This afternoon.
At University College Cork.
Karl Kitching tweetz:
Protesting the fact that a new UCC building is being named in James Watson’s honour.
Meanwhile, a letter sent from the resident of UCC’s Student Union President Aidan Coffey to UCC President Michael Murphy about the decision…
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Hmmm…….Noble Prize vs naming a building in a small provincial university after me? I think I’ll go with the Swedish gong.
Nobody is suggesting there is a reason to choose between one or the other.
Norwegian. Not Swedish.
swedish… only the peace prize is norwegian. btw: Watson didn’t care about homosexuality or not, he was making the point purely about choice (he could have said sex, race, generic abnormality, but scientifically went with sexuality because he was -ironically to these protestors – one of the early advocates of genetic causation of sexuality).
And it’s named after the scientist, not the opinionated geriatric.
the troll doesn’t care
The dude sold his Noble medal and donated large sums to UCC and TCD towards scientific research.
Concerning the Quote you have from him in ’97
Dawkins wrote a letter to The Independent saying that Watson’s position was misrepresented by The Sunday Telegraph article, and that Watson would equally consider the possibility of having a heterosexual child to be just as valid as any other reason for abortion, to emphasise that Watson is in favor of allowing choice.
He’s done more good than harm in this world, Students union and anyone protesting needs to look at both sides of story here , It’s very easy to vilify someone. If we were to have open forums on naming every student building they would all be some form of… “GATTIN BUILDING FOR MAD SESSIONS AND YOKES”
Eh, folks, what the frick is a Noble Prize or medal?
bleh , copied off the comment above.
some people just want to be offended.
A Noble Call!
(that’s an old trad music thing – I’m old)
Sorry now but that’s stupid. Shouldn’t a university be a place where people’s ideas are challenged? Do they want a “learning environment” where everyone agrees with everyone else all the time? The right to not be offended is getting really irritating
Irish education and its teachers/lecturer are charged with and relish maintaining the status quo; challenging that status quo is not acceptable.
Generation snowflake
+1
Where’s the “No free speech for people we disagree with” poster?
They call it hate speech when its an opinion they disagree with, makes it easier to legislate against it
Universities slowly turning into ‘safe spaces’ where nobody can ever be challenged, offended or disagreed with. Perhaps some of his comments could have been phrased better but, as noted above, he’s done more harm than good.
‘More good than harm’ is what I meant. Woops!
is nobody going to mention that it’s a well known fact that Watson and Crick stole the research (for which they won their Nobel prize) from Dr. Rosalind Franklin. Or is this only known among the scientific community. That’s a good reason by itself to not name it after him.
Spot on, and agreed.
not stolen. there was zero chance of Franklin or Gosling coming up with the findings that they did, and her contribution was essential to the modelling, but she was not part of the core team. Her contribution is widely recognised today, including on the the DNA monument that Watson donated.
Seems to me that the guy’s pro choice!
This is like the Queen Victoria’s bust (not boobies) debacle way back when.
UCC loves an aul scrap over crap like this.