Seems like there were two things Abbot did "wrong", one was to argue against affirmative action, and the other was to use a nazi reference to make his point.
Does anyone have first-hand knowledge of what the mob said on Twitter? I'm curious if they differentiated between the two.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, Netflix's fiction THE CHAIR satires cancel culture in liberal institutions and their story includes someone who is canceled for using a nazi reference as well.
There are really only two analogies he could have used, because there are only two cases in (post-Mongol) history where a nation with the best universities in the world experienced a calamitous fall from grace. One was in Nazi Germany.
The other incident was Napoleon's conquest of France, Italy, and Spain, and the damage that was done by the anti-Church reforms imposed on those universities. This is a closer analogy, since Napoleon's reforms were nominally "liberalizing" in that he had proclaimed the abolition of nobility and its continuation via said institutions. But it's unlikely that the Twitter mobs would have been any happier about being compared to Napoleon instead of Hitler.
> Does anyone have first-hand knowledge of what the mob said on Twitter?
The article contains links to a few Twitter posts.[0][1] Keep in mind that they might not be representative.
Edit: also consider that your use of the word "mob" (which isn't used in the Atlantic article) might be unfair, and that the word might apply to us uninvested, nameless faces better than it does to those students and professors putting their real name down against something that actually involves them.
It seemed like the nazi reference was appropriate though. In this case, the university system in Germany was ruined by a move away from merit toward an incorrect and abhorrent philosophy.
I think that doesn’t mean that affirmative action = nazism. It means that focusing on things other than merit has negative consequences and should be avoided.
A recent comedy, Death of Stalin, points this out on the micro level when there are no competent doctors to treat Stalin because all doctors who didn’t pledge political fealty were purged.
Having an academic system based on political or philosophical fealty will result in poorer academics.
It doesn't really matter if the nazi reference was appropriate or not, using nazism as a comparison point is taboo for any kind of serious discussion. Once you compare anything to nazism you pretty much forfeit the discussion, even if it's a valid comparison.
The period of 1933-1938 offers a wealth of information on how dictatorships are set up, how a war economy is financed (quantitative easing), the march through the institutions, censorship etc.
The other obvious parallel, Stalin, is more messy because a revolution started it all. Germany went from fragile democracy to full dictatorship overnight with the enabling laws (after the Nazis had marched through the institutions for about a decade).
It is a perfect analogy and does not mean that all of the "progressive" left are Nazis (though some of them would have participated in the Nazi movement, too, because they are just power hungry and don't care about the specifics of the cause).
> Seems like there were two things Abbot did "wrong", one was to argue against affirmative action, and the other was to use a nazi reference to make his point.
Which in the current political climate is a horrible look for the school. I get why they dropped him - for better or worse lots of people are fed up with the promise of an ideal meritocracy... especially younger folks. And, for better or worse, those younger folks heavily coordinate their dissatisfaction in the most effective place to get their voice heard by institutions: the internet.
Wrong or not... in the current climate I would not be making arguments against affirmative action publicly while expecting to keep my academic speaking arrangements. Especially with Nazi Germany comments thrown in there - way too spicy. I guarantee MIT will find a fine replacement that has less controversy in their recent history, and allowing this guy to talk would have only been risking further public altercation with their students. I would have made the same business decision.
I don't understand the argument of people who partly justify affirmative action in college admissions with the lack of a perfect meritocracy. So just because the ideal of a perfect meritocracy is illusive, decisions shouldn't primarily be based on merit anymore?
This all is in good faith, just sharing my ever-evolving thoughts on the topic to answer the question:
For better or worse meritocracies are exclusive in nature when you take systemic societal issues into consideration like wealth gaps. In America, we've historically done so much to hurt minorities I believe we've arguably held religions/ethnicities/classes/genders back from the same opportunities that I have as a straight middleclass white guy.
Is it the fault of the meritocracy that it is exclusive in this arguably unfair way? Nope - and I don't think that we should get away with meritocracies at all. But I do think we have to take into account external societal conditions when implementing one and I see affirmative action as this measure.
Schools are unique in society that they're a ladder up - my time in college was huge. Arguably, education is one of the most fair ways to lift people out of the non-ideal societal crap I was discussing in the first paragraph... so things like affirmative action are implemented to enhance marginalized people's access to opportunities I often take for granted.
This issue for me is a hard one as I can't exclude the reality of history and systemic societal problems along side a school's unique position to be the ladder up for people who have been crapped on like I haven't.
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> decisions shouldn't primarily be based on merit anymore?
I think we still need to make decisions based on merit absolutely - and I think we need to strive for the ideals of meritocracy as a society. I just think that active measures are taken to try to balance things out - affirmative action being one of those... for better or worse.
Affirmative action is just a really complex issue. Anecdotally, I admit I am glad that I am in California now where it's illegal in regards to employment - and honestly... selfishly so. In Iowa affirmative action was a thing.
Man I really hope the Diablo 2 auth servers are back online....
It is a form of perverted sense of fairness. If X gets to skirt the rules, it's only fair that everybody (really, myself, but that sounds too crass) gets to skirt the rules as well.
If you regard affirmative action as more fair than an admission system based on merit, please tell me in what sense you consider it fair that the more qualified person loses out because of their ethnicity? There are literally hundreds of Asian students who completely dedicated their youth to the goal of making it to an elite US university and then you're rejected because your acceptance would violate some quota... that just seems incredibly absurd and cruel to me. Not even speaking of the negative societal repercussions that such actions will have.
Does anyone have first-hand knowledge of what the mob said on Twitter? I'm curious if they differentiated between the two.
For anyone who hasn't seen it, Netflix's fiction THE CHAIR satires cancel culture in liberal institutions and their story includes someone who is canceled for using a nazi reference as well.