Lunch At The Google Cafeteria

Via Rod Dreher

The clip below is from The Lives of Others (2006), an unforgettable film.  Please see it if you have not already done so.  Set in communist East Germany during the 1980s it documents how the regime effectively imposed itself on the way its subjects not only acted, but on how they thought. This scene take place in the cafeteria for the Stasi, the country's secret police organization.



Since the controversial memo on Google's diversity program that resulted in the author's firing was actually solicited by the company as part of its internal discussion, and only became public when circulated externally by those who were offended by it, one is also put in mind of the Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom Campaign of 1956, run by Mao Tse Tung and the Chinese Communist Party.  That campaign solicited critiques of the country and the regime's programs, supposedly as a way to guide improvements.  Instead it was used encourage dissidents to expose themselves so they could be punished with prison or execution.

What is happening at Google is tied in with some large societal trends.  In a recent Wall St Journal article Mark Lilla, a Columbia professor, and well-known liberal Democrat, wrote about this change:

As a teacher, I am increasingly struck by a difference between my conservative and progressive students. Contrary to the stereotype, the conservatives are far more likely to connect their engagements to a set of political ideas and principles. Young people on the left are much more inclined to say that they are engaged in politics as an X, concerned about other Xs and those issues touching on X-ness. And they are less and less comfortable with debate.

Over the past decade a new, and very revealing, locution has drifted from our universities into the media mainstream: Speaking as an X…This is not an anodyne phrase. It sets up a wall against any questions that come from a non-X perspective. Classroom conversations that once might have begun, I think A, and here is my argument, now take the form, Speaking as an X, I am offended that you claim B. What replaces argument, then, are taboos against unfamiliar ideas and contrary opinions.

In a New York Times piece shortly after the presidential election (which I wrote about), Lilla first made his argument against identity politics, and its increasingly repressive and authoritarian nature, and was attacked by many progressives, including a professor at Columbia Law School who likened him to David Duke.  His critique is perceptive but I doubt it will gain much traction with 21st century progressives.

Who are the brain police?  I think I know.

 

Sign Me Up

Appropriately for the day, we finally have a set of college student demands that THC can sign up for!  From the Stanford Review via Powerline:

THC's favorite:

WE DEMAND that Stanford recognizes that half-lives matter, and establishes a committee to fund the Chemistry and Physics Departments accordingly.

And now for the full list: 

"Stanford University has repeatedly failed to address systematic issues on campus. We, the Students of the Stanford Review, have seen our voices silenced, our rights trampled, and our experiences ignored. Not once has an administrator inquired as to the relative health of our feelings – the system is broken! We, the Students of the Stanford Review, DEMAND change.

1. WE DEMAND that Stanford builds a wall around El Centro Chicano, and makes MEChA pay for it.
2. WE DEMAND that Stanford expels Panda Express from campus, since its food is culturally appropriative, and celebrates the harvesting of the endangered panda bear.
3. WE DEMAND that Stanford renames White Plaza to Black Plaza. Naming a central plaza after a race is hateful.
4. WE DEMAND that Stanford recognizes that half-lives matter, and establishes a committee to fund the Chemistry and Physics Departments accordingly.
5. WE DEMAND that Stanford’s Classics Department end its disgusting and exploitative profiteering off the lived experiences of ancient Greeks and Romans.
6. WE DEMAND that swimming pools be abolished at Stanford, since their blueness shows implicit support for the Israeli flag, further dehumanizing the Palestinian people.
7. We DEMAND that Stanford ends its use of European languages, since they are inherently colonialist. We recommend Xhosa, Zulu, and interpretive dance as alternatives for person-to-person communication.
8. WE DEMAND that Stanford’s Applied Quantitative Reasoning requirement not be fulfilled by cis-linear algebra. The experiences of marginalized matrices have been ignored for too long.
9. WE DEMAND the banning of the Stanford Federal Credit Union from campus, since all debt is alienating and shackles people to the capitalist machine. Also, people use their SFCU debit cards to purchase food from the aforementioned, oppressive Panda Express.
10. WE DEMAND that Hoover Tower be removed, since its phallic symbolism is not countered by a suitably feminist building on campus.
11. WE DEMAND that the Math Department immediately cease reducing fractions, each having their own unique identities and experiences, to their lowest common denominators.
12. WE DEMAND that Stanford base grades only on attendance records in class, since all other measures are discriminatory, as SAL already nobly recognizes.
13. WE DEMAND that Stanford remove the clearly ageist language in “Old” Union. From now on, the Review will meet in Union 215 on Monday nights.
14. WE DEMAND that Stanford bans hard alcohol in dorms.
15. WE DEMAND that the Administration immediately accepts the aforementioned demands, and that a statement of acceptance, a timetable of implementation for each demand, and an administrative point person for each demand be presented to the Review at 3 PM on Friday April 8, in open forum at Buffalo Wild Wings, San Jose."