> Mercado pointed to Cullen's claims that "male homosexuals played a critical role in the early spread of HIV in the USA, especially in [San Franscisco, Calif.] and [New York City, N.Y.]" and that "the promiscuity of African women who then gave British sailors HIV...allowed HIV to spread to Europe" as examples.<p>Aren’t these claims true? It seems odd for a medical student to not be familiar with early HIV/AIDS. And to present these as examples of homophobia exposes this person’s lack of knowledge in areas they should be knowledgeable. And to criticize someone with wrong criticisms shows poor judgement.<p>I think this is included to show how some of the complainers are silly and misguided.<p>I’m glad they include specific examples because it’s hard when articles just quote non-qualified sources as saying someone is X-ist.
Sadly we are only seeing bits and pieces of the emails. Roughly it’s going:<p>““My initial reaction is I refuse to engage in left-wing Maoist political propaganda workshops and, as a tenured faculty, that is my choice,”<p>Response on Twitter:<p>“[the professor] expressed reactionary rhetoric for many years now, and is set to retire soon.”<p>“Yet another reminder that despite someone's contributions to a field, or the money they might bring in to an institution, academic administrators do themselves and future scientists a great disservice by keeping these types of people around for the long haul …”<p>If that’s the worst of the professors rhetoric … then so what?
Well, either the professor in question has "a history of xenophobic, homophobic and racist behavior," or he does not, and I suppose people affiliated with Duke Medical might care about that in some way. But. For the love of God, can we not simply decline, on Hacker News, to take seriously a man who arbitrarily specifies that equity training is 'Maoist'? There is nothing interesting to say here. There is nothing to learn. This is a beef some of us here want to have, but there are plenty of other places to have it. Everyone is aware that every single form of corporate training is more often than not going to be garbage produced as part of a grift profiting off of the underlying ideal. People are not monsters for hating mandatory extraprofessional training. The real monsters here mostly stay in the woodwork these days. Do not give them an excuse to come out.
Ironically, the responses in that article are perfect examples of a standard denunciation during the cultural revolution. Pick some examples of speech/jokes that deviate from the party line and treat the "perpetrator" like a criminal.<p>So the professor is correct and Duke seems to have degenerated into a horrible environment.
Something that always bugs me with stuff like this. The people in favor of these trainings and woke stuff in general make this claim that they are doing it because they are so deeply compassionate and have a ceaseless drive to do the right thing. But they never actually try to be compassionate or make situations better. Here's the response from a supporter<p>> "In the below figure, we see a textbook example of a tenured faculty member whose grasp on human decency is on par with his grasp on the reply-all function," wrote MGM doctoral candidate Jeffrey Letourneau in a reply-all email obtained by The Chronicle.<p>Is this guy the standard bearer for decency? Going into full on personal attack mode when someone disagrees with you.<p>Isn't his whole gripe with this other guy a lack of decency? How does this not strike everyone as disingenuous?
Duke Kunshan University (DKU) needs to reply to this professor's screed.<p>DKU is a Chinese-American partnership of Duke University and Wuhan University to create a liberal arts and research university offering academic programs for students from China and throughout the world. If DKU and the Chinese Ministry of Education have no objection to this characterization as “left-wing Maoist political propaganda workshops”, then so be it.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Kunshan_University" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Kunshan_University</a><p>.
The whole article shows what happens when there's no economic growth: people eat themselves. The woke stick is used very well by younglings to smack old people.<p>These younglings will be experts at leaving no trace. After they have passed though an institution, will anything of worth remain?<p>Soon it will be standard MO for people in high position to use attorney for any communication. Saying something yourself, showing some personal facet, even a joke, is a dangerous thing.<p>Society is now a dark forest. Shh, be quiet.
And here I thought Mao killed the counter-revolutionary teachers rather than giving them tenure and having them whinge about training. My bad..? Maybe I'm the one who misremembers the actual historical events we refer to when calling things Maoism?
Another example of how dinosaurs still walk the earth. While he might be tenured, Wikipedia says he’s 71, and I’m sure there’s something about retirement age in the department. Or, as an md, he probably has two parts to his salary: that of a senior professor and an uplift to make up for what a senior md could make in private practice. I suspect the latter part is independent of tenure.<p>And if it was truly Maoist, he’d be looking at a few years in the tobacco fields for criticizing the thought police.<p>Edit: judging by the speed this got down rated, I feel pretty confident about the right/libertarian bias to HN. Guess it’s useful providing test cases. And I imagine this guy is chuckles to deal with when working with the women in the department. Too many years, perhaps, being god in academia?