Religion is a Mental Illness

Is this the end for DEI?

“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” hiring policies are unprofitable, patronising and regressive. Some companies are finding a better way.

andrewdoyle.substack.com

“There is a mistaken belief that meritocracy somehow conflicts with diversity. I strongly disagree. No group has a monopoly on excellence. A hiring process based on merit will naturally yield a variety of backgrounds, perspectives, and ideas. Achieving this requires casting a wide net for talent and then objectively selecting the best, without bias in any direction. We will not pick winners and losers based on someone being the ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ race, gender, and so on. It should be needless to say, and yet it needs saying: doing so would be racist and sexist, not to mention illegal. Upholding meritocracy is good for business and is the right thing to do.”

“You’re ‘disrupting’ current hard-fought standards you don’t like, by reverting to a system rooted in bias and inequality that asks less of you as a hiring manager and as a leader” – Dan Couch (He/Him)

“Curious to see how hiring processes can effectively (and objectively) measure one’s ‘merit’, ‘excellence’, and ‘intelligence’, all of which are very subjective terms” – Cole Gawin (He/Him)

“What is merit and how do we measure it?” – Rio Cruz Morales (They/Them)

“This sounds a lot like excuse making for casting off DEI principles” – R.C. Rondero De Mosier (He/Him)

1. We will never discipline or fire members of staff on the basis of pressure from online activists.
2. We have no interest in our employees’ political opinions, and how they choose to express themselves outside the workplace is no business of ours.
3. We will not probe into our employees’ thoughts with “unconscious bias training”, or force them to undertake workshops that presuppose the existence of “systemic injustice”.
4. We will never make statements of fealty to any given cause, political or ideological, or claim to promote certain “values”. Our aim is to make a profit, not preach to our customers.
5. We will not tolerate the public shaming of employees if they cause offence, either through a joke or poor phrasing, and will instead seek to resolve internally any disputes that naturally occur when human beings work together.
6. We reject the current predominance of identity politics and will simply treat everyone equally (staff and customers alike) irrespective of their race, gender, sexuality, or any other immutable characteristic.

"Cancel culture doesn't exist!" is a mantra we often hear from its most obstinate practitioners.

In October 2022, the comedian and BBC presenter Graeme Norton suggested that a better term for cancel culture would be "accountability." But is it really fair to harass, defame and ruin people's lives simply for expressing commonly held opinions? What exactly are they being held accountable for? A much better synonym for cancel culture was coined by the singer Nick Cave. He said it was "mercy's antithesis."

Given that the very existence of cancel culture is so often denied, I thought I'd take this opportunity to outline precisely what is meant by cancel culture, and why it matters so much for those of us who still care about liberal values.

But let's begin with that thorny question of definitions. Now, most of us understand what cancel culture means. But perhaps it might be more instructive to consider what it isn't.

If someone criticizes you for something you've said or done, that's not cancel culture, that's free speech. If someone blocks you on social media, that's not cancel culture; someone has just decided you're not worth listening to and is exercising his or her freedom to ignore you. If you've not been invited to speak at a certain event, that's not cancel culture either; no one's entitled to a platform.

No, what cancel culture actually means is a form of public shaming or harassment, often for relatively minor mistakes or unfashionable opinions. It's the difference between criticizing someone for something they've said or done, or systematically attempting to see their reputation and livelihood obliterated. Cancel culture is not criticism, it's denunciation. it's contacting employers and demanding that people are fired because you don't agree with what they've said. It's spreading lies about them online so their future work prospects are diminished. In other words it's a hugely disproportionate and vindictive form of revenge, dressed up in the guise of virtue.

Here's a way to think about it: let's say a colleague has attempted a joke via email and maybe you feel a bit offended by it. Do you have a conversation with them in private and say, "look I think that was a bit misjudged, but I know that wasn't the intention so let's just move on and go for a pint." Or do you screenshot the offending email, post it online, invite all your followers to pile on to the person who wrote it, and denounce them publicly and then demand that the employer fires them for hateful conduct?

Now if you're opting for the latter, I've got some bad news for you. You you're not the good guy here.

"But free speech has consequences," the cancel culture skeptics cry. Well look, I'm inclined to agree. If a person says something stupid or offensive, they can expect criticism, ridicule, counterarguments, even protest. But if the consequences of free speech are that someone becomes the target of a campaign of public shaming and personal ruination, or worse still, that they're arrested for so-called "hate speech," then that's surely unjustifiable.

A common misconception is that cancel culture is simply a matter of holding the powerful to account. The failure of activists to cancel JK Rowling is often cited as evidence that cancel culture is a myth. But as one of the most successful authors of all time, Rowling cannot be cancelled, much to the irritation of those who sender abuse and threats on a daily basis. The vast majority of targets are those with limited means, who don't have the public profile or financial resources to protect themselves from such attacks. This is why the Free Speech Union has been invaluable, offering support to so many people who found themselves at the center of witch hunts.

Perhaps the most sinister aspect of cancel culture is that it has successfully generated a climate of fear, in which many are afraid to express even their most cherished convictions. Once a few high-profile individuals have been cancelled, this can be sufficient to discourage others from speaking out. The relentless and cruel attacks on JK Rowling are driven not by any serious belief that she'll suddenly become impoverished and unemployable. But rather by the desire to send a message to others who share her point of view. After all, who would want to be on the receiving end of such malicious and continual harassment.

And so, the full impact of cancel culture is pretty difficult to quantify. Like "no platforming," which is the practice carried out by universities of denying platforms to individuals with controversial views, most of the targets of cancel culture are pre-emptive. Just as speakers with heterodox views will never know that they've been deprived of an opportunity to speak on campus, many of us will have been passed over for promotions, or not hired at all, simply for the opinions we've expressed in conversation or on social media. We will never know who has been cancelled, because we can only ever be aware of those handful of instances that have been publicized.

So, while the press will report on pop singer Róisín Murphy's cancelled shows, a consequence of her entirely reasonable comments about the dangers of puberty blockers, the supermarket employee who loses his job for an offensive joke on Twitter is unlikely to garner the same attention.

For all that, there have been numerous examples of cancellations that have made the national news. And the evidence of cancel culture is there for anyone who wishes to see it. And although these examples represent a fraction of the problem, they should be sufficient to disabuse those who cling to the comforting misapprehension that cancel culture is just a fabrication of right- wingers. Not least because so many of its victims have been on the left.

And so, to counter the pervasive and false narrative that cancel culture doesn't exist, I thought it might be helpful to provide an overview of just some of its victims. And now, needless to say, this list is by no means exhaustive.

So, in June 2015, the Nobel prizewinning biochemist Tim Hunt was forced to resign from his honorary position at University College London after a journalist misrepresented jokes he'd made at a conference in Seoul in South Korea.

In August 2019, school teacher Christian Webb lost his job when it emerged that he'd been performing viral comedy rap videos under the pseudonym MC Devo in the mid 2000s.

In December 2021, choreographer Rosie Kay was compelled to resign from her own dance company after investigation processes began because she expressed her gender-critical views at a gathering with dancers in her own home. And although she had cooked them a meal and invited the company to her house, some of those present took it upon themselves to report her to the board.

In December 2018, tax expert Maya Forstater lost her job for saying that women are female and human beings cannot change sex. The decision of the tribunal was initially upheld, so she was forced to take the case to the High Court, which eventually ruled that gender-critical beliefs are protected by law.

The comedy writer Graham Linehan has been unable to work in the comedy industry for six years due to his gender-critical beliefs. His musical adaptation of his hit sitcom "Father Ted" has been halted by the rights owners, Hat Trick Productions, who had offered Linehan a substantial sum of money to have his name removed from the project.

In 2018, barrister Allison Bailey, a lesbian with a long history of gay activism, raised concerns about her chamber's decision to join Stonewall's "Diversity Champions" program due to its uncritical stance on gender self-identification. For raising these concerns, she was labeled as "transphobic" by Garden Court Chambers, who publicly announced that Bailey was under investigation. Bailey later won a court case for discrimination.

In 2018, the children's author Rachel Rooney published a book called "My Body is Me," which challenged sexist stereotypes and promoted a positive self-image for children. It was branded as "transphobic" and Rooney was subjected to a campaign of harassment by figures in the publishing industry. Some bookshops capitulated to activists and stopped stalking her work, and her publisher told her to stop expressing her opinions on the subject of gender.

In June 2023, it was reported that Sibyl Ruth, an editor at Cornerstones literary consultancy, was dropped because of her gender-critical views. Following an employment tribunal she received an apology and substantial damages.

In October 2023, Newcastle United fan Lindsay Smith was banned from the football club stadium for three seasons for her belief that sex is immutable, and that men shouldn't have access to women's changing rooms or compete in women's sports. In addition to her ban, she was investigated by a secret unit at the Premier League, who created a dossier on what they described as their "target." They attempted to find a home address, they assessed photographs from her social media accounts, and they even downloaded images in which Smith could be seen walking a dog.

Dr. Neil Thin experienced what he described as a devastating couple of years when he was falsely accused of racism by student activists. Thin is a senior lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, and he had criticized a conference called "Resisting Whiteness" because it offered racially segregated spaces. He also objected to the renaming of the David Hume Tower as 40 George Square. It had been renamed on the grounds that Hume had written some passages in an essay in 1753 that would today be deemed offensive. Thin stepped back from teaching while an investigation was underway and was eventually exonerated in September 2021.

Also in 2021, the actor James Dreyfus was dropped from the audio range of Doctor Who stories for signing a letter to Stonewall calling for an open and respectful debate on the subject of gender identity ideology and its impact on the rights of women and gay people. The company not only dropped him but erased his episodes from a compilation in which he was meant to be featured.

In July 2020, the children's author Gillian Philip was dropped by her publisher for tweeting in support of JK Rowling. She's since retrained as a trucker and has written that the haulage industry is far more supportive and inclusive, and a lot less misogynistic, than the world of children's writing.

Criminology Professor Jo Phoenix was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after a campaign of harassment by colleagues after she co-founded a gender-critical research network. In early 2024, she won her constructive dismissal case against the Open University.

In November 2021, social worker Rachel Meade was sanctioned by her employer Social Work England because of gender-critical posts she had shared and liked on Facebook. This led to her being suspended on charges of gross misconduct by Westminster City Council. Meade later won her claim for discrimination against her employer and the judge ruled that the disciplinary procedure amounted to harassment.

In June 2020, Nick Buckley, the founder of charity organization Mancunian Way, was ousted for criticizing the radical politics of the Black Lives Matter movement, most notably its calls to defund the police and abolish capitalism.

In August 2020, Sasha White, an assistant at the Tobias Literary Agency in New York, was fired after a campaign by trans activists who took offense at statements posted on her Twitter account expressing her view that gender neutral pronouns were unhelpful to the feminist cause.

In January 2020, veteran television presenter Alastair Stewart was forced to resign after tweeting a quotation from Shakespeare which included the phrase, "an angry ape." This was misinterpreted as racist because he was replying to a black Twitter, user even though it was a phrase he had used previously in conversation with white people.

In April 2019, philosopher Roger Scrutin was sacked as housing adviser to the Conservative government as part of the "Building Better, Building Beautiful" commission. And this was after a journalist at the New Statesman doctored his statement in an interview in order to make them appear racist.

In June 2019, Asda Supermarket worker Brian Leech was fired after sharing a video online by the comedian Billy Connelly which mocked Islamic suicide bombers, even though the source of the offending excerpt was from a DVD sold by the company that employed him. He was later reinstated following an outcry.

In June 2019, BBC Books removed the writer Gareth Roberts from a Doctor Who short story anthology because he expressed his view that the trans activist movement reinforces outdated gender stereotypes.

In June 2021, the textile artist Jess de Wahls had her artwork removed from sale in the Royal Academy gift shop, having already been driven out of her hairdressing salon in the Soho theater. Simply for her gender-critical opinions. She was bombarded on Twitter with vitriolic messages and calls for her to commit suicide.

In June 2021, it was reported that the Reverend Dr Bernard Randall, a school chaplain at Trent College in Derbyshire had been reported to Prevent, that's the government's anti-terrorism program, and this was because he delivered a sermon on why it was reasonable to challenge ideological viewpoints. And this was in response to a training session that he'd been obliged to attend in which school staff were told to chant "smash heteronormativity."

In June 2021, the cricketer Ollie Robinson was banned from playing for eight months due to offensive tweets that he posted as a teenager. In addition to the ban from the Cricket Discipline Commission, he was fined £3,200 and was compelled to participate in anti-discrimination training.

In June 2021, it was reported that law student Lisa Keogh had been investigated by authorities at Abertay University in Scotland for saying that "women have vaginas." Although she was cleared, she described the two-month investigation as needlessly cruel given that it coincided with her final examination period.

In October 2021, the philosopher Kathleen Stock resigned from the University of Sussex following a campaign of abuse and harassment from student activists who claimed that her very presence excludes and endangers trans people.

Ann Henderson, rector of Edinburg University until February 2021, was falsely smeared by activists as "transphobic" and antisemitic and not fit to hold office simply for tweeting about a meeting at the House of Commons on proposed reforms to the Gender Recognition Act. She experienced a vicious campaign in which the University refused to tackle her abusers.

So that's just a sample of some of the victims of cancel culture.

And if it's true that cancel culture isn't real, it's got a hell of a lot of casualties.

150 Examples of Cancel Culture

When some people claim that cancel culture doesn’t exist, that it’s just about ‘consequences’ or ‘accountability’ – well that’s just bullshi

Democracy Coma

John Cleese: I'm so grateful that you came. Greg Lukianoff has co-written the best book on this subject that I've read. You co-wrote it with Jonathan Haidt, wonderful author. It's called "The Coddling of the American Mind," and it's the most interesting thing I've read on all this stuff.

But what I'm fascinated by, is that it all started with you having a severe depression. So, tell the tale.

Greg Lukianoff: Well, in 2007 I got so depressed I had to be hospitalized as a danger to myself. And in the process of recovering the next year, I studied Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. And Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is something that teaches you to talk back to your own exaggerated thoughts.

Cleese: So, when you have the voices in your head you argue with them?

Lukianoff: Exactly. When you're catastrophizing, you call it out…

Cleese: So catastrophizing means what?

Lukianoff: That you're just thinking everything's going to be a catastrophe. It sounds very much like it sounds. When people are anxious and depressed, they have all of these cognitive distortions you know at Volume 11 going on in their head. And that just getting in the habit of talking back to them can relieve many of the symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Cleese: So, when you discovered that, what happened then?

Lukianoff: Well, you know, it changed my life, but I started seeing all over the place ways in which we were teaching young people the habits of anxious and depressed people. It was as if, both in K through 12, in grade school and in higher education, it was like the adults were saying, by the way do catastrophize, do engage in emotional reasoning, do engage in binary thinking, which I know you think a lot about as well.

Cleese: So, you linked up with Jon?

Lukianoff: I linked up with Jon Haidt, I told him what I thought was -- cause I'm a constitutional lawyer. My major focus…

Cleese: Are you? I thought I liked you.

Lukianoff: … and I was defending freedom of speech on college campuses, and academic freedom, and I noticed around 2013 that students were really clamping down, both on freedom of speech, but they were also rationalizing it in this kind of medicalized way that was all catastrophizing, all binary thinking, all of these cognitive distortions. So, we wrote an article together in 2015, saying the things that are threatening free speech on campus are also the kind of mental habits that will make young people anxious and depressed.

Essentially, it's teaching people that essentially, they should avoid challenges, they should avoid things that cause them any pain, but of course and things that cause you pain are also what cause you growth. And so, the emphasis on having your children not experience either physical or emotional pain or challenges, is actually a profoundly unhealthy way to teach kids to think about the world, and to let them be kids and grow up. It's tempting as a parent, because I have a five and a seven-year-old, I understand that you want to protect your kids from emotional difficulty, but if you don't prepare them for a world that's difficult, and you don't prare them for challenges, you're not preparing them to be adults. And even worse. you're creating a situation where of course they're going to be anxious and depressed, because they're afraid of the world, they're afraid of adulthood.

Cleese: Having all these insights with you, how do they affect the people who are advocating woke ideas?

Lukianoff: I think that to a degree, this terrible advice is inherent to a lot of what we might call woke ideology. That essentially, challenge is bad, that you should always follow your emotions, and most importantly, that life is a battle between good people and evil people. A lot of the ideology that we're seeing particularly on campuses, is this very simple narrative of there is pure good and pure evil, and you want to be on the side of pure good always at war with the other.

Cleese: So that if you agree with a lot of the transgender agenda but disagree with some of it, then you are a very bad…

Lukianoff: You're absolutely evil.

Cleese: … person and you're absolutely wrong.

Lukianoff: Yeah, and this is part of the way that unfortunately, in the places where we should be learning to argue like adults, we're teaching this very childish way of arguing. It creates the situation where you can just dismiss any person, any book, any thinker, any institution you disagree with, because since you can find everything is evil, anytime you don't want to listen to somebody, you just declare them evil and…

Cleese: You don't have to bother with them.

Lukianoff: You don't have to challenge your thinking at all.

Cleese: Now, I want to ask you a little bit more about cancel culture, because every time I get on television, the second question is something to do with cancel culture, and my friends are saying, why are you always talking about cancel culture. And the answer is, we're obsessed with it. Tell me what you're thinking about it.

Lukianoff: So, I have a book coming out called "Cancelling of the American Mind."

Cleese: Cancelling, yes.

Lukianoff: Yes, and it's making the point that not only is cancel culture real, but it's so bad we're going to be studying it in 100 years. One thing that we've collected is the number of professors who have been punished or fired. And in the United States, you have to go back to the 1950s to McCarthyism to see numbers that are anywhere near as close to the number of professors…

Cleese: What? The McCarthyism?

Lukianoff: In terms of numbers, absolutely. The estimate's about about 100 to 150 professors were fired from 1947 to 1957. And right now, we're approaching 200 professors getting fired.

Cleese: How does it happen? The students?

Lukianoff: Used to be the administrators were the ones getting professors in trouble. And then it increasingly became the students and the fellow professors who were reporting them. So, McCarthyism, it was generally people outside of higher education who were reporting professors. But now it's coming from within, and it's devastating for the production of knowledge. Because if people think -- people aren't stupid. If they look at an expert, and they come up with an opinion, and they say to themselves, "wait a second, if you can be cancelled for having the wrong opinion, why should I trust you to be objective about this anyway?"

Cleese: Is it anything to do with the fact that the fees at universities now are so high that the students are also kind of customers as well as students?

Lukianoff: That is part of the problem.

Cleese: And they don't want to lose their customers, right?

Lukianoff: It's related to the fees both because it creates a "customer is always right" situation, but also because those fees, at least in the states, increasingly pay for armies and armies, ever growing numbers of bureaucrats and administrators who enforce really rigid ideological norms. They police freedom of speech and it creates an environment that is very chilled.

Cleese: Because the only real aim they have in life is not to get fired.

Lukianoff: Careerism definitely plays a part, but there's also people who think that the key to saving the world is less and less freedom of speech. You would think we would have learned a bit from Galileo.

John Cleese: Helen, I'm so, so happy to have you on this show. And the reason I'm happy is I can't get the woke people to come on and discuss it with me. We've asked over a dozen of them and they've basically refused. So, the way I want you to help me, Helen is that since they won't come on to answer the questions I'd like to ask, if I ask you those questions, will you give me the answers that they would normally give? Because you studied that, and you know how they think and why won't they discuss this with me?

Helen Pluckrose: So, you are coming here from a Marketplace of Ideas approach. The concept of debate, of bringing ideas together, comparing them, seeing which stand up best to critique, qualifying them, having them critique each other, is understood largely as a western white masculinist tradition.

Cleese: So, this is liberalism would you say?

Pluckrose: Yes, liberalism is very explicitly critiqued in what I would call "critical social justice," and most people call wokeness. Liberalism is the big enemy. This idea that if we get people together, we are then rational agents who can evaluate ideas, compare them and replace bad ideas with better ones, or as John Stewart Mill would say, "exchange error for truth."

This is, to the social justice activists, a western philosophy. It does not allow for the lived experience and the different knowledges of marginalized people.

Cleese: As I am a straight, white male, and an imperialist apparently...

Pluckrose: Yes, apparently.

Cleese: ... is that why they won't speak to me?

Pluckrose: It certainly is a big strike against you, yes. But even more than that, have you taken effort to educate yourself, do the work, uncover your own biases, dismantle your whiteness, detoxify your masculinity and decolonize your concepts of knowledge? Because if you have not done any of this, then you are not woke, you are not awake to the systems of power and privilege, you are still asleep and so there is no point in in speaking to you.

Cleese: Okay, but the whole thing sounds to me really quite authoritarian. Slightly like the medieval church. I mean they're very much saying what you can -- not just what you can say, but also really what you can think.

Pluckrose: It certainly is an authoritarian system. But if you truly believe that these systems of oppressive power absolutely exist and permeate everything, that they are perpetuated through language, they are doing harm to marginalized people every minute of every day, then the idea to control what people can say and what they can think and also to subject them to unconscious bias training to retrain their minds, does seem like a an effective way to achieve social justice.

Liberals like me and like you, presumably, will argue with this and say, no we need to argue about these bad ideas, we need to defeat these bad ideas by showing why they are bad. This doesn't work to the critical social justice people.

Cleese: Well one of the women who would not come on the show said that the very fact that we are having a discussion is the problem. I mean...

Pluckrose: Yeah, this this is particularly strong in the postcolonial, decolonial movement. You want to have a debate -- I don't know if you've seen the slogans, "my existence is not up for debate," that comes from the Trans Rights Movement -- if you want to debate...

Cleese: So, to disagree with them means that you're trying to disappear them completely.

Pluckrose: That's what it comes down to, yes. I mean, we saw Linda Sarsour also said, criticism of Islam, for example, is the denial of her right to exist. Now obviously, if Islam didn't exist, Linda still would, but the idea is that by criticizing any Identity or any belief system, you are not allowing people to exist as they are. But they just speak of existing, and even of genocide.

Cleese: I think an awful lot of people have no idea that that's what some aspects of woke are about, because they just say, well being woke is kind to people. And you know that's great.

Pluckrose: This idea that wokeness is about being nice, it is about just being aware of racism, sexism and homophobia and being opposed to it...

Cleese: Well, that's all totally sensible.

Pluckrose: Yes, but of course this is -- wokeness is not the only framework from which this can be done. Liberals also have been opposing racism for a very long time. Marxists oppose it on the grounds that it divides the working class. Conservatives generally oppose this as well, religious believers think that we are all the children of God.

This is what I have argued: any kind of policy needs to allow for people to come from different frameworks in opposing racism, sexism, homophobia or other bigotries. But the critical social justice movement does not accept that other frameworks do this.

Cleese: We mentioned cancel culture earlier. Do you want to add anything to that?

Pluckrose: Cancel culture is something that I've been dealing with for for quite a while. Because a lot of time people think of cancel culture as something that affects celebrities who are being hounded and perhaps not allowed to speak in one particular arena. And they say, "but you're still speaking, you haven't been canceled at all."

But if you look at who is actually being cancelled, the organization that I have worked with looks at blue and white collar workers who are being asked to undergo various kinds of training, are objecting to this training, and are being fired, suffering disciplinary action. Trade unions are very, very wary of even addressing the issue. So, cancel culture affects those who do not have a voice.

Cleese: That's very interesting. So it's the smaller people who suffer the worst, because they lose their jobs. Whereas people like you and me and JK Rowling and so forth, can speak out because they can't actually get us fired.

Pluckrose: This is why I would argue, from an admittedly biased leftwing point of view, that this cannot realistically be seen as a left-wing movement, when it arranges things so that only the independently wealthy can actually speak...

Cleese: That's funny.

Pluckrose: ... and when it supports corporations in putting, inflicting these kind of policies on workers. And then it stands with corporations against workers. This is very much against the whole ethos of the left. In the US, it's an $8 billion a year industry.

Cleese: What is?

Pluckrose: These kinds of trainings for employees.

Cleese: I'm fascinating by the way that corporations have -- they're just frightened of an economic boycott right?

Pluckrose: I am not sure how much a boycott would actually work. I mean, if we look at JK Rowling, her books are not failing to sell, are they? Even though there is such strong opinion. Such a small percentage of people actually adhere to these critical social justice ideas that I don't think a boycott can really work.

Cleese: Well, I'm hoping it doesn't because I'm thinking of the adaptation I'm doing of "Life of Brian."

Pluckrose: Are you going to be problematic again?

Cleese: I love that word!

Free speech is in trouble

Young liberals are abandoning it — and other groups are too comfortable with tit-for-tat hypocrisy

natesilver.net

Student groups often invite speakers to campus to express their views on a range of topics. Regardless of your own views of the topic, should your school ALLOW or NOT ALLOW a speaker on campus who previously expressed the following idea: ______________

C1. Transgender people have a mental disorder. C2. Abortion should be completely illegal. C3. Black Lives Matter is a hate group. L1. The Second Amendment should be repealed so that guns can be confiscated. L2. Religious liberty is used as an excuse to discriminate against gays and lesbians. L3. Structural racism maintains inequality by protecting White privilege.

The ideological shift that has surprised me the most is witnessing “free speech” become coded as a right-wing value, and something that when the phrase is uttered makes people sympathetic to “woke” ideas suspicious. The argument is that unrestricted speech harms people. There isn’t an equal platform to speak in the first place, so racists and other unpleasant people are able to use the norm of free speech to terrorise groups who are oppressed. I think the strangest example of this new norm in action was the response to Elon Musk buying Twitter. Traditionally, liberal ideology is fearful of overreach by powerful figures like billionaires, and is in favour of more permissive speech rules and norms as a hedge against their power. But the “woke” complaint about the new owner is that under Musk’s leadership, Twitter will not be censorious enough, and will be too permissive over what speech is allowed on the platform.

In 2020, Harvard ranked 46 out of 55 schools. In 2021, it ranked 130 out of 154 schools. Last year, it ranked 170 out of 203 schools. And this year, Harvard completed its downward spiral in dramatic fashion, coming in dead last with the worst score ever: 0.00 out of a possible 100.00. This earns it the notorious distinction of being the only school ranked this year with an “Abysmal” speech climate.

What’s more, granting Harvard a score of 0.00 is generous. Its actual score is -10.69, more than six standard deviations below the average and more than two standard deviations below the second-to-last school in the rankings, its Ivy League counterpart, the University of Pennsylvania.

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.” ― George Orwell, 1984

Dis-empaneling Anthropologists

Bowing to political pressure, two leading anthropological associations cancel a conference discussion on the centrality of biological sex.

City Journal

We used to say there’s sex, and gender. Sex is biological, and gender is not. Then it’s no, you can no longer talk about sex. Sex and gender are one, and separating the two makes you a transphobe, when of course it doesn’t. In anthropology and many topics, the goalposts are continuously moved. And, because of that, we need to stand up and say, “I’m not moving from my place unless there’s good scientific evidence that my place is wrong.” And I don’t think there is good scientific evidence that there are more than two sexes.

• Scholars Under Fire Database
• Campus Disinvitation Database

Law protects opposition to critical race theory, judge rules

Holding a view that does not subscribe to critical race theory is a protected characteristic under equality laws, a judge has ruled in what

thetimes.co.uk

Holding a view that does not subscribe to critical race theory is a protected characteristic under equality laws, a judge has ruled in what is believed to be a legal first in the UK.

Sean Corby, an employee of the government’s workplace conciliation service Acas, took the organisation to an employment tribunal after bosses ordered him to remove comments that he posted on social media that were critical of Black Lives Matter (BLM).

Corby had written that critical race theory, an ideology that believes racism is entrenched in society and which is at the heart of the BLM movement, is divisive because it portrays white people as racist.

He argued that a better approach to addressing racism in society was to follow the approach of Martin Luther King, who said we should aspire to a day when people would be judged by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin.

Corby made the comments on Yammer, a workplace social media platform.

Some of Corby’s colleagues complained to Acas’ management that the comments were offensive and brought a grievance case against him. They claimed that he was “using the Yammer platform to promote racist ideas” and suggested he could be member of a far-right group. They also said they would not feel safe to be “in contact with him” and questioned his right to be employed by Acas.

Acas dismissed their complaints, but instructed Corby to remove the posts on the grounds that employees had found them offensive.

Corby has taken Acas to an employment tribunal, claiming he had been unlawfully discriminated against and his views were protected under the Equalities Act in the same way as his colleagues’ views on critical race theory. Religion or belief are among nine protected characteristics under the Equalities Act.

The Free Speech Union, which has supported Corby in his case against Acas, said his colleagues had wrongly tried to silence him.

Acas defended its decision to instruct him to remove his social media posts, arguing that what he was posting were only opinions, rather than beliefs and were subsequently not protected under the Equalities Act.

Employment Judge Kirsty Ayre, presiding over the case in Leeds in a three-day hearing earlier this month, ruled in Corby’s favour on the basis that he had given his beliefs careful consideration and much thought.

As a result, she said his comments opposing Black Lives Matter and critical race theory fall under the “religion or belief” section of the Equalities Act. The ruling paves the way for the tribunal to consider in April whether Corby was unlawfully discriminated against by Acas.

It is believed to be the first time a judge has ruled that holding a contrary view to critical race theory is a protected characteristic under equality laws.

“Colleagues who’d never met me and knew nothing about me or my life targeted me and called me a racist. This caused me a great deal of distress,” Corby said.

“My beliefs on race are rooted in the ideas of Howard Thurman and others who railed against segregation and separatism, as well as in my personal experience. I grew up with black people, was immersed in their culture and dedicated my life to music and education. I have also experienced bigotry from white and black people in various forms and on many occasions. It is reprehensible of anyone to seek to divide us along lines of colour or to try and bully anti-racists like me into silence.

“I’m delighted we have made a stand and taken a step to embedding a in the workplace a more conciliatory and harmonious approach to dealing with issues around race.”

Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, said the case was “a significant victory for the cause of freedom of speech” in the UK.

He added: “Sean’s belief that we should judge people on the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin is eminently sensible and shared by most people, save for a handful of far-right and far-left activists. His employer should not have taken seriously the vexatious complaints of Sean’s colleagues, who claimed that his quoting Martin Luther King made them feel ‘unsafe’.”

An Acas spokesman said: “We take pride in having a diverse workforce and have noted the tribunal’s decision on one aspect of this case that is set to conclude next year. We value Acas staff having a voice and our regular staff surveys continue to show that Acas is an inclusive organisation.”

"Any church that imprisons a man because he has used an argument against its creed, will simply convince the world that it cannot answer the argument." -- Robert G. Ingersoll

Ingersoll was involved with several major trials as an attorney [..] He also defended a New Jersey man charged with blasphemy. Although he did not win the acquittal, his vigorous defense is considered to have discredited blasphemy laws and few other prosecutions followed.

Freedom of religion or belief must include the freedom to ‘blaspheme’

Ahead of International Blasphemy Rights Day, Jack Rivington says freedom of religion or belief must include the freedom to criticise or diss

National Secular Society

Ahead of International Blasphemy Rights Day, Jack Rivington says freedom of religion or belief must include the freedom to criticise or dissent from religious orthodoxy.

The freedom to question and criticise religious ideas in the same manner as any other kind is foundational to a democratic society. Where it exists at all, this freedom is constantly threatened, both by its traditional enemies of theocracy and religious fundamentalism, but also increasingly from a misguided interpretation of liberal values.

A recent report from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom identified 95 countries which criminalise blasphemy in some way. That number is at least one too few, as it fails to include the United Kingdom, where the offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel remain on the books in Northern Ireland.

Punishments in countries which outlaw blasphemy vary, from fines to imprisonment and execution. Unjust though such legal processes are, the extra-judicial violence licenced and encouraged by such laws is of equal importance. The Center for Inquiry, which established September 30th as International Blasphemy Rights Day, has said to "charge someone with blasphemy is to value a person's life less than an idea". Though this is particularly true in countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan, where those accused of blasphemy are often murdered, it is also the case worldwide. Last year, Sir Salman Rushdie was attacked in Chautauqua, New York, 34 years after the Ayatollah Khomenei called for his murder for the supposed offence of blasphemy.

Those who would impose and enforce blasphemy codes on others do not respect or recognise national borders or sovereignty. A commitment to free speech must therefore be equally international in its scope. In failing to fully abolish its blasphemy laws, the UK validates the notion that perceived offence to religion or God should be prohibited, thereby undermining its ability to promote the right to freedom of expression elsewhere.

Attempts to shield religion from criticism are also underway via systematic efforts to characterise such criticism as a form of racial or ethnic bigotry. The concept of 'Islamophobia', vigorously promoted by Islamists both in the UK and abroad, is the most pressing example. Integral to the concept is the claim that criticism of ideas is equivalent to attacking individuals. Under the term's definition formulated by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims (APPG), to question Islamic ideology is to effectively express hate for Muslims.

This is a blasphemy law in another form – a point demonstrated by the case of Erika López Prater, who was fired last year by Hamline University after discussing artistic representations of Muhammad in an art history class. A Muslim student complained that as images of Muhammad are banned in Islam, the content of the lesson – and by extension Prater – was thus blasphemous and Islamophobic.

By agreeing that images of Muhammad are Islamophobic and should therefore not be shown, Hamline generalised the personal feelings and religious interpretation of one individual as the definitive position of Islam. But this view is not shared by all Muslims. As Anna Khalid - an associate professor of history at Carleton College and herself a Muslim - pointed out, in endorsing the supposed Islamic ban on images of Muhammad, Hamline "privileged a most extreme and conservative" point of view.

A policy which empowers the most fundamentalist elements within a religious community is neither liberal nor inclusive. Yet that is precisely what the current arguments around 'hate speech' have achieved. What we have, in effect, is a code which polices a particular theological interpretation of Islam against other interpretations. It is a gross perversion of laws intended to protect the right to freedom of religion or belief to enlist them in sectarian theological disputes in this way.

If the right to freedom of religion or belief means anything, it must include the right of those within religious groups considered blasphemous by more doctrinaire views to practice their faith as they see fit. The current understanding of 'Islamophobia' threatens those who perceived not to conform to traditional theology – Muslim women who reject the hijab, openly LGBT Muslims, and minorities within the religion such as Ahmadis, for example. It is absurd to think that a gay Muslim could be labelled 'Islamophobic' for criticising elements of their own faith which are homophobic. Yet under the current conceptual framework, such criticism could be labelled as such. The ability to criticise religion must therefore be seen as an essential component of the right to freedom of religion or belief, not in conflict with it.

However well-intentioned, politicians who endorse the concept of 'Islamophobia' are effectively reintroducing blasphemy laws by the backdoor and empowering fundamentalists within religious communities in the process. Concerningly, a significant part of the UK's political establishment appears unaware of the problem – the APPG definition has been accepted by all major parties except the Conservatives, along with one in seven UK local authorities.

The UK must not sacrifice the right to free speech in a misguided attempt to promote social cohesion. Secularism, and a robust defence of the ability to criticise all ideas and ideology, is the only genuine way to achieve an properly inclusive society which respects everyone's right to freedom of religion or belief. In defending that right, we must remain vigilant.

I want to do a quick exercise. Close your eyes.

I want you to picture your best friend. Think about what specifically you love about them. What trait makes them them?

Now open your eyes.

I don't know what each of you came up with, but I'm pretty sure I know what you didn't come up with. I’m pretty sure none of you thought, "What makes Jim Jim is the fact that he's six-foot-two and a redhead." I'm guessing you chose their inner qualities, their sense of humor, their generosity, their intelligence, qualities they would have no matter what they looked like.

There's one more quality I'm pretty sure you didn't choose. Their race.

Of all the things you could list about somebody, their race is just about the least interesting you can name, right down there with height and hair color.

Sure, race can be good source material for jokes at a comedy club, but in the real world, a person's race doesn't tell you whether they're kind or selfish, whether their beliefs are right or wrong, whether they'll become your best friend or your worst enemy.

But over the past ten years, our societies have become more and more fixated on racial identity.

We've all been invited to reflect on our inner whiteness or inner Blackness, as if these racial essences define who we are.

Meanwhile, American society has experienced the greatest crisis in race relations in a generation. Gallup has been asking Americans how they feel about race relations, and this chart is the result.

So as you can see, between 2001 and 2013, most Americans felt good about race relations. Then both lines take a nosedive.

It's no exaggeration to call this one of the greatest crises of our time. And clearly we need new ways of thinking about race if we're going to reverse this trend.

So today I'm going to offer an old idea, but it's an idea that's been widely misunderstood.

You've probably heard it before. It's called color blindness. What do I mean by color blindness? After all, we all see race. We can't help it. And what's more, race can influence how we're treated and how we treat other people.

So in that sense, nobody is truly colorblind. But to interpret the word colorblind so literally is to misunderstand it.

Colorblind is a word like warmhearted. It uses a physical metaphor to capture an abstract idea. To call someone warmhearted isn’t to talk about the temperature of their heart but about the kindness of their soul.

And similarly, to advocate for color blindness is not to pretend you don't notice race. It's to support a principle that we should try our best to treat people without regard to race, both in our personal lives and in our public policy.

And you might be thinking, what's so controversial about that? Well, the fact is the philosophy of color blindness is under attack.

Critics say that it's naive or that we're not yet ready for it as a society or even that it's white supremacy in disguise.

And many people agree with these feelings.

Why Is TED Scared of Color Blindness?

Watch now (13 mins) | The organization’s tagline is “ideas worth spreading.” But they attempted to suppress mine.

https://www.thefp.com/

substackcdn.com

Really glad to see TED offering viewpoint diversity—we need more conservative voices—but as a social scientist, was dismayed to see Coleman Hughes deliver an inaccurate message. His case for color blindness is directly contradicted by an extensive body of rigorous research; for the state of the science, see Leslie, Bono, Kim & Beaver (2020, Journal of Applied Psychology). In a meta-analysis of 296 studies, they found that whereas color-conscious models reduce prejudice and discrimination, color-blind approaches often fail to help and sometimes backfire.

Far from a refutation of my talk, this meta-analysis is closer to an endorsement of it.  The only anti–color blindness finding in the paper is that color blindness & meritocracy are associated with opposing DEI policies. Well, I do oppose race-based DEI policies in most (but not all) cases. Unapologetically. But that is a philosophical disagreement, not an example of me delivering incorrect social science.  I feel it would be unjustified not to release my talk simply because many people disagree with my philosophical perspective. By that standard, most TED talks would never get released.

There have been a million talks about race at TED. For this talk and only for this talk was the speaker required to publicly debate his points after the talk as a condition for having it posted online. As it is, the lack of standard promotion by TED has Coleman’s talk at about 10% of the views of all the other talks surrounding his on their site.

Earl Silverman, who ran men’s safe house, dies in apparent suicide | …

The day after he packed up his recently sold home — also the site of the Men’s Alternative Safe House — Earl Silverman was found hanging in

archive.ph

It was men who built the pyramids and laid the great railroads.

Yes, it was men who laid down the bedrock of society; from the buildings high above, to the infrastructure deep below, all of it was built by the hard work of hardened male hands.

And so the problem of there being no shelters for male victims of abuse, seems kinda simple to solve?

Let’s build them boys! 🔨

How hard could it really be; bricks and mortar, some timber, chuck in some hard hats and some elbow grease, and were done.

In fact, funnily enough, it wasn’t women or bra burning feminists who built the first women’s shelters, in fact… it was men.

So why can’t the boys get together again, and reunite, to do what they do best? Build.

Why can’t ‘men build their own refuges’, as you’ll probably hear asked around social media.

Well, the issue is not necessarily the building itself, the boys love that, the problem begins when the building is done.

For there is a huge amount of hostility around the idea of men’s spaces, especially refuges, and to make it harder there’s quite literally no funding to help build them.

Many of tried of course, but each have fallen at the wayside of contempt, anger, neglect, outrage, or apathy.

For the world will congratulate and pat you firmly on the back for building spaces for vulnerable women escaping violent homes, and rightly so.

Just don’t expect that to last if you try to do the same for the men and boys.

The smiles will drop, the funding vanishes.

The proud face of joy turns to a snarled lip of contempt.

Reminding us that the problem is not what men can or can’t do, because building is easily, the issue is… what are men allowed to do?

So tell me, would you ever open a refuge for men?

Could you?

“Free speech has always been the primary tool of the marginalized to be heard and foster change.

Authoritarians oppose free speech because dissent undermines control and threatens the status quo.

If you want to know who holds the power, figure out who opposes free speech and seeks to limit what can be said. They have something to lose.“