…to Tim Hunt’s sexist remarks. It’s great. Angry, but justifiably so, and right on point. Just have a look here.
(Image: poster -click for larger view- is by Jen Golbeck.)
-cvj
P.S. The #DistractinglySexy hashtag campaign is brilliant. Worth looking at, here.
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Thanks Clifford. Hunt also mentioned various roles in European science committees that he is no longer playing, would be nice to hear their version of events. The UCL story is actually consistent with his, but their statement that online and media attention played no role is not credible (to me). If they had gone through some organized process, which takes more than 24 hours, and this was the outcome, that statement would be more believable. In any event, this is a borderline case at best and I am not that upset about the outcome. I am much more concerned about the general phenomena.
Moshe , Kristan , Ben , Richard , you might find UCL’s official take of the “dismissal” somewhat interesting. Quite different from Hunt’s. See the update below the first part. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0615/100615-tim-hunt
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We need to remember these new media are in their infancy. I remember 20 years ago that at work I adopted the practice of not sending an angry email until I got up and walked around the office. This had 2 results 1) I did not send some emails that I would have regretted. 2) People kept asking “why is Elliot always walking around?”????
don’t know if you folks have kept track of these things lately. but scratching hunt, you don’t have to work too hard to find other, far less justified examples of faculty members quickly nixed (or heavily censured) by an unsupportive administration after a PR blow-up. it’s something you remember when applying for jobs..
But it is true that the damage to him is small in comparison to some recent cases of Twitter victims you hear about. Being essentially retired kind of helps in that. I am more interested in the general phenomena than the specifics of this case anyhow, as I said I have very little sympathy for him (calling professional women “girls” is disgusting, never mind the rest).
My understanding is that he is now mostly a science advocate and administrator, and as such he has become toxic and therefore he was dismissed from most his positions in European science organizations. I would not think one should be able to change the composition of, say, a scientific administrative committee, overnight and without an organized process, but I am apparently naive.
Moshe — Hunt didn’t actually have a job at UCL; the honorary professorship is essentially a visiting position which can likely be withdrawn at will, and without the formal process that would be required to dismiss an employee.
None of us can do that anyhow, whether you think it is empowering the weak or allowing groups people to act as one cohesive tool of destruction, it is here to stay. The question is how we adjust. I am a believer in structural change, not only relying on the goodness of human nature (though that is nice also). In this story, I am alarmed how little protection a Nobel prize winner had from an unreasoned job action, when he becomes inconvenient to the higher ups (who we can assume will *always* act in their best short term interest). Maybe a good start in that structural change is looking at strengthening protection from such arbitrary decisions.
Moshe – Good, so I would say we agree. We need to strengthen our existing practices – not that we need to throw out the new phenomenon that masses of people can make themselves heard, because I think that overall it is a positive development that the normally voiceless can be heard en masse so easily.
I agree with most of it, just to say that Twitter of course did not crate anything new, it only magnified existing human tendencies (shouting from the sidelines unthinkingly, delighting in demonstrating group identity, etc. etc.). But, sometimes sufficiently large magnification factor results in qualitatively new phenomena. None of us ever before felt the rage of millions of people, it is now a new force to be reckoned with. I don’t insist on sticking to any particular linguistic device, so don’t call it a mob. Whatever you call it, it is a new phenomena that requires some thought to deal with. Evidently being measured and compassionate and thoughtful is not that easy while experiencing this type of pressure.
Kristan , I think we all three agree on that point. What I did not agree with Moshe on at the start of the discussion is the business of claiming that Twitter is to blame….. But I think over the course of our comments, we converged. I think.
I entirely agree with moshe on this. events like this do not set a good precedent for the future. justice is more than the final result, after all.
So I think we are in agreement that existing old-school systems are perhaps broken if they react too swiftly to lots of expressed opinion, angry or otherwise, from the masses… without due care and consideration of the facts, the history, and with recognition that mistakes can be made and can get amplified. This has, to my mind, little or nothing to do with newer phenomena like social media and random people’s right to express themselves (however they chose to do so, depending upon their own personal history, etc), showing their anger, dismay, or amusement. It is the reason I think that the mob analogy for Twitter is not a very good one. People are yelling loudly from the sidelines, yes, and sometimes it is hard to get the signal from the noise as a result, but nobody is being burned at the stake and so forth by that crowd. We need to put employers (and journalists and so forth) on notice to be better actors in their positions of power…. I don’t think that the new fashion of blaming twitter is the answer.
One last point to completely flesh out my worry: I think it is also naive to think that this system stays confined to aiding progressive causes. As progressive academics we tend to hold minority views on social issues. It is not inconceivable that exactly such progressive causes will result in very loud and visible backlash, among both the faceless masses and the people with money and influence. It is worrying to see how quickly UCL caved to this kind of pressure. The fact that this was in a case where the main protagonist does not deserve much sympathy is irrelevant to that worry.
Yes, absolutely. This is why I am alarmed, because until recently I ignored the outrage machine, because if it stays in some web servers somewhere, who cares? But, the pressure applied by this fictional world now routinely changes the real world in worrying ways. I don’t know what pressure his colleagues faced, but this is now apparently sufficient for seemingly reasonable people to act is exaggerated ways, on an almost daily basis. It’s naive to think that such flawed system for assigning blame and forcefully demanding punishment will result in any kind of justice, setting aside the details of any specific case.
The point here is that it was not the tweeters who changed his appointment circumstances…. It was his academic colleagues.
I don’t know what the answer is, of course, and there is no practical way to block people from voicing their opinion, which I am certainly not advocating. Though it is useful to hold your outrage in check and ask a few questions. The answer is in the real world, the dynamics of social media might be beyond repair. Perhaps the problem is that people have no protection and can be simply dropped when they become inconvenient. I am particularly surprised in this incident, because I had higher opinion of the academic system.
I think it is important to allow people without voices to express their opinion. We just need better and more careful thought (not knee jerk reactions) when it comes to how to take that opinion into account. The tweeters did not make decisions about his position at UCL. UCL did. I think social media has its flaws, for sure, but I do not think that the solution is to return to a time when underrepresented and undermined voices had no easy means of being heard.
The other reason to use the word “mob” is that it is faceless, one cannot find anyone specifically responsible. In the beginning, one or two people get the ball rolling, in the end one or two people in the real world make an unfortunate decision under immense pressure. In between there is large number of anonymous people who just retweet, presumably because outrage is delicious. This dynamics is dangerous, I think.
Not sure, Clifford. Any action is performed in the context of its probable consequences, and the consequences of flashing anger on Twitter are well-documented. It is surprising and unfortunate that the results in the real world can be that extreme, but at this point this should be taken as a probable consequence. This was no doubt stupid and insensitive and does real damage, but at the same time it is good to remember that people are complex and cannot be reduced to being just triggers of sore spots, even in their weak moments, and they are not responsible for the whole phenomena they suddenly represent. There is a reason that there is a careful and considered (and slow and conservative) process for assigning blame and punishing individuals. The absence of any such process is my operational definition of a “mob”.
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Moshe – yes, it can be a concern, but I also think that we must be careful not to lump all opinion expressed in social media into one category (mob, or whatever), any more than we do that for print media, or some other form. The Tim Hunt statements (whether they were really all a “joke” or not) poked at a hugely sore spot for some people who feel daily undermined and underrepresented (and *not* just women, by the way) and I think that it is a good thing to have a place where the many voices who make up that group can express themselves and feel heard for a change, through humour, anger, polite discussion, or whatever. How people in positions of power react to (and make decisions informed by) the voices thus raised is where we should be measured… not that fact that the (sometimes angry, yes) voices are raised per se.
You know, after a bit more thought, and reading an interview with Tim Hunt, and the story of Rachel Dolezal, I am now much more concerned about the Twitter mobs than any stupid remarks by one person, however offensive and damaging they may be. I always thought that in the end, social media plays with monopoly money, and in the real world people are much more considered and sensible, but I am clearly wrong. The end of due process as we know it is terrifying, in fact. There is no concept of proportionate punishment either in this non-process, nothing short of completely destroying the offender will satisfy the mobs. Pretty scary stuff.
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meh
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The Tuttle Rebuttal… http://t.co/c6k3Vj7ktJ via @Asymptotia
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