Richard Stallman in the United States - Part III - Georgia Tech Did a Fine Job Upholding Free Speech Principles
The real problem was social control media (toxic)
In Part I we explained the timing of this series and days ago, in Part II, we explained why Richard Stallman (RMS) tends to be targeted the way he has been targeted since 2009 at the very least (or earliest I know of). A lot of it boils down to people defending unethical occupations or simply being envious. "Collecting" accomplishments like starting GNU/Linux is far harder than collecting money. Many people do the latter; many die young due to such needless and potentially self-harming (health hazard) pursuits.
RMS is respected enough by many who didn't lose track of the narrative. They can easily distinguish between Jeffrey Epstein's friends (such as Bill Epsteingate) and people who openly called Epstein "serial rapist". They know who's in it for the money (Epsteingate) and who's in it for science.
Sadly, there are also scientists who were led to think negatively of RMS, either based on direct experience or hearsay online.
"I met with our Dean of Students at Georgia Tech yesterday," an organiser told us of the RMS talk, "and after I presented the situation and identified the individual involved as a faculty member (department chair), I was clearly assured that she has no authority over our organization, Dr. Stallman, or the event itself, nor any ability to cancel it. Per the Dean's own words "you can literally bring anyone you want here as an RSO, and nobody can do anything but protest it outside." (RSO is a registered student organization)
"In addition, we were granted “council” protection. This means the university will assign and pay 2–5 students to attend the event, with the explicit responsibility of ensuring Dr. Stallman has a quiet and uninterrupted space to speak. If anyone attempts to disrupt the talk or stage a protest inside the classroom, the Dean assured me that they will be promptly removed by council staff and, if necessary, GTPD. We don't want to advertise this as it will likely only enrage RMS's haters even more.
"The faculty member in question has also made some rather concerning public posts, and her account of events changed when I attempted to ask her about them directly. The Dean of Students explained that by making public accusations while using her name and university title, she looks to have violated university policy. As a result, the matter will likely need to be forwarded to the Provost for further review. I'm not sure what will come of it, but it's super frustrating that a faculty member thought she could step in the way of students paying her salary due to her own views.
"Long story short, we have the university’s full support, and we’re now in a position to formally address the situation if needed. Importantly, I haven’t said a word to her or acknowledged since her behavior began, and in hindsight, that was the right call. I’ll admit it was tempting to publicly vent about how we’ve been treated simply for inviting someone to speak about technology, at an institute of technology, but it’s genuinely reassuring to have confirmation that we’ve done nothing wrong and that the administration is standing behind us.
"We're not backing down anytime soon, and will continue to fight for software & hardware freedom - and advocate for justice for RMS!"
The talk ended 4 weeks ago and, in hindsight, it went very well. Many thousands of people from all over the world listened to it; articles were published in several languages based on that talk.
There's no real harm bringing this up now and, moreover, the person who attempted to interfere with the talk has since then changed her attitude, if not superficially then at least based on the realisation the talk went well (albeit that's somewhat a personal guess, based on gut feeling).
Giving credit to Georgia Tech, at the end it offended nobody (on the face of it). Admonishment of RMS averted, the talk went ahead, and no disciplinary actions were required.
What's noteworthy here is the conflict resolution/mediation/deescalation. By professional bureaucracy at a technical institution they reached a positive outcome that brought positive attention to Georgia Tech.
The main issue, in this case, was social control media. It breeds hostility and conflict. It thrives in attention, no matter the means.
Debian, take a lesson from academia, stop harbouring cults and narcissism. Stop persecuting well-meaning people. █
"I'm not going to dig into the archive because basic human respect shouldn't be this difficult and it's why Debian is losing active contributors." -Earlier this month amid mass censorship of geeks (science is abandoned when people are excluded based on "tone" or "tact" in a medium that lacks nuanced elements)
Image source: Georgia Tech seal
