RRSTDV8 wrote:

HWN wrote:

RRSTDV8 wrote:

I'm only offended by the atrocious conditions in which you keep your apostrophes. The poor things have died. I shall consider reporting you to the RSPCA. And as for your capital letters - they're extinct!

Sorry, Wayne, but IMHO your original post should have hyphenated "black-listing".

I think you may be incorrect there Hugh. So far as I can see, blacklist is acceptable and, it seems, the norm.

You also wrote "Is black listing speakers..." (without a hyphen).

RRSTDV8 wrote:

My guess is that someone that didn't understand the speaker's point complained afterwards. The student president then issued his edict as a defence against attacks on him in order to avoid being thrown out of his position.

It seems to me that the episode just shows that Cambridge undergraduates / graduates aren't what they were. What they are now is a bunch of thin skinned types that are incapable of thinking deeply about things.

HWN wrote:

RRSTDV8 wrote:

HWN wrote:

RRSTDV8 wrote:

I'm only offended by the atrocious conditions in which you keep your apostrophes. The poor things have died. I shall consider reporting you to the RSPCA. And as for your capital letters - they're extinct!

Sorry, Wayne, but IMHO your original post should have hyphenated "black-listing".

I think you may be incorrect there Hugh. So far as I can see, blacklist is acceptable and, it seems, the norm.

You also wrote "Is black listing speakers..." (without a hyphen).

Ah, you spotted my deliberate mistake...



I mistakenly added a space.

Canburne wrote:

RRSTDV8 wrote:

My guess is that someone that didn't understand the speaker's point complained afterwards. The student president then issued his edict as a defence against attacks on him in order to avoid being thrown out of his position.

It seems to me that the episode just shows that Cambridge undergraduates / graduates aren't what they were. What they are now is a bunch of thin skinned types that are incapable of thinking deeply about things.

The descriptive word you are looking for is SNOWFLAKE

Free Speech Union wrote:

Cambridge Union U-turns over “blacklist” of banned speakers

The President of the Cambridge Union apologised for a speech made by Andrew Graham-Dixon during a debate on good taste, in which the art historian and broadcaster used “derogatory terms” while impersonating Hitler. Graham-Dixon himself apologised for several of his comments, saying they were offensive “even in quotation”.

Although Graham-Dixon won the debate, the Union’s president Keir Bradwell said a blacklist of banned speakers would be created – to include Graham-Dixon – and shared with other debating societies. The decision was labelled “Stalinist” by former Union president and author Andrew Lownie, and “pathetic” by scientist Richard Dawkins, who said university should foster and encourage free speech and free thought. John Cleese withdrew from a talk he was due to give at the Cambridge Union in protest, and asked to speak at a venue “where woke rules do not apply”. Louis de Bernières asked to be added to the blacklist in solidarity, writing that academics and artists should volunteer for such lists in order to boycott universities and institutions that practice cancel culture. Harry Clynch in the Spectator said the episode was sadly “utterly unsurprising” and that the Union had a “poor track record when it comes to defending free debate”.

Following the furore, the Union president reversed the decision and told the Telegraph: “Obviously announcing a U-turn looks silly. I was just a 21-year-old who tried to make the situation better. There is no policy to ban anyone for what they are going to say – it’s a free speech institution. If there is a dichotomy between free speech and offence, I would defend free speech. I don’t want to create an impression that the Union is against free speech.”

Nina Power in the Telegraph said the latest farrago at Cambridge was life imitating art, in reference to the Netflix show The Chair in which a professor does a Nazi salute to illustrate authoritarianism in a lecture – in a way that cannot possibly be misunderstood as an endorsement of Nazi ideology – and is then suspended when a clip of him doing so is circulated online.

Quote:

I disagree with you. Your comment comes across as serious tone-policing and as a woman of color, I am concerned that you as a white-presenting man would jump into this conversation to silence me.

"tone-policing?" - what does that mean? (Color - OK, I'm going to assume they're a Yank or similar). "white-presenting" - is that what we have to say now? I'm not "white", I'm "white presenting". It all smacks of an attempt to say the other person is racist and misogynist without actually saying it.

Sometimes my inner grumpy old white bloke forces itself to the fore and this is one of those. White-presenting. I ask you.

LT wrote:

I thought “white-presenting” was just another term for racial passing.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_(racial_identity)

RRSTDV8 wrote:

I think it unfair to say that everyone under some arbitrarily chosen age is unable to think about things. Some are like that, undoubtedly, but not all or there would have an almost universal clamour by all those present at the debate.