To sum up the first few pages after skimming it, Facebook tried to bribe her (well "fund" her research), she refused. Later she had a meeting with the former head of comms at Facebook, who was now on the Dean's council, where he became incredibly angry with her research (page 4, 13). Following this, she got an email from the Dean of the Kennedy school which sounds very much like someone tattled to them and they now want to "review" her research (see page 5, 15). It continues from here.
Not sure why I decided to spend so much time on this on a Monday morning but I've read to page 35, and the picture is much more muddled.
It looks like the FB Archive project gains momentum and launches but Dr. Donovan and the TASC get sidelined along the way (which understandably is very upsetting, you can feel the pain on every page). It does seem clear that the Dean doesn't approve of Dr. Donovan/TASC and he eventually shuts the group down, but if he allows the Facebook project to move forward under other groups that are also within the Kennedy school, then the title of this post is pretty misleading. (Oh, maybe why the actual article title says "initial team" instead of just "team".)
BTW, not a particular fan of Meta, no feelings about Harvard/Kennedy school, never heard of any of these people before except Frances Haugen and Dr. Latanya Sweeney.
I think sidelining the lead researcher and giving the project to another group is accurately described at "gutting a team". No, they didn't end the project, but the series of events described seems to be insinuating that she could have led the project if she was willing to have her work funded by Facebook, listen to one of their former people, etc. So if that was their goal, and they just got someone else to do the work, is that any better?
That's not quite what I imagine when I hear the term "gutting a team." Gutting a team is when then very significantly reduce its size and priority. Simply switching leadership of a project isn't gutting a team, it's normal university politics and infighting.
If they are forcing funding by Facebook/Meta, then that does seem like a conflict of interest, but is a quite a different headline.
The sidelining is to show damages to her reputation etc. Page 50 or so starts the description alleging how the administration and the dean gutted her department by blocking, reallocating funds, stopping hiring, and refusing to extend contracts when funds are available.
From what I gathered, they didn't simply switch leadership, they removed it entirely, along with the person doing the most work, replacing them with nothing, which effectively shut down the project.
According to the complaint, "the project" was FB Archive, which Dr. Donovan came up with the idea for and was the only person in the room with the actual source material. The Public Interest Tech Lab was the organization actually tasked with building out FB Archive, which they did, and it shipped: https://fbarchive.org
I think Dr. Donovan's complaint is not that it didn't happen, so much as she was not allowed to play a larger role in it despite having the desire, the people, the funding, and the right--as the person who came up with the idea and the person who provided the material, without which there would be no project. (And then worse, history rewritten to exclude her contributions)
Fair, but it raises the question of the motives behind it. It would seem they didn't necessarily have a problem with the research, but rather with the lead researcher. There's complicated issues of academic freedom to parse here, but in principle, if you aren't happy with the work someone is doing, it's not entirely unreasonable that you'd let them go and have someone else pick up the work.
> It would seem they didn't necessarily have a problem with the research, but rather with the lead researcher
This is the entire crux of the issue; do they have a problem with the lead researcher because she isn't good at her job or because she is finding things that their large donor doesn't like?
Universities don't work that way. There's generally very little oversight over the PI of projects. The university generally wants more projects leading to more publications and grants, not less. Administrators understand that removing a PI generally means abandoning their lab's projects, so it usually doesn't happen.
An academic team isn't the same as a team in a company though, right? My understanding (which could be incorrect) is that a PI is almost like the CEO of a startup which happens to have the goal of doing research, and operates in the context of a university. A PI is not like a team lead in a company . Each PI-led team is doing research independently of the rest of the department. I have the impression it's not even expected to outlive the PI's employment there.
Going out and getting Washington Post, New York Times articles about your issues through "Whistleblower Aid" - it brings to mind Barack Obama's great line:
When some activists at that meeting said they felt that their voices were not being heard, Mr. Obama replied, "You are sitting in the Oval Office, talking to the president of the United States."
I don't work in PR, the issues I am politically active over are very local. This researcher paints a big target on her back, in an issue as amply documented as an academic firing, it isn't surprising that things are not cut and dried.
> but if he allows the Facebook project to move forward under other groups that are also within the Kennedy school,
Move forward in the direction the dean and Facebook want, or in the direction the original team wanted to explore?
Because it doesn't seem - at all - that the two are equivalent. And it is not misleading to call out replacing a non-bribe-able PI with a susceptible or even already bribed one.
I was not nearly clear or explicit enough in my comment, apologies for that. In sections 25 and 26 (page 14), the whistleblower report talks about the origins of the project. Dr. Donovan acquired the entire archive of the Facebook Files, and reached out to Dr. Latanya Sweeney, who she calls her "most trusted colleague":
> I chose to work with Dr. Sweeney because she was the shoulder I leaned
on when I needed to decode the politics of HKS. I regard Dr. Sweeney to be brilliant at
computer science, the foremost authority on privacy in technology, and had a vision to build the
FB Archive on the base of a data sharing platform that she had designed previously.
Donovan's vision was to build "a searchable archive of these documents for the public interest" and hold training workshops for other researchers. So Dr. Sweeney's lab built it, as was the plan; and held training workshops, which was a little hurtful to Donovan as she was not invited into that process.
After the fact, Sweeney summed up her view of their respective contributions in a private email to Donovan:
> The technological IP (design, architecture, and implementation) in FBarchive belongs to the Lab [i.e. Sweeney] alone. No one can claim IP over the original content of course, but the Lab also has IP in the redaction strategy used. Your team contributed the citation reference used to identify each image and document, and of course, you were part of the original concept. This is the kind of details that we will document on the history page.
And implies, like it's not even worth asserting directly, that TASC's contributions are historical, not current. A couple of responses later, Donovan says:
> TASC made many contributions including getting the documents and categorizing them, as well as promoting the archive in public forums, and having my team write testimonies and 1pagers, reviewing abstracts and holding office hours with students and so many meetings.
Dr. Donovan's complaints with the project as delivered seem to mostly NOT be that she wanted it to be different than it was, but rather, that the history page contains blatant lies that minimize Dr. Donovan and TASC's contributions. And also that it is incredibly unjust that she brought this highly valuable asset to the table, and without cause was not only shut out, but basically fired, and her historical contributions scrubbed. (Section 42.)
(To be clear, this is a sad and frustrating tale and if I was Donovan I'd be pissed too.)
The picture becomes much more clear later on. The Dean sidelined and reallocated the very generous funding which donors provided specifically for her, while also lying to the donors about this. And then winds down her research even though there is obviously demand for and interest in it. All while stringing her along. She should have been able to take her funding elsewhere if the dean didn't want her around, there is ample precedent for that. The degree of manipulation is unprecedented and amounts to the dean stealing her funding from her/her donors.
> Dr. Donovan and the TASC get sidelined along the way
this is described dismissively and in the passive voice, but it's an active action, and quite damning.
who sidelined them, and why?
it seems the answers are: the school, because the researchers upset facebook, who was giving the school money
> if he allows the Facebook project to move forward under other groups that are also within the Kennedy school, then the title of this post is pretty misleading
this is misleading: if the research is allowed to continue, it should continue under the researchers who did the research, unless there's a good reason otherwise
"The school" is not a person with motive. Dr. Donovan's report strongly implicates the Dean, who maintains a personal friendship with Sheryl Sandberg, as the driver behind these actions. The remaining actors appear to be interest in saving their own necks.
If you're familiar with this woman's past research, you'd realize she is quite.... biased politically.
She strongly believes in increased content moderation by "fact checkers".
She's spread misinformation herself like
- Suggesting Russian disinformation on Facebook shifted the 2016 election (anyone who's run a facebook ad in their life knows how absurdly ridiculous this is)
- Advocating for increased censorship of information during COVID on lab leak hypothesis
This is just off a few minutes of reading her past work.
I'm not a fan of Facebook (in the slightest) but also am really not a fan of the type of censorship this person wants.
I'm hesitant to share this because it's completely unverifiable in any way I'd be comfortable documenting. Not my life, not my secrets to tell.
I had a close friend who did undergraduate research in a fisheries department.
They had been researching plant selection for aquaponics to increase the yield of tilapia. They had a filtration system that pushed tank water through a bed of plant roots. The plants would be harvested, processed into fish food, and fed back to the fish. On top of this platform, they'd experiment with different plant combinations to measure the impact on water quality and protein conversion.
They were seeing very high protein conversion with their plant choices (numbers high enough they gave me pause at what it would mean for society, but if I tried to throw out a number now I'd certainly get it wrong).
Recycling energy like this reduced the amount of food you'd have to put into the system, and the plants handled a good portion of the filtration for the system.
At some point, a large agriculture business with strong ties to the department offered a large grant that was understood to be contingent on this project being discontinued.
The project was abandoned and my buddy dropped out of his degree program.
On one hand I absolutely believe this does routinely happen. On the other every researcher/inventor out there with a project that went nowhere claims that they were on the cusp of a breakthrough and only silenced because of the government/corporations/illuminati. I'd wager the vast majority are in the second category.
My guess is that the researchers don't "own" the research they're doing since it was being funded by the university. It's property of the university and if you take it and try to sell it now you're stealing IP.
Superficially, focus on driving down net waste in the system.
Take the nutrient profile of tilapia waste. Compare that with the nutrient demands of plants to find candidates. Then look for plants where the majority of the biomass can be converted into food that the tilapia can digest (i.e. edible roots, stalks, leaves; the more the fish can eat the less energy you take out of the system).
IIRC at least one of the plant choices had a tuber.
IIRC there is also something about the efficiency of waste->biomass conversion for the plants at different stages of development; figuring out when the ideal time to harvest is to minimize energy loss.
I know what intentional suppression of innovation looks like. I worked in blockchain sector. I think you're underestimating the scale of it and hence you do not see that it's the same ideology behind both cases and many more cases.
Setting aside the institutional failures within Harvard, shouldn't this also pose legal problems for the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation? I am certainly not a lawyer, but I thought the tax-benefits of a non-profit were supposed to be tied to some governance requirements and operating in pursuit of some mission other than profit. If when the Chan Zuckerberg foundation gives a donation to a school, an exec from Meta is then put on some Dean's council, and if the foundation's donation is used to pressure the school to advantage the corporation, then it seems like the foundation is operating as an arm of Meta, and is compromised as an independent philanthropic org.
CZI and CZF are structured as a for-profit LLC and a non-profit arm, respectively. Depending on where the money came from, it might not be a problem at all, though it could potentially jeopardize Harvard's nonprofit status. I'll leave it up to you to figure the odds of the IRS revoking that designation.
Isn't "Foundation" a word that is usually for non-profits? I understood the different between "Charity" and "Foundation" just to be about "Public" vs "Private" organization, but both of them being non-profits. Am I misunderstanding what "Foundation" means here?
The foundation here is a 501(c)(3) non profit. However it is not a public charity, which is a sub classification that comes with stricter rules and higher donation tax write-off limits.
People tend to assume all 501(c)(3)/nonproft and "public charity" are synonymous, but they aren't and that can make discussions like this confusing.
> However it is not a public charity, which is a sub classification that comes with stricter rules and higher donation tax write-off limits.
It sounds like you mean public charities have stricter rules. I find the opposite to be true. There are additional rules and reporting requirements that apply only to private foundations because of the limited funding and tight control of such organizations by a close-knit group of people.
The rules are different, so which you view as more restrictive dependa on your perspective.
In this case, the context is discussion of this claim:
> I thought the tax-benefits of a non-profit were supposed to be tied to some governance requirements and operating in pursuit of some mission other than profit
Thr greater tax benefits of public charities are indeed tied to governance requirements (specifically rules that restrict the board makeup of public charities) and mission alignment.
It's deeply dirty, in a sort of teflon get-away-with-anything way. Of course Harvard needs money to run, and has in the past accepted all manner of dubious donors, but implicitly receiving a payment quid pro quo to kill research is pretty low.
What's actually dirty? Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF): a tax breaks now, pay-give later DAF. It ostensibly does some community projects that are token billionaire pet projects, but it exists first and primarily to reduce taxes of the gigarich.
I just read that this morning. I'm interested enough in the outcome that I put a calendar reminder 6 months out to check what happened. Doing so made me wonder if there's a service that would email me updates about legal cases like this that I would like to follow.
Random people like you and me wouldn't pay for something they're gonna use twice in their lifetime, and lawyers surely have something like this, possibly integrate with all the other tools they use.
I do love it when people say "I am not familiar with this situation at all but" and then proceed to speculate about it having made clear they have no basis for their speculation.
Hadn't considered the role that AI could play in such a service. But now think that it could be a great application.
Speaking to my AI: "computer, please create me a Google Doc that gets updated with new results related to the legal case of Joan Donovan vs Harvard, and notify me via email with updates."
I'd probably do something like that a few times a week. It's really a missing link to my news experience.
There are services that monitors changes on webpages so you could plug the "official" page where legal/official information about that case lives and wait for a change, maybe it would even work with a search engine results page.
I set up cron to run urlwatch[1] once a day on a vps, and it emails me updates to pages. It supports CSS selectors, various filters (like html2text) and so on. Combined with a little elisp to diff highlight emails in Emacs, this has one of the highest usefulness/maintenance ratio of things I self-host.
There are plenty of mailing list services that associates of large law firms sign up for. I haven't been around people in that world for a while so I don't know the names, but I'm sure you can find them if you spend time looking.
Anything that provides a calendar and/or timed TODO/list items. Just set calendar item or the TODO item's due date 6 months out. Any OS you're using whether mobile or desktop probably has an app for this shipped with it.
> [Harvard] also denies that she was fired, saying she “was offered the chance to continue as a part-time adjunct lecturer, and she chose not to do so.”
I have not read her filing, or followed her specific research, so I have no opinion about the possible merits or conspiracy theories regarding winding down her project. But, that statement by Harvard is suspicious. You take someone who is high profile, doing their own research, and offer them basically an insulting part time job (sorry to my adjunct lecturer friends, you know what I mean) and say "well, we didn't fire her, it was her choice." It would be like having a Director level position at a company, and being told your department was shutting down, but you could stay on as a part time contractor if you want. You just soft-fired her and tried to give yourself cover.
I don't know how it would be at a Harvard school, but all the adjunct professors I have ever known (working for large, but not ivy-league universities) were making significantly less than the part-time software contractors I have known.
I went from being an adjunct instructor at a California community college to a software engineer. Now I earn more in a month than I used to make in a year. And the more prestigious a school, the worse the pay in a lot of cases. Like I made more at my CC than I would have made teaching at UC Berkeley, which is by some measures the #15 university in the US!
this is how many rich people get their kids into Harvard too, the only reason parents got caught up in the varsity blues scandal was that they were too explicit... old money donates the new library and "hopes" for the best
New money means wealth that was mostly based on efforts (not due to passive investments) by the current holder.
micromacrofoot1 was trying to distinguish “a lot of money” from “a little bit of money”, but old money is not the correct term for that.
From Wikipedia, the varsity blues scandal was about 33 sets of parents paying ~$25M total. That is chump change compared to donating a whole building, which new or old money can do, because they would have access to tens of millions of dollars.
fair, though I was thinking the context that "old money" is usually old because there's a lot of it... but new/old signaling quantity is probably less true now than ever
there's also some behavior involved, traditionally it would be a major social faux pas to ask for special treatment in a traceable way
> this is how many rich people get their kids into Harvard too
That's the entire point and feature of these elite institutions (more specifically, their undergraduate division and business schools), to connect wealth with brilliant people. They are the traditional social institutions of innovation and entrepreneurship before incubators like YC were a thing. If you remove the wealth aspects, then the Ivies are no different than any other research state school.
If you wanted to make money, you would choose business over academia. I know one brilliant math/physics researcher who wanted to go to China because they have better scientific research equipment.
They do call themselves truth experts. Nothing prestigious about being a sad, untrusted, and failed backstop for failing trust in journalism. See the fact that media calls them "prestigious" after being forced to concede their supposed fact checking role to them.
Democratic election politics being a public trust game, at their core.
I'm not following your reasoning here. There are people working with the topic that is online disinformation. I know Swedish government have some teams who analyze disinformation campaigns, as an example. Are you saying that people who work with this area cannot be experts on the area?
I can't speak for the OP but take into the current Media Matters "outing" of X over the ad placement next to anti-semitic content.
Basically Media Matters juiced the X algorithm to give them less than 10 impressions of big ad spend clients ads next to anti-semitic comments they entered on their own sock puppet accounts (with few or little followers), then passed that contrivance off as truth, stating brand-destroying anti-semitic content is rampant on X. Where are the disinformation experts now decrying MM's bullshit? Where will they be in 30-36 months after X sues MM into oblivion? Hint: likely silent at their desks. Just as they have been over numerous lies targeting non-liberal narrative-busting realities.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make. It seems quite US-Politics-centric and really doesn't answer the question I asked. If you're upset about things then that's fine but please try to stay on topic.
I am saying there is no "disinformation detection" industry, trade, field of study. It is a new name for "propaganda", and in this instance rather than simply telling lies, they are saying those telling the truth are lying, and doing so with a contrived color of authority. And it is a global problem.
His point is that academic self proclaimed "misinformation experts" don't care about misinformation, only ideological warfare. They are basically just academically sponsored left wing political activists pretending to be neutral scientific researchers.
This problem is not US centric. Every western country has developed these people like a rash. Universities are overflowing with left wing radicals who spend their time on activism instead of research, the only thing that's new is the tactic of claiming to be fact checkers. It's really hard to feel sorry for the firing of someone who should never have had a job in the first place.
They can't be publicly trusted experts unless they can demonstrate that they correct disinformation at a better rate than it is delivered by the MSM. I haven't seen that. Apart from mundane fact checking chores, my observation is that referenced fact checkers lie by ommision, and other means, as much as anyone else.
And it really is late stage civ stuff. Journalists are supposed to be the "disinformation experts". This has always been a false narrative, but in recent years the public percieves enough deception from he Press that trust in their proclamations has fallen through the floor. Enter "disinformation experts" as a cheap last-ditch attempt at an appeal to authority fallacy by the same distrusted media. It will and is failing as well. As it should.
I don't understand how that is relevant to the question I asked. Are you suggesting that no one can be experts on disinformation because different people have different view on what is true? Sounds a bit silly to me. Is the earth flat or more shaped like a globe?
The scientific consensus is that the earth is shaped like a globe. Though, not really a globe. More like a mishapen sphere-like object. All science is never-ending discussion and consensus. Really poorly supported hypothesese can be infintely marginalized, but they can never be off-limits for discussion. If you are dealing in actual science. To insert "disinformation experts" into science to police hypothesese is, in fact, obviously anti-science. Unless one is merely speaking about misquoted quantitative data that can be corrected by referencing the actual source of the data. In actual science world, "disinformation police" is, in fact, research critique. No specific "disinformation experts" required.
Because it implies of knowing the truth as a matter of expertise, which is just arrogance even for experts. Expertise is about knowledge, not truth.
There was also experts on lobotomy who won Nobel Prices. All of whom were assumed to be truthful and knowledgeable and yet was disinformation in its own right.
I still have no idea what point you are trying to make. I have not claimed to be an expert on the topic, I only asked why no one can be an expert.
It sounds like your view is that no one can be an expert on disinformation because some topics are disputed. That's an "interesting" take. I guess that reasoning would leave pretty few experts in the world.
Saying they are experts are like telling you who is sexy or not. It's subjective. Some people really consider Marx or Friedman as the truth for instance. Digging deeper in the weeds we can make claims either way.
Experts are often self appointed as well. If I was to declare myself an expert in an obscure area you don't understand by making wild claims that sound plausible it would be hard to say I wasn't and if some peers accepted it it would be even harder to deny it.
An expert shouldn't be self appointed and if nobody trustworthy calls someone an expert they shouldn't be considered one too. If you consider someone an expert on your own by their knowledge it's different.
Other than the fact that "disinformation expert" is a fake expertise invented to facilitate fallacious appeal to authority in the void left by a distrusted press:
There are two answers to your question.
First, everyone attempts to derive the truth from imperfect information and therefore is a "disinformation expert".
There's no consistently guaranteed information access that makes any one person consistently an expert above most others, including Joe at his coffee table.
That type of access and divulsion used to be assumed of the MSM. They destroyed their trust, and so now "disinformation experts" demand that trust. Broadley speaking, they won't get it. And they shouldn't.
The second reason is that comprehensive presentation of any truthful information requires a presentation of all facts regarding it. Aside from the most mundane fact checking tasks, I've broadley observed "fact checkers" disseminating disinformation as much as the MSM does. Whether the method is lying by ommission or another.
This isn’t unusual in academia btw. It’s an open secret that economics departments are bought the same way— a generous donation to the department in exchange for the donor hand-picking the department chair.
The current economic system where (in the US) bribes are “speech” and corporations are people unavoidably leads to things like this project getting neutered.
“The invisible hand” Adam Smith refers to are the unintended consequences from merchants’ want to keep their capital: increasing the domestic capital stock and enhancing military power for the state, i.e. protectionism etc.
More broadly and lately it refers to any unintended societal consequences from the free market.
Consequently it never means “finding a good price” which 99% of everyone using the term seems to believe.
Bribery exists in every economic system, even before economic systems existed, and is not uniquely connected to the free market. Nor are they connected to "unintended societal consequences", since bribes very clearly have a specific goal. So it doesn't make any sense.
Just wanted to say that you're completely correct and making a very reasonable statement which is not controversial. I would love to hear about an economic system in which bribery did not exist or have influence, but I have not seen any examples of that yet, in the present day or in history.
I don't agree that bribes can't have unintended social consequences. They do have specific goals, yes. But some unintended consequences of bribery would be things like discouraging honest participants, or encouraging the most corrupt people (rather than the best, on merit) to place themselves in positions of authority, so as to get bribes. All of these are unintended in the sense that neither the person giving the bribe nor the person taking the bribe are trying to bring them about per se, they're only thinking about the immediate consequences (I get what I want).
I agree that they can have unintended consequences, but I wouldn't say any more or less than anything else. This is why I'm struggling with the "invisible hand" analogy, which focuses on a connection to unintended (positive) consequences.
Singapore's not an economic system, but rather a country. In any case, it's still got corruption. Bribery is one form of corruption, and I have no doubt whatsoever that you can bribe someone in Singapore.
Bribery is a corruption that happens in every single economic system, so it has nothing to do with the "invisible hand" of capitalism. In fact, arguments could be made as to why it happens less in free markets (where an economy flows more freely) than in non-free markets (where there are artificial barriers, making bribery more effective/needed).
Bribery is not connected to capitalism any more than it is connected to any other economic system, that's the point that you seem to be missing. People seem to want to dunk on capitalism, but it doesn't make any sense here.
Good thing I didn't make that argument anywhere. My point with that statement is that bribery is in no way connected to capitalism or free markets because it exists independent of the market type.
When bribery happens in a country with a command economy, do you still say "there's that invisible hand of capitalism again"?
? Of course not that question doesn't even parse. Your strategy of acting like your conversational partners are idiots doesn't win you any points; it just makes you sound difficult and wrong.
Bribery is not connected to a free market per se, but bribery in a free market is still a problem to be solved in the context of that free market.
>but bribery in a free market is still a problem to be solved in the context of that free market.
Yes of course. I don't know why you keep suggesting I am against that. My issue is with the nonsensical attempts to tie bribery to capitalism, as if one is the result of the other.
Well if you need it spelled out: the "invisible hand" refers to indirect social impacts of free markets which are typically meant to be good things. So any example of market-ish behavior causing things that seem incontrovertibly bad, like buying a department chair under the guise of targeted donations to influence policy to (presumably) protect a certain class of actors, is an example of the "invisible hand" doing a bad thing, hence an example of how this "feature" of free markets, often used to defend them, is actually a bad quality.
This is totally unsurprising to most people who aren't directly benefitting from an unchallenged free market and it usually seems like the "invisible hand" is brought up as a bullshit argument by those already in power to justify accumulating more power, so it's a point of bitterness, hence the OP's sarcasm.
Bribery is not "market-ish" behavior in the sense that it is connected to capitalism and free markets. But you also mention bitterness, which explains the reactions to my question. I think that means people want to be bitter at the idea of capitalism and free markets, whether or not it actually makes sense in this instance of bribery.
They are naturally and righteously bitter about the annoying status of secretive manipulations in our version of free-market capitalism. Their reaction to you, however, is simply because you are being an obstreperous asshole.
This reaction is uncalled for, especially for hackernews. I've been nothing but level-headed and fair, even though I disagree on the topic.
If you're looking for someone to criticize, you should look at your own behavior: "Fairly obvious, right?" an unsubstantive, smug, miserable response to my question, setting the tone for our interactions.
So, coming from a country where universities are either non-profit or owned by the state… how does this work? Like, surely Harvard isn’t paying anyone dividends? It’s not actually a literal for-profit entity, is it?
Basically the only thing a US nonprofit can't do is give dividends to investors. The nonprofit has to funnel any unspent profit to itself as an endowment, but can also have obscenely high salaries for administrative staff.
Is this a surprise? All of these universities are known to bow down to the biggest wallets, so why on earth would anyone expect that they wouldn't can any investigations to someone who donated $500 million? I'm shocked that anyone else is shocked.
Whether you are surprised or not is barely relevant. It is newsworthy and worth discussing particularly when there is concrete evidence on which to make or fail to make a case.
"This surprises you?!" Is a statement that contributes nothing. The occurrence of people doing wrong is not surprising, it is frequently shocking. The fallout when such people are caught out is worth noting.
I assume people are less shocked and more upset in, you know, that weary and disappointed way. Sometimes it's good to loudly complain about bad things happening even if you're not surprised about them happening!
Not excusing what Harvard and Zuckerberg did. Joan Donovan is not an advocate for transparency and open discourse, either. Google her name and you will find she is quite alright with censoring.
Had a quick look and Donovan is a board member of Check My Ads [1], "an organization that pushes advertisers to ditch right-leaning media" and they've wrote articles in favour of social media bans [2]. They're probably referring to that.
On top of that the "Public Interest tech lab" is but a giant data harvesting machine and most of the apps they create are either about physically tracking you, organizing students into various cells that get benefits for "attending events" and communication within those cells or various politics focused applications.
Here is their privacy statement (of the app that holds all your centralized data):
> MyDataCan may access, use, and disclose Your MDC Data as follows:
> To respond to subpoenas, court orders, or other legal process; in response to a request for cooperation from law enforcement or another government agency; to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding actual or suspected violations of our Terms of Service or this Privacy Statement, illegal activities, fraud, security or technical issues, misuse of the Platform or an App, or other misconduct, or to enforce our Terms of Service or this Privacy Statement; as otherwise may be required by applicable law; or to protect our rights, property, or safety or those of others.
Also they encrypt none of your data, and the only encryption function they have can encrypt your data only upon your explicit request after uploading it and only the data about yourself shared with you IN YOUR PERSONAL COPY OF THE DATA.
Also, they advertise
> providing access to technology and data for public interest research and development.
If you know anything about public policy, Michael Bloomberg's association to Harvard, the Joyce Foundation, and largely anything about behind the scenes at Ivy Leagues at all...
You would know this is typical modus operandi for Harvard.
Throwaway account because this is an honest question. Why did the researcher have to look like that? It makes the person an easy target for further disinformation. I could post that the person hates white males and people would believe it without question, even though I have no basis for that statement. Facebook and Harvard got lucky that this person was a non-obstacle to removal by appearing so uncharismatic. It is a near certainty that most of you who opened the link formed your opinion of the matter shortly after looking at the picture of the propaganda researcher in question. I almost wonder if this is some sort of advanced test, since I have never heard of this researcher.
For whatever reason though this is a controversial element, even though a change in the person's appearance would make a greater impact to their career than anything else. If it were okay to discuss, someone would have told the person by now.
On a lighter note, propaganda research is not a new field at all, even if it is being rebranded as disinformation studies. Noam Chomsky comes to mind.
Laws capping these massive donations need to pass or nothing will change. $500M is more than enough money to operate any school, and Harvard simply does not need more money in its pockets. https://www.statista.com/statistics/221147/the-20-richest-co...
I’d support the full destruction of Harvard and MIT taking all of its assists and land. I want our universities to accept based on merit, not fat donations. The traditional ivys are simply bad for society and our elite schools should be elite because the majority of students their are truly gifted (i.e Stanford, caltech, MIT) not because their from the ultra rich
I agree. Harvard Yale and the rest of them are for rich elitist assholes who give each other jobs. It’s bad for society much like discriminating based on race like Harvard did
Uh, I'm reading it to mean a scholar researching propaganda committed by other people, not a scholar engaging in propaganda or developing new propaganda tech.
These elite institutions have shown themselves to have absolutely no credibility on independence, freedom of expression or any of the other virtues they continaully extol after their actions of the last 2 months [1][2].
Take a look over the law faculty and you'll find famed Jeffrey Epstein defender and hospitality enjoyer Alan Dershowtiz [3] but it's OK, he kept his underwear on while getting a massage [4].
Epstein himself bought influence at Harvard and even had his own office there [5].
As for the whistleblower claims, they might be true. I wouldn't be surprised. Never forget though that you're only hearing one side. Would Mark Zuckerberg really spend $500 million to silence a study where the researcher could no doubt walk out and find someone to fund it without too much trouble?
500MM to avoid Harvard scrutiny - not a bad deal on 40MMM quarterly profit. It probably doubles as a tax deduction as well. Free market capitalism at its finest.
Sadly the current normal, and has been for some time. It's sad to see an educational institution deal so wholeheartedly in intentional and active disinformation.
From regulatory capture through revolving doors and lobbying, to media capture through purchase, and now academic capture through donation, it seems no activity is safe from large concentrations of wealth.
Universities have been dirty since they embraced price gouging on tuition in the 90's. There is no way what they are providing can be considered fair or reasonable.
I don't think tuition is the problem (in this case!); it's the endless need for "fundraising". If you need to get huge gifts, inevitably you will be corrupted by the needs/wants of the gift givers.
Huh, and where does that big amount come from? By taking huge donations. Its like saying Apple can sell iPhone for free since they are insanely rich. They are reach because they charge large amount of money for a fucking phone. Money either increases or decreases its not gonna stay at same level.
> since they embraced price gouging on tuition in the 90's.
(Caveat that the following is US-centric.) I'd love to see the data showing actual price gouging, because the data I've seen has generally suggested that per-student spending hasn't even increased at a pace equivalent to inflation; rather, funding didn't increase with enrolment, leading to students paying for an ever-higher share of their education.
(As for private universities... fine, I'm okay calling it price gouging.)
I used to work in Institutional Research at a state university and at least for state school's tuition tracks pretty closely to the cost of education. In my time working there, our funding from the state was reduced by 30%.
Generally Non-resident tuition is the cost it takes to educate a student. Resident tuition is cheaper because it's subsidized by the state. Every year we would get less and less funding from the state and would have to shift more burden to the student. We implemented furlough days, and cut admin staff compensation to attempt to reduce the tuition burden on students. We still had to raise Tuition faster than inflation in the end.
There is no reason why my adjunct professor spending 45 minutes a week, twice a week for a few months, in some old building, should cost me and 70 other people $3000 each. The tuition problem is one of bloat and greed.
That's nearly a quarter million dollars, of which the professor is probably getting a few thousand. where is the other $200k+ going?
I worked as an adjunct about 10 years ago and ~$2k per class was the pay. With a full class load that came out to a little over $2k per month. Definitely more work than 90mins per week per class though. 4 courses per term was definitely a full-time job.
So yeah, not a lot of tuition is making it to the low rung teachers.
That’s not the point. Corruption (which is what this is) is NOT binary, it’s a problem that exists on spectrum.
We don’t solve spectrum problems, we reduce and minimize them. Just because they exist to a degree and never are remediated doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek to minimize them.
Corruption can lead to tax evasion, poor tax administration, and exemptions that disproportionately favor the well-connected and wealthy population groups in society and must be rallied against if we seek civil societies.
We’ll never get rid of it. As you say. But if we don’t act against it these problems will grow like cancer and become insidious, infecting every aspect of society, so it’s deeply important not to embrace an apathetic approach or present them as inevitable.
They are intrinsic, but the level we tolerate — the “degree of corruption” — which I would argue is pretty high in this case, is most certainly counterable and definitely can be reduced.
Well, you can prevent the concentration of wealth in the first place.
Thomas Jefferson wrote, "But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property....Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise"[0].
It is very good and useful to actually ignore a reasonable question and engage in any discussion they might contradict your way of thinking and instead point and yell at things that literally aren’t representative of what was posed.
What a joke. It didn’t used to be this way in the US and we weren’t North Korea then, but okay. Point at a bogeyman and accept the status quo (to the benefit of those with unimaginable wealth by the way, of which they aren’t going to give you any for defending them.) instead of I considering how to make a world where things are better for everyone.
The good old "we have always been that way". If perhaps hard to imagine for you, there are tons of social structures where wealth cannot be used to purchase power (ie where currency buys you some stuff but not labor from other humans). See the recent book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dawn_of_Everything. Very much a perspective changing book.
I’m going to guess that not many of those social structures achieved things like low infant mortality, not dying from randomly stubbing your toe, the internet, space travel, and the like. If I was presented with a choice, I’d pick a modern Western state any time, flawed as they may be.
Your argument is a straw-man. You're conflating taking inspiration from something and adopting it verbatim (your first two examples are particularly hilarious in this regard). Also i've yet to find a compelling argument defending that western capitalism is a necessity for high-tech (you second two examples). In particular schools, academia and software are fields where not commercial-centric relationships are thriving and deemed superior by a fair share of practitioners.
>> From regulatory capture through revolving doors and lobbying, to media capture through purchase, and now academic capture through donation, it seems no activity is safe from large concentrations of wealth.
> And it never will be. This is a human problem. No amount of laws and regulations will ever solve it.
Come on. Wealth is literally a creature of "law and regulations," and changes to them can definitely "solve it." That's trivially shown by the through a thought experiment where we imagine legal changes that lead to Zuckerberg having his wealth confiscated and Facebook being placed under the control of some person or entity who is not its ally and is not allowed to profit from it.
I think I need to make extra-clear that my example is an extreme one to clearly disprove your point, not the only regulatory option available or a policy proposal. Don't get distracted by irrelevant details.
Defeatist memes like what you said circulate widely to encourage paralysis, but they're propaganda or its derivatives, not truth.
We shouldn't sit on our hands or whatever but wealth isn't a creation of laws, it's a bit of the inverse. Some laws can remove wealth and some laws are gonna take a lotta of guns and manpower (resources ==wealth) to implement.
> We shouldn't sit on our hands or whatever but wealth isn't a creation of laws, it's a bit of the inverse.
Huh? Maybe in the deep, deep past; but definitely not now. Even back then, where there were no states and little social organization, there was still custom within groups that worked like law.
> Some laws can remove wealth and some laws are gonna take a lotta of guns and manpower (resources ==wealth) to implement.
Zuckerberg and Facebook have no army and no means to raise one, despite the wealth they have. They are totally, utterly at the mercy of laws and regulations.
Mark Zuckerburg's wealth is absolutely a creation of laws. Almost all of his wealth comes from his ownership of a corporation. The corporation only exists because of laws. It is only a sale-able asset because of laws.
what if we had laws that prevented people from obtaining disproportionate amounts of wealth? Seems like it'd be a lot harder to buy a school if being a multi-billionaire is impossible.
This is such a naive viewpoint. Let's say that people are not allowed to have more than 10 million dollars, but corporations are. Then it wouldn't be Zuckerberg's money, it would simply be Facebook's, wielded by Zuckerberg.
I hope you can see the ridiculousness is saying that corporations should be limited in wealth as well, but even if you can't, let's assume they are limited the same. Now it becomes easier to buy them off, because they are comparably smaller.
The only logical solution is to allow both corporations and individuals to accumulate as much wealth as they are able to. Rich people aren't the problem, corrupt people are. Instead of trying to make rich corrupt people less rich, why don't we try to make them less corrupt instead?
Foreign entities? Of course, we should ban that as long as we’re at it. Next you’ll have people using vastly superior foreign products, we better ban that as well. And if people decide to leave the country en masse because they’re too morally weak and desire wealth, we can’t have that either, so better build a wall.
> We should just tax income over $10 million at 90% for both people and corporations.
People - maybe. But why corporations? Isn’t that double taxation? The only way money leaves a corporation is through people which will be taxed eventually.
As for the healthcare system, it doesn’t need more money. It needs an extreme regulation and red tape shake up. We could have vastly better healthcare today for the same amount of money that’s already there if not for the bureaucratic mess and an army of administrators tending to it.
That would tip the balance of power to another corrupting influence. Corporations, say. Or professional associations representing highly-educated high earners like doctors or lawyers. Or to politically savvy deca-millionaires who use their money with more focused attention. And that's setting aside the question of how and whether you could prevent the existence of billionaires, which would lead to offshoring and (plausibly at least) dramatic unintended changes in what kinds of social and technological change happens. But either way, coalitions corrupting institutions is not a soluble problem generally. It gets solved with acts of effort and courage like this one, and by discussions like this.
> That would tip the balance of power to another corrupting influence. Corporations, say. Or professional associations representing highly-educated high earners like doctors or lawyers.
Even if what you say is true, which I do not grant, your implication is akin to "we should not punish criminals, because some other criminals will rise to take their place." It's a defeatist meme that mainly serves to protect the interests of the already-powerful.
Some work is never done, but that is not a reason to give up on it.
Loopholes will be found, wealth will be concentrated in new ways, and then the wealth will be used to revert laws to benefit the wealthy. The laws won't change in the first place since money has captured most political systems as well.
Yes, give up and don't try, on the scale of things you will be dead and forgotten anyways - a failure in every sense of the word regardless of what you do.
Even people famous in their time are forgotten in short order. A good lesson for those deluding themselves into thinking they'll be an exception. Better to be remembered as a decent human being to your loved ones.
Politics (as in the game of power) and corruption are human nature. Pushing back against these are equally human nature. The worse it gets the more intense the push back. The push back seems to be at moment taking the shape of voting in far right or trump like politicians accross the world. They won't solve the issue. Therefore the next level of intensity may very well be revolution.
imho, you're wrong:
it may not be "human nature" as much as it is prisoner's dilemma.
few, but some, humans are just as inherently averse to corruption as someone may be inherently prone to it. it's a matter of "if I don't take this bribe, someone else will"
That is still human nature. Not everyone will exhibit those traits, but when looking at the entirety of humanity, these traits are certainly part of our nature.
And the prisoner's dilemma is a way of exploring/explaining these traits (though I expect these aren't exclusive to humans).
hmm. I suppose a sentient ant may not reach a Nash equilibrium, but the best equilibrium. Then through that lens, yeah. I can see how you see it as human nature.
Clarify what do you mean by "revolution", because to me that words means either a coup, civil war, acts of terrorism, or, worse than that, a massacre like China's "cultural revolution".
Any of those I imagine, perhaps all. When things reach boiling point pressure has to be released somehow. And as it stands things are under quite some pressure as of recently.
You jest, but that is how a well functioning free market would handle this problem, I think. As long as the information about the payments is public (and information being available is an integral part of any free market, which some people seem to miss), then paying would be a losing proposition for Facebook in the long run since there's always another person ready to step and and start looking you'd need to pay off. At best they could hope to buy some time.
There's no such thing as a "well functioning free market". It's an utopia.
What we have today is how a free market works. The invisible hand always tipping the scales. They would simply find a better way to get the outcome they want, avoiding the issue altogether (something at the federal level, make an example out of a researcher or institution, etc).
The word utopia is used a lot when anything other than capitalism is being talked about, but the free market, which is an integral part of it, definitely takes the win. We have so many "free economies" around demonstrating how much of an utopia this concept is.
> There's no such thing as a "well functioning free market". It's an utopia.
It's relative. You seem to be confusing "well" with "perfect". Depending on your point of view, no economic system is well functioning, because there will always be ebbs and flows where people clash with the system and it works better or worse at time. I'm not sure if our version of a free market in the U.S. is closer to well functioning or not, but I don't see a problem with pointing out how it can be better, and I'm not sure why you would respond with something I interpret as "don't bother, it can't be perfect", especially when you haven't presented a better alternative.
> What we have today is how a free market works. The invisible hand always tipping the scales. They would simply find a better way to get the outcome they want, avoiding the issue altogether (something at the federal level, make an example out of a researcher or institution, etc).
The counter to the invisible hand working against society instead of in tandem or for it is freely available information. In a free market economy, the answer is almost always more information because it allows individuals to act correctly, either through individual actions, or as a group through pressure on the government to regulate.
So yes, what we have today is how a free market operates (although I would argue not very efficiently, due to lots of blocks on information that exist), and this information we're discussing in this post coming out and people being able to respond to it is the first step in being able to act on it to curtail it in the future.
> The word utopia is used a lot when anything other than capitalism is being talked about, but the free market, which is an integral part of it, definitely takes the win. We have so many "free economies" around demonstrating how much of an utopia this concept is.
The only person here who said that is you, so I'm not sure what you're on about. I certainly don't think it's some utopia, just a system built on emergent behavior that like any other, needs special bounds and constant attention to both keep it functioning as well as possible as well as keep it from going completely off the rails.
> respond with something I interpret as "don't bother, it can't be perfect"
That was not my intention. I simply had to point this out because your comment implied that a well functioning free market could somehow solve the issue. My take is that it can't, because there's no such thing.
Whether or not we should bother with improving it, is a matter for another debate. My take is that we've tried it for long enough, and small improvements simply don't work anymore. Millions of people need/want something and a small handful of powerful rich folks can deny that with no real recourse.
> The counter to the invisible hand working against society instead of in tandem or for it is freely available information.
I mostly agree! But that's, once again, an utopia. Key information is still kept from the public eyes and the trend is to get more restricted to the rich and powerful as time goes on.
As an example, a few key players like Google and Meta have information on virtually every single citizen in the world, while the public has absolutely no control over it or oversight on how that's used.
I don't fully agree because of another problem that we can see almost every day: even with information, the system is unable to make any meaningful change.
We have backroom deals exposed, corruption, quid-pro-quo everywhere, and yet the majority of the responsible people/companies remain free to keep doing those. At best we get a few scapegoats or slaps on the wrist. Information alone is useless if you either have nobody that can act on it (think unregulated markets, industries, etc), or the ones that are able to, can't or won't because of the existing power structures, like the example in the article.
> The only person here who said that is you
I was obviously alluding to the ever-present "communism/socialism is an utopia" argument. I never implied you said that specifically. It's just such a common argument that I assumed could be raised since I mentioned the word and I expanded on it.
> Whether or not we should bother with improving it, is a matter for another debate. My take is that we've tried it for long enough, and small improvements simply don't work anymore. Millions of people need/want something and a small handful of powerful rich folks can deny that with no real recourse.
I'm not sure that's true, or if that's just a prevailing emotion. Being true and feeling that way aren't the same thing. Presumably, if it's true, we can point towards examples of it, and try to quantify it.
If the answer is "no, we can't quantify it because the same people that cause it prevent us from knowing about it", well, that's an untestable assertion and very close to conspiracy theory territory, so I would push back on that, as I think anyone should. So hopefully there are some examples we can discuss.
> I mostly agree! But that's, once again, an utopia. Key information is still kept from the public eyes and the trend is to get more restricted to the rich and powerful as time goes on.
Except we're seeing the counter case right here, right now? Here we have what appears to be a case of Meta with their thumb on the scale, and then with their thumb on the scale again when they're investigated. Either soemthing comes about from this, or from similar stuff later on, or I'd be tempted to say most people just don't care.
To be clear, just because you and I care doesn't mean the average person does, and if the average person doesn't and that means nothing happens, that's not a failure of the system, that's it working as expected, as our minority opinion shouldn't necessarily override theirs, no matter how much we think we're right.
> As an example, a few key players like Google and Meta have information on virtually every single citizen in the world, while the public has absolutely no control over it or oversight on how that's used.
No, the public has absolute control, through petitioning for legislature and holding their representatives to account for acting, or not. Failure to exercise power is not the same as lack of power, even if it appears the same.
> even with information, the system is unable to make any meaningful change.
There are many changes that happen all the time, but the system is also slow, which in some ways is a feature and some ways a problem. Being slow to change means that rapidly changing events can take a while to be dealt with, but it also means that usually there's limited damage that a change in a detrimental direction can do before it's recognized and dealt with, because the changes often come in small steps.
> At best we get a few scapegoats or slaps on the wrist. Information alone is useless if you either have nobody that can act on it (think unregulated markets, industries, etc), or the ones that are able to, can't or won't because of the existing power structures, like the example in the article.
This article is the response to this problem. Harvard is ultimately responsible to the students that want to go there, the donors that donate, and the state and federal governments in which it resides and operates. Whether this results in a small loss in confidence in Harvard being able to carry out research objectively by those that pay attention, a large loss in confidence for the general public the public that Harvard can carry out research objectively and that affecting other research they do, or the federal government calling people in to investigate, we'll have to see. The latter seems unlikely, but I'm looking forward to there maybe being some increased scrutiny and coverage. It seems it's being covered by major outlets now, so congress getting interested isn't out of the question, given they've been fairly interested in this fairly recently.
> I was obviously alluding to the ever-present "communism/socialism is an utopia" argument.
I wouldn't claim a free market to be a utopia, and I wouldn't think someone espousing communism or socialism would in a discussion where they are expected to support their assertions, so I don't think it's particularly useful to introduce it to the conversation here. Without someone actually calling for it, it's just a straw man argument, whether against a person or a position, and whether against me or against the traditional counter to what I presented, I don't think it serves a useful purpose. I was confused enough by it's introduction that I honestly wasn't sure what the point was.
> Presumably, if it's true, we can point towards examples of it, and try to quantify it.
I never went after concrete examples because, like I said, that's a matter for another discussion. But we do have very easy to find examples with a very prevalent topic: climate change.
Protests, complaints, endless coverage of it and yet... no real change. Companies now paying "carbon offsets" that have been multiple times proven to be complete bullshit, targets for emission reduction keep getting postponed and so much more that we can absolutely quantify if we want to. But it simply won't happen because it's not profitable.
> Except we're seeing the counter case right here, right now?
I suppose you're hopeful this will actually result in something. I'm not so sure, unfortunately. Now it's news, in a week nobody will remember. In the end, let's no forget Meta got what they wanted: the research was stifled and now other researchers know: here lie dragons.
We have another gigantic example: Snowden literally imploded his life to get all that information out. We know so much more thanks to his sacrifice and yet what has changed? Do we now not worry that we're all spied on because this was exposed? Are we convinced the tech giants don't have backdoors to the government anymore?
Information is meaningless if we cannot act on it.
> if the average person doesn't and that means nothing happens, that's not a failure of the system, that's it working as expected
If the system is designed to allow corporations and governments to control the average person, ensuring they don't care about anything meaningful, that's a very, very bad system in my book.
Socrates had issues with how democracy was built exactly because it relies on the population being educated to work. If we simply ignore that - like we do today - we end up with our current situation: the majority of people don't care and the rich and powerful get to fuck them over for profit.
You keep everyone poor and dumb, and they'll worry about surviving. Never about climate change, corruption, privacy, etc.
I simply cannot comprehend how we as a society can look at this and say: that's working as expected and I'm fine with it. [insert "this is fine" dog picture]
> No, the public has absolute control, through petitioning for legislature and holding their representatives to account for acting, or not. Failure to exercise power is not the same as lack of power, even if it appears the same.
Sorry but I have to call bullshit here. The public cannot purchase lobbyists to legally bribe legislators to do whatever they want (including introducing legislation they provide to them). I can send thousands of emails to my representatives (or whatever other legal way of pressuring them) and it won't change anything. We've seen plenty of cases where even when the public does not agree with legislature, a few companies can still get what they want because they simply have much more power.
You are right in the sense that, if we did rebel, we could actually exercise our only real power. But voting and trying to convince politicians to "do the right thing" simply does not work. The system is not designed to work for the people, it's designed to work for whoever has power. At some point, the imbalance wasn't this great and we did use our power. But it was always through bloodshed and revolt that we got real change.
How many more outrageous bills have to pass despite public outcry to convince us that the system is broken?
> There are many changes that happen all the time, but the system is also slow, which in some ways is a feature and some ways a problem.
I can partially agree here. By nature of being slow it does in fact prevent some very bad decisions from happening over night. However we've seen with COVID and other recent events how that slowness can be literally the death of us.
There has to be flexibility when we require drastic changes and there simply isn't. As a result people keep dying - and many more will die - because it's simply not profitable to do what's necessary.
Ultimately it's not really the speed that's the issue though (although it worsens crises), but a complete misalignment on the objective. The system is built to increase profits, not to improve human life. Changes that improve human life are merely coincidences in pursuit of profit. So even if the system is slowly working, it's working towards a goal that's almost always orthogonal to what society needs.
Lastly, even though we clearly have very different views, I appreciate your thoughts and keeping it civil. I've had many of these conversations here where it devolved into personal attacks or worse, so: thank you.
It could be true in the sense that you don't live in a cave, weren't murdered because of ever-marginally losing your physical edge at age 35, haven't died of a tooth infection, defecate indoors in a climate controlled structure, and can summon light as if by magic at any time of the day. Ignoring the rest, and acknowledging that this sounds like an aggressive answer. I don't mean it in that way. But there should be some POV on this incredibly rare era, even if it is imperfect strictly speaking. Maybe perfect is also the enemy of happy.
How many people you personally know have died of hunger? Have been killed in a robbery? How many of your brothers and sisters died before reaching the age of 10? How many of your own teeth did you have (or expect to have) at the age of 30? Have you been able to afford sugar more than 10 times in your life? How many times per year do you afford to wash yourself in hot water? How many people sleep in the same room in you? In your bed? How many fleas, ticks, mites and other insects to you usually scratch out of yourself? How many times have you been physically assaulted by someone in the last year?
Just coming from an assumption that you're an average HN reader, your answers to this question are radically different from what most of humanity would have answered before 20th century (first world) or the second half of 20th century.
On the other hand, I have a Grimm's Fairy Tales including a story that tells how the hero visits a petty king's court and receives a promise conditional on accomplishing something impossible. Off he goes and does the thing, and the narrator makes an aside saying "Now the king would gladly have blown off the promise, but he was trapped because other people in the court had heard him make it."
Regicide, and even just murder in general, is highly frowned upon these days. Back then it was de rigueur when the concept of fealty required reciprocity in the keeping of one's word.
As other people in his court, with whom reciprocal vows of fealty have been made, heard his promise, he now has to keep his promise our of fear of them proactively removing him (or otherwise punishing him, such as by breaking their own vows of fealty) for breaking his promise.
Today one can lie with much more impunity, at best tying things up in court for years until the person you lied to gives up, at worst being ordered by the court to make good on the promise and pay some legal costs (maybe).
As your synopsis shows, it's not prestige that forced integrity, it's the fact that others heard, and presumably would enforce such vows, even against a king, that forced integrity, even from a king.
I don't think a direct threat of enforcement is the problem. A king who was known to have gone back on his word would be an illegitimate ruler and he would be unable to function as king within his court and his kingdom. He would end up getting deposed, but that wouldn't be part of an effort to enforce the king's promise, it would just be what happens to kings who aren't fit to rule.
The direct consequence of the king breaking his vow is "only" that the king loses his prestige. But the indirect consequences are severe; "king" is a position from which it is not safe to be removed.
i must be an outlier to this default. there has been enough evidence over the years that the ivy league schools are just as shady as any other school. they just have more money to make hiding things easier. with as many laps around the sun as i have now, i'm just super suspect of pretty much anything at this point.
im not sure completely. There is probably inherent traits related to leadership/followership , and a cognitive bias to assume integrity of leaders seems plausible. Before society, might literally meant right.
sure, my point still stands. It is a reasonable evolutionary hypothesis that groups that err on the side of trusting a leader succeed more that distrustful groups. Obviously there is a learned behavior component. I'm just not certain its completely that.
This shouldn't be surprising at all.
Harvard and other American universities have taken "donations" from foreign countries for years to hire the "correct" professors to push agendas (and raise the next generation of leaders), just look at the amount money flowing from Qatar for example.
Why taking bribes from tech giants is any different?
It's fascinating how we've come to this, where we've let our society be influenced so profoundly by social media platforms and the men who run them. It's bad and I hope we can eventually diffuse the power that's been concentrated in their hands.
But they're not the same, these men. Only one of them really scares me. What scares me about Zuck is observable in his public behavior. He knows EXACTLY what he's doing and saying at all times. That's why when stuff like this comes out, you can be assured it was no coincidence, and you have to face the fact that he doesn't care.
I agree with the sentiment, but don't think "let our society come to this" is the right framing.
This is how the USA has always been run, except in the past the billionaire class created the whole university to shape society. Like JD Rockefeller and the University of Chicago, which continues to have a profound political influence on the entire field of Economics.
It's absolutely pernicious and we normal people do need to fight it every way we can.
I agree with you that he is at best seemingly being indifferent, which is the same act as not caring; inaction is an act too; the origin story of TheFacebook lays a firm foundation for a continuation of similar behaviours even nearly two decades later.
If he hears about this - and he should if he's being caring, careful, and keeping his eye on the "empire"- and takes actions against this seeming cover up and suppression attempt, then that would bode well for him. That doesn't seem to fit into his character though, unlike Elon Musk standing up to the advertising industrial complex (and the parties it's aligned with who want to suppress truths and control the narrative) who very publicly will tell bad actors to go fuck themselves; "Hi Bob!"
I think or hope we're yet to see the consequences of controlling founders and boards of directors of these mammoth Fortune 500 companies that a small handful of individuals are wielding to control, whether solely for profit motive or evil, and arguably captured or corrupt institutions within the US government - of which the Twitter Files showed them working together to interfere with elections, suppress voices that countered the desired mainstream narrative talking points (propaganda) from top institutions from Harvard, etc.
The Nuremberg Code and punishment didn't exist prior to the Nuremberg Trials, where "I was just following orders" wasn't adequate justification, and it was concluded that "they should have known better."
The "power" and profits that come from these scalable systems are immense-unfathomable - and why you have to work from first principles, ethics as a foundation of that, to at least attempt to reduce and limit the externalized or collateral damage.
I personally believe the ad industrial complex needs to go, allowing people to be too cheaply-shallowly manipulated - where consumers are then paying a higher price for products and services to be manipulated; Tesla's vehicles would be ~6% more expensive if Tesla advertised - their success otherwise being attributed to mostly creating a good product that people wanted.
I've started to wonder if advertising being allowed in society should be considered a form of unnecessary-harmful inflation-inflammation, driving up prices, as well as lowering access to higher quality of products that everyone - as economies of scale for cheap products will not only them more readily available but also make better quality products more expensive due to lower quantities being in demand, etc.
But it's tricky because a high quality product that doesn't advertise could relatively quickly be surpassed by a low quality "good enough" product that's willing to advertise and flood the market with it, and trickier yet when it's an attention economy and reminding people you exist is part of the current competitive landscape especially for certain product types; the problem being people aren't accounting for to include the externalized costs - but where a simple mechanism of "don't buy from any brands that advertise" could counter all of that.
> One: Reward and Punishment Superresponse Tendency
> I place this tendency first in my discussion because almost everyone thinks he fully recognizes how important incentives and disincentives are in changing cognition and behavior. But this is not often so. For instance, I think I’ve been in the top five percent of my age cohort almost all my adult life in understanding the power of incentives, and yet I’ve always underestimated that power. Never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes a little further my appreciation of incentive super-power.
That's true of a lot of things. You really can't allow a system to police itself. Once you allow that, you've essentially given them carte blanche to run a fiefdom.
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem." -Douglas Adams.
Insularity is both the strength and weakness of academia. Unfortunately, I feel we are sliding toward the worst of both worlds: an administrative "ruling class" that is insulated from consequences, but also allowed to constrain and control the educators/researchers.
You were quite close to a 1917 style red revolution on US soil. Only the reds wore maga baseball caps that time and most of them were right wingers. Fortunately Trump backed down by the time the FBI tactical teams arrived. I don't think anyone is insulated by consequences, but I have yet to see a former US president go to prison.
But all the other systems are just systems too, and even a system of systems is just a system... Unless we have a God at the top there's no escape from the fiefdoms
Basically a system cannot be accountable to only itself. There must be an outside entity that can hold the system accountable.
However, even if you have two systems accountable to each other, once they realize that there's no third party that's holding the gestalt accountable, they're free to play tit-for-tat and essentially become a single entity.
It's kind of why "internal affairs" doesn't really work in police departments. They are part of the same system. If internal affairs clears the police, the police won't mess with internal affairs.
And I'm not saying there are easy solutions to implement. Because even if you have an entire web of systems configured in such a way that cooperation among some would be detrimental to the others so they would have incentives to keep each other in check, it would only take a sustained imbalance of power in order for the cooperators to neutralize the others so that they could create their own fiefdom.
But anywhere you do have a system that is only accountable to itself, you have a system that is likely rotting from the inside.
Harvard et al also launder reputations, incubate reactionary movements, serve as a finishing school for the rich and powerful, stoke credentialing (eg grade inflation), and accelerate social inequity. For starters.
You mean to say that no one is running the world, not even behind the scenes, or even behind behind the scenes? You are leaving us without anyone to blame! Daring I must say.
Certainly not a way to get clicks. People are eager to see patterns—it’s in our wetware. For example: two podcasts about JFK: one is about a lone gunman, the other a secret conspiracy and coverup. Which will be more interesting? Get more of an audience?
Consider “Oswald: the man who took on the United States Secret Service, and won”. I'm not particularly interested in US history, but I think I'd find this much more interesting than yet another conspiracy podcast.
There's a joke from a comedian I forget if it is L̶o̶u̶i̶s̶ ̶C̶K̶ George Carlin o̶r̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶. But basically is along the lines that you don't have explicitly collude when you all come from the same backgrounds. The interests are aligned already. It's pointing out that representatives need to actually be from representative populations of people. But he did it in a funny way, this comment really isn't.
If only the middle and lower class could do that. But they argue amongst each other over the relative scraps. Even arguing what a "middle class" is these days.
> it's one of the best points of view on "conspiracies" I've ever heard.
It's actually how I often think of conspiracy. Not a bunch of men sitting in a room plotting together but a bunch of independent actors with convergent incentives. Also my litmus test for real bona fide conspiracy (Watergate or Contra Affair) vs crackpottery is if it can be boiled down to "wizards did it." It's always interesting that conspiracies work out to essentially making one feel safe in a world of all powerful but evil men rather than the discomfort of a chaotic world. Flat Earth stands out a bit because I still don't know who gains from it...
> I don't understand how did you get the impression that I was trying to be funny?
I didn't. I said Carlin was funny and that I was not. I honestly wasn't even aware you were referencing Carlin (at a direct level at least, since I did make the connection). It just reminded me of his statement (which now I understand as your intent. The subtle nod reference).
> It's always interesting that conspiracies work out to essentially making one feel safe in a world of all powerful but evil men rather than the discomfort of a chaotic world.
Hmm. Rather the comforting thought is in the mind of the so-called conspirators. Systemic theories about things like the Media (see mentioned Manufacturing Consent) get rejected as “conspiracies” because people (like in the Media) interpret it as saying that they, with full knowledge and intentionality are doing these things. Rather than that they are pawns in a larger system.
Of course, see my reference to Watergate and Contra Affairs. Would you not say those are real bona fide conspiracies of the original kind?
The litmus test is not about convergence, it is "wizards did it." Convergence is just a common kind of thing that crackpot conspiracies develop around. It's more rational when you understand convergence because crackpot conspiracy often is re-framed as a misinterpretation of the data.
these things are much more transparent than us experts like to think they are - people making "uneducated" decisions are often just making decisions that don't fall in line with the expectations of the "educated". Power is legible regardless of whether you know how to read or not (or code (or do immunological research)).
It was only in the last few years did I realize the massive endowments many universities have make them ripe targets for bad actors to make their way into administration.
The few very large unis i looked into all made massively more money off investment returns than any operational income. the year i reviewed for the university of texas system showed they could have charged zero tuition that year and still make a profit
there are absolutely kickbacks for people in control of those endowments choosing specific investment options with their many billions of dollars
I would occasionally visit some of my high school friends attending William and Mary in Va (in the 80s). One year the school decided the football stadium needed upgrading so the team could play football in a more competitive division. The students protested - saying they were happy going to watch their not so great team and they did not want to see the school divert interest from academics. The stadium was not built. The school listened to the students.
The problem is many schools are now status symbols similar to an iPhone. People go to them precisely because other people cannot afford them. There are many schools that can provide a similar undergraduate experience - William and Mary for example - but simply do not have the cachet. The alumni, the students, professors and administration all want the prestige. It doesn't have to be that way if people would stop buying into the BS.
> but that new upgrade for the stadium at a cool $120m, seems like a great idea.
This doesn't have anything to do with universities specifically. There's always money for endeavors that have positive ROI. You can tell what a person, group, business or institution actually values by the things they spend money on that are true losses.
because the people controlling those endowments make tens of millions off of kickbacks and care a lot more about that than the school. additionally, all schools are operating in the same shitty way, they're all getting expensive and shitty and degrees are fairly non-optional for a lot of career paths so it's a captive market
If it was laid out, that their education would suffer, because the resources that might be put towards it are now put into Sports Team, I suspect they would balk more.
Ironically, she stopped at a Masters, after this same university forced her to restart her phd thesis 3 TIMES, due to changing staff. She worked on it one semester, then they changed her major professor. Worked on the 2nd one another semester, and they again changed her major professor. Considered a 3rd time and she just threw her hands up and said, fuck it, which I don't blame, at all.
She's still a full-time faculty member, has written/designed 3 courses for them, that are taught by herself and others to this day, and gets kudos every semester from students she's taught.
The college system is slightly less uncaring than the government. The big difference is the college system drains 20 years of your future income with insane pricing and if you get shit on due to THEIR changes, that's just your happy ass.
I think the main problem with issues like this that happened to your partner is people fear making waves so much that they don't even consider going to a lawyer to enforce the implied contract that she had as a grad student with both the university and the original thesis professor.
Legal action is used even by unions to enforce their rights and contracts. If you don't have a union, legal action is the only strength a cog in the machine has. Use it, or get run over.
I'm not just writing out of my butt, I've successfully done this once. It is risky, but is it realistically any worse than what happened in this situation? It's not as if there's only one university awarding PhDs. And if you're swapping professors left and right, it's not as if staying at the university is really benefiting your original research goals.
One of the many things that pissed me off about it was they didn't even try to match her up with a prof in her specialty. Just threw her to the next prof available, because "Fuck it, not my life. That'll be $14k..thanks!"
UCLA recently got hammered on this, after people shared a bunch of job posting for teaching posts for grad students with the disclaimer: "Note: this is an uncompensated position".
It's more that student loan availability, the questionable promise of a middle-class life, and selling "dream schools" makes it easy to sell a $150k product to someone who doesn't need it and can't actually afford it.
> there are absolutely kickbacks for people in control of those endowments choosing specific investment options with their many billions of dollars
This is a form of corruption that is present whenever anyone manages an investment fund, and not only specific to school endowments. This is why investment managers are licensed, and taking this kind of bribe could result in criminal penalties.
"The filing raises questions about the potential conflict of interest created by Big Tech’s influence at research institutions that are called upon for their expertise on the industry."
so much drama, but I was not learning enough about what is actually going on so I did some simple searching.
TL;DR if you believe that there is a (quoting Hillary Clinton) "vast right-wing conspiracy" that the govt, media, social media, and academia should be coordinated and marshalled to contain, you're on her side. She is the one who figured out that Jan 6th was "in favor of" Trump, see below. But the skullduggery may be of a more pure nefarious nature, she had a non faculty staff position and got fired, but she wants to be treated as an "academic" in the sense of the academic freedom that goes with professorships.
Here's her wikipedia page trimmed down to essentials.
Donovan's expertise is in examining internet and technology studies, online extremism, media manipulation, and disinformation campaigns
As Director, she published a number of impactful research papers and books.
Donovan co-wrote a widely-read study that discovered that a significant number of participants in the January 6 attack on the Capitol were driven by their support for President Trump.
In September of the same year, Donovan released a book titled "Meme Wars: The Untold Story of the Online Battles Upending Democracy in America," which explores the spread of right-wing political conspiracy theories through online media.
Donovan earned her PhD in Sociology and Science Studies from UCSD, and was a postdoc at the Institute for Society and Genetics at UCLA where her expertise was social movements, technology, and white supremacist's use of DNA ancestry tests.
She later held the role of Research Lead for the Media Manipulation Initiative at Data and Society, and mapped how interest groups, governments, political operatives, corporations, and others use the internet and media to disrupt social institutions.
Donovan went on to lead the Technology and Social Change Research Project at Harvard Kennedy School and teach the class Media Manipulation and Disinformation Campaigns.
She joined the Boston University College of Communication in September 2023 as a tenure-track assistant professor.
Donovan has authored over 35 articles, paper, and books [10] including:
How news organizations should cover white supremacist shootings, PBS NewsHour
Big Tech Companies Are Struggling With How To Best Police Their Platforms
Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives
Navigating the Tech Stack: When, Where and How Should we Moderate Content?
Toward a Militant Ethnography of Infrastructure: Cybercartographies of Order, Scale, and Scope across the Occupy Movement.
The better move for the Harvard team is to pivot to investigating Facebook’s big name adversaries (Apple?) and aim to get them on the board turning the university into a corporate influence battleground. \s
Honestly, not sure on which side I am. Facebook being a criminal organization is nothing new. Harvard (and pretty much any other university) being a criminal organization is nothing new as well. But, man, "propaganda scholar"…
I had the same thought. There's no good side. Just the corrupt going against the corrupt and seeing who can spin the most elaborate tangled web of lies to 'prove' their point.
The surprise to me is that anyone would ever expect companies like X or Facebook to pay more than lip service to the idea of being an open public platform. These are private companies who want to
1) Attract a lot of eyeballs
2) Sell ad space in front of those eyeballs
That's all. To bastardize a Lincoln quote[1]:
My paramount object in this struggle is to make a profit
and is not either to save or to destroy free speech.
If I could make a profit without promoting any free speech I would do it,
and if I could save it by promoting all free speech I would do it;
and if I could save it by promoting some free speech and forbidding other
free speech, I would also do that.
My point being, if you want to say something controversial, host it yourself. It's childish to expect businesses to host your content when it attracts the ire of regulators who can threaten their business, or when the content directly threatens their business by causing people to leave.
The problem is that all hosting is done by companies trying to make a profit.
When you say host it yourself, likely you mean - Build your own website. A few issues with this line of thinking
- Web hosting companies are attacked for hosting controversial speech all the time (AWS stopped hosting Parler when they were put on blast)
- The infrastructure required for hosting large controversial websites can also be made unavailable to controversial sites (e.g CloudFlare dropping KiwiFarms citing its 'hateful user base')
- Not to mention some platforms/people are literally de-banked, which apparently is a thing, and forced to use crypto for all expenses and revenue
Americans value freedom of speech, these are American companies. At some point our governing body, which exists to shape society according to our collective wishes, needs to step in and hold the hands of these companies and make them behave in accordance with American values. I don't know the numbers but I would imagine it's a very small amount of America that isn't pro free speech.
At some point our governing body, which exists to shape society
according to our collective wishes, needs to step in and hold
the hands of these companies and make them behave in accordance
with American values
There is a list of things the government should to. "Shape society" is not one of them.
At the end of the day, companies can and will decide what's profitable for them to do. If a hosting service doesn't want to host your site, you should probably speak in some other way. The internet is not the only vehicle for public communication. You and I should be completely free to say whatever we want. Nobody owes me (or you) a platform for speech. Those two statements are not incompatible. As I write this, I'm aware of the irony that I'm doing so on a public online forum. But I acknowledge at the end of the day if Hacker News wants to delete this comment, they have a right to do so.
> There is a list of things the government should to. "Shape society" is not one of them.
All actions of government shape society. Tax break for charitable contributions? Laws permitting or forbidding certain medical procedures? Drawing lines for voting districts?
A completely laissez-faire attitude leads to landlords not renting apartments to people explicitly because of their skin color and blatant, explicit discrimination in hiring.
All government action is, by definition, an act of violence-backed force.
I think that should be minimized.
I don't share your cynical view that people only behave with kindness because they are forced to at gunpoint. I also try to remember that every war ever conducted in human history was the explicit act of organized government action, ostensibly as an expression of the will of the people.
Anyway this isn't the right thread or forum for this kind of discussion. I hope you are right; my viewpoint is definitely not about to take over the world :)
I don’t really see how your comment is at all relevant to the topic at hand. The accusation is that Facebook used a donation to Harvard to silence a critic, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether that criticism is published on Facebook or not.
I guess you are right; I kind of fly off the handle when I see this kind of topic come up. But the underlying premise of the research in question is that Facebook should be an unbiased, moderated forum for open public discourse. I just don't see how anyone could reasonably expect that to happen.
It makes you wonder how much the Zucherbergs influenced the 2020 election with "Zuckerbucks". They were cleared by the Feds, but then even that investigation becomes suspect with these large sums of money and influence. Conservatives claimed it went towards bolstering voting in largely Democratic regions, or in a biased distribution and application of the funds.
Not fraud, never have. But to see what is coming out about how endemic and deep the censorship and bias was, I would say a lot of voters were manipulated by big tech, government, and media, and I wonder how they would vote now knowing this, but I guess we are seeing some of that with Biden's approval numbers.
The epitome of hegemony and privilege can't credibly act as an arbiter of truth, particularly in the current milieu, where it's simultaneously a bastion of The Oppressors™ and The Colonists™ as well as one of those liberal colleges indoctrinating The Children with Communism™ and/or Socialism™.
In short, few people actually care what Harvard has to say because it's popularly perceived as a mouthpiece for The Establishment.
The U.S. government has stopped warning some social networks about foreign disinformation campaigns ...
...
University academics and disinformation research groups are also in limbo. Many are seeking affordable legal representation to defend themselves against mounting cases and reevaluating their communication with industry and the public.
“The trust and safety workers are gone. The relationships with external researchers is now gone,” said Anika Collier Navaroli, senior fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and a former senior Twitter policy official. “And now this third piece of the actual information from the government is gone. … So we’re basically unprotected.”
----------
Think how crazy that is - who is in favor of disinformation? How can universities - even Harvard - set precedents of not protecting open inquiry or their faculty, which will not stop here, and even indirectly support disinformation, the main threat to their mission of creating and disseminating knowledge. And as usual, there is no leadership; the Biden administration's answer to all problems is to avoid confrontation at all costs.
@dang, if you see this comment: Is there a bug in the ranking algorithm? A substantial comment, with an almost immediate upvote, drops 3/4 of the way down the page beneath many one-liner comments (not criticizing them, just observing).
(I don't need a fix here, just pointing out some apparent bug.)
If string theory was disproven we could still have experts that were former string theory experts. The best programmer-musician-firefighter-chef in the world might be less impressive than you think.
But you have a good point. What are her credentials? She's being censored so it makes it interesting.
>Who says that social media disinformation didn't exist four years ago?
I've seen zero evidence that it did. Propaganda, sure. But 'disinformation'? No.
>And even if one were to grant that, how long should a field exist before there can be an expert?
Probably more than three years. It feels like people latching onto the profit opportunity to shore up eastablishmen narratives under a fancy new buzzword more than a real objective science.
If you're concerned about it, TFA and linked materials go into the potential casual connection. I don't think you can simply dismiss this without a critical examination because all the facts aren't in yet and the story isn't finished. Usually, a whistleblower complaint is really the start of things, not the end.
Hopefully, we'll see over time how much merit this has. It certainly seems worth investigating because we'd all really want to know if/how big donations to prestigious academic institutions can buy their research.
The individual is using the same reasoning as the headline. They weren't getting the fund they wanted and noticed there was a donation recently. They are speculating that that's the cause of their lack of organization support.
"whistleblower" is a journalism word meant to imply who the good guy is and endow them with credibility. Rewriting the story with "employee files complaint" doesn't hit the same.
> They weren't getting the fund they wanted and noticed there was a donation recently. They are speculating that that's the cause of their lack of organization support.
Sure, it's all anecdotal -- it is testimony, after all -- but much of it is backed up by email and text conversations. On the topic of a potential conflict of interest, what do you think about the personal relationship between Doug Elmendorf and Elliot Schrage?
A casual reader may infer the same for both words, but "following" is much stronger. If I may take some liberties with usage: Following someone to a faraway place is much more likely to involve causation than going to that same place after they do.
"Following" is also a very common and well-understood English word which means that one thing happened after another, which is probably why journalists use it. Implying a suspected causal relationship by talking about a temporal relationship also happens very frequently in non-journalistic speech. Nobody is trying to trick you with this headline.
It could be read that way; but it could be read as a simple temporal sequence, no? In either case, this is a press release from an organization which is advocating for the aggrieved party. I suppose any journalist who wanted to pickup this story would have to decide for themselves whether the language used in the press release goes too far or not when writing their story.
> In sending the lawful whistleblower disclosure to the President and General Counsel of Harvard University, the U.S. Department of Education, and subsequently to the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office, Dr. Donovan and Whistleblower Aid are calling for an urgent and impartial investigation into inappropriate influence at the Harvard Kennedy School.
That’s an astute observation. Without having any insight in the matter, statements like “the most important documents in the history of the internet” have me questioning how self-assured this team have been when assessing why Harvard put up a line of defence.
You know, donating money to Harvard is weird. They've got a $50 billion endowment. They have enough money to do anything they want. What good would donations do in the first place?
And yet, Harvard receives something like $500 million per year in donations. Why?
You can always spend more money, especially at an academic institution, where the money spent is not directly tied to a concrete, specific product. The staff can always go to one more conference a year, or take one more sabbatical, or buy newer computers more frequently, hire more people (whether they are needed or not; takes some weight off seniors’ backs), organize more events, spend more with communication, outreach, build something, or improve existing buildings, create a new research group, raise some salaries, etc.
This makes more sense when one recalls that a whole lot of powerful people, including and perhaps especially politicians, come from a handful of prestigious schools, and are surrounded by advisors and assistants largely from those same schools.
[edit] and of course the real rabbit hole is private prep schools. Good luck becoming president in this century without attending one. Wonder what their donor lists look like.
> Good luck becoming president in this century without attending one.
Bill Clinton made it last century, and Hillary almost made it this century. I don't think the odds are that stacked against public school attendees even now.
It’s mostly a recent problem, oddly enough. Only one of the last nine big-two party candidates didn’t go to prep school (Hilary, as you mention). Typically more than half the primary candidates “prepped”, over the same period. Most VPs have, too, though it’s been less totally-captured than the big chair (and you’ve got edge cases like Harris who didn’t technically “prep” but had a pretty similar situation) Seems like damn well-stacked odds, considering fancy prep school kids are a small minority of all kids. But maybe this is just a multi-decade weird run of strange fortune, and not a persistent trend.
I'm sure there are social factors both driving prep school graduates to run, and helping them stand out from the crowd. Outside of just family money.
I do wonder if "prep" schools are recruiting more of the socially outstanding non-rich students than in previous years. Even so this can only have so much of an effect, as non-prep schools will always have valedictorians and social organizers regardless of who's pulled out beforehand.
A lot of donation and endowment money is legally tied up, due to the original terms of each endowment, for specific purposes. So even though Harvard has $50 billion, it can't just spend that $50 billion on anything it wants.
This is both why people keep donating to Harvard, and how Harvard keeps marketing a 'need' for more donations. Along with, of course, either naming rights, or as an incentive to accept their child into the school (previous research has shown the ability and/or willingness of families to donate does add to the likelihood of admission).
Opposition to the sand-glassing of Gaza by Israel is not encouragement of harassment. Nor am I aware of any substantial number of students encouraging the harassment of Jewish students. A shocking number of student groups claimed something akin to "Israel brought [this attack] upon itself," which, while somewhere between tone deaf and despicable is also not encouraging harassment.
On the other hand, you do have legitimate harassment of the people who made these statements. [1]
A shocking number of students openly support Hamas and like to chant "from the river to the sea ..." and that just at the surface level. If you look at say UCLA things are far more grim than posting "tone deaf" msgs.
You are conflating use of the phrase "from the river to the sea..." with support for Hamas. The phrase has been used in many ways, and depending on the context, could have different meanings:
Benjamin Netanyahu himself was using a map that espoused a "river to the sea" vision of Israel at the UN. [1] A different version "between the Sea and the Jordan there will only be Israeli sovereignty" was a founding ideological tenet of Israel's Likud party (which Netanyahu represents), though it has subsequently been dropped. [2][3]
The "river to the sea" slogan is deeply poisoned and has been used by every conceivable bad actor, from west bank settlers and supporters of a "Greater Israel" to Hezbollah, and all points between. It is reasonable for people hearing that slogan to assume the worst.
That doesn't mean people who use it are per se antisemitic (or per se Kahanist). But it does obligate its users to explain themselves, and when you're explaining you're losing. Everybody would be better off abandoning those words.
>It is reasonable for people hearing that slogan to assume the worst.
Hard disagree. I do not think it reasonable to assume that an American college student chanting "from the river to the sea" is advocating for Jewish genocide. I think a more reasonable interpretation would be one of anti-Israeli excess in their response to the attacks of October 7. To quote from source [3] above:
"'The phrase ‘Palestine will be free from the river to the sea’ suggests a vision of the future without a Jewish state, but it does not answer the question of what the role of Jews would be,' said Peter Beinart, a professor at the City University of New York. He added that the meaning of the phrase, however, 'depends on the context.'
'If it’s coming from an armed Hamas member, then yes, I would feel threatened,' said Professor Beinart, who is Jewish. 'If it is coming from someone who I know has a vision of equality and mutual liberation, then no, I would not feel threatened.'"
Assuming the worst ignores the context of who is saying it.
>That doesn't mean people who use it are per se antisemitic (or per se Kahanist).
100% agree.
>Everybody would be better off abandoning those words.
It would certainly make these discussions and protests less inflamed!
On the contrary, I think a great many pro-Palestine activists are inadvertently advocating for exactly that; that the chant, to them, implies that the Levant be restored to the control of non-Jewish Palestinians, and that Jewish interlopers lose that control. It's part of a very common perspective on Palestine that suggests Jewish Israelis are ethnically white European "settler colonists", which is false.
If you believe that Jewish Israelis could, in the worst case, just go back to Poland, then the "river to the sea" stuff seems more benign than it actually is.
As is so often the case, the effect of those words on the listener is important; if not as important as the intent of the speaker, it is at least worth consideration --- especially when, as in this case, the people saying it are literally advocating for an ethnic cleansing of their own, one they don't realize might also be a step towards genocide.
All this just back to my point that the "river to the sea" stuff is poisonous. If you're a slogan that both Hamas and the Kahanists use, something has gone terribly wrong.
The fact that your and my interpretation of the modal meaning of "from the river to the sea" when chanted by American college students is so divergent points to the problem with "assuming the worst."
I agree that the phrase is poisonous, but I don't ascribe genocidal intent to the hypothetical modal speaker of it without knowing exactly who that speaker is. Consider it from a Bayesian standpoint: even if you test positive for a rare condition, the likelihood is overwhelming that the positive is a result of test error, and not actually having the underlying condition. Supporting genocide is exceedingly rare, thus is it not likely that someone who uses the phrase "from the river to the sea" should have the worst assumed about them. Perhaps your prior belief is different, and you think that support for genocide is common?
I think I have two things to contribute to this thread:
1. The observation, after going and looking it up a week ago, that the slogan is associated with not just Hezbollah and Hamas but also the Kahanists.
2. The observation that people of good will have and continue to a "decolonization" narrative that posits the dispossession of Israeli Jewish people as a kind of restorative justice, based on the terribly broken premise that Israeli Jewish people are all descendants of settler colonists. They largely are not that, and advocacy for blanket dispossession for those people can reasonably be seen as genocidal. Israelis are not moving back to Yemen.
You can hard disagree, but there are polls showing pretty wide spread support for specifically Hamas among students especially at elite UCs. The goals of Hamas are articulated pretty clearly so as comforting as it is to pretend they don't mean it in the bad way a very decent percentage literally do mean it. If you honestly believe they don't mean it do a fun experiment stand with say flag of Israel on UC Berkley or UC LA campus and than with flag of Hamas or Isis see the reaction you get. Or not even Israel flag just US flag.
>There are polls showing support specifically for Hamas not for Palestinian liberation cause among students.
to
>there are polls showing pretty wide spread support for specifically Hamas among students especially at elite UCs.
Cite some evidence. I have found one poll that addresses the question of Hamas support among college students, and it does not support your claims at all. Furthermore, it was an online survey, which typically suffer from pretty poor methodology and selection bias, so I think the poll itself[1] should be ignored, despite the fact that it undermines your argument. The relevant question and response (n=609):
>How much do you sympathize with…
>Israeli civilians: A lot (49%) A little (23%) Not sure (16%) Not Much (9%) Not at all (4%)
>Palestinian civilians: A lot (65%) A little (17%) Not sure (13%) Not Much (3%) Not at all (2%)
>Israeli government: A lot (9%) A little (17%) Not sure (27%) Not Much (22%) Not at all (24%)
>Hamas: A lot (9%) A little (13%) Not sure (36%) Not Much (13%) Not at all (29%)
This does not show "wide spread support" for Hamas. It shows less support for Hamas than for the Israeli government. The overwhelming majority are against Hamas, by a roughly 3-to-1 margin. It's hard to even claim that this is a representative sample, due to its online nature.
You just posted it. 22% is widespread. If we are talking about people chanting slogan at a rally the 25% that support Israeli government obviously did not take part in it. So of those chanting it at a rally at the very least 30% literally mean it and up to half mostly mean it. It's also not far fetched that the more militant you are the more likely you to attend a rally in the first place. So those numbers get skewed higher. There is obvious correlation between how far left you and how likely you are to support Hamas. So in a place like UC Berkley support obviously scewes higher. But even if we ignore the scew if some university had student body where 9% supported KKK a lot and 13% supported it somewhat. And they had regular rallies with racist chants I would hope that this would be considered problematic by you and too wide spread to ignore.
Netanyahhu is student or professor at elite US university? There are jewish students marching with Israeli flags chanting "from the river to the sea Isreal will be free" on campuses? Would equivalent behavior be allowed toward any other group on campus?
I guess you and I see different things: I see people protesting Israel's response to Hamas' attacks of October 7th. You seem to see harassment of Jewish students. I don't think we will ever close that gap.
So in your opinion "From the river to the sea ..." is just a protest slogan ? There are polls showing support specifically for Hamas not for Palestinian liberation cause among students. It's very high. The Hamas goals are articulated very clearly. It's comforting to pretend it's just to support Palestinian cause but it's def not just that.
Maybe as an aside, but why should this research be done at university level? Is it expensive or require their resources?
Obviously institutions are at risk of capture by special interests. We can call them non profit but doesn't stop the economics and human nature. Same is true for politicians so oversight could make things even worse as it would be even more centralized and easier to capture .
So we should look for smaller individuals and groups to conduct research. Being public also creates a financial incentive. If your research indicates something is a fraud or very harmful you can short the stock to fund your research
> why should this research be done at university level?
I think this questions is backwards. This seems very much in line with other research already done at universities.
> So we should look for smaller individuals and groups to conduct research.
Smaller individual and groups can be much more easily sued. It's much easier to spin a story about suing some rogue partisan non-profit than it is for suing academic researchers.
> Being public also creates a financial incentive. If your research indicates something is a fraud or very harmful you can short the stock to fund your research
These sorts of financial incentives provide the easiest and simplest way of discrediting these groups (aside from simply ignoring them). All Meta has to say is "Don't believe a thing they say, they're simply doing it since they're shorting us".
You didn't answer my question. Why should it be done at universities? I get that stuff like it is already done there, but why?
Short selling has a long history. Obv people don't like them but don't know any successful lawsuits. Prob a lot easier and cheaper to capture a uni than sue some short seller.
> You didn't answer my question. Why should it be done at universities?
Let me try again. One of the reasons research is supposed to be done at universities is specifically to remove financial incentives. Tenure is meant to insulate academia from having to worry about financial incentives and what is popular so they can focus on what is true.
> Prob a lot easier and cheaper to capture a uni than sue some short seller.
Meta doesn't have to sue a short seller. All Meta has to do is point to the now extremely clear conflict of interest. Having such a strong conflict of interest makes it easy to cause doubt about the validity of the research. And that's good enough. Compare two following two headlines:
1. Prestigious research group at Harvard shows wrongdoing on Meta's part.
2. Opportunistic short sellers put out yet another hit piece against Meta for their own financial gain.
It's like going to get your nutritional advice from the small sample size and suspect studies put out by supplement companies. Obviously they won't publish findings that go against their financial interests, or even run the experiments in the first place.
> Let me try again. One of the reasons research is supposed to be done at universities is specifically to remove financial incentives.
Wasn't this whole thing preempted by financial incentives playing a role in Harvard dropping the case. My point is financial incentives exist either way. The difference is that FB can point and say "Harvard says we're great and they have no financial incentives to lie *wink*" or we can say "sure I have a lot to gain if I'm right but that doesn't mean I'm wrong".
So you kind of made my point for me. It's the high minded veneer of objectivity I am most against
> but why should this research be done at university level?
Where else should it be done?
Supposedly academia is supposed to be the place that is free from economic incentives. Think about how we use the word "academically." As well as being a third party that is independent of the government. Even non-profits have to worry about economic value, just not about shareholders.[0]
I say supposedly because lots of academia is already captured by industry (or other entities). Computer science is a good example considering how common it is to work with industry partners. Sciences are mixed and there's good reason to work with industry that is highly rational and can provide huge benefits. But it does come with risk of capture. It should also be worrying if academic research becomes essentially an extension of a company's research arm because it does reduce innovation and exploration of ideas as research is pushed towards profit motivations but that's a very different kind of risk than the one discussed.
[0] In the last few decades we've adopted a mindset that everything should be a business model. This is true for academia. Maybe everything shouldn't be a business model. That doesn't mean things have to run at a loss but schools definitely are profit seeking in their current forms. The priority is not placed on education and research and thus presents an existential risk to these institutions. One could claim the death has already come but I'm not convinced.
> why should this research be done at university level?
If it's important research it's good if it's done by a renowned university that brings oversight and credibility for the research. Much better than the same researcher doing it in their basement, unless they are already famous and have their own following. Of course incidents like this and cases where research gets influenced into any direction hurt that benefit of research being done at a university.
> Maybe as an aside, but why should this research be done at university level?
Why not? Universities perform research - typically free from outside interference (academic freedom). And there are good reasons for academic freedom (which I'm not getting into here). As a consequence, academic freedom limits the reasons to stop this research from happening at a university.
So what is it in the contents of this research that makes you think it is not at an academic level or a violation of ethical standards?
> So we should look for smaller individuals and groups to conduct research.
Maybe. And maybe not. I think you need both. The larger, public institution is the lightning rod. They get all the attention, but also all the scrutiny. Smaller groups are difficult to track. The more you have of them, the more difficult it is to account for their methods and funding and so on. So you pit the smaller groups against the large public institution. The smaller groups are the chihuahuas barking at the bulldog.
Instead of eliminating the big institution, you subject it to higher standards and scrutiny. More severe punishments for bad behavior, and perhaps also better rewards for good behavior.
You have a major knowledge gap here. Other than for literal lab start up funds for brand-new professors universities typically don't grant much money, if any at all, to their professors for research. The professors are expected to seek outside funds, of which a good chunk then goes to the university for the university's costs.
This may not be the same at Harvard, I genuinely don't know. But it's typical at most research universities.
> Maybe as an aside, but why should this research be done at university level? Is it expensive or require their resources?
I guess the question is ... why shouldn't it be? Social media is a huge part of modern life in the US, has a massive impact and is all both pretty recent and poorly understood. I would expect any half decent university with anthropology or sociology (or even a political science) departments to be doing heavy research in this field.
> Maybe as an aside, but why should this research be done at university level?
In this specific case: Because it started there and institutions that claim to be neutral or to use scientific methods should not stop research because they are paid to do so.
In the general case: When speaking bad about big actors, reputation and a big budget for lawyers can make a lot of lawsuits go away before they even start.
I can't speak to the other green users, but I'm a long time poster who recently created a new account because I decided I didn't want my contributions here tied to my real name anymore, after some real-life concerns about harassment (not from HN, but still trying to play it safer online now).
Three valid reasons. Person is genuinely new. Person wants to post but not link to original identifiable id. Third someone is posting in official capacity and wants separate work id.
Why was Harvard dedicating resources to investigate Facebook in the first place? What kind of academic research was it conducting? "Our hypothesis is that Facebook censored right-wing disinformation campaigns" doesn't have academic value.
> Donovan co-wrote a widely-read study that discovered that a significant number of participants in the January 6 attack on the Capitol were driven by their support for President Trump. [1]
It's outrageous that Harvard won't fund such an insightful, groundbreaking researcher.
Hopefully, another university will step up and help us discover if there is any possible link between Zuck and Meta.
> It's outrageous that Harvard won't fund such an insightful, groundbreaking researcher.
TFA flatly tells that she brought in her own funding from outside grants. Like the vasy majority of academic researchers do. She claims that Harvard is keeping this money even though it was dedicated to her research agenda.
> Though Donovan’s contract was supposed to keep her on the job through the end of 2024, her superiors took away her ability to start new projects, raise money or organize large events, she alleges. They kept the money she had brought in, including more than $1 million from Craigslist founder Craig Newmark that he wanted specifically to go to her research project, according to documents quoted in the declaration. Newmark declined to comment.
It's right there in the article.
People have wrong ideas as to what kinds of funds and resources academic researchers actually have access to from their employing institution.
There is 'Big Tech' already available. Plus America has raised interest rates, which means market capture/empire defense is getting more and more expensive, so expect all of them to become small soon.
Big Tech as a term doesn’t feel like it encompasses the specifically social influence of some of the social media companies (Meta could almost be called Big Social just by itself, but that’s a different conversation).
The reason it made sense to me is that when the article said “Big Tech” it didn’t feel right.
It's hard to beleive why such an immense sum of money is being funneled into warping the truth, and to make the extermination of an entire population of innocent people appear justified.
What happened here was a massive donation was made. At some random point, someone in a position of power at Harvard noticed that a team was pissing on Mark's leg, and so put an end to it. Mark probably couldn't care less about the research, yet the optics about Harvard's treatment of him were at stake.
Harvard's actions are also consistent with her not doing good research. Note that she was not snapped up by another institution to be faculty, just a "tenure track position". One red flag is that the reporter cites all the times she talked to media and congress. A good indicator that it was superficial and headline driven work.
I'm sure she was a valuable source for reporters needing dramatic quotes on a slow news day, but really there should be more heft than that.
More than that, the reporter mentions "donors who contributed millions of dollars to her work", implying how valuable her "research" was. But given the nature of that "research" you could also ask yourself, if this isn't basically the same kind of "donation" as Facebook being accused of here, just different beneficiary.
$500M is a lot of money for one university, especially as bad as Harvard. Insane.
But let's not forget that's a common practice. Qatar and et al. compromised many humanities departments. Oil money helps fund pro-Palestine protests in these universities. Now they need to show the money was well spent.
The linked blog doesn't actually include any details and is instead just a vitriolic series of paragraphs from what sounds like an angry fired employee.
It's hard to actually believe anything about this without having specific examples of what was done.
