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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Iran / Cowards in Academicals

Cowards in Academicals

by Tom Levenson|  January 23, 20208:56 pm| 26 Comments

This post is in: Iran, Open Threads

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Babson College, previously known to me primarily as a center of Isaac Newton fandom in the Boston area, has shown all the moral courage and commitment to discourse one would find in a pail of slops.

The backstory: First, Trump announced that he might target Iranian cultural sites in any escalating conflict.

Cowards in Academicals 1

Cowards in Academicals

In response, Babson’s director of sustainability, Asheen Phancy, mused on the Book of Faces that perhaps Iran’s ruler should counter by tweeting out “a list of 52 sites of beloved American cultural heritage that he would bomb.”

That bit of snark got picked up by a Boston bro-sports site that likes taking aim at what it calls SJWs — bro-code for people who think beating on the poor or structural racism are bad things.  From there it got into more mainstream news outlets (where have we seen this game before?) and from there, as The Boston Globe reports, “within 48 hours he was suspended and then lost his job.”

The apologia for the move:

[a consultant for the Association of G(overning Boards of Universities and Colleges] Larry Ladd said colleges have to look out for the rights of the students, faculty, and employees, but also must ensure that the institution’s reputation and culture are protected. If Babson officials thought that Phansey’s post ran counter to its values, it had good reason to fire him, Ladd said.

“He had a right as an individual to make the post; he doesn’t have a right to have a job with an employer that doesn’t like that,” Ladd said.

IOW: the firing is (likely) legal, but that don’t make it right.

Babson ain’t commenting yet.  But as something of a Newton guy, I’ll note that for a college founded by someone obsessed with Sir Isaac, my man Izzy wouldn’t have survived long if his college had not been willing not to notice his anti-Trinitarian views (not to mention his very odoriferous alchemy lab tucked against the wall of the Trinity College chapel.  This is cowardice, plain and simple, and another tiny surrender to the forces of thug-tyranny in our culture.

Feh.

In that vein, the Twitter thread that begins with this:

“I study genocide. It’s been a theme in my academic endeavours for nearly 30 years. More accurately, I study the conditions in the lead up to genocide, be they cultural, social, political, economic, etc… 1/n”

has left me…even less happy…

And prince that I am, I choose to share such sweetness and light with all of y’all.

Open thread.

Images: (The pretty illusion) Jan Both, Ruins by the Sea, before 1652

(Reality) Imperial War Museum Collection Ruins at Ypres in the Sunlight, 3rd Battle of Ypres, (Passchendaele) 1917.

 

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Reader Interactions

26Comments

  1. 1.

    Jerzy Russian

    January 23, 2020 at 9:03 pm

    I have never heard of Babson College (I heard somewhere that the Boston area has upwards of 80 colleges and universities, so there must be many places like this that I have never heard of).

    The good professor should not have been fired.  Given that he has been, I await the firing of Trump, given his various war crimes, etc.

  2. 2.

    oatler.

    January 23, 2020 at 9:03 pm

    That Ruins at Ypres in the Sunlight, was pretty charitable compared to the shit pits and bodies in the trenches.

  3. 3.

    Kent

    January 23, 2020 at 9:05 pm

    I had to google Babson to find out about it.  So it doesn’t really have much of a name here on the west coast or I’m really out of touch.  I see that it is just a business school?  At least according to Wikipedia?  That probably accounts to some extent for it’s cowardice.  I’ve never known business students to be risk takers in any way, at least in terms of academics.  I expect their endowment donations are probably dependent on Trumpers?  Or is their enrollment dependent on MAGA parents

    EDIT:  I’ve also found in my experience, when this sort of thing happens, it it usually someone who was already on thin ice or on the outs for whatever reason and they finally had a legit excuse to let them go.  Not saying that was the case here.  But they pulled the trigger pretty damn fast.  I’m guessing someone in power already wanted this guy gone an finally had an excuse.

  4. 4.

    RSA

    January 23, 2020 at 9:07 pm

    I would offer something witty that connected Babson with Babbitt, but (a) I’m not clever enough and (b) hardly anyone would care.

  5. 5.

    Felanius Kootea

    January 23, 2020 at 9:12 pm

    Salman Rushdie and others have spoken up in Asheen Phansey’s defense but it doesn’t look like that will help him.  Is Babson considered a conservative college?  I just don’t know much about it even though I used to live in Boston.

    OT: Jim Lehrer, former anchor at PBS died today.

  6. 6.

    Duane

    January 23, 2020 at 9:21 pm

    It is good you’re posting more. Makes me think in ways I normally wouldn’t. Might make me smarter, which many a teacher would reply, “unpossible.”

  7. 7.

    Gvg

    January 23, 2020 at 9:22 pm

    To be honest, i’m shocked that anyone called a professor was stupid enough to say something like that. I’d be pretty offended if he said that around me and i’d have yelled at him. It seems to kind of miss the point of why it is wrong to bomb cultural sites and was not actually good snark. In fact I would wonder if it really was snark or just barely disguised what he really thinks like the current crop of white supremists who say nasty stuff then pretend it’s a joke when called on it. Maybe it’s easier to tell if I heard it myself but what you describe is a jerk to me. I don’t think the purpose of tenure or academic freedom is to waste capital defending a mere jerk as opposed to some actual moral thought of difference of opinion. This thought doesn’t actually show that Trump and toxic nationalism are barbaric and self defeating so….I am not outraged yet.

  8. 8.

    chris

    January 23, 2020 at 9:24 pm

    Jesus, that twitter thread. She’s been reading my mind.

  9. 9.

    schrodingers_cat

    January 23, 2020 at 9:25 pm

    Phansey sounds like a last name from my ancestral home state of Maharashtra. Asheen sounds Muslim. Konkani Muslim most likely.

  10. 10.

    Baud

    January 23, 2020 at 9:27 pm

    Counterpoint: Acting like Trump should be a cause for termination for every employer.

  11. 11.

    Martin

    January 23, 2020 at 9:30 pm

    @Felanius Kootea: It’s a business school. So, by association, yes. These small privates tend to be fairly fragile – they rely on giving and semi-well-off families sending their kids.

  12. 12.

    Baud

    January 23, 2020 at 9:32 pm

    Libertarian outrage at political correctness at universities in 3…2…1……….0…-1…-2….-3….

  13. 13.

    mrmoshpotato

    January 23, 2020 at 9:33 pm

    @Baud: Acting like Dump should’ve been cause for never hiring the Soviet shitpile in the first place.

  14. 14.

    Baud

    January 23, 2020 at 9:34 pm

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Who knew?

    (Except us)

  15. 15.

    Jerzy Russian

    January 23, 2020 at 9:34 pm

    @Gvg:   I haven’t bothered to follow the links, so I have not read the offending post.  It would have been much better had he said “imagine the outrage here if the leader of Iran tweeted out a list of cultural sites in the USA to bomb …”.     That might get some people thinking about bombing other countries from a different perspective.

  16. 16.

    West of the Rockies

    January 23, 2020 at 9:40 pm

    I wonder if the guy would have been sacked if his name was Bill White.

    OT: do we have any old-time radio buffs who remember X Minus 1?

  17. 17.

    Steeplejack

    January 23, 2020 at 9:40 pm

    That bit of snark got picked up by a Boston bro-sports site that likes taking aim at what it calls SJWs [. . .].

    Probably useful to point out that SJW = “social justice warrior,” for those not in the know.

  18. 18.

    Another Scott

    January 23, 2020 at 9:42 pm

    @Jerzy Russian: I haven’t read the links either.

    I’m reminded of the admonition: “Don’t put anything in an e-mail that you wouldn’t want to see on a billboard / on the front page of FTFNYT / your wife/mother/grandmother/daughter to see…”

    Twitter and FB are extremely public.

    Snark is easy to misinterpret, even when one isn’t trying to score points.

    It seems like this was an easily avoidable own-goal. Twitter doesn’t do nuance and is horrible for conversation and actually explaining things. People should know better.

    All that said, tenure should mean that people with it can express views that might be controversial. That’s part of the reason why it exists…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    Martin

    January 23, 2020 at 9:45 pm

    @Kent: I wouldn’t be so sure. I watched a much larger institution very quickly shit the bed over a prominent hire when a bunch of conservative groups threatened giving.

    I can see the trustees rolling in and screaming ‘holy fuck, we can’t afford this controversy’ and that’s that – tenure be damned.

  20. 20.

    The Lodger

    January 23, 2020 at 9:48 pm

    @RSA: what about a comparison of Babson and Bobbitt?

  21. 21.

    Tenar Arha

    January 23, 2020 at 9:50 pm

    Waiting for the usual freeze peach bro suspects like Chait or Friedersdorf or Maher to say a word in support of this professor. The only offensive & offending speech they usually write about (or comment on) & defend is when the Charles Murray’s & Anne Coulter’s et al get disinvited from speaking on campus.

    (If you’re curious why I’m not impressed  by these men, check out Jeffrey Sachs TL. It is chockablock with examples of the Koch funded campus-controversy-to-MSM, let’s-attack-anyone-remotely-liberal-or-left-on-campus-pipeline that goes through those guys. He’s got the receipts).

  22. 22.

    NotMax

    January 23, 2020 at 9:55 pm

    Not extrapolating from a subset to the complete set but have known two graduates of Babson and both were, shall we say, very lightly educated.

  23. 23.

    chopper

    January 23, 2020 at 10:24 pm

    and yet these same RW bros bitch and moan about “cancel culture”.

  24. 24.

    chris

    January 23, 2020 at 10:43 pm

    And prince that I am, I choose to share such sweetness and light with all of y’all.

    Thanks, I guess.

  25. 25.

    Jay

    January 24, 2020 at 12:55 am

    Freeze Peach for “them” not for “yous”.

    And sadly, it is part and parcel of your “employment” being 24/7, akin to a certain “National Sandwich Chain” requiring their minimum wage “Sandwich Artists” sign NDA’ s requiring that post employment they not practice their “sandwich arts” for personal, or a “compeditor’s benifit” for 3 years after termination of employment.

  26. 26.

    Uncle Cosmo

    January 24, 2020 at 7:42 am

    @Jerzy Russian:  @Another Scott: “It seems like this was an easily avoidable own-goal. Twitter doesn’t do nuance and is horrible for conversation and actually explaining things. People should know better.”

    Concur. Sounds like the twitterer shot from the lip (or the fingertip) & should’ve sat on the tweet for 15 minutes or so & considered how it would read. And then modified it to something on the order of

    So, suppose that in reply the Iranians had put out a list of [however many] cultural heritage sites in the USA they’d be prepared to hit only if the USA hit theirs first–how’d we feel about that? reighteously angry? Why? Nation-states warn one another like that all the time: Don’t do X unless you’re prepared for Y. Consideration of possible consequences is part of what keeps this planet from kneejerking to DEFCON 1 at the drop of a word.

    Not that it would’ve deflected the reichwing fury but at least it would’ve made it obvious there was nothing to go all Homelando Furioso over…

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