I think there's one other tactic the grasshoppers use against the cows - namely they wrap their side/issue in nice and try to make it so that the cows will feel that opposing this particular grasshopper means they are nasty people.
I think this is a tactic that is beginning to be seen through - at least in certain areas/issues
In terms of Australian Rules football clubs, the folklore in the 1960s and 1970s was that the paperboys could never sell a Sporting Globe in a pub in Collingwood on Saturday night if the team had lost that afternoon.
I'm a Loud Cow. I don't have extreme views, but I do have a few unwavering views: the earth is round, gravity exists, the two sexes are male and female, large biceps and triceps does not give one a better functioning brain. I would never protest any who want to waste time listening to other adults who want to discuss a flat earth. But I will continue to sit under the tree and Mooooo very loudly for those listening to the siren song of the crickets.
As you have noted, the crickets tend to be monomaniacal on their issue of interest, and so if you engage with them at all you find that they leave you no peace and that the only options are to engage as monomaniacally as they do, or withdraw in what they would cockily proclaim as a surrender on your part.
YES. This, so much this. I didn’t get to bring up the Sealion cartoon, but it’s like that. They also nitpick incessantly about small details. Another reason not to bring up “hot button” topics - I’d get dragged into an incessant discussion of what someone exactly did say or didn’t say: https://wondermark.com/c/1062/
My understanding is that it all happened very quickly - within six hours of activists announcing that they would take action and cancel an individual, a small seminar scheduled for the next day had been cancelled. I don’t know yet what happened re campus security, contacting the police, or anything else, or who made any of the decisions (I don’t believe the Chancellery knew, but I’m not sure). Part of my point is that academics and the university needs to know what to do in these circumstances, and we need to have a plan.
But as I was saying to someone else, this is wider than the Israel-Palestine issue. I got told not to speak out on another hot-button issue in May last year because I might face violent protests and ruin my reputation. When I said I was willing to face that, I was told to recall my colleagues and the law school. I was worried about my colleagues - while I’m a stubborn goat, others are not - so I held my peace, but I’ve really wondered if I was right to do so ever since. Previously, even though I’ve spoken out on contentious issues, and received significant flak for both myself and the law school, I’ve always felt backed, and as if anyone who threatened me would be given short shrift. It’s rocked my sense of security as an academic.
I think, in light of my experience, that we don’t have a protocol for this, and actually, the vehemence of protests in the last eighteen months to two years is foreign to us. I went to the VC to complain (saw him in July 2023, poor man has to deal with my kvetching) and he said he’d support my academic freedom and ensure I was looked after, but by that point, the debate had moved on, and it was too late. The very thing I’d intended to warn about had occurred.
Katy you’re so right: people have to know what the rules are for everyone, and have confidence that they will be impartially enforced. A microcosm of the rule of law!
Firstly, I will ignore the blatantly dehumanising language. I don’t feel the need to respond to or even acknowledge the absurd language used, rife with racism and micro-agressions. Inferring that pro-Palestinian students on campus are “crickets” is not only a lazy comparison but also a poorly thought out comparison as well. The crickets is a noble creature that works collectively to ensure the safety and survival of not only themselves but of other crickets; crickets find strength in numbers and unity, no one cricket is more or less equal than another. I hope, as a so-called ‘cricket’, that I plague your consciousness with the remembrance of the on going genocide in Gaza just like God plagued Pharaoh with crickets in the well known story Musa (Moses).
Moreover, your exclusionary interpretation of protest is very exposing. You reminisce about your uni days but you make sure to stipulate that your protests were targeted with aims and were peaceful, which you juxtapose with the current protests seen on campus. The main difference between these protests and the protests you attended is that these current protests are led by people of colour. These protests are peaceful but are misrepresented as violent due to your own racial prejudices and the prejudices of the university. Violence was never threatened against the university ever, however, POC students were still scapegoated as being violent and aggressive, especially regarding the University’s decision to cancel the talk by Professor Shima. Furthermore, you don’t mention how university security has called police on peaceful protestors, you don’t mention how university officials have gotten security to follow around pro-Palestinian students on campus and you don’t mention the rife culture of tokenism that this institution displays. This lack of nuance is telling of a broader colonial issue in academia and in your own works. Furthermore, what even is the point of a protest if it isn’t to ignite change. We didn’t want Tal Shima to speak due to his affiliations with the Israeli and American Military, we protested it online and the university cancelled the event. We ignited change. Your protests as a student did virtually nothing and I can say that with my full chest knowing that I have 30k+ debt in HECS.
I am completely fine being a humble yet effective cricket… enjoy being a cow. 🦗🇵🇸
Very interesting how academics will “rules based order” their way into passively supporting a genocide. You are so invested in your own air of superiority and “freedom of speech” that you find yourself justifying the logics of ethnic cleansing. You stand on the sidelines and scoff at anyone who dares to imagine a world free of prosecution. Not to worry, you and your colleagues will only be remembered as poignant examples for the banality, the everydayness, of evil. you stand on a non existent pedestal and use big words to hide your ultimate insecurity - you are insignificant and cowardly.
Silence isn't violence young one. Stop projecting. Secondly, what have you been doing about the Uyghur and Rohingya genocides? I suspect nothing because those genocides don't quite strike the chord of activism, despite the evidence and the ongoing ties the university has to the Chinese Communist Party.
I think there's one other tactic the grasshoppers use against the cows - namely they wrap their side/issue in nice and try to make it so that the cows will feel that opposing this particular grasshopper means they are nasty people.
I think this is a tactic that is beginning to be seen through - at least in certain areas/issues
Oh goodness yes. I have seen this used in all different kinds of “hot button” issues.
Very well put. Also, I think this is the only time I'd be happy to be called a cow.
Katy, well done.
In terms of Australian Rules football clubs, the folklore in the 1960s and 1970s was that the paperboys could never sell a Sporting Globe in a pub in Collingwood on Saturday night if the team had lost that afternoon.
You know me too well. Might have been going to use Collingwood and the Tiges… But it just didn’t work.
I'm a Loud Cow. I don't have extreme views, but I do have a few unwavering views: the earth is round, gravity exists, the two sexes are male and female, large biceps and triceps does not give one a better functioning brain. I would never protest any who want to waste time listening to other adults who want to discuss a flat earth. But I will continue to sit under the tree and Mooooo very loudly for those listening to the siren song of the crickets.
I love the idea of a Loud Cow. Mooooooo back. Or bleat, or whatever it is that I do…
I have decided that I am no longer going to respond to FB memes claiming Israel has bombed a youth gender clinic in Collingwood.
LOL. ALL THE BUTTONS. 🤯
As you have noted, the crickets tend to be monomaniacal on their issue of interest, and so if you engage with them at all you find that they leave you no peace and that the only options are to engage as monomaniacally as they do, or withdraw in what they would cockily proclaim as a surrender on your part.
YES. This, so much this. I didn’t get to bring up the Sealion cartoon, but it’s like that. They also nitpick incessantly about small details. Another reason not to bring up “hot button” topics - I’d get dragged into an incessant discussion of what someone exactly did say or didn’t say: https://wondermark.com/c/1062/
Tal Shima didn’t get the benefit of this policy! What happened to university security?
My understanding is that it all happened very quickly - within six hours of activists announcing that they would take action and cancel an individual, a small seminar scheduled for the next day had been cancelled. I don’t know yet what happened re campus security, contacting the police, or anything else, or who made any of the decisions (I don’t believe the Chancellery knew, but I’m not sure). Part of my point is that academics and the university needs to know what to do in these circumstances, and we need to have a plan.
But as I was saying to someone else, this is wider than the Israel-Palestine issue. I got told not to speak out on another hot-button issue in May last year because I might face violent protests and ruin my reputation. When I said I was willing to face that, I was told to recall my colleagues and the law school. I was worried about my colleagues - while I’m a stubborn goat, others are not - so I held my peace, but I’ve really wondered if I was right to do so ever since. Previously, even though I’ve spoken out on contentious issues, and received significant flak for both myself and the law school, I’ve always felt backed, and as if anyone who threatened me would be given short shrift. It’s rocked my sense of security as an academic.
I think, in light of my experience, that we don’t have a protocol for this, and actually, the vehemence of protests in the last eighteen months to two years is foreign to us. I went to the VC to complain (saw him in July 2023, poor man has to deal with my kvetching) and he said he’d support my academic freedom and ensure I was looked after, but by that point, the debate had moved on, and it was too late. The very thing I’d intended to warn about had occurred.
Katy you’re so right: people have to know what the rules are for everyone, and have confidence that they will be impartially enforced. A microcosm of the rule of law!
Exactly this.
Firstly, I will ignore the blatantly dehumanising language. I don’t feel the need to respond to or even acknowledge the absurd language used, rife with racism and micro-agressions. Inferring that pro-Palestinian students on campus are “crickets” is not only a lazy comparison but also a poorly thought out comparison as well. The crickets is a noble creature that works collectively to ensure the safety and survival of not only themselves but of other crickets; crickets find strength in numbers and unity, no one cricket is more or less equal than another. I hope, as a so-called ‘cricket’, that I plague your consciousness with the remembrance of the on going genocide in Gaza just like God plagued Pharaoh with crickets in the well known story Musa (Moses).
Moreover, your exclusionary interpretation of protest is very exposing. You reminisce about your uni days but you make sure to stipulate that your protests were targeted with aims and were peaceful, which you juxtapose with the current protests seen on campus. The main difference between these protests and the protests you attended is that these current protests are led by people of colour. These protests are peaceful but are misrepresented as violent due to your own racial prejudices and the prejudices of the university. Violence was never threatened against the university ever, however, POC students were still scapegoated as being violent and aggressive, especially regarding the University’s decision to cancel the talk by Professor Shima. Furthermore, you don’t mention how university security has called police on peaceful protestors, you don’t mention how university officials have gotten security to follow around pro-Palestinian students on campus and you don’t mention the rife culture of tokenism that this institution displays. This lack of nuance is telling of a broader colonial issue in academia and in your own works. Furthermore, what even is the point of a protest if it isn’t to ignite change. We didn’t want Tal Shima to speak due to his affiliations with the Israeli and American Military, we protested it online and the university cancelled the event. We ignited change. Your protests as a student did virtually nothing and I can say that with my full chest knowing that I have 30k+ debt in HECS.
I am completely fine being a humble yet effective cricket… enjoy being a cow. 🦗🇵🇸
Very interesting how academics will “rules based order” their way into passively supporting a genocide. You are so invested in your own air of superiority and “freedom of speech” that you find yourself justifying the logics of ethnic cleansing. You stand on the sidelines and scoff at anyone who dares to imagine a world free of prosecution. Not to worry, you and your colleagues will only be remembered as poignant examples for the banality, the everydayness, of evil. you stand on a non existent pedestal and use big words to hide your ultimate insecurity - you are insignificant and cowardly.
Silence isn't violence young one. Stop projecting. Secondly, what have you been doing about the Uyghur and Rohingya genocides? I suspect nothing because those genocides don't quite strike the chord of activism, despite the evidence and the ongoing ties the university has to the Chinese Communist Party.