Let's put things in perspective. Stanford, on its own website, behind a Stanford login, posted a list of words they want to try to avoid using on their own websites and code. That's it. For this great offense, you suggest:

> We should heap scorn and ridicule on the people who came up with this ridiculous blacklist of commonly used words and drive them out of decent society.

Really. To reiterate, these people who you say should be driven "out of decent society" aren't even imposing that you shouldn't say these words. It's just for them. And for this you want to encourage their banishment at a societal level? You suppose they are the authoritarians, though? You, as always, are free to do whatever you want. Say all the words on the list in a row if you want. No one will stop you.

Your comment is very dissonant for me, because it seems to be anti-woke, yet pro cancel culture. I feel like this must be evidence for Horseshoe Theory.

It was only put behind a login wall after this made the rounds on social media on Monday, according to the WSJ. [1]

1: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-stanford-guide-to-acceptabl...

[1]: https://itcommunity.stanford.edu/news/poc-it-2022-progress-a...

You don't seem to understand how academic departments are organized. I can't see any content on the link you provided (it just has a header that reads "News"), but faculty are not subject to the style guidelines of the IT department, especially if they are tenured. Faculty hire/fire decisions are made by the Chair and Dean of the respective departments, and they aren't bound by these kinds of lists either.

Feel free to criticize and ridicule as much as you want, using whatever words you want. No one will stop you, especially Stanford. But the fear you articulate here regarding faculty freedom of thought is baseless.

The url indeed seems to be dead right now but it originally had described an initiative which would periodically scan everything which is hosted on Stanford domains, which naturally would include faculty pages. It previously stated as follows:

"EHLI Scans In addition to the educational website, EHLI involves scanning Stanford University domains and sites to determine where and how identified harmful language is being used. The end goal is to help individuals and units eliminate harmful language that could be perpetuating stereotypes, inequality, violence, and racism.

Seven web domains authorized by the CIOC were scanned in a pilot phase to test the process of receiving, analyzing, and addressing scan results. This pilot phase led to a change in how terms are categorized from the scans, using these three priority levels:

Most egregious terms that need to be addressed immediately Terms we do not expect to find on our sites but will scan for due diligence Terms that can be used in a non-harmful way, generating many false positive results For the seven domains in the pilot, baseline scans have been recorded, and scan results are now recorded monthly. The process for working with content owners for remediation is still in a planning phase. Additional domains to be included in the scanning process are being evaluated, in close partnership with the CIOC."

> But the fear you articulate here regarding faculty freedom of thought is baseless.

It absolutely is not. The coded language of "Harmful Language" which is constantly morphing and changing to continuously include more and more benign words such as "User" and "American" will absolutely be used to full effect against Faculty.

Indeed, the content from the link which is dead doesn’t support your point. They said they scanned for content and found egregiously harmful examples, along with many “false positives”, meaning there is a process here. So it’s not just “you used the word American, therefore you’re disciplined.” No, it’s nothing like that whatsoever.

It’s more like you posted the word “jewed” somewhere on your personal faculty page and they’d prefer to get rid of that. But if you posted “jewed” in an academic context, there’s obviously nothing wrong with that usage.

I don’t think I need to explain why Stanford doesn’t need a list of words or scanning tools to discipline employees for using racial slurs on company property, so what’s the problem?

As for the list, the problem is the clear attempts to obfuscate and grow the number of wrong think words wile trying to equate their usage as harmful. Purposeful and clearly overtly racist words such as "jewed" are right along side words like "grandfathered", "user", is a pretty clear attempt to mix the two. There certainly will be a process, but your kidding yourself thinking that academics will not be told under no uncertain terms that they are permitted to express "Harmful Language".

> your kidding yourself thinking that academics will not be told under no uncertain terms that they are permitted to express "Harmful Language".

And you're kidding yourself if you think academics will care. Wake me when something actually happens.

You are woefully uninformed, or willfully misrepresenting things if you don't think using such lists to punish people aren't already being used today. It's not harmless, and it seems dishonest to me to paint it as such.

Also I'm in academia so I'm not woefully uninformed about what goes on in academia and how it works. I think the SV tech workers here on HN are the ones who are uninformed about how academia works.

> Isn't it Berkeley where 80% of applications for faculty positions are filtered on their diversity statement

Have you ever read such a statement? They are very important for academia, because classrooms are very diverse. It's important for applicants to state their philosophy on teaching people with different (dis)abilities, because that's the nature of the job. As an instructor, you will face the range of disabilities in students from mild dyslexia all the way to students who are bound to a wheelchair and communicate through a computer voice system. How does the instructor handle those situations? What techniques or practices do they employ?

Also, classroom conflicts do exist. For CS there aren't so many, but in other classes that touch on contentious issues, the question for the instructor is: how do they balance the views of all students in a constructive way that is conducive to learning? It's not easy, and so requires some explanation on the part of the applicant.

Filtering on diversity statements means advancing candidates who have put genuine thought into these issues, because again, they are important for the job.

The other part of the diversity statement plays is that is forces the candidate to reflect on their community service work. Did you know that service is part of the job description of a professor? The job is research, teaching, and service. We ask them for a research and a teaching statement, so what's wrong with asking for a diversity statement? Would you rather it be called a "service" statement?

The filtering process selects for candidates who are serious about service and who have thought deeply about how to teach a diverse classroom (because that's the job). I don't see a problem with that; even if you disagree with DEI initiatives, you still have to teach a diverse classroom. This whole idea that we can't ask job candidates how they handle situations which will arise on the job to which they're applying is strange to me.

> Or consider Stuart Reges being disciplined by UW for not putting the boilerplate land acknowledgement on his course's syllabus.

This is a misrepresentation. The land acknowledgement for UW is in fact optional on the course syllabus. What Stuart Reges did was put his own land acknowledgement statement on the syllabus which veered from factual statements and was a political statement.

So he was using his platform in an engineering course to push his own personal political agenda. A syllabus in particular is regarded as a contract, sometimes binding, between student and professor. It's not the place for off-the-cuff political statements. If Stuart Reges is allowed to put his political statements on his syllabus, that opens up the door for all professors, which makes the syllabus a political platform. Apparently he was very vocal about the land statements outside of the syllabus and that is fine for UW, but it just didn't belong in the syllabus.

I don't see a problem with that, do you? If you want to include the UW land statement, that's fine. If you don't want to include the statement, that's fine. But what's not fine including your own statement because you're personally politically against land statements or what the UW statement has to say. I mean, if you take a course, do you care to see it colored with political statements from your instructor that are wholly unrelated to the course content?

As for how he was disciplined... what happened to him exactly? They asked him to take down the statement, he refused. Yet his salary was uninterrupted and he still works at UW to this day: https://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/reges. So the sum total of his discipline was what, exactly?

According to the lawsuit Reges filed, he didn't even claim material damages. His lawsuit was about being butthurt because he felt like a pariah, which reading the situation, is as much his fault as anyone else's. In fact, the party that was materially impacted was the department; they had to open another section of the course because he was so acerbic to the students. That costs serious money and time from all of his colleagues. Honestly for that alone I would have fired him, but I guess UW is more forgiving than me.

Now also taxpayers, because of debt cancellation. It's subsidized now.

So, in your opinion, if Neo-Nazis try to impose a speech code among those young people who they seek to indoctrinate into their "ethos", that is okay, as long as it is "just for them" and they don't try to impose it on society at large?

>And for this you want to encourage their banishment at a societal level?

Yes.

> You, as always, are free to do whatever you want. Say all the words on the list in a row if you want. No one will stop you.

Just like Neo-Nazis and self-appointed cultural hall-monitors at Stanford are free to do whatever they want. And the rest of us are free to drive these worthless people out of decent society because they have no place here and are detrimental to free and open discourse among decent, reasonable people.

Yea, I’m supportive of the first amendment rights afforded to all Americans, including neo-Nazis, with whom I disagree. Crucially, they already do this. Use too many words that neo-Nazis don’t like to hear and they’re likely to reject you from their group, which is also their right.

> Yes.

Great, thank you for admitting you are in fact an authoritarian in this context. It clarifies the rest of your comment.