This is very much in line with what I have said far upthread, and in other threads. Public attitude toward Jewish people is strongly positive. While some speech related to current events may present as anti-Jewish, the fundamentals don’t indicate an anti-Jewish sentiment. Jews are loved in the US. @worriedmomucb described the intention-vs-interpretation gap far more eloquently than I am capable of.
You’re very welcome. I come for, and appreciate the perspective of others, and I offer my own. That any of this is surprising suggests that someone’s perspective has been needed. Here goes…
Probably. Reasoning through this would require off-topic discussions, though, including the arc through time, DEI, politics, etc.
No, I don’t hide my profile. Having my finger on the pulse of society is what punditry requires. If a parent values my perspective, I can provide.
One if the “nuances” that seems to be left out is that for many years the policy on these same campuses was “words=violence” and this idea was the underpining of many school policies as well as numerous student led, (at times violent) protests and shutdowns of speakers or other student groups whose very speech or ideology was deemed too injurious and violent towards certain students to be allowed to proceed; regardless of the fact that those same protestors and students were not required to listen and could simply choose not to attend the event or interact with that student group.
Now the Presidents of those very same schools are backtracking on the words=violence mantra but only with respect to Jewish students and not only is it creating cognitive dissonance but it’s pulling back the curtain on the beliefs of the leadership of these institutions and placing it squarely in the public eye. It’s similar to what happened during Covid with zoom classes….the public and alumni have a front row seat what’s been going on behind the Ivy covered fences surrounding these schools….and the view isn’t great.
The second Ken White post I linked to discusses exactly the issues you bring up (no heroes in free speech wars).
But I think there is an awful lot of conflating student held positions with administrative positions. School Administrations haven’t been censoring speech even as some students have made the speech=violence arguments.
Again, I would refer back to the Ken White article as it says all this and I don’t want to just repeat what I linked to.
Agreed!? Has anyone questioned that the quota system of 100 years ago was discriminating?
No group can make/dictate the binding determination on behalf of everyone else, that speech or actions they disagree with, is motivated by anything-phobia, or anti-anything for targeting them? (Brexit was foolish – but I’m not Anti-British, even if 51% felt I am.)
Specially the topic “College Response to Terrorism in Israel”, very clearly defines the issue being about an entity - not a race/religion!
The world should know that Liz Magill is a very good person and a talented leader who was beloved by her team. She is not the slightest bit antisemitic. Working with her was one of the great pleasures of my life. Worn down by months of relentless external attacks, she was not herself last Tuesday. Over prepared and over lawyered given the hostile forum and high stakes, she provided a legalistic answer to a moral question, and that was wrong. It made for a dreadful 30-second sound bite in what was more than five hours of testimony.
I wish Liz well in her future endeavors. I believe that in the fullness of time people will come to view the story of her presidency at Penn very differently than they do today. I hope that some fine university will in due course be wise enough to give her a second chance, in a more supportive community, to lead. I equally hope that, after a well deserved break, she wants that role.
A single smirk at a political circus warrants losing one’s job? The X account for the committee that held the hearing, aside from reading as though a 12-year-old controls it, reveals that the purpose of the hearing had nothing to do with antisemitism.
So, I find this claim of yours to be a bit problematic. When people start down this direction of thinking, the opinions of Jews end up being discounted. “You just see antisemitism in everything because you are Jewish.”
Being Jewish in itself doesn’t make it inherently more difficult to distinguish between these types of rhetoric, or inherently more difficult for the person to be able to entertain criticism of Israel. (Many American Jews don’t have much of a feeling of connection to Israel at all. And many Jewish Israelis are extremely critical of their own government.)
Perhaps you’re thinking of specific individuals you know who seem to confuse these types of rhetoric. Personally I can think of both Jewish and non-Jewish individuals who confuse them a lot… and I can think of both Jewish and non-Jewish individuals who make a very clear distinction.
It is CRITICAL that we derive the right message–and avoid deriving the wrong one–from Liz Magill’s “voluntary” resignation. The wrong one is that universities like Penn need more restrictions of speech. The right one is that double standards will no longer be tolerated.
He also threw the other two Presidents under the bus:
Former President Liz Magill last week made a very unfortunate misstep—consistent with that of two peer university leaders sitting alongside her—after five hours of aggressive questioning before a Congressional committee. Following that, it became clear that her position was no longer tenable, and she and I concurrently decided that it was time for her to exit.
I’ve been quietly worried about that in the past 2 months - but never dared to say out loud:
If people (who unreservedly condemned the terrorist killings) might increasingly become uneasy about one side seemingly controlling much of the conversation, when prior to that there had not actually had been resentment?
I am a Jewish parent, and agree with both you and @circuitrider on this one. It is a catch 22 for us. The narrative then becomes that the Jews are shutting down free speech and anyone who criticizes Israel. It plays into the age old anti semitic tropes that the Jews and their money are controlling the world.
My S22 is a sophomore at a “public Ivy”. They have not tried to censor/abolish the SJP or shut down their protests. A couple of days ago someone graffitied the student center with " your tuition funds genocide" and a small group of protesters interrupted a symposium by the former secretary of defense. I asked my son about these incidents and whether the school is disciplining students who violate the code of conduct. His response was probably not but " it’s whatever. The tactics of the protesters are alienating other students who might otherwise be sympathetic to their cause."
Well, we can talk about “double standards”. I don’t recall anything in recent years that could quite compare to an Ivy League president resigning because of a perceived insensitivity to racism, but the Yale “Halloween Costume Fight” some years back, certainly comes close: Yale’s big fight over sensitivity and free speech, explained - Vox
IIRC, the residential faculty advisor (they used to be called, “Masters” without any sense of irony) of one of the gated dormitories took exception to a university advisory to refrain from indulging in blackface, yellowface, stereotypical ethnic costumes and other types of insulting behavior during Halloween. The dueling emails highlighted what seemed to be a conversation that needed to be had but because the students most angered by their advisor’s (and her husband’s) minimization of their concerns, did not have access to generations of wealth or powerful voices in Congress to make themselves heard, their behavior became the issue rather than the issue they were trying to address.
