A collection of 227 posts
For the most part, the Great Firewall (GFW) is irrelevant for the average Chinese citizen, mostly irrelevant for most Chinese netizens, and for many of the rest it protects their ability to make money.
One young man said to me, “How did you get tenure?” When I said that I didn’t have tenure he said, “Good! Because you’re not going to get it.”
If we want to live in a world where we can buy things and subscribe to media and earn money and publish our thoughts without the fear of being spied on, then we are going to need a digital form of cash. Bitcoin is the foundation for that system.
The truth is therefore that Mark Zuckerberg’s reading of civil rights history with respect to its relationship to free speech is closer to the mark than that of many who have inherited the mantle of the movement.
The subliminal message behind this is obvious: “Censor yourself so we don’t have to.”
The Rise of Jordan Peterson constructs a kaleidoscopic narrative that enables the viewer to look at the same sequence of events in several different ways.
Tokarczuk is a passionate proponent of tolerance, feminism and European unity.
Sensitivity readers are typically sought by authors writing about some marginalized group—a culture to which they don’t personally belong, or a community about which they don’t feel they have complete expertise, and about which they want to be warned of any overlooked biases or stereotypes.
If upsetting students or staff or the public is a reason for banning speech, all such discussion is at an end.
Can we not treat trans people as the sex they identify with for almost all purposes, and still make some distinctions when it comes to female-only spaces, services and provisions?
This silencing campaign presents itself as inclusive and therapeutic. In reality, it poses a significant threat to intellectual and academic freedom, yet one that seems perennially overlooked in the campus speech wars.
Ironically, what is really needed is the restoration of the entire college campus as a safe space for people of all perspectives.
The unhinged reasoning in Fairbanks’s essay invites an overcorrection. It would be easy—and tendentious—to reverse her argument. The Left are the real heirs of the proslavery tradition—intolerant aggression disguised as aggrieved fragility, etc.
The larger discussion of how trans rights and women’s rights will be reconciled in coming years lies beyond the scope of this article.
As chilling effects go, “I would speak out, but I don’t want to risk going to jail” is not all that different from “I would speak out, but I don’t want to risk losing my friends and my livelihood.”