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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33118 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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Columbia Student Hunted by ICE Sues to Prevent Deportation

A 21-year old, third year Columbia student is wanted by ICE. She's a legal permanent resident who has lived in the United States since she was 7 years old. This is different from the case of Mahmoud Khalil in very notable regards:

  • Chung is herself Korean and not Arab like Mahmoud Khalil, there is no accusation that Chung herself "supports terrorism" which was the justification that was going around when Khalil was arrested.
  • According to NYT the Trump administration justification is:

The Trump administration is arguing that her presence in the United States hinders the administration’s foreign policy agenda of halting the spread of antisemitism...

The involvement of federal prosecutors was particularly notable. According to Ms. Chung’s lawsuit, agents apparently seeking her searched two residences on the Columbia campus with warrants that cited a criminal law known as the harboring statute, aimed at those who give shelter to noncitizens present in the United States illegally.

That signaled that the searches were related to a broader criminal investigation by federal prosecutors into Columbia University. Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general, has said that the school is under investigation “for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus.”

  • So the arrest/deportation order is based on the accusation of antisemitism and not support for terrorism. If you are wondering what Chung did that the US government would consider antisemitic- the DHS and United States has adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's working definition of Antisemitism.
  • There is no accusation that Chung organized the protests or was a leader of the protests in any form, and did not speak to reporters, she was merely a participant.

As someone who has been very aware of the growing body of European hate speech laws making antisemitism illegal, and the regulatory and legal tactics which are being pursued to tacitly put Americans under the same rules, even I underestimated the extent to which antisemitism would be overtly criminalized in the United States. Although I warned of the US adopting the IHRA definition of anti-semitism years ago on TheMotte, even at the time I didn't think it would form the basis for arresting protestors.

I can't tell if pro-Palestinianism already had its moment of immoderate greatness or if philosemitism is having its own.

From a purely cynical perspective, it seems like it would be easier to tamp down on certain attitudes about Jews if there's a general woke regime that reacts horrifically to any perceived attack against any victim of history, the more the merrier.

Having an administration or people hellbent on dismantling that entire system (and whose main talent is exacerbating negative polarization)make exceptions for one group seems suboptimal in comparison. This is how normal people get ideas.

I mean, pro-palestinians largely are the woke. Like literally the same people in many cases(no, most of them are not Arabs). You can't go after the woke without going after pro-palestinians.

Right, the Free Palestine and BLM Venn diagram will have an almost complete overlap.

Frankly, I would be fine with deporting aliens that protest for far right causes as well. I think guests should simply not be shit-stirrers, regardless of my agreement or lack thereof with their positions.

Venn diagrams don't use areas

They do:

A Venn diagram, also called a set diagram or logic diagram, shows all possible logical relations between a finite collection of different sets. These diagrams depict elements as points in the plane, and sets as regions inside closed curves. A Venn diagram consists of multiple overlapping closed curves, usually circles, each representing a set. The points inside a curve labelled S represent elements of the set S, while points outside the boundary represent elements not in the set S. This lends itself to intuitive visualizations; for example, the set of all elements that are members of both sets S and T, denoted S ∩ T and read "the intersection of S and T", is represented visually by the area of overlap of the regions S and T.[1]

In Venn diagrams, the curves are overlapped in every possible way, showing all possible relations between the sets. They are thus a special case of Euler diagrams, which do not necessarily show all relations. Venn diagrams were conceived around 1880 by John Venn. They are used to teach elementary set theory, as well as illustrate simple set relationships in probability, logic, statistics, linguistics, and computer science.

A Venn diagram in which the area of each shape is proportional to the number of elements it contains is called an area-proportional (or scaled) Venn diagram.

If you're going to be pedantic, at least be right! The complaint that I should have said "an area-proportional Venn diagram would have an almost complete overlap" is just about maximally pointless.

A Venn diagram in which the area of each shape is proportional to the number of elements it contains is called an area-proportional (or scaled) Venn diagram.

I don't think it is pedantic to point out that just because a niche generalization shares the name with a common concept, the common concept itself is fully general. Note the area-proportional (or scaled) part, if Venn diagrams wouldn't encode just boolean relarions, this addition would be superfluous.

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