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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.
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.
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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.
Note that this would not fall under bullying, nor harassment, in the code of conduct.
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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…).
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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.
How can speech that is not spoken to someone, or even in earshot, constitute bullying or 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
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.
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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”
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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
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