Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Wikipedia censors physics videos

I posted MIT fires its best professor. It cut all contact with him and his famous physics videos, but it turns out that the video lectures are essentially in the public domain and still hosted on YouTube.

Wikipedia claims to have a neutral point of view and to be not censored. So it has movie spoilers and Hilter's Mein Kampf. But it has now censored Lewin's videos. The links are currently on Conservapedia but not Wikipedia. I posted the matter on the BLP noticeboard to get the attention of senior editors, but no one helped.

The videos are straight physics lectures, and no one objects to the content. MIT has not fully explained why it took action against Lewin, but we do know the following.

The Obama administration has used Title IX to force colleges to change the way they handle complaints, and has punished Harvard and Princeton for not favoring the complainer enuf.

The Harvard law professors say that the new policies lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process for the accused.

Lewin is nearly 80 years old, and a retired MIT professor. He was MIT's most popular professor.

A 32-year-old French woman watched some of Lewin's videos online, and sent him naked selfies. She was also on medication for mental disorders.

A year later, MIT investigators persuaded her that "Lewin’s interest in her was not motivated by empathy, and that their first conversations included inappropriate language."

MIT alleges that Lewin violated college policy.

In case you think MIT would always be fair, read about how it destroyed Aaron Swartz.

I deduce from this that Lewin never got a fair hearing, that he is a victim of a modern witch-hunt, and that MIT scapegoated him in order to avoid action from the Obama administration. I realize that it sounds inappropriate for an 80yo physics professor to be getting a naked selfie from a woman on another continent, but we live in an age where it is common for millions of women to send naked selfies. Even big-shot Hollywood actresses do it.

Update: Now the IPCC is accused of sexually inappropriate emails. [6][7][8] As with Lewin, the allegations are serious enough that he is no longer on the job. To be consistent with Lewin, Wikipedia should remove all the links to the IPCC reports.

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