Moral leadership isn’t on the agenda for colleges anymore.
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Are you agreeing or disagreeing with Fareed Zakaria here?
American universities have been neglecting excellence in order to pursue a variety of agendas — many of them clustered around diversity and inclusion. It started with the best of intentions. Colleges wanted to make sure young people of all backgrounds had access to higher education and felt comfortable on campus. But those good intentions have morphed into a dogmatic ideology and turned these universities into places where the pervasive goals are political and social engineering, not academic merit.
As the evidence produced for the recent Supreme Court case on affirmative action showed, universities have systematically downplayed the merit-based criteria for admissions in favor of racial quotas.
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I agree with him. And, on this matter, with you, it appears.
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Thanks for the link. He is saying a lot of what should be absolutely uncontroversial. I encourage everyone to read it in its entirety.
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The President’s prep is still a head-scratcher to me. Yes, the 1st Amendment is important – for government and public colleges. Not these 3 private Unis where their private school code of conduct controls. And that is what they could not explain. Magill of Penn is a former Law Dean, so she surely knows the difference between the 1st Amend, the school’s code of conduct, and plain old common sense.
“Critics said the answers appeared to be too focused on whether conduct would violate the First Amendment.”
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“One Law Firm Prepared Both Penn and Hаrvard for Hearing”
If you watch the infamous clip of the hearings’ culmination carefully, you will note at this timestamp a lawyery-looking gentleman seated behind President Gay nodding his head ever so slightly right along her every carefully-rehearsed word not dissimilar to a doting parent nodding tensely as their little prodigy is performing at the piano recital.
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As I suspected, they were prepped primarily by lawyers and left common sense at the door.
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Perhaps their real issue was that they have no answer for their double standards on speech:
"But the deep problem with their testimonies was not fundamentally about calls for genocide or free speech. It was about double standards — itself a form of antisemitism, but one that can be harder to detect.
The double standard is this: Colleges and universities that for years have been notably censorious when it comes to free speech seem to have suddenly discovered its virtues only now, when the speech in question tends to be especially hurtful to Jews."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/opinion/antisemitism-college-free-speech.html
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Only if they reside in Oakland…
“In a Thursday statement to the News, Yale President Peter Salovey updated his response to a question asked to three peer presidents during the Tuesday Congressional hearing on campus antisemitism; he suggested in his full answer that calls for genocide of the Jewish people would violate Yale’s policies.”
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unwarranted greatly exaggerated, absolutely. No question.
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I am interested in how you have come to this determination that Jewish students fear of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus is greatly exaggerated.
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How recently have you spent time on Harvard’s campus?
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How long were you there for?
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Are you Jewish?
Please take a look at the embedded video…
Do you think a Jewish student walking past over 1,000 students at Widener library shouting “Hamas’s actions are not terrorism it’s freedom fighting” would be “greatly exaggerating” their fears of antisemitism?
Thanks is in advance for your insight.
I highlight this OP to reinforce my questions are on topic as @OhiBro seems to have some unique perspective or direct experience that I hope he will share. Perhaps he can comfort some parents that fears of antisemitism are greatly exaggerated.
@OhiBro certainly does add a point of view…
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Might I remind members of the forum rules: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others."
and
“College Confidential forums exist to discuss college admission and other topics of interest. It is not a place for contentious debate. If you find yourself repeating talking points, it might be time to step away and do something else… If a thread starts to get heated, it might be closed or heavily moderated.”
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I think the distinction he is trying to make is between being antisemitic and anti-Israel. To many people - and I imagine for the most part non-Jewish people - these are two very separate things. One can be vehemently anti-Israel (both in terms of its existence as a state and/or the nature of its governance especially as it relates to Palestinian rights and self-determination), but feel no animosity at all towards Jewish people in general. But, yes, I understand that to some/many/most? Jewish students such anti-Israel statements - especially the most extreme - could make the lines feels very blurry or even blatantly crossed. So I guess it could be discord between intention and interpretation. In that case, which takes precedence? Ideally, it would be interpretation and people would take more care in what they say and how they say it, taking into consideration how it might make others feel. But I think the crux of the argument - as very poorly expressed by the college presidents prepped by their legal teams - is that while that might be preferred, it is not required. If protestors are expressing a political opinion (anti-Israel), then that is not necessarily a personal attack against other students.
And, personally, while I would find such a statement horribly cruel and wildly unjustified, I am not sure I would see it as inherently antisemitic. I would see it as anti-Israel. I am not Jewish so, again, it is likely much easier for non-Jewish to separate the two and also to fail to understand how many Jewish people don’t or even can’t separate the two. And hence part of the problem that makes the chasm between the two sides seem currently unbridgeable. It would be nice if there were more forums on college campuses and elsewhere where each side could listen and truly hear the other. But I don’t think that’s likely to happen in our current climate, unfortunately.
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We as a family are entirely secular of mixed background and not in any way Zionists. My kids however have visited Israel as part of Brithright.
The Hamas terrorists when committing their atrocities however would not have drawn any distinction.
Similar kids to mine walking on their college campuses (their homes and communities) being confronted by 1,000 neighbors uttering such statements would not be comforted by such opaque nuances.
It is antisemitism and to be honest any expressions of support for such acts of barbarism should be condemned. Similarly acts of terror by Israeli settlers or war atrocities by Israel should also be protested and condemned.
There should be no what aboutism when talking about children and pregnant women being tortured, raped, kidnapped and killed. This isn’t as complicated as people seem to want to make it.
Supporting Hamas isn’t anti Israel or even anti Jew, it is anti humanity.
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Hamas would not, but my point was I believe some/many of the protestors do and that it is likely far easier for non-Jewish people to draw boxes around these things. This is not at all to say that they are correct to do so. It is simply to say that when spouting anti-Israel rhetoric, they are not necessarily associating or intending it to be broadly anti-semitic. Of course, that doesn’t lessen the pain of Jewish people who may indeed view it that way. But again intention vs interpretation…There is a wide gap between the two and perhaps genuine, sincere engagement could lessen that gap, but that doesn’t seem to be likely right now, so there is likely little way to resolve any of this currently. I don’t think either side really hears the other over the heat of their emotions.
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I hear you I just disagree that the responsibility of “putting up with it” should fall on Jewish students. Particularly in a world where thankfully all other minorities or marginalized groups are appropriately protected.
Imagine for instance in the aftermath of the Pulse massacre where 49 innocent people were killed at an LGBQ nightclub, if Right Wing Christian student groups gathered in mass on campus and expressed loudly that the shooter was acting out G-Ds will. Now imagine these protestors claim their speech is protected free speech and that they have nothing against the LGBQ community. Instead they claim they are “just” protesting promiscuity when supporting the murderer. Of course they would be appropriately condemned and their protests not tolerated.
Jewish students should be afforded the same protection and treatment. Calling Hamas freedom fighters when their stated goal is to kill Jews, is to define a policy of killing Jews as an acceptable belief system.
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I’m going to have to push back on this statement. Hard. It is not true and has never been true.
I don’t want to have to list out all the violence and lack of protection minorities and women faced and continue to face on campuses and all over the world. Frankly, none of us have that much time either.
I also want to push back on the idea of trying to contrast one marginalized group’s treatment with another. They all have been/are treated poorly and it is unacceptable always. No need to try to rank in some sort of repugnant “who has had it worse order”.
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In fact you are correct. My point (poorly stated) being a world in which thankfully society is trying to advance itself by protecting those who are marginalized or minorities. While advances are being made more to do, but my comments were directed specifically to college campuses.
I do however think the use of analogy and comparison is an effective way of highlighting hypocrisy and inconsistency when colleges are obligated to be equitable across their entire communities.
This thread is specific to college reactions not a broader discussion of societies treatment of various groups.
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