Elise Stefanik needs her own thread. She's gonna be a GQP big player.

[Biff Tannen 45,499]

17 hours ago, C-Man said:

There's some good shit at that link.

https://www.governorgregabbott.com/

[Blotto 23,434]

 yeah....about that

Cunt. 

[Longhorn_Fan68 33,843]

dildos, the whole lot of them

[Bama Chick 28,596]

Nah.

Dildos are useful and provide pleasure.

This lot are as useful as tits on a boar and not a single one of them has ever given pleasure to another human being.

[Bullneck 18,987]

And now, a message from Rip van Bullneck:

Just saw her questioning the presidents of Harvard, MIT, & UPenn about anti-semitism on their campus.  I didn't catch the whole thing, and I know she's one of those "sound bite legislators" but I agreed with her.  

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,414]

The question whether calling for the genocide of X, violate a school’s rules, seems like a simple Yes but I imagine context matters.

I bet there are plenty of examples, in many  schools, where students have called for the killing of Muslims and no one has been kicked out of school or faced discipline. Unless their threat was directed towards a specific student.

Regardless they should have simply said yes expressing the killing of someone violates school rules. However stefanik wouldn’t have accepted yes and she would have slammed them. It’s a no win question. I don’t understand why these witnesses show up and/or engage with the politicians. 

Edited December 7, 2023 by Nice Guy Eddie

[DDD Dad 14,252]

On 6/14/2022 at 9:35 PM, Bama Chick said:

This lot are as useful as tits on a boar and not a single one of them has ever given pleasure to another human being.

You’re from Alabama, right?

I would think a boar’s tits have given pleasure to many human beings there. 

[Underdog 28,457]

She’s a Sow. 

[Incredulity 11,555]

4 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

where students have called for the killing of Muslims and no one has been kicked out of school or faced discipline.

Bull fucking shit.

You really are going to offer that with a straight face?  Utterly laughable.

You show up to Penn and walk the main quad(or whatever the layout of Penn campus is) with a sign that says, "Kill Muslims" and you will be escorted off campus within minutes.  

Edited December 7, 2023 by Incredulity

[WhatTheBuck 28,713]

On 12/7/2023 at 6:47 AM, Bullneck said:

And now, a message from Rip van Bullneck:

Just saw her questioning the presidents of Harvard, MIT, & UPenn about anti-semitism on their campus.  I didn't catch the whole thing, and I know she's one of those "sound bite legislators" but I agreed with her.

Did she cite any examples of Harvard students, faculty, or staff calling for the genocide of Jews? Has that actually happened? Because advocating for the rights of Palestinian Arabs isn’t the same thing. Advocating for an end to Jewish occupation of Palestine isn’t calling for genocide of Jewish people.

The question was a trap. The presidents should’ve been better prepared with their answers. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,414]

1 hour ago, WhatTheBuck said:

Did she cite any examples of Harvard students, faculty, or staff calling for the genocide of Jews? Has that actually happened? Because advocating for the rights of Palestinian Arabs isn’t the same thing. Advocating for an end to Jewish occupation of Palestine isn’t calling for genocide of Jewish people.

The question was a trap. The presidents should’ve been better prepared with their answers. 

Thats a good point. Were there actual calls for the genocide of Jews on those campuses? I don’t know but I haven’t seen any evidence one way or the other. And you’re spot on that it’s incredible that 3 well educated women who rose thru the ranks to become top college presidents didn’t recognize the easy answer.

when asked, the answer is simple: ”I would not allow any student to call for the death of a single person or group of people.” Even if context would come into play on an actual situation there is no reason to get into that during a congressional q&a trap.

perhaps this situation in Congress will get a few more schools to pull back from some of their recent policies or practices.

[Incredulity 11,555]

“Globalize the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea” are calling for the genocide of Jews.  Yes, there have been protests with those chants used repeatedly at all the universities involved in the congressional testimony.

Don’t be fatuous.

[Bozo_Casanova 26,285]

8 hours ago, BeardIP said:

Penn president is a casualty of that embarrassing display: she’s resigned.

 

 

Good, and I hope she’s the first rather than the last. Just a shocking display of moral confusion. 

[Bozo_Casanova 26,285]

50 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Were there actual calls for the genocide of Jews on those campuses?

Yes. 

[Bozo_Casanova 26,285]

19 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

“Globalize the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea” are calling for the genocide of Jews.  Yes, there have been protests with those chants used repeatedly at all the universities involved in the congressional testimony.

Don’t be fatuous.

Agreed, and I say this as someone deeply opposed to Israel’s policy of oppression and ghettoization of Palestinians.

[Underdog 28,457]

Fuck those schools giving that Sow a victory lap. 

[aggie08 21,434]

While I hate that it gave Facebook idiots a victory lap to say, "See! This is just the tip of what they're indoctrinating our children with!!!"...you absolutely deserve to lose your job as a university president if you get twisted up by Elise fucking Stefanik and she comes off looking like the sane, morally superior of the two.

Edited December 10, 2023 by aggie08

[HornOnTheBayou 8,881]

50 minutes ago, aggie08 said:

While I hate that it gave Facebook idiots a victory lap to say, "See! This is just the tip of what they're indoctrinating our children with!!!"...you absolutely deserve to lose your job as a university president if you get twisted up by Elise fucking Stefanik and she comes off looking like the sane, morally superior of the two.

[Jive Turkey 12,568]

 

[Bullneck 18,987]

4 hours ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Thats a good point. Were there actual calls for the genocide of Jews on those campuses? I don’t know but I haven’t seen any evidence one way or the other. And you’re spot on that it’s incredible that 3 well educated women who rose thru the ranks to become top college presidents didn’t recognize the easy answer.

when asked, the answer is simple: ”I would not allow any student to call for the death of a single person or group of people.” Even if context would come into play on an actual situation there is no reason to get into that during a congressional q&a trap.

perhaps this situation in Congress will get a few more schools to pull back from some of their recent policies or practices.

Jewish students at MIT blocked from attending classes by ‘hostile’ anti-Israel protesters

By 

Social Links forPatrick Reilly

Published Nov. 10, 2023, 10:42 p.m. ET

 

https://nypost.com/2023/11/10/news/jewish-students-at-mit-blocked-from-attending-classes-by-hostile-anti-israel-protesters/

 

I know it's the Post and all, but I've heard this elsewhere as well.  Here's a story in The Algemeiner -- which I've never heard of but wiki says Elie Weisel was the editor at one time:

Jewish and Israeli students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have warned in a new letter to university president Sally Kornbluth that radical anti-Zionism and intimidation of Jewish students on campus has become intolerable and reminiscent of Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust.

The letter, shared on X/Twitter by MIT professor Retsef Levi, recounted an incident from Thursday in which students from the MIT Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA), a campus anti-Israel group, “physically prevented” them from attending class by forming a “blockade” of bodies in Lobby 7, a space inside the main entrance of the university. Non-students were invited to attend CAA’s demonstration, and together the entire group spent hours chanting “Intifada” — a term used to describe violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel — and declaring solidarity with Hamas.

“Instead of dispersing the mob or de-escalating the situation by rerouting all students from Lobby 7, Jewish students specifically were warned not to enter MIT’s front entrance due to a risk to their physical safety,” wrote the MIT Israel Alliance. “The onus to protect Jewish students should not be on the students themselves.”

3 hours ago, Incredulity said:

“Globalize the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea” are calling for the genocide of Jews.  Yes, there have been protests with those chants used repeatedly at all the universities involved in the congressional testimony.

Don’t be fatuous.

Shit, I'm + repping Incredulity. 

What a time to be alive.

 

 

Edited December 10, 2023 by Bullneck

[bolverk 29,405]

Three good reads on the hearing and its implications.

 

Liz Magill’s ouster at Penn will help the worst people take down free speech, higher ed

Critics celebrating the scalping of Penn's president won't stop there. Free speech, and college itself, are in grave danger.
 

Spoiler

A band of raiders never stops at just one scalp. Just minutes after the University of Pennsylvania’s president Liz Magill pulled the plug on her stormy 17-month tenure, under intense pressure for her handling of antisemitism questions on Capitol Hill, her chief inquisitor — GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York — was back on the battlefield calling for more.

“One down. Two to go,” a clearly ebullient Stefanik posted on X/Twitter, urging on her dream of an academic Saturday Night Massacre that would also take down the two college leaders who testified last week along with Magill — MIT’s Sally Kornbluth and Claudine Gay of Harvard, which, in a controversy with more ironies than a Jane Austen novel, happens to be Stefanik’s alma mater.

But what Stefanik promised on Saturday night, and what her allies are cheering on, goes well beyond a few high-profile resignations. She promised the current crisis — over what constitutes antisemitism on college campuses, and how administrators like Magill have been handling it — will lead to more congressional hearings on “all facets of their institutions’ negligent perpetration of antisemitism including administrative, faculty, and overall leadership and governance.”

This weekend, Magill’s resignation — urged on by some of Penn’s billionaire donors withholding massive donations, amid intense criticism from both political parties including the Biden White House — has been the lead national story everywhere. It’s bumped back coverage of Israel’s intensifying strikes on Gaza that have killed hundreds every day while taking out top Palestinian scholars and journalists, as well as holy sites. And it’s drowned out the Biden administration’s international pariah move of vetoing a UN ceasefire resolution backed by 13 out of 15 Security Council members. No wonder some folks prefer to keep the focus on a college campus 11,000 miles west of this carnage.

Magill’s legalistic, bloodless, deer-in-the-headlights response to incessant probing by Stefanik and other lawmakers was not good — not just because she blew a chance to condemn the never-ending horror of antisemitism but also because it was a weak defense of free speech on campus. I’m not writing to express any regret over her departure. It seemed to me she governed Penn like a candle in the wind, wanting to defend academic freedom but then betraying those values, as when the university tried to ban a film presenting legitimate criticisms of Israel’s policies and then threatened to punish students for showing it anyway.

By ceding the high ground to demagogues like Stefanik, the fallout from this affair is more likely in the long run to hamper the fight against antisemitism than to bolster it, which is beyond unfortunate. Because no one can deny the scourge of antisemitism — especially not here in Pennsylvania, where a right-wing fanatic ginned up by immigration lies entered a Pittsburgh synagogue and murdered 11 Jews with the kind of AR-15 killing machine that Stefanik and her Republican colleagues have no interest in holding hearings about, let alone outlawing.

And there’s no doubt that antisemitic incidents are on the rise — such reports increased 35% from 2021 to 2022 and then have spiked exponentially this year, as tensions over the war in the Middle East have boiled over during contentious protests here at home. Since the Hamas terror attack on Oct. 7 triggered the fighting, Islamophobia has also risen dramatically. College administrators have a responsibility to come down on anyone committing acts of violence, threatening actual violence, or undertaking vandalism, but that’s not really what the Stefanik-Magill showdown was about.

Stefanik’s relentless questioning didn’t focus on actions at Penn — like October’s antisemitic graffiti on campus — but on words, and especially protesters’ use of the term “intifada,” which marchers see as a call for liberation but Israel’s staunchest defenders claim is an invitation to pogrom. No doubt the term is controversial and offensive to some, but Magill was actually right to insist there’s a line between speech and action.

I agree with the tiny handful of commentators not joining the anti-Magill pile-on. That includes the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg, who wrote that Magill and her colleagues walked into a trap by allowing Stefanik to define common pro-Palestinian rhetoric as “antisemitism” and then demanding what Goldberg called “egregious violations of free speech.” And also New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait, who wrote after Magill’s resignation that the college presidents were right to insist that schools regulate conduct but not words, stating that “what Stefanik was demanding was the wholesale ban on rhetoric and ideas that Jews find threatening, regardless of context.”

Shortly before Magill’s resignation, Jeremy C. Young, who directs the Freedom to Learn program at PEN America (full disclosure; I’m a member), told me that the literary-free-expression group is deeply concerned that the outcry over antisemitism is already driving a bevy of legislative proposals with alarming implications for free speech. He cited proposed laws that would require universities to be “neutral” on controversial issues, proposals to force schools to embrace the strictest definition of antisemitism that includes opposing the idea of Zionism, and bans on the most aggressive pro-Palestinian groups like the one recently laid down in Florida by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Young stressed he isn’t disagreeing that campus antisemitism is a problem or that college presidents have made a mess of things, but he noted those driving the controversy are attacking other topics — diversity initiatives, tenure for professors, and what universities are teaching students. He said antisemitism is “being used as a pretext to take power over college decisions from neutral arbiters and hand it to politicians who want to enforce ideological control on campus. Silencing and chilling speech on campus cannot be the solution.”

But that’s exactly the hoped-for solution from the avatars of America’s new McCarthyism, who are seizing on young people’s pro-Palestinian activism, and a handful of the most despicable acts, to foment a new kind of “Red Scare” that has both the nation’s extreme right and the billionaire winners of our class wars in sight of their real goal. That would be to cripple our colleges and universities as incubators of critical thinking that might cause the next generation to question their authority.

Indeed, Stefanik makes for an ideal 21st-century Joe McCarthy, since she has no sense of decency. It’s not just that her passion as an anti-antisemitism crusader was nowhere to be seen recently when her conservative allies were out in the schools banning books like The Diary of Anne Frank. Far worse, Stefanik, in 2022 campaign ads, seemed to be endorsing the racist “great replacement theory” that mass immigration is a liberal plot, using inflammatory rhetoric about a scheme to “overthrow our current electorate and create a permanent liberal majority in Washington.” It’s exactly that idea that animated the madman who shot up Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue.

How much of this is about antisemitism, and how much of this is about something else? — such as the fact that the college presidents who testified on Capitol Hill don’t look like the 300 years of school leaders who came before them. Bill Ackman, billionaire hedge fund manager and deeply disgruntled Harvard alum and donor, said the quiet part out loud last week when he made the repulsive allegation in a tweet that his alma mater’s first Black president — a child of Haitian immigrants, an award-winning scholar — was only hired to satisfy diversity goals.

And the likes of Ackman, Stefanik and their allies won’t stop at reversing a half-century of diversity on campus — not when their bigger strategic goal of weakening the already tottering American way of higher education suddenly seems within reach. Last week, Sen. J.D. Vance, the billionaire-backed Ohioan, tweeted that “if universities keep pushing racial hatred, euphemistically called DEI, we need to look at their funding.” In the swirling vortex that led to Magill’s resignation, these calls for financial retribution will accelerate — and students will suffer.

We know this because it’s happened before. Today’s campus unrest is a distinct echo of the Vietnam era, when students at many of the same universities now under attack also led massive protests against U.S. militarism, making their parents’ generation uneasy. In 1966, Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California by running against campus unrest, and he promised to impose tuition on its virtually free public universities, stating taxpayers “should not subsidize intellectual curiosity.” His philosophy inspired a generation of conservative lawmakers to privatize and devalue higher education, as tuition soared and student debt climbed to $1.75 trillion. Now, with public faith in universities at an all-time low, Reagan’s political heirs might finish the job.

The first step would be painfully familiar to anyone familiar with the anti-communist hysteria of the 1950s when McCarthyism reigned: a climate of fear and silence on college campuses. Here at Penn, the Wharton School’s board of advisors — the hedge fund-flavored panel that played an instrumental role in driving out Magill — has also proposed a new code that critics say goes too far in curbing campus free speech. Jonathan Friedman, PEN America’s director of free expression, blasted it as vague and “patently wrongheaded and could chill an ocean of speech on campus.”
In the current climate of fear and loathing, it won’t be the last such proposal.

With Magill’s departure, those who want to fight back for free speech face an increasingly uphill struggle. It’s easy for folks like the Biden White House to follow the path of least resistance and pretend that by slam-dunking Penn’s ex-president they are claiming the moral high ground, even as they sell Israel more tank shells like the one that was used to deliberately target and kill a Reuters journalist. It’s a lot harder to defend free expression knowing that the worst people will even try to brand you as an antisemite, just as those who once called out McCarthyism were stigmatized as “fellow travelers.”

Instead of jumping on the Magill scrum, let’s praise the courage of those defending our First Amendment rights. In a saga packed with irony, nothing would be more ironic than allowing a manipulated definition of “antisemitism” to shut down learning and inquiry, which are so central to the great Jewish traditions.

 

At a Hearing on Israel, University Presidents Walked Into a Trap
 

Spoiler

On Wednesday, a dear friend emailed me a viral clip from the House hearing on campus antisemitism in which three elite university presidents refuse to say, under questioning by Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates school policies on bullying and harassment. “My God, have you seen this?” wrote my friend, a staunch liberal. “I can’t believe I find myself agreeing with Elise Stefanik on anything, but I do here.”

If I’d seen only that excerpt from the hearing, which has now led to denunciations of the college leaders by the White House and the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, among many others, I might have felt the same way. All three presidents — Claudine Gay of Harvard, Sally Kornbluth of M.I.T. and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania — acquitted themselves poorly, appearing morally obtuse and coldly legalistic. It was a moment that seemed to confirm many people’s worst fears about academia’s tolerance for hatred of Jew.

But while it might seem hard to believe that there’s any context that could make the responses of the college presidents OK, watching the whole hearing at least makes them more understandable. In the questioning before the now-infamous exchange, you can see the trap Stefanik laid.

“You understand that the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that?” she asked Gay.

Gay responded that such language was “abhorrent.” Stefanik then badgered her to admit that students chanting about intifada were calling for genocide, and asked angrily whether that was against Harvard’s code of conduct. “Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against students or applicants who say, ‘From the river to the sea’ or ‘intifada,’ advocating for the murder of Jews?” Gay repeated that such “hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” but said action would be taken only “when speech crosses into conduct.”

So later in the hearing, when Stefanik again started questioning Gay, Kornbluth and Magill about whether it was permissible for students to call for the genocide of the Jews, she was referring, it seemed clear, to common pro-Palestinian rhetoric and trying to get the university presidents to commit to disciplining those who use it. Doing so would be an egregious violation of free speech. After all, even if you’re disgusted by slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” their meaning is contested in a way that, say, “Gas the Jews” is not. Finding themselves in a no-win situation, the university presidents resorted to bloodless bureaucratic contortions, and walked into a public relations disaster.

The anguished and furious reaction of many Jews to that viral clip is understandable. Jewish people of many different political persuasions have been stunned by the rank antisemitism and contempt for Israeli lives that have exploded across campuses, where Jewish students have been threatened and, in some cases, assaulted. This week, when I wrote that the backlash to anti-Israel protests threatens free speech, I received many emails from people who felt I was refusing to grapple with an evident crisis. “You are worried about an overreaction when there hasn’t yet been a sufficient reaction to the antisemitism terrifying Jewish students on campus,” said one.

But it seems to me that it is precisely when people are legitimately scared and outraged that we’re most vulnerable to a repressive response leading to harmful unintended consequences. That’s a lesson of Sept. 11 but also of much of the last decade, when the policing of speech in academia escalated in ways that are now coming back to bite the left.

Amid the uproar over the campus antisemitism hearing, many have claimed that if Stefanik had been asking about attacks on any other ethnic group, there would have been no waffling. But Stefanik did ask about another group. Her first question to Gay was, “A Harvard student calling for the mass murder of African Americans is not protected free speech at Harvard, correct?” Gay started to respond, “Our commitment to free speech,” but Stefanik, perhaps realizing she wasn’t going to get the answer she wanted, cut her off and changed tack.

Yet clearly, at many universities, the defense of free speech has been inconsistent. Some elite schools now cloaking themselves in the mantle of the First Amendment to ward off charges of coddling antisemites have, in the past, privileged community sensitivity over unbridled expression. So when university administrators say, as Gay did, “We embrace a commitment to free expression, even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful,” many in the Jewish community see a galling double standard.

But as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a libertarian-leaning civil liberties group, said in a statement about the hearings, “Double standards are frustrating, but we should address them by demanding free speech be protected consistently — not by expanding the calls for censorship.” Unfortunately, that is not what’s happening.

“The general point that there’s a hypocrisy around free speech and an imbalance around free speech on college campuses is right,” said Ryan Enos, a Harvard professor of government. But, he said, many of the people pointing this out “are not doing it to stand up for free speech; they’re just doing it because they want to shut down speech they disagree with.”

Enos was a founding member of the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, formed this year. In October he resigned because, he said, “Some of the leadership led the charge to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on campus.” When it comes to speech about Israel, there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around.

Like me, Enos found the hearings shocking, though not for the reasons many supporters of Israel did. At one point, Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who is the chairwoman of the committee holding the hearing, asked each of the presidents whether she believed that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. Now, I think that calls to dismantle Israel are misguided at best and often despicable, but it was wildly inappropriate for educational leaders to be asked to affirm their Zionism before a government panel. It felt reminiscent of the anti-Communist witch hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee: “Are you now, or have you ever been, an anti-Zionist?”

“I have a real problem with questions where you think there’s only one right answer,” said Enos. “You’re not asking a true question. You’re asking for some kind of loyalty display. And I think those things are especially dangerous.”

It’s not clear that these college presidents will keep their jobs after their performance at the hearing. But whatever happens, we’re likely to see a crackdown on many forms of pro-Palestinian expression. On Wednesday, amid mounting calls for her resignation, Penn’s Magill posted an apologetic video statement online. For decades, said Magill, Penn’s policies on speech have been guided by the Constitution and the law, but going forward, a different framework may apply.

“In today’s world, where we are seeing signs of hate proliferating across our campus and our world in a way not seen in years, these policies need to be clarified and evaluated,” she said. Expect more safety and less freedom.

 

 

The College Presidents Were Right About Campus Antisemitism. Schools should regulate conduct, not speech.

Spoiler

The job of a college president involves constantly apologizing and promising to do better. This week, several elite college presidents’ object of their groveling was Congress, which subjected them to a series of largely impossible queries about antisemitism on campus at a hearing everybody agrees went quite poorly for them.

One of the most instantly infamous exchanges took place between Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, and the Republican representative Kevin Kiley from California. “If you were talking to a prospective student’s family, a Jewish student’s family right now,” asked Kiley, “could you look them in the eye and tell them that their son or daughter would be safe and feel safe and welcome on your campus?”

Gay replied, “We are absolutely committed to student safety.” Kiley noted acidly that Gay had dodged the question, that he repeated it but received the same answer.

And it is true that she failed to answer the question — because there’s no good answer. If Gay says Jewish students would feel absolutely safe on campus, she is denying the problem. If she says they wouldn’t, she is telling Jewish students they shouldn’t come to Harvard.

There are several underlying causes for the discomfort of the college presidents, not all of which have clear solutions. College campuses have been inundated with pro-Palestinian activism, which sometimes contains a threatening tone to Jewish students. Campuses have also been struggling for a decade or so with left-wing demands to make campuses “safe,” which has entailed cracking down on criticism of the political left.

So what does it mean to make Jewish students feel safe on campus? One way would be to crack down on anti-Israel rhetoric that might make many Jews feel threatened. That would be consistent with the methods universities have sometimes employed to protect other minority groups. But it would also be deeply illiberal.
A more limited and defensible response would be to police conduct. When mobs of students disrupt classes and make it hard for students to walk around campus without being screamed at (or shoved), that creates an intimidating atmosphere.

The distinction between speech and conduct is worth bearing in mind when you read this exchange among Republican representative Elise Stefanik from New York, Gay, and University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill. This was probably the most widely cited moment of the hearings, and the one which brought the widest condemnation, but also illustrates the predicament the presidents are trying to navigate:

STEFANIK: Ms. Magill, at Penn, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct? Yes or no?
MAGILL: If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. Yes.
STEFANIK: I am asking, specifically calling for the genocide of Jews, does that constitute bullying or harassment?
MAGILL: If it is directed and severe, pervasive, it is harassment.
STEFANIK: So the answer is yes.
MAGILL: It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman.
STEFANIK: So calling for the genocide of Jews is, depending upon the context, that is not bullying or harassment. This is the easiest question to answer. Yes, Ms. Magill. So is your testimony that you will not answer yes? Yes or no?
MAGILL: If the speech becomes conduct. It can be harassment, yes.
STEFANIK: Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide. The speech is not harassment. This is unacceptable. Ms. Magill, I’m gonna give you one more opportunity for the world to see your answer. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s code of conduct when it comes to bullying and harassment? Yes or no?
MAGILL: It can be harassment.
STEFANIK: … And Dr. Gay at Harvard? Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?
GAY: It can be depending on the context.
STEFANIK: What’s the context?
GAY: Targeted at an individual targeted, as at an individual?
STEFANIK: It’s targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of antisemitism? I will ask you one more time. Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no?
GAY: Antisemitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct, that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation, that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.

Stefanik was asking the presidents about the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a slogan used by many pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Like many slogans, this one is deliberately ambiguous. Globalizing the intifada can simply mean mobilizing demonstrators across the world to support the Palestinian cause. It can also mean spreading the tactics of the intifada (which include attacks on civilians) across the world, which almost inherently means attacking Jews — after all, there aren’t many Israeli state targets outside Israel.

Many Jews quite rationally find the phrase to be a form of incitement against them. And given that pro-Palestinian activism sometimes extends to actions like vandalizing synagogues and Jewish businesses or confronting Jewish students, it seems clear that at least some activists understand the slogan the same way.
Stefanik was defining it even more aggressively, though, by using the shorthand “calling for the genocide of Jews.” As threatening as it may be, globalizing the intifada does not mean genocide.

Even worse, Stefanik was trying to collapse the distinction between speech and conduct when she said, incredulously, “Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide.” No, conduct does not have to mean committing genocide. It can mean vandalism, shoving, invading people’s personal space, or violating content-neutral rules regulating time, place, and manner of demonstrations.

What Stefanik was demanding was the wholesale ban on rhetoric and ideas that Jews find threatening, regardless of context. A university should protect students from being mobbed or having their classes occupied and disrupted. But should it protect them from an op-ed in the student newspaper calling to globalize the intifada? Or a demonstration in an open space demanding “From the river to the sea”? That would entail wholesale violations of free speech, which, in addition to the moral problem it would create, would likely backfire by making pro-Palestinian activism a kind of forbidden rebellion rather than (as many students currently find it) an irritant.

The presidents’ efforts to deflect every question about genocide of the Jews into a legalistic distinction between speech and conduct may have sounded grating, and Stefanik’s indignant replies may have sounded like moral clarity. But on the whole, they were right to focus on the distinction between speech and conduct, and Stefanik was wrong to sneer at it. A better criticism would be that colleges are failing to protect Jewish students by refusing to enforce rules of conduct. But that is different from, and in some ways the opposite of, the point Stefanik chose to stand on.

A huge proportion of the discourse around Palestinian activism and the campus has consisted of pro- and anti-Israel activists accusing each other of hypocrisy. The anti-Israel activists complain that their critics stop caring about free speech when the speech is pro-Palestinian, while the pro-Israel activists accuse the pro-Palestinian left of abandoning its commitment to safety and tolerance when the victims are Jewish.

Both criticisms have a lot of truth. But focusing monomaniacally on the hypocrisy of the opposing side can conveniently free you up to engage in hypocrisy yourself.

 

[mchookem 16,225]

academia, higher ed, and critical thinking in general are reliant on nuance. there is little if any room for nuance in today's political environment. smart people should know this and act accordingly. 

[Hermanator 6,945]

I don't remember where it was sourced from but some study stated that 55 percent of American adults read at a 6th grade or lower level. The dumber the majority of Americans become the more they're going to attack that which makes them feel inferior. Higher education in the US is going to backslide greatly in the coming decades and will lose the large talent pool of international students that come here to study and end up staying here. It will be disasterous. 

Generations from now people will study this time we're all living in as the destruction of the greatest academic empire on earth. Future generations will at once pity us and be disgusted by us. 

[Bullneck 18,987]

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

At a Hearing on Israel, University Presidents Walked Into a Trap

Shouldn't they be smart enough to see a trap?

2 hours ago, bolverk said:

The College Presidents Were Right About Campus Antisemitism. Schools should regulate conduct, not speech.

 

Counterpoint: He's a guy talking to his supporters.  His personal conduct wasn't violent that day.

Here's a couple of guys who never actually killed anyone that we know of.  But . . .

 

[atomheartbevo 89,450]

1 hour ago, Hermanator said:

I don't remember where it was sourced from but some study stated that 55 percent of American adults read at a 6th grade or lower level.

Probably sourced from Surly.

[Macanudo 12,928]

40 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Probably sourced from Surly.

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

About 130 million adults in the U.S. have low literacy skills according to a Gallup analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education. This means more than half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 (54%) read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

[TwiceHorn 31,283]

8 hours ago, aggie08 said:

While I hate that it gave Facebook idiots a victory lap to say, "See! This is just the tip of what they're indoctrinating our children with!!!"...you absolutely deserve to lose your job as a university president if you get twisted up by Elise fucking Stefanik and she comes off looking like the sane, morally superior of the two.

To be fair, there was quite a bit of concern over this from the other side of the aisle as well. 

[Bozo_Casanova 26,285]

8 hours ago, Jive Turkey said:

 

I like how uncomfortable that skit made the studio audience. It could have been funnier but drawing blood is what political satire should do. 
All it took for the Presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT needed to show Elise Stefanik for the hypocrite she is was the leadership and clarity they lack.

 

[Don Johnson 4,745]

 

[TexArcher 37,521]

14 hours ago, Macanudo said:

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

About 130 million adults in the U.S. have low literacy skills according to a Gallup analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education. This means more than half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 (54%) read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

This is maddening.

[wildcat09 29,260]

16 minutes ago, Don Johnson said:

 

Oh for fuck's sake. Conservatives in America have been attacking colleges as liberal indoctrination factories for as long as we've had colleges. It has always been, currently is, and will always be part of an organized effort to delegitimize colleges in the eyes of the American public, to justify defunding and degrading a college education because a college education typically makes someone less likely to buy into their bullshit.

Anyone who isn't literally a GOP operative doesn't need to parrot their propaganda. Yes, the university presidents were stupid to fall for Stefanik's trap, but that doesn't mean CNN talking heads need to promote her propaganda. For fuck's sake, she promotes the white genocide conspiracy theory! She doesn't care about Jews! 

[Bozo_Casanova 26,285]

14 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Oh for fuck's sake. Conservatives in America have been attacking colleges as liberal indoctrination factories for as long as we've had colleges. It has always been, currently is, and will always be part of an organized effort to delegitimize colleges in the eyes of the American public, to justify defunding and degrading a college education because a college education typically makes someone less likely to buy into their bullshit.

Anyone who isn't literally a GOP operative doesn't need to parrot their propaganda. Yes, the university presidents were stupid to fall for Stefanik's trap, but that doesn't mean CNN talking heads need to promote her propaganda. For fuck's sake, she promotes the white genocide conspiracy theory! She doesn't care about Jews! 

There's no binary choice necessary here. It's possible to discern the cynicism of Republicans here and also see the the drift of social science and liberal arts academia into bullshit and illiberal political groupthink. 

Edited December 11, 2023 by Bozo_Casanova

[Nice Guy Eddie 13,414]

13 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Oh for fuck's sake. Conservatives in America have been attacking colleges as liberal indoctrination factories for as long as we've had colleges. It has always been, currently is, and will always be part of an organized effort to delegitimize colleges in the eyes of the American public, to justify defunding and degrading a college education because a college education typically makes someone less likely to buy into their bullshit.

Anyone who isn't literally a GOP operative doesn't need to parrot their propaganda. Yes, the university presidents were stupid to fall for Stefanik's trap, but that doesn't mean CNN talking heads need to promote her propaganda. For fuck's sake, she promotes the white genocide conspiracy theory! She doesn't care about Jews! 

100% that some of the right want to degrade our public educations + liberal private schools.  You can't defund schools until you convince 50% of the voting public that these schools are evil.

And you're connect that some on the right, who are celebrating this liberal elite school scandal, are actually the ones who hate the Jews.

[956 Worldwide 34,444]

One of the Rabbis and a lecturer at HDS has resigned from the antisemitism committee at Harvard. He does not join the dogpile onto President Gay. I think the middle tweet is the most relevant:

 What I think is undeniable about this recent controversy is that for many years now, speech on campus has been centered around feelings of student safety.  It was hard not to get whiplash on the sudden about-face into legalism when the people who felt unsafe were Jews. It is extremely unfortunate that a dishonest wretch like Elise Stefanik is getting any credit for this discussion happening. 

[wildcat09 29,260]

10 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

There's no binary choice necessary here. It's possible to discern the cynicism of Republicans here and also see the the drift of social science and liberal arts academia into bullshit and illiberal political groupthink. 

Sure, but to the extent someone thinks reform is needed and needs to be championed, they really need to save that shit for later. Jumping in on a fascist PR campaign isn't going to help achieve anything but fascist reform. The rule is always "you do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to fascists." 

[High Plains Drifter 10,978]

On 12/10/2023 at 9:25 AM, Incredulity said:

“Globalize the Intifada” and “From the river to the sea” are calling for the genocide of Jews.  Yes, there have been protests with those chants used repeatedly at all the universities involved in the congressional testimony.

Don’t be fatuous.

 

free speech!

 

 

42 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Oh for fuck's sake. Conservatives in America have been attacking colleges as liberal indoctrination factories for as long as we've had colleges. It has always been, currently is, and will always be part of an organized effort to delegitimize colleges in the eyes of the American public, to justify defunding and degrading a college education because a college education typically makes someone less likely to buy into their bullshit.

Anyone who isn't literally a GOP operative doesn't need to parrot their propaganda. Yes, the university presidents were stupid to fall for Stefanik's trap, but that doesn't mean CNN talking heads need to promote her propaganda. For fuck's sake, she promotes the white genocide conspiracy theory! She doesn't care about Jews! 

 

one of those university presidents should have mentioned that during their questioning.

edit: Hell, they should have mentioned everything in this post.

 

Edited December 11, 2023 by High Plains Drifter

[wildcat09 29,260]

Fuck it, I'll be president of Penn. 

[Macanudo 12,928]

24 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

100% that some of the right want to degrade our public educations + liberal private schools.  You can't defund schools until you convince 50% of the voting public that these schools are evil.

And you're connect that some on the right, who are celebrating this liberal elite school scandal, are actually the ones who hate the Jews.

They want people to have less faith in government as well.   This makes it easier for a demagogue to come to power.

Oh, and these same people also went to these elite schools.   Like Elise and Ted Cruz, Jeffrey Clark, etc.  

[Gap03 3,287]

5 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

They want people to have less faith in government as well.   This makes it easier for a demagogue to come to power.

Oh, and these same people also went to these elite schools.   Like Elise and Ted Cruz, Jeffrey Clark, etc.  

Perfect. They absolutely should have asked Elise what technical undergraduate degree she pursued to become a useful member of society.  For the record:

Quote

Stefanik graduated from the Albany Academy for Girls and enrolled at Harvard College, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in government in 2006

Elise can get fucked with her BA in government ...

[Bozo_Casanova 26,285]

48 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Sure, but to the extent someone thinks reform is needed and needs to be championed, they really need to save that shit for later. Jumping in on a fascist PR campaign isn't going to help achieve anything but fascist reform. The rule is always "you do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to fascists." 

Indeed not, but the only thing that it took to avoid a fascist victory lap was to answer a very simple question very simply. And there is a reason they didn’t. That reason is a problem. Progressive maximalism IS NOT liberal. Progressive maximalists agree it’s not. The only people who seem confused about that are liberals.

The reason why the presidents of Penn and Harvard can’t say that calling for a genocide of all the Jews in Israel violates the code of student conduct is fear of the progressive maximalism that has captured many of quarters of elite academia and countenances no dissent.

I have nothing but contempt for Elise Srefanik and likewise for edgelord liberty grifters who have made a cottage industry out of normalizing fascism under the guise of “free speech.” But I am not going to go along with people (like Judith Butler) who insist that we must enable terrorist groups like Hamas (Hamas!) as part of a global left because of a heirarchy of grievance and obligation born of collective guilt. 

Edited December 11, 2023 by Bozo_Casanova

[Chopper 17,170]

1 hour ago, Don Johnson said:

"People are losing faith in universities because of their foray into politics. Just look at the declining attendance!"

Does this motherfucker even have a degree from Columbia (School of Broadcasting)?

[wildcat09 29,260]

30 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Indeed not, but the only thing that it took to avoid a fascist victory lap was to answer a very simple question very simply. And there is a reason they didn’t. That reason is a problem. Progressive maximalism IS NOT liberal. Progressive maximalists agree it’s not. The only people who seem confused about that are liberals.

The reason why the presidents of Penn and Harvard can’t say that calling for a genocide of all the Jews in Israel violates the code of student conduct is fear of the progressive maximalism that has captured many of quarters of elite academia and countenances no dissent.

I have nothing but contempt for Elise Srefanik and likewise for edgelord liberty grifters who have made a cottage industry out of normalizing fascism under the guise of “free speech.” But I am not going to go along with people (like Judith Butler) who insist that we must enable terrorist groups like Hamas (Hamas!) as part of a global left because of a heirarchy of grievance and obligation born of collective guilt. 

Agree with all of this. I have no sympathy for the university presidents who were dumb enough to get tripped up by Stefanik.  Though I think the reason they did has as much to do with their legal preparation (and the resulting attempt to be legally correct in answers) as it does with campus progressive maximalism. I only just realized this, but the Penn president that resigned was a Constitutional law scholar, which also helps explain why she answered how she did. 

It's infinitely preferable for university presidents to be academics rather than fascist activists like Christopher Rufo or even business dipshits who think a university should be run like a for-profit business, but that doesn't mean stuffy academics don't have their own drawbacks. A huge one being that they're usually cloistered weirdos with big blind spots regarding modern culture war issues. Which, considering that campuses are often the front lines of culture war shit, is more than a small problem.

[RDCanecutter 26,284]

16 hours ago, Macanudo said:

https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x-adult-literacy

About 130 million adults in the U.S. have low literacy skills according to a Gallup analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Education. This means more than half of Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 (54%) read below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.

Can u rephrase that  With not so many big words  kthx

[956 Worldwide 34,444]

6 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Agree with all of this. I have no sympathy for the university presidents who were dumb enough to get tripped up by Stefanik.  Though I think the reason they did has as much to do with their legal preparation (and the resulting attempt to be legally correct in answers) as it does with campus progressive maximalism. I only just realized this, but the Penn president that resigned was a Constitutional law scholar, which also helps explain why she answered how she did. 

It's infinitely preferable for university presidents to be academics rather than fascist activists like Christopher Rufo or even business dipshits who think a university should be run like a for-profit business, but that doesn't mean stuffy academics don't have their own drawbacks. A huge one being that they're usually cloistered weirdos with big blind spots regarding modern culture war issues. Which, considering that campuses are often the front lines of culture war shit, is more than a small problem.

I can think of few positions less suited for preparing someone to run a major research institution than “academic.”  Being Chris Rufo would certainly be one though. 

[Bozo_Casanova 26,285]

7 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Though I think the reason they did has as much to do with their legal preparation (and the resulting attempt to be legally correct in answers) as it does with campus progressive maximalism.

Agree, but that’s a distinction between weather and climate- they were overlawyered *because* of the maximalist environment they operate in, or at least have a voluble maximalist faction to appease in order to do their jobs in peace.

[Chopper 17,170]

If you're a University President and you don't know how to deal with dishonest questions, you are unqualified for the job.

If you're a University President and you don't understand that calling for the extinction of a group of people would be inherently threatening to any members of that group of people, you are unqualified for the job of University President.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo wrote an informative article last Friday (free link but cut and pasted too) https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/about-that-university-presidents-viral-video/sharetoken/vVMnfyHfNvjR  in which he exams the viral convo in the context of the entire hearing and found looking at the context of the entire hearing doesn't appear to make things look much better for the university presidents' side.

About That University President’s Viral Video By Josh Marshall

You’ve almost certainly now seen or heard about the congressional hearing with elite university presidents (Harvard, Penn, MIT) coldly arguing the need for context and invoking technical criteria when asked whether it would violate the university’s code of conduct to call for the extermination of Jews. The viral clip is genuinely jarring.

When I watched it I found myself asking not why are these administrators such terrible anti-Semites but how did you three possibly find yourself in this situation giving these answers?

Let’s start with some important stage-setting. First, the clip was posted by Rep. Elise Stefanik, a consistently odious and mendacious weasel who represents a district in Upstate New York. Stefanik is very much that person you’ll see melodramatically huffing and puffing in a congressional hearing demanding yes or no answers to gotcha questions that don’t have yes or no answers. And yet here … well, even for a weasel with gotcha questions, she seemed to have gotten them.

If you watch the answer from the three university presidents, each was more or less awkwardly groping toward the same response: to know whether a call for “the genocide of Jews” would violate university policy would depend on the context and more specifically whether the speech had become “conduct” and whether it was targeted at specific individuals. These are certainly valid criteria for policies on harassment and bullying. But presumably calling for the extermination of any discrete group would be inherently threatening to every member of that group and intentionally so.

So how did this happen, how did these three come up with the same catastrophically bad set of answers as Penn President Liz Magill acknowledged in an apology video released a day later? (As I wrote this, news broke that Claudine Gay, President of Harvard, also issued an apology.) I told my wife a couple days ago the exchange would make some sense if it was immediately preceded by a discussion of the role of targeting and the speech/conduct distinction in university harassment policies and then Stefanik used this as an opening for her gotcha questions. Admittedly, I hadn’t found time to go back and watch the whole hearing to see if something like this was the case. But this morning I found out that Times columnist Michele Goldberg did do this. And there was something at least somewhat like this. Here’s the relevant excerpt from Goldberg’s piece in today’s Times.

But while it might seem hard to believe that there’s any context that could make the responses of the college presidents OK, watching the whole hearing at least makes them more understandable. In the questioning before the now infamous exchange, you can see the trap Stefanik laid.

“You understand that the use of the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that?” she asked Gay.

Gay responded that such language was “abhorrent.” Stefanik then badgered her to admit that students chanting about intifada were calling for genocide, and asked angrily whether that was against Harvard’s code of conduct. “Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against students or applicants who say, ‘From the river to the sea’ or ‘intifada,’ advocating for the murder of Jews?” Gay repeated that such “hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me,” but said action would be taken only “when speech crosses into conduct.”

So later in the hearing, when Stefanik again started questioning Gay, Kornbluth and Magill about whether it was permissible for students to call for the genocide of the Jews, she was referring, it seemed clear, to common pro-Palestinian rhetoric and trying to get the university presidents to commit to disciplining those who use it. Doing so would be an egregious violation of free speech. After all, even if you’re disgusted by slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” their meaning is contested in a way that, say, “Gas the Jews” is not. Finding themselves in a no-win situation, the university presidents resorted to bloodless bureaucratic contortions, and walked into a public relations disaster.

I don’t think this closes the book on broader question of double standards in a university context. The bobbled responses are related to a framework of social justice politics that isn’t inimical to Jews but simply doesn’t have an obvious place for them. But it does provide some helpful context in explaining how this messaging trainwreck came to pass.

I do think that double standard exists. But it’s a complicated one, one in which Jews and their allies simultaneously have made Anti-Semitism, labeled as such, wholly verboten and have a robust institutional network of groups aimed at identifying it and shunning it, and yet also find demonizing rhetoric about Jews evaluating on the basis of whether and what Jews might have done to deserve being demonized. Both things manage to be kind of true at the same time.

In recent years many academic institutions have adopted a ways of navigating speech questions that put the subjective experience of individuals and particular groups at the center of the question. But that framework is inherently problematic and unlimited, though coming up with “objective” standards is inherently difficult and at some level not entirely possible. There’s no question that many Jewish college students raised in a communal Jewish environment find calls for “intifada revolution” deeply and genuinely threatening. But the best situational definition of intifada refers to a violent uprising against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, the First Intifada, which is generally dated from 1987 to 1993 mostly consisted of rock throwing and what we might call rioting. While certainly not “non-violent” it had much less violence that what came after it during Hamas’s armed campaign to derail the Oslo Accords and even more so during the much more violent terror campaigns of the Second Intifada. Most Palestinian factions decided that it would be crazy and folly to get into a contest of violence with the IDF and at first even Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad agreed to abide by these limits.

While groups like Hamas certainly use the word with a strong eliminationist meaning it is simply not the case that the term consistently or usually or mostly refers to genocide. It’s just not. Stefanik’s basic equation was and is simply false and the university presidents were maladroit enough to fall into her trap.

The standard of subjective experience is not a workable one. If we’re going to use it we should apply it consistently across the board. And there is a good deal of evidence it’s not consistently applied with respect to Jews on college campuses. But a better approach would be to reconsider the standard itself.

Edited December 11, 2023 by Chopper