Dissapointed with UCT

[Rakuen Growlithe]

I used to think UCT was a rational place which respected reasoned debate and made decisions based on evidence and principles. Sadly, over the last year or two, my respect for UCT has been steadily diminishing as it seems to be bowing to populism and tending to the lowest common denominator rather than standing up as a beacon for others to follow. Most recently they have dropped the ball on academic freedom by cancelling this year's TB Davie Academic Freedom Memorial Lecture.

Ironically, in the letter explaining the cancellation, they say "Let me start by affirming our commitment to the right to academic freedom and freedom of expression as enshrined in the South African Constitution." I couldn't help being reminded of this scene from Yes, Minister, rather an interesting satire of government.

The feeling of the meeting is, in principle, that we're all in favour of equal rights for the ladies, but there are special problems in individual departments.

Yeah, UCT is all in favour of academic freedom except this case is an exception. It's very easy to be for academic freedom when everyone is agreed. The whole point though is to stand up to this sort of bullying! I was also a bit surprised that Jacques Rousseau was so understanding of UCT's position but he does also take them to task for the vast majority of their reasoning, with the exception of the hypothetical safety concerns. His postalso links to UCT's statements and the disagreement of the Academic Freedom Committee.

You would expect a university with a whole lecture dedicated to academic freedom to take the topic a bit more seriously. Who knows how long until everything will be determined by the person who is most easily offended or upset or whoever makes the first threat.

[Sev]

I got angry when I heard that they were renaming Jameson Hall.

How much more of the university's history is going to be erased? Is nothing sacred?

[Rakuen Growlithe]

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.

[Sev]

It honestly feels as though this country is trying its damnedest to erase everything that happened before 1994, while, ironically, blaming every problem on the period.

[Splicer-Fox]

i was at an AGM for PRISA ()public relations institute of SA)
There they had communication professors talk about "fees must fall".
But they mentioned having safe spaces and sensitivity training mandatory.

Universities are not sacred places that are left too do their own thing.
Many groups want a slice of that intellectual space to further an agenda.
All the cool dictatorships and religions know this.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

"Safe spaces" are incompatible with a university's mission of building critical thinking and encouraging debate of issues. The last point is why we need to protect academic freedom. In Turkey they just closed a bunch of universities and removed professors who were critical of the current regime. We going in some weird directions....

[Randall]

And all the dictatorships and religions all follow the tried and tested formula in Orwell's books.
The ANC must be reading that book daily, for them its a friggen manual, not a novel.

[Fluke]

Implying Zuma can read more than the figure he's stealing from tax payers.

[Randall]

Not him he is just the village chieftain. His henchmen can read and are scammers of the highest order

[Obsidian]

The bankers love the constant fighting in every country and general civil unrest, leaves them unnoticed able to keep at their misdoings.

Illuminati confirmed

[Randall]

I wouldn't say its the illuminati, but in general, it would seem that every political fight is a diversion to shift attention away from white collar crime.

[Splicer-Fox]

People and members of a university are not automatically saints.
We all know how willing young people are to obey their mentors.

Like the umbrella riots in Hong Kong.
Organized by students, but started by professors that had a disagreement with the establishment.
I am sure that some of the Turkey faculty were starting fires. (And not all of them got selfless reasons)

As for safe spaces.
I hear they are excellent in creating echo chambers. (Free thought can be dangerous after all)
You could teach all those young people about university vetted subjects like:
Communism, Objectivism, Gender studies, Astrology, Creationism Science and Alchemy.
That all probably had its start by people thinking too freely.

Many bad ideas started by crackpot professors without external meddling.
Including this safe space thing is someone’s idea on the inside if I understand it correctly.
And now this free idea has reached people in South Africa.
(We will need to see if it gets any ware, they are competing with the EFF for student brains)

[Rakuen Growlithe]

Please don't bring all sorts of conspiracy theories here. In any case, another blogger I respect has brought this to a wider audience.
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.co ... -cartoons/

[Randall]

It is not a conspiracy theory. More accurately we can say that Orwell was pretty good at predicting the exact way the demise of the human race would occur.

I have read the article. The reality is that freedom of speech is under serious threat. Here we are in 2016 and people like myself don't have social media because it's too risky, one's innocent thoughts might just push some religious nut job into jihad, or worse, be construed as hate speech by the ruling faction. Once that freedom is gone, they will start with freedom of thought. And then the rest is pretty much going to fall into place as per the novel.

[Obsidian]

Please don't bring all sorts of conspiracy theories here.

That is just what a banker would say...

It is a common trend nowadays, especially in America to allow yourself to be bullied in the interest of being Politically Correct. Apparently during that Sexual Assault spree in Germany on New Years Eve woman were reporting their assailants as being German. Out of all the assailants police officials only arrested 4. Their reasoning was that they did not want people to hate the refugees or to make their life harder.

PC culture is starting to ruin us.

[Rakuen Growlithe]

I have moved the off topic discussion to the rules discussion thread. Please remember that people make threads to discuss topics that they have a particular interest in and other users will look in those threads because they have a similar interest. I'm sure you would not like your own threads to become about someone else's interest so please try to keep on whichever topic the OP has made. The forum makes it very easy for anyone to start a thread on whichever topic they would like.