...at 3AM. Shockingly, after gathering "more information", she found the reasons for the harassment of Rebecca Tuvel "much more urgent and compelling."
UPDATE: A young philosopher writes:
Zheng 'confesses' that she didn't completely grasp the force of the arguments being made in the open letter. I confess to finding those arguments manifestly absurd, as do many others. But, she tells us, she had faith that a large group of academics working in a highly moralized and politicized area of study would not collectively and publicly display their anger about something like this without good reason. As a result of this faith, she was open to hearing about several other views, which apprised her of some basic facts she hadn't known. She was grateful to others for letting her know of these views and facts. In light of these views, she found the arguments in the open letter much more compelling.
But she forgot to tell us what these basic facts and views are, or how they made the open letter's argument more compelling. Since she thinks they are so valuable, and simply being exposed to these basic facts had such a profound impact on her understanding of the open letter, it is sad that she not share these basic facts with us. Then again, this unfortunate oversight is sure to be corrected once she recognizes it.
The next thing she tells us is that she doesn't have any surefire solutions to the problem of the toxic environment she is being asked about. But she has just finished telling us that exposure to some basic facts had a profound impact on her understanding of the open letter. So while it might not be a surefire solution to the toxic environment, a very obvious step in that direction is to share the views and basic facts that make the open letter's arguments compelling.
Here are two explanations as to why she did not.
The first is that it somehow did not occur to her to take this obvious step, despite a great deal of name-dropping and extended discussion of views and facts in the rest of the interview. Despite the great impact that these views and facts had on her understanding, and despite the fact that she is specifically being asked how to ameliorate the toxic environment, it did not occur to her to share the very important facts that made such a difference to her.
The second explanation is that she can avoid the punitive moralizing of a certain class of academics (who, we can have faith, would not get angry without good reason) by gesturing vaguely toward some facts or other that someone or other let her in on. These facts and people set her straight, so that notwithstanding her 'confession' not to have 'completely grasp[ed]' the soundness of the arguments of the open letter, she can display that she has now had the devil taken out of her by virtue of her encounters with the right views and facts. But by leaving the facts and views entirely mysterious, she will not have to defend the claim that such and such basic facts and views actually warrant concluding that the open letter's arguments were compelling after all. Is this a conscious strategy? Of course not; one of the facts she does mention is that 'much of our information-processing is not self-transparent').
Of course, making these kinds of criticisms has been effectively pre-interpreted as reactionary and bigoted in the community of academics who would not get upset without good reason. For this community, there are two choices: conform to the ideology or be the relentless object of moralistic aggression (of course, always with good reason).
Recent Comments