Thread. 1) Thirty or forty years ago, supporting free speech was understood to be a non-negotiable core value of the liberal left.

2) Pop culture endlessly celebrated liberalism’s uncompromising support of speech rights — from The People Vs. Larry Flynt to Field of Dreams to The American President. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
3) Think of “President Shepard’s” speech in “The American President” about how “America isn’t easy” and citizenship requires we “acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil.” https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
4) That started to change long before Trump. As “The American President” came out, Bill Clinton was pushing the first Internet censorship laws. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
When the PATRIOT Act passed, every Democrat but one in both houses voted yes. Russ Feingold, Independent Bernie Sanders, and three Republicans voted no. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
6) After Trump and especially after Charlottesville, mainstream Democrats mostly stopped defending the principle of free speech. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
7) A leaked ACLU memo read: "Our defense of speech may have a greater or lesser harmful impact on the equality and justice work to which we are also committed." https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
8) Democratic lawmakers pressured Internet companies to censor more and activists cheered as Internet companies suppressed books like “Irreversible Damage.” https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
9) This gave Republicans a political opening to sell themselves as defenders of speech rights. But they’ve blown it so far. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
10) So far, the signature Republican responses to censorship have been legislative bans as batty as the worst lefty speech codes. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
11) Either that, or Republican lawmakers are pressing firms like Barnes and Noble to suppress books like “Gender Queer” — new-age lefty censorship in reverse. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
12) From the lab-leak fact-checking fiasco to the insane overreaction to @ElonMusk’s attempted purchase of Twitter, it’s clear we need an effective non-partisan lobby to defend free expression. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
@elonmusk 13) The announcement of a major expansion by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (@theFIREorg) is a step on the road to such a lobby. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
@elonmusk @TheFIREorg 14) Either way, neither of the two parties currently shows much interest in the principle of free speech, which really sucks and means those rights are in danger. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi
@elonmusk @TheFIREorg 15) The worst case is a world where censorship will be yet another underreported area of near-total consensus between the two parties, like military spending, bailouts, and corporate taxation. We're almost there. https://t.co/ZWpiCOocUi

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1/“What would need to be true for you to….X”

Why is this the most powerful question you can ask when attempting to reach an agreement with another human being or organization?

A thread, co-written by @deanmbrody:


2/ First, “X” could be lots of things. Examples: What would need to be true for you to

- “Feel it's in our best interest for me to be CMO"
- “Feel that we’re in a good place as a company”
- “Feel that we’re on the same page”
- “Feel that we both got what we wanted from this deal

3/ Normally, we aren’t that direct. Example from startup/VC land:

Founders leave VC meetings thinking that every VC will invest, but they rarely do.

Worse over, the founders don’t know what they need to do in order to be fundable.

4/ So why should you ask the magic Q?

To get clarity.

You want to know where you stand, and what it takes to get what you want in a way that also gets them what they want.

It also holds them (mentally) accountable once the thing they need becomes true.

5/ Staying in the context of soliciting investors, the question is “what would need to be true for you to want to invest (or partner with us on this journey, etc)?”

Multiple responses to this question are likely to deliver a positive result.
"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."


We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.

Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)

It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.

Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".