let’s do it!”
Having just finished this book, I can say that the articles author has misinterpreted the whole plot. The rich guy is going ahead and proving that you can do this big thing to help the climate. Then various governments get upset at him just doing it, and move to stop him. I think the billionaire part is that that guy had the resources to just build the thing, without dealing with the horrors of government bureaucracy.
Sounds like it reinforces the idea that billionaires know better than the rest of us? And that government bureaucracy is always bad? Is that the argument, you think, or no?
No, I don’t think the idea was that billionaires know best, just that getting something done is better than more proclamations and hand-wringing. One of the main characters is the queen of the Netherlands, and much is made of how well that country has prepared for changing water levels. In fact, the book makes it pretty clear that most of the world does not approve of the rich guy, and his assumptions.
It can be, but it can also make the problem worse, depending on what action is taken… I haven’t read the book yet, so I don’t know what angle he’s taking on this, but the idea that government can’t solve problems, and therefore we should depend on billionaires taking bold action in our best interest in very much a libertarian article of faith. It’s the secularized version of Calvinism, that wealth equals morality. The reality is that we do need to take bold action on climate change, and that we do need governments taking charge of that, because it’s our collective expertise that is making that up. They are not just pulling on our collective financial resources, but also on our collective knowledge base, too.
Okay, but does the book approve, is my question. You can have a character who is unpopular by his actions, but is still the “hero” if you see what I’m saying. Is it putting the rich guy in the right for taking action and condemning the “bumbling, incompetent democratically elected governments” for lack of action? If so, see above.
Like I said, I haven’t read the book, so I can’t say, I’m just looking to see how accurate the Baffler article is… What I have read of Stephenson, he leans a bit into the singular hero, great man of history vision to some extent.
Too true, and thanks to people believing in the “bold action” model in the past, now we have more real-world examples of the flaws and consequences of that approach:
Another lesson about this came from failures with education projects. Expert input and oversight are crucial in projects like this, but that’s not really the strong suit of people used to acquiring wealth through disruption and enforcing secrecy to maintain ownership or protect their sources of profit.
It’s the mindset that accumulation of wealth is what matters, and everything else is in the service of that, and that one who has accumulated vast wealth must be good at everything else… it’s just not the case. Sometimes bold action is required, but that action should be backed by an actual knowledge base rather than the hubris of wealth.
I don’t think the article is accurate. The climate emergency and the billionaires solution were more of a backdrop to the character exploration and development. The billionaire is def a secondary character. I may have misread, but the book seemed to be more of a cautionary tale-- this is where we end up if we, the entire world, do not pressure our governments to address climate change. All we are left with is very risky solutions. The perspective characters, including what there is for heros (Rufus/Red and Saskia, mainly) are conflicted about the project. The billionaire comes across as almost a caricature
