Cambridge defended and praised a professor for a wrongdoing

[Gravlen]

Does anyone else find that the professor's opinion doesn't seem very lawful at all?

There's nothing unlawful about the statements.

[Ostroeuropa]

Does anyone else find that the professor's opinion doesn't seem very lawful at all?

There's nothing unlawful about the statements.

There certainly is.

First let's apply the Nazi pug trial standard and note that the context being used to excuse her is "Irrelevant" according to courts, the statements must be evaluated in isolation without further clarification or justification and without taking into account the context of her statements.

Then it seems quite trivial to conclude her statements are hateful;

Expressions of hatred toward someone on account of that person's colour, race, disability, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation is forbidden.

Then there is also;

Any communication which is threatening or abusive, and is intended to harass, alarm, or distress someone is forbidden.

I think it's simple enough to demonstrate her tweet was intended to distress people, you can tell from the syntax and the grammar. "White lives don't matter" is its own sentence.



There's also this:

(a) he intends thereby to stir up racial hatred, or
(b) having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.

It's again, simple enough to say that racial hatred was likely to be stirred up by the post as it's essentially done purely to raise racial tensions.

displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,

Then there's the "Threatening abusive or insulting" part. Insulting is again, evident.

[Gravlen]

There's nothing unlawful about the statements.

There certainly is.

No.

First let's apply the Nazi pug trial standard and note that the context being used to excuse her is "Irrelevant" according to courts, the statements must be evaluated in isolation without further clarification or justification and without taking into account the context of her statements.

Not without looking at the very next sentence in the statement she tweeted.

[Ostroeuropa]

Sincerely held belief and even well established belief is also not a defense.

A pastor was put on trial for writing:
"Jesus Gives Peace, Jesus is Alive, Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism, Jesus is Lord".


That lots of people believe it is irrelevant, as is their ideological justification for believing it.

[Ostroeuropa]

There certainly is.

No.

First let's apply the Nazi pug trial standard and note that the context being used to excuse her is "Irrelevant" according to courts, the statements must be evaluated in isolation without further clarification or justification and without taking into account the context of her statements.

Not without looking at the very next sentence in the statement she tweeted.

That doesn't seem relevant given the large numbers of people who object to this particular kind of sophistry and dogwhistling these types engage in and that she had a reasonable basis to assume this would be insulting to many people based on their race, and it seems added purely in an attempt to provide cover as an afterthought, hence it's a separate sentence. Grammatically, the claim "White lives don't matter" is a statement she made, before making an incoherent sentence "As white lives", disconnected from the former claim. There is a full stop in the middle there.

"Kill the Pakis. But not really.".

Would this be defensible in the context of someone clearly signaling genuine animosity to Pakistanis?

I'm sure there must be case law about similar eye-roll worthy "But not really" defences for speech acts, and i'm pretty confident they'd agree with me.

[Ostroeuropa]

There's also the aforementioned problems with "Abolish whiteness" and the inherent racism of the ideology she's using to justify that kind of rhetoric.

She also started threatening to sue people and mentioning her powerful connections to politicians and so on if they don't stop "libeling" her about this, which makes it look even worse.

I think both of the statements qualify as racism and hate speech, but the clearer case can be made for "Abolish whiteness". If a professor went around demanding we "Abolish Islam" and "Tear down mosques" while using the same kind of garbage rationalizations anti-white racists do, they'd be viewed as islamophobic.

(White Nationalism/Supremacy = Islamism. This seems uncontroversial.

Then you just have to do the same paranoid and racist justifications anti-white racists do and start claiming that any tenet of whiteness ultimately feeds into white supremacy and needs to be abolished. So, Whiteness = Islam, and that means if you mention anything Islamic you should be fired and we need to deface Islamic art and monuments and so on.).

Furthermore, she's clearly engaged in a joke there. The punchline is "Wouldn't it be funny to say white lives don't matter?". Again, i'll refer you to the Nazi Pug Trial, where it was concluded that regardless of how serious the statement is or the context it is made in, it remains prohibited. I'd also point out that more people are taking her seriously as being anti-white than took the Nazi Pug Guy as genuinely advocating genocide. Especially as she is defending the statement on its own terms rather than saying "It's just a joke and I do not seriously mean this".

[Nobel Hobos 2]

Not without looking at the very next sentence in the statement she tweeted.

I'll say it again. White Lives Don't Matter.

As white lives.

I'm missing something here. Is it to do with the capital letters?

[The Alma Mater]

Well, white skin IS the mark of Cain, so...

[Gravlen]

Not without looking at the very next sentence in the statement she tweeted.

I'll say it again. White Lives Don't Matter.

As white lives.

I'm missing something here. Is it to do with the capital letters?

I don't understand what she's trying to say judged in isolation. Having read her subsequent statement about what it was supposed to be about, I think I can see what she was driving at (unsuccessfully, in my opinion).

“They were very clearly speaking to a structure and ideology, not about people. My Tweet said whiteness is not special, not a criterion for making lives matter. I stand by that.

However, my point remains: You cannot judge her statement based only on one of the sentences of the tweet. You have to look at the whole thing.

[Ostroeuropa]

I'll say it again. White Lives Don't Matter.

As white lives.

I'm missing something here. Is it to do with the capital letters?

I don't understand what she's trying to say judged in isolation. Having read her subsequent statement about what it was supposed to be about, I think I can see what she was driving at (unsuccessfully, in my opinion).

“They were very clearly speaking to a structure and ideology, not about people. My Tweet said whiteness is not special, not a criterion for making lives matter. I stand by that.

However, my point remains: You cannot judge her statement based only on one of the sentences of the tweet. You have to look at the whole thing.

As I've pointed out, this is a racist ideological justification in and of itself, and would not be tolerated if discussing "Queerness" or "Islam". Hate speech laws have in the passed been used to prosecute people for this kind of rhetoric addressed at ideologies and identities like queerness or islam, so why is whiteness different exactly?

That a loud fringe cult of anti-white racists have a bunch of garbage rationalizations for why it's okay is comparable to the pastor who was arrested for opposing homosexuality. (Which i'm sure he'd tell you is "Hating the sin, not the sinner" and so on, an attack on "Gayness", not "Gay people").

[Gravlen]

I don't understand what she's trying to say judged in isolation. Having read her subsequent statement about what it was supposed to be about, I think I can see what she was driving at (unsuccessfully, in my opinion).

“They were very clearly speaking to a structure and ideology, not about people. My Tweet said whiteness is not special, not a criterion for making lives matter. I stand by that.

However, my point remains: You cannot judge her statement based only on one of the sentences of the tweet. You have to look at the whole thing.

As I've pointed out, this is a racist ideological justification in and of itself, and would not be tolerated if discussing "Queerness" or "Islam".

Yes, you have alleged that.

[Ostroeuropa]

As I've pointed out, this is a racist ideological justification in and of itself, and would not be tolerated if discussing "Queerness" or "Islam".

Yes, you have alleged that.

Can you elaborate on the difference? Because it seems to me there isn't one, and thus the speech was illegal.

[Fulgornia]

Cited from this article

A British university defended one of its professors following a petition launched against her after she posted on social media that “white lives don’t matter.”

Priyamvada Gopal, a professor in colonial and postcolonial literature at Cambridge University, posted a series of tweets Tuesday saying “white lives don’t matter” and “abolish whiteness” and the backlash prompted the university to issue a statement that said that professors have the right to express their opinion

And on Twitter, Cambridge stated:

"The University defends the right of its academics to express their own lawful opinions which others might find controversial and deplores in the strongest terms abuse and personal attacks..."

Some online took issue with Cambridge’s decision, pointing out that it did not stand by intelligence researcher Noah Carl and Jordan Peterson when their affiliations with the university were canceled over controversial things they said.

Does anyone else find that the professor's opinion doesn't seem very lawful at all?

My apologies to the moderators if this isn't allowed here.

this is rather racists to white people having a Cambridge staff member parrot to the world how their lives dont matter. She should be fired or at the least disciplined. This idea that some people's lives dont matter just because of the color of their skin runs counter to the protests happening right now.

[Gravlen]

Yes, you have alleged that.

Can you elaborate on the difference? Because it seems to me there isn't one, and thus the speech was illegal.

You're right that there isn't one. You're wrong that the speech was illegal.

[Ostroeuropa]

Can you elaborate on the difference? Because it seems to me there isn't one, and thus the speech was illegal.

You're right that there isn't one. You're wrong that the speech was illegal.

You don't think tweeting that we should abolish Islam, and supporting the tearing down of mosques and so on, would be hate speech?

Or at the very least, being offensive?

And remember, offensiveness is the criteria. It was very clearly illegal.

[Kaitjan]

I think the lesson one can learn from this is that it is fine to vilify, insult and make racist remarks against white people, but that anything similar directed a minority (even though, for example, Islam is the second biggest religion in the world and is not a race) will not be tolerated. It makes me both furious and relieved to see these double standards in action. Furious because its disgusting, but relieved because it means that I'm not simply a paranoid alt-right troll or whatever buzzword is in vogue.

Isn't it scary?

[Gravlen]

You're right that there isn't one. You're wrong that the speech was illegal.

You don't think tweeting that we should abolish Islam, and supporting the tearing down of mosques and so on, would be hate speech?

No, I don't think those particular statements would be hate speech.

[Nobel Hobos 2]

I'll say it again. White Lives Don't Matter.

As white lives.

I'm missing something here. Is it to do with the capital letters?

I don't understand what she's trying to say judged in isolation. Having read her subsequent statement about what it was supposed to be about, I think I can see what she was driving at (unsuccessfully, in my opinion).

“They were very clearly speaking to a structure and ideology, not about people. My Tweet said whiteness is not special, not a criterion for making lives matter. I stand by that.

However, my point remains: You cannot judge her statement based only on one of the sentences of the tweet. You have to look at the whole thing.

What she was driving at isn't all that coherent or worthwhile either.

Seems to me that being able to express a logical concept without it coming out wrong the first time, and not all that clear the second time, would be a requirement to hold a professorship in English at Cambridge.

But what do I know. I got 60-something percent in English.

[Kaitjan]

You don't think tweeting that we should abolish Islam, and supporting the tearing down of mosques and so on, would be hate speech?

No, I don't think those particular statements would be hate speech.

But do you think that the person, lets say a cambridge professor, uttering those things would be shielded by the university or immediately cut off and reprimanded?

[Gravlen]

Or at the very least, being offensive?

And remember, offensiveness is the criteria. It was very clearly illegal.

That's not the correct criteria either.

[Ostroeuropa]

You don't think tweeting that we should abolish Islam, and supporting the tearing down of mosques and so on, would be hate speech?

No, I don't think those particular statements would be hate speech.

The criteria is if I is insulting or offensive. OR if a reasonable person would understand that they would be construed as such (Which is blatantly obvious).

Do you not think they qualify and can you justify that?

[Ostroeuropa]

Or at the very least, being offensive?

And remember, offensiveness is the criteria. It was very clearly illegal.

That's not the correct criteria either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_spee ... ed_Kingdom

(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,
thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.


It also counts if the statement is "Likely to stir up racial hatred", regardless of intent.

[Gravlen]

No, I don't think those particular statements would be hate speech.

But do you think that the person, lets say a cambridge professor, uttering those things would be shielded by the university or immediately cut off and reprimanded?

Shielded, as in not fired? Yes. Reprimanded? That depends more on the context, but there should be a wide leeway. Richard Dawkins has said many things I didn't like, but he hasn't been reprimanded by Oxford as far as I'm aware, and that seems right to me.

[Ostroeuropa]

The communications act of 2003 also covers "Offensive" communications in a similar manner.

[Gravlen]

That's not the correct criteria either.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_spee ... ed_Kingdom

(a) uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or
(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,
thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.


It also counts if the statement is "Likely to stir up racial hatred", regardless of intent.

You'll note that "offensive" is not the correct criteria, as I said.