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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.

He has seen these institutions treat mild to moderate social aggression as a threat to the existence of various minority groups. And here he is, hearing loud and clear that words aren't violence when directed at his ethnic group. None of it counts when you do it to Jews.

How is any of this surprising at all? He has been cataloguing the exact same system of social aggression that is being turned not on Jews qua Jews, but on White Nationalist jews. Antizionist jews aren't just applauded, they're celebrated by the left for entirely consistent reasons. If you advocate for an ethnostate for white people the fact that some of those white people wear funny hats and don't like Santa Claus doesn't change the fact that you're a white nationalist in the eyes of the left, especially when there's a daily feed of photos of brown people getting blown up and killed. It isn't like the left has been hiding their views on this situation, and while I don't pay for his content I have a sneaking suspicion that Singal has actually got a bit of first-hand experience with the modern left (and may in fact make a living talking about it).

The outcome of this dust up is not that Jews are white, it's that Jews need to rejigger DEI with an explicit cut-out for themselves. I'm quite happy to bet on this if you're interested

This is like saying feminists need to rejigger DEI with an explicit cut-out for themselves. It's missing the point, both groups already have their cut-outs, it's that they are not allowed to be self-determined groups. Their primary loyalty must be to DEI, and they are asked to prove it, hence no female only spaces for women, and no Israel for the Jews. If they give these things up they'll be free to engage in all the cis-straight-white-male bashing they want, and enjoy DEIs full protection.

Thank you Jesus for the expression 'cart before the horse.' All the feminists were Jews. Jews have been doing all the DEI stuff, quite openly. They can and have openly murdered 10's of thousands of innocent people and the consequences are more protection, more funding, more support, more philosemitism. Like I already said I'd be more than happy to bet on this

  • -10

All of them? Damn, and I thought Jews don't proselytize.

You're still missing the point. Yes, there are still feminists happily aligned with DEI, screaming at you about "patriarchy" as they gush over the stunningness and braveness of Lia Thomas, but it is a sacrifice on their part. One that not all feminists are prepared to make. Likewise, we might end up with a new type of Jew that will have to now happily chant "from the river to the sea"...

Like I already said I'd be more than happy to bet on this

I'm not, because I recognize there's a good chance you're right about the final outcome of this spat. I think I saw somewhere that Harvard already lost, or is about to lose, a cool $1 billion in donations, that should be enough to give pause anyone in the administration. On the other hand, this feels too much like testing the front lines for vulnerabilities. What is even the point of this theater if they've been running DEI all along?

Fully, entirely, and totally embracing the irony of this response, you're familiar with Golem meme, no? Might be more familiar to some as 'Frankenstein' where the master loses control of the monster.

But the master is still the master. And my master said we could only serve one master. And now I've gone and typed the word so many times it looks and sounds funny.

So... Jesus good, but Jews bad? Is that the point you're making?

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If we're talking Golems, I don't get the terms of your bet. It would also imply that there's a decent chance the monster turns on it master, no?

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