A very in depth and excellent analysis/discussion Mr Hobbit. The left has indeed departed the zone of free speech and tolerance, including in academia where I suspect you and I have differing views (as to the degree of cancelling of 'heretical' non-woke academic opinion). The problem society faces with wokery is that the majority of families are traditional/conservative (having kids reinforces this) and that establishes a sense of fairness. This is then exploited by the left ('be kind'...) and the inch given becomes a country mile. Thus homosexual reform (was needed) slides into filthy perversions such as Trans idiocy or Minor Attracted Persons (sick pedos by any other name). MLK's righteous crusade is now perverted into BLM. Caring for the planet is distorted into APGW scams. Concern for the weak gets twisted into contempt for the strong (eg Gaza v Israel). (All aided by complicit media...)
Speech should indeed be free (with usual caveats not to incite violence etc) but 'hate speech' ends up simply being speech the left hates. Throw in 2-tier political/legal activism and that gets Lucy Connolly 3 years in jail for an angry tweet or people holding Israeli flags threats of arrest. Our Section 4 (1)(c) of the SO Act (for example) is an open door that I fear would give Boris a conviction for simply and correctly identifying an ignorant fucktard in public.
We need wise leaders and judiciary to draw those grey lines carefully for the common good. Instead we have a bunch of cowardly politicians and activist f-wit judges pushing their own agendas. Is 1984 here to stay, or is there some hope?
As to your observation about "'hate speech' ends up simply being speech the left hates" I was at a Conference a few years back when an eminent emeritus professor who has something to say about many things these days said, without a note of irony nor a sliver of humour "hate speech is speech I hate to hear"
I had little respect for him, before that statement. I have had none since.
Would we differ on the zone of speech and tolerance in academia and the cancelling of non-woke academic opinion. I have been absent from the academy for some time now.
I may have inferred incorrectly from comments you made at the FSU gathering with Prof Hunter recently. Apologies if I have. Just felt my view that anyone right of far-left cannot speak freely at unis was not shared by the speakers (although a Uni employee shared his same concerns with me afterwards). Certainly Prof Hunter was a massive disappointment with his conflicting stance on freedom from political interference.
I am also not involved in uni life, but my kids are and they tell me stories of cancelling and woke orthodoxy that make me feel genuinely ill. As an aside I also never wrote my Masters Thesis many moons ago for the key reason that I knew it would be unpalatable to the establishment. (That thesis has now become topical almost 30 years later!)
But I digress, your article was a fine read thanks.
Not at all. I taught Law of Civil Procedure in 1999 and Law and IT from 2000 - 2018. In that final year I also co-taught a Masters paper on Media Law. I had gone back on the Bench with an Acting Warrant in 2018 and because that involved a bit of travel to various Courts I decided not to commit to teaching in 2019. The judicial job continued until the end of 2021 and by that time Covid had come and the worst was over and I was offered another gig for a year in 2022 with the Public Defence Service which was mentoring and supervising junior lawyers - teaching with a very practical focus. There were a number of policies about part time teaching and the like at Law School plus I had a sense that the "political" atmosphere had changed with a lack of tolerance for other than the "orthodox" view whatever that might be.
As I said at the FSU meeting my first lecture always opened with "there is no party line" and if I were teaching today that would still hold.
What was your Masters thesis on - sounds interesting.
"As I said at the FSU meeting my first lecture always opened with "there is no party line" and if I were teaching today that would still hold."
Fortunately I never had reason to appear before you in Court (!), and my law study comprised basic commercial law only, but from your articles and comments I am sure you would have been an excellent and fair lecturer (and Judge too I hope!).
My MTheol thesis was going to be an epistemological comparison of Maori & European worldviews & argue that the former did not and could not provide a foundation for science and a society based upon the same. I read the room and it was going to go down about as well as our learned 7 friends' letter many years later...
Thanks for the comment Boris. After I retired and people had nothing to gain by saying suchj things, many lawyers commented on the fact that I was fair and that was about as good as it gets. The Law and IT course was a popular one as well and I have run into a number of former students since who have said how much they enjoyed the paper. Many of them went into IT and one in particular heads up Microsoft's AI department in Seattle.
Pity about the thesis - it soundsd ahead of its time but concerning that even then there would be an effective cancelling of the work.
When I was asked to identify the Treaty issues about my PhD I said there were none. The period covered was 1475 - 1642 which was well before the Treaty and it focused on the printing press which had no relevance to Treaty issues because Maori at that time had no written language. Nothing further was mentioned about it.
Thanks for addressing this difficult subject, David. I wholeheartedly agree your excellent conclusion, especially your closing sentence:
"...I can accept that speech can have consequences. But that lies not in the fact of speech itself, but in the resonances and result that the ideas communicated by speech may cause. But to make that causative link directly, as Mount does with the mass murdered manifestos is too much. Causation is deeper than that. I would prefer to be able to hear the ideas and assess them rather than have them crushed. But then I grew up in the “sticks and stones” generation when we were a little more resilient to stupid speech..."
A very in depth and excellent analysis/discussion Mr Hobbit. The left has indeed departed the zone of free speech and tolerance, including in academia where I suspect you and I have differing views (as to the degree of cancelling of 'heretical' non-woke academic opinion). The problem society faces with wokery is that the majority of families are traditional/conservative (having kids reinforces this) and that establishes a sense of fairness. This is then exploited by the left ('be kind'...) and the inch given becomes a country mile. Thus homosexual reform (was needed) slides into filthy perversions such as Trans idiocy or Minor Attracted Persons (sick pedos by any other name). MLK's righteous crusade is now perverted into BLM. Caring for the planet is distorted into APGW scams. Concern for the weak gets twisted into contempt for the strong (eg Gaza v Israel). (All aided by complicit media...)
Speech should indeed be free (with usual caveats not to incite violence etc) but 'hate speech' ends up simply being speech the left hates. Throw in 2-tier political/legal activism and that gets Lucy Connolly 3 years in jail for an angry tweet or people holding Israeli flags threats of arrest. Our Section 4 (1)(c) of the SO Act (for example) is an open door that I fear would give Boris a conviction for simply and correctly identifying an ignorant fucktard in public.
We need wise leaders and judiciary to draw those grey lines carefully for the common good. Instead we have a bunch of cowardly politicians and activist f-wit judges pushing their own agendas. Is 1984 here to stay, or is there some hope?
As to your observation about "'hate speech' ends up simply being speech the left hates" I was at a Conference a few years back when an eminent emeritus professor who has something to say about many things these days said, without a note of irony nor a sliver of humour "hate speech is speech I hate to hear"
I had little respect for him, before that statement. I have had none since.
Would we differ on the zone of speech and tolerance in academia and the cancelling of non-woke academic opinion. I have been absent from the academy for some time now.
I may have inferred incorrectly from comments you made at the FSU gathering with Prof Hunter recently. Apologies if I have. Just felt my view that anyone right of far-left cannot speak freely at unis was not shared by the speakers (although a Uni employee shared his same concerns with me afterwards). Certainly Prof Hunter was a massive disappointment with his conflicting stance on freedom from political interference.
I am also not involved in uni life, but my kids are and they tell me stories of cancelling and woke orthodoxy that make me feel genuinely ill. As an aside I also never wrote my Masters Thesis many moons ago for the key reason that I knew it would be unpalatable to the establishment. (That thesis has now become topical almost 30 years later!)
But I digress, your article was a fine read thanks.
Not at all. I taught Law of Civil Procedure in 1999 and Law and IT from 2000 - 2018. In that final year I also co-taught a Masters paper on Media Law. I had gone back on the Bench with an Acting Warrant in 2018 and because that involved a bit of travel to various Courts I decided not to commit to teaching in 2019. The judicial job continued until the end of 2021 and by that time Covid had come and the worst was over and I was offered another gig for a year in 2022 with the Public Defence Service which was mentoring and supervising junior lawyers - teaching with a very practical focus. There were a number of policies about part time teaching and the like at Law School plus I had a sense that the "political" atmosphere had changed with a lack of tolerance for other than the "orthodox" view whatever that might be.
As I said at the FSU meeting my first lecture always opened with "there is no party line" and if I were teaching today that would still hold.
What was your Masters thesis on - sounds interesting.
"As I said at the FSU meeting my first lecture always opened with "there is no party line" and if I were teaching today that would still hold."
Fortunately I never had reason to appear before you in Court (!), and my law study comprised basic commercial law only, but from your articles and comments I am sure you would have been an excellent and fair lecturer (and Judge too I hope!).
My MTheol thesis was going to be an epistemological comparison of Maori & European worldviews & argue that the former did not and could not provide a foundation for science and a society based upon the same. I read the room and it was going to go down about as well as our learned 7 friends' letter many years later...
Thanks for the comment Boris. After I retired and people had nothing to gain by saying suchj things, many lawyers commented on the fact that I was fair and that was about as good as it gets. The Law and IT course was a popular one as well and I have run into a number of former students since who have said how much they enjoyed the paper. Many of them went into IT and one in particular heads up Microsoft's AI department in Seattle.
Pity about the thesis - it soundsd ahead of its time but concerning that even then there would be an effective cancelling of the work.
When I was asked to identify the Treaty issues about my PhD I said there were none. The period covered was 1475 - 1642 which was well before the Treaty and it focused on the printing press which had no relevance to Treaty issues because Maori at that time had no written language. Nothing further was mentioned about it.
Thanks for addressing this difficult subject, David. I wholeheartedly agree your excellent conclusion, especially your closing sentence:
"...I can accept that speech can have consequences. But that lies not in the fact of speech itself, but in the resonances and result that the ideas communicated by speech may cause. But to make that causative link directly, as Mount does with the mass murdered manifestos is too much. Causation is deeper than that. I would prefer to be able to hear the ideas and assess them rather than have them crushed. But then I grew up in the “sticks and stones” generation when we were a little more resilient to stupid speech..."
A long read but an enlightening one thanks