Professor fired for quoting from Mark Twain

[mahagonny]

'Dear White People:'

'Dear Persons Who Have Been Inflicting Their Whiteness on Everyone:'

I like it! People first.

[Caracal]

The objections to the word slave seem to fit with the wider "people first" language movement. It argues we should say "person with schizophrenia in room 3" rather than " the schizophrenic in room 3" for example. We should avoid phrases like "the blind," "the deaf," "an epileptic" and so on. We should also avoid nouns that are perceived as derogatory -- cripple, moron, retard, psycho, addict.

While it seems a bit simplistic about how language works, it might also be onto something. I guess it could count as a form of conceptual engineering.

I haven't ever heard of a college requiring or even recommending "people first" language be used in classrooms.

As someone who teaches and writes about slavery, I don't think using the term slave is offensive, but I try to use enslaved person in certain contexts and formulations. Mostly, I use it where saying or writing "slave" does seem potentially dehumanizing.

For example, "Smith was born a slave in 1799" doesn't strike me as any different than "Smith was born as an enslaved person in 1799."

On the other hand if I say,  "The slaves were put up as collateral for the debt," that's a bit ickier and I do prefer "The Enslaved people," since it emphasizes their humanity even though I'm writing about a system that treats them as property.

[Wahoo Redux]

The professor could had made her point using other words and avoided the whole thing. Don't be a martyr if you're an adjunct. No one will care.

No one in the university may care, but this has generated headlines and discussion here.  I imagine it will generate more.

When I taught "Barn Burning" I emailed my one African-American student ahead of time and asked her if the N-word would be a problem.  She politely said no and we proceeded.

We have posted elsewhere about this sort of hysterical censorship on college campuses

[mahagonny]

The professor could had made her point using other words and avoided the whole thing. Don't be a martyr if you're an adjunct. No one will care.

No one in the university may care, but this has generated headlines and discussion here.  I imagine it will generate more.

When I taught "Barn Burning" I emailed my one African-American student ahead of time and asked her if the N-word would be a problem.  She politely said no and we proceeded.

We have posted elsewhere about this sort of hysterical censorship on college campuses

There are plenty of academics who care, people like McWhorter, Glenn Loury, Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Coleman Hughes. You know, the 'Uncle Toms.' The intellectuals who are intentionally drowned out by the mob who is on cloud nine because Biden won. The same mob that pretends Tim Scott couldn't possibly like being a republican, and tell that to anyone dumb enough to listen.
When I say they care I mean they write about it and take a stand, using their own name. Not like what we're doing here. McWhorter doesn't even have tenure. Maybe that's why...?
On the whole, academics who have tenure don't care unless it inconveniences them. Although they may find it's an interesting thing to muse about. And an adjunct shouldn't care about what the ultimate truth is considering how she is getting treated. I think that was Mobius' point.  She apologized, got fired, apologized some more, stayed fired. And no one comes to her defense.
on edit: You sound like a guy who's got everything figured out except which political party believes the same things as him.

[Caracal]

When I say they care I mean they write about it and take a stand, using their own name. Not like what we're doing here. McWhorter doesn't even have tenure. Maybe that's why...?

It turns out you can check these things before making unfounded claims. McWhorter himself said this on a podcast.
"And people should know though, I don't have tenure for administrative reasons that I wouldn't bore people with."
https://www.thefire.org/so-to-speak-podcast-transcript-john-mcwhorter-says-academics-are-really-really-worried/

Certainly doesn't sound like it has anything to do with his political views. He had tenure at Berkeley, left to work at a think tank, and then got a job at Columbia where he had been teaching as an adjunct. Apparently he's actually in the English department because they don't have a linguistics department. I'm assuming the administrative reasons why he isn't tenured involve some combination of those circumstances. He is an associate professor...

[mahagonny]

Wow, why would a political moderate want to give up his tenure at Berkeley for a new job, I wonder.

ETA: I find it interesting and also impressive that he would publish such controversial views without the same protections many other academics have. Whereas most tenured academics don't really need tenure protection to express their political views if they are basically another one in the liberal herd.

[Caracal]

Wow, why would a political moderate want to give up his tenure at Berkeley for a new job, I wonder.

ETA: I find it interesting and also impressive that he would publish such controversial views without the same protections many other academics have. Whereas most tenured academics don't really need tenure protection to express their political views if they are basically another one in the liberal herd.

In that same interview, he said he had reason to think his position was secure. He also pointed out that he isn't in a particularly vulnerable position, regardless.

[mahagonny]

Wow, why would a political moderate want to give up his tenure at Berkeley for a new job, I wonder.

ETA: I find it interesting and also impressive that he would publish such controversial views without the same protections many other academics have. Whereas most tenured academics don't really need tenure protection to express their political views if they are basically another one in the liberal herd.

In that same interview, he said he had reason to think his position was secure. He also pointed out that he isn't in a particularly vulnerable position, regardless.

Well, he's written a lot of books, and I hope they get read, but they certainly won't be appearing on my college's recommended summer reading from the erudite staff at the diversity, equity and inclusion group. Most of that list is radical left authors; the rest is MLK or someone more of his bent. The question why would McWhorter write the things he writes without having tenure has obviously been posed to him. It would seem he's asking for it. Ta Nehisi Coates for example, has gotten after him. Of course believing something strongly gives one confidence.
I hope Wahoo is still following. As Groucho used to say 'it's been nice talking with you, but now it's time to win some money.'

[dr_codex]

The post I first say listed Fischthal as a "supplement professor," which is a term I don't know. Does that mean she was an adjunct or PTF?

One of my first years at my current institution, I taught Huck Finn. To preface that, I showed students this 60 Minutes segment on the novel and an Alabama publisher who issued an edition of the novel with the n-word replaced with "slave." At the time, I figured it might be controversial with some students, but I didn't think other departmental faculty would. My new-faculty mentor explained that some faculty, especially in the English department, strongly discouraged the use of white instructors actually saying the n-word when reading from the novel. As in, "don't." I said the word in the context of the novel, and there didn't seem to be too much problem at my predominately white institution. That said, I wonder if I'd have to change my approach now, if I taught that novel again.

I've been getting the impression that "slave" is now considered problematic.

I remember hearing a few years back that in computer systems "master-slave" architectures are problematic. The suggestion is to use "client-server" instead. (This despite the fact that the meaning is quite different, and so often highly confusing.)

Seriously, chattel slavery was a very bad thing. Whatever the language, it doesn't (and shouldn't) change that fact. Is it really some sort of improvement if alternate language makes people less upset when thinking about it?

I'm not fully sure I understand your point, but I think you're suggesting that, regardless of systems architecture jargon, chattel slavery was bad, and that badness won't be changed by avoiding language like master/slave. Implication: There's no advantage in changing master/slave to client/server, because it's less accurate, and won't fix the badness of slavery.

What comes next is a response to this paraphrase above, so if I've got your point wrong, please clarify what you meant instead. I don't want us to be talking at cross purposes.

I feel like chattel slavery is so distant and oldy-timey to most Americans that people forget how bad it was, or perhaps never fully understood how bad it was in the first place. This is why terms like master/slave came into use: the power relations in the metaphorical source domain were convenient, and they didn't really understand that human rights atrocities were inextricably linked to that metaphor. But let's do a thought experiment with a different metaphorical domain: Would you feel the same if instead of master/slave architecture the terms were rapist/woman? or pedophile/child? Leave aside whether the terms are accurate, and just focus on the source domain in the metaphor.

Using sex crime metaphors is not any more extreme than the master/slave metaphor. Indeed, actual master/slave relations encompassed rape and pedophilia along with the other atrocities. But since we have a modern-day cringe with terms like 'rapist', we can see more clearly how certain metaphorical source domains are in appallingly bad taste. And master/slave is one of those domains. You say that the language of systems architecture shouldn't change how bad slavery was. And maybe it won't--but it certainly trivializes it in the minds of people who use language.

Many people who hold conservative values about language are quick to criticize cursing, saying that it shows much more facility with language and expression to express your thoughts without drawing on four-letter words. Perhaps that same attitude might be useful in redefining IT subsystems architecture jargon. Would dom/sub be a better metaphor than server/client?

Interesting thought experiment. The Fantastics (1960) ran into trouble for its use of "rape", and as a result many productions change it. The word used in the same sense as Pope's "The Rape of the Lock", and maybe "The Rape of Lucrece" and the rape of the Sabine women. Part of the semantic instability in some or all of those texts is that one man's abduction is another man's sex crime -- or, perhaps more accurately, that abduction is a sex crime. While the issue of ownership and property that were implicit in the idea that women could be "stolen" are hopefully behind us, decisions about the line between seduction and abduction are still very much with us. (Insert the tawdry example of the politician of your choice here.) So, when Chaucer was accused of raptus, should we be thinking about Romeo or about Bill Cosby?

[mahagonny]

I just asked Cosby and he answered 'both.'

Excellent contribution by Dr. Codex. There will be interesting responses.

I think when you're dealing with works of art, you can't paraphrase anything without compromising the work. Thus when movie producer Billy Wilder heard of plans to colorize some of his movies, he rose from his deathbed to make a furious public statement (maybe legal injunction?) against it.

It occurs to me the complexity of Huckleberry Finn is lost that way too. In the part where Huck is exasperated over Jim's inability to get the point about the parable of King Solomon, how he resolved the dispute by proposing to cut the baby into two halves, Huck is delving into his own racism, concluding 'you can't teach a [n-word] anything.' No doubt he would've met no resistance expressing that view publicly. Then later the  decision, it's worth going to hell to save the freedom of his best friend by telling a lie about the race of the man he'd been rafting with. So, the negative verdict on society.
Imagine if Huck had said to himself 'you can't teach a slave anything?' Much different. In terms of the main character and his odyssey.

[Caracal]

Wow, why would a political moderate want to give up his tenure at Berkeley for a new job, I wonder.

ETA: I find it interesting and also impressive that he would publish such controversial views without the same protections many other academics have. Whereas most tenured academics don't really need tenure protection to express their political views if they are basically another one in the liberal herd.

In that same interview, he said he had reason to think his position was secure. He also pointed out that he isn't in a particularly vulnerable position, regardless.

Well, he's written a lot of books, and I hope they get read, but they certainly won't be appearing on my college's recommended summer reading from the erudite staff at the diversity, equity and inclusion group.

Most of his work is on linguistics. He's a good writer and not actually a particularly ideological figure.

[Caracal]

Slavery was (and is) practised in numerous cultures all through history, all over the world. People still write speculative/science fiction which includes it. And we talk of "mastery" of subject matter, and we even grant "Master's" degrees. Experts in their fields give "master classes" and so on. If people are unsettled by the use of the term "slave", should we be equally diligent in avoiding the term "master"?

(Note that in the examples above, the "triggering" term is the term for the perpetrator, not the term for the victim.)

Interesting observation re: perpetrater/victim. I'm not entirely sure that it matters how the problematic term is aligned. I suspect it's just a question of which term contains the morphological root naming the crime: hence slave/rapist/pedophile being objectionable terms. Only when those terms are used is the metaphorical source domain explicitly named. With master or child or woman, there are many metaphorical source domains that could be invoked, so they are not objectionable in the same way.

That being said, I actually have come across arguments objecting to terms like 'mastery' and 'master's degree' because of the link to chattel slavery. But I've always thought those arguments were a little bit silly. It's not until now that I've had to articulate why I thought they were silly. I think it's because the link between the term 'master' and the institution of slavery just isn't linguistically direct enough. The word 'master' just has too many other associations.

There are people who have lost a parent, sometimes even by violence. By similar logic to the discussion above, these people would have reason to find the term *"orphan" distressing. (Someone who experienced an event like this themselves should surely have as much right to be upset as someone who had ancestors several generations ago that experienced slavery.) Should the term "orphan" be avoided?

There is no end to terms which someone will find troubling, for some genuine reason.
As John McWhorter, a linguist at Columbia, has said regarding "the N-word"; it has gone beyond being an obscenity to being basically a taboo. This is getting into the realm of superstition rather than use of language.

Taboos are part of the development of language. The Proto Indo-European word for bear was Hrktkos, or something like that. That's where Ursus in latin comes from. The Germanic languages don't use a word that derives from Hrktos. Instead they used variations of the word that became Bear in English. Apparently, (I'm not a linguist, so people who actually study this stuff should feel free to tell me I'm wrong) bear might have meant something like "the brown one" and the guess is that it was used as a euphemism  because the actual word for bear became taboo. They were "the scary brown creature who must not be named." Presumably, the guy in Denmark who kept insisting on saying Arkto and might be summoning a bear became pretty unpopular.

[Parasaurolophus]

And some people don't think you should name their god, or even spell out the word in full. Most people don't appreciate being called 'fuckers' either, even though having sex is a perfectly normal, legitimate activity.

That's just how language works. It's not independent from social conventions, it's fed by them. Some conventions are especially salient at some times and in some places, and not in others. NBD.

Caracal's 'bear' case is a good example.

[spork]

[. . .]

Most people don't appreciate being called 'fuckers' either, even though having sex is a perfectly normal, legitimate activity.

[. . . ]

I resemble that remark!

[mahagonny]

[. . .]

Most people don't appreciate being called 'fuckers' either, even though having sex is a perfectly normal, legitimate activity.

[. . . ]

I resemble that remark!

Some don't mind. John  Lennon: 'we put tracks played backwards on records before any of those fuckers.'