Man charged with shooting at George Zimmerman in road rage incident plans ‘stand your ground’ defense.
We got a huge amount of feedback in response to my post yesterday about the Laura Kipnis story out of Northwestern, one of which I already published Tuesday afternoon. They ranged the gamut from hearty agreement to strenuous disagreement, with at least a few stuck in the sort of fatuous new-speak that I ridiculed in my original post. What was most interesting though is something one almost always finds in these sorts of cases, which is that people on either side of the issue were focusing on very different things, if not addressing very different questions.
So for instance, those who agreed with what I wrote were focusing on generational conflict, attempts to shoehorn Title IX law into a broader war to bludgeon opponents in a sort of campus culture war, while those who disagreed zeroing in on ways in which Kipnis seemed to poo-poo accusations which if proven count as criminal behavior under current law. What makes big debates so hard to get a handle on is that we’re usually arguing not just over the facts and ‘what’s right’ but often even more so over which facts or questions even matter.
France is expecting the Vatican to decide within days whether it will accept the country’s gay ambassador designee.
In today’s edition of My Conservative Inbox enter the raffle to go and shoot yourself some tyranny with Ted Cruz.
A new academic study says that presidents of both parties are guided by the views of the wealthy and political elites and use polling shape public opinion of the population at large to serve those interests.
Huffpo is reporting that someone approached former Congressman Mel Watt (D-NC) about Speaker Hastert’s alleged history of sexual abuse at some point early in Hastert’s tenure as Speaker.
FIFA Prez Sepp Blatter resigns.
Here’s the background on the scandal and indictments (though of him himself) that apparently brought him down.
A TPM Reader who is an academic and asks to remain anonymous sends along this note responding to the Kipnis story. I think the point about the demographic nature of the battle, though certainly far from the entirety of the battle, is an apt point.
I will say that I’m under no pressure at my own campus or in my own field.
But the broader tension– amplified by social media and blogs– is very real. A lot of hurt feelings, as the establishment figures like Kipnis are liberals, even leftists.
And needless to say, the fight is as demographic as it is ideological. The insurgents tend to be younger, gayer, browner, more female, etc. Conversely, establishment figures tend to be older, more male, and more Jewish.
Check out This Chart on how millennials rely on Facebook for political news in the same overwhelming number that boomers rely on local TV news.
You may have seen some mention of the now-apparently-concluded Laura Kipnis saga at Northwestern University. If you haven’t, here’s the quick gist: A couple months back, Kipnis, a Professor of Radio, TV and Film at Northwestern, wrote an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, lampooning and denouncing what she views as the ‘sexual paranoia’ now reigning on college campuses, spreading out into the society at large and creating a broader climate of adult infantilization captured by new phrases like ‘trigger warnings’, ‘safe spaces’ and the like. This created a good bit of controversy and debate, unsurprisingly. It also spurred a protest at Northwestern in which student activists demanded that the administration publicly reject Kipnis’s views and reaffirm its support for its own policies on sexual harassment and assault.
Then, in response, at least two students at Northwestern filed Title IX complaints against Kipnis – alleging that her essay constituted retaliation against students whose sexual abuse or assault claims she described in passing in the essay. The University did in fact open such an investigation, complete with a contract with an outside law firm to conduct the investigation, which was entirely based on the article in question and a single tweet Kipnis tweeted to support the same article.