27 Comments

Dorian Abbot is an excellent example for examining the very edge of where cancelation becomes the correct action. He loves to use the word 'clearly' as cover for a lack of thought about his own privilege, merit, morality, etc., so I will use it to say that he is clearly unaware of his white privilege. He is also clearly unaware of the hypocrisy in his claim that his professional statements must be considered separately from his social (non-professional, unprofessional?) statements, but that he must use his professional platform to promulgate his social statements. He is a 40-ish spoiled brat, and I agree with his own department's unwillingness to support him in his crusade (yes, that is a metaphorically appropriate word here), but he should not have been cancelled from the conference. On the other hand, I feel no outrage that he was cancelled. To put it in terms of Nazism, as he did, he is not Joseph Mengele, creating professional knowledge through the torture of innocents, so his professional output should not be discarded, but we have no obligation to support his professional work if his social commentary becomes too toxic.

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There was and is absolutely nothing about Abbot's social commentary that is "toxic." How is it possible that anyone in their right mind would believe such a thing?

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Todays Liberals defy the very meaning of Liberalism

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2 sentences & you've said 'privilege' & 'white privilege' . You should probably have stopped there because that's all we need to know . Your patronising reply to A Meltser oozes that egregious self-righteousness that I'm seeing all the time now .

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The views he expressed are well within the mainstream American opinion, like it or not, and as a concerned citizen, he doesn’t need anyone’s approval to express them. Even those who broadly argue with affirmative action have strong misgivings about some of its secondary effects or

implications. Just like many people who, say, support abortion rights, are uncomfortable with it in some of its aspects and might favor some restrictions. White privilege? Please drop the essentialism. Clarence Thomas, the sole Black Supreme Court justice, agrees with Abbott. There is a wide range of opinion held by people within any given race on any important issue.

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So sorry that you are unable to understand differing viewpoints. I’m inclined to take your comments as obtuse and quite unoriginal.

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It's the hysterical wokesters like yourself who contribute to suffocating atmosphere in our colleges and use demagoguery often for their personal advancement despite full abcense of scientific merits and capabilities. If you want to see a spoiled brat - just look in the mirror.

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Hi Aleksandr: Thank you for commenting! Please read my response again after you've had your nap. I don't think you'll find any hysteria or wokesterism, and you won't find me trying to shut him up. I am just saying that the rest of us can do better than to give him our time or money. That seems very traditionally American to me. After all, when he sticks to what he knows well he does valuable work, but no one is so indispensable that the value they provide outweighs everything else. Have a great day, Aleksandr!

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James - no one here is advocating that others "not support" your "professional work", as you are doing toward Dorian. You are, indeed, trying to shut him up by calling for the financial and professional sequestration of him for his personal views. It would be equally bad if we were to encourage the same because of yours. But we don't do that. And your chipper sign-off to Aleksandr ("Have a great day") does nothing to conceal the essential cruelty and self-righteousness of the position you espouse.

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Calling a good scientist whom you don't know "40-ish spoiled brat" does not sound "very traditionally American" to me. More like lexicon of BLM and Antifa scum.

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Aleksandr- it obviously makes no sense to engage with the types like Mr. Johns- he (or she?) simply cant help themselves. The silent majority agrees with you- and laughs at him and the fashion that he espouses.

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Aleksandr! You didn't wait until after your nap! You know you'll feel so much better then!

Please do not try to claim that I did not listen to him present his best case for his social opinions for 1/4hr. Other episodes in this podcast have presented strong cases for why the opinions of people that were cancelled were worthy opinions. This one revealed clearly why some people over reacted and cancelled someone. He shouldn't have been cancelled, but he needs to explore why people find his social opinions so offensive.

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Uh! I find this comment utterly offensive! I think you should explore why I have found it offensive, and maybe consider editing. Thankyou.

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Why does he need to do that? And why don't you need to self-examine why the people in this chat find your comments obnoxious?

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Also, Amna, how could you let Abbot diss “the humanities” writ large? More than once! Such ignorance, feels like an ad hominem attack. One could honestly make the same argument about computer simulations of climate change on Mars!

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I probably would have been more sympathetic to Dorian Abbot before hearing this interview. This is why we shouldn't de-platform people: by letting them speak, we metaphorically give them the rope to hang themselves with. Mr Abbot makes a number of demonstrably false and inaccurate claims (which should probably have been fact checked and/or challenged in real time but whatever). He is clearly a racist and a white supremacist. Oh, and a jackass. It's definitely an indictment of higher education that pompous, ignorant, spoiled brats like him get to be college professors.

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Generally speaking, maybe colleges should start hiring people who are actually smart, rather than people like Mr Abbot who merely *think* they are smart.

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I wish Professor Khalid had pushed back on the claim that science has always been a place with no politics, where people got their positions purely based on effort and achievements. If that were true, women and underrepresented minorities would not in fact be underrepresented. Professors Khalid and Abbot should perhaps watch the film "Picture a Scientist," and they should perhaps read the National Academy of Sciences report on Sexual Harassment in Academia.

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Seems some crucial context about MIT’s decision process was omitted. https://orgchart.mit.edu/node/6/letters_to_community/important-update-re-eaps

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Thanks for this, Amna. This episode is a fantastic case in defense of not leaving the problem of academia’s racial segregation to tenured geophysicists 🙄

Reminds me of when James Watson talked about the inferiority of Black peoples’ intelligence. Or when Scott E Kern at Johns Hopkins published an opinion in an academic journal that suggested only scientists who have “earned it” should have families. A thinly veiled attack on women not putting enough work in at the lab because they choose to have children. Yes, those terrible old misogynist days: published in 2010.

I’d actually argue the main difference between Tenured Professor Dorian Abbot and his detractors is the medium, not the message. When he was their age 20+ years ago, you might get someone canceled via Newsweek. He was adroit to use YouTube initially, but a more mainstream platform would have garnered him a more receptive audience, I think.

So you run your mouth in Newsweek, and your opponents run theirs on Twitter. For such a smart guy it doesn’t sound like he sees how the systems work. Or maybe he does, and this podcast is his next act, Redemption?

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It's the interviewer's job to probe and provide context to the claims of the subject. Giving this man so much free time to air his views unchallenged is not journalism, it's PR. If his ideas were truly so robust then they would stand up to scrutiny, but that's sorely lacking here. You've lost a listener with this one, sorry.

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Dorian Abbot is straightforward, realistic, and brave. On what grounds is anyone calling him "a spoiled brat?"

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This episode was a miss for me. He was still invited to speak at the school, ended up giving his speech to an equally large audience at Princeton, got on the cable news circuit, and even received an award for his “cancellation.” It seems like he got a career boost from simply having to switch audiences for his intended speech. Somebody cancel me please!

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He makes sense to me. Society seems to be terrorized by views that encourage discrimination and unfairness, while professing to abhor those activities. These things likely will be seen for what they are a few decades from now when people have moved on to other craziness.

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My piece to offer here is, I suffer from the affliction of being a late middle-aged now retired straight white male journeyman carpenter, who happens to be a damn good poet. The main topic of my writing is war poetry. My applications for writing residence's are continuously rejected. One sited my "lack of seeking a further, more refined education." ie: No initials behind name.

I do not ever come close to being canceled, I'm never allowed a seat at the table due to overtly judgmental academic snobbery. On one occasion a residency candidate (with an MFA) selected over me didn't attend because of a little snowfall between her home and the residencies' location. Yet, she applied for a wintertime slot. I guess common sense isn't a requirement necessary for an MFA in poetry.

To Mr. Abbott's many fine points, I know all to well the game of checked boxes in complete disregard to a person's actual abilities in both my working and writing life. I will however invite Mr. Abbott to utilize common sense over his academic prowess wishing to, hide away with his equations, by suggesting he stay the hell off of twitter. Twitter is just so much dis-jointed internet graffiti & the downfall of many.

(before someone starts screaming white privilege, I've heard it all. Been there, done that. Most reading this weren't even born yet the first time I took-it to the streets. But that's for another day. -semper fi)

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The main proof that liberal cancel culture has gone too far is that expressing essentially moderate views - whether you agree with them or not - is now cause for cancellation.

We are not even close to talking here about hate speech or bigotry, but the far left is equating everything to its right as equivalent. There is nothing wrong with questioning whether affirmative action is fair or advisable, whether reparations are justified, etc., etc. There are reasonable arguments - with pluses and minuses - on both sides.

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This is Marcuse's repressive tolerance in praxis. Repressive tolerance skews the argument to one side by canceling the people in opposition. They fight to the death because their safety is at risk. They are oppressed victims. Texas Professor, Tommy Currey, who does not get canceled from Youtube for violence. against whites in the link below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzzzUhknV_o&t=12s

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