Good joke from Kieran but the replies mostly assume Burgess is too dumb/privileged/partisan/whatever to recognize a bunch of angles he does in fact address in his smart and temperate talk. He has posted the full text + slides if you're interested. open.substack.com/pub/guidedci... - ThreadSky

cicadafungus.bsky.social • 45 days ago

Good joke from Kieran but the replies mostly assume Burgess is too dumb/privileged/partisan/whatever to recognize a bunch of angles he does in fact address in his smart and temperate talk. He has posted the full text + slides if you're interested. https://open.substack.com/pub/guidedcivicrevival/p/your-speech-is-freer-than-you-think

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cicadafungus.bsky.social•45 days ago

Here is the TLDR:
* Some academics (NTTs, people on the market, those going up for tenure with marginal records) face material career risks but those who do not still tend to worry about vague reputational risks. These people need to grow a spine.

cicadafungus.bsky.social•45 days ago

* Threats to academic freedom take different forms from left and right. Both suck, but at present, left censoriousness/group groupthink is the bigger issue
* This means right wing heterodoxy is undersupplied, and its value should rise in long-run
* Citations are right-skewed so risk aversion is dumb

wrigleyfield.bsky.social•45 days ago

It’s hard for me to agree that left censoriousness is a bigger issue when the examples we’re seeing of ppl you’d expect to be protected (eg, tenured ppl) pushed out are so heavily bc of Palestine advocacy

Feels to me like liberal rejection of non-liberals is more prevalent but also less powerful—

wrigleyfield.bsky.social•45 days ago

—so in that way, who you think is the bigger threat is sort of a mirror of the larger question about felt threat (of social and related rejection) vs bigger stakes

wrigleyfield.bsky.social•45 days ago

Btw, I framed it as “liberal rejection of non-liberals” bc early in my career, like when I was a student, I felt very strongly that being someone to liberals’ left put me at a lot of risk of retaliation

I think this has shifted in real ways & it’s hard to separate from my own career trajectory but

cicadafungus.bsky.social•45 days ago

Palestinian advocacy is a tricky issue. It has been a longstanding issue with academic freedom problems and there has been a big spike, in last year and change, but much of the spike was legitimate time/place/manner violations.

cicadafungus.bsky.social•45 days ago

* groupthink means there's a lot of low hanging fruit out there.
* Hacks will like you when you say things that fit their ideology and the same people will attack you when you say things they dislike. Maintain your integrity.
* He, Burgess,himself is untenured, so what's your excuse?

cicadafungus.bsky.social•45 days ago

I don't think he'd mind me saying after the talk, we had a pleasant email conversation about under what circumstances restricted field dynamics will be so strong as to serve as scope conditions for the positive part of his argument. Smart, thoughtful, and temperate guy.

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