One of many articles.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/10/31/antisemitism-college-campuses-jewish-hamas-gaza/
The reality jewish students/people do not share the same protections as other minority groups in our society, unfortunately. Even some of our House leaders espouse the hateful views.
I think that is a slippery slope when one argues one group doesn’t share the same protections as others. Unless you have walked in the other person’s shoes, you really don’t know.
Many free speech advocates, including the often cited F.I.R.E. organization would disagree. Unless the speech poses a true threat ("statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals” (Va. v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003))) it is protected.
How this plays out in real life is that college campuses have been roundly criticized for taking actions against all sorts of hate speech, including blatant antisemitism by alt-right groups and figures.
For an example specifically addressing your statement, when Harvard took a stand against antisemitism by rescinding an admissions offer when they found out an applicant had written, among other things, “Kill all the f***ing Jews,” F.I.R.E not only strenuously objected, F.I.R.E continues to use the instance as an example as why Harvard finished last in their free speech ratings.
My question is why suddenly many of the same people who criticize Harvard for standing against that sort of antisemitism, are now mad that Harvard isn’t shutting down those protesting against Israel? Seems they want action against Israel’s perceived enemies, and aren’t so concerned with consistency or free speech.
@mtmind , you make it sound like poor Harvard, “roundly criticized” because it had been anti-free speech in the past, finally decided to get it right and go full out free speech, then got jumped on because, I guess, no good deed goes unpunished. That’s an improbable reading of Harvard’s history on this subject, given that it had, according to Steven Pinker, “flagrantly flouted” free speech principles for a long time, and not only in the case you cited: It had “persecuted scholars who said there are two sexes, or who signed an amicus brief taking the conservative side in a Supreme Court deliberation…Harvard’s subzero FIRE rating reveals many other punishments of politically incorrect peccadillos.” How was it that this long history was peremptorily dismissed without comment by Harvard’s President? Did the criticism of FIRE finally wound her into a recantation which she didn’t, however, care to announce to the world until the moment the congresswoman pressed her for reasons why this situation was being treated so differently from all others?
Your question pressing Gay’s critics to be consistent has some cogency (though saying that they want to “shut down those protesting against Israel” is whitewashing the reality of these protests). But Gay’s defenders might more cogently be asked this: Did you defend the perpetrators of those “politcally incorrect peccadillos” punished by Harvard and a multitude of other universities? Will you defend their right to free speech in future?
Sorry, but I don’t consider statements like, “Kill all the Jews" to be merely “politically incorrect right wing peccadillos.” The “punishment” of rescinding the acceptance was entirely consistent with Harvard’s policies and there is a long line of precedence. That this would the go-to example for F.I.R.E. is further indication of the absurdity of their rankings. Colleges need be collegial and that is so far beyond the line it shouldn’t even need be discussed.
As for Pinker’s/Ackman’s two examples, they expose the superficiality and triviality of their complaints:
Both examples are of thin-skinned scholars who believe that they are entitled to speak without anyone else being entitled to challenge them. Neither were persecuted by Harvard.
So no. I won’t be defending the right of a lecturer trying to shut up and punish a graduate student who called her transphobic on twitter.
And no. I won’t be defending a professor who didn’t like that students were hurt and offended by his past writings, so he wants Harvard to do I don’t even know what?
As for the current protests, they aren’t comparable to the nonsense about lecturers getting their feelings hurt, and I don’t think I have “whitewashed the reality of the protests.” In my opinion any calling for death or destruction of Jews should be expelled, whether or not it would qualify as free speech protection in a different setting. But protests against the actions of Israel’s government must be allowed, provided the protests abide by the tpm rules. I understand this is a difficult issue for many and it is a difficult issue for me, but that’s how I view it.
ETA: I see my post has been edited and the accurate (but despicable) quote of some of what was said to earn the rescission of acceptance has been altered. The accurate quote is here . . . Harvard Rescinds Offer To Parkland Survivor Kyle Kashuv For Racial Slurs : NPR
Something tells me, @mtmind , that when a conservative undergoes any form of social ostracism, departmental discipline, deplatforming or outright firing, it will always turn out to be the fault of the poor deluded heretic himself and not a matter of free speech at all. I reckon that’s how you’d see the cases of Roland Fryer, Ronald Sullivan, David Kane, Devin Buckley, J. Mark Ramsayer and Carole Hooven, to name a few of the many that FIRE has taken up the cudgels to support in their troubles on the Harvard campus, often on Claudine Gay’s watch as Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Why is it, one wonders, that it’s always the conservatives, small a minority as they are, who are the ones always in trouble? To ask the question is to answer it. However, you’d think the principle of diversity would help them out here, rather than make them reluctant even to voice their opinions in the company of their colleagues and fellows.
There are acceptable views and unacceptable ones. Underlying that reality is the real reason - not the phony one of devotion to free speech - the Harvard President and, to be fair, much of the Harvard community are reluctant to curb the excesses of the present demonstrations. As Nicholas Christakis, a man with some experience of the phenomenon of defenestration, has noted: At Harvard “‘decolonize’ is in the title of 7 courses and the descriptions of 18 more. ‘Oppression’ and ‘liberation’ are in the descriptions of more than 80 courses. ‘Social Justice’ in more than 100.” There’s a reason a certain narrative has been imposed on the events in Gaza.
Of course, complainig about such things is just nonsense in your book, bad faith, failure to accept the natural consequences of holding erroneous views. The health of open discourse on the Harvard campus is of little consequence. The real action is a world away.
Please don’t just make things up to serve your rhetorical purpose.
Harvard didn’t persecute the two examples you brought up and it is too far afield from the topic for me to go through all your new examples. But as for those two examples, free speech is a two way street. One person’s social ostracism is another’s freedom of association, whether the first likes it or not.
So? Where is the approved “academic freedom” list of what can be offered?
And finishing with a flourish of further false representations of my views. Naturally.
If we agree on nothing else, can we at least agree that I get to write my own posts? Without your help? If not, I’m afraid you’ll have to continue speaking for me without any of my input.
The problem, of course, is that FIRE conflates everything under the sun as an abrogation of someone’s 1st Amendment rights. Thus, if you are discussing whether a single Harvard student has ever been expelled for hate speech - it’s easy to deflect the discussion to faculty employment practices instead. Different stakeholders. Different yardsticks. In the case of students, the university is really trying to act as a referee between fundamentally emotional and contentious contemporaries; the fact that one group of students may want to “cancel” another is of significance only to the extent that it may boil over into violence. Do you think Greek societies, eating clubs and sports teams shy away from cancel culture? I don’t think they do. YMMV.
@circuitrider , I’m addressing the topic of this thread - the College response to terrorism in Israel - and am asserting that the softball treatment of the pro-Palestinian protests is linked to the hardball treatment in Harvard and other elite institutions of voices that dissent from the dominant campus ideology of our day. This is a bigger deal than the micro-aggressions perpetrated by frat boys. It is a climate of opinion under which the frat boys get punished but the agitators are left to do their thing, with the support of the administration and most of the faculty. I’ll take Steven Pinker’s account of this in preference to that of @mtmind.
To understand the linkage of this ideology to the subject of this thread one need only consider the attitudes of college-age Americans revealed by their answer to the question posed in a recent Harvard/Harris poll: “Do you think Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors or is that a false ideology?” Two out of three between the ages of 18-24 labelled the Jews as “oppressors.” At the elite schools, where all those courses in “oppression” and “decolonization” are taught, the figure would undoubtedly be higher. That’s the result of an elite ideological education. If only it stayed there it would be bad enough, but as a wit once remarked, “we are all living on campus now.”
Again, what frat boys are we talking about?
You’re the one that brought the frat boys in to it. You must have had something in mind.
My point was that Harvard frat boys have gone largely un-punished in ways that ordinary people would recognize as punishment (i.e., separation from the college.) But, maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps you have examples that would support your theory that Harvard has a double standard when it comes to hate -speech?
Unfortunately, the distinction between being Jewish and the political notion of “Zionism” have been so muddled and wrongly intertwined by those who should know better.
I am thinking of decertifications of particular fraternities because of supposed microaggessions, often in the form of offensive halloween costumes. Do you deny that frats are in the crosshairs at many universities for such reasons? Perhaps it’s mainly because they’re simply bastions of old-time male bumptiousness, which somehow makes them right-wingers and dangerous ones at that. You could put in this category, too, the rescension some years ago of the admissions of those trash-talking Harvard admitees, likely would-be frat boys. Had they simply solemnly declared all the reasons the Jews are oppressors rather than obnoxiously larking about for effect, well, let’s say the “context” would have saved them.
Um, I’m familiar with fraternities being decertified for drunken parties during which sexual assaults were alleged. I have no nostalgia for that sort of “old-time bumptiousness”.
You’re undoubtedly correct about the entanglement, @Canuckdad , but another result in that same poll suggests that young people are more convinced that Jews are oppressors than they are anti-Israel. The question was, “In this conflict do you support Israel or Hamas?” The answer was an equal 50/50. To me that result was shocking in its own right, but what’s even more shocking is that of those who say they support Israel, some 16 percent also say that Jews (as distinct from Israel) are oppressors. That’s indicating to me that antisemitism is not just about Israel. Our youth are being taught to see oppression wherever they see success.
Or perhaps they are just drawing that conclusion since they are being taught that non-success must equal oppressed (by definition).
Success? That is a rabbit hole this discussion should stay out of. The question is indicative of the issue forcing a choice between two sides. Maybe a fairer question would offer a third choice.
This thread should be focused on college responses to the Israel-Hamas conflict. The moderators have given a good bit of leeway, but recent posts have strayed too far and are more appropriate in the Politics Forum. Thanks for your understanding.