> I ask myself every time I hear that Thiel is a "libertarian" _while also_ being the founder of the biggest surveillance dragnet ever created: what about surveillance is libertarian?
Surveillance does not directly violate the non-aggression principle, and a myopic adherence to minimal principles without any consideration to where they lead is the central feature of libertarianism.
Self-proclaimed libertians aren't anything of the sort. You'll never meet actual libertians, they won't tell you, because they don't care. It's basically the opposite of the vegan, crossfit, prius charade.
Surveilance means stealing intellectual property of surveiled people. If you're a TRUE libertarian, then you need to make sure that you arrange some kind of a contract with the people you surveil.
Do they also teach about Comanche slave raids and other intra-native wars, and the native American treatment of prisoners of war and slaves, putting European conquerors in context as just another warring 'tribe', just a more successful one? Or do they teach a one-sided morality play version of history?
What history course would you expect to see this in? Courses don't tend to contain "by-the-ways" for things outside of the course material. Should it be against the rules to have a course specifically on the african slave trade? If somebody is teaching a course on the italian renaissance, should they be obligated to mention that great art was made in china too?
College history courses aren't "one-sided morality plays."
The reason why there is more discussion of atrocities committed by europeans is because there is way more course material focused on europeans. There are more courses on the american and french revolutions than the haitian revolution. Even orientalism is a european frame, focusing on how europeans engaged with the near and far east. A course on orientalism is not a course on the middle east. It is a course on europeans.
I do not observe classes on precolumbian american or the islamic golden age shying away from atrocities in their course material. Courses on specific topics rather than time period / region pairings don't tend to shy away from a global frame either.
So you've got a few options.
You could insist that when atrocities come up in courses that focus on europeans that the course contains a "but actually" where it discusses other atrocities to balance things out. This seems odd from a pedagogical standpoint.
You could reduce the number of courses focusing on europeans and increase the number of courses focused elsewhere. But doing this is also considered "woke."
You could deliberately avoid discussion of atrocities committed by europeans in "western civ" style courses. This also doesn't strike me as right.
Could you share what specifically you'd expect to change about history curricula?
Oh, I hadn't considered that there are complex and nuanced reasons why only white wrongdoing is discussed, and by others is ignored.
> Even orientalism is a european frame, focusing on how europeans engaged with the near and far east. A course on orientalism is not a course on the middle east. It is a course on europeans.
It is nothing of the sort. "Orientalism" is not about Barbary slave raids that emptied whole villages, about Ottoman invaders colonizing half of eastern Europe for centuries, or about the Islamic invasion of Spain. Instead it's focused on problematizing the fact that Europeans viewed these invaders as an 'other', and did not accept and welcome them as their own.
There is, notably, not a similar course chiding native Americans for seeing Europeans as 'other'. There's not even a course problematizing how Ottomans viewed [1] Europe.
You're free to invent further sophisticated reasons why this ridiculous cherry-picking is all perfectly natural and not motivated at all. I am done.
Orientalism is a discussion of how europeans engaged with culture from the near and far east, yes. That's a topic on europeans. And europeans engaged with this culture incompletely, which is not exactly a surprise for any community on the planet.
Again, the reason why we see more courses on Orientalism than the reverse is because of the continued disproportionate focus on european history in the academy. And at least for my professor friend who teaches indigenous american history, there is absolutely discussion of the ways that they understood and misunderstood europeans.
I do not understand how a modern authoritarian leader relates to this whatsoever. Does Erdogan have some say in history curricula at US universities?
Strange. The report the article discusses shows that whites are, relative to their share of the population, underrepresented at top-200 colleges [1, page 13]. And this counts Jewish students as white - if one counts them separately, the numbers are even more stark, at least judging by 2023 Ivy League admissions, where non-Jewish whites were the most under-represented group, despite having the 2nd/3rd highest SAT scores [2].
Yet the report ignores this, saying only [1, page 15]: Data on who benefits from legacy preferences is severely limited, but some research has found that the advantage goes mainly to wealthy White applicants;
Are they not curious why, despite benefiting from high SAT scores and legacy status and "inherited advantage", whites are still under-represented? The group that produced the report, Class Action, claims to be about equity [3] - isn't it then their job description to care?
[3] Class Action is a student-driven organization of student, alumni, faculty, and civil society leaders organizing for a new academic social contract: one that rebuilds public trust by embracing inclusion over exclusivity, public service over private gain, and opportunity over inherited advantage. - https://www.joinclassaction.us/s-projects-side-by-side
Are we supposed to expect that tools police themselves? They're going to use the ridiculous notion that fake images need consent, to expand the surveillance state into our computers (even more).
It tells you all you need to know about their honesty, that such a dramatic expansion of government power into our private lives and property, was put into a "budget bill".
He signed a secret agreement to help develop China's technology [1], lobbied against a bill aimed at stopping forced labor in China [2], and blocked the Hong Kong protest app [3], the New York Times app [4], and many others [5] in China.
Good. At least this will open the eyes of its users, however slightly, that they are being manipulated. Next step is to make them realize the algorithmic suppression/promotion is even more effective at propaganda. The step after that is realizing the same applies to the selection of stories focused on by traditional media. This is not the only thing Meta bans: https://www.npr.org/2019/03/27/707258353/facebook-bans-white...
If you want to keep a democracy, you simply cannot let your fellow voters expose themselves so completely to manipulation.
If the accusation is true and the bugs are just an excuse, that they're bothering to blame bugs instead of just openly censoring puts them ahead of the competition:
Surveillance does not directly violate the non-aggression principle, and a myopic adherence to minimal principles without any consideration to where they lead is the central feature of libertarianism.
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