This is getting tiresome. The New York Times tells us today that Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, has apologized for her congressional testimony earlier this week. Here's their summary:
Asked during Tuesday’s hearing whether urging the genocide of the Jewish people amounted to defying Harvard policies against bullying and harassment, Dr. Gay replied, “It can be, depending on the context.”
Yes, she said that. But she immediately added that it was harassment if it was "targeted at an individual":
Anti-semitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct and we do take action.
Politically speaking, Gay and the other presidents should have had the presence of mind to say that calling for genocide was vile and disgusting and had no place on their campuses. That's especially the case since they were dealing with a grandstanding jackass like Rep. Elise Stefanik. Then they could have added that although this is hard to accept, even vile anti-semitism is protected free speech unless etc. etc.
Apologizing for not doing that is the right thing to do. Nonetheless, it remains the case that Gay's answer was, in fact, the right one. Free speech is meaningless unless it applies to the most revolting and offensive speech too.
Reminder: The US is extreme. There is less protected speech in other countries which are as free or freer than the US.
"Free speech is meaningless unless it applies to the most revolting and offensive speech too."
That quote is simply one perspective.
When you point out that there is less protected speech in other countries, you are also pointing out one of the main reasons why we should be grateful to live in this one.
Nope. If I lived anywhere else in the developed world my life woyld be better than here.
Fare thee well.
+1
Pretty sad to have to apologise for being correct.
There's something else these presidents might have said, or at least might have addressed. At one point, the MIT president did say it:
"I have not heard calling for the genocide for [sic] Jews on our campus."
She seemed rattled, and her statement was garbled. That said, is anyone actually calling for any such genocide on these college campuses? It might have been reassuring to hear that question addressed. At the very least, it would have been informative, unlike Stefanik's showboating series of questions.
Yes, let's define our terms. Does saying that you support the intifada mean that you are calling for genocide? Of course Stefanik and others try to frame the questions so that this is the implication.
The college presidents might have been better prepared for this since it is an obvious point of dispute, but there is less excuse for the pundits who condemn the presidents without considering the ambiguities of the questions. They aren't being put on the spot in a live hearing and should have time to think about the complexities.
+1
Whether mass deportation is genocide is dependent on the context. On opposite ends of the spectrum:
A: An interloping invader rounds up and deports the existing population, spreading them out widely and deliberately engaging in forced assimilation in an effort to end their culture - clearly genocide even if not one person died
B: Under a UN-approved and mutually agreeable partition agreement, two peoples are physically separated into newly created countries for each and/or safe, reasonably wealthy countries where their rights would be protected, and those that are required to move compensated - clearly not genocide
Generally anyone talking about moving Jews out to solve the problem is close to B. People talking about moving Palestinians out are, unfortunately, more in the middle.
Anyone chanting "from the river to the sea" or supporting Intifada is pushing A.
Does anyone think a Harvard student group that supported the KKK and neo-Nazis fighting a race war to kill blacks and force mass deportation of blacks (presumably to Africa) would get the kid glove treatment at Harvard?
Remember - Harvard ranks dead last in FIRE's ranking of free speech at American universities.
Most of them were born in Israel. Most Palestinians were not.
If you want to go by ancestors, the Israelis can trace a longer history in the region than the Palestinians can.
I think it is pretty clear who the natives are and who the interlopers are unless you deliberately cherry pick a time window to exclude Israelis as native.
In these examples are the Israelis the interloping invaders or the existing population?
There are certainly elements of that in this dispute.
The bigger difference is that people talking about displacing Palestinians as a solution generally mean pushing them into inhospitable deserts controlled by authoritarian regimes, while people talking about displacing Jews as a solution always mean the US and Europe as the safe havens.
Most of them were born in Israel. Most Palestinians were not.
If you want to go by ancestors, the Israelis can trace a longer history in the region than the Palestinians can.
I think it is pretty clear who the natives are and who the interlopers are unless you deliberately cherry pick a time window to exclude Israelis as native.
"Longer history" is certainly questionable. I don't intend to imply that the Bible is historically accurate, but the Promised Land was already populated when Moses led the Children of Israel out of Egypt. Again according to the Bible, the Jews committed quite a bit of genocide in securing their little slice of paradise, but they didn't kill ALL the aboriginal occupants of the territory.
+1
This is the sticking point. Very few people will explicitly call for genocide - either through mass murder or mass deportation. Even with mass deportation, which falls under the definition of genocide that is typically used by experts, not all regular people include that in their definition.
When most people speak about other groups they dislike, they use much more ambiguous language. Are they calling for genocide? Are they just expressing anger? Are they advocating something that is decidedly not genocidal, but might possibly piss off others?
When someone says "from the river to the sea," are they advocating genocide against Jews, the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, or lovingly quoting the founding charter of Likud?
My guess is that most members of the GOP don't think it is a call for genocide when right-wing protesters shout "2nd amendment solutions" or "Jews will not replace us." I had a coworker who once loudly said in the middle of work that all Democrats should be shot. That wasn't very ambiguous, but she still got in no trouble for it!
From the river to the sea…
Supposedly the Harvard President did say a number of times that she found the speech vile but permitted.
The point I want to make is in the weeks and months prior, the "Weaponization of Government" Committee Stefanik sits on had numerous hearings with activists like Matt Taibby and Michael Smelleyberger where Stefanik and other Republicans tried to frame ANY government influence on others "Free Speech" (such as asking social media companies to enforce their own terms of service against posts that violate the KKK Act or sharing Hunter Biden revenge porn) as a severe betrayal of the 1st Amendment.
Now, a mere week after one of those hearings, Government Agent Stefanik is demanding private organizations police Free Speech she doesn't like. Sounds like something to bring to the Weaponization Committee!
stefanik supports the official republican position: only white christian nationalists are allowed to call for the extermination of the jews (or any other non-christian/non-european group)
“The only Jew Christians have liked is a dead one.”—Marc Maron
For what it's worth, Josh Marshall points out that they were tricked by Stefanik's assertion that support for an intifada is calling for genocide. Which is bullshit. You can't and shouldn't ban calls for intifada. (Stefanik may be a jackass, but she's a clever jackass.)
Having primed them with that, when she went back to questions about "calling for genocide", they assumed she was still talking about intifada, so they danced around the question. (And to be fair, if they'd said urging genocide should be banned, she'd have turned around and asked why they were permitting "genocidal" calls for intifada.)
" when she went back to questions about "calling for genocide""
It seems odd they didn't repeatedly point this trick out, because it is pretty obvious one. Each time she asked about "calling for genocide", they should have pointed the confusion, and then answer for both terms, i.e. what they think about "calling for genocide" and what they think about "support for an intifada".
About "intifada".
Why has the civilized world put up with Israeli incursions (theft of land) into Gaza and the West Bank?
Because Israelis have been taking those settlements gradually, a little piece at a time, never enough to provoke a large reaction from anybody.
Sort of like Russia's strategy in eastern Ukraine from 2014-2021.
Got it in one.
It's nothing like Russia's strategy in Ukraine which was an outright invasion.
The real invasion happened in FEB 2022. Prior to that, starting in 2014, Russia was taking little pieces of land here and there, being careful to keep things small-scale and below the radar of anyone who was strong enough to do anything about it.
If we're going to call that an invasion, then the Israeli settlements are also the result of invasion.
You can't call that under the radar since it was all over the news from the minute it started happening.
Russia's vaguest, pitiable pretense of plausible deniability was something they could barely stop laughing at long enough to get it out there.
But you're right, Ukraine wasn't strong enough to repel them and no one actually wanted to get into a war with Russia. Because they slow-walked it everyone had eight years to get used to the idea.
I keep hearing that "Free speech is meaningless unless it applies to the most revolting and offensive speech too." But why? How is it in society's best interest to tolerate revolting and offensive speech?
I get it that "revolting and offensive" is sometimes in the eye (ear?) of the beholder. But genocide? There really isn't any argument that I can come up with that says allowing calls for genocide is in any way a societal good.
"There really isn't any argument that I can come up with that says allowing calls for genocide is in any way a societal good."
Agree.
It’s kind of like arguing that the 2nd Amendment is meaningless unless I have the right to own an ICBM.
Antonin Scalia (before he and apparently his brain had died), on whether any restrictions applied to the Second Amendment:
This concerned the impressment of colonial Americans into the Royal Navy. The meaning could not be clearer, ‘bear arms’ meant to engage in a military action. It had nothing to do with hand-carrying anything (sailors don’t heft naval cannons). Scalia was being disingenuous.
There are low yield "tactical" nukes that are light enough for a strong man to carry. Keep in mind that "low yield" means around one kiloton, which is an enormous explosion by non-nuclear standards.
@ dmcantor:
“How is it in society's best interest to tolerate revolting and offensive speech?”
Putting up with speech that we find abhorrent will ultimately preserve our own right to speak freely in ways that we may find sensible but others find abhorrent.
Your question is certainly understandable, but the answers seem pretty clear to me, and I find it unsettling if we aren’t teaching basic free speech principles in school.
Because once we go down the path of limiting “harmful” speech, the metaphorical Pandora’s Box is thrown wide open. Who will determine what is “harmful,” and on what grounds will those determinations be made?
We could wind up with Donald trump deciding that all harmful speech is whatever hurts his feelings. Or it could be Evangelicals deciding that pro-abortion speech must be banned as the most harmful speech of all.
Hence the fairly standard understanding that the best response to speech we find wrong or offensive is more speech, not less. If we think someone’s wrong, we should resort to the rhetorical art of persuasion, not the bullying tactic of censorship.
It’s also important to remember that the Left falls into this trap just like the Right does, and this last summer provided an eye-popping example of the Left’s ability to accept and even promote censorship to further its own agenda of social “justice.”
I still feel astonished every time I think about this, but three “Liberal” justices on the Supreme Court voted last summer to curtail religious freedom and compel expressive speech in favor of gay marriage.
So let that serve as a warning for all of us: we all have to live and let others live in our diverse society, even when others act in ways we disagree with. Otherwise, it will ultimately be our own freedoms put in question.
And if that sounds like a lot of work, welcome to life in a democratic and open society. Let’s keep it that way.
The time-tested and still best argument for free speech!
(That said, I'll reserve judgment on the gay marriage decision bc I can't recall the details at the moment.)
People point to the slippery slope, but does it ever happen in practice? We let people speak more offensively than in the UK, and we're the ones who had Jan 6, not them. Freer speech clearly does not make anti-democratic actions less likely.
I'm not sure what you are referring to in your comment, but it seems likely that you are trying to claim that non-discriminatory requirements in workplaces are somehow restrictions on "free speech." But that has not been how free speech has been regarded historically.
"We let people speak more offensively than in the UK, and we're the ones who had Jan 6, not them"
Meh. Statistics of small numbers, and very confounding multitudes of variables.
I think a more relevant example is Russia, honestly, where all sorts of speech and politcal activity is banned for being offensive or contrary to community morals or seditious or whatever.
I fully believe the majority can--and should!--use the power of the state to prevent people from *doing* harmful things. But when the claimed harm stems from merely hearing or seeing a thing you don't like, it is far too easy for the majority/powerful to find pretextual offense to quell political discourse.
As another example, one can look to our own history here in the US--slave states banned abolotionist speech on the grounds that it was seditious and anarchic.
@ cephalopod:
“People point to the slippery slope, but does it ever happen in practice?”
That’s exactly what has happened in college and university campuses. They decided to emphasize safety, social justice, and equity instead of academic freedom, open inquiry, and robust debate. And the result is possibly the single most dangerous slippery slope that our country now faces.
As Greg Lukianoff writes in the Atlantic: “[E]ven McCarthyism didn’t seem to cause as much damage on campuses as we’ve seen in the past decade. According to the largest study at the time, about 100 professors were fired over a 10-year period during the second Red Scare for their political beliefs or communist ties. We found that, in the past nine years, the number of professors fired for their beliefs was closer to 200.”
In case it’s not clear, the professors who were fired in the last decade lost their job not for legally prohibited speech, but for speaking up in favor of things like biological sex, individual merit, and colorblind advocacy.
Once our schools took it upon themselves to decide what speech is “harmful,” and to set about eradicating it, they hurled themselves as far and as fast as they could down a self-destructive slippery slope that has effectively destroyed free speech at our colleges and universities.
Many of these schools have thereby engaged in blatantly illegal behavior. And it will, hopefully, catch up with them eventually. But it may not. And even then, how much damage will be done along the way?
So serious is the issue of Leftist censorship that I personally would characterize it as the most important issue of our times. When the entire California Community College system openly declares that it will fire any professors who question anti-racism (and yes, this has already happened), that should be taken as a sign that we’re dealing with a five alarm raging inferno that has already burned much of the Academic community’s integrity into ash.
I would go further and assert that Ibram Kendi (author of How to be an anti racist) is more dangerous, and has done more harm, than Donald Trump. Kendi has openly, and in writing, called for unconstitutional agencies to enforce anti-racism across the country. Kendi has also unambiguously called for the widespread enactment of reverse racism (he says the only solution for past discrimination is permanent discrimination) and for mandated racial quotas (as opposed to a meritocracy). And our colleges and universities have now embraced and enacted every single one of his decrees.
So, yeah, we have indeed seen slippery slopes in action. And I realize that people on the Left don’t like to acknowledge the problems with Leftists. But, in that case, you’re refusing to engage with and resist the most dangerous elements corroding our society at this time.
What, The Atlantic is still publishing?
I agreed with you before but here I'll take the other side. I personally think Kendi is a dimwit, and his management of his own little perch in academia seems to be inept. But there is no way he is more dangerous than Trump.
An academic / author has authority over virtually no one. The onetime president and would-be authoritarian leader is a threat unlike anyone else around.
What institutions can you point to and say that Trump left long-term if not permanent damage on them? Not the Republican Party: it was an empty husk before he got there. Not the Supreme Court. I know it’s unpopular, but that Court’s decisions to uphold free speech and ban affirmative action were, as I understand it, broadly accepted by sensible majorities.
In Kendi’s case, you can point to the enactment of his ideas, and the explicit evocation of his name and work, in the evisceration of our academic institutions, in the radicalizing of progressive advocacy groups, in the hollowing out of diverse opinions at Liberal media organizations, and in the imposition of rigid content controls throughout TV and Hollywood production.
If the pen really is mightier than the sword (especially an incompetently wielded sword), then there’s just no question that Kendi is far more dangerous than trump. None.
While Kendi was selling books promoting some misguided ideas about correcting legitimate historical injustices, Donald Trump was inciting a violent mob to attack Congress and overturn a free and fair election, the bedrock of American democracy. He has yet to be brought to justice, and he’s vowing to do worse damage to our institutions if elected again. If there’s any debate about who’s more dangerous, I fail to see it.
+1
The proportion of Americans who know who Ibram Kendi is, and have a favorable opinion of him, is far smaller than the proportion that thinks that a racist, misogynistic insurrectionist and would-be dictator is a good choice for President.
@KenSchulz:
Ibram Kendi’s relatively low profile is another thing that makes him dangerous. On university campuses, of course, he’s a “household” name (at least among the humanities). But others who need and want to condemn him may not even know who he is.
And that’s a problem. The Rabbi who just resigned from the commission on antisemitism @ Harvard did so in part, according to his statement, because the ideology embraced by so many at Harvard is evil.
The ideology he’s referring to is Ibram Kendi’s version of antiracism, and the administrative apparatus supporting it is DEI. And it is Kendi’s explicit promotion of reverse racism that has now assumed the form of antisemitism on campuses.
We need to know these names. We need to know who we’re struggling against in the fight to preserve an open society that still Values free expression.
"The onetime president and would-be authoritarian leader is a threat unlike anyone else around."
+1 for that.
and -1 for answering leo1008,
"But why? How is it in society's best interest to tolerate revolting and offensive speech?"
Because "revolting" and "offensive" are in the eye (or I suppose ear) of the beholder. And because we recognize that speech, however unpleasant, doesn't actually cause harm: *actions* do.
Doing a genocide is illegal, and rightly so. Talking about genocide might mark you out as an asshole, but there's something very valuable, I think, about not expending the police power of the state on punishing people for being assholes unless they *act* on said assholery.
It’s not in society’s interest. But it is less undesirable than having legislators decide what we are permitted to say, and what is forbidden. That’s why it’s in the Bill of Rights and difficult if not impossible to alter.
At least in principle, there can be situations in which genocide is justified. The Children of Israel committed genocide at the express direction of God while securing the Promised Land. More historically, ancient Rome apparently felt justified in exterminating the Carthaginians.
This whole conversation should have been derailed on the House committee floor. Gay’s first mistake was accepting the premise of Stefanik’s question. This apology doesn’t help.
Nor does having people like Kevin Drum, Bill Ackman, and Bret Stephens repeat Stefanik’s deceitful propaganda, taking it at face value.
Stephens, today:
Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, asked the presidents whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” violated the schools’ codes of conduct or constituted “bullying or harassment.”
What Stefanik asked about was use of the words “intifada” and “from the river to the sea.” Stefanik claimed that was the same as “calling for the genocide of Jews.”
No, they are not the same thing. Everybody repeating Stefanik’s claim is guilty of either sloppy thinking or willful deceit. Y’all ought to stop it.
What Gay should have said to Stefanik: “I reject the premise of your question. It’s ridiculous. Now can we talk about something important? When do we break for lunch?”
"Congresswoman, last week you were agreeing with the TwitterFiles guys when they said that ANY Government attempt to influence on others speech was a violation of the First Amendment, even if they were merely trying to get private entities to enforce their privately-derived codes of conduct. Now Government employee Stefanik is basically trying to browbeat us into policing free speech. How does "Weaponization Committee" member Stefanik justify this?"
Yes.
"Elise dear, the man whose boots you've been seen licking publicly as recently as five minutes ago has called the KKK and neo-Nazis who marched on campus in Charlottesville 'very fine people.' How long do you expect the rest of us to pretend to believe you and he and the party you represent give a flying fuck about the safety of Jews on college campuses?"
PS NPR's All Things Considered today has gone all in on the horseshit premise from Stefanik about advocating "genocide." When people who are supposed to know better (major media and people like Kevin Drum) fall so easily for right-wing b.s., how is the rest of the country ever going to know what's going on? We can survive Fox but not the heavy duty laundering of propaganda we're seeing now.
@ Joseph Harbin:
That column by Bret Stephens is excellent. This passage is essentially perfect:
“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.”
This is more or less the essence of the problem, I can’t really phrase it any better than that.
And when Kevin defends a university president like Gay on the narrow grounds that her defense of free speech aimed against Jews is correct, he seems to be ignoring the fact that Gay herself has previously led campaigns to oust people from Harvard because she didn’t like their views.
There is no record that I know of indicating that Gay ever defended free speech until that free speech was aimed against Jews.
And these observations help explain why Gay was a.) so obtuse in responding to Stefanik and b.) so unskilled and inarticulate at defending free speech.
The problem is not that she was unfairly manipulated by Stefanik or that she walked into a trap. The problem is that she has belonged to an antisemitic, repressive, and censorious Leftist ideology for many years, and now she’s suddenly placed in a spotlight where she has to pretend otherwise. And the results are predictably catastrophic.
So everyone defending these university Presidents, if there were crowds on campus gathering and demanding death to all Palestinians or death to all Blacks, that should be a nuanced answer? If they can be baited into giving such weak and tone deaf answers, they shouldn't be sitting there representing their respective schools.
I think Codes of Conduct should handle abusive speech like that, but I really just want to know why Stefanik changed her mind on what is Free Speech from what she was advocating the entire rest of the year (where she said pressuring private entities to police speech wasn't allowable)?
It's not about her. She's a stooge who says whatever meets her needs at the moment. The Presidents need to be smarter. They had to know they'd get grilled. They're paid a ton of money to be able to handle a situation just like this. They failed miserably.
I agree. Like I could tell anyone going before this Congress that the Republicans there are only interested in making video that looks good on Big Con Media, so accept their bad-faith premises on face value.
"She's a stooge who says whatever meets her needs at the moment. The Presidents need to be smarter. "
Well, one of these people is a powerful member of the federal government that can enact legislation affecting the entire country; the others are academic adminstrators. I'm not sure why I should care about the ability of the latter to perform well in an asinine media circus.
Oh dear Lord. Are you that credulous that you fell for the 'not that quick of their feet' bit, hook, line, and sinker? Did you not for one second consider the possibility that Dr. Gay is quick on her feet indeed and did exactly as she was instructed to do beforehand?
You strike me as a little old to still believe in Santa Claus, but whatevah.
You're implying that there were crowds on campus demanding death to all Jews. Can you cite examples of when this happened?
Stefanik referred to people using the words "intifada" and "from the river to the sea." If you think a distinction between that and "genocide" is too "nuanced" for you, then don't be surprised when these so-called defenders of the Jews usher in a wave of antisemitism and persecution unseen in American history next time they rise to power.
The NYT has the following quote of the exchange.
“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment?” she demanded of Claudine Gay, the new president of Harvard University.
“It can be, depending on the context,” Dr. Gay responded.
“What’s the context?” Ms. Stefanik shot back.
“Targeted at an individual,” Dr. Gay said.
“It’s targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals,” Ms. Stefanik said.
This isn't about interpreting coded language. Insert Black or Hispanic or Catholic or whatever you please as the targeted group. All would be met by righteous condemnation.
I agree! Because Dr. Gray, I person I had never heard about until today whom I will never meet and whom I am sure I will promptly forget about tomorrow, said something that angry people on the internet are upset about, we should abolish taxation!
No. I just don't want my Blue state dollars transferred to Red states. One has nothing to do with the other.
You're missing the point. Sure, the college presidents' responses were weak and tone-deaf but you assume the premise of Stefanik's question about genocide was sound. She's not referring to "genocide" in the way that most people understand the term.
Michelle Goldberg in today's Times:
Stefanik equates the term "intifada" with "genocide." She claims that students who say "from the river to the sea" are advocating for the murder of Jews. So her question about genocide is pertinent only if you buy her bad-faith assumptions. (Just bc Gay whiffed doesn't mean the rest of us should.)
The corollary is not what would happen if students were calling for the genocide of Blacks or Hispanics or Catholics. Because you can't accept Stefanik's premise that students are calling for the genocide of Jews.
Again, if you have examples of "crowds" calling for genocide, feel free to cite them.
It doesn't matter if the question is hypothetical. And the reference to Intifada aren't relevant. With any other group the reaction would be, of course not. There's no asterisk to add that makes it OK to call for genocide.
Stefanik’s first question was, “A student calling for the mass murder of African-americans is not protected free speech at Harvard, correct?” Dr. Gray didn't give a yes or no answer to that question, either. We didn't get to her Dr. Gray’s full answer to that question because Stefanik cut her off, but we did get the portion where Dr. Gray talked about the commitment to free speech. If she had been permitted to complete her answer the answer would likely be exactly the same as her answer to Stefanik’s later questions: the view expressed is personally abhorrent to Gray, but expressing it is not per se a violation of Harvard’s policies. Depending on the context, it could violate Harvard’s policies against bullying and harassment.
Harvard rescinded admissions offers to 10 high school seniors for sharing risque memes in a private Facebook group.
Is supporting Hamas or Intifada really less offensive than that?
No, it's all abouit keeping the Harvard donors happy, sigh.
If you can provide a link to a credible report of ‘crowds on campus gathering and demanding death to all’ Jews, in those words, do so.
So calling for death and deportation just for all Israelis is OK?
What about all American blacks?
While in concept I agree with the three university leaders, I think the actual practice on their respective campuses, undermine the public position.
If students at Harvard, MIT etc were to hold a rally and shout slogans urging the genocide of gays (trans, blacks etc), I doubt this schools would view this as protected speech...
Are students at Harvard, MIT or anywhere else actually "holding rallies and shouting slogans urging the genocide of" anyone?
As far as I know, the answer is no. The presidents should have spoken to that basic point. Stefanik kept asking hypothetical questions about a situation which doesn't seem to exist, and the presidents just kept taking the bait.
bobsomerby - while your point has merit, I respond as follows:
1. Should not the president of an elite university be able to respond to a hypothetical question?
2. If ask the hypothetical a similar question, using another group, ('would students shouting for the genocide of blacks violate university policy') I suspect the various presidents would not have struggled to answer.
My point, I believe, that there is a double standard at play.
You: "Should not the president of an elite university be able to respond to a hypothetical question?"
Me: "The presidents should have spoken to that basic point."
Your doubts aren’t evidence of a damn thing.
KenSchulz - just curious, do you think a Harvard student/s could have an on campus rally, call for the genocide of gays, and not suffer consequences from the school Administration?
I said before, I don’t deign to answer hypotheticals.
Dukakis type situation
Yep. "Bloodless."
I think the easiest hill to die on, is one where a university stands on the principle that hate speech is not tolerated on campus and will be uniformly and unequivocally enforced -- requiring a court to outline the bounds of how and when hate speech is protected.
The much harder hill to die on, is one where hate speech is selectively protected depending on context, without direction from a court.
The MIT president said that there are things we have a right to say but we should not say them.
In other words, we have rights, but we also have responsibilities.
The right to have any view we want, but the responsibility to state that view in a civil manner.
Unfortunately, those were just words. There is no consequence when you violate the responsibility of civility, so there is no point in saying "should".
Protesters have every right to advocate for a Palestinian state. They have a responsibility to refrain from calling for "global intifada" or quoting from the charter of Hamas that describes the elimination of Israel as a Jewish State as part of that.
Scent of Violets, I await your ad hominem attacks telling me how stupid I am, and that I have no idea what intifada means.
Ask the Israeli faculty members and students who survived an intifada, or had family and friends killed by one. And then insist that you know better than them how that word makes them feel.
The people who use that word know how it makes Israelis and Jews feel. They are not ignorant. But they choose to use the most hateful, inflammatory words they can get away with, and count on the uninformed not knowing the context. They could use civil terms, and let the ideas speak, but they choose not to.
Points of view should not be suppressed. Shouting those points of view in a hostile, manipulative way on campus should have consequences.
“Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment?” It seems like not so many years ago it was Republicans who would twist and squirm and misdirect when caught trying to defend the indefensible, and I would always wonder how they could stand the moral stink of it all. And here, face with a simple question, those on the Left talk about intifada, they cynically misdirect to Stefanik, they try claiming that the question doesn’t really need to be answered because demands of genocide are not taking place on these campuses. But the question remains, and everyone not desperately in need of backing their political team saw it for what it was: a moment of moral clarity.
These university presidents should have answered that calls for genocide unequivocally violated their rules. If pressed, they could have claimed (I hope truthfully!) that while tempers were inflamed, and that distasteful, radical political statement were being bandied about, no one was calling for the systematic killing of entire peoples. After all, how could any members of a group not feel threatened for their very lives in the face of calls for genocide? That said, political speech that was not directed at individuals would be tolerated, not always happily but rather out of principle.
Unfortunately, calls for genocide at places like Harvard are… complicated and contextual. I, for one, hope this is the moment that the mask fell for large portions of the American public. Unlike the vast majority of the Right, I refuse to hold my nose simply because the stench of moral decay emanates from my side.
> Politically speaking, Gay and the other presidents should have had the presence of mind to say that calling for genocide was vile and disgusting and had no place on their campuses…. Then they could have added that although this is hard to accept, even vile anti-semitism is protected free speech unless etc. etc.
So calls for genocide have no place on their campuses but, well, such calls DO have a place on their campuses. Kevin, you would have embarrassed yourself just as thoroughly as the others. The correct answer was that calls for genocide violated university rules, even if perhaps allowed more generally under the principles of free speech. The university has to walk a delicate line of allowing the free exchange of ideas while avoiding harassment and outright threats. If the university failed in particular instances, then the president would personally see that action was taken. That is all.
Oh gawd of course a lying freak like Stefanik is apparently citing Sabrina Goldfischer's recent undergrad thesis on anti-Semitism at Harvard.
I haven't yet bothered to read the thesis, but Stefanik's summary of it claims that part of its evidence for a climate of anti-Semitism at Harvard is "anti-Semitic slurs shouted in Harvard Square."
Harvard doesn't control Harvard Square! Anyone who has spent even 10 minutes in the middle of Harvard Square knows that Harvard Square is 1) a public intersection that is 2) traversed daily by thousands of university affiliates and non-affiliates alike which also 3) features a major transit station whose main entrance HAPPENS to be 4) populated most of the time by local dirtbag edgelord teens, the "Pit Kids," who love nothing better than getting a rise out of passerby. That includes needling them with slurs, ethnic and otherwise. I, personally, have been called a f*gg*t by kids in the Pit as I approached the escalator into the station.
Acting like the random insults from the Pit Kids or other local weirdos meaningfully contribute to a supposed climate of anti-Semitism at Harvard is a joke. Nobody passing through the Square takes any of those people remotely seriously, and Harvard University couldn't really do anything about them even if someone was stupid enough to give them the attention they crave, because they aren't on university property. Stefanik attended the school and she knows this, but is pretending otherwise because it's useful for her other lying.
Without bad faith….
Republicans would have no arguments at all
It's a "when did you stop beating your wife?" question.
If you say (accurately) that it depends on context, etc, you get accused of being ok with genocide.
If you say no, then it becomes a game of equating student support of Palestinians and criticism of Israel as calls for genocide. "Your students chanted about infatida, why weren't they expelled?" And there are plenty of students with rather simplistic, sometimes ignorant, poorly-expressed views about the conflict that you can cherry pick someone saying something dumb (though not genocidal.)
I, too, thought the presidents could have threaded the needle better, but let's not pretend this is nothing more than a dumb gotcha and they would have been attacked no matter how they answered.
The question was - Is it a violation of your code of conduct to call for genocide of Jews, yes or no?
Please provide a reasonable context where it is not.
If you're in a country with a free spech clause in its constitution and under federal regulations to follow those same principals despite being a private institution.
Source?
Apologies, I was misremembering this article: https://popehat.substack.com/p/stop-demanding-dumb-answers-to-hard but I don't find what I thought it said about universities at some point to being bound to first ammendment principles.
But, though more lengthly than a typical blog comment, that article does address your question.
I read through that article and just could not find it convincing. It’s right to point out that these presidents were expected to tiptoe through rhetorical minefields. Their problem was that they smugly jumped onto the first mine. At least one has already resigned.
Question: Genocide against university policies? Answer: Yes!
Follow-up question: But what then about these calls for intifada? Answer: Intifada is not a call for genocide, and depending on the context may or may not be against policies.
Not such a difficult trap really, and it hardly takes a university president to escape unscathed. In fact, the trap was so ham handed that only those with dangerously broken moral compasses could have fallen into it. Luckily for us, they did.
You're refusing to acknowledge the context of the issue.
For 20+ years now, universities have been fixated on shutting down free speech – the whole claim of phrases like "safe space" and "words are violence" is that people (at least CERTAIN people) are not allowed to say whatever they want; likewise the way university administrations have been happy to shut down any event that they don't especially like, simply because of the content of the event.
Jews are justifiably unimpressed that the same colleges that were happy to shut down *any other* demonstration *suddenly* become free speech supporters when the free speech is anti-semitic.
To refuse to acknowledge this context is to refuse to be honest about what's actually going on here.
We really have to have specifics. If you equate protests opposing the annihilation of Gaza with anti-semitism then I can't share your outrage, even if "from the river to the sea" was chanted.
If you want to ban something, let's have some specific circumstances and verified quotes, then we can decide if it is speech that should be suppressed. Yes, it is a poor soundbite, but sadly it is true that context matters even with respect to the most odious speech.