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Robert Boyers Quotes

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Famous Robert Boyers Quotes

“Astonishing, of course, that those very terms - 'reeducation' and 'rehabilitation' - do not scare the hell out of academics who use them and hear them. That they do not call to mind the not-so-distant history of authoritarian regimes in Europe or lead on to the thought that 'diversity,' for many of us in the academy, has now come to mean a plurality of sameness. More important: the words, apparently, do not suggest how vulnerable we are - all of us - to error, slippage, and hurt, and how the protocols, tribunals, and shamings currently favored by many in the academy have distracted us from our primary obligation, which is to foster an atmosphere of candor, good will, kindness, and basic decency without which we can be of no use to one another or to our students.”

KindnessHonestyCivilityAuthoritarianismConformismSocial Justice WarriorsVirtue Signaling
Book:The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies
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“The will to insist upon a definite, unimpeachable reading of an incident - which might well have been read in other, more generous ways - was a mark of a bewildering denial: a denial of the imagination that, liberated to do its proper work, can lead us in alternative directions.”

KindnessJudgmentEmpathyDenialAmbiguityBenefit Of The DoubtCharitable Interpretation
Book:The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies
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“I have long been moved by Rosa Luxemburg's assertion that 'freedom is always the freedom to think otherwise,' and thus I've been attracted to contrarians, to people whose instinct is to go against the grain of officially accredited views - especially those accredited within their own circle of progressive thinkers. This has its dangers, to be sure.”

DissentFreedom Of ThoughtContrarianFreedom Of ConscienceNonconformists
Book:The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies
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“In academic circles influences by Said, any reference to acts of 'terrorism' was soon regarded as off-limits, a reflection of Zionist efforts to discredit the legitimate aspirations of a subject population by casting aspersions on their so-called freedom fighters. In this way, 'blaming the victim' was deployed as an ideological weapon that might constrain debate.”

LanguageIsraelTerrorismOppressionComplexityMiddle EastVictimhoodVictim Blaming
Book:The Tyranny of Virtue: Identity, the Academy, and the Hunt for Political Heresies
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