Cornell infomercial - Truth or Conspiracy Theory ??

[www.youtube.com]

This is popping up all over the place when I watch YouTube content. I know what my opinion is on the subject matter, which is based on 34 years of working at the institution. I'm wondering if alumni and donors have the same opinion as the piece describes ?

Remarkably vague, and mostly free of citations and verifiable facts despite some pretty weighty claims. 99% of it could probably be said about any relatively significant college or university. Disinformation at worst, tiresome at best.

I'm sure it's part of an attack on many universities by the usual orcs, with them filling in different schools and different Tales of Woe from the poor persecuted Nazis.

Fuck em. They've repeatedly shown us exactly what they are. They have excused themselves from discourse in a democratic society. They are no longer at the adults table.

End the Right
Save the world

Trotsky
I'm sure it's part of an attack on many universities by the usual orcs, with them filling in different schools and different Tales of Woe from the poor persecuted Nazis.

Fuck em. They've repeatedly shown us exactly what they are. They have excused themselves from discourse in a democratic society. They are no longer at the adults table.

End the Right
Save the world

Ummmmm.... Usually I support your attitudes, but in this case, I need to relate my son's experience on Cornell Student Council in 2019 - Attempts were made to shout him down because he opposed BDS. There are crazies on both extremes.

Beeeej
Remarkably vague, and mostly free of citations and verifiable facts despite some pretty weighty claims. 99% of it could probably be said about any relatively significant college or university. Disinformation at worst, tiresome at best.

My thoughts exactly.

With that said, notwithstanding this dumb video, free speech and dissenting viewpoints are absolutely being stifled at Cornell and peer schools. Everyone deserves to have their viewpoint heard, regardless of how stupid it is (except to the extent such viewpoint is blatantly racist or misogynistic or is putting people in immediately danger). Pro-life speakers should not be shouted down and forced to cancel events (even if their views are (IMO) stupid). The shoe could just as easily be on the other foot, where progressive views are silenced. Whether the speaker is on the left or the right, the response to disagreeable viewpoints should be asking questions and putting forth alternative viewpoints, not shouting over the speaker or making them feel unsafe. This is Civics 101 and it’s frankly concerning that people don’t understand this. I say all this as someone who leans far to the left.

BearLover

Beeeej
Remarkably vague, and mostly free of citations and verifiable facts despite some pretty weighty claims. 99% of it could probably be said about any relatively significant college or university. Disinformation at worst, tiresome at best.

My thoughts exactly.

With that said, notwithstanding this dumb video, free speech and dissenting viewpoints are absolutely being stifled at Cornell and peer schools. Everyone deserves to have their viewpoint heard, regardless of how stupid it is (except to the extent such viewpoint is blatantly racist or misogynistic or is putting people in immediately danger). Pro-life speakers should not be shouted down and forced to cancel events (even if their views are (IMO) stupid). The shoe could just as easily be on the other foot, where progressive views are silenced. Whether the speaker is on the left or the right, the response to disagreeable viewpoints should be asking questions and putting forth alternative viewpoints, not shouting over the speaker or making them feel unsafe. This is Civics 101 and it’s frankly concerning that people don’t understand this. I say all this as someone who leans far to the left.

That's exactly where the vagueness comes in. Notice that they didn't identify the pro-life speaker or specify why she was disinvited? Turns out that she was disinvited because she has what are these days considered rather outdated and bigoted views on homosexuality. Does that necessarily mean she shouldn't be allowed to speak on abortion? Not necessarily, but it's a more complicated situation than simply disinviting someone because they're pro-life, which is what the video implied.

Propaganda like this is designed to circumvent critical thinking skills by giving only the information they want you to know (and yes, I've seen some from both sides, but far more and far worse from the right). Always ask questions.

Beeeej

BearLover

Beeeej
Remarkably vague, and mostly free of citations and verifiable facts despite some pretty weighty claims. 99% of it could probably be said about any relatively significant college or university. Disinformation at worst, tiresome at best.

My thoughts exactly.

With that said, notwithstanding this dumb video, free speech and dissenting viewpoints are absolutely being stifled at Cornell and peer schools. Everyone deserves to have their viewpoint heard, regardless of how stupid it is (except to the extent such viewpoint is blatantly racist or misogynistic or is putting people in immediately danger). Pro-life speakers should not be shouted down and forced to cancel events (even if their views are (IMO) stupid). The shoe could just as easily be on the other foot, where progressive views are silenced. Whether the speaker is on the left or the right, the response to disagreeable viewpoints should be asking questions and putting forth alternative viewpoints, not shouting over the speaker or making them feel unsafe. This is Civics 101 and it’s frankly concerning that people don’t understand this. I say all this as someone who leans far to the left.

That's exactly where the vagueness comes in. Notice that they didn't identify the pro-life speaker or specify why she was disinvited? Turns out that she was disinvited because she has what are these days considered rather outdated and bigoted views on homosexuality. Does that necessarily mean she shouldn't be allowed to speak on abortion? Not necessarily, but it's a more complicated situation than simply disinviting someone because they're pro-life, which is what the video implied.

Propaganda like this is designed to circumvent critical thinking skills by giving only the information they want you to know (and yes, I've seen some from both sides, but far more and far worse from the right). Always ask questions.

Yeah, I totally agree with this. I certainly am not taking anything in this video at face value.

BearLover

Beeeej

BearLover

Beeeej
Remarkably vague, and mostly free of citations and verifiable facts despite some pretty weighty claims. 99% of it could probably be said about any relatively significant college or university. Disinformation at worst, tiresome at best.

My thoughts exactly.

With that said, notwithstanding this dumb video, free speech and dissenting viewpoints are absolutely being stifled at Cornell and peer schools. Everyone deserves to have their viewpoint heard, regardless of how stupid it is (except to the extent such viewpoint is blatantly racist or misogynistic or is putting people in immediately danger). Pro-life speakers should not be shouted down and forced to cancel events (even if their views are (IMO) stupid). The shoe could just as easily be on the other foot, where progressive views are silenced. Whether the speaker is on the left or the right, the response to disagreeable viewpoints should be asking questions and putting forth alternative viewpoints, not shouting over the speaker or making them feel unsafe. This is Civics 101 and it’s frankly concerning that people don’t understand this. I say all this as someone who leans far to the left.

That's exactly where the vagueness comes in. Notice that they didn't identify the pro-life speaker or specify why she was disinvited? Turns out that she was disinvited because she has what are these days considered rather outdated and bigoted views on homosexuality. Does that necessarily mean she shouldn't be allowed to speak on abortion? Not necessarily, but it's a more complicated situation than simply disinviting someone because they're pro-life, which is what the video implied.

Propaganda like this is designed to circumvent critical thinking skills by giving only the information they want you to know (and yes, I've seen some from both sides, but far more and far worse from the right). Always ask questions.

Yeah, I totally agree with this. I certainly am not taking anything in this video at face value.

In agreement with all of the above.

nshapiro

Trotsky
I'm sure it's part of an attack on many universities by the usual orcs, with them filling in different schools and different Tales of Woe from the poor persecuted Nazis.

Fuck em. They've repeatedly shown us exactly what they are. They have excused themselves from discourse in a democratic society. They are no longer at the adults table.

End the Right
Save the world

Ummmmm.... Usually I support your attitudes, but in this case, I need to relate my son's experience on Cornell Student Council in 2019 - Attempts were made to shout him down because he opposed BDS. There are crazies on both extremes.

There are crazies on both sides in the sense that 20k is a number, vs 20M.

What the Right has done here is collected and exaggerated anecdotal stories about individual instances of possibly extreme behavior and then elided the difference between those and (1) official university sanctioned policy, and (2) the ubiquitous extremism of what passes for even mainstream "conservative" discourse and legislative policy.

This is 1933 Nazis bawling like a scalded infant about Those Bad Jews. As Beeej points out so well (and more calmly) in his post, this is standard operating procedure for what the Right does across the polemical spectrum -- it is how their propaganda works. It works with their Useful Idiot followers because it caresses their pet prejudices and puts the lotion on their thin skin. And the ultimate aim is to intimidate the sentient portion of the electorate into allowing them to foist their aggressive, malicious agenda on us as "free speech." It's the First Amendment corollary to rich tax evaders voting to defund the IRS.

So, not to put too fine a point on it: fuck them.

Trotsky

nshapiro

Trotsky
I'm sure it's part of an attack on many universities by the usual orcs, with them filling in different schools and different Tales of Woe from the poor persecuted Nazis.

Fuck em. They've repeatedly shown us exactly what they are. They have excused themselves from discourse in a democratic society. They are no longer at the adults table.

End the Right
Save the world

Ummmmm.... Usually I support your attitudes, but in this case, I need to relate my son's experience on Cornell Student Council in 2019 - Attempts were made to shout him down because he opposed BDS. There are crazies on both extremes.

There are crazies on both sides in the sense that 20k is a number, vs 20M.

What the Right has done here is collected and exaggerated anecdotal stories about individual instances of possibly extreme behavior and then elided the difference between those and (1) official university sanctioned policy, and (2) the ubiquitous extremism of what passes for even mainstream "conservative" discourse and legislative policy.

This is 1933 Nazis bawling like a scalded infant about Those Bad Jews. As Beeej points out so well (and more calmly) in his post, this is standard operating procedure for what the Right does across the polemical spectrum -- it is how their propaganda works. It works with their Useful Idiot followers because it caresses their pet prejudices and puts the potion on their thin skin. And the ultimate aim is to intimidate the sentient portion of the electorate into allowing them to foist their aggressive, malicious agenda on us as "free speech." It's the First Amendment corollary to rich tax evaders voting to defund the IRS.

So, not to put too fine a point on it: fuck them.

Yes but,
I might grant 2M vs 20M but I think you are dismissing the threat from the left because you are more ideologically aligned with the left than the right.
The left says 'Black lives matter'. If you reply 'All lives matter' you are pilloried for being insensitive to the injustices heaped upon people of color in this country.
If someone says 'Antisemitism is a growing problem in America', the left sees nothing wrong with saying 'discrimination is a problem', not acknowledging that this is the same whitewash as 'all lives matter'.

In addition, the nationwide BDS movement so prevalent on campuses today is strictly a function of the left.

There is a difference in the effect of the "crazies" on both sides.

The 200k (let's split the difference) crazies on the Left, of whom I am one, will hurt your feelings when you pass off your iron age misogyny as Ma Religious Freedumb. The 20M morally and mentally deficient crazies on the Right ram through laws that reduce women to chattel incubators and give a malevolent narcissistic manbaby the White House because you feel the need to own the libs.

Faced with the choice between being mildly inconvenienced by the hypocritical, mincing performative wokeness of affluent 20-something whites who will age on to vote for lower top marginal rates and a warfare state and then wonder why the country continues to crater, just like their pathetic Clintonista parents, vs being burned alive on a dying planet while being shot by AR-toting white nationalists because a bunch of Heritage and Federalist asswipes figured out how to get rubes to vote against their economic self-interest by leveraging their hyperactively racist amygdalae, I know which poison is for me.

Their entire channel looks like warmed-over donkey shit.

French Rage
Their entire channel looks like warmed-over donkey shit.

Ever been to Freep?

nshapiro
The left says 'Black lives matter'. If you reply 'All lives matter' you are pilloried for being insensitive to the injustices heaped upon people of color in this country.
If someone says 'Antisemitism is a growing problem in America', the left sees nothing wrong with saying 'discrimination is a problem', not acknowledging that this is the same whitewash as 'all lives matter'.

This is the first I've ever seen it suggested that it's only (or mostly) "the left" minimizing antisemitism in this way. (Not to mention that a huge chunk of the right's performative "support for Israel," the lens through which much of their anti-antisemitism must be viewed, is in the name of either 1) being anti-Arab in general or 2) hastening the apocalypse or 3) both.)

Beeeej

nshapiro
The left says 'Black lives matter'. If you reply 'All lives matter' you are pilloried for being insensitive to the injustices heaped upon people of color in this country.
If someone says 'Antisemitism is a growing problem in America', the left sees nothing wrong with saying 'discrimination is a problem', not acknowledging that this is the same whitewash as 'all lives matter'.

This is the first I've ever seen it suggested that it's only (or mostly) "the left" minimizing antisemitism in this way. (Not to mention that a huge chunk of the right's performative "support for Israel," the lens through which much of their anti-antisemitism must be viewed, is in the name of either 1) being anti-Arab in general or 2) hastening the apocalypse or 3) both.)

I am NOT saying that antisemitism is mostly on the left. What I am saying is that the BDS movement is a function of the left, and that the radical left happily trumpets all kinds of discrimination, except antisemitism. Right wing antisemitism is less obfuscated, much more in-your-face.

Trotsky

French Rage
Their entire channel looks like warmed-over donkey shit.

Ever been to Freep?

Or the UNH DI thread?

Trotsky

Faced with the choice between being mildly inconvenienced by the hypocritical, mincing performative wokeness of affluent 20-something whites who will age on to vote for lower top marginal rates and a warfare state and then wonder why the country continues to crater, just like their pathetic Clintonista parents, vs being burned alive on a dying planet while being shot by AR-toting white nationalists because a bunch of Heritage and Federalist asswipes figured out how to get rubes to vote against their economic self-interest by leveraging their hyperactively racist amygdalae, I know which poison is for me.

THAT is a breathtaking work of linguistic art. Seriously.

TimV

Trotsky

Faced with the choice between being mildly inconvenienced by the hypocritical, mincing performative wokeness of affluent 20-something whites who will age on to vote for lower top marginal rates and a warfare state and then wonder why the country continues to crater, just like their pathetic Clintonista parents, vs being burned alive on a dying planet while being shot by AR-toting white nationalists because a bunch of Heritage and Federalist asswipes figured out how to get rubes to vote against their economic self-interest by leveraging their hyperactively racist amygdalae, I know which poison is for me.

THAT is a breathtaking work of linguistic art. Seriously.

Art, maybe. Most of us here would probably agree with him. But I don’t think Trotsky is responding to the question. The question isn’t, “is the American right some combination of evil, stupid, and crazy?” Rather, the question is, “does the fact we on the left regard the right as some combination of evil, stupid, and crazy mean we should suppress what they have to say?”

there's something to the critique of the heckler's veto but the existence of protests or requests for deplatforming is not that. there are examples of where it goes farther of course, but the way people talk about protests usually ignores that the protests themselves are a form of speech worth valuing.

BearLover

TimV

Trotsky

Faced with the choice between being mildly inconvenienced by the hypocritical, mincing performative wokeness of affluent 20-something whites who will age on to vote for lower top marginal rates and a warfare state and then wonder why the country continues to crater, just like their pathetic Clintonista parents, vs being burned alive on a dying planet while being shot by AR-toting white nationalists because a bunch of Heritage and Federalist asswipes figured out how to get rubes to vote against their economic self-interest by leveraging their hyperactively racist amygdalae, I know which poison is for me.

THAT is a breathtaking work of linguistic art. Seriously.

Art, maybe. Most of us here would probably agree with him. But I don’t think Trotsky is responding to the question. The question isn’t, “is the American right some combination of evil, stupid, and crazy?” Rather, the question is, “does the fact we on the left regard the right as some combination of evil, stupid, and crazy mean we should suppress what they have to say?”

I am all for letting the fuckwits talk. It removes all doubt.

But I was responding to OP's insipid claim that Cornell Fucking University is some sort of Leftist dystopia. FFS, it's a hockey team I love aligned with a real estate and federal grant scam. It has the feverish social conscience and kindhearted humanity of Goldman Sachs. The Right should cream themselves just thinking about how it churns out generation after generation of bovine, entitled, centrist New York Times readers too terrified of losing their summer home to contemplate actual change.

Cornell as Pol Pot forcing the rich into the fields to work with their hands? If only.

Trotsky

BearLover

TimV

Trotsky

Faced with the choice between being mildly inconvenienced by the hypocritical, mincing performative wokeness of affluent 20-something whites who will age on to vote for lower top marginal rates and a warfare state and then wonder why the country continues to crater, just like their pathetic Clintonista parents, vs being burned alive on a dying planet while being shot by AR-toting white nationalists because a bunch of Heritage and Federalist asswipes figured out how to get rubes to vote against their economic self-interest by leveraging their hyperactively racist amygdalae, I know which poison is for me.

THAT is a breathtaking work of linguistic art. Seriously.

Art, maybe. Most of us here would probably agree with him. But I don’t think Trotsky is responding to the question. The question isn’t, “is the American right some combination of evil, stupid, and crazy?” Rather, the question is, “does the fact we on the left regard the right as some combination of evil, stupid, and crazy mean we should suppress what they have to say?”

I am all for letting the fuckwits talk. It removes all doubt.

But I was responding to OP's insipid claim that Cornell Fucking University is some sort of Leftist dystopia. FFS, it's a hockey team I love aligned with a real estate and federal grant scam. It has the feverish social conscience and kindhearted humanity of Goldman Sachs. The Right should cream themselves just thinking about how it churns out generation after generation of bovine, entitled, centrist New York Times readers too terrified of losing their summer home to contemplate actual change.

Cornell as Pol Pot forcing the rich into the fields to work with their hands? If only.

Once again, I mostly agree, but...
Cornell is not a monolith.
The Wall Street wannabees may be most of the student body, but they just want to get through having as much fun as possible without their names attached to a scandal.
The most vocal group of students is the far left.
Fortunately, they don't set Cornell policy.