"... that are all designed to protect students from alleged emotional harm. But not all students. When, as a student at Harvard Law School, I was booed and hissed and told to 'go die' for articulating pro-life or other conservative views, exactly zero administrators cared about my feelings. Nor did it cross my mind to ask them for help. I was an adult. I could handle my classmates’ anger. Yet how sensitive are administrators to student feelings under other circumstances? I had to chuckle when I read my colleague Pamela Paul’s excellent column on the Columbia School of Social Work and she quoted a school glossary that uses the term 'folx.' Why spell the word with an 'x'? Because some apparently believe the letter 's' in 'folks' renders the term insufficiently inclusive. I kid you not...."The rule cannot be that Jews must endure free speech at its most painful, while favored campus constituencies enjoy the warmth of college administrators and the protection of campus speech codes.... "
Writes David French, in "What the University Presidents Got Right and Wrong About Antisemitic Speech" (NYT).
Posts
84 comments:
Nothing will change. The Left has a stranglehold on the colleges.
"The rule cannot be that Jews must endure free speech at its most painful, while favored campus constituencies enjoy the warmth of college administrators and the protection of campus speech codes.... "
'Oh it be.
Delicate leftist sensibilities will be coddled and groomed ... on the fly. A whole new vocabulary must be created because the entire English language offends these boo hoo babies... The patriarchy must die!
If a conservative steps a big toe on campus - the boo hoo mind-crime Nazis lose their minds. They yell, scream and cry and drown it all out. There will be no debate. The science is settled. If they could - the little leftwing Nazis in the making would kill the offending speaker.
up next: The Jews.
II can’t believe the NYT got something right!
let's hear rcocean's view on this.
Let's hear from someone who doesn't even think Jews are Human.
"The rule cannot be that Jews must endure free speech at its most painful, while favored campus constituencies enjoy the warmth of college administrators and the protection of campus speech codes.... "
Of course it can. It's the rule now, progs like it, and it makes total sense. As Andrew Sullivan said, progs are consistent in following one rule fairly: the oppressed get to say things to oppressors that oppressors cannot say in return. Jews are oppressors, ergo--.
"The answer to campus hypocrisy isn’t more censorship. It’s true liberty. Without that liberty, the hypocrisy will reign for decades more."
Well, that's very nice. But the moment someone denies the existence of "systemic racism," or when Heather Mac Donald appears to defend meritocracy or Western civ, or Amy Wax notes that no blacks finish in the upper half of her classes, liberty ends. Race makes liberty impossible. And when was the last time anyone criticized Islam for anything on a college campus? How many commencement addresses has Ayaan Hirsi Ali delivered?
By the Sullivan rule, it's not hypocrisy: progs are perfectly consistent. Of course, they rule, so "true liberty" is out of the question in any case. Unless and until the handwringing Frenches of the world recognize prog power and the devastation it has wrought, nothing will change. So nothing will change.
There was a time when I might have thought that French's argument was reasonable (based on Ann's snippet; I don't have access to NYT).
Now, when I read it, el deguello is playing in the background.
They made the rules, all I favor is to Alinsky them. Make them play by the rules they set up.
Or Obama them- "they bring a knife, we bring a gun" (yes, he really said that).
Does anybody really think that the next president of Penn will be any different, that she would under any circumstances make a decision that Magill would not have made? Sure, she'll be more circumspect in her statements, but will she allow someone to stand on Penn property and state that only women can have babies, or that black people score lower on IQ tests than white people?
No quarter; higher education is irretrievably destroyed and must be reconstructed after it completes its collapse.
French just found other criticisms to whine and complain about.
David French clearly demonstrates that the principle of free speech has been abandoned by the universities, not their critics. I see no sign of any move by those critical of the three presidents to censor speech critical of Israel or the Jews. I found nothing in what Stefanik asked those presidents that suggested she wanted speech censorship. I'd like Ann to cite anyone else defending Jews against rising antisemitism on campus who is calling for censorship. Simple criticism of the bigots, yes, but that is NOT censorship. What outraged people about the three presidents' touting of free speech was not opposition to free speech. It was their double standard hypocrisy in claiming a commitment to free speech which they have trashed in every other relevant context.
I pay especially close attention to Harvard on a daily basis via the Crimson's stories. If anyone can find there a single call for the suppression of speech by pro-Palestinian groups, I'd like to see it. I have not seen it. It is a big fat diversion from the real crisis this incident has exposed.
the left cannot get beyond their blind faith in their own self-righteousness.
that is why it's OK to trample and harass anyone non-leftist.
Higher "education" is a left-wing progressive democratical bully club. It's like NBC.
The reason these leftists have no interest in protecting Jews... is basic. They adore the eternal victimhood provided by the Palestinian propaganda machine.
the they-them club
grooming young children
pro-noun police
gender affirming care
safe spaces
climate religion
Open borders for endless migrants - shuttled in with Soros funds.
Obey.
Althouse said...
French concludes (and I agree): "[P]rotect students from harassment... But do not protect students from speech...
The three college presidents did a horrible job of trying to nuance the speech/harassment dichotomy by invoking the term "severe and pervasive" as well as "context."
First, the commonly used standard in sexual harassment cases is "severe or pervasive," not necessarily both severe and pervasive. Second, how is the espousal of genocide (like espousal of rape of murder in the sexual harassment context) ever not severe?
In sum, the college presidents failed to distinguish the circumstances under which espousing the genocide of Jews does not cross the line into harassment and bullying.
Congresswoman Stefanik: Dr. Kornbluth, at MIT, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT’s code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?
President Kornbluth: If targeted at individuals not making public statements.
Congresswoman Stefanik: Yes or no, calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment?
President Kornbluth: I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus.
Congresswoman Stefanik: But you've heard chants for Intifada.
President Kornbluth: I've heard chants which can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.
Congresswoman Stefanik: So those would not be, according to the MIT's code of conduct or rules.
President Kornbluth: That would be investigated as harassment if pervasive and severe.
Congresswoman Stefanik: Ms. Magill at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?
President Magill: If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes.
Congresswoman Stefanik: I am asking, specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?
President Magill: If it is directed, and severe, pervasive, it is harassment.
Congresswoman Stefanik: So the answer is yes.
President Magill: It is a context dependent decision, Congresswoman.
Congresswoman Stefanik: It's a context dependent decision. That's your testimony today, calling for the genocide of Jews is depending upon the context, that is not bullying or harassment. This is the easiest question to answer. Yes, Ms. Magill. So is your testimony that you will not answer yes? Yes or no?
President Magill: If the speech becomes conduct. It can be harassment, yes.
Congresswoman Stefanik: Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide. The speech is not harassment. This is unacceptable. Ms. Magill, I'm gonna give you one more opportunity for the world to see your answer. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn's Code of Conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment? Yes or no?
President Magill: It can be harassment.
Congresswoman Stefanik: The answer is yes. And Dr. Gay at Harvard? Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?
President Gay: It can be depending on the context.
Congresswoman Stefanik: What's the context?
President Gay: Targeted at an individual targeted, as at an individual?
Congresswoman Stefanik: It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of antisemitism? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?
President Gay: Antisemitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct, that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.
Congresswoman Stefanik: So the answer is yes. That calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard Code of Conduct. Correct?
President Gay: Again, it depends on the context.
My question at this point is, what's the larger goal of the Bill Ackmans who are currently pressuring Ivy League schools to fire their Presidents?
Is it to take on the Herculean task of doing away entirely with the hateful, divisive, toxic philosophy that is currently manifesting as DEI and destroying those institutions?
Or is it simply to leverage their vast wealth to insist they be given what they see as their proper place on the official list of oppressed victims and then carry on?
It seems to me these wealthy donors have had no problem supporting this vile stuff for years because they assumed they held a secure place at the top of the victim hierarchy. Now they've discovered they aren't protected and are lumped in with ordinary, run-of-the-mill crackers. There aren't many buzzkills for billionaires, but this is a big one, apparently.
Maybe I'm being unfair, but that's how it looks from way down here amongst my fellow toothless and backward designated oppressors.
"[P]rotect students from harassment... But do not protect students from speech.... The answer to campus hypocrisy isn’t more censorship." Nice NYT straw man.
Few are claiming Jews should be protected from speech. After all, that protection is only for women, blacks and LGBTers.
Harassment: "[T]o create an unpleasant or hostile situation for [another] especially by uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical conduct." Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
Jewish students and others on campus are facing pro-Hamas terrorist, anti-Jew demonstrators. Hamas are Islamists whose covenants call upon them to kill Jews. That is the "context" in which campus demonstrations take place - that and centuries of antisemitism.
Sorry, David French has nothing to offer.
sound and fury signifying nothing told by an idiot
I just started reading Andrew Sullivan.
I have not finished it yet.
so far - he is knocking it out of the park.
"In the hearings, President Gay actually said, with a straight face, that “we embrace a commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful.” This is the president whose university mandates all students attend a Title IX training session where they are told that “fatphobia” and “cisheterosexism” are forms of “violence,” and that “using the wrong pronouns” constitutes “abuse.”
oh yeah, now its all about free speech
BS
"The rule cannot be that Jews must endure free speech at its most painful, while favored campus constituencies enjoy the warmth of college administrators and the protection of campus speech codes...."
But that is the rule, and has been the rule for at least 30 years. Let's first hear the abject apologies to all the victims of that rule, and maybe then we can assert the principle of free speech. The left doesn't get to change the rules just when they become the victims. It's like the pro-Hamas idiots demanding a ceasefire of Israel after Hamas first broke the ceasefire and slaughtered hundreds of Israeli civilians.
Wince.
Thank you for that.
Stomach turning. MIT president MUST GO.
Are speech codes like an inversion of the star of David?
The star of David signaled to everyone you were the other.
Speech codes are meant to protect you from the other.
If could identify as a biologist for a minute. Seems like we, the who we are we, keep introducing variations of the same predatory specie and keep wondering how come the natives can't handle it.
At Student at MIT speaks about what she is forced to endure.
Simple. But "simple" wouldn't require an army of administrators and college presidents making mid six figures annually....
Where is Meir Kehane when we need him?
I remember reading somewhere an essay about how the 12mm Jews and Christians would not have been murdered in the death camps if Poland and Germany and other countries had the 2nd Amendment along with widespread gun ownership. Would the Gesatapo been so anxious to round them up if they knew that behind every door might be someone with a 45 or a rifle and nothing to lose by taking a couple with them?
Look what the Jews accomplished in the Warsaw Ghetto without access to weaponry other than what they could build themselves. It took the Germans nearly a month to subdue it and then only by nearly total destruction.
Or the Polish uprising the following year.
The israeli govt seems to realize this and has relaxed their tough gun restrictions. 250m Israelis have obtained licenses in the past 2 months. Good on them. No more rolling over and being "briquets" as someone, who resisted the National Socialists called those who didn't and were murdered in the camps.
John Henry
What Bob Boyd wrote at 9:48 a.m.!!!!
some may argue that resigning in disgrace is too harsh a punishment for the UPenn lady. If you parse her words carefully, as Ann did the other day, perhaps she was at worst unclear.
Yeah, perhaps. But fuck her anyway. It is good she is gone. If not for this specific malfeasance then for a host of other she has committed in her tenure and career.
Now do MIT and Harvard (and a hundred other schools)
To show that bad behavior will not be tolerated.
John Henry
I'm glad that so many people have now seen the 3 university presidents give their idiotic, lawyer-scripted testimony and realized that something is deeply wrong in academia.
These people, and their predecessors, and their peers in administration, have been not just willing, but gleefully happy about prohibiting and punishing ALL KINDS of speech or communicative action. From regulating student halloween costumes, to ferreting out "micro-aggressions," to asserting that the OK hand-gesture was coded white supremacy (I am not making that up) there has been nothing too small or trivial to be regulated to "protect" the "vulnerable" members of the "community." There has been NO sphere in which people on campuses have had truly free speech: even brute facts can be aggressions or "harmful." Universities have hated free speech and have been actively suppressing it for more than 20 years.
What does it tell you about these people, that they have only discovered the importance of free speech when that speech is advocating the mass-murder of Jews? Seriously, they're happy to threaten students with punishment for a "harmful" Halloween costume, but not for saying--in front of Jewish students--that the Jews should be murdered.
A few friends have tried to claim that I am being hypocritical because I have defended fully free speech for the past 20 years but now I want to see harsh punishments for those who have created a "hostile learning environment" for Jewish students. I didn't make the new rules, but I absolutely insist that if anyone has to follow them, everyone has to follow them. If universities want to reinstate all the students who had their admission offers revoked because of something they said in high school, apologize to and compensate all the professors disciplined or dismissed because they didn't comply with the latest trendy moral fashion statements, and compensate people for all the time wasted in "trainings" and "webinars" listening to all the rules about what was not allowed to be said, THEN I'll believe that they're really committed to free speech. But if they don't do these things (and obviously they won't) then I'm just going to conclude that it's not that they value free speech, it's just that they hate the Jews.
What does the Constitution say?
Do that.
"They made the rules, all I favor is to Alinsky them. Make them play by the rules they set up."
That way lies insanity and chaos.
Oh, I see. A group of divergent people are now folx. A folx of folks.
Unlike Latinx, this one's pronounceable. But... if I only say folx aloud you don't know how inclusive I'm being. Perhaps an ASL "x" should be signed each time the word is said. I would hate to have my au courant use of "folx" mistaken for a deplorable's use of "folks".
Alas, I have no folks to give.
Well, let's just count in slurs against heterosexual women too.
Oh, yeah, the Anti-Defamation League and Bill Clinton and Elena Kagan, and Eric Holder decided in 1986 that there's just too many of such incidents -- ranging from speech to serial rape/murder, to "include them." Abe Foxman said counting heterosexual women attacked in any way, right up to sexual mutilation and murder, for being women, would "distract" from the statistics they were seeking.
I'm strongly on the side of Israel in this conflict. I just wish they were even limply on my side as a heterosexual, biological woman.
thats not all
https://www.karlstack.com/p/leaked-documents-the-president-of
One might argue that conservative students are the only ones getting a liberal education at these institutions, being forced to confront challenges to their priors every day. However, the cucking of David French suggests that the long term effect of such hostile bombardment is surrender. The Never Trumper Neocons are merely prodigal sons, yearning for the warm embrace of Mother Jones.
Protect students from harassment but not from speech? The universities think they are already doing that. It's why those testifying before Congress last week brought up the word "context". They see those in favor of the rape, torture and kidnapping of the Jews as merely speechifying, no one is actually raping anyone at Harvard, are they? No one has killed anyone at MIT.
Eliminationist rhetoric is focused on the rhetoric right now, no one's been eliminated, not permanently anyway. If someone is tortured or killed, that will be punished, when any of those things happen, because that will surely be considered harassment, although maybe that "conduct" will be in some other category, a law enforcement matter maybe? and not the university's concern at all. So possibly it's a win win for the institution. There is nothing that constitutes harassment, it's all just speech. Otherwise, it's a crime and that's a matter for law enforcement.
I have the impression that this problem has been bubbling under the surface for awhile now in academia and it's been ignored and minimized up until now as just part of the price a Jewish student pays for admission to the hallowed halls.
Is that squishy-soft sack of shit David French writing for NYT now? David French has called himself a "conservative". Ross Douthat too. Also that bloated maggot David Brooks. You can tell they are conservatives because, um. Um. I begin to understand why the NYT has such a poor opinion of conservatives.
As Andrew Sullivan said, progs are consistent in following one rule fairly: the oppressed get to say things to oppressors that oppressors cannot say in return.
I would say, "the oppressed get to say and/or do things to oppressors."
This is where Crack departs from his usual sensible, if single-minded, line: he accepts and embraces the fixed oppressed/oppressor relationship in this one context. As he has clearly informed this commentariat, he is black - so that opinion, however inconsistent with everything else he says, is maybe more understandable from him than it would be from, say, me, a suburban white middle-aged woman.
My point is definitely not to pick on Crack. I'm saying that there are apparently a lot of people out there who, like him, are smart and thoughtful and mostly reject a victimhood framing, but when they feel some ox of theirs has been gored (and sometimes it definitely has been, at least historically, as in the history of slavery and Jim Crow in the US), they suddenly perceive relevance and accuracy in that fixed oppressed/oppressor thing.
Basically if you or someone you relate to has ever been oppressed, it can be easy and satisfying to assume - no, I'm going to say to pretend that, first, you or they are still being oppressed regardless of facts on the ground, and second, that you have automatic common cause with some other group that claims it's being oppressed - again, regardless of facts on the ground.
And that's the intersectional Left. The fact that they can sometimes get even a dedicated non-Leftist like Crack - or me! on certain feminist issues - on board always astonishes me, and makes me realize how important it is for me to "interrogate" my reflexive responses in order to distinguish between my feelings (a Leftist might say "my truth") and what actually makes sense.
Have you noticed that the university presidents seemed shocked that anyone would actually object to their 'Free Speech is what we allow for whom we allow it' thinking?
Someone put it "They've been in the leftist bubble so long they can't imagine the thinking of those outside it."
University foughulks have been forming a new religious sect since the 1980s (when "politically correct" was used by insiders in a positive, non-ironic way). They needed code words to identify each other, and came up with many rites, symbols, and dogmas. No clapping, jazz hands please, as the noise disturbs autistics. Crucifixes and skull caps and veils were already taken, and even the standard rainbow was taken by the gay culture.
Universities are 'left' in the fashion of lacking self-awareness about raw, universal, primal instinct to form religions.
First off, French is an idiot. A minor intellect posing as a profound pundit.
Even though he is correct (see stopped clocks).
I am of the opinion that at least half of university administrators could be fired tomorrow and nobody would notice.
What does a DEI administrator actually do? What is their work product? What do they make other than trouble?
Fire them all. Same as those within all governments.
Wow, something from Rev. French that i agree with. And answer to speech you disagree with is more speech.
Decades ago, Protein Wisdom blogger Jeff Goldstein raised alarms about the problems caused by the purposeful corruption of language. Among other issues, he examined the power to define intent as it was removed from speakers or writers, and assumed by listeners and readers, whose misinterpretations, often purposeful, of speech or writing suddenly became definitive for meaning of any speech. This inversion of the role of intent in speech rapidly gave rise to hate laws, to censorship and cancelling, to infringement of first amendment rights on no other basis than any claim of victimhood by a supposedly aggrieved party. It was a bold, corrupt power grab and it worked.
We were told long ago by Goldstein and many others that allowing this corruption of intent any credence would lead to everyone having to deal with a giant pile of crap. It stinks.
Oh, yeah, I should warn that Goldstein stopped blogging a while back, and currently attempts to access his former blog site results in viral attack. Hey, somebody is having some fun on the internet!
"It seems to me these wealthy donors have had no problem supporting this vile stuff for years because they assumed they held a secure place at the top of the victim hierarchy. Now they've discovered they aren't protected and are lumped in with ordinary, run-of-the-mill crackers. There aren't many buzzkills for billionaires, but this is a big one, apparently.
Maybe I'm being unfair, but that's how it looks from way down here amongst my fellow toothless and backward designated oppressors."
The same thought occurred to me. I'm not sure about the "unfair" part, though.
You might think Stefanik is an unlikely crusader against antisemitism, given that she’s a repeat promoter of Great Replacement Theory, the antisemitic trope that Jews are bringing foreigners into America to undermine it. But if you bought Stefanik’s BS, you probably didn’t think that far. Almost as enraging is that the university presidents made Stefanik look good.
You must have free speech to develop free thought. That is why the universities are so desperate to clamp down on speech. Next thing you know, the students will develop unapproved thoughts and be able to discipline their intellects and regulate their emotions enough to articulate those thoughts. All because they were able to have open discussions with others and hone their thinking in debate.
Here is Jordan Peterson making the point
https://youtu.be/DcA5TotAkhs?t=1667
A joke that is becoming a reality for the Ivies
I went to college, but then I had a thought, so they threw me out.
Blogger Dude1394 said...
Sorry, David French has nothing to offer.
Yeah. They guy is an arrogant publicity asshole.
He's now taking part in a Rob Reiner produced movie attacking MAGA and Trump. Fuck him.
And we can look to Carl Jung to see why so many on campus report loneliness and despair. Directly traceable to the speech suppression. Leave the universities to their special interest groups. They are no longer places where someone can become educated, except in the negative. That is those who can be attacked will hone their skills, those who conform and fit in will be weakened intellectually as the submerge themselves in the Cult of the Dialectic.
“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.”
― Carl Gustav Jung
https://youtu.be/Bb_tJ59bSzg?t=17
Yesterday, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents voted 9-8 to reject a compromise reached between the Wisconsin Legislature and the UW System to reign in DEI and even require an endowed professor that would teach conservative and classical liberalism and in return would allow the UW System employees to get their pay raises that was passed in the last state budget along with badly needed construction projects at various campuses. These hard far left ideologues just cut off their noses to spite their faces. The hard far left accuse Trump of being a dictator. In reality, they are the dictators trying to enforce their will on the rest of us and to indoctrinate the students into modern day brownshirt stormtroopers. This has become evident from the massive demonstrations of our nation’s young in the 2020 BLM and 2023 Pro-Hamas demonstrations. The college administrators did their lawyerly best to try to hide their true intentions last week in front of Congress and the nation and were exposed. Unfortunately, they will be replaced by similar ideologues who will continue to do the same old, same old. It might be too late, but our universities need to be purged of administrators and professors who think like those who testified in order to save our country from becoming what Orwell warned us about in “1984”…
The israeli govt seems to realize this and has relaxed their tough gun restrictions. 250m Israelis have obtained licenses in the past 2 months. Good on them.
Incidentally, I have read that the main reason Israel had restrictive private gun ownership was because they were leery of allowing the 20% Arab minority to arm themselves, and didn't feel they could discriminate against them. I'm wondering if in practice they can finesse this problem in the application process.
Rich, seriously?
"You might think Stefanik is an unlikely crusader against antisemitism, given that she’s a repeat promoter of Great Replacement Theory, the antisemitic trope that Jews are bringing foreigners into America to undermine it."
So when I googled this, I got stories with headlines referring to Stefanik's opposition to illegal immigration as an "echo of great replacement rhetoric." But not a single quote from her saying a thing about either a "great replacement" or suggesting any link to Jewish involvement in it. I conclude, Rich, you are repeating a slander and owe us all an apology.
hes on substack and twitter, jeff goldstein is,
Sorry if I don't pat David French on the back even if he says some things that are spot on.
He's a collaborator with the folx he criticizes here. He is complicit.
Here's what Mitt Romney said on MTP:
...what they did in that hearing was absolutely repugnant, was outrageous, incomprehensible. It – it violates the very premises of – of American unity. We're a diverse nation. Not to recognize that calling for the genocide of a people is awful, is a hate crime. This was an extraordinary breach on the part of the judgment of the heads of these universities. And people are saying, "Wait a second. If a conservative speaker wanted to come stop – come to their campus, oh, they'd be all outraged. 'No, they can't come there.'
But they're saying it's okay for people to call for genocide of the Jewish people?" And, by the way, this is not just about Jews. It's about members of Islam. I mean it's about tolerance for people who are different in our country. And these university presidents have to stand up for that. Their failure to do so was an extraordinary failure.
I'm always struck by how hysterical and unserious MItt Romney is. Remember this is the REAL Mitt Romney. This is what he truly believes. He's retiring. Note to Mitt: calling for the destruction of Israel is NOT a hate crime. They are a foreign country. And no one called for "genocide of the Jewish People".
And there was nothing in the College president's words that were "absolutely repugnant or outrageous". They just (weakly) tried to defend free speech while asserting their hatred of anti-semitism and love for israel about 1 million times. And they stood up for diversity.
After reading Mitt's book and reading the transcript of his latest MTP appearance, we really dodged a bullet when this clown lost.
Here's what Mitt Romney said on MTP:
...what they did in that hearing was absolutely repugnant, was outrageous, incomprehensible. It – it violates the very premises of – of American unity. We're a diverse nation. Not to recognize that calling for the genocide of a people is awful, is a hate crime. This was an extraordinary breach on the part of the judgment of the heads of these universities. And people are saying, "Wait a second. If a conservative speaker wanted to come stop – come to their campus, oh, they'd be all outraged. 'No, they can't come there.'
But they're saying it's okay for people to call for genocide of the Jewish people?" And, by the way, this is not just about Jews. It's about members of Islam. I mean it's about tolerance for people who are different in our country. And these university presidents have to stand up for that. Their failure to do so was an extraordinary failure.
I'm always struck by how hysterical and unserious MItt Romney is. Remember this is the REAL Mitt Romney. This is what he truly believes. He's retiring. Note to Mitt: calling for the destruction of Israel is NOT a hate crime. They are a foreign country. And no one called for "genocide of the Jewish People".
And there was nothing in the College president's words that were "absolutely repugnant or outrageous". They just (weakly) tried to defend free speech while asserting their hatred of anti-semitism and love for israel about 1 million times. And they stood up for diversity.
After reading Mitt's book and reading the transcript of his latest MTP appearance, we really dodged a bullet when this clown lost.
How many Ivy League presidents are women? Is it a requirement?
I almost went to MIT. But it was in 1975.
My understanding of university presidents was that they were meant to do one thing: smile politely while they raise vast donations for their institutions. Otherwise, generally they should keep their pieholes shut on anything else to avoid damaging their money raising efforts. There are lotsa admins, from university VPs to Assistant Dept Heads, to do the dirty work of wrangling students and professors into control on campus. The university president, as demonstrated by these elite examples, aren't able to do anything other than their primary function.
“French concludes (and I agree): "[P]rotect students from harassment... But do not protect students from speech.... “
David French (and Ann) gets it. Universities must allow free speech. However, this newfound respect for freedom of speech by our “elite” universities is a sham. They were using freedom of speech as a way of getting around having to punish their Muslim and progressive students who were trying to intimidate (or worse) the Jewish students on campus. When you have student mobs attacking Jewish students with calls for genocide, that is not freedom of speech. That is a true threat to the safety of those students that can and should be punished by the university.
Rich - Jews are not bringing illegal entrants to the Southern border and allowing them in - Joe Biden and his mobster administration are doing that.
Rich - you are just another leftwing liar.
Rich -
read what Jonathan Burack said at 12:27.
& answer the question - why are you a liar?
To all dedicated leftists - we see right thru your BS Maddow-esque game.
If you confront a dedicated progressive leftwing democrat on the millions of illegal entrants that have been allowed to stream into the nation along our southern border (people who have been shuttled from central and south America and other nations around the globe - to the southern border) - they always have a BS answer.
First- these dedicated leftists deny it is even happening.
Then - they come up with BS narratives/lies/smears that attempt to paint anyone who dare speak out against illegal border crossings - (which are against US immigration law)
Rich - lol - you are such a leftist sap.
Stefanik: Dr. Kornbluth, at MIT, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate MIT’s code of conduct or rules regarding bullying and harassment? Yes or no?
Kornbluth: If targeted at individuals not making public statements.
Stefanik: Yes or no, calling for the genocide of Jews does not constitute bullying and harassment?
Kornbluth: I have not heard calling for the genocide for Jews on our campus.
Stefanik: But you've heard chants for Intifada.
There’s the rhetorical trick. Calling for Intifada is not the same as calling for the genocide of Jews, and it’s just dishonest to say it is. Not all Jews are Israeli. Arguing that a particular group has a moral right to violent revolution against the power over it is not a call for the genocide of a group. The argument about when violent revolution is morally justified is ancient. Whether or not you agree that Israel is tyrannical or the Palestinians are unjustifiably oppressed, you can’t outlaw arguments that they are and pretend you’re anything but an absolute censor.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that antisemitism is on the rise in America in the wake of October 7th. It’s on the rise on college campuses. Sometimes criticism of Israel or defense of Palestinians is explicitly antisemitic, sometimes it is implicitly antisemitic, and sometimes it incorporates classic antisemitic tropes. Sometimes people of bad faith take advantage of the ambiguity.
I don’t blame Jews who feel under siege in America or on campus, even if I sometimes disagree with their interpretation of criticisms of Israel. Feelings are not right or wrong, and in the face of so much overt Jew-hatred, I understand a tendency to interpret ambiguous statements in the worst way possible. I think we should feel compassion and empathy for people who feel that way.
None of that is solved by pretending hard questions are easy. None of that is solved by letting demagogues and hucksters take advantage of the moment to push their agenda. None of that is solved by contributing to what America is becoming — stupider and meaner.
more from Andrew Sullivan:
"This is the same president [Harvard] who watched a brilliant and popular professor, Carole Hooven, be effectively hounded out of her position after a public shaming campaign by one of her department’s DEI enforcers, and a mob of teaching fellows, because Hooven dared to state on television that biological sex is binary. This is the president of a university where a grand total of 1.46 percent of faculty call themselves “conservative” and 82 percent call themselves “liberal” or “very liberal.” This is the president of a university which ranked 248th out of 248 colleges this year on free speech (and Penn was the 247th), according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Harvard is a place where free expression goes to die."
The critics who keep pointing out “double standards” when it comes to the inflammatory speech of pro-Palestinian students miss the point. These are not double standards. There is a single standard: It is fine to malign, abuse and denigrate “oppressors” and forbidden to do so against the “oppressed.”
Freedom of speech in the Ivy League extends exclusively to the voices of the oppressed; they are also permitted to disrupt classes, deplatform or shout down controversial speakers, hurl obscenities, force members of oppressor groups — i.e. Jewish students and teachers in the latest case — into locked libraries and offices during protests, and blocked from classrooms. Jewish students have even been assaulted — at Harvard, at Columbia, at UMass Amherst, at Tulane. Assaults by woke students used to be rare, such as the 2017 mob at Middlebury that put Allison Stanger in a neck brace — but since 10/7, they’re intensifying. "
Rich and other dedicated radical leftists? - aka Lying liars who lie?
Lie lie and more lies.
Andrew Sullivan nails it with this:
"If a member of an oppressor class says something edgy, it is a form of violence. If a member of an oppressed class commits actual violence, it’s speech."
That’s why many Harvard students instantly supported a fundamentalist terror cult that killed, tortured, systematically raped and kidnapped Jews just for being Jews in their own country. Because they have been taught it’s the only moral position to take. They’ve diligently read their Fanon, and must be puzzled over what the problem is. Palestinians are victims of a “colonial,” “white,” “settler-state” and any violence they commit is thereby justified. "
It would be wrong to see this as a function merely of old-school anti-Semitism. The new anti-Semitism is simply a subsidiary of the entire rubric of “anti-Whiteness” that is taught as the supreme principle of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” DEI does not mean and has never meant diversity, equity and inclusion for all. It means active support for the “oppressed” against the “oppressors.” It means challenging “whiteness,” as represented by individual white people. "
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Me? btw - that's why it is important to mock the White Left in these situations. Why are white leftists exempt? They are white, too. so they are oppressors, too. You don't get a pass- radical leftist white leftists. You NBC white left types are oppressors too. even bigger oppressors because you are also lying liars who lie.
I'm strongly on the side of Israel in this conflict. I just wish they were even limply on my side as a heterosexual, biological woman.
Tina, the limp part can be explained by the significant number of the loudest bug-eyed lefties that are flaming homosexuals and trannies and Karens and cucks. Your admirers don't have a limp problem.
- Krumhorn
Here - the link.
Love the photo of the NBC-esque white leftist morally confused female scolds who run the DEI el presidente elite college shit-shows.
I'll bet Amy Wax is smiling and thinking about an old Chinese adage today:
"If you wait by the river long enough, eventually the bodies of your enemies will float by."
None of that is solved by pretending hard questions are easy. None of that is solved by letting demagogues and hucksters take advantage of the moment to push their agenda. None of that is solved by contributing to what America is becoming — stupider and meaner.
You are utterly (possibly, willfully) blind to the reality that the goal of intifada is the destruction of Israel which is functionally nothing less than the elimination of the Jews. Israel was designed to be the one safe place on the planet for the Jews. The chant to 'globalize the intifada' is a naked invitation to violence against Jews anywhere.
I honestly do not give a rat's ass about whatever historical claims Palestinians think they have to the land and the inequity of the formation of the Israeli state. The Palestinians live in shit because they are determined to live in shit. Gaza is prime real estate with 25 miles of Mediterranean coast in a space larger than Manhattan and less dense in population. They have received hundreds of billions of $$ in support including from Israel...and they cannot manage to make the desert bloom. Just look at what remains after Israel forced 8,000 Jewish settlers to leave 21 Gaza settlements. It's now just plain shit.
And let's be real about who has dominated the process of driving us "to what America is becoming — stupider and meaner". That would be you bug-eyed lefties who, as I never tire of pointing out, are nasty and hateful little shits.
- Krumhorn
Freedom of speech in the Ivy League extends exclusively to the voices of the oppressed
... and the category "oppressed" is assumed to be fixed and immutable, and to be defined exclusively by the Left, irrespective of - here I go again - facts on the ground.
Hamas doesn't even have an army, and they're fighting one of the greatest powers on the planet, but you clowns are still comparing them to the Confederates.
Your lies stretch credibility to extremes.
That last comment is on the wrong thread. Pardon./
Israel was designed to be the one safe place on the planet for the Jews.
I lost a comment earlier today on this very point, so thanks, Krumhorn, for the opening! Let me try to recreate what I said and lost - perhaps more succinctly:
Jews of the Diaspora have been persecuted everywhere they've gone, in ways ranging from ghettoization to mass murder. They have, of course, been tiny minorities in all these places. Post WWII, post their worst single persecution, the world decided to allow them one tiny place - a place of tremendous historical significance to them as a people - where they could be a majority, where they would not be subject to the persecutions they'd suffered and endured throughout their history.
The best interpretation that can be put on "From the River to the Sea" is "The Jews must leave the Holy Land and again be a minority everywhere," which reopens the door to persecution of all Jews.
We all know what the worst interpretation is.
Meanwhile, the artificially created category "Palestinians" would blend seamlessly into the majority of every nation surrounding Israel, because they are the same people, ethnically, culturally, and religiously. But no one wants them, because, first, they're like three generations in to UN-created aggrievedness and entitlement, and, second, their continued existence as a separate "ethnic identity" ensures that there is always, as needed, a pretext to re-diasporize the Jews.
Or worse.
Does this mean Charles Murray can give talks on campus again?
How about Donald Trump?
French endorses 'disempowering' the DEI programs and embracing viewpoint diversity, but neither of these seem likely. Also, if he only 'chuckled' at Pamela Paul's column then he isn't sufficiently alarmed at what has happened to education.
Jamie said...
"Israel was designed to be the one safe place on the planet for the Jews."
After the Paris bombing in 2015, Netanyahu beckoned all the Jews to come to Israel, forgetting Iran had just threatened to nuke the place the day before.
This is NOT going to end well.
"... and she quoted a school glossary that uses the term 'folx.' Why spell the word with an 'x'? Because some apparently believe the letter 's' in 'folks' renders the term insufficiently inclusive."
I think the truth is simpler than that. I think someone just let a careless spelling error out and and had to scramble with some pseudo-intellectual nonsense to cover for it.
When I’m trying to decide on tactics, if I have a choice between Saul Alinsky and serial failure David French, I know I Better Call Saul.
He understood that you need to hold your enemies to their own rules, and then make them choke on those rules. And then you can start to negotiate.
40 or so Islamic countries is just fine.
But one single, tiny Jewish nation is somehow always “problematic”.
Huh.
Jamie said...
"Israel was designed to be the one safe place on the planet for the Jews."
After the Paris bombing in 2015, Netanyahu beckoned all the Jews to come to Israel, forgetting Iran had just threatened to nuke the place the day before.
Not the context of my statement. I was saying that Israel is the one place where Jews could be in the majority, not that Jews wouldn't face threats from jihadists. My point was that the best light in which "From the River to the Sea" can be viewed is "Back to the minority ghettos in every country where you can be picked off, Jews!"
The fact that Iran wants them all dead wherever they are is irrelevant - except insofar as it doesn't exactly reflect positively on the Palestinians who are also in that camp.
Trying to persuade the academics that they are hypocritical, or even just wrong, is a waste.
They're on the side of Hamas, and they are rooting for their team.
holdfast said...
40 or so Islamic countries is just fine.
But one single, tiny Jewish nation - placed right where people are already living but told to leave with murder and machine guns - is somehow always “problematic”.
Huh
That's a tough one to figure out, is it?
Bunkypotatohead said...
"Trying to persuade the academics that they are hypocritical, or even just wrong, is a waste."
Because they're correct.
"They're on the side of Hamas, and they are rooting for their team."
And you mind is a cartoon.
I would agree, except that ship sailed long ago. If we do not hold them to the standards they have set, they will continue to apply it unequally. As it is, the laws on who can say what about whom are applied the same way the Jim Crow laws were applied in the South long ago. For instance, a literacy requirement to vote makes a lot of sense....until you realize the only ones it applied to were black. Then it is discrimination. Which is what we have on college campus' today. I dislike hate speech laws, if speech is not hateful to someone it does not need protection, so free speech is going to result in some hate speech.
French concludes (and I agree): "[P]rotect students from harassment... But do not protect students from speech.... The answer to campus hypocrisy isn’t more censorship. It’s true liberty. Without that liberty, the hypocrisy will reign for decades more."
Bullshit. Then you just get into fights about what qualifies as "true harassment", where it turns out that saying "murder all Jews/Trumpers/pro-lifers" is NOT "true harassment", but saying "trans women are mentally diseased men" IS "true harassment".
Either you protect people from ALL "hurtful" speech, in which case everything just has to STFU, or you tell anyone who is "hurt" to grow the fuck up.
But for damn sure: if ANY speech is "too hateful" to be allowed, then any and all calls for genocide of Jews is NOT allowed.
Which means you call he speech police and crush the hell out of anyone who says "from the river to the sea", or supports "infatada", or supports Hamas.
But until such a time as ALL "speech codes" have been repealed, every one of the pro-genocide the Jews people needs to face the full impact of those rules.
Or else the rule non-enforcers need to be destroyed for their support of genocide
You might say I am being more than usually uncharitable with my comments. That’s because I think people falling for Stefanik’s gambit have been more than usually gullible. They’ve become useful idiots for evil. They’ve become the dupes of people who will wave the banner of “fight antisemitism” while pushing Great Replacement Theory. They’ve become the patsies of people who transparently want to use Jews as an instrument and excuse to suppress speech they don’t like. They’ve become the creatures of cynical, dishonest politicians who want to treat hard things like they are simple to rile up mobs.
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