Open Thread For June 26, 2017
Kushner, Trump, Russia, Loans, Deutsche Bank. Emoluments. Not just for the President any more. Kushner got a $285 mill lifeline loan month before election. So many conflicts-of-interest, so little time (to secure that credit line). Great reporting from WaPo.
British PM Theresa May Cuts Deal With RWNJ Fringe Party To Stay In Office. Homophobia and creationism are two of the DUP Party’s core beliefs. That’s Fuck DUP.
UD Cuts Ties With Professor Who Said That Otto Warmbier Got What He Deserved. It was, of course, inevitable. A quote from the University: “The comments of Katherine Dettwyler do not reflect the values or position of the University of Delaware”. Well, of course they don’t. But if everything said by every UD professor was to conform to that standard, then everybody would sound just like Ed Freel. Not the diversity of thought you would hope to find on a college campus. Yes, her comments were incendiary. But she at least had a point worth considering. Something college campuses should cultivate, IMHO.
‘Science Is Running For Congress’. A distinguished scientist, to be specific. Against Russia’s and climate deniers’ fave representative, Dana Rohrabacher.
Rethugs Playing Whack-A-Mole On Trumpcare: While senators ask for more time, vote is set for this week. They’ll get the votes. They always do.
What do you want to talk about?
I am all for free speech, but I think that when a young person is brutalized by a savage regime and ultimately killed, it is irresponsible and unprofessional for a professor to publicly proclaim that he had it coming to him. I am sure if a professor said similar things about any victim of these police killings, folks would be tearing down the campus until that professor was removed. UD did the right thing there. Tell her to find a new job somewhere else !
The gist of her comments were about white male privilege, something about which UD is not unfamiliar, to put it mildly.
If her comments were the sole reason she was not retained, I think it’s unfortunate.
Rude, irresponsible comment + 2(internet shaming) = employment issues
The way professors are tarred, feathered and sacked for irresponsible opinions is entirely unproductive.
Personally I find the remarks in bad taste, although I don’t know many of the details of Mr Warmbier’s situation. (In fact nobody does.) This new culture game of finding internet comments we don’t like and calling up a posse to run the commenter out of Dodge serves no purpose.
The professor made a crass comment about one person caught up in a complicated situation about which we all actually know very little. The fact that this received one minute of attention is a ridiculous waste of time.
Also, the caveat that reads “I support X, but…” is a huge tell.
laughed out loud at the Ed Freel mention. Is it just me or do these “free speech/anti-safe space” types always get way too fired up when someone hurts their feelings?
@chris: So you’re OK with the idea that if you have a job, your employer has the right to muzzle you. I realize that is the status quo. I’m asking if you’re OK with it.
See, it’s easy to be for free speech when the person agrees with you. It’s when they don’t that the ideal is tested.
You say that people would be screaming for the person’s head. Yes, they would. Would it be right to fire someone for holding such an opinion?
Just BTW, the woman is not a professor, she’s a lecturer. And her area of research is on breastfeeding among primates, including humans.
For comparison, consider the research of UD professor Linda Gottfredson, which the university has supported for over 25 years. I don’t know how many calls for removal the university has ignored about her over the years:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Gottfredson
“The caveat that reads “I support X, but…” is a huge tell.”
The problem with this sort of statement, which we see constantly, is that the second half of the sentence is guaranteed to disprove the first half.
Adjunct prof – contracted term-by-term and not on a tenure tract. That’s true.
Yeah, that qualification is a nasty bit of obfuscation. I support the freedom to say everything up to what I consider appropriate and nice and acceptable. That’s definitely not how it works.
I understand there can be “consequences” for speech, but this is very dumb. Criticism is perfectly fine, but the outraged hordes are totally confused.
Dettwyler deserves the same consideration as someone who posts rape victims “had it coming.”
Wasn’t aware of Linda Gottfredson. And what about economics professor Eleanor Craig, who basically has been a mouthpiece for Delaware’s wealthiest for something like four decades now? Or John Stapleford?
Do they reflect the university’s values any more than Dettwyler? Probably. Which does not reflect well on the university. If challenging ideas prove too challenging for academic institutions, then perhaps the institutions should do some self-examination.
Yeah, Puck, one should take the phrase completely out of context then decide what one thinks of it. I never considered that method. Seems dumb.
“Dettwyler deserves the same consideration as someone who posts rape victims “had it coming.”
I was unaware that we were debating how much “consideration” statements deserve. I thought we were talking about free speech as a concept.
The fact remains that people post about rape victims “having it coming” every single day. How many lose their jobs over it, and should they?
Then again, puck, I’ve never mistaken you for a liberal in the first place. Guys like you love autocracy as long as you’re the ones calling the shots.
There is no more privileged class than that of a college professor
“So you’re OK with the idea that if you have a job, your employer has the right to muzzle you.”
If the employer thinks it will hurt the business. Of course they have the right.
@FBH: The question, as I said, isn’t whether an employer has the “right” to fire someone. It does. The issue is freedom of speech, and the question is about whether an employer SHOULD have that right.
It’s a test, chicken man, designed to separate the authoritarians from the actual liberals. We already know where you line up.
putting her statement in context, at least in this case, doesn’t make it any less stupid. but I would not have “fired” her as long as she didn’t stifle thoughtful dissent (not just sloganeering) in the classroom when her statements there became obviously political. also, I would not have fired her because she didn’t make these comments in the classroom in the first place. she was operating on her own time.
@arthur: “There is no more privileged class than that of a college professor”
How would you know? Do you know any college professors? Do they agree with you, or are you just talking out the wrong orifice as usual?
@ar: I agree the kid did something incredibly risky, ignoring the principle that reward should be commensurate with the risk. One might easily interpret that as the result of a privileged upbringing. I think she was actually bitching about her pupils, not Otto.
But “got what he deserved”? That’s way over the top.
OTOH, Gottfredson has said many offensive things in defending her research over the years, and has never been in any danger of losing her position. This is no accident of circumstance, either. UD remains the bastion of conservatism it has always been. Its dreadful record with minorities is no coincidence.
There is a great misconception in this country about “tenure”. If you are a college professor, you can pretty much say anything you want unless someone decides you violated a morals clause. I don’t think this comment on the UD professor’s part does this, despite how stupid and distasteful it was. That said, many in this country cast a jaundiced eye toward public school teachers, cite tenure and try to make the case that tenure hamstrings public school administrators trying to “weed out” bad teachers. Tenure in the public schools is not a license to say anything you want. There is no academic freedom in public schools, and teachers are almost but not quite the victim of the whims of the public or the administration. My contract had one tiny line in it that made some difference, “No employee shall be disciplined in any way that effects a demotion or loss of employment without just cause.” That cuts down on some of the whim bullshit, but not all, and in no way grants the same protections and privilege as college tenure does for professors. I don’t really have an opinion at this point about this particular utterance by this UD professor, but it is apples and oranges, not twins.
On the other hand, the US and South Africa are the only two developed nations that have an “at will” labor policy. In all the other developed nations, you get due process before firing. Therefore in the US, unless you have a contract that specifically guarantees due process, you will have none, and that includes speech. We are required to abandon the first amendment the second we go through a workplace door, and those who thought they could say exactly what they are thinking in the private sector find out the hard way that they say what they want at their peril. I have said for a long time that in Delaware education, no one knows what is going on behind the closed doors because those who know don’t want you to know, or are unable to say for fear of retaliation, and those who do not know are free to talk all they want, they don’t have anything of consequence to share anyway. We would do a lot better in this country if we actually framed a labor policy that sticks up for the truth, and protects the employee from harassment and retaliation by the employer. All those tears on the part of employers who say it is “too hard” to fire teachers just want the public to have no idea about that which they are talking.
She has the right to free speech, but the university has the right not to renew her contract… she has to accept the consequences of her vocal and public comments.
Of course the University had the right to do, but should it have done? We really can’t live with an anthropology lecturer who makes a remark on the internet that’s in bad taste?
You’re having the wrong argument. I think that if the time comes, maybe you’re unreliable.
@REV: What’s remarkable to me is how few people can take this from the actual circumstance to the principle behind it. That’s how regimented we are to accept our stature. Tug those forelocks, folks!
@chris: Yes, we get that. Thanks.
tenure was not an issue. she was an adjunct, hired from semester to semester. firing a tenured professor would have been another, more difficult and complicated, matter. in this case they simply decided to hire somebody else to teach that course next semester. whether they should have or not (based on her internet comment) is a different issue.
They did not simply decide to hire somebody else to teach that course next semester.
They decided not to bring her back b/c of her comments. Who knows if they’ll even offer the course next semester?
To me, that is the issue.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/06/26/new-study-casts-doubt-on-whether-a-15-minimum-wage-really-helps-workers/?utm_term=.1b7915054be4
New study on Seattle’s $15 min wage. Not positive.
Saw this last night. Not encouraging, no. I even spent a bit of time reading about the National Bureau of Economic Research. I was wondering if there was any political/funding issues. Nope. Like the WaPo headlines says this looks “very credible.”
Look, people who work need to be able to support themselves, but if something is not working it needs to be fixed.
“The University of Washington study excluded workers at companies with multiple locations—meaning McDonald’s, Starbucks, and the other big and small chains that account for about 40 percent of the overall workforce and a huge number of minimum-wage jobs.”
One study finds results that differ from most other studies of subject. Count on Chris to highlight it.
“Bad News For Liberals” I have now been trolled by literally everyone.
I saw some of the mitigating details as well. It’s fair to say that this isn’t the end-all-be-all result. But it shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.
No, not dismissed out of hand. But not given great credibility yet, either.
The problem with localized efforts like this — the Philly soda tax is another — is that cities are localized and have porous borders. Teasing out the effects of one change is hard to do. That paragraph was just one of the caveats. Another is the booming Seattle economy. But ruling out 40% of low-wage employers because it was just too hard to study with them included sort of skews the results, no matter what they turn out to be.
The media does the same thing with medical research stories. It’s essentially clickbait.
I’m very skeptical too, but the outfit that did study is very credible.
el som: my point was simply that it would have been much harder to get rid of a tenured professor and that trying to do so would have caused a lot more controversy for the university. obviously her dismissal was due to her comments, but all adjuncts live from semester to semester no matter what their political views are. I was not expressing an opinion about whether or not they should bring her back next semester. I personally believe they should have let her come back this time, even though her comments were foolish. also, they could offer that course with another teacher.
I gotcha.
More on the Seattle minimum wage data:
https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/seattle-is-getting-an-object-lesson-in-weaponized-data/