A thread. When I was interviewing for an academic job in January 2004, I made the tactical mistake of admitting without much thought that I was skeptical about rights on a campus interview. (This institution was very fond of rights talk in ways that I had not appreciated.) (1/7)

But I was then, as I continue to be now, very worried that the powerful phenomenology of rights derives much too often from what we are simply used to, for the intuitive judgment that we have rights to things to be very trustworthy at all. (2/7)

When we are used to anything working in some way, we acquire a sense of entitlement that it should continue to work in that way. This phenomenon is I think nearly universal, no matter what we are used to. (3/7)

But it is still interesting to see this phenomenon at play in demands that graduate students keep their mouths shut, if they know what is good for them. Yes, it is true that the prudent thing to do is almost always to keep quiet and keep your head down. (4/7)

Yes, if a student comes to you for advice and asks whether cultivating an active social media presence is the right career move, the safe answer is no. Yes, if they come to you asking if publicly taking a stand on issues that face the profession is safe, the answer is no. (5/7)

But somehow some members of our profession have gone from knowing that it is rational for students who care *only* about their own careers to shut up and keep their heads down to feeling entitled to all students doing this - especially if those students disagree with them. (6/7)

Indeed, they have gone so far as to think that they are entitled to having their colleagues extort this silence from students whom they supervise. This is a truly remarkable sense of entitlement. Yes, I am familiar with the general phenomenon. But this still astounds. (stop)