Stop Demanding Dumb Answers to Hard Questions
popehat.substack.com
popehat.substack.com
At UPENN a law professor named Amy Wax invited a white nationalist to speak and the law school dean said this [the invitation] "crosses the line of what is acceptable in a University environment where principles of non-discrimination apply,” in a document where he asked the University to impose a “major sanction” on Wax. https://www.thedp.com/article/2023/12/penn-amy-wax-jared-tay...
Amy Wax is currently under investigation by the university https://www.thedp.com/article/2023/01/penn-carey-law-amy-wax.... I would be curious to see what popehat's analysis of this situation is because the talk itself that Wax invited complies with all the guidelines he outlined but yet I get the feeling this talk would be unacceptable but the speech of the pro-Palestinian side is acceptable on campus despite some claiming that it is a call for genocide.
*Being in Europe, we won't agree with the very low bar the US has for free speech - to us it's as absurd as the mad "right to bear arms" as applied in the US (note I am in Switzerland, which also allows to bear arms but... without the crazyness). But Popehat is a lawyer, he's not here to rewrite laws.
> Stefanik’s purpose was transparent. No matter how the college presidents answered, she won. If they answered accurately — that the question depended on the context - she could shriek neeeeeerrrrrrdddd like a football player bullying a kid with glasses, and credulous people would eat it up. If the presidents answered inaccurately but simply “yes,” she could make her next point: then why aren’t you punishing people who advocate intifada? Why aren’t you expelling students for saying “from the river to the sea”? Why aren’t you punishing people for accusing Israel of genocide? That was her express, explicit purpose…
She brought them in front of America to chew them out for their anti-Semitic BS. they were chewed.
And he's jumping from a clear call for genocide to things that are more debatable WRT that...
In what contexts is (explicitly) calling for the genocide of Jews not objectively offensive or hostile? Maybe if you whisper it quietly in an empty room? I don't buy the examples provided in TFA (the ones he deems acceptable are not explicit calls for genocide).
I mean, I think a statement advocating for the genocide of Jews is reflecting a violent opinion and is obviously personal for Jews!
- The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Sharlet. 2023.
- Woke Racism by McWhorter. 2021.
- The Case Against BDS: Why Singling Out Israel for Boycott is Anti-Semitic. by Dershowitz. 2018.
- Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle by Hedges. 2010.
- The Fateful Triangle by Chomsky. 1983.
- Anti-Semite and Jew by Sarte. 1946.
- Mein Kampf by Hitler. 1925.
If its not "all or none" you're not arguing free speech, you're arguing which heathens are worse.
These are the same people who said Trump’s anti-China rhetoric caused anti-Asian hate crimes. If we take them at their word about that, what does their newfound nuance in this context say?
It is in fact possible to say "Hamas is bad" while still believing Palestinians are humans with the same rights the UN brought in as a result of things like the holocaust. It's also possible to go "given the decades of colonial abuse by Israel the actions of Hamas are an entirely predictable outcome", much like the myriad terrorist attacks against English civilians by the IRA (that large swathes of America were 100% in support of).
Terrorism is objectively wrong, but it is a predictable outcome of abusive and dehumanizing colonial behavior.
And abusive and dehumanizing behavior is a predictable outcome of Terrorism. How do we break the cycle?
Honestly? Through pro-getting-along propaganda subversively force-fed to everyone involved. Brainwashing people into hating each other less is probably the only way.
Actually, you conflated the two. I explicitly said "pro-Hamas" and not "pro-Palestinian" because I meant "pro-Hamas".
If you watch the hearing, the most contentious question was in reference to actual calls for genocide coming predominantly from pro-Hamas protesters.
Another failure is Bill Maher: a moron and a tool of idiocy because he equates pro-Palestinian with pro-Hamas without any nuance or concern for the lives of both Gazans and Israelis.
The Israel-Palestine conflict is not like US native American conflict where we landed somewhere we'd never lived before, killed as many people as possible, and broke treaty after treaty.
The Jews has been living there for 2000+ years. The Ottoman empire was the last empire in control of that area. It lost a war and gave up that land to the British. The British proposed a break up. That was rejected. The UN proposed a break up of the area into Jewish and Arab land. The Arabs did not agree with he division of land and went to war with Israel, Israel won. This happened a few times until we ended up with today's boarders.
Now neither the Israelis nor Palestinians believe in a two state solution. And you have two groups of people bent on the others destruction.
No, the area currently named Israel had not been a jewish state in centuries when the British occupiers gave it to a new set of jewish colonizers of what was an occupied Arab state.
The jewish population of the area label Israel was less than 10% jewish until 1910 or so (after Britain had control and started encouraging colonization before explicitly assigning it to a specific group of Jews). At that point a mass colonization was started. To claim that because "jews have always lived there" means that 10s to 100s of thousands of immigrants moving to an area in which they had not lived in generations are not colonizers is patently false. Especially when the people migrating to the area are the group that have all the financial, military, and political power.
> Now neither the Israelis nor Palestinians believe in a two state solution
you mean the two groups in an apartheid state do not believe that they have equal rights? Remember again, fundamentally the two state solution is "you were colonized, and should be happy to lose half your country". In terms of peace it's probably the only path forward, but don't pretend the victims of colonization should be happy with that outcome.
It was similar to the partition of India, which was also something that had only ever existed in that form due to millennia of colonization.
Out of sheer exasperation at this point I would propose forcing a one-state solution on them as a less-bad option. We've tried two state solution for decades and it just plain hasn't worked.
The trouble there is that Israel is specifically a Jewish state. If we ended up with a one-state situation, it wouldn't have a Jewish majority. While many of us might be OK with that, lots of the Jewish inhabitants wouldn't be.
There's a reason that this situation hasn't been resolved, and it's not because people aren't trying.
We know this because that’s what they keep doing. They have repeatedly tried to wipe out Israel. Thats why Qatar hosts the leadership of Hamas. Even if Palestinians genuinely accepted a two-state solution, the other Arab countries wouldn’t.
That would require an external powers go to war with both and conquer them,and then somehow suppress terrorists from both sides.
The idea is soo misguided, it just the kind of intervention the US might attempt
Don’t forget that the Arab countries expelled a million Jews in retaliation for the creation of Israel.
In the hearing, Stefanik kept asking the presidents whether a call to genocide was considered bullying and harassment according to the respective universities' codes of conduct. That's a factual question that has an objective answer, which they gave multiple times: it depends if it's pervasive and severe. Which is exactly what those codes of conduct state, namely that a single instance of someone saying something stupid doesn't constitute bullying or harassment according to those policies. The phrasing 'pervasive and severe' comes directly from Harvard's code of conduct, for instance.
But Stefanik would then would casually change the context of her question, using 'bullying and harassment' in a colloquial sense instead of in the sense of her initial question (i.e. the codes of conduct). Why? Maybe to engender exactly the reactionary response that followed. To try and insinuate that the presidents actually think calls to genocide are A-OK under certain situations, namely when it comes to the genocide of Jews. To insinuate, as some (like you) have, that the presidents think some classes of minority populations are worthier of defense than others. To bring into question the utility of a liberal higher education entire.
I'll give her this: Stefanik was very successful (as evidenced by yours and similar comments, and by the mainstream media's reaction) in generating widespread, reactionary approbation. To some of the most banal, legalistic, administrator-speak imaginable. I'm glad this is the state of discourse in this country.
Are you seriously claiming that, if students had made similar statements about any other group of people (except maybe whites), these universities would be asking “well, but is it pervasive and severe?”
Many examples there, like: "From 2019 to this year, Harvard sanctioned four scholars, three of whom it terminated." or "In 2020, Harvard revoked conservative student activist Kyle Kashuv’s acceptance over comments he made on social media as a 16-year-old, for which he had since apologized. "
Some other colleges as well:
Yale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Christakis#Yale_Hallo...
Stanford: https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/05/judge-duncan-stanford-l...
The survey results are interesting, but I think contradict the point you're trying to make in many cases. For example, the survey showed students felt less comfortable discussing abortion. An odd result if the claim is there's some kind of liberal oligarchy that's selectively punishing conservative speech.
CogitoCogito asked for "specific examples of the universities in question acting in contradiction to these statements". When you are providing specific examples, a handful are enough.
People need to step back and realize that the majority of students are 18-21 year olds. They are children. The student codes of conduct are meant to correct bad behavior, not to punish and expel students.
Most of these actions are demanded by the student majority.
The underlying phenomenon is that the children are running the daycare and administration is doing their bidding. It is perfectly consistent that the admin only takes action against the most egregious students. However, a book, paper, or statement might get faculty removed. Similarly, invited guest speakers can be shut down by hecklers veto.
Just a hint for you - president of Univ of Chicago will not have suffered this fate because that school stands for true free speech and didn't disinvite or ban any speakers from its campus. You live by "words are violence", you die by "words are violence".