James Damore is (almost certainly) not a victim of a free-speech violation
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
The First Amendment clearly doesn't protect Damore. But there's more to free speech than the First Amendment. If employees try to start a union but the employer fires without consequence everyone who talks about it or likes it on Facebook, is that a society where free speech is valued?
Similarly, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and followup legislation grant additional protections to employees for matters regarding discrimination against a protected class of people, including speech rights which are not otherwise protected in the workplace by the First Amendment.
There is more to the First Amendment than free speech. It also includes the freedom to assemble, which is closely or even interchangeable with the freedom of association. This is what allows a group to expel someone from the group as a consequence of speaking in a way which the group disagrees with.
Yes, which is exactly the point. Lazy justifications of any non-governmental punishment of speech with "well the First Amendment doesn't protect against it, so it's fine!" is just that: lazy.
> There is more to the First Amendment than free speech.
Yes. And there is more to free speech than the First Amendment.
The Left's arguments were also much more concrete than an appeal to "free speech". Suppress the right to unionize and there will be wildcat strikes and a return to the violent actions of the 1800s. Allow workplace discrimination on the basis of skin color and there will be a return to the horrors of the Jim Crow era. Don't discriminate against women in the workplace because the experience of WWII shows that women are much more capable than was previously thought. [0]
You'll also notice that "the Left" deliberately made it harder for people to make some sorts of speech at work, if it results in a hostile workplace. Why, it's almost as if they consistently believe that "free speech" at the workplace has a lesser standing than free speech in a public arena.
Sure, there's more to free speech than the First Amendment. There's also more to freedom of assembly than the First Amendment. There is a necessary tension between the two no matter how it is embodied. If freedom of speech trumps the freedom of assembly then there is no liberty.
[0] Also, don't discriminated against men, eg, "men aren't allowed to be nurses." Really the argument is that there are very few jobs with a bona fide reason for discrimination on the basis of gender.
People are arguing that Google is acting like a thug.
A more apt comparison is if that trans person disseminated a controversial manifesto about gender theory on company time with company services.
You seem to be taking the perspective that evil people must be fired, and other people shouldn't. Which may be defensible, but off-topic to this particular thread.
Spare me the extrapolation. My position is clear: Stupid people should be fired.
I don't see what's so controversial about the "manifesto." And it's not a manifesto, it's a pro-diversity memo that questions the implication that gender representation in software engineering must be 50/50 or there's clearly some sort of discrimination going on.
Perhaps, like the author of the article, you haven't actually read the "manifesto." I'll be charitable and assume that you did: what, in your mind, do you fundamentally believe is controversial in the memo, and is it controversial because it spits in the face of the facts, or is it controversial because they're uncomfortable facts, for you personally?
It's controversy is in the assertion that there is a class of people at Google who hold positions that they are not deserving of.
But that's not what the "manifesto" is asserting, at all.
The memo is questioning the wisdom of equal sex representation in a particular career choice, considering biological predispositions. At no point does the manifesto assert that genders, races, or classes of people are holding positions that they do not deserve at Google.
What it does assert is that there are biological predispositions, personality types are brought up, and questions the wisdom of an even split of representation, just by considering the rate of women coming out of uni with a related degree.
Again: at no point does the author assert your claims. What it does talk about is preferences, and biological predispositions. It also talks in generalities, but mentions individuals. It does not say "all women have these personality types and these interests therefore this explains the gap". It simply says that women are biologically predisposed to certain personality types, and interests, and it MAY explain the gap.
If this were true, and even it were not (allowing for other explanations), it would be unwise to operate solely on the assumption that there's some sort of early or late discrimination going on which causes women to avoid entering this particular career.
So, are you upset because this makes you uncomfortable about biological predispositions, particularly the personality types that the author originally brought up, or do you hold that such a position flies in the face of the facts? If it's the latter, you can spare talking about your favorite social science models, because unfortunately they're not the "facts" we're looking for. Actually, they're not facts at all.
Becuase I wouldn't.
No one has claimed that the women who enter it perform poorly in this particular career, or that anyone has positions that they did not deserve at Google. The author did not even come close to anything resembling sexism, racism, or other related terms that have been reduced to buzzwords at this point.
You, and others, were the ones who put these words into the author's mouth. I don't blame you, outrage culture is everywhere, dishonest media loves ad impressions, and it must feel good to have a common enemy that you can project when anyone questions the fundamental assumptions that you're operating on and virtue signal about the evil nazi on Twitter.
And for the record, I disagree with the author's proposed solutions to tackling this particular gap. This is a really hard problem. But that doesn't mean that I do not recognize that part of what he's saying is the objective truth, and that there are biases that could be clouding better solutions for tackling this purported gender gap in software engineering, if there's anything to be solved.
He was fired for poor judgement, for using company services and time to write a broad and controversial memo that contradicts Google's corporate policy and goals as a company. What he wrote is almost immaterial. California law protects him when he does it on his own time. That would have prevented him from being fired, or at least provided a legitimate grievance if he was.
Is it funny because you can't actually source a quote from the memo proving any of your implications? I think it is.
>That you don't see what you're doing as a form of virtue signaling
Virtue signaling requires the signaling to, hopefully, elevate one's status within an in-group. Considering I don't blather on social media all day about political shit, it'd be pretty hard for this to be the case, and the rare time that I do, I prefer to do it unrelated to my real name, precisely because of vitriol shit out by both "sides", faux progressives and alt-right or whatever you want to call them.
But please, continue to believe that many faux-progressives were not acting like thugs in this particular debacle.
>He was fired
He was fired because immature employees couldn't have an honest discussion, and then called up a bunch of news orgs to get public opinions on their side and summon a shitstorm before anyone even saw the memo. Firing him just proves him right.
> In sum, Damore may have enough of a complaint to file a case, but that case — ultimately — won't get very far unless the US Supreme Court is willing to adopt California law, widen it, and give all Americans a new right to use their bosses' computers for political activity. That, given the court's 5-4 conservative majority, seems unlikely.
On the other hand, the conservative judges might sympathize with Damore, but...
> It is rare that conservatives argue for the rights of employers to be restricted when it comes to firing workers. They ought to tread very carefully with that insistence. Such a right could give every communist, every member of the KKK, and every Hillary Clinton voter an equal right to fill up their internal workplace bulletin boards with propaganda of their pleasing.
...but Business Insider warns the judges that if they choose to back up Damore, workplaces might become filled with communist propaganda.
Those trying to make the workplace more equal are going to find it harder to meet the people they need to reach. Education would have been a better choice.
It showed terrible judgement on his part, and that's not even getting into the content of the manifesto.
Doubtful. Brendan Eich was ousted for "controversial politics" on his own time. In the current climate, there'd still be the same outrage ("Googler has evil thoughts, why isn't Google firing him?!"). If anything, he'd have even less of a case in the court of public sympathy, as the entire point of this guy's post was not just diversity issues in general but how they applied to Google's internal operations. Taking the initiative to air that publicly would have been an intentional hit against Google PR. In this case, though, the author of this memo had posted it to internal Google groups, and then presumably an ideological opponent leaked it to the public for the purposes of stirring public opinion against the author.
That's a completely different situation, and can't really be compared. A CEO position for a non-profit and Sr. Engineer at Google are not comparable.
A CEO position is the public face of a company. There is so much more that goes into it on multiple levels than being an engineer with only 4 years under their belt who nobody has ever heard of.
Had he posted this to a personal blog, it would have barely been a footnote. And more importantly, California law would have protected him.
I can't really evaluate anything else you've said without examples of that person's "religious beliefs" or your professors "heavily biased progressive liberal confirmation bias".
I'm sorry you got unfriended though. I hope you're doing ok.
K-12 teachers still deserve first amendment rights. They have a right to say controversial things (outside of work hours)...that's precisely what the Constitution protects. This isn't ethics...this is speech. If folks haven't learned to accept that some people will sometimes offend you with their opinions and that it's okay...then I question their ability to function as adults. The teacher did end up getting reinstated but not before some lengthy dragged out debacle.
We can't say the first amendment applies to everyone except teachers or CEOs or (insert arbitrary profession here). We can't say progressive views are inherently less offensive than conservative views and proceed to shut down conservative speech through intimidation or termination. That's ridiculous. It doesn't matter which class of people were offended.
If all that matters is who is offended the strongest, then all you're doing is setting up an arms race for which side can get the most riled up. You're not encouraging constructive dialog and nobody is growing. Offensive speech happens.
"For some Americans in the 1960s and 1970s, Coors—the iconic Rocky Mountain brew—signified views about labor, race, and gender equality. The Coors boycotts, beginning in 1966 and lasting, for some people, right up to the present, connected a wide spectrum of activists and organizations, much like the successful grape boycott organized by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in the 1960s. ... In 1969, 43 Chicano students at Southern Colorado State College (SCSC) - now Colorado State University-Pueblo- joined hands around the campus pub to keep people from ordering any Coors beer. ... The boycotts had a clear financial impact. In California, where anti-Coors sentiment was high, the company’s share of the state beer market slid from 40 percent in 1977 to 14 percent in 1984."
Here's a quote from "The Milagro Beanfield War", written in 1974.: "Okay, gimme a pack of Camels and a Coors tallboy. No, wait a sec, make that a Hamms, there's a boycott on Coors."
Here's an article from the Lakeland Ledger Dec 28, 1975, https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1346&dat=19751228&id=... . Among other things, numerous gay bars in SF stopped serving Coors already by that time.
Regarding K-12 teachers, see https://www.aclu-wa.org/docs/free-speech-rights-public-schoo... . They have First Amendment rights. "However, if you use social media to comment about students, school or other work-related matters, or you use it to engage in what might be considered conduct impairing your functioning as a teacher, the First Amendment may not protect you."
It then lists some examples:
• a court upheld a demotion of a teacher who posted derogatory comments about a school administrator on her blog.
• a court upheld the firing of a teacher who communicated with students through MySpace inappropriately, “as if he were their peer.”
• A court upheld the firing of a teacher who posted sexually explicit Craigslist ads (“immoral conduct” made him unfit to teach).
The relevant Supreme Court case is Garcetti v. Ceballos, which applies to all public employees.
As the last point shows, K-12 teachers are often subject to morality clauses, with a gray area in what that means. Olivia Sprauer in FL was fired for working in off-hours as a glamour model, wearing bikinis.