Rabbi David Wolpe, a highly respected Jewish leader from Southern California who is currently a visiting scholar at the Harvard Divinity School, resigned from Harvard’s antisemitism committee following Gay’s testimony in Congress.
Except the rescinding case was not an antisemitic one, but someone who expressed their racism to other groups. I’m sure there will be examples that come to light of rescinded admission for antisemitic views uncovered after the fact. When they do, please share. No point in arguing, I think their actions are hypocritical; you don’t.
Still, we also seem to disagree on whether schools should limit any speech on campus and when. Let’s leave it at that.
Interesting that the presidents of NYU and Columbia were spared of the congressional charade.
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The rabbi gave a great interview on CNN. Very nuanced, but unfortunately I can’t find a link to the video.
As noted by other posters, there is a big difference in protesting governments and policy and calling for the extermination of an entire group of people.
An MIT student president of the school Hillel was also on CNN and he said they had someone urinate on their building and shout racial slurs. There are now reports the man came back a second day and repeated the act on the window. IMO that person should be at least charged with public indecency.
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Consistent adherence to the Chicago Principles seems to greatly help schools in managing both this turmoil and expectations of university action. I wonder if more will sign up.
Some schools have free speech monitors, who are administrators trained in the issue and university regulations who appear at all protests to ensure the procedures are followed. That seems to work well, as far as I have seen. Neither student leaders nor faculty may be fully aware of the right procedures, but the monitors can inform them and ensure consistency in application.
Columbia adopted them in 2016…
Students trying to attend classes in the building would have crossed paths with demonstrators saying…
“On October 7, the Palestinian liberation fighters demonstrated their refusal to be dominated,” a woman speaking at the event said. “They showed the world that the Palestinian people will fight for freedom instead of quietly adapting to subjugation. They showed us that with creativity, determination, and combined strength the masses can accomplish great feats”.
I believe most Jewish students would find the statement that the atrocities committed on 10/7 were ”great feats” as threatening and not agree with your suggestion it is working well.
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Oh, I think Columbia and NYU ( and any school located in NYC) are in a category of their own. NYC seems to always be the epicenter of any protest, there are many interested spectators, and I am not sure there is much the administrators can do about that, regardless of what policies and procedures they adopt. NYC is unlike any other city here.
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https://www.axios.com/2023/12/08/penn-antisemitism-wharton-magill-resign
Wharton’s board of advisors wrote in a letter to Magill that it has held “an unprecedented” eight meetings since its regularly scheduled Nov. 16 meeting, mostly focused on student safety and other community issues related to antisemitism and “hate-based behavior” on Penn’s campus.
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The meeting concluded with a series of unanimous resolutions that were included in the letter to Magill.
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Those resolutions primarily focused on changing Penn’s code of conduct to, among other things, state that neither students, faculty, nor staff are to “celebrate or advocate for the murder, killing, genocide, or annihilation of any individual classmate or any group of individuals in our community.”
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Magill met around one week ago with Wharton’s board, but declined to make the requested changes. The board’s decision to request her resignation came following her congressional testimony.
I think we can expect that University leaders will not voluntarily appear before any Congressional hearing on any topic again for a very long time, if ever. Columbia’s president must be so happy she skipped it.
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It’s sad that this would even have to be stated or put in policy
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I am very conflicted on this. I hate what is going on on campuses, and I am all for squashing any time, place, and manner violations with an iron fist, deportations and all.
The hearings were extremely bad optics (I watched the whole thing, not just the 3-minute snippet that made the news). More needs to be done on the policy enforcement side, and overall culture side. But as satisfying as it might be in the moment to see some heads roll, once it gets into policing speech as such, it’s a slippery slope.
How long before it gets weaponized against, for example, those defending the usage of the terms “male” and “female” by accusing them of calling for trans genocide?
FIRE agrees:
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Thank you for sharing that article about the congressional hearings, and how the sound-bits are not representative of the context in which follow-up questions about student speech were posed, and answered.
Enos was a founding member of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, formed this year. In October he resigned, because, he said, “Some of the leadership led the charge to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on campus.”
When it comes to speech about Israel, there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around.
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It felt reminiscent of the anti-Communist witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee: “Are you now, or have you ever been, an anti-Zionist?”“I have a real problem with questions where you think there’s only one right answer,” said Enos. “You’re not asking a true question. You’re asking for some kind of loyalty display. …”
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My concern is any movement towards abandoning the notion of the University campus as a place for the free flow of ideas and speech. BUT, there is a fine line when students use their “freedoms” to push political and geopolitical agendas and hatred. Acts of violence, no matter, who perpetrates them, and for whatever reason, should never be justified against innocent people. The vast majority of people in the region are innocent and pawns in a very complex “political” endgame.
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The “rescinding” case was an antisemitic one, and I did share. The quote I provided (“Kill all the f***ing Jews.” )was a direct quote from the applicant who was rescinded. Click on the link for an article with the quote. This was, without a doubt, an antisemitic statement.
More broadly, antisemitism has been one of the main flashpoints of speech controversies on numerous campuses. Look up despicable antisemite Richard Spencer, for example. Many of same people who are complaining about protests in support of Palestinians were conspicuously absent from the conversation when it was alt-right (and mostly white/non-Muslim) antisemites trying to spread their hate on campuses, or worse they were condemning the colleges and students for not welcoming these white antisemites to the conversation. There is hypocrisy, but it doesn’t necessarily flow in the direction you suggest.
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Which is why “simple yes or no answers” we demand from students and leaders are not really as obvious as they seem – even less so with young people who haven’t refined yet the ability to carefully formulate their expressions, vs. us “old people” who have lived decades of becoming attuned to and navigate people’s sensibilities.
The victims of the violence from both sides, starting of course with the 10/7 terror victims, and the 10,000 since, and subsequent student victims here, must never be individually blamed. However, students should be allowed to question whether decades of history between the two warring parties created the fertile ground that leads both peoples in the region to accept/support what genuinely are unacceptable actions.
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Until the University reverses the contested policy and returns policymaking and disciplinary proceedings to the proper channels of student government, we will maintain a stance of non-cooperation.
And though the Student Governing Board does not condone the violation of University policy, we see it as incumbent upon us and all students to protect student government and to oppose policies that suppress student speech and limit the possibility of discourse on campus.
Created in the wake of 1968 campus protests against the Vietnam War and plans for a gymnasium in Morningside Park, SGB serves “students who are passionate about ideas, students who challenge the status quo, students who ask questions,” according to its website.
ETA:
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Specially with a women’s college, like Barnard, college leadership can easily tread on core principles when rushing to satisfy deep-pockets donors seeking to influence day-to-day operations.
“We’re a gender and sexuality studies department, we’re a feminist department, everything we do, all of our scholarship, is political,” Neferti Tadiar, professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, said.
A previous version of the political activity policy prohibited all “representatives of the College” from engaging in “certain activities in their Barnard work,” all of which were related to electoral and partisan politics. Janet Jakobsen (Professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies) said that this policy was typically sent to faculty during election cycles.
The new political activity policy of 13 November now restricts “all written communications that comment on specific actions, statements, or positions taken by public officials or governmental bodies at local, state, federal, and international levels; attempt to influence legislation; or otherwise advocate for an outcome related to actions by legislative, executive, judicial, or administrative bodies at local, state, federal, and international levels.”
Barnard then used the new policy to remove certain political speech from departmental websites.
There was a time when professors were called upon by government officials as advisors in understanding international developments and formulating donestic or foreign policy. I guess no longer at Barnard
I don’t think it should be a fine line. It should be a very bold line in the sand that isn’t crossed. IMO there is a big difference between people calling for an autonomous Palestine and those wanting the means to that end being destroying Israelis and Jews. And frankly, the opposite is true for me too. Those saying that destroying Gaza because “they are all terrorists or sympathizers” are doing the same thing.
We’ve lost the art of debate and discussion on college campuses. Too many times it devolves to shouting and name calling. There is a huge learning opportunity being lost.
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