Date: August 12th, 2019 9:12 PM
Author: Your boomer dad
Preface
added August 12th: Some people seem to be interpreting this statement
as motivated by anger against Hopkins, or against specific demographic
groups. While I'm certainly not happy about my treatment, that is not
the primary intent; in a sense they were doing me a favor by firing me. I
don't even have that much interest in the legality or rightness of my
firing, or the details of the events themselves, or the specific groups
involved. This is about a broader cultural issue in the Western world,
and the United States in particular. White people, and particularly
white males, seem to be presented with a choice of either hating
themselves, or hating others; and the left is then surprised and
outraged when they choose the latter. I am saying: that's a false
choice. Respect for others doesn't have to be at the expense of respect
for oneself, and demonizing the majority is just as dangerous as
demonizing minorities.
Leaving Hopkins
Everyone,
I am leaving to take a private-sector job in Seattle, starting
August 19th. I will still be working with my students and collaborators
here remotely. As you'll see from this letter, I have been fired from
Hopkins effective the 31st of August. I had arranged a backup plan
beforehand, so will be leaving a bit earlier. Please don't blame the
Whiting School or Andrew Douglas for this; this comes from higher up.
You'll see from the letter that I am not supposed to communicate with
(almost) anyone at Hopkins... technically I am just putting this on the
web; and if you find it, you find it.
I don't expect all this will come as a surprise to most of you,
given that three months ago organized a counter-protest against the
student occupation of Garland hall, and a number of people were
extremely triggered about that; but I thought you might like a little
background.
What was never in dispute is that, being frustrated as the
prospect of a long siege at Garland where our computer servers live, I
organized a group of what I called “counter-protesters” to try to regain
control of the building from the students. This was on the evening of
May 8th; there was a scuffle and I was carried out of the building by
the protesters. They then made allegations to the Office of
Institutional Equity (OIE), saying that I had attacked them. The OIE
seems not to have been able to substantiate the allegations that I
attacked the protesters, but university leadership still decided that I
still needed to be fired. (The attached letter claims that they are
still investigating... I think most likely the true story is either they
found the protesters were lying or realize that they'll never know what
happened).
What the administration seems to be saying is that I put the
students in danger by bringing outsiders into what could have been a
dangerous situation. You'll see that the letter states that I believed
the group I brought with me “could become violent"... the actual
conversation with their lawyer went like this: after I stated that
everyone was under strict instructions to not retaliate if attacked, I
was asked whether I was confident that they would be able to follow
those instructions no matter what happened; and I shrugged.
So essentially I am being fired for what might have happened,
while the students are getting off scot free for things that actually
did happen. They actually made false allegations against me, both in
public (on Twitter) and to the university authorities. They actually
attacked me and hurt me; many of you saw the big scratches on my back.
They also threw a lot of punches at the people with me, who showed
admirable restraint, although I understand one punch was thrown by a
person in my group. They actually shut down Garland and inconvenienced
thousands of people, requiring the fire department to cut open the doors
to get them out. But they suffer no consequences. Am I sensing just a
liiiitle bit of a double standard? I mean, obviously faculty will be
held to higher standards than students, but that's nowhere near enough
to account for the difference in treatment.
Where could this double standard come from? Well, obviously
there's the fact that they were protesting for a left-wing cause, and I
was opposing them. I'm not convinced that that's enough to explain it,
though. My feeling is that this mostly has to do with underrepresented
minorities, specifically black people (and trans people). There seems to
be nothing that Americans, or American institutions, fear more than
being accused of racism (or similar ism's), which leads to ridiculous
spectacles like what we're seeing here, where such a huge organization
can be paralyzed by a handful of deluded kids.
Now if I had known in advance that everyone inside the building
was black (that was what I saw; although from media coverage it seems
that there may have been a white trans person in the core group)— I
wouldn't have gone ahead with the counterprotest. I'm not an idiot; I
know that as a person who demographically ticks all the 'oppressor
boxes', I would have to be severely punished for opposing such a group. I
miscalculated by trusting the coverage in JHNewsletter, which seems to
have given a false impression of the demographics of the protest; their
photos showed mostly white people. Now many of the people sitting
outside the building were white, but that seems to have been
window-dressing; they were just bystanders and didn't do anything except
take a bunch of cellphone video. All the people that I saw fighting and
screaming were black. If it were simply a matter of difference of
opinion I expected that Hopkins would at least pretend to be
even-handed; but once race and transgender status enter the picture I
don't think that's possible any more.
I'm aware that it's a huge violation of social norms for me to
say publicly that I think whites, or males, are being discriminated
against1. As far as I can tell there are three specific circumstances in
which it's acceptable for a white male in left-of-center America to
allude publicy to these types of double standards:
To justify them
To advocate for their adoption
To deny that they exist at all
Clearly what I am doing here doesn't fall into any of those
three categories. But the truth is, I left the bounds of left-wing
respectability quite some time ago.
1. Some people seem to be taking this statement out of context.
This is not a blanket statement that white males are discriminated
against in general, just in the context of campus politics.
White males in this environment seem to be expected to
constantly atone for their existence by telegraphing their exclusive
concern for every demographic group but their own, like a neutered
puppy-dog or some Justin Trudeau man-child. It's pathetic, in my
opinion; and I don't accept it at all. I am not prepared to apologize
for being who I am. I don't think that empathy should preclude critical
thinking or basic self-respect. I don't accept that a person should have
carte blanche to disrupt everyone's lives just because of their
minority status; and I don't feel it's right that I should be fired just
for opposing a group whose victimhood makes them politically
unassailable. This might sound very controversial to some people here,
but to me it seems like common sense.
After writing the words above, I can hear in my head a chorus of
marginalized voices crying: “But.. but.. but.. we're triggered!”
“Hate!” “White supremacy!” “Transphobia!” and demanding special
protection. I expect that some people will characterize my plea for
equal treatment as an incitement to genocide. Let them. Unlike some
people here, I have the mental strength to not be manipulated by these
kinds of histrionics. I don't need the approval of victim groups to
bolster my self-esteem; and I'm capable of weathering a little outrage.
(The fact that I have career options helps, obviously). There's a
difference between tolerance and cowardice; there's a difference between
broad-mindedness and self-hatred; and no-one should claim they are
bravely defending ‘oppressed classes’ when in reality they are just too
timid, self-conscious or mentally feeble to stop themselves from being
manipulated by their advocates. Males educated here in America seem to
be uniquely supine in this regard. Is it something they put in the
cafeteria food?
Perceptive readers may see the above as an appeal to
masculinity. Yes, that's essentially what it is. The obvious response,
for a progressive, would be to put the adjective “toxic” in front of
that word “masculinity” and throw it back at me. OK. I'm aware that in
the progressive world male is bad and female is good, just as in
Orwell's “Animal Farm” it was “four legs good, two legs bad”. To round
it out you can add: “non-white good, white bad”; “diversity good,
uniformity bad”; “majority bad, minority good”; “powerful bad, powerless
good”, and so on; and you have a nice little moral system, one that may
be perfectly self-consistent. Now, I view moral systems as arbitrary
and subjective: it's just a particular assignment of people, actions,
thoughts, events, artifacts and so on, to the categories “good” and
“bad”— typically reinforced by myths or cherry-picked facts, and held
together by some more general principles or concepts. So from a certain
abstract point of view, the progressive moral system as on the same
footing as any other.
What I do find very odd, though, is that any straight white male
would buy into it. It's the same as if a gay Jew were to join the Nazi
party and begin endlessly apologizing for his ancestors having lent
money to Aryans at too-high rates of interest; and agreeing that he
needs to recognize his “problematic Jewishness” and “toxic
homosexuality”, stop talking, and make space for Aryan voices to be
heard. He might even take pride in having acknowledged the uniquely
cancerous and exploitative nature of the Jewish people, despite being
one himself. So is this person virtuous, or is he just too-easily
manipulated? You decide. I know we're approaching cerebral-haemorrhage
territory here, for left-of-center readers, but it's true: there are
many things said by American progressives where if you replace “white
patriarchy” and “women of color” with “Jewish capital” and “Aryan
youth”, and add a picture of a blond boy and a swastika or two, you'd
have a very serviceable Nazi propaganda poster. Think about it.
Of course, there are differences. Genocide of one gender by the
other, or of a more-powerful majority by a less-powerful minority, is
perhaps not historically common. The point is, the language used to
describe the more-successful demographic (Jews in Nazi Germany; white
males here) is similar; and the psychological states of the people
involved are no doubt similar as well. This isn't about moral
equivalence; it's about that hypothetical gay Jew's reaction to being
told that his demographic characteristics are “problematic” and “toxic”.
Do we see him as virtuous and strong, or as weak? Suppose we say that
he's weak. What is it about a white male social justice warrior today
who's constantly “checking his privilege” and “making space for minority
voices” that might make us admire him? Yes, white males now are
overrepresented in some respects; but so were Jews in early-20th-century
Germany— much more, in fact. See “World on Fire” by Amy Chua, which
says, IIRC, that they had a 10-times-larger-than-average income; and
according to this they seem to have been 25-fold overrepresented at the
top tier of business. (Hitler might have been a little bit triggered by
that). So what exactly is different? Our guy might have been in more
physical danger; but doesn't that give him more of an excuse to act the
way he did?
I've heard the objection that unlike the situation today, the
Jews were not oppressing the non-Jewish Germans. My response is that
oppression is something that's in the eye of the beholder. No-one today
would suggest that they were— not in polite society, at least— but at
the time, many Germans felt that they were being oppressed. If you apply
the logic of today's progressives, where differences in outcomes are
automatically assumed to be the result of some kind of bias, I find it
difficult to see how you'd argue that there was no oppression of any
kind. Today, even a 10% salary difference can lead to cries of
discrimination; a factor of 10 is much harder to ignore.
You might also say that the Nazis were wrong about the Jews
being bad (or at least, worse than non-Jewish Germans), whereas it's
actually true that white males are bad; and that history proves it. But
that's a subjective judgement, because facts alone can never tell you
what's good or bad unless interpreted within a moral framework. And if
you use a moral framework that was constructed with the specific goal of
proving that women and non-whites are good and white men are bad
(because it originated in women's-studies and black-studies departments
at universities), then that's the conclusion you will reach.
By singling out these academic disciplines I certainly don't
mean to tarnish all women or black people. In fact, I feel that in the
long term those academic communities are doing a disservice to the
people they represent, by taking extreme positions that inevitably cause
a backlash. Black people seem to be generally more sensitive to this
concern than whites, as you can see from their greater support for
moderate candidates in the current Democratic primary. Whether that's
because they perceive it more clearly or because they actually have skin
in the game, I don't know.
I also want to be clear that I'm not in favor of any political
or cultural movements that are animated by resentment. The choice isn't,
and shouldn't be, between demonizing one demographic group or
demonizing the other. But to join a movement that's specifically against
one's own group? That's retarded. Man up, America! You're better than
that. Leave that ideology to the man-haters and racial agitators that
generated it, stop apologizing, and start living your lives!
Anywho: as for me, I may not have my job, but at least I still
have my dignity and my independence of thought. I'll leave you with some
words of Bob Dylan:
I ain't sorry for nothing I've done
I'm glad I fought, I only wish we'd won
Please send my regards to the OIE, and say that, thanks to them, my career prospects have greatly improved.
Sayonara!
PS I am aware that some people are trying to “cancel” me and get
me fired from my next job. See if I care! I have lots of other career
options. When this whole thing started I told my friends, if the worst
comes to the worst I can always go to China or Russia. I'll tell you
this, though: whatever happens, I will never apologize and I will never
back down. I know the normal script is that I am supposed to get down on
my knees and beg, “Please accept me back into your midst, liberal
America! I accept that I was wrong.” I will never ever do that.
PPS They have now posted some video of the incident.
Misleadingly captioned, but if you look at the video itself, and bear in
mind it's what they felt was most advantageous to release from the much
larger amount of video they collected, it doesn't really bolster their
story that I attacked them. For me the funniest part is where they
ominously zoom in on— da da da dah! — a Guns'N'Roses t-shirt. Like it
proves we're white supremacists or something. Dudes! Guns'N'Roses isn't
even metal; it's just mainstream hard rock. Plus I'm pretty sure that
Axl Rose is Jewish. Did you guys even realize that it was the name of a
band? (shakes head). Also: when they say I am pulling on one of their
people, I believed I was pulling on the arm of the guy with me in the
blue shirt. When I freeze-frame the video, it does actually look like
the hand of a black person; I might have been confused.
PPPS As you can see from how this document starts, it was
intended to be read by some of my colleagues at Hopkins, as an attempted
workaround for a ban on communicating with them (we'll see whether
Hopkins will decide to advance the date of my termination as a result of
that). I did not provide any public link to it, and didn't really
intend for it to go viral. But now that it has gone viral I don't plan
to remove it, because I would see that as backing down in the face of
pressure from ideologues; and that's not something I would do.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4321812&forum_id=2#38677531)
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