"I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend."
- Thomas Jefferson to William Hamilton, April 22, 1801
"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I'm trying to work through this concept of "Identify." What does it mean to "identify" as something? I noticed Colin Wright asking the same question:
Colin Wright:
I've still yet to hear a coherent definition of "identity" in the "I identify as ____" sense. I'm not convinced anybody knows what they're talking about. I think we'd all be a lot better off if we just buried that term and used a few more words to communicate an actual thought.--
I'm an atheist. I don't "identify" as an atheist, I simply am one because I don't believe in God. I'm a biologist. I don't "identify" as a biologist, I simply am one because that's what I studied. I am straight. I don't "identify" as straight, I am simply attracted to females.
Where does "identity" come into it? Is it just the sum total of my experiences, behavioral tendencies, personality, beliefs, likes & dislikes? Well that seems infinitely complex and impossible to label.
"Identity" seems entirely meaningless and unnecessary. What am I missing?
Erich Vieth: [This is a work in progress.]
My take. When someone "identities" as a X, they like to think of themselves as an X and they expect others to nod complete uncritical agreement and pretend that it always denotes real world accomplishment, though it's often faux heroism or a cheap signal of tribal membership.
Ray Arora reports the spiking numbers in Philadelphia crime and the urge to "fix" this problem by denying it. Arora's article appears at Glenn Loury's Substack:
Last week, Philadelphia district attorney Larry Krasner, a prominent criminal justice reform advocate, generated blistering backlash after explicitly dismissing the recent explosion of violent crime in his city:“We don’t have a crisis of lawlessness, we don’t have a crisis of crime, we don’t have a crisis of violence,” the district attorney told reporters at a Monday press conference when asked if tourists are safe to travel to Philadelphia for the holidays. “It’s important that we don’t let this become mushy and bleed into the notion that there is some kind of big spike in crime.”
The crime stats tell a different story. As of Saturday night, the city tallied 535 homicides, shattering its record 500 homicides set in 1990, the height of the crack epidemic. This summer, the city reached another grim milestone: Philadelphia had the highest murder rate per capita of the country’s 10 largest cities.
Though progressive politicians dismiss growing crime concerns as right-wing “hysteria,” the homicide toll is nearly impossible to exaggerate. More people have died by homicide in Philadelphia in 2021 than in 2014 (248) and 2015 (280) combined. Moreover, the racial inequality in homicide victimization is striking: though black Americans comprise only 41.5% of Philadelphia’s population, they account for 85% of the city’s homicide victims.
Geoffrey Miller describes what most of our legislators do. He left off one important thing: 80% of their job is to get re-elected by soliciting big money from powerful companies and individuals who expect a quid pro quo.
Sixty Princeton Students have carefully responded to the declaration of Princeton Dean Amaney Jamal decrying Kyle Rittenhouse’s not-guilty verdict. Here is an excerpt from "Let Students Think for Themselves," published by The National Review:
[Jamal] lamented with a heavy heart the “incomprehensib[ility] . . . of a minor vigilante carrying a semi-automatic rifle across state lines, killing two people, and being declared innocent by the U.S. justice system.” Furthermore, she situated the verdict within the context of the racism embedded “without a doubt . . . in nearly every strand of the American fabric,” thus implying that defenders of a not-guilty verdict are defenders of racism.Along with 60 of our peers, we sent a letter of concern to the university president, Christopher Eisgruber. We criticized neither the embarrassing factual errors polluting Jamal’s statement nor her position on the trial’s outcome. Rather, we vehemently objected to the fact that she took advantage of her official position to broadcast her own stance on a controversial public issue — a maneuver that can only harm, not aid, a culture of bold, open truth-seeking.
An academic institution committed to truth-seeking and open inquiry should foster an environment in which students feel welcome — even encouraged — to speak up on controversial issues about which reasonable people of goodwill disagree. But as Princeton students and frequent critics of the ideological orthodoxy that pervades our campus, we’ve witnessed our peers retreat from conversations, opportunities, and even friendships out of fear that their deeply held beliefs will cost them academically, socially, and professionally.
A university hinders its truth-seeking mission when it — unintentionally or otherwise — prompts students to think twice before expressing unpopular but reasonable points of view. This can occur when officials violate the basic institutional neutrality required for the university to be a home for the free marketplace of ideas. When an educational institution adopts official stances on controversial issues not directly connected to its core mission, it suggests parameters around an otherwise liberated discourse. This effect is enhanced when such pronouncements are morally tinged; in these cases, the university would appear to have decided that such parameters are morally requisite. By implication, those who defy them are morally suspect.
The “basic neutrality” ideal isn’t new. The most famous defense of the principle was offered by faculty at the University of Chicago during the height of the Vietnam War. Chicago’s Kalven Committee made the point succinctly: “The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic.” The Kalven Report, long celebrated, is still operative at the University of Chicago. Universities everywhere should consider adopting the report’s guidance, as well as the university’s famed Free Speech Principles, which Princeton formally did in 2015.