The treatment Mr. Hughes received at the hands of the TED apparatus reminds me of the Soviet Union's way of dealing with inconvenient people - dissidents, really - the regime could not afford to silence by exiling them to the Gulag or resorting to more permanent measures. No, this is not a MAGA exercise in redbaiting. It's a critique of TED's reliance on irregular internal processes and disingenuous pretexts to "other" Coleman Hughes for the political and cultural offenses of defending color blindness.
Still, the incident has been a learning experience. It has exposed TED as yet another business in which executive management allows hot headed leftist ideologues on the staff to call the shots. Presumably there's a Trans@TED or its equivalent standing by to attack at any TED talker who challenges trans orthodoxy assuming, however, that a gender critical intellectual could even make it past TED's gatekeepers the way Mr. Hughes did.
TED's bad faith during its discussions with Hughes was bad enough. To suppress Hughes' talk surreptitiously is the ultimate in progressive duplicitousness
In an ideal world, given TED's reach and its influence, the organization would have set up an independent body with the authority to investigate alleged misconduct such as what Mr. Hughes has alleged, issue findings and require prompt corrective action. Don't expect Chris Anderson to do it. He is not an honest broker.
Luckily, this story provides a moment of comic relief. Mr. Hughes reports that his chief antagonist within TED describes itself as an "Employee Resource Group that exists to provide a safe space for TED staff who identify as Black.” Oops! Someone scrambled their woke refrigerator magnets when they penned that sentence. As Rachel Dolezal can well attest, unless BIPOC have taken a page out of the trans playbook and are now embracing the concept of "race assigned at birth," nobody but nobody ever gets to "identify" as black.
Some additional comments regarding the Coleman Hughes TED talk brouhaha
I’ve quoted from the head of TED, Chris Anderson’s, comments regarding the situation, and this post is written in the form of a letter addressed to Mr Anderson. My comments regarding Mr. Anderson’s comments are below each quote.
>> “...we concluded that some of the essential issues raised by Coleman’s talk needed wider discussion, hence the decision to supplement the talk with a debate”
The obvious question, Mr. Anderson – which you do not answer in your response to Mr. Hughes’ complaints regarding his treatment by TED – is whether TED has EVER postponed publication of a talk pending “wider discussion” and a required additional debate on the topic? Did this, for example, happen following the 2014 TED talk that criticized color-blind social policies? If not – why was the Hughes talk singled out in the way that it was?
>>”The first is how unfair it is that Adam Grant got dragged into this.”
True – to a degree. And I am certainly not claiming that Mr Grant supported censorship of Coleman Hughes. However, as I noted in my review of the Leslie et al. (2020) meta-analysis paper, that paper has a number of really glaring weaknesses that Dr. Grant should have highlighted in his report regarding the current state of the science. I’m really surprised that he did not, because he is an accomplished social scientist who really couldn’t have failed to have noticed the paper’s weaknesses if he had done a thorough review of the paper rather than simply accepting the conclusions of the authors of the paper at face value.
>>”As the researchers themselves write: “Multiculturalism is more consistently associated with improved intergroup relations than any identity-blind ideology.”
That IS what the authors concluded. But, as I have noted above and elsewhere, the paper is so fatally flawed (and biased in its design) that Dr. Grant should have cautioned you against accepting the paper’s conclusions at face value.
>> “But when we have entered political waters, that content in recent years has indeed been more likely to use the language and ideas of progressives than conservatives. “
And why is that? Are you working to return some balance to the talks that are presented at TED? And by what measure would one classify Hughes’ talk as “conservative”? Hughes argues in favor of affirmative action based up social class. Is that a conservative idea? Is it “conservative” to argue that everyone should be treated equally, regardless of race? Is it “conservative” for professors to grade all students based upon the same rubric, regardless of each student’s race? If you are going to claim that Hughes’ ideas are “conservative”, it would seem to be incumbent upon you to justify that claim in some way.
>> “Some commenters below just don’t understand how anyone could be upset by a talk arguing for color blindness. This speaks to their own lack of immersion in the rich debate that has swirled on this topic in recent years. See, for example, a wonderful TED Talk from 2014, “Color blind or color brave?”, arguing that we’ll never achieve true equity unless we proactively take race into account in our decision-making. Check it out. It’s persuasive: https://go.ted.com/6WzH“
All I can say is – WOW. So you are claiming that it is your critics, and not you and the members of black@TED, who need to get out of their ideological bubbles. I’m sorry – but I really think you might want to entertain the possibility that you need to get out more into the world that most people in this country inhabit. You do know, don’t you, that race-based affirmative action is deeply unpopular in the country as a whole, including among African Americans? WOW.
In addition, I think you have misread the point being made here by your critics. I doubt there are many who truly cannot understand HOW anyone could be upset by the Hughes talk. There are many, however, who seem to believe that people who work at TED should not become upset by the content of a talk – or if staff do become upset by the content of a talk, but should not be a factor affecting you decision regarding the posting of that talk or the selection of topics foir future talks. Your staffers work, after all, for an organization whose motto focuses on the importance of operating at the level of IDEAS. Becoming upset in response to an idea is simply not a rational argument against the idea.
>>”If someone's spent their whole life experiencing a playing field that is tilted against them, proactive policies to un-tilt that field are a ray of light. A talk arguing to dump those in favor of color-blindness can therefore seem not just wrong, but truly dangerous.“
Really, Mr. Anderson? I might be wrong – but I am willing to bet that many of the staff who work at TED have led very privileged lives. Am I wrong? What percentage of them, for example, have attended either private high schools, or elite private universities, or both? How many of them have benefitted from affirmative action in college admission and/or in being hired by TED? Please note that, as was noted above, Hughes argues in favor of class/economic-disadvantage-based affirmative action, rather than race-based affirmative action. By claiming that the thesis of Hughes’ talk is “not just wrong, but truly dangerous”, some of your staff are claiming that they are more deserving of special supports than are those who are seriously economically disadvantaged. Nice. (And if I am wrong about the level of privilege that has characterized the lives of most of your staffers, I apologize and will be happy to change my views about them).
>>”They’re smart, creative, curious and kind, and they work for TED because they believe in the importance of ideas and in TED’s mission.”
Uh – if this claim about your staff is correct, then why did some of them argue against releasing the Hughes talk? Is censorship a part of the TED mission? If not – then the request that Coleman Hughes’ talk not be released does not reflect a “belief in the importance of ideas and in TED’s mission.”
At least 22 of the 65 episodes in Jul/Aug/Sep on the TED Talk Daily podcast have been about climate change. So if you’re wondering if TED has an agenda, I would suggest that it’s no longer a question.
And I say this as someone who is concerned about climate change, but more concerned with the continual deterioration of once heterodox/varied sources of information.
So I’m not surprised that going against the current orthodoxy on race earned you some issues with TED. Very unfortunate.
The fact that Adam Grant is a Harvard grad and Ivy League professor and twisted the findings of a research paper to support his own narrative just goes to show you that education does not necessarily equate to intelligence. Absolutely appalling.
The treatment Mr. Hughes received at the hands of the TED apparatus reminds me of the Soviet Union's way of dealing with inconvenient people - dissidents, really - the regime could not afford to silence by exiling them to the Gulag or resorting to more permanent measures. No, this is not a MAGA exercise in redbaiting. It's a critique of TED's reliance on irregular internal processes and disingenuous pretexts to "other" Coleman Hughes for the political and cultural offenses of defending color blindness.
Still, the incident has been a learning experience. It has exposed TED as yet another business in which executive management allows hot headed leftist ideologues on the staff to call the shots. Presumably there's a Trans@TED or its equivalent standing by to attack at any TED talker who challenges trans orthodoxy assuming, however, that a gender critical intellectual could even make it past TED's gatekeepers the way Mr. Hughes did.
TED's bad faith during its discussions with Hughes was bad enough. To suppress Hughes' talk surreptitiously is the ultimate in progressive duplicitousness
In an ideal world, given TED's reach and its influence, the organization would have set up an independent body with the authority to investigate alleged misconduct such as what Mr. Hughes has alleged, issue findings and require prompt corrective action. Don't expect Chris Anderson to do it. He is not an honest broker.
Luckily, this story provides a moment of comic relief. Mr. Hughes reports that his chief antagonist within TED describes itself as an "Employee Resource Group that exists to provide a safe space for TED staff who identify as Black.” Oops! Someone scrambled their woke refrigerator magnets when they penned that sentence. As Rachel Dolezal can well attest, unless BIPOC have taken a page out of the trans playbook and are now embracing the concept of "race assigned at birth," nobody but nobody ever gets to "identify" as black.
Some additional comments regarding the Coleman Hughes TED talk brouhaha
I’ve quoted from the head of TED, Chris Anderson’s, comments regarding the situation, and this post is written in the form of a letter addressed to Mr Anderson. My comments regarding Mr. Anderson’s comments are below each quote.
>> “...we concluded that some of the essential issues raised by Coleman’s talk needed wider discussion, hence the decision to supplement the talk with a debate”
The obvious question, Mr. Anderson – which you do not answer in your response to Mr. Hughes’ complaints regarding his treatment by TED – is whether TED has EVER postponed publication of a talk pending “wider discussion” and a required additional debate on the topic? Did this, for example, happen following the 2014 TED talk that criticized color-blind social policies? If not – why was the Hughes talk singled out in the way that it was?
>>”The first is how unfair it is that Adam Grant got dragged into this.”
True – to a degree. And I am certainly not claiming that Mr Grant supported censorship of Coleman Hughes. However, as I noted in my review of the Leslie et al. (2020) meta-analysis paper, that paper has a number of really glaring weaknesses that Dr. Grant should have highlighted in his report regarding the current state of the science. I’m really surprised that he did not, because he is an accomplished social scientist who really couldn’t have failed to have noticed the paper’s weaknesses if he had done a thorough review of the paper rather than simply accepting the conclusions of the authors of the paper at face value.
>>”As the researchers themselves write: “Multiculturalism is more consistently associated with improved intergroup relations than any identity-blind ideology.”
That IS what the authors concluded. But, as I have noted above and elsewhere, the paper is so fatally flawed (and biased in its design) that Dr. Grant should have cautioned you against accepting the paper’s conclusions at face value.
>> “But when we have entered political waters, that content in recent years has indeed been more likely to use the language and ideas of progressives than conservatives. “
And why is that? Are you working to return some balance to the talks that are presented at TED? And by what measure would one classify Hughes’ talk as “conservative”? Hughes argues in favor of affirmative action based up social class. Is that a conservative idea? Is it “conservative” to argue that everyone should be treated equally, regardless of race? Is it “conservative” for professors to grade all students based upon the same rubric, regardless of each student’s race? If you are going to claim that Hughes’ ideas are “conservative”, it would seem to be incumbent upon you to justify that claim in some way.
>> “Some commenters below just don’t understand how anyone could be upset by a talk arguing for color blindness. This speaks to their own lack of immersion in the rich debate that has swirled on this topic in recent years. See, for example, a wonderful TED Talk from 2014, “Color blind or color brave?”, arguing that we’ll never achieve true equity unless we proactively take race into account in our decision-making. Check it out. It’s persuasive: https://go.ted.com/6WzH“
All I can say is – WOW. So you are claiming that it is your critics, and not you and the members of black@TED, who need to get out of their ideological bubbles. I’m sorry – but I really think you might want to entertain the possibility that you need to get out more into the world that most people in this country inhabit. You do know, don’t you, that race-based affirmative action is deeply unpopular in the country as a whole, including among African Americans? WOW.
In addition, I think you have misread the point being made here by your critics. I doubt there are many who truly cannot understand HOW anyone could be upset by the Hughes talk. There are many, however, who seem to believe that people who work at TED should not become upset by the content of a talk – or if staff do become upset by the content of a talk, but should not be a factor affecting you decision regarding the posting of that talk or the selection of topics foir future talks. Your staffers work, after all, for an organization whose motto focuses on the importance of operating at the level of IDEAS. Becoming upset in response to an idea is simply not a rational argument against the idea.
>>”If someone's spent their whole life experiencing a playing field that is tilted against them, proactive policies to un-tilt that field are a ray of light. A talk arguing to dump those in favor of color-blindness can therefore seem not just wrong, but truly dangerous.“
Really, Mr. Anderson? I might be wrong – but I am willing to bet that many of the staff who work at TED have led very privileged lives. Am I wrong? What percentage of them, for example, have attended either private high schools, or elite private universities, or both? How many of them have benefitted from affirmative action in college admission and/or in being hired by TED? Please note that, as was noted above, Hughes argues in favor of class/economic-disadvantage-based affirmative action, rather than race-based affirmative action. By claiming that the thesis of Hughes’ talk is “not just wrong, but truly dangerous”, some of your staff are claiming that they are more deserving of special supports than are those who are seriously economically disadvantaged. Nice. (And if I am wrong about the level of privilege that has characterized the lives of most of your staffers, I apologize and will be happy to change my views about them).
>>”They’re smart, creative, curious and kind, and they work for TED because they believe in the importance of ideas and in TED’s mission.”
Uh – if this claim about your staff is correct, then why did some of them argue against releasing the Hughes talk? Is censorship a part of the TED mission? If not – then the request that Coleman Hughes’ talk not be released does not reflect a “belief in the importance of ideas and in TED’s mission.”
At least 22 of the 65 episodes in Jul/Aug/Sep on the TED Talk Daily podcast have been about climate change. So if you’re wondering if TED has an agenda, I would suggest that it’s no longer a question.
And I say this as someone who is concerned about climate change, but more concerned with the continual deterioration of once heterodox/varied sources of information.
So I’m not surprised that going against the current orthodoxy on race earned you some issues with TED. Very unfortunate.
The fact that Adam Grant is a Harvard grad and Ivy League professor and twisted the findings of a research paper to support his own narrative just goes to show you that education does not necessarily equate to intelligence. Absolutely appalling.