Explaining How Someone Attempted to Cancel RMS This Year (and Failed)
Earlier this year RMS (Richard Stallman) gave a talk that was watched by over 10,000 people online and offline. It was his first talk in an American campus (college) in nearly a decade. It was at Georgia Tech and it had been arranged since 2025.
"You’ve likely already seen the Reddit posts from a particular professor (one I’ll leave unnamed)," an organiser told us earlier on. "She is the same individual I had to met with our Dean of Students about earlier this month. The Dean was able to offer us temporary protection and oversight through the university’s “freedom council” mentioned earlier, which will monitor the event. However, they were unable to stop her continued policy violations."
Notice that the protest against him speaking freely was itself a policy violation.
"This led to my conversation with our Provost last Friday," we got told, one "who indicated that multiple university policies appear to have been violated. In Georgia, silencing students is one of the very few actions that can result in the loss of tenure at a public institution. The investigation is ongoing, and outcomes could range from a formal reprimand to termination. We won’t know the final result until Georgia Tech completes its review - likely shortly before RMS arrives next week. I’ll be sure to keep y'all both updated."
Now that the outcome is known and the story is "old enough" to not result in any serious sanctions we wish to tell the story of how an attempt to cancel the RMS talk basically failed. The process itself involved debunking some falsehoods. And if falsehoods were spread, why not publicly scrutinise these? █
Last week: The Pedophilia Problem Comes From the Accusers
Image source: Richard Stallman