Harvard withdraws 10 acceptances for ‘offensive’ memes in private group chat

To answer you question - Yes, I would support the rights of people to state whatever they wish. I also support the rights of individuals such as you or myself to call those people morons, and to not associate with them.

Suppressing speech, and demonizing people for their views (no matter how "objectively wrong") does not solve any problem. It only breeds hate and contempt and radicalizes people more.

Bear in mind that this argument is not intended as an argument for "thoughtcrimes" to be made illegal, it is made as an argument for creating and encouraging strict rules against this behaviour in privately-owned spaces. Facebook is not a 'public space', they just choose to give you those rights.

That seems to me a reasonable middle ground between on the one hand doing nothing, which I agree would be a highly questionable decision even from the purely cynical perspective that anyone accepted to Harvard may reasonably be expected not to violate the eleventh commandment in such damnfool fashion and if they don't already know that then they better get on learning - and, on the other hand, rescinding these prospective students' acceptance, with the concomitant potentially very significant impairment of their lifelong prospects, on the basis of they posted some tasteless images to a private Facebook group.

Those of us who have qualms around consequentialism find this efficacy not reason enough to regard such behavior as exemplary of virtue. Those who do not have such qualms might be well advised to consider, from a utilitarian perspective, the ultimate outcomes which recent history has shown profligate use of this tactic to produce. And those who try to disclaim the grasp their political and cultural tendency has on power would do well to remember that this is, always and only, a tactic of hegemony, without which it cannot work at all.

In any case, as I said before, I like the honesty.

does it really work? it seems to work in-so-far-as it purges specific communities of specific people. it doesn't remove those people from larger society and it most certainly doesn't change their mind. it makes them feel aggrieved to the point where they lash out with redoubled violence. it radicalizes people into extremists where before they may have merely been insensitive now they will be resentful and hateful.

backlash is a real thing and we ignore it at our own peril.

In other words: People you very strongly disagree with should find it impossible to maintain a social and professional life, until they stop disagreeing with you. For a society that values consensuality and freedom, this is shortsighted and naively self-centered thinking. Who in the world are you to judge? For much of the 20th century, the majority in supposedly "enlightened" societies prosecuted such a program against homosexuals. Many people doing this even thought to themselves that it was alright, because it was a choice -- just as I've read you advocate about other people's personal philosophy and political thought.

That's not a violent action, that's a highly effective non-violent action.

The human instinct around exclusion from a group is very strong. In prehistoric days, exclusion from the group was tantamount to a sentence of slow, lingering death. For this reason, when a group of people crosses the moral line of using such coercive tactics to enforce their will on another group, they are very close to the parallel moral line involving violence.

Freedom is consensuality. Consensuality can clearly be violated through power and social/emotional pressures that fall short of physical violence. A social/political movement that seeks to enforce its will against those it labels as "wrong thinkers" does not truly believe in consensuality.

Throughout history, such actions are only "highly effective" in contexts where there is effectively absolute political power, and even then, the authorities must escalate even beyond violence to assert their will. Short of that, we know from history that coercion always produces backlash. If you are truly on the side of justice, then you will eschew all forms of injustice, even when they are supposedly for the good. If you are truly for consensuality, then you should strive to convince your political opponents. It's not for me to know one way or another, but if you have devolved to the point where you have given up convincing, and only want to ostracize and shame them, then everything I know about human nature suggests to me that you are in danger of dehumanizing others in your heart and placing yourself above them. Historically, anyone who gets to that point has made the same mistake in their heart has become an opponent of social justice. It is exactly this mistake that was made against homosexuals, jewish people, and black people in the 20th century US. (Note the specificity of context/location when formulating your response.)

I am amazingly uninterested in "aguments" where you put words in other people's mouths. Where do I support racism and sexism? Please provide a quote. (Big fail for you here!) As it so happens, I'm a liberal non-heterosexual brown person. Violence is wrong, no less so if it's done against vile, violent people. Coercion is wrong, even if it's done against people I dislike. The suppression of free speech is wrong, no matter who is talking.

in attempts to equate freedom of association as equivalent to violence

It's certainly not equivalent to violence. However, it's still fake and crappy if you're just interested in getting your way, and have reduced certain other human beings in your mind to some status where their consensuality doesn't matter. That's the whole reason why democracy is the best form of government we have so far: it respects consensuality the best out of every other system we've tried.

"your particular ideas of what's right and wrong". Enjoy beating up that strawman as long as you like, but it has little to do with any actual position I'm advocating.

So your ideas of "social justice" are better than everyone else's? You claim to have some sort of line to "the truth?" A close friend of mine received some sort of award and several hundred dollars for her work in social justice, and she agrees with much of what I have said.

You said yourself in this very discussion that you want "your side" to infiltrate all of the organizations and force the certain people you think are "bad" because they disagree with you. You want society to run in this way, and even if it just succeeds in creating pockets of people who think like you, that's great. Well, that's exactly what you said, and my position is precisely this: Thinking this way is crappy and it's emotionally dishonest. It creates an oppressive fake "consensus," and it convinces absolutely no one. The kind of society it would create would be just as truly about "justice" as the Christian religion dominated society of the 19th century was truly about "Christian values" -- only on the surface! This is my position, and exactly this. The only "straw-manning" that's been done has been yours. You are the one philosophically advocating coercion. Honestly, does the thought of coercing all of those horrible people to leave groups not strike you as righteous vengeance? Are you honestly free of hate of people in your heart?

I agree with many of your political aims, but be honest with yourself: Your position is weak someplace, and thus you have turned away from convincing and towards coercion.

I considered that to be an absolutist argument

That item just on happens to be on the other side of my "line." By your logic, anyone who has a position on the wrong side of your "line" is "absolutist." I don't think that word means what you think it means.

I think there are contexts in which authorities (EDIT: non-governmental authorities) can police speech in a way that is not oppressive.

Sure. There's definitely a line. The point at which authority, even non-violence based non-governmental authority, can be used to suppress dissent through societal and/or economic coercion, there is a moral line which has been crossed. It's even built into human psychology. The psychological threat of exclusion from a group is very strong, because in the prehistoric past, exclusion from the group was tantamount to a sentence of slow, lingering death. An organization using such a fear to enforce a political view is crossing a moral line parallel and nearby the moral line crossed by an organization (or an informal association of "activists") using the fear of violence to do the same.

So if Harvard had put these students on academic probation or something instead, you wouldn't necessarily have a problem? That's something I can get behind. I thought you were opposed to any action being taken against these students of any kind.

Sure. I wouldn't be "getting behind" that, but I wouldn't be "up in arms" against something like that, since it is temporary and non-exclusionary.

If you want to change that, then you need to lead the charge. But it's a political question and not a constitutional one.

Everyone here is exercising their rights. The kids have a right to exercise their rights to free speech, and Harvard has a right to run a business the way they want to run it.

Harvard is not a public institution run by the state, so it is not obligated to respect rights that public schools have to. This creates more diversity in the marketplace rather than less.

Everybody can make the kinds of statements they want to make, and everybody can run the kinds of businesses they want to run, until those statements or businesses run afoul of laws. That's how America works.

You can tell Harvard that they should respect student's rights the way you want them to. They can in turn ignore you. You can in turn choose a different university.

The reason we have anti-discrimination laws is because without them, minorities would have no other options.

You seem to want blanket and blind enforcement of your idea of what rights are, without regard to the reasons why we have free speech and discrimination laws in the first place. It's for greater diversification and opportunities.

If you want to advocate for the desirability of adopting a new norm, from here forward -- fine go ahead and do it. But simply repeating the words "free speech" over and over again isn't convincing.

As for prison, I'm implying what consequences you would assume for individuals who would be so vocal about what you would call their racist acts.

Maybe you could make a utilitarian argument against black humor. Maybe you could argue that such jokes encourage actual baby killers and the world would be better without them. I really doubt that's true, but even if it was, it's a very different argument. People want these kids expelled because they think they are actual monsters, which is probably false. Not because of theoretical arguments of the utility of banning black humor.

Pols transition to conservatism has nothing to do with black humor, but how it's set up. It's a site that not only doesn't censor, but strongly encourages discussions on taboo topics. Of course it will attract people that believe taboo ideologies and are banned or ostracized elsewhere.

/r/dankmemes has similar subject matter but it's clear that it's ironic and it's black humor.

They are two fundamentally different things. Nobody is being indoctrinated into being a fascist from the latter. The former is actively attempting indoctrination.

They're not "literal fascists". Literal fascists were in Italy overthrowing the government 70 years ago. All these people have is the ability to create chaos. When we give them coverage and attention, we feed them. What you're advocating for is what we're doing right now - trying to shut off these toxic wells. But what it's simply doing is adding fuel to the fire.

My statement is that attempting to get someone elected president just because it would be "funny" to see that person as President has real-world consequences. At some point these things go beyond being "just a prank" regardless of how effective they are at actually accomplishing their goal. Were they to actually accomplish their goal, it would have real-world consequences beyond just providing more fuel for their image board meme battles.

Curiously their school paper (or w.e.) recently posted a treatise [1] on free speech, including this bit:

> We also believe that the essential definition of free speech has itself been twisted and clouded. Free speech only entails the right of every individual to “speak freely.” It does not give one the right to speak free of criticism or protest. It does not give one the right to say something which could reasonably be construed as inciting chaos or violence. It does not give one the right to any forum that one desires... Certain speakers do not deserve the platform Harvard University offers, especially when their rhetoric runs antithetical to the values we should all hold dear.

Also many news outlets have mentioned this bit from their admissions policy:

> the university reserves the right to withdraw an offer of admission if the admitted student “engages or has engaged in behavior that brings into question their honesty, maturity or moral character,”

One might claim their "speech" displays a lack of maturity and moral character and avoid a paradox.

[1] http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2017/5/25/commencement-201...