On “Chilling Effects” and the “Rowdiness” of Free Speech
“Whatever reasons there are that might justify the state saying that free speech is not being protected, the fact that some people felt intimidated by the permitted rowdy and contentious speech of others cannot be among them. Yet our supposed defenders of free speech continually resort to this cowardly line of argument, and ironically enough end up being the greatest enemies of free speech there are, given their support from powerful factions in the state, press, and even some upper administrations.”
That’s Liam Kofi Bright (LSE) writing at his blog, The Sooty Empiric.
His post was prompted by the decision of the UK government’s Office for Students (OfS) (whose “free speech czar” is philosopher Arif Ahmed), to fine the University of Sussex £585,000 after its investigation into how the university handled the case of philosopher Kathleen Stock, who resigned after students protested her views and called for her to be fired.
The Guardian reports:
The OfS criticism was directed at the university’s trans and non-binary equality policy statement, which required course materials to “positively represent trans people” and said “transphobic propaganda … will not be tolerated”. The regulator said it had “a chilling effect”, which could result in staff and students self-censoring.
“An example of this chilling effect materialising in practice is the experience of Prof Stock while at the university. Prof Stock said that she became more cautious in her expression of gender critical views as a result of the policy,” the OfS said.
“There were some views she did not feel able to express, and therefore teach, despite those views being lawful. Other staff and students may have felt similarly unable to express these, or other, lawful views, and not speak about or express lawful views.”
The full report of the OfS is here.
The policy (which you can read here) is largely about equal opportunity and treatment for trans students, and about the unacceptability of “abuse, harassment, or bullying” directed at trans people because they’re trans.
The focus on the policy seems a bit disingenuous.
As the university’s vice-chancellor, Sasha Roseneil, noted:
Universities must be able to have policies and expectations of behaviour that support respectful communication and enable us to manage cultural tensions on campus… Under this ruling, we believe that universities would not be permitted to expect their staff and students to treat each other with civility and respect.
And as readers will recall, it was the student protests and signs that were cited as the problem at the time; Stock herself lauded the university leadership when she decided to resign.
So what seems to have happened is that, using the fig leaf of a policy problem, the UK government is punishing a university for allowing protests of trans-exclusionary or “gender critical” views.
Here’s some more of Bright’s commentary:
Let me say what it is that bothers me about the UK’s current attitude to protecting campus free speech. What bothers me is we let “chilling effect” arguments constitute violations of our free speech, as per the Education Secretary quoted here. The same article quotes Dr. Ahmed, head of the Office for Students’ free speech wing, saying his group were “concerned that a chilling effect may have caused many more students and academics at the university to self-censor”. So it seems that the earlier cited fact that “[p]osters were put up on the campus calling for [Kathleen Stock] to be sacked, and students turned up with placards at an open day” is the sort of thing that prompted action here. And I think that is absurd. I think that leads to violations of free speech, like the one Sussex is suffering from!
Free speech protections only arise as an issue where there is controversy. If nobody felt particularly strongly on a matter the issue simply doesn’t arise. But if, say, someone publishes a paper saying “Black people are less intelligent than white people” then presumably black people are not going to like that. So maybe me and my buddies decide to express our unhappiness publicly with our (free!) speech, and stand in the campus quod shouting “fuck that guy”. Indeed we might even say that he should be fired, or at least never be employed. Well, this is all very heated, all very rowdy… but so far no one’s free speech rights are being infringed. You could make the case that if anyone calls for the person to be fired then they are clearly calling for a world with less free speech, but unless there is some serious reason to believe that us saying this will actually prompt action from the university so far it’s all just so much hot air. In fact, all this is what we should expect it to look like in a world with free speech protections! People have the freedom to say stuff that upsets others, and those who are upset have the right to make it clear how they feel about this and the person saying it. They may even be unreasonable in so doing. That’s what happens when you are angry! This is the sort of issue where free speech protections actually matter, and so far they are working as planned.
Chilling effect arguments allow this to get transmuted into a bad thing!
Because now suppose the 1st person claims they can’t publish their follow up paper (“Black people are ugly”) because they’re afraid of me and my buddies saying mean things about them. Sure, they weren’t actually fired, but us saying we thought they ought to be was very distressing. Since they don’t want to be distressed they don’t want to publish the paper since they know that will start a causal chain that ends up with them feeling distressed. Now, if that counts as a reason for state action to punish the university (unless the university takes proactive steps to silence us) then suddenly speech has become punishable! But it’s the protestors whose speech is suppressed, all in the name of protecting free speech! (And notice how the chilling-effect way of framing things inevitably favours those who are less likely to have people saying stuff about how much their group sucks. Restrictions on free speech are, ever, a tool to protect the antecedently powerful; they only ever can be.) The inevitable rowdiness of the world with free speech is taken as reason to suppress speech!
The lesson I take from this is: a genuine regime of free speech requires an attitude of learning to accept that people will be rowdy and mean and unreasonable and say you shouldn’t have a job and all sorts of things. Sometimes this will, genuinely, suck and be unreasonable. Free speech is better if we all display virtues of reasonableness and keeping a calm head – and we don’t always! (I initially included links to work illustrating the sort of unpleasant statements that get made re black people, but I eventually decided not to precisely because I didn’t trust readers not to go and harass the author(s).) I am not saying we should celebrate that people do this, only that our means of responding to it should not be to institutionally punish them.
Read the whole post here.
Related:
Students at Sussex Campaign to Get Philosopher Fired
Kathleen Stock Resigns from Sussex
Trans-Women and Philosophy: Learning from Recent Events
While Tables Burn: On the (Non) Existence of Trans People and the Failure of Philosophy
“When Tables Speak”: On the Existence of Trans Philosophy
On the Outraged, Oversensitive, Politically Correct Snowflakes
A reading of the OfS report suggests that Bright’s focus on the “rowdiness” of student protesters is misdirection and unfair to Arif Ahmed.
While the report [to which Justin admirably links above] notes that student protests were the initial cause of the investigation, the fines were for [a] “constraints on freedom of speech and academic freedom in the university’s governing documents, which had the effect of restricting the expression of lawful views” and [b] “a pattern of decisions taken at the university to adopt and/or revise policies without proper delegated authority.”
Justin characterizes the Sussex policy at issue in [a] as “largely about equal opportunity and treatment for trans students, and about the unacceptability of “abuse, harassment, or bullying” directed at trans people because they’re trans.” However the policy elements OfS claims were in violation of the law are more capacious, including:
“a. A requirement for ‘any materials within relevant courses and modules [to] positively represent trans people and trans lives’.
b. A statement that ‘the curriculum shall not rely on or reinforce stereotypical assumptions about trans people’.
c. A statement that ‘transphobic propaganda … will not be tolerated’.
d. A statement that ‘transphobic abuse, harassment or bullying (name-calling/derogatory jokes, unacceptable or unwanted behaviour, intrusive questions) are serious disciplinary offences for staff and students and will be dealt with under the appropriate University procedures.’”
There is admittedly some vagueness here, esp. in ‘a’ (I think), but in general these rules seem rather reasonable… whatever one’s view on a topic X, it seems that reinforcing stereotypes, spreading propaganda, harassing, bullying, etc. should be considered inappropriate.
Point d. is fine, but presumably redundant (are there not already policies against harassment and abuse?).
Principles a., b. and c. are ridiculous and dangerous infringements on free expression. A requirement to present an identified group positively is exactly what some American state legislatures are using to silence teaching about slavery (because telling the truth would portray Southern whites in a non-positive way). Similarly, a prohibition on reinforcing stereotypes could silence fair discussion of facts which happen to reinforce stereotypes. And a ban on “propaganda” introduces the notion that the administration can identify “propaganda”, distinguish it from other forms of discourse, and restrict it in ways that would be unacceptable when applied to non-propaganda forms of discourse.
Transphobia is a real danger that requires serious responses, but administrations can’t use that as an excuse to clumsily override their other institutional principles.
We’re reading things a bit differently, I suppose. (I don’t think redundancy is necessarily a bad thing, but that’s a minor point.)
I agree A is potentially problematic. It seemed fairly straightforward to me that the idea in B isn’t the possibility that discussing certain facts might inadvertently influence someone to accept a stereotype, but rather that it’s inappropriate to use stereotypes as evidence/support for claims made within an academic setting.
Re: C, I took the definition of propaganda at face value; as it involves attempts – based on inappropriate motives – to sway people’s beliefs/opinions in a specific direction, I see that as wrong-headed when it comes to academic settings. The goal should not be to subtly manipulate others into agreeing with my agenda, it should be to present the situation as fairly as possible for rational discussion. I was assuming that as a general principle.
I’ve always liked this “valence check” thing David Wallace does. Suppose, for example, somewhere in a blue state, anti-abortion activists wanted to protest vociferously outside of an abortion clinic.
For the sake of argument, assume that some people seeking access to abortion “felt intimidated by the permitted rowdy and contentious speech of others.” For many liberals, this would be a problem: the (pre-Dobbs) constitutional right to abortion shouldn’t tolerate “felt intimidation” at the clinics. Right? In fact, *Hill v. Colorado* (2000) seems to have said exactly that.
But then if you flip the fact pattern (e.g., restricting Gaza protesters, instead of abortion protesters), people’s opinions seem to flip as well (e.g., you *can* do the Gaza protest, but you *cannot* do the abortion protest). And it feels to me like they shouldn’t. Not in the sense that we could try to distinguish those two fact patterns–that’s not really the point–but in the sense that we view the “rowdiness” itself differently, based on what it attaches to.
the abstraction from the issues at hand in these imagined examples is disingenuous at best. murder, assault, and bombing are tactics that have been used rather extensively by certain extreme anti-abortion factions. by some accepted accounts, we’re talking about 11 murders, 200+ arsons, 500+ assaults. this is not “chilling,” it’s terrorism.
and of course, that really *is* the point isn’t it? passionate, even perhaps misguided college students & profs being immoderate and sometimes cruel is not of the same piece as organized terrorist violence. feeling “chilled” when people say you should be fired and knowing that you could get actually killed (as others have) for walking into the office of an abortion provider are not equivalent.
Unhelpful…at best. 😉
Seriously though, adding unnecessary toxicity just poisons the well, especially for anyone who found value in Fritz’s comment and might have otherwise found value in yours as well. More philosophy, less Twitter.
This ‘toxicity’ is, I think, an important and often disregarded aspect of discussing such controversial topics. It seems pretty clear from looking at a variety of posts/comments on DN related to gender issues, for instance, that even philosophers can’t escape from the heightened emotions that such discussions bring (this shouldn’t be a surprise). This suggests two things to me:
1) Philosophers should not assume that they are neutral, unbiased actors in such discussions. In fact, at times that very assumption may add to the toxicity of the situation. This is perhaps rather obvious, but still…
2) Accordingly, part of the frustration coming from those who oppose ‘team Stock’ is the sense that that team tends to attribute the toxicity primarily to those who are trying to ‘cancel them’ or ‘chill their speech’, when it seems fairly obvious – at least to trans allies – that there is also toxicity coming from ‘team Stock’, which that team tries to wave away with claims of neutrality (only making things worse).
In other words, to many trans allies there is the sense that the trans critics have been involved in the poisoning from the start but try to blame allies (who may or may not respond inappropriately) for adding to the poisoning, instead of admitting their own role in it. (This is not saying that allies have never been guilty of poisoning, just to be clear.)
Which, of course, is unhelpful… at best. 🙂
pointing out false equivalence isn’t toxicity
I agree. I was just referring to the quoted “is disingenuous at best” part.
Hill v Colorado does not say that. It just says that it’s okay for states to pass legislation according to which anti-abortion protesters aren’t allowed to get *within 8 feet* of people (who don’t want them to) directly outside of clinics. It does not suppress vociferous protest outside of clinics–it just says that it’s okay to make sure protestors stay out of arms’ reach (but well within voice’s reach) while vociferously protesting.
Just so I’ve got this straight:
Suppose that, back when belief in God was deemed to be a false and socially catastrophic doctrine, even among academics, a professor — call her Professor Brown — argues openly that God is best understood as a social fiction. She presents objections to the main arguments for theism. Several others at the university, and many religious activists from outside the university, are outraged and offended by this, so they not only protest against Professor Brown but engage in a campaign of harassment against her.
These people — who claim that Professor Brown’s ideas deny their existence (because they see themselves as essentially spirits, not bodies, and Brown is a materialist) — seek to get her fired from her academic position and to prevent her from receiving any academic awards or honors because they disagree with her views and find them socially odious. On these grounds, several hundred of her fellow academics sign petitions, trying to get her fired.
Then, the protestors put signs up all around the campus, attacking Professor Brown for daring to raise (say) the argument from evil, and demanding her immediate termination. They set off flash bombs near her and dog her movements when she walks across campus. They send her death threats. The police advise her that she will need a personal security detail if she wants to be able to go to work safely.
Finally, she is unwilling to handle the stress of it all, and she quits her job. The harassers who hounded her out of it celebrate. Others get the message. Her arguments are no longer taken up at the university.
Were her arguments any good? It is now difficult for any well-informed person with any intellectual integrity to say no, since they have not been given a fair hearing. Moreover, the message has presumably been got across very well: question the existence of God at university, and you can expect the same.
It seems clear to me that only a fool would have any confidence, in the wake of that, that atheism is a failed metaphysical position. That would be as asinine as attending a ‘trial’ at a corrupt law court where the defense attorney gets harassed to the point where he leaves the courtroom without making his argument because he reasonably fears for his own safety, after which everyone cheers and listens to the argument of the prosecutor, and then reaching a confident verdict that the defendant is guilty.
The reason why academic freedom is important is precisely to prevent inquiry from becoming corrupted. The participants in any academic discussion must be free to present their arguments without intimidation or fear of personal reprisal for holding views that are unpopular or even views that are deemed false or socially harmful.
By contrast, there is no right, under academic freedom, to harass or intimidate your interlocutors or try to get them fired because you don’t agree with what you have to say. Those who do such things, or who sign petitions calling upon people to be fired for holding ‘undesirable’ views, merely reveal themselves to be the enemies of academic freedom and everything the university stands for. It is they, and not their targets, who should be kicked out of university. This is not because they hold the wrong views — they could argue for those views if they wish to, within the dialectical norms of inquiry — but rather, because they show themselves to be unwilling to abide by the principles of fair inquiry that form the basis of the university’s legitimacy.
Similarly, people in a liberal democracy are free to vote as they wish to, and to argue on behalf of certain parties, candidates, and policies as they wish to. But if they intimidate and threaten you as you go to the voting booth, and put up posters trying to get people to destroy your life and reputation because they don’t like who you’ve said you’re going to vote for, they are not playing the game in a ‘rowdy’ way. In fact, they are not playing the game at all, but turning the table over and spilling the game pieces all over the floor.
Justin, I’m confused — did you mean at the start to say ‘non-belief in God’ was deemed… etc.etc.?
Yes, sorry!
Yes! Sorry for the error.
Your fictional if Professor Brown is stipulated to be engaged in academic research.
The actual Professor Brown was and is primarily engaged in political activity: promoting discriminatory behavior towards believers, advocating for political disenfranchisement of believers, and vocally belittling anyone with a different view?
Political speech permits political counter speech, including protests, including rowdiness. And Professor Brown is not nearly as good as taking it as she is at dishing it out.
No harassment beyond protected protest speech was ever substantiated. Here’s an experiment: Call the police, tell them you want protection without providing evidence that you need any. They’ll tell you they can’t do anything but you’re free to hire private security. A nothingburger if there ever was one, unless you have an entire credulous media system behind you.
I don’t enjoy interacting with Justin K, so with the record being set straight, I wont continue here. Here’s some further reading if anyone is interested: https://www.liberalcurrents.com/academic-freedom-in-the-media-who-is-being-silenced/
“Your fictional if Professor Brown is stipulated to be engaged in academic research.
“The actual Professor Brown was and is primarily engaged in political activity: promoting discriminatory behavior towards believers, advocating for political disenfranchisement of believers, and vocally belittling anyone with a different view?”
I see. So she didn’t actually do much research or publish, say, all of the items I easily found here in under four seconds of searching:
https://philpeople.org/profiles/547290/publication_attributions?order=added&page=1
“No harassment beyond protected protest speech was ever substantiated.”
Ah, so that’s the standard we’re to use. People can be photographed harassing someone by holding up signs all over her campus, mentioning her by name, demanding that she be fired. This can happen day after day, as she’s targeted with abusive hate mail. And so on. But since it’s ‘protected protest speech’, well, honestly, who cares, right? I’m sure that if it happened to you, you’d just find it to be a walk in the park.
Of course no-one should support death threats or stalking, and if Sussex didn’t take appropriate steps to protect Stock from these things, then of course that is wrong. My issue with this position, Justin, is that many of the things you would also ban (i.e. loud protests, Mill’s “intemperate speech”) are only called “harassment” and “intimidation” by begging one of the central questions at issue. I or anyone else would feel deeply upset by such a protest aimed at me. It is indeed personally devastating to be subject to such things.
But is a loud protest “harassment” in the full moral sense of that term? That is an open question. After all, many people can be justifiably made to feel this way and we don’t say that they are being harassed (in the sense that they are being wronged). Typically this is because they’ve done something to provoke the treatment. So the debate over whether protest is “harassment” centers constitutively around whether the agent deserves the protest. But that is, in turn, a substantive moral matter over which protesters and target already disagree, and you can’t just impose an answer by fiat (that would, indeed, violate principles of free inquiry).
This, perhaps, is why Mill disagrees with you: in a free society, people have to be willing to be psychologically harmed for their speech. The alternative is that institutions will have to enforce positions on issues that are supposed to be resolved by inquiry. And that enforcement will predictably involve violence (as we’ve recently witnessed in the case of other loud protests).
Thanks for the thoughtful reply, Nick. But I think this is mistaken.
I’m not at all sure that Mill would take the side of those who support the student’s freedom to antagonize Stock the way they did: It was Mill, after all, who said that “…there needs protection also against the tyranny of the prevailing opinion and feeling; against the tendency of society to impose, by other means than civil penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules of conduct on those who dissent from them.”
But I’ll leave that aside, since I think there’s a more important problem here.
The problem is that the university is a special sort of place with a special purpose. That purpose is the cultivation of knowledge and understanding through fair, robust, and principled inquiry. That sort of inquiry requires a special kind of freedom, which is both more and less extensive than the freedom that one might have or wish to exercise elsewhere.
In some ways, members of a university community must be more free than usual. We must be free to explore the best arguments for or against the various positions on the topics we wish to investigate, and that requires that people feel free to argue for positions that it might otherwise be controversial (or boring, etc.) to advocate in other social contexts.
But that freedom is directed to a specific purpose: the purpose of putting ideas on trial fairly. There are many things people could say at a university that would not promote rational inquiry at all, and it would often be entirely legitimate to limit people’s ability to express their views when they hinder rather than promote the university’s purposes. For instance, if someone is giving a talk on modal realism and a member of the audience wishes to interrupt the talk to tell everyone about his favorite breakfast cereals, it would be entirely appropriate for others to silence that person so that everyone can stick to the appropriate topic of inquiry and give the arguments due regard.
It would also be inappropriate, during the Q&A, for someone in the audience to say that she is not persuaded by the speaker’s argument because he is too short or ugly. Comments of that sort do not shed any light on whether modal realism is true, or on whether the arguments the speaker just provided are plausible.
The question we need to ask ourselves in all these cases is whether the speech in question promotes intellectual inquiry on the topic at hand. If it does not, then regardless of whether people have a legal right to speak in that way, and regardless of whether it might be appropriate to say the same thing in other contexts, it is not at all clear why that speech should be welcome at a university. Moreover, if the speech is not only irrelevant but apt to intimidate people with a minority viewpoint into silence, then that speech is *directly antithetical* to the purpose of the university.
If someone thinks that Stock has provided poor arguments for her views on sex and gender, then it would be entirely appropriate for them to expose the purported flaws in those arguments on campus. But that is not what these people were doing. They were calling on the administration to fire her, and rallying people to their cause in order to intimidate her into silence on pain of the destruction of her livelihood and reputation. For that, their actions should have been stopped immediately, and they should have been removed from the university if they refused to respect the proper campus norms.
Whether a member of the university should be fired is not an academic topic, nor were these people engaged in presenting reasoned arguments for their position. If I believe in modal realism, I don’t contribute to an academic debate about it by getting my friends to join me in standing around holding a sign saying “Fire the modal anti-realists” and circulating a petition to that effect. I don’t seek to draw attention to my view on the matter with colored smoke. I don’t send hateful messages to the anti-realists and make others worry that they’ll be next if they stand up in support of anti-realists. That’s just not how universities operate, or how we come to decisions. If they start operating in that way, they will lose their credibility and authority for excellent reasons.
Not closely familiar with the details of the Stock case, or English law (“English” not “British,” because Scotland, I gather, has its own legal system).
In the U.S., though, if students gather in a quad with signs reading “fire professor X” and with chants on the same lines, that’s likely protected speech, at a public university at any rate (private universities have somewhat more leeway to regulate). However, if students do things like blocking X’s path when X tries to walk to class or otherwise make it physically difficult for X to do what X normally does on campus, that’s conduct, not protected speech (or so I’d think).
Putting the strictly legal issues aside, should it be acceptable for students to gather with signs reading “fire professor X” because they object to X’s views? I’d say probably yes — which, of course, does not mean X should be fired — although if such protests happened more than once or twice in a year that would probably point to some deeper problems at the institution.
Would it be acceptable in a legal sense? Perhaps. But would it be acceptable behavior for any member of a university to hold up signs that demand that someone be fired, merely because they object to her views? Not at all. It subverts, rather than promotes, the authority of the university as a place where ideas are ‘put on trial’ in a fair manner. It allows people to be intimidated or pressured into silence exactly where we need them to argue for their minority viewpoints. It makes a mockery of the institution qua university, and also shows that the people holding the signs either do not understand the purpose of a university or else understand it but choose to subvert it. Either way, it is abominable behavior and should not be condoned if the university in question is to preserve its legitimacy.
I think this might be an instance where there are decent arguments on both sides. On the one hand, there’s the argument that it subverts the university’s purpose. On the other hand, there’s the argument that some “rowdy” speech of this sort should be tolerated and might spark reasoned discussion and debate. I don’t work in a university and thus can shunt this specific problem onto others, I suppose.
I can’t see how my holding up a sign demanding that you be fired for saying things I don’t agree with is likely to lead to reasoned discussion on the topic on which I don’t want you to be allowed to give your opinion.
It may be of interest to readers of this blog to read what Kathleen Stock thinks of this matter.
https://unherd.com/2025/03/fortunes-are-changing-in-the-culture-war/
It’s neat to imagine a world where students protesting to have a professor fired won’t influence the admin to fire the professor. That might be true for tenured folks like Stock— I have no idea. However, it’s so clearly not true of the rest of us (and there are lots of us, even though we don’t really count for much in discussions of campus free speech) that I myself struggle to extract much practical value from the exercise.
But, sure, for students impotently protesting faculty that won’t be fired, I say let them eat cake! Scream and shout, have some drinks first, get rowdy.
Right, for students who *impotently* protest faculty who *won’t be fired*.
I guess there are two ways we could go without making an embarrassment out of a university:
Alright, one more attempt to get some facts in here:
1) When TERFs/“GC”s claim harassment, they make no distinction between vocal criticism and criminal threats.
Some might remember that in the last DailyNous post on the subject, Lawford-Smith claimed (absurdly) that it was harassment to negatively discuss her political speech on here.
Justin K in here is another example, shifting goalposts fluently between claims of legal significance and claims of what is merely unpleasant to undergo.
Nobody is denying that “rowdy” vocal criticism is unpleasant. The question is whether it is illegal or immoral. What Liam (rightly) attacks in his blog post is the *presupposition* of illegality or immorality.
2) Claims alleging immorality usually turn on rowdy vocal criticism being contrary to the mission of the university. But TERFs/“GC”s aren’t entirely (arguably not even primarily) engaged in academic activity. The largest chunk of their work is political.
Stock’s first forays were political blog posts. The fierce criticism she faced at Sussex was prompted by her publicly signing the “WDI”, a political declaration calling (among other things) for the elimination of trans women from public life.
It is pure rhetoric to construe political responses to political initiatives as contrary to academic freedom.
Such rhetoric is itself undermining academic freedom.
3) So what about academic freedom? You probably don’t know what “gender critical feminism” scholarship looks like, you just know that it exists and is being treated unfairly. That’s not a coincidence: merely asserting the existence of the scholarship and its unfair dismissal is the VAST majority of “GC” writings.
Take all of that away, and you are left with a handful of books that probably would’ve gone unnoticed (like most academic books are), had their authors not alleged (to a shamefully credulous audience) that they are being harassed for these books.
The opposite is true: these authors stirred political controversy FIRST and tied this controversy to their scholarly work LATER.
4) Justin K likes his courtroom metaphor. You should listen to his dramatic retelling of 12 Angry Men.
But academia is unlike a courtroom: there is no judge to enforce good faith and proper procedure, no bailiff to hold people in contempt, no marshal to enforce the judgment.
If you insist on a courtroom metaphor (I sure don’t), consider that “GC”s are simply held in contempt for their bad faith rhetoric.
Really, Julian.
Please just stop for a moment before you continue. Take a breath. Try to look at this situation from the outside. Ask yourself how you are making yourself look to anyone giving your comments the time of day, seeing how fairly you make your case.
If you are proud of the level of intellectual integrity you consistently display in your comments here, I urge you to start posting under your full name like the people you attack. I can’t help but think that being accountable for the moves you are making will improve their quality, at least somewhat.
On the other hand, if you would be ashamed for people to know who you are when you write these things, given how confidently you hold forth on these topics despite making the most ridiculously unfair claims, then perhaps you might take that as a sign that you should either sit these discussions out, or if you choose to continue, take more time to consider your points self-critically before you make them.
“Justin K in here is another example, shifting goalposts fluently between claims of legal significance and claims of what is merely unpleasant to undergo.”
Stop. Think.
‘Shifting goalposts’ is not just a phrase one uses to beat others over the head with. It has an actual meaning. It refers to the move of first stating or clearly implying that something will follow if the interlocutor achieves a certain thing, and then, when the interlocutor achieves that thing, changing the rules so that one now demands some new, much more difficult thing first.
Think about that. Think about what you said. Think about what happened in our short discussion here.
At no point did I ‘shift the goalposts’ between claims of legal significance and claims of what is merely unpleasant to undergo. I did NOT initially say that one of these was the standard that someone had to show had been met and then, once that standard was in fact met, switch to the other.
If you gave some evidence of trying hard to learn the meanings of the words and phrases you used and just kept getting these basic things wrong and apologizing for it, I would be sympathetic. I think many of us would be glad to help you learn the rudiments of philosophical discourse if you are missing them. But you just keep on coming with remarkable confidence and arrogance no matter how many times you’re caught in these unbelievable falsehoods and confusions. I mean, they’re really transparent. I can’t see how you could be missing them if you stopped and thought before writing.
“3) So what about academic freedom? You probably don’t know what “gender critical feminism” scholarship looks like, you just know that it exists and is being treated unfairly. That’s not a coincidence: merely asserting the existence of the scholarship and its unfair dismissal is the VAST majority of “GC” writings.”
Wow — so you’re an authority on gender critical writings now, and can tell us what the “VAST majority” of it consists in. And yet, you show no familiarity whatsoever with those writings or the arguments they contain. Very recently, in this thread, you claimed that Kathleen Stock was not doing any research. She did plenty of research, both on these topics and on other topics. I directed you to it. You apparently ignored that, and never acknowledged your clear error. Now, here you are again, doing the same thing, in no way diminished in your self-confidence.
All right. You mention Kathleen Stock. You mention Holly Lawford-Smith. You give us the impression that you know a great deal of what they have written on these topics.
Please: do us the favor of summarizing any of the main arguments Kathleen Stock makes in her well-known philosophical work on the subject, Material Girls. You don’t even need to tell us why or whether you think the argument fails. Just tell us what the argument is. Go ahead.
Next, please summarize the main argument Holly Lawford-Smith presents in ‘Gender: What Is It, and What Do They Want It To Be?’ in her collection of philosophical essays, Sex Matters: Essays in Gender-Critical Philosophy. Just give us the main argument of that essay, in your own words, please.
Someone who is so well-versed in gender-critical philosophy that he is in a position to tell us so much about it must surely know these two works very well. Please: prove it by giving us these summaries.
Then we can work out how accurate they are and how well they support your claim that the ‘VAST majority’ of those essays and books are just complaints about being persecuted for saying things.
My prediction: you can’t do it, and you’ll just ignore this request. But let’s see.
The parts of this response that are not moral grandstanding are misrepresentations of what I say and of what you said. For example:
– I have said consistently and repeatedly that “GC”s are not PRIMARILY engaged in purely scholarly pursuits, and you keep responding to me as if I say that they are not engaged in it AT ALL.
– In the post I responded to earlier, you said that there is “no right” to do what has been done to Stock. That’s a legal or moral claim. When I responded to that, you shifted to asking whether I’d like it if it happened to me. I wouldn’t, but that is not a question of “right”. That’s goalpost shifting, textbook.
You do this all the time. It is why I don’t enjoy interacting with you, and this is the last time I’ll do so.
But I’ll keep correcting your sophistry whenever I think it is needed. Come to think of it, how is your neo-prescriptivism about grammar going?
(1) Here’s what I said, in the only place I used the phrase ‘no right’ (which you quote here): “By contrast, there is no right, under academic freedom, to harass or intimidate your interlocutors or try to get them fired because you don’t agree with what you have to say.”
There you have it. No right **UNDER ACADEMIC FREEDOM**. Right there in the original.
And yet, your accusation, which you repeat just as confidently here after being corrected on exactly the point in error, is that I initially said that there was no *legal* right and only later, to evade falsification, “shifted the goalposts” to saying that there was no right under academic freedom (the truth-seeking purposes of which I set out).
Had I been in your position, before doubling down and humiliating myself, I would have at least checked to make sure that I had read to the end of the sentence in question. But you couldn’t even bring yourself to read the next three words, it seems, despite missing them the first time.
Again, it is difficult to believe that you would be as cavalier about this if you were posting under your own name. But as it is, you can keep wasting others’ time with this nonsense with no damage to your reputation.
It’s a loser’s game talking with you. You don’t follow basic norms of argumentation, you don’t care that you don’t, and you just keep plowing on like this no matter how many times you are caught out in your falsehoods. I must learn to stop bothering until you start posting as yourself.
(2) Speaking of which, isn’t it interesting that *you* are hiding your true identity here, even while you mock people like Kathleen Stock and Holly Lawford-Smith for not being tough enough to handle the severe antagonism they face from the angry mobs and just get on with it?
It’s no big deal, you keep telling us, and yet you refuse to put yourself in the position of handling anything like it, even though there is not likely to be any howling mob coming for you even if you reveal your name just as we do. I have never seen you write a single opinion that was not completely in accord with the most popular cliches of the in-group of the moment. And yet, these two women who, whether right or wrong, are vastly more courageous than you have been here (and probably anywhere else), are somehow afraid of shadows on your account.
(3) I have long suspected that these big, authoritative proclamations you tend to make here are checks written on a bank account with nothing in it. I called you on it today by asking you to summarize for us the main arguments by Stock and Lawford-Smiths in their books and essays on the topic. But you ignore that simple request and make no mention of it. As I said at the time, I predicted that you would respond this way: big talk is cheap, but reading takes time. I hope anyone who hadn’t yet tumbled to your little game has now seen how much to trust your bold dismissals of entire categories of philosophical literature about which you know nothing. I know it’s not the first time you’ve done this. But again, why should you care? You’ve got no skin in the game here.
(4) Thanks for asking. I hope to finally have time to write up the first couple of essays that touch on grammatical prescriptivism this summer. But with a 3/3 teaching load and several other projects on the go, I don’t have as much time as I’d like for such things.
More sophistry:
1) “right under academic freedom” is still legal/moral and has nothing at all to do with what is pleasant or unpleasant.
2) I’m not interested in potential unpleasantness, and have nothing to gain from exposing myself to it. The insistence that I do feels increasingly malicious.
3) I’m not gonna write you a homework essay in the Daily Nous comments section lmao. Honestly get a grip.
4) I look forward to it. Its eventual publication in the journal of controversial ideas will finally prove that there’s no intellectual low you won’t stoop to if it allows you do dunk on trans people.
I always enjoy reading the DN comments section, including many comments by Julian and Justin Kalef. But I think it would be best for everyone if the two of you actually stopped engaging.
“Someone is wrong on the internet”
https://xkcd.com/386/
Yeah, Lurker, it’s a good point, and the comic is apt. There is no profit to be had in dealing with this clown if he’s going to just make up reality according to his own rules, time and time again, and there’s no way to hold him accountable. This last post of his is even more off the rails than the other ones, and shows even less interest in the facts. But… Must… Refrain… From… Correcting, even though I’m sure someone might think that some of what he implies might be true just because it’s on the internet.
Unlike Julian, though, Justin Weinberg does have skin in the game here, and is responsible for what he says. I submit that two ways of improving things might be as follows:
It’s only fair, and it would improve the quality of the discussion.
It’s not only fair.
You don’t think this would have a chilling effect on speech here? Or that that effect would, on the whole, be worth it?
There are many valuable and profitable exchanges here between named and pseudonymous individuals in every post that allows comments. There are also many acrimonious and uncharitable exchanges here between named individuals. This tends to happen when the topic is contentious.
Plus, it doesn’t seem to me that DN is sufficiently like the wild, wild web whereby anonymous bullies refrain from bullying when they can no longer be anonymous. On the whole, the DN commenter community is respectful and insightful even if this norm is flouted occasionally (and predictably) when the topic concerns contemporary and consequential social issues, including among and between named individuals. (That said, I do support limiting some comment sections for named individuals if the subject matter warrants it, and I believe Justin Weinberg has done this in the past very carefully and deftly.)
Further, whether Justin Kalef or Julian is more or less to blame for an exchange’s having gone off the rails is not for me to judge. But I have to say, their continuing to engage with each other is, in fact, blameworthy of both parties. It only takes one party to walk away from an unprofitable exchange. But it takes both to continue it.
Lastly, I have to admit that I find it somewhat intimidating to see calls to post under one’s “real” name. Toward what end? Is it so that the individual thinks twice before belittling another or otherwise uncharitably arguing in the comments? Or is it so that the individual can reap a consequence outside of DN, whether merited or not?
In the recent past, there has been one commenter who has, on more than one occasion, moved to their own blog to call out by name commenters on DN posts with whom they have disagreed. That may be an extreme case, and while it is just one individual who has done it on more than one occasion, it is nevertheless shocking to see.
Pseudonymous posting on DN protects those individuals — especially if early career or affiliated with an institution in a state that would be all-too happy to censure or fire a member of its body — from what Justin Weinberg cannot otherwise control, namely, what happens outside his blog.
My interest is here has just been to point out that chilling effects on speech can be spurred on, not curtailed, by removing pseudonymous options.
I hope you find my reply respectful, given I am posting pseudonymously and you are a named individual.
Thanks for your thoughtful reply, Pseudonymity. If all other pseudonymous contributors showed the same care in what they wrote, and avoided making cheap shots, then I agree that there would be no need for what I have recommended.
I can see the merit of allowing some people to contribute anonymously, to allow points to be made that would not otherwise be heard. For instance, if there terrible social pressure were brought against anyone who spoke in defense of some proposition, and allowing a pseudonymous contribution were the only way we could ever hear a sympathetic statement of that position, then yes, I think it would be worth it. In that case, the contributor could take care not to attack other named people from the shadows, which is a cowardly and uncivil move, and instead just focus on making the case that could not otherwise be made.
However, pseudonymity should not be tolerated as a convenient cover for people to snipe at known individuals with impunity, especially when the people who attack from behind masks represent the dominant position, and police dissent through personal attacks or distortions. Permitting that actually reduces free and open discussion.
If you’re not sure whether that’s going on here, consider to yourself which feels more frightening: being seen in public defending Kathleen Stock’s reputation in the wake of her treatment by protestors, or being seen as defending her. There are strong motivations for people to attack those of us who resist the pile-ons against unpopular figures, and it’s very easy for such people to distort and lie outright in ways that can be rather intimidating. Our main hope is that those make unfair attacks on us will be held responsible, to some extent, to what they say, if they don’t have the integrity to hold themselves responsible. But the pseudonymity makes it impossible to do so.
2. “Plus, it doesn’t seem to me that DN is sufficiently like the wild, wild web whereby anonymous bullies refrain from bullying when they can no longer be anonymous.”
The fact that A can still happen in the absence of B does not entail that B may as well eliminated with no expected effect on A.
3. “Further, whether Justin Kalef or Julian is more or less to blame for an exchange’s having gone off the rails is not for me to judge. But I have to say, their continuing to engage with each other is, in fact, blameworthy of both parties. It only takes one party to walk away from an unprofitable exchange. But it takes both to continue it.”
I’m afraid that you’re neglecting to notice some of the results of the asymmetries here.
First, the license to use a pseudonym to attack a named person is a wonderful opportunity for trolls to sow chaos and also for sanctimonious, slipshod reasoners to get high on carelessly bashing people they see (often unjustly) as morally inferior. The moral exhilaration they get from trying to portray themselves as above others makes them feel heroic, superior, and clever. The less attention they pay to what is actually being said, the more unfair they become, but the clearer their sense of victory is to them.
That wouldn’t be too much of a problem if all the others just called these people out, or at least ignored them. But, alas, there are many sanctimonious readers and gossips out there who are perpetually on the lookout for dissenters to condemn for all the unlovely reasons that should now be familiar. There are also many cowards in the profession, alas, and many others who feel most secure from being attacked themselves when they join a pile-on. And others still want to feel that they are ‘making a difference’, and derive pleasure from thinking that they are doing God’s work by beating up on someone they have been told is churlish.
None of these people are known for reading what their targets write very closely.
If a pseudonymous troll or sanctimonious twit attacks a named person by severely mis-describing what that person did or said, then even if there’s an easy-to-find, publicly-accessible record that proves the attack to be a blatant falsehood, the target can suffer professional harm as a result. The target may even be cancelled underhandedly and stealthily, in hiring or promotion discussions in which clearly false rumors or distorted stories (fueled by these exchanges) are used against the target without the target’s ever hearing about it.
Meanwhile, absolutely nothing is done to threaten the reputation of the pseudonymous sniper.
Unfortunately, this state of affairs makes it dangerous for the named person to abandon the conversation without correcting the blatant falsehoods of the hidden, dishonest sniper. And then it’s ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’: if you don’t correct the falsehoods, there’s professional harm from the sniper’s attack; but if you do correct them, then some people might criticize you for engaging for too long.
One thing that could help the situation without simply blocking pseudonymous people from attacking named people is for others to call out the pseudonymous hit-men when they try this bullshit. Even though they would still have the cover of the mask to safeguard themselves through their dishonesty, at least we could make it unnecessary for their targets to continue to engage if the rest of us step in and call bullshit. For instance, Kathleen Stock should not have to step in here to defend herself against anonymous aggressors: the rest of us need to do that for her.
If others had done this here so that it had not been necessary for me to correct the libels of a masked attacker, I would gladly have stepped away much earlier.
I should’ve stuck with my first instinct, yeah. I hope someone else can take up the task of calling out Justin soon.
Though I have an unfair head start. Although “I didn’t move the goalpost from moral/legal terms, I moved it from a specific moral/legal term” is a banger, I don’t think anything is gonna top the prescriptivism thing.
“…will finally prove that there’s no intellectual low you won’t stoop to if it allows you do dunk on trans people.”
Huh? Oh, right, it’s that wacky final bonus round thing you came up with where we both have to invent the wildest and most obvious fabrications to slander each other with. Geez, always takes me by surprise no matter how often you do it.
Give me a sec…
Right. Uh… here’s one. “Sure thing! After all, you did just confess to your habit of jumping on random puppies with both feet.”
Anyway, man, it’s been weird, but I’ll see you next time. And no offense, but maybe we should stick to that you-ignore-me, I-ignore-you thing. Take care.
I laid out four facts in this debate: that TERFs equivocate vocal criticism with harassment; that TERFs are primarily political actors; that “GC” scholarship comes after the controversy an thus is not its cause; that academia is meaningfully different from a court of law.
I had hoped to explain these facts (I have sources for all of them) to reasonable people. Instead, my attribution of a single fallacy to you made you explode into a little angry cloud of ad hominems.
So what am I to do but point out that this is just par for the course.
The first time we talked, you reasoned yourself into the corner of linguistic prescriptivism in order to … complain about singular they, revealing yourself to be a fundamentally unserious thinker to me and any neutral onlooker.
It’s on me to have continued from there at all. I’m done.
I would refrain from deciding what “neutral onlookers” think, on their behalf.
Sorry, I meant to say “informed onlookers”.