This new journal was featured in today’s Wall Street Journal. No Speech Coddling in Chicago - WSJ. The managing editor is Evita Duffy, daughter of the former Wisconsin congressman and involved in some controversial exchanges with her woke classmates as part of the IOP. This lady is a comer
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Haven’t read it but have been hoping it’s better than the Maroon.
Two of founders appeared on Fox News this morning
It’s another example why UChicago is the best of the elite universities: because its administration is the least woke. May that never change.
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Yeah, this didn’t age well. Not sure I see Evita as a “comer.”
Hmm. You might be right, @hillybean. The Maroon has not aged well - they are now shutting down the comments thread when it gets too many of “the wrong opinion.” Not particularly in keeping with the Chicago Principles. Perhaps that’s why Ms. Duffy and others decided to start their own.
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This is some of the neoStalinist attitudes these folks have to confront which specifically reject the Chicago Statement of Principles and substitute ideological conformity Instructing Insurrections: How UChicago Can Avoid Creating the Next Ted Cruz – Chicago Maroon
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And note how that opinion is protected because comments are shut down. The irony is lost on the author of the piece.
I have no problem with giving people as much rope to hang themselves as they like. It does make you wonder how she got in. I guess money talks at U. Chicago. No shutting down that speech.
@hillybean, do you have some additional knowledge of Ms. Duffy’s qualifications that you’d like to share, or are you screening merely by political viewpoint?
Also, your comment reads as if you believe The Chicago Thinker required special permission from the university in order to publish. You probably aren’t aware that the University of Chicago doesn’t prohibit free association or speech among its students, faculty or other community members. This, in fact, does separate them from quite a few other privates.
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She is a provocateur. She has been on Fox News several times and writes regularly for the Federalist which is sort of main stream conservative publication. The fact that her father was a Congressman, and controversial one at that, plus her good looks and the fact that she is well spoken has served her well. She has does seem to promote some causes that are little out of the mainstream, at least for people of her social and educational class (enthusiastically pro-life, pro-Trump etc) but I think her presence adds diversity in the literal sense (not because her mother is Hispanic) to a college community that has pretty monolithic political and social views.
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Wow. Just watching, but wow.
I’m fully aware. 
And I’m basing my judgment on her specious arguments, not her political views. I see I’ve ruffled your “Navy Seal” feathers. Or flippers, as it were.
lol - not at all. Just wanted to make your comments weren’t the result of ignorance. Also, I believe you are confusing me with another poster.
Being a provocateur is more typical for UChicago than for other places, fortunately. I’m hoping it’s not really as monolithic as it’s been appearing lately.
What’s really typical: those who disagree seem unable to articulate why. Either her points are too airtight or - more likely - her detractors have little ability to make a well-reasoned alternative viewpoint. “Out-Thinking The Mob” seems quite an easy task at the University of Chicago these days!
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Evita goes international. Here is her interview on the U.K.'s Sky News https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6237388982001
“Out-arguing” does not make somebody right, it just means that they have more experience arguing. Feynman, the one who got a Nobel Prize in physics, wrote about how some young Yeshiva student in New York out-argued him on the age of the world.
As a rule, regular people cannot out-argue provocateurs, since they do not have the quick, one-sentence responses which sound correct, even if they aren’t. They also tend to have a bunch of assumptions that are shared with their friends which may be correct, but are unexamined. Provocateurs can also “win” by questioning every bit of basic knowledge, or claiming that facts are opinions: “Most Black people were brought here as slaves” “not everybody agrees that this is so”, or, “poor people don’t have money”, “well, that’s YOUR opinion”.
Moreover, provocateurs also are good at pressing the buttons which make their opponents lose their cool. A good provocateur does not lose their cool, even if their basic beliefs are being attacked. So all she has to do is say something which implied that intelligence is based on race, and she has “won” the argument, since she’s pressed that button. On the other hand, she has trained not to respond if you, for example, tell her that her religion is nothing more than a primitive superstition.
Put her in a ring with a communist provocateur, and they will chew her up and spit her out in five minutes flat, because they have been doing this for even longer.
Seriously, “winning” an argument rarely proves anything but that a person has the ability to argue. “Winning” an argument against idealists is ridiculously easy.
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very well said.
Not sure you are understanding the UChicago brand of “provocateur,” MWolf, but the best way to test Duffy’s mettle would of course be to cancel the cancel-culture and debate the issues in the public square.
The version of “argument” you describe was derided in the days I was at UChicago. The culture of discussion, debate and even disagreement isn’t a mere exercise in rhetoric; it’s an open forum on substantive issues, and you must provide substance for your “argument” to hold water. Zimmer covers this topic every year when he addresses each incoming class at opening Convocation: the point of an argument isn’t to “win” the debate - it’s to think more deeply about an issue.
Maybe I haven’t met the right “communist provocateurs,” but IMO they tend to be a rather uncritical bunch who rely on dogma, emotion and the mob. However, anyone who has actually read and studied Marx (and there are several opportunities to do so at UChicago) should be qualified to debate Duffy on the issues. I say: go for it.
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Use of the term “cancel culture” is exactly the type of thing that is used. It is the logical fallacy - basically you have dismissed the arguments of the other side, and are making claims as to their motives.
As for Evita, here is her “logical arguments”:
“I vote because the coronavirus won’t destroy America, but socialism will”
This is dogma, emotion, and the mob.
Dogma - Socialism Is Evil
Emotion - Socialists Are Trying To Destroy America
Mob - Biden is a socialist - stop the steal.
Here is another of her quotes, demonstrating that she is not at all a provocateur, but a person who presents her views is a logical manner, with no such logical fallacies such as appeal to emotion:
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