Aaron
247 posts
@Rongwrong_
“Every word that is uttered creates an angel.”
This is a good letter. Cofnas shouldn't be fired (and it appears he will not be). Cofnas is a deeply unoriginal thinker and a sloppy researcher; his recruitment is an embarrassment. But once hired, he has a right to academic freedom of expression.
Dr @nathancofnas’s appointment at Ghent University has prompted a campaign by members of the institution calling on the university to reverse course, citing his published work on race, heredity and intelligence. In response, CAF Advisory Board member Professor Abhishek Saha helped organised a counter-petition in support of Cofnas’s right to #academicfreedom of expression. CAF Director Dr Edward Skidelsky is among the signatories, alongside a number of senior academics from leading universities. This is not about endorsing Cofnas’s views, but about defending the principle that disagreements of this kind should be addressed through open inquiry, criticism, and civil debate. Of course, academics must be free to strongly contest ideas they regard as deeply objectionable. But that does not extend to a veto over appointments. Universities cannot function if controversial or provocative lines of research are treated as grounds for exclusion rather than argument. You can read the statement and sign the counter-petition here: drive.google.com/file/d/1RRsGma… @ObhishekSaha @ProfDHayes @epkaufm @Furedibyte @HJoyceGender @drianpace @aytchellesse @JoPhoenix1 @sapinker
Top Ten People Who Block Me on X 1. Barak Ravid 2. Jeffrey Goldberg 3. Paul Graham 4. Gérard Araud 5. George Galloway 6. Danny Citrinowicz 7. Craig Murray 8. Muhammad Shehada 9. Heidi N. Moore 10. Chaya’s Clan
KENT: “The last time I saw Charlie Kirk on this earth was in June, in the West Wing… He said, ‘Joe, stop us from getting into a war with Iran.’”
I read the first hundred pages of The Road last year, and read the first hundred pages of Blood Meridian this year, and in both instances, gave up, because the books never clicked. Lyrical writing, but the characters are reduced to way down Maslow's hierarchy, and the tone is so relentlessly bleak, with almost no humanity breaking through, it was difficult to feel anything besides the flint clicking against the cold steel in the overwhelming darkness. I know many of you love it, but to me, it's overwrought, overstylized, and overhyped.
