Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins · Apr 22
University is about confronting new ideas, unfamiliar, un-“safe”. If you want to be “safe” you are not worthy of a university education.
Sadly, it didn’t stop there. It went on.
Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins 12 hours ago
If you can’t handle challenging questions like “What’s wrong with incest, or cannibalism?” University Probably Is Not For You (#UPINFY)
That one set off a little hashtag storm, which is still going on.
Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins 12 hours ago
If you can’t handle challenging questions like “Could rape be a Darwinian adaptation in wild animals?” university may be not for you #UPINFYA philosopher suggests that children will one day sue their parents for bad genes. Another asks when nuclear 1st strike justified. #UPINFY
If you boycott a lecture because scared it may challenge your existing beliefs & “trigger” un-“safe” feelings #UPINFY
If you are implacably convinced that all knowledge & wisdom is contained in one centuries-old book, #UPINFY
And then, the conclusion:
Richard Dawkins @RichardDawkins 11 hours ago
If, for any of the reasons given, it looks as though #UPINFY, why not go to University anyway? It just might open your mind.
Nice of him to throw that minimal lifeline at the end, but…not really.
It’s nasty stuff. It’s also fatuous. It’s not true that universities are packed to the rafters with academics asking silly “provocative” deliberately rude questions. Dawkins gives the impression of wanting them to be like that, but they’re not like that.
There’s a germ of truth in what he’s saying, which is that students shouldn’t dogmatically refuse to consider any ideas they don’t already hold – but there’s a whole silo full of truth in what I’m going to say now, which is that crude slogans are not the best way to convey that kernel of truth.
Thank goodness Dawkins is dismissive of bloggers who say controversial things for “click bait”!
Hm, I think he prompted one for me: if you believe wild animals are capable of rape, You May Want to Try University Again (#YMWtTUA).
I’m surprise he didn’t ask about female animals who routinely kill their lovers. And sometimes eat them…
is this the Dawkins that refuses to contemplate the concept of privilege?
How about this one?
If you are an aging biology professor who would rather spout ill-considered slogans on subjects about which you clearly know little than fall out of the public spotlight (or do some basic research), university is probably not for you.
Am I doing this right, Dawkins? Oh, right, except you actually have been to university, so it’s clearly irrelevant to this sort of thing.
If you are an aging biology professor who would rather spout ill-considered slogans
The ageism probably isn’t helpful, there.
My dad is an 87 year-old university professor (emeritus) who has remained mentally unaffected by his years. Implying that Dawkins is acting like a jerk in whole or in part because of his age is almost certainly inaccurate. It’s probably more likely that he was a jerk all along, and has only recently felt free to display it now that he’s rich and famous.
True, I probably should have left that bit out. If anything, I don’t think his age is the cause of his positions, just that it might be contributing to his fear of irrelevance (though if anything that’s probably due more to at least a large section of the atheist movement having moved beyond him, so I still shouldn’t have included it, I just needed some kind of shorthand to keep that statement to a plausible Twitter-length… I should stop digging.)
Seriously. I’m very aging, and I’m not a jerk.
Oh wait.
The more I think about it, the stupider a thing I think it was to say. I apologise. (Especially to Ophelia and Marcus’ father; neither of you deserve to be binned with Dawkins, obviously.)
(See, Dawkins? It’s not that hard!)
When people talk about safe places in Universities, they’re not talking about places safe from “confronting new ideas”, they’re talking about places safe from harassment, threats, violence, bigotry, and hate. I do not believe for a moment that Dawkins does not know this. This is absolutely deliberate misrepresentation on his part. Ironic coming from someone who so regular accuses his critics of writing “clickbait”. I guess Dawkins is getting tired of putting out the effort of pretending to care at all about feminism or the well-being of women in general and has decided to simply drop all the pretenses. Oops, I forgot, he TOTALLY cares about the ones oppressed by Muslims. At least until one of them decides to ask for a safe place at a university.
FIFY
mcbender@#9: righteous.
Uh, that is the same Richard Dawkins who expects to be safe from criticism and insists that anyone who criticizes him is just too stupid to understand how right he is?
That Richard Dawkins who, at the end of the day, is no wiser than my grandfather with his his eighth-grade education?
Q: What is the difference between Richard Dawkins and a chimp?
A: Chimps are capeable of recognizing themselves in a mirror.
A: Chimps are capeable of recognizing themselves in a mirror.
It’s useful because it keeps them from flinging poo at it, or thinking it’s a twitter feed.
I tried looking through the hashtag. A couple good ones, but mostly terrible, terrible shit.
It’s sad how hard Dawkins is trying to remain relevant. Go with the tide or get out of its way, Dawk.
I think I’m well past the point where I’m disappointed with Dawkins. I’ve pretty much just written him off as an ass and every new tweet of his just reinforces that opinion.
Same guy who couldnt handle “Guys dont do that?”
At best, it’s elitist snobbery.
Ah. So we can say that Dawkins ought to be thrown into a garbage heap (just like what probably happened to Jesus’ body), and we can say that he not only sub-human, but sub-chimp (no kind of racial slur, since he’s white of course). I guess that explains how we can say Richard Shermer is a rapist on absolutely no evidence whatsoever.
Ah, you moderate your comments, just like the Discovery Institute, I see.
This fucking guy.
As others already mentioned, the author of “Dear Muslima” has a lot of nerve accusing other people of being petty, thin-skinned or too delicate to deal with intellectual challenges to their belief systems.
The concept of safe spaces is feminism 101 isn’t it? At least I remember having no problem understanding the term way back when I first heard about feminism. Originally I thought safe spaces were mainly practical, actual “spaces” like domestic violence shelters, or group therapy rooms, but even in the most simple interpretation of the term isn’t that difficult to understand.
But then I guess violence, harassment and male entitlement are these invisible things that don’t exist except as nonserious examples in vigorous entirely theoretical debates and lectures from white male professors. Or what?
@17 Deepak Shatty
“If you cannot handle a women saying ‘Guys Don’t Do That’ then University is probably not for you”
Yup, content notices concerning course material are totally about not having to confront new ideas and never dealing with potentially-emotionally-difficult subjects. I know in all of my Women’s Studies classes, no one ever showed up becasue we were dealing with difficult material every day, and the lectures in my sociology course and my rhetoric course that dealt with lynching were empty thanks to the content notes the previous week. /s
Nice to see that the Dawk is still #CompletelyMissingThePoint.
Most ghastly: the way Dawkins tends to state something almost trivial (e.g. being shot in the head is worse than being perved in an elevator; militant ignorance shouldn’t survive an university education) and then drivels off into incoherence. Incest…cannibalism…rape…WHAT?
I’ve seen a couple of recent video clips, and I do think that Dawkins has reached a point where he can no longer rely on his ‘off the cuff’ speaking ability. His twitter account should be dragged from his hands before they are cold or dead.
@themadtapper
“When people talk about safe places in Universities, they’re not talking about places safe from “confronting new ideas”, they’re talking about places safe from harassment, threats, violence, bigotry, and hate.”
If this is the definition, why were students offered a ‘safe space’ for Christina Hoff Sommers’ talk at Oberlin College? It does seem as if the reason they are created is because listening to opposing viewpoints is expected to make some students feel ‘unsafe’.
Beth: use block quotes.