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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   26663 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 11, 2023

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On the bird site (or is it the letter site now?) I'm seeing increasing calls to oust Harvard President Claudine Gay. Famously, during her recent Congressional testimony she was asked this question:

"Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?"

Her memeworthy reply was: "It can be, depending on the context".

This of course, is pretty weak sauce considering that Harvard is ranked dead last out of 245 institutions for Freedom of Expression according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. It would appear to an outside observer that Harvard's standards of what is acceptable speech vary greatly depending on who is doing the speaking.

Bill Ackman, billionaire and Harvard alum, didn't pull any punches tweeting "Resign in Disgrace".

Predictably the scandal has caused people to dig into Ms. Gay's academic work, and accusations were made that she plagiarized parts of her thesis. Nevertheless, many have come to her defense with more than 650 Harvard faculty signing a letter of support for Dr. Gay, who became the institution's first black President earlier this year.

It would appear that Harvard is in a no-win situation.

  • If they fire Dr. Gay, they will have fired a black, female President and will enrage the social justice left who constitute the vast majority of Harvard's students and staff.

  • If they don't fire her, they will have proven that Harvard has no consistent free speech principles and, furthermore, that calls for genocide are acceptable as long as they are against the appropriate targets.

  • There is perhaps a third option, in which Dr. Gay cracks down hard on anti-Semitic speech and makes an example of a few students or staff who crossed the line, thus blaming it on a few bad apples and going back to the status quo.

Whatever happens, I think that Harvard's reputation has been damaged by this incident. There is an opportunity for another school in the elite ranks to set itself apart as the "sane" alternative and perhaps capture Harvard's crown at the top of the academic food chain.

As always, I believe that donations to elite institutions are harmful and the donors should be laughed at, taxed, and shamed.

I don’t want to start another antisemitism thread and this will do but an interesting survey came out recently on Holocaust denial.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/1-5-young-americans-say-holocaust-was-myth-twice-many-democrats-republicans

43% of the under 29 age group believe the Holocaust is a myth or heavily exaggerated.

Personally I thought Holocaust denial on TheMotte was a fringe group representing some 1-3% of the overall population and largely alt-right. Turns out it’s rapidly becoming the dominant view of college students and a normie belief for the next generation.

My understanding of popular opinion on the issue was completely off and one of my worst beliefs. It’s probably a sign I am just not up to date with the young kids. I can take comforting in being completely wrong because it is a fringe belief in older age groups.

My gut would say places like ADL completely missed this too. One could right off all the right wing bashing as a pivot to justify their existence because existential antisemitism was gone and everyone agreed with it in the last generation. Will be interesting to see if they pivot back to their primary purpose and start approaching Ackman types for cash to attack Holocaust denialism.

Fundamentally I think issues l should be viewed in the following light:

  1. Israel and Israel’s supporters (primarily American Jews and evangelicals), want the us to give Israel 15 billion dollars.
  2. This will enable Israel to expand their activities in the Gaza Strip and possibly invade Lebanon again and could easily end up involving the us in the region again.

I and many other Americans who don’t have any affiliation with Israel are asking if this is in our national interest. Many more democrats than republicans do not think it is and Democratic support is required to make this pass. Rather than debating this issue on its merits the adl and other Israel supporters are doing their best to make it a conversation about anti semitism. In my opinion suggesting that universities are antisemitic places is even more preposterous than suggesting that they are racist places and anyone who cares a wit about freedom of speech should should be concerned that the wealthy donors have this much influence over public institutions (by which I mean u penn.). I can’t believe that I am actually in support of something Harvard is doing (this is probably the first time ever), but it sort of refreshing that their endowment is so big that they can ignore these kinds of donor demands.

By any definition that people like me get accused of being white supremacists, fascists, pick your label, etc - these schools are far past the line I’m judged by on their antisemitism.

I think being pro-Palestine after what they did is very very tough line to draw before your antisemitic. You Can asks for mercy from Israel and things like that but what happened was really bad.

I’ve seen a lot of reports that most young people saying “river to the sea” don’t actually know what that term means and change their view when they realize it means Jewish genocide. But Harvard students aren’t some stupid kid at a directional state school. They know geography and what that means.

And I disagree with you that Israel isn’t strategically important to the US. 30-50% of scientific output comes from the Jewish population (nobels so boundary pushers not the grinders pushing others ideas to implementation). The US having a technological edge on China etc completely depends on the Jews. Nukes were invented by Jews. AI led by Altman (a Jew) is the next big military tech. The Jews matter as allies.

For every Bill Gates and Elon Musks there is a Mark Zuckerberg and Sergei Brin/Larry Page.

I think you’re completely missing my point which is that it’s questionable that giving Israel a lot of money to destabilize the Middle East is a good idea (not the least of which is because you are mostly propping up Netanyahu). The us needs to be preparing to compete with China, not wasting our energies on regional fights in the Middle East and

As for Israel’s alleged strategic importance, every example you have was of Jews working in america. Israel itself is not particularly productive or important.

I’d also encourage you to look at the domestic Israeli political situation, before advocating American political involvement.

“Destabilize the Middle East” is doing a lot here and unfounded. As far as I can tell no one in the ME likes Palestine and a lot of them do like Israel.

43% of the under 29 age group believe the Holocaust is a myth or heavily exaggerated.

The event is solidly out of living memory now. Anyone old enough to properly remember the lead-up to the Holocaust (let's assume they had to be 10 to properly appreciate what Kristallnacht was) is 100 years old now, so there would be... 600 survivors, assuming a centenarian proportion of 1/10,000 and 6 million victims.

Charitably, there's correspondingly less incentive to bend truths and exaggerate the scale (outside of the usual political actors); less charitably, nobody left who can fact-check them. Moral panics and social justice issues have a half-life, and that seems to me (using other things as a barometer, like absinthe prohibitions and how long those took to disappear from the books) to be about 4 generations, or 80-100 years.

That is absolutely insane. I don't know what else to say...

This is almost entirely non-whites and blacks and Muslims are massively over represented. Non-white people just see Jews as another type of white people oppressing POCs and bombing brown people. The ironic thing is that the Jewish community played a huge role in the Civil Rights movement and liberalizing immigration laws. Meanwhile, groups like the ADL spent all this time antagonizing the biggest supporters of Jews and Israel, which has eroded support for Israel and Jews on the right with young people like the Groypers and Nick Fuentes. Israel is about to have a massive legitimacy crisis in the coming decades if things don't change. If you go on the teachers subreddit, it's filled with millennial and gen-x teachers shocked that young people, especially non-whites, think the Holocaust was funny and make jokes about Hitler being based.

43% of the under 29 age group believe the Holocaust is a myth or heavily exaggerated.

No, 20 % think it's a myth and 23 % think it's exaggerated. They were separate questions on the poll, and probably have a lot of overlap.

I think you are right on that sorry combined them for simplicity.

I believe it said 30% aren’t sure if it’s a myth if I’m reading it right so that still gets a combined 50% between myth and don’t know.

Aggressive antisemitism is often an urban black thing, which is consistent with the polling data regarding holocaust denial. This isn't new, it was a feature of black integration into Jewish neighborhoods during the Great Migration, and the groups have never gotten along all that well. I have a very difficult time treating the ADL's emphasis on right-wing antisemitism as being entirely good-faith given how historically obvious black-Jewish strife is.

I would note polling shows Holocaust denial doesn’t exists over 65 and very small over 45 so even most of the older black community doesn’t believe it. And I think they rightfully believed that urban blacks weren’t a political threat to them.

There is perhaps a third option, in which Dr. Gay cracks down hard on anti-Semitic speech and makes an example of a few students or staff who crossed the line, thus blaming it on a few bad apples and going back to the status quo.

Why not take the mirror image of this third option, where Dr. Gay and other Harvard leadership make commitments not to crack down on all "hate speech" that is similar to the antisemitic stuff we see today, just directed at other, less acceptable targets, while continuing to let the antisemitic stuff go free? This would be my preferred option. Making a credible commitment here is likely to be difficult, so it would have to be costly, though, like liquidating entire departments both administratively and academically.

I think this falls under the old meme of “why we can’t have nice things”. I would take the deal you offer but it’s not a winning position.

Hanania I believe gets it correct. We aren’t going to get some free speech movement. But we can use victimology and in my view the current people in charge awful views on antisemitism to kick out the old guard and replace them with people who will allow more speech on things I think should be in the Overton window.

It’s easier to just do a power play and in my view kick the bad people out than try to get everyone to agree to free speech.

https://twitter.com/richardhanania/status/1734628629211168821?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

I don’t care about supporting people who want to support Hamas free speech rights but getting rid of the pro-Hamas people is good for me.

If I went all free speechy and was like I support Ms. Gay right to her beliefs and help her keep her job I have zero faith she would be my ally when the mob comes for me.

It was a manipulative question. It’s akin to, “does calling for the rape of women violate Harvard’s rules on domestic assault?” Of course it wouldn’t, because inappropriate statements against the values of Harvard are not in the category of domestic assault, but a different category of infraction. In the same way, bullying and harassment are targeted actions against individuals or groups of individuals, and not every infraction is in the category of harassment. So Gay’s answer was correct, and also morally correct. The pressure of billionaire Jews and the World Jewish Congress to make people lie in front of Congress is a horrible look. Calling for the genocide of Jews would be against norms of every major university in America, but that doesn’t mean that it constitutes “harassment” any more than it constitutes tax fraud. Not to mention, it’s a new type of crime that hadn’t had time to be adjudicated. (“Miss Gay, does calling for Armenians to eat so many hot dogs that they internally implode violate Harvard’s rules on harassment?”)

Tbh I think you're partially correct in the first part. But 'asking manipulative questions' and 'pressuring people to lie in politics' isn't an exclusively jewish thing.

So Gay’s answer was correct, and also morally correct.

Can we compare this with other examples of hate speech from the past few years? Slightly right-leaning speakers were stopped from speaking because they were a threat. Didn't people putting up 'It's ok to be white' signs get investigated by the FBI?

It's the blatant double standard being enforced that's getting me ...

Well the FBI thing is irrelevant. The university professors are telling the senator what (to the best of their knowledge) constitutes bullying and harassment in the code of conduct, which they did not write.

because they were a threat

Note that this would not fall under bullying, nor harassment, in the code of conduct.

It was a manipulative question. It’s akin to, “does calling for the rape of women violate Harvard’s rules on domestic assault?” Of course it wouldn’t, because inappropriate statements against the values of Harvard are not in the category of domestic assault

To continue the analogy, this happened after Harvard claimed that calling for the rape of 10 other categories violates the rule. (It's a hypothetical, so pretend that those categories exist.) If the president of Harvard refused to answer when asked specifically about women after agreeing for everyone else, the question isn't manipulative, it's just exposing hypocrisy.

If you claim that calling for genocide is not harassment, that's fine by itself. But if you do it in the context of all the other things that Harvard does consider harassment, it isn't.

If Harvard said "calling for genocide of Jews isn't harassment or bullying because that's the wrong category," the next question would be "how about 'it's okay to be white', or anti-trans positions?"

Where is the part about the rape? I can’t find it searching through the CSPAN archives

The analogy was comparing supporting rape of women to opposing rape of hypothetical groups, and the real world counterpart would be comparing support of anti-semitic comments to opposing anti-X comments. The rape is part of the analogy (and it was an analogy that you started), not a claim that they actually support rape.

Okay, so do you have proof that these Ivy League schools have disciplined “it’s okay to be white” or similar remarks as bullying or harassment per the code of conduct when it occurred outside the context of teaching? You are making a claim that this occurred. (The “outside the context of teaching” is essential, because the question was asked so broadly that it includes any single context involving the employee of the university. A self-published work, a comment to an agreeing party, an article in an obscure journal…).

The allies of convenience created by this controversy are farcical. DR guys defending the affirmative action hyper-woke presidents of Harvard and their commitment to free speech, now I’ve seen everything.

Calling for genocide is obviously “harassment”, in the same way that citing statistics is “harassment”. On a regular day, harvard students ‘feel unsafe’ when confronted with mild antagonism and unfamiliar ideas, and the administrators use this ‘harm’ to justify censoring offending speech. Now I’m not invested in this line of thought and I’m not that kind of guy, but it should be obvious to anyone that such a vulnerable person would feel even less safe by hearing calls for their genocide, than by hearing a random unorthodox talking point like abortion should be illegal. For harvard, it's a little late to try to catch the first amendment train.

I’m defending precise language when under oath to Congress, which everyone should be doing regardless of the surrounding details.

Calling for genocide is obviously “harassment”

How can speech that is not spoken to someone, or even in earshot, constitute bullying or harassment?

citing statistics is “harassment”

In the context of teaching students, it may, but not in the context of a published work or some other context. In other words, it depends on the context.

Why are you talking about published work, or speech that is not in earshot of anyone? The context is speakers at protests.

It was a new speaker’s turn to ask questions, and the question was

Dr. Gay, at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment, yes or no?"

This broad question exists outside of any previous context, and had the speaker wanted (she did not and succeeded in her actual desire) she could have qualified her question relevantly. The Collins American entry simply defines it as demand, but I think the actual definition of “calling for” in an academic context is “desiring / hoping for the action to be completed”. Greta Thunberg can call for lower emissions, and that’s really what she’s doing, with “demand” not accurately conveying that a call for something can be totally wishful and ineffectual. Academics and politicians do this all the time, eg “we call for an equal number of black astrophysicists” does not imply an effectual action or completed action.

The other reply is correct. They haven’t held these standards in the past that it’s something something free speech absolutism which since free speech applies only when it’s talking about genociding Jews it does make it just antisemitism.

So that’s a strong form and probably closest to my actual opinion of the situation.

A weaker form is she very easily could have said free speech without specific threats is fine but then brought down the hammer in condemning the students actions.

You could just say “Even extremely vile speech such as advocating for genocide of Jews which we have seen on Harvards campus does not violate our Honor Code as harassment if it is not directed at a specific person”

It’s a manipulative question because it’s designed to elicit a certain answer, sure. That said…

The ‘spirit of the first amendment’ defense (as invoked by Harvard, Penn, etc) is invalid because it does not apply to criticism of favored groups like transgender and black people, or when it comes to controversial topics like HBD. As FIRE has extensively documented, lawful conservative or reactionary speech clearly does violate Harvard’s code of conduct enough for the administration to take (extensive, in the case of BLM) action. In addition, most American universities’ approach to Title IX policy since the Obama administration has been to build an entire infrastructure of kangaroo courts that explicitly exist to prosecute and punish students for alleged behavior that does not amount to an ‘official’ crime as investigated and charged by the police and justice system.

On this basis it is therefore fair to ask why these colleges retreat to the ‘spirit of the first amendment’ defense with regards to Israel/Palestine when merely adhering to constitutional and legislative standards clearly isn’t sufficient for them in other cases.

If what you’re saying is true, there should be a case of someone being disciplined or fired specifically on the grounds of bullying and harassment for making an anti-black or anti-gay comment entirely outside a teacher-student context [eg, in a professor’s own self-published work]. I do not know of any case of this happening, but if you know of a case then it would prove your argument.

Carol Hooven was, as far as I can tell, forced to retire from teaching at Harvard within the last two years for making the controversial statement that there are two sexes while promoting her book about testosterone and its effects.

Actually, this proved the exact opposite. Hooven was never disciplined by the university at all, and instead was “boycotted” by graduate students.

https://www.goacta.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Carole-Hooven-transcript.pdf

Ordinarily I have little sympathy for people who get hauled before committees because generally they deserve it. And a bunch of presidents of extremely wealthy universities who have spent the past few years licking the shoes of the wokies gets even less sympathy from me.

But that was a real "have you stopped beating your wife?" question there.

There's two parts to it, and the answers are "yes" and "no" respectively.

"Is calling for the genocide of Jews... bullying and harassment?"

Well, yeah. Who (apart from the usual suspects) is going to stand up in public and say "I'm all for genocide of the Jews, me!"

The second part of the question, though, is "Is what is going on with campus protests calling for genocide?" and that is the Remains To Be Proven part.

In which case, a bunch of idiot kids chanting slogans does not "violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment", so the answer there is "no". Because if it is, then all the idiot kids (and lecturers and professors) chanting slogans and marching in protests over the past few years about White Supremacy and the rest of it is "calling for genocide" and there were no committees investigating that.

It can't be "it's okay if it's about whites, but the Jews are special" unless you want to open a whole can of worms about The Global Jewish Conspiracy and puppetmaster elites pulling strings and so forth.

The condemnation, as Nybbler says (and again this is in Ackman’s Twitter post) is because they’re unwilling to actually commit to freedom of speech. They want their exceptions for discourse around trans issues or HBD, but then when it’s POC vs Jews, they want to be able to sit back and say they’re just following the spirit of the first amendment.

You can't divorce the discussion from the fact that Israel is slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians, and it's especially rich that Jews have been able to force the discourse on an alleged call to genocide with a run-of-the-mill propaganda slogan like "Palestinians will be free in Palestine," when such slogans are common to every war in human history. We should be left in awe that they've been able to steer the discourse to pearl-clutching around that slogan while they openly endorse an ongoing ethnic cleansing. None of the hypocrisy you are trying to identify here between "POC vs Jews" on the free speech question can possibly hold a candle to the hypocritical Elite support for Zionist brutality. The fact this has been made an issue proves Jews are on the top of the pyramid, above and beyond the POC, and the kvetching over this controversy is just proof of that fact and not at all proof that Jews are put upon.

Israel is slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians

This is bullshit. Sure, some civilians in Gaza are dying, but Israel is not intentionally killing them. They're dying because the Hamas faggots are standing next to women and children when they fire their rockets. They're dying because they support the terrorists stockpiling machine guns next to their kids' school supplies. Whatever the beef with Jews, it's Hamas and its supporters who are killing the people in Gaza.

an alleged call to genocide with a run-of-the-mill propaganda slogan like "Palestinians will be free in Palestine," when such slogans are common to every war in human history.

How else do you interpret “from the river to the sea”? That slogan clearly includes both Israel and Palestine, and Hamas’s original and 2017 charters both indicate that their ultimate goal is to wrest control of the entire area from Israel.

Look, I’m no fan of Israel’s actions, especially the settlements in the West Bank. I even argued here last week that we shouldn’t be supporting Israel in this conflict. But just because Israel isn’t a saint, it doesn’t mean Hamas is. Everyone who chants “from the river to the sea” while knowing what that means (most Americans don’t, including the ones chanting it) is mouthing support for genocide.

ETA: You can substitute “ethnic cleansing” for genocide if you prefer.

How else do you interpret “from the river to the sea”?

It could be interpreted as call for genocide, it could be also interpreted as call for one state solution, creation of one state where Palestinians and Jews would live happily together as equal citizens with equal rights (this means equal right to return to both Jews and Palestinians).

Could such state work?

Combined total population of current Holy Land is 12,8 million split roughly equally between Jews and Palestinians.

Outside of the land, total number of Palestinians is about 6 million, while Jews outside of Israel eligible by Law of Return to immigrate are about 17 million.

Assuming everyone returns home according to the plan, total population of the Holy Land will rise to respectable 36 million. Divided by 25,500 square km of land, it gives population density of ~ 1411 ppl/km2.

Hellish nightmare, you might say, just little less hellish than Houston, TX.

How would be Mega City Mideast governed? We are in the 21st century, democracy is out and absolute rule by Dictatorate of Supreme Judges is in. We are destined to dystopic future anyway, why not pick the cool British one?

Assuming everyone returns home according to the plan

How likely do you think that is to actually happen? And failing that, how do you prevent this single-state solution from undergoing Dan Carlin's "conquest via democracy"?

Assuming everyone returns home according to the plan

Ha. Not bloody likely.

Israel: slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians

Nazi Germany: those Jews died of typhosis

Slaughtering, to me, seems like a highly incorrect use of the word. They are incidentally killing people in Gaza, some tiny percentage of which are civilians, most of whom are in the crossfire because they are being used as human shields by agents of Hamas, a foreign military operation that just conducted an act of aggression in Israel.

It seems rather likely to me that a large percentage are civilians, given how much Hamas tries to hide itself with civilians and inside civilian structures. Which doesn’t make the IDF’s collateral damage any less moral, in my opinion.

Oh I disagree. You can't have such a standard practice without willing participation of the vast majority of the population. Almost everyone over age 10 knows why they are there and is agreeing to it.

That may well be, but supporting the military doesn’t make you a combatant, or else the civilian/combatant distinction would be virtually meaningless in the vast majority of cases.

Yes I agree that the civilian/combatant distinction is useless in the vast majority of cases. I further assert most people asserted to be Palestinian Civilians would fail all but the most lenient tests if given a questionnaire with a perfect truth detector.

More comments

You can't divorce the discussion from the fact that Israel is slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians

Can you divorce from you mind the mass rape and murder of Oct 7? Wasn't that called exhilarating by a few groups on Oct 8?

The fact this has been made an issue proves Jews are on the top of the pyramid, above and beyond the POC

Well ‘the Jews’ just failed to oust Harvard’s WOC president despite making up a majority of its most generous donors, which would suggest otherwise. Israel isn’t ‘slaughtering’ Gazan civilians, casualty rates in Gaza are within expected parameters for fighting in a dense, highly populated urban environment and don’t suggest any large scale targeting of non-combatants unaffiliated with Hamas.

Not only do Hamas’ own casualty figures fluctuate in a deeply suspicious way, but even if they were accurate they’d suggest a less than 1% civilian death rate, which again is extremely low in historical terms for the invasion of a dense city (or even in general). Gaza’s population is three times that of Dresden before it was bombed, and yet in two months of heavy bombing and a ground invasion, even Hamas argues that fewer died than did in a single allied bombing there.

Gaza’s population is three times that of Dresden before it was bombed, and yet in two months of heavy bombing and a ground invasion, even Hamas argues that fewer died than did in a single allied bombing there.

Dresden was firebombed and the majority of the city was outright annihilated by the resulting firestorm. The firebombed japanese cities, or for that matter the nuclear bombings, would be similarly poor examples for comparison. Why not compare to casualties from the bombing of Britain, or some other example of indiscriminate bombing, adjusted by weight of bombs dropped? Presumably Israel is dropping guided weapons; if they are producing more casualties per ton of bombs dropped than examples of indiscriminate bombing in WWII, that seems like it ought to be recognized as a significant result.

The bombing of Britain wasn't a war crime (or at least isn't widely considered one), so the comparison wouldn't really demonstrate anything.

Presumably Israel is dropping guided weapons; if they are producing more casualties per ton of bombs dropped than examples of indiscriminate bombing in WWII, that seems like it ought to be recognized as a significant result.

Not really; when you make more precise bombs you generally also make them smaller (some of the big bunker-busters being exceptions). The proper measure would be civilian casualties per some measure of military effectiveness.

Not really; when you make more precise bombs you generally also make them smaller (some of the big bunker-busters being exceptions).

Hence per ton of bombs dropped.

Works the wrong way. If I used to drop 100 tons of bomb to destroy a target and it killed 5 civilians (destroying the target but mostly hitting other stuff) and now I drop 10 tons of precision bomb and it kills 1 civilian (destroying the target that the civilian was at/nearby), going by tonnage makes the second one look worse.

Israel isn’t ‘slaughtering’ Gazan civilians, casualty rates in Gaza are within expected parameters for fighting in a dense, highly populated urban environment and don’t suggest any large scale targeting of non-combatants unaffiliated with Hamas.

Israel is slaughtering Gazan civilians, it is building settlements to ethnically cleanse the West Bank. It is Apartheid by any reasonable standard, with Gazans as functionally less-than second class non-citizens of Israel. Using Dresden as a benchmark for whether or not we can consider there to be a slaughter of civilians is revealing of just how motivated you are to deny the reality of the situation.

Why not just embrace the Richard Hanania approach of supporting it rather than denying that it is actually happening?

On the one hand, you don't think we can call this a slaughter of civilians because the death toll isn't at the level of Dresden, but on the other hand you are Very Concerned that students on campus are saying that Palestinians should be free. Like I said, we should be left gasping in awe at the inversion of reality we are watching unfold at the pinnacle of the Ivory Tower, and even here.

Using Dresden as a benchmark for whether or not we can consider there to be a slaughter of civilians is revealing of just how motivated you are to deny the reality of the situation.

Dresden is considered a controversial case and had a casualty rate either an order or multiple orders of magnitude higher than the current conflict depending on who you believe, sure.

But that reminds me, you’ve argued that extraordinarily high civilian death rates on the Eastern Front in WW2 were merely sad realities of warfare (rather than any deliberate extermination), but less than 1% of Gaza’s population (a substantial part of which is armed combatants) dying in an invasion is a “slaughter”? More Jews died at Iasi in a few days than civilians have died in Gaza since October 7th.

If killing sub-1% of the civilian population in collateral damage during an invasion is a “slaughter”, then the term applies to almost any major military action to the extent it’s almost redundant.

Why not just embrace the Richard Hanania approach of supporting it rather than denying that it is actually happening?

I’m not Israeli, but if I were I’d be far harsher and less compromising. Perhaps that would make me a bad leader. I advocated right here, as I recall, that Israel should start executing fighting age men until the will to fight back is eliminated, for example.

you are Very Concerned that students on campus are saying that Palestinians should be free.

Not at all. I have few real opinions about freedom of speech, given neither I nor those I consider hostile to me support it. But, as a citizen of present day America, I would run a university as the presidents promised this week (or last, I forget) in Congress, without any restrictions on legal speech by faculty or students.

I have never contested that the high mortality due to war reality, reprisals etc. certainly constitutes a "slaughter of civilians", and again, I don't know why you insist on pointing to particularly notable examples of this and insisting they are a minimum benchmark for acknowledging the reality of what is happening on the ground. What is happening right now in Gaza is a reprisal.

I advocated right here, as I recall, that Israel should start executing fighting age men without charge until the will to fight back is eliminated, for example.

You don't appreciate how fragile Israel is. It only exists by the pathological grace of European people. It's been an albatross around the neck of the White world. The Jews haven't built an inspiring outpost of civilization. It's an embarrassment in every regard: politically, ideologically, aesthetically, geopolitically. It's been a massively destabilizing force geopolitically, it has costed the United States immense wealth, blood, and prestige on the world stage to such an extent as to actually threaten its hegemony.

The real reason why propaganda slogans are so threatening is because they threaten an erosion of Western support for Israel, which is absolutely terrifying for them, and rightfully so. It has nothing to do with "muh genocidal rhetoric". It's about clamping down on campus opposition to Israel.

You don't appreciate how fragile Israel is.

If the West stopped caring either way about Israel tomorrow, what do you suppose would happen to it?

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran successfully invade?

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You can't divorce the discussion from the fact that Israel is slaughtering thousands of Gazan civilians

Israel is, as far as anyone can tell, following the laws of war on protection of civilians, although I suppose they could just let Hamas attack them again instead.

with a run-of-the-mill propaganda slogan like "Palestinians will be free in Palestine," when such slogans are common to every war in human history

This slogan is 1) blatantly false(Palestine will continue to lose) and 2) actually is ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, which implies an end to Israel. Israeli Jews will get genocided or ethnically cleansed if that happens. So yes, it is an implicit call for… something unpleasant.

Israel is engaging in an ethnic cleansing, the "legality" doesn't matter as that is simply a function of the support of the United States. The legality of settlements or blockades doesn't matter either. It's an Apartheid state... It's everything the managerial elite claim to oppose. But the real problem is a fucking slogan saying Palestinians will be free? Give me a break, seriously. It's a testament to their penchant for narrative control that they make a fucking slogan the big Controversy of the Day, and even people here take the bait by claiming that this shows how Jews are just so put upon by Academia. It's completely absurd.

Something tells me that the Jewish donor class that pushed out Liz would support ending Apartheid, regardless of the consequences for white South Africans, while also supporting Israeli Apartheid in order to safeguard Israeli Jews. And then, to cover up their monumental hypocrisy, they will drum up controversy over a slogan like "from the River to the Sea" to claim they are the victims of "genocidal rhetoric" while they actively support an Apartheid regime engaging in ethnic cleansing.

Israel engages in ethnic cleansing in the West Bank, but the Gaza operation is a military operation with military targeting, not ethnic cleansing. The settlements in the West Bank are bad and should be condemned, they don’t justify even more ethnic cleansing in return.

Gaza is its own country though...

"Is calling for the genocide of Jews... bullying and harassment?"

Well, yeah. Who (apart from the usual suspects) is going to stand up in public and say "I'm all for genocide of the Jews, me!"

How about "Calling for the genocide of Jews is disgusting and distasteful in the extreme, but it is absolutely protected speech under Brandenburg v. Ohio and does not in itself constitute prohibited bullying or harassment." That's what I would say if I was leading a public university and being grilled. The University of Pennsylvania guarantees students "The right to freedom of thought and expression", so I'd say something like "...but it is expression permitted under the University of Pennsylvania Code of Student Conduct." Harvard, however, has no such out.

"Yes or no, Mr/Ms President. That's what I asked: yes, or no?"

They won't listen to your explanation of "yes, but"; they want a gotcha.

You don't start your answer with "yes" or "no". If the questioner starts bullying tactics like that you don't have to play along.

How about "Calling for the genocide of Jews is disgusting and distasteful in the extreme, but it is absolutely protected speech under Brandenburg v. Ohio and does not in itself constitute prohibited bullying or harassment."

Harvard can't say that because all the other things that they do claim are bullying or harassment keep them from being able to say it honestly.

If they say that, the next question would be about whether Trump support, Islamophobia, etc. are prohibited bullying or harassment.

Yeah, Harvard can't, as I noted. Penn could. They'd be lying, but they at least have a student conduct code which clearly backs it up. Harvard doesn't, because they hedge around with stuff like "Moreover, it is the responsibility of all members of the academic community to maintain an atmosphere in which violations of rights are unlikely to occur" and "the rights of individuals to express their views within the bounds of reasoned dissent" (emphasis mine).

Ackman seems like the mob leader. He says they haven’t fired her because he’s making too much noise.

The obvious issue with her and her plagiarizing is affirmative action. Like that’s the best you can find for Harvard? She appears well below the average Motte posters ability. And atleast a few of us probably wouldn’t mind the position.

The second thing I’ve been thinking about is whether anyone is going to NOT attend Harvard. Where would you even going? MIT seems in the same boat here which at one point would have just been the pragmatic engineering school. All the Ivy’s are the same. Perhaps University of Chicago, Notre Dame, and Cal-Tech, after that whats out there flagship state schools? Yeshiva?

The degradation of Harvard won't begin on the side of the applicants, but with elite employers and the families who run them. Whether or not this week's scandal has any permanent effect, the headlines have absolutely put a microscopic chip in the edifice of Harvard's reputation. The failing is ultimately not the president herself nor the answers she gave, but instead the amount of criticism that has been able to exist without loud pushback from the Left. The fact that Progressive mouthpieces haven't gone full Propaganda Mode to defend the integrity of the Ivy League at all costs indicates something has already started to crumble in the Ivies-as-Progressive-Temples mindset. If any of this has long-term implications, it's likely toward the end of the current top post in this CWRoundup: to shave the wildest edges off of Wokeism in the interest of waterproofing Progressive positions (both professional and ideological) for the long haul.

And don't forget that the Chinese (at the very least) are actively looking for ways to degrade Harvard's (and other Western universities) reputation. English, Japanese, Chinese, French, Swiss, South Korean, etc. universities aren't going to cry if Harvard gets knocked off its perch. There's a whole world out there waiting for a chance to step into the prestige circle.

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