Saw a kid get shut down for asking a question at a UC Berkeley talk

The speaker called his question 'harmful' and the moderators cut his mic. How is that supposed to be an open forum?

2 comments

2 Comments

Hot take: That's messed up. Longer response: Universities used to be the one place you could ask anything. Now it feels like they're just echo chambers for approved opinions. Calling a question harmful is a cheap way to avoid a real answer. If your ideas can't handle a simple question from a student, maybe they aren't very strong. The whole point of a talk is to have a discussion, not give a lecture no one can challenge.

beth_hart681mo ago

That's the whole problem right there. Calling a question harmful shuts down any chance to talk about why someone might see things that way. It just tells everyone that some ideas are too dangerous to even say out loud. How are we supposed to learn anything if we can't ask about the hard stuff? It makes the whole idea of a university talk feel fake. What's the point of having a forum if only pre-approved questions are allowed?