Same reason I suspect lawyers on CC comment on investment banking, college admissions, water bottles, etc.
Because it is a friendly and welcoming place where people can post without their intelligence being questioned.
Sorry if your question was rhetorical, I wasn’t sure so I responded directly.
Agree. The snippet that circuit posted itself is incorrect. OTOH, the rest of the column made sense. I wonder if an editor messed up a cut-and-paste?
My student will be attempting to transfer from a LAC in the northeast for other reasons. I am interested to know the situation is so bad on some campuses that any parents here have students who are transferring from your current university due to concerns about the way in which their current college is responding to these issues. There are a few colleges we have crossed off the list that they might otherwise have applied to based on these issues. Thank you
The irony is that if the three presidents who were grilled by Stefanick had given the “incorrect” answer rather than relying on Harvard’s lawyer, one or more of them would still have their jobs.
not necessarily. If they would have admitted that ‘calling for the genocide of jews’ violates their school policy, the follow-up question woudl be, ‘why have they then failed to do anything about this violation of their own policy’? And in MIT’s case, is being banned from a campus club an appropriate punishment for inciting violence?
The writer of that piece would say that the problem with the answers given by the Presidents was that they didn’t make the case by providing reasons. The piece does this, very lucidly and correctly, in my view. That’s something the Presidents would have had trouble doing in any event, both because of the setting and because of a prior history of suppressing speech on their campuses nowhere near as serious as the hypothetical that was put to them.
@roycroftmom , as a lawyer myself I can say that I’d be rich beyond the ill-gotten gleanings of my trade if I had a penny for every time I’ve heard a lawyer misconstrue the plain words of a statute or rule of law.
I guess I’m still not understanding what this is in reference to. There seems to be a narrative out there that has taken on the mantle of a Creation Myth that Harvard students are constantly being expelled for hate speech violations. I’m wondering why these instances never get publicized?
@circuitrider , I’m not contending that Harvard students are being “constantly expelled” for hate speech violations, merely that students falling foul of the code are subject to discipline and have been disciplined from time to time. I’m not sure there’s a public record of these, but it’s what sources closer to Harvard than you or me say. Steven Pinker, a Harvard prof, has referred to students being disciplined for mere peccadillos against political correctness. The Jewish students who have just launched a legal action against Harvard say in their claim that “Harvard requires students to take a training class that warns that they will be disciplined if they engage in sizeism, fatphobia, racism, transphobia or other disfavored behavior.” And: “Harvard aggressively enforces policies to address bias against other minorities and regularly disciplines students and faculty members who harass other groups or espouse viewpoints Harvard deems inappropriate.” Of course, the first of these reasons for disciplinary action is perfectly appropriate, the second not. To be fair, speech codes under which students may be disciplied for “microaggressions” in the form of incorrect phrasing on contested subjects exist on many campuses. It is against this background that I judged the hypothetical put to the Presidents to be much more serious than any of these.
Is it your contention that antisemitism would not be covered in such a warning?
Of course not. The Jewish kids are contending that Harvard should, but does not, enforce the code when they are the targets of hate speech - as opposed to the aggressiveness of its enforcement when other minorities are concerned.
My point in citing that passage was a different one. I was replying to your request for instances of students being disciplined for speech crimes. I don’t know where else to get that information than from students themselves. The quoted passage comes from Harvard students and refers to a training class in which it is made clear that students will be disciplined for a variety of speech infractions, of which racism is one category, along with sizeism, fatphobia, transphobia and other “disfavored behavior.”
And unfortunately, it doesn’t support the frankly absurd (and apparently unprovable) contention that Harvard takes allegations of fatphobia more seriously than it does allegations of antisemitism. In fact, it’s difficult not to read it as a cheap shot at all the other protected classes subsumed in that discrete set. It saddens me to think that even a small number of Harvard Jews would feel so isolated and vulnerable that their immediate response to a perceived antisemitic threat on campus would be to denigrate other marginalized people. The possibility that they may actually reflect the impulses of a majority of Harvard Jews is too horrific to contemplate.
Huh? it reads to me is that the Jewish students are suing to demand that antisemism is treated the same as the other 'isms in the training course.
I guess it depends on the context in which the snippet is read:
“The court documents allege a double standard exists at Harvard. It alleges that while students and faculty are permitted to advocate “the murder of Jews and the destruction of Israel” without consequences, the school requires students to take a class that “warns that they will be disciplined if they engage in sizeism, fatphobia, racism, transphobia, or other disfavored behavior.””
Further evidence that attorneys are not the best experts when it comes to advising college presidents how to govern their colleges. Any grade-school pupil could tell you that antisemitism is a form of racism. A “double standard” implies that Jews are not among the groups the training course was designed to protect.
yes, that is exactly what the current H students are claiming in their law suit.
(There are some academics on the right that have claimed that such training courses are only designed to protect the ‘oppressed’…)
Can you explain how having a course that attacks racism is evidence of a double-standard with regard to antisemitism?
@circuitrider , you have moved the goalposts - from a position that nobody at Harvard is being disciplined for speech crimes to one that it’s a good thing, per that training class, if they are. Which is it?
Incidentally, the threat of discipline must surely be a reason so many Harvard students feel they aren’t free to say what they think, as per FIRE’s survey and many quotations of that phenomenon. A misstep could lead to being reported by a fellow student and a disciplinary proceeding.
As for the double standard, you say correctly that it isn’t manifested in the words of that training course. Of course not. Words are easy, and they’re seldom the problem. The problem is in their application: some minority groups are more equal than others. George Orwell could tell that tale.
The one group benefiting from all this is lawyers.
Antisemitism is not racism. Jews come in all races: caucasian, african, asian.
My kid has had to live with on campus hate speech calling for the ethnic cleansing of the land of Israel by all means possible, and the murder of Jews worldwide, throughout their entire time at Harvard, and nothing has been done about it by the administration. The lawsuit is appropriate at this point. It should be expanded to every college that has permitted such hate speech on campus.