[Linkspam] Monday, August 29

This week, the dean of students at the University of Chicago released an appallingly ignorant and anti-intellectual letter sent to incoming first-year undergrads that decried "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces", assuring students that he would make sure professors weren't free to use these concepts in their teaching. I'm linking to two articles related to this attack on academic freedom and on disabled students, though neither article recognizes that content warnings (or trigger warnings) are disability accommodations:

• University of Chicago dean declares war on student autonomy, by PZ Myers (2016-08-26)
• Straw Freshmen: Why the War on Campus PC Culture is Bullshit, by Vann Newkirk (2015-09-24). Yes, this is from almost a year ago, but the status quo warriors' tactics are so predictable that every word applies to the UChicago situation.

Neither author really seems to understand what PTSD is, either, and I wish I had an article by someone who actually has PTSD about the recent events to link to -- particularly one who thinks in a disability rights framework -- but alas.

Other links:

• How Nextdoor reduced racist posts by 75%, by Kashmir Hill for Fusion (2016-08-25). Moderating racism isn't rocket science -- anyone with a site featuring user-generated content can do it if they care.
• Straight White Men, by Chloe Reeson for Scum Mag (2016-08-25): "How can you explain to evidence-obsessed men that the reason you’re afraid of them is simply because you’ve experienced a space without them? It’s a tree falling in the woods type situation. They’ll never know because they’ll never see it. It’s hard to talk about the impact of straight white men because it is so pervasive, so quiet and insidious. The effect is so constant that it’s difficult to break it up into stories or reason. That’s why it so easy for some men to ask us to explain ourselves, to offer evidence that they immediately shoot down as petty or weak or specific. It’s easy for them to shoot holes in our evidence because they are snippets out of an experience whose toxicity is in its wearying constancy."
• Two articles on grad student unionization at private universities (it's about time): Are they students? Or are they employees? NLRB rules that graduate students are employees. by Danielle Douglas-Gabriel for the Washington Post (2016-08-23) and Ruling Pushes Door to Grad-Student Unions ‘Wide Open’ by Peter Schmidt for the Chronicle of Higher Education (2016-08-24).
• 'Crack baby' study ends with unexpected but clear result, by Susan FitzGerald for the Philadelphia Inquirer (2013-07-22). Old, but it's still worth repeating that the "crack baby" moral panic of the '80s was a lie and that it's poverty, not drugs, that hurts kids.
• The Central Park Five Ad Told Us Who Donald Trump Really Is, by Jamil Smith for MTV (2016-08-23).
• Political Strategy and Buzzfeed’s analysis of “the Twitter problem”, by Flavia Dzodan (2016-08-18). Dzodan comes to a similar conclusion to the one I did in "The Democratization of Defamation": harassment continues on social media because it's a feature, not a bug.
• The Right’s Favorite Anti-LGBT Doctor Strikes Again, by Samantha Allen for the Daily Beast (2016-08-23). On the right-wing disinformation campaign targeting trans kids for abuse.
• I Got Hit In The Face With A Fish On The G Train, by Martin Bergman for The Awl (2016-08-24).