https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvz0Yrtet_s
Questioned at a Congressional hearing, the President of the University of Pennsylvania will not say that calling for the genocide of Jews violates the University’s anti-bullying or harassment Code of Conduct. She says it is “context-dependent,” and only violates University’s rules “if the speech turns into conduct.”
The presidents of Harvard and MIT gave similar testimony.
By that logic, racists students could burn a cross on campus, and advocate lynching in order to intimidate Black students, and the University would consider that to be protected speech? Yeah, but Jews are different, hate speech against Jews is OK, isn’t it? Maybe these Ivy League universities should look the other way and accept demonstrations advocating rape. Women should understand that advocating that they be raped is not intimidation or harassment, it is free speech.
I have read credible reports of at least one Harvard professor who, teaching in class, advocated genocide of the Jewish people. Harvard!
P.S. I have read a couple of Dan DeWalt’s Commons articles. He focuses exclusively on Israel’s war crimes, but is silent about the unspeakable atrocities against Jewish women on Nov. 7, dismissing what happened on that day as just another instance in a long history of violence and counter-violence (“Ho-hum, just a routine military operation,” DeWalt seems to say). I cannot recall when I have ever felt such strong personal outrage. How can I stand in solidarity with the left, when as a whole (including some of our friends and neighbors in Brattleboro) they show themselves to be weasels and jackals?
In total contrast to the Dan DeWalt’s of the world, here is an uncompromising denouncement of anti-semitism by President Biden’s press secretary:
Correction
The Hamas atrocities occurred on October 7.
Academic Freedom or Mob Harassment?
A November 3, 2023 NY Times opinion piece by Gabriel Diamond, Talia Dror and Jillian Lederman titled, “What Is Happening on College Campuses Is Not Free Speech,” details anti-Semitic hate speech, apparently tolerated by administrators: “On an online discussion forum last weekend, Jewish students at Cornell were called ‘excrement on the face of the earth,’ threatened with rape and beheading and bombarded with demands like ‘eliminate Jewish living from Cornell campus. . . . The targeting of Jewish students didn’t stop at Cornell: Jewish students at Cooper Union huddled in the library to escape an angry crowd pounding on the doors; a protester at a rally near New York University carried a sign calling for the world to be kept ‘clean’ of Jews; messages like ‘glory to our martyrs’ were projected onto a George Washington University building.
“This most recent wave of hate began with prejudiced comments obscured by seemingly righteous language. After the Oct. 7 attacks, more than 30 student groups at Harvard signed on to a statement that read, ‘We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.’ There was no mention of Hamas. The university issued such a tepid response, it almost felt like an invitation.
“Days later, at a pro-Palestinian rally, the Cornell associate professor Russell Rickford said he was ‘exhilarated’ by Hamas’s terrorist attacks. (He later apologized and was granted a leave of absence.) In an article, a Columbia professor, Joseph Massad, seemed to relish the ‘awesome’ scenes of ‘Palestinian resistance fighters’ storming into Israel. Most recently, over 100 Columbia and Barnard professors signed a letter defending students who blamed Israel for Hamas’s attacks. To the best of our knowledge, none of these professors have received meaningful discipline, much less dismissal. Another green light.”
The Times piece makes a distinction between free speech, debate, diversity of opinion; and intimidation. “Mob harassment must not be confused with free speech.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
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In the Commons: "Hate speech against Jews is OK?
Wednesday, December 13, 2023 — Issue 744
https://www.commonsnews.org/issue/744/744k-brooks
(Managing Editor, Jeff Potter, great job getting this piece ready for publication.)
big man
you b & m about a small group of stupid college kids bandying the g-word
and are completely silent of the real-world slaughter of tens of thousands of arabs
your silence regarding the real-world depravity coupled with your mewing over words makes you complicit in the crimes against humanity that the IDF now commits routinely
and if you had any experience with the hasidim next to the ESB recruiting for the kibbutz because they’re “chosen”–an arrogant self-description if there ever was one–you might understand the wildly negative hyperbole directed at them
it’s giving them what was given by them when they both casually and vociferously berate the shiksas and other gentiles
big man
Hateful Invective Sows Toxic Seeds
Hateful Invective Sows Toxic Seeds
When it is the self-righteous Dan DeWalts of the world, Arab-hating Jewish chauvinists, or hajms venting their spleen: The hatred, murders, rapes, bombs, and terrors that they encourage today, will inevitably traumatized young survivors who will grow up to be tomorrow’s bumper crop of psychopaths.
Throwing gasoline on the fire, hajm, harms everyone and destroys hope for all.
when you value words over deeds
you quickly find yourself in a morally reprehensible space
and you insult me and every competent English reader when you accuse me of “encouraging” violence. I might have thrown gasoline on your petty fire son but nowhere in my comment did I encourage violence. Up yours for asserting otherwise. Guess which finger I’m pointing at you with.
this behavior makes you a vile revisionist liar who _won’t_ read, you just read what you think you want to see on the screen
and to the point of your original post: never in your college years were you held to a Code of Conduct. This is still america where the young and old are free to speak the vilest things and read Mein Kampf as if it were scripture because the First Amendment takes precedence over your feelings.
The Code of Conduct is nothing short of social control. This nonsense did not go on when I was in college, and it sure as hell didn’t exist when you were college=aged, but I guess the idiotic raise of the drinking age to a national standard forced the hand of educational institutions everywhere.
If it existed in my time my life may have gone on a wildly different route as I would have been most reluctant to subject myself to some idiot’s social regulations.
Tell me where I encourage violence in my reply. I simply let them have their stupid words, I never actually agreed with them at any time.
Tell me big man.
Tell me.
hajm
Have you read Vidda Chrochetta’s new book, “The Shield of David,” and what did you think of it?
https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/skokie-case-how-i-came-represent-free-speech-rights-nazis
https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/skokie-case-how-i-came-represent-free-speech-rights-nazis