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Comment by uejfiweun | Hacker News Reader

I recently graduated from a top 20 school and in my experience it was not the professors you had to worry about, as this article suggests. Instead it was the other students, especially on social media, that were the most dangerous. I witnessed people losing internships and jobs after posting very IMO non-offensive statements, such as saying illegal immigration is bad and capitalism is good.

It taught me a valuable lesson - when it comes to highly emotional and politically charged people, simply agree with whatever they are saying, then get the hell away.

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When you say it's not the administration, but the other students, realize that your problem isn't what you're allowed to say, it's that you hate waht other people are allowed to say. That's the authoritarian position.

If you care about people getting fired, work for labor rights.

No, it's not that I hate what other people are allowed to say, in fact I am socially liberal. What I hate is what other people are allowed to DO. People should not be able to ruin each other's lives due to political disagreements, with no consequences. I also hate when internet assholes call me an authoritarian just because I shared an anecdote about my college experience... fortunately this has only happened once.

This surprises me. I've never heard of anyone losing an internship or co-op position for such a reason. I can't think of it happening anywhere I've worked. As both of us have anecdotes however, perhaps some data on this could be enlightening.

It happened to me at Berkeley in 2005…the seeds were already being sown back then. I only found out years later that I was rejected for being in an apparently inappropriate facebook group. Someone on the committee was offended and that was that.

What was the Facebook group? "Apparently inappropriate" is too vague to know what the problem was!

I don’t want to be cancelled again so I won’t share specifics but think south park level humor

The article mentions that students are being, so to say, "a wild force", even though other sources express it with more evidence.

The issue is, the students attend to university in order to acquire and develop the intellectual instruments: how come those who "came to learn" by definition became tyrants over, possibly, the learned?

There is a basic cultural societal fault in the acceptance of the empowerment of the «emotional and politically charged». There is the foremost problem, in social disgregation impeding communication and discussion - the basics are shaken.

A strategy which works until it doesn’t. Right or left does anyone think the current US political climate is sustainable?

>does anyone think the current US political climate is sustainable?

No. We seriously need to delete FPTP in favor of something more proportional. No one should ever be able to say e.g. "So you're voting for Trump?" because you don't want to vote for Biden.

simply agree with whatever they are saying, then get the hell away

One of the characteristics of facism according to Wikipedia is “forcible suppression of opposition” which is ironic because facism is typically considered a far-right ideology.

Modern day progressive ideology has for a while now been distanced from classical liberal ideology in a few key ways. Especially when it comes towards discussing ideas that don't always agree with the ideology.

There’s a ton of daylight between being oppressed and deciding not to engage in an argument. If you are not engaging out of a fear of large-scale repercussions, then it starts to smell like oppression.

Not to say this isn’t bad, but it’s important to make sure to take context into account.

It's interesting that conservatives don't have it any easier outside of academia. You can count on the fingers of one hand the prominent conservatives who feel free to make non-offensive statements about the results of the 2020 election, global warming, or even any principled concept of conservatism.

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