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UPenn Imposes Major Sanctions on Law Professor Amy Wax

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2024 //
36

Eighteen months ago, I described the case of law professor Amy Wax at the University of Pennsylvania. She had made statements that were deemed bigoted. I defended her speech, even though it was vile. That post began:

The New York Times published an article about a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Amy Wax, who has frequently made statements that are racist, homophobic, sexist, xenophobic, the whole range of prejudices, not what you expect of someone who supposedly teaches students that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law.

The question I posed to readers was whether they thought that her statements were protected speech or should be sanctioned. A lively discussion ensued.

The University of Pennsylvania just announced sanctions against Professor Wax but did not fire her or strip her of tenure. The student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, reported the decision:

Penn has upheld sanctions against University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School professor Amy Wax following her history of discriminatory remarks and two years of disciplinary proceedings with little precedent.

“These findings are now final, following a determination by the Faculty Senate’s Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility that the proper process was followed,” a University spokesperson wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian.

The new ruling, first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer, comes after the Faculty Senate Committee on Academic Freedom and Responsibility upheld sanctions that were initially recommended by a Faculty Senate hearing board on June 21, 2023 and strikes down an appeal filed by Wax and her lawyer, David Shapiro, this past February.

The sanctions mark the first time in recent history that a tenured University professor has been sanctioned through Faculty Senate procedures. Neither Wax nor her lawyer responded to requests for comment in time for the publishing of this article. 

The DP previously reported that the recommended sanctions against Wax included a one-year suspension at half pay, the removal of her named chair and summer pay, and a requirement for Wax to note in public appearances that she is not speaking on behalf or as a member of Penn Carey Law. 

Penn will announce the decision in Tuesday’s edition of the Penn Almanac. The decision will include a letter of reprimand from Provost John Jackson Jr.

“Academic freedom is and should be very broad. Teachers, however, must conduct themselves in a manner that conveys a willingness to assess all students fairly,” Jackson wrote in a copy of the letter obtained by the DP. “They may not engage in unprofessional conduct that creates an unequal educational environment.”

Interim Penn President Larry Jameson added that Wax must refrain from “flagrantly unprofessional and targeted disparagement of any individual or group in the University community … for so long as [she is] a member of the University’s standing faculty.”

In a June 2023 letter to former Penn President Liz Magill, the hearing board noted that they “do not dispute the protection” that Wax holds over her views, but said that the way she presents these views violate widely acknowledged “behavioral professional norms” when presented as “uncontroverted.”

The hearing board “unanimously” found that the facts presented throughout the hearing “constitute serious violations of University norms and policies,” according to the letter. The hearing board also concluded that Wax’s behavior “has created a hostile campus environment and a hostile learning atmosphere.” 

When determining sanctions, the hearing board decided that the University should issue a public reprimand, but it did not suggest that Wax should be fired or stripped of tenure. Separate from the sanctions, the hearing board suggested that the University and Penn Carey Law should consider having Wax co-teach her classes with another faculty member, and that Wax teach her classes outside of Penn Carey Law buildings.  

The board wrote that it found Wax “in dereliction of her scholarly responsibilities, especially as a teacher” in part due to her “reliance on misleading and partial information,” which results in her drawing “sweeping and unreliable conclusions.” 

But the sanctions, which reportedly take effect for the 2025-26 school year, won’t have an impact on her teaching plans this semester — which, according to a course syllabus obtained by the DP, include an invite of American Renaissance magazine editor Jared Taylor to deliver a guest lecture at Dec. 3 meeting of LAW 9560: “Conservative and Political Legal Thought.” The invitation would mark at least the third appearance by Taylor at Wax’s class in four years, after his visit last fall sparked a protest outside Wax’s classroom and a rare schoolwide emailfrom Penn Carey Law Dean Sophia Lee addressing the “bounds of academic freedom.”

Weeks before Taylor comes to campus, Wax is scheduled to speak at a conference in Tennessee alongside multiple people who have reportedly espoused white supremacist, neo-Nazi, and racist views.

Tuesday’s Almanac will also include an Aug. 11, 2023 letter from Magill in which she accepted the sanctions initially recommended by the hearing board.

Jameson provided an introduction for Magill’s letter, summarizing the disciplinary process against Wax and confirming he was implementing Magill’s decision.

Magill wrote in her letter that the board considered arguments such as the “critical point” regarding academic freedom and used a “well-developed” factual record to make its decision. 

While she said she was “mindful of the limit of my authority as established by our policy,” Magill accepted the major sanctions suggested from the board’s report. 

The letter from Magill prompted Wax to file a Aug. 29, 2023 appeal to SCAFR, in which Wax’s lawyer argued that there were “several procedural defects” which gave the respondent the right to appeal.

Shapiro wrote that that the most significant “defect” was that the hearing board made the decision “about the breadth and extent of a tenured professor’s contractually guaranteed right to academic freedom,” rather than SCAFR.

The appeal also alleged that Magill and the hearing board applied an unfair speech standard. Shapiro wrote that Wax was punished under an “incoherent standard, never before articulated, or applied to any Penn faculty member.”

The standard used to punish Wax has drawn scrutiny from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a national civil liberties group which said on Monday that Penn had mustered “zero evidence” that Wax discriminated against her students.

“Faculty nationwide may now pay a heavy price for Penn’s willingness to undercut academic freedom for all to get at this one professor,” FIRE Vice President Alex Morey wrote in a statement. “After today, any university under pressure to censor a controversial faculty member need only follow Penn’s playbook.”

Wax’s history of discriminatory statements has included her claiming that Black students never graduate at the top of the Penn Carey Law class and that “non-Western groups” are resentful towards “Western people.” Wax has also faced criticism for hosting white nationalist Jared Taylor for a guest lecture and allegedly telling a Penn Carey Law student that she was only accepted into the Ivy League “because of affirmative action.”

In June 2022, former Penn Carey Law Dean Ted Ruger filed a complaint to the Faculty Senate recommending a “major sanction” against Wax. At the time, he cited numerous student and faculty accounts of Wax’s conduct that he believed warranted disciplinary action. Ruger asked the Faculty Senate to appoint a hearing board of five professors from across the University to evaluate his complaint, conduct a full review of Wax’s conduct, and impose sanctions in line with the University’s policy for punishing tenured faculty members. 

“Academic freedom for a tenured scholar is, and always has been, premised on a faculty member remaining fit to perform the minimal requirements of the job,” Ruger wrote in his report to the Faculty Senate. “However, Wax’s conduct demonstrates a ‘flagrant disregard of the standards, rules, or mission of the University.’”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, Pennsylvania

Umair Haque: Code Red for Democracy!

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2024 //
21

Umair Haque, an economist, warns us that democracy is in deep trouble and only one force can save it. We the people.

He writes:

Code Red for American Democracy

The last week or two’s felt like a lifetime. It’s been body blow after body blow for democracy in America.

The Supreme Court ruled Trump was effectively already something like a dictator, enjoying “presumptive immunity.” A lunatic tried to assassinate Trump, and the far right promptly blamed it on the center and left, despite the assassin being a Republican. Meanwhile, Trump announced Vance as Vice Presidential pick. And all that came on the heels of the media carrying water for Trump, while trying their very best, it seemed, to take down Joe Biden, time and again, this time with character assassination of every stripe and form.

A lifetime.

So what does all this add up to? 

Code red. 

If this moment feel severe, historic, let me assure that it is.

Democracies rarely and barely face as much and as many troubles as all this.

Let’s now simplify some of the above. The range of forces arrayed against democracy by now includes: billionaires, a supine press, lunatics, crackpots, pundits, the judiciary. And even that’s an incomplete list. That is a long and powerful list of forces inimical to democracy.

And on the other side awaits what we can all now openly call fascism.

Are These the Final Stages of American Collapse?

It’s been a decade or so since I began predicting American collapse. And we went through a familiar cycle, many of you right along with me. I’d bet that even many of you who are long time readers might have been skeptical, then grudgingly accepting, and by now, your hair’s on fire.

By now, it’s hard to deny.

My prediction, in other words, was all too prescient, and I take no comfort from that. I warned precisely because I didn’t want this to happen.

But you might wonder: what happens next? Where are we, precisely?

America’s now in a very bad place.

Let’s now put some of the above even more formally. 

  • The Supreme Court’s mounting what amounts to a rolling judicial coup, assigning the Presidency unassailable powers.
  • The press appears uninterested in providing people facts, information, or basic knowledge with which to make informed decisions, focusing on personal attacks on Biden and other forms of tabloid journalism.
  • The GOP’s effectively been transformed into an instrument of Trumpism.
  • Project 2025 is its agenda, and it involves essentially creating a totalitarian state, or at least the beginnings of one. Who’s going to check, after all, that people are obeying all these new rules which cause them to lose their basic freedoms? 

I could go on, but the point should already be clear.

All these are forms of institutional collapse. Pretty advanced and severe institutional collapse. Democracy’s a fragile thing, and each of its institutions must work in tandem to provide it the sustenance and support it needs. Those institutions, at their most basic level, are the rule of law, the press, political “sides” not being against openly authoritarian, their bases accepting basic democratic norms of peace and consent and the transfer of power and so forth, aka civil society, and of course, leaders not openly aspiring to dictatorship.

You can think of all that as kind of a checklist for the basic health of a democracy.

And the frightening thing in America right now is that almost none of that checklist can be ticked off anymore. Almost none of democracy’s institutions work anymore. Some work partially, some barely, and many, not at all.

Worse, you can see the sort of degeneration before your eyes. Take the example of the press. A few weeks or months ago, even, its behavior today would have been unthinkable to many. Hundreds of articles attacking Biden, while portraying Trump as a hero, a martyr, a glorious and noble figure? Today, as we’ve discussed, the media’s enabling the strongman myth before our eyes, perhaps “obeying in advance,” as Timothy Snyder, the scholar, calls it.

The point is that the rate, scale, and pace of collapse is increasing swiftly. Institutions which are fundamental to democracy’s functioning are simply ceasing to function before our very eyes.

Democracy’s Last institution, and Why It’s the One Which Matters Most

All of that leaves us with one remaining institution. Have you guessed it yet?

The people.

This isn’t some kind of idealistic paean. I’m just going to tell it like it is, as a scholar and survivor of social collapse.

When the people are united, all those other institutions can fail, and democracy, in the end, can still survive. We’ve seen recent examples of just such a thing, in Poland, for example, and arguably, a very close call in other parts of Europe.

All of that brings us to Biden. Should he drop out? Shouldn’t he? This is politics as sport. Don’t fall for it. The truth is that it doesn’t matter very much. Whomever comes next? They’ll face precisely the same brutal abuse and hazing by media as Biden has, and most likely, even worse, since they’ve done it to everyone from Carter to Hillary to Al Gore and beyond.

The point isn’t the candidate. It’s the people.

Right now, America’s in a very perilous—and very singular—place. If those who are sane, and thoughtful, and on the side of democracy unite in its defense, then they will win. They’ll win decisively, in fact. At 60% turnout, it’s an easy victory, at 70%, it’s a landslide. The numbers are clear. 

The questions are unity, and motivation. In that sense, you might say, the candidate counts, but that’s an evasion. Like I said, whomever the candidate is—they’ll be portrayed as weak by a media that’s now dismally attached to the strongman myth. Weak, feminine, incompetent, inexperienced (never mind Trump being a reality TV star), shallow, inept, not an orator to rival Cicero, not as fearless as Alexander the Great, not as wise as Sun Tzu, and so on. 

The candidate counts, but only in a weak sense. And that weak sense is: are Americans willing to grit their teeth, roll up their sleeves, and unify, whomever the candidate is? Enough of them, on the side of democracy and sanity? If they’re not, then it’ll be always and altogether too easy to divide them—there’ll always be some kind of foolish myth, some kind of fatal flaw, that the press, pundits, and the enemies of democracy will cook up, and spit out, over and over again.

So are Americans on the side of democracy willing to stop playing this game of fatal flaws? And say enough is enough: whomever the candidate is, we back them? In European politics, we call this, simply, voting for your party. The GOP, by the way, excels at it, too. The Democrats, never having built a party of great solidarity, or a modern party organization, rich in networks and communities, are poor at it. So people in America, on the center and left, don’t vote for the party. They look down on it, in fact. But there is nothing to be contemptuous of here: this is precisely how Europe and Canada built social democracies to begin with.

The Myth of the Fatal Flaw, or Democracy’s Greatest Test

In other words, this is democracy’s greatest test.

It goes like this.

When the chips are down—this down—and every institution has failed, welcoming fascism with open arms, every institution save one, will the people themselves remember they are that crucial institution?

You see, this is what fascism hopes to terrorize people away from realizing. To give up on their power, and instead succumb to fatalism—that’s why it’s so loud, explosive, violent, threatening, always intimidating, never shutting up, always promising the worst. Because it’s trying to terrorize the people into submission, giving up on their own unity and togetherness, and thus ceding it all in advance. We’ll discuss all that more tomorrow.

This is democracy’s greatest test. On the one side, fascism. Now behind it, every institution that should be preserving democracy. Save one, the people. And the people, in situations like this, find themselves easily divided, because all this is frightening, upsetting, destabilizing, even terrifying. Finding themselves demoralized, the people give up, focusing on the very Fatal Flaws that a failed media and those in league with the fascists trumpet over and over again.

But in truth none of these are Fatal Flaws. Sure, Biden’s old. Would you rather have an old guy or a dictator? Easy choice—if you’re thinking rationally and sanely. But if you’re scared out of your wits, then maybe, suddenly, all that clear thinking goes foggy. 

The next Fatal Flaw? Let’s rewind, so you really understand this. Al Gore wasn’t “likable.” Hillary was “difficult.” Carter wasn’t manly enough. Howard Dean was a “weirdo.”  Doesn’t matter—do you get the point yet? There’ll always—always—be a fatal flaw.

In fact, I can point out plenty in advance, and you should be able to, too, now that I’ve taught you how to think about all this. Kamala will probably be “unlikable,” too, like “Al Gore,” or “distant,” or even more “difficult” than Hillary. Gavin Newsom will be “slick” or too “polished” or not enough a “man of the people.” Anyone remotely to their left will be a socialist, etcetera. See how simple this is once you get the hang of it?

So this test of democracy, the greatest one of all? It’s never really about the candidates. Because nobody is perfect. Least of all politicians. This test is about the people, who must be willing to brook some degree of imperfection, and come to their senses, instead of being frightened into searching for an unattainable degree of perfection because…

That’s The Only Thing That Can Win.

That’s the reason we’re told to search for Unattainable Perfection, isn’t it? Anything less is Doomed to Lose. And yet the fact—the fact—is that united, the people can’t be defeated. That sounds trite, but let me remind you, we’re talking about statistical realities. Even in the most extreme social collapses, the majority never support the extremists, which is why they are extremists. Hitler had to seize power, the Bolsheviks had to revolt, Mao had to “re-educate” a society, and so on. The people united cannot be defeated.

But that unity is hard—incredibly hard—to come by. Because the more destabilized a society gets, the less of it it has. And so a kind of vicious cycle sets in, what in complexity theory we call an dynamic system: destabilization destroys unity, which intensifies destabilization.

That is how extreme minorities collapse societies. And it’s why despite the majority not backing the fanatics and lunatics even in the most extreme social collapses, we see social collapses. Because the unity of the majority in the thinking, sane center doesn’t hold.

So. This is democracy’s greatest test of all. When the chips are this down, so far they’re in the abyss, can the people remember that united, they can’t be defeated? That through unity, the preservation of democracy is assured—but in its absence, all history’s horrors and follies recur, like a waking nightmare?

Understand my words, my friends. I say none of this lightly. I predicted American collapse. I can tell you what happens next. But that’s not the part you need to know. It’s that you still have the power to change it.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Character, Citizenship, Civics, Courage, Democracy, Discipline, Disruption, Education Reform, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Funding, Home Schooling, Propaganda

My View: How Should We Judge the Debate: Biden v. Trump?

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2024 //
66

Now that the initial shock of Biden’s poor performance in last night’s debate is fading, there are several bottom-line facts that should not be overlooked.

Biden has been an excellent President. Trump was a failed President, impeached twice, who inspired an insurrection intended to overthrow the government and the Constitution. Historians have judged Trump to be the worst of all presidents.

Biden has many legislative accomplishments: the Infrastructure bill, which directed billions of dollars to repair our nation’s crumbling bridges, tunnels, roads, and other vital parts of the economy. His CHIPS act brings high-tech jobs back to the U.S. and has already encouraged more than $300 billion in new investments. His efforts to create good union jobs and to revive unions strengthen the middle class. He has also relentlessly tried to reduce the massive debt that college students are saddled with.

By contrast, Trump’s only legislative accomplishment was a massive tax cut for the 1% and corporations.

Biden has aggressively promoted action to curb climate change. Trump opposed any effort to deal with climate change, forbade the use of the term, and insists that it is a hoax.

Biden appointed highly accomplished people to his cabinet, with few exceptions; Trump appointed rightwing extremists and had a high turnover among the few qualified people he appointed.

Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who were prepared (though they didn’t admit it in their hearings) to overturn Roe v. Wade and to gut gun control. if re-elected, he will have the opportunity to appoint more extremists to the Supreme Court who want to roll back the New Deal.

Biden has revived NATO. Trump wants to withdraw from NATO.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden rallied Europe to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. Trump wants to abandon Ukraine and let Putin take whatever he wants in Europe.

Biden respects the Constitution. Trump does not. Trump refuses to admit that he lost the 2020 election, despite losing more than 60 court decisions against his claims. Trump refused during the debate to accept the results of the 2024 election. Trump undermines respect for the Constitution, the electoral system, the judicial system.

Biden is not a good speaker. He is not a good debater. He has a slow gait. He is a good President. He is actually a GREAT President.

And Trump is a demagogue, a world-class liar, a wannabe Fascist, and a danger to the nation and the democratic institutions that are the soul of our nation.

I repeat, Biden has been a great President. If he doesn’t step aside, as many nervous people urge, I will support him. With my heart, my soul, and my wallet.

Categories Biden, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Gender, History, Lies, Trump

Lithwick and Ornstein: A Last Chance for Democracy?

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2024 //
88

Dahlia Lithwick and Norman Ornstein are lawyers and close observers of national politics. In this article, they urge us to take Trump’s threats seriously. They are not just campaign rhetoric or empty promises. He means what he says. As Maya Angelou once said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”

Most of the mainstream media (MSNBC is an exception) attempts to normalize Trump, as though he’s just another in a long line of conservative politicians. He is not. He is an autocrat who longs to have total control and to use that control to get vengeance for his enemies (no “loyal opposition” for him).

The first term was a warning. Trump tried in some cases to pick good people, but they didn’t last long. He won’t make the same mistake. He will demand loyalty, total loyalty. Anyone he appoints will have to agree that the election of 2020 was rigged and stolen.

He says he will take bold steps to reverse the progressive gains of the past 90 years, which he will attribute to “communists, socialists, fascists vermin, and scum”

Lithwick and Ornstein write at Slate about The dangers posed by Trump:

Most would-be dictators run for office downplaying or sugarcoating their intentions, trying to lure voters with a vanilla appeal. But once elected, the autocratic elements take over, either immediately or gradually: The destruction of free elections, undermining the press, co-opting the judiciary, turning the military into instruments of the dictatorship, installing puppets in the bureaucracy, making sure the legislature reinforces rather than challenges lawless or unconstitutional actions, using violence and threats of violence to cow critics and adversaries, rewarding allies with government contracts, and ensuring that the dictator and family can secrete billions from government resources and bribes. This was the game plan for Putin, Sisi, Orbán, and many others. It’s hardly unfamiliar.

Donald Trump is rather different in one respect. He has not softened his spoken intentions to get elected. While Trump is a congenital liar—witness his recent claim that he, not Joe Biden, got $35 insulin for diabetics—when it comes to how he would act if elected again to the presidency, he has been brutally honest, as have his closest advisers and campaign allies. His presidency would feature retribution against his enemies, weaponizing and politicizing the Justice Department to arrest and detain them whether there were valid charges or not. He has pledged to pardon the Jan. 6 violent insurrectionist rioters, who could constitute a personal vigilante army for President Donald Trump, presumably alongside the official one.

He has openly said he would be a dictator on Day One, reimplementing a Muslim ban, purging the bureaucracy of professional civil servants and replacing them with loyalists, invoking the Insurrection Act to quash protests and take on opponents while replacing military leaders who would resist turning the military into a presidential militia with pliant generals. He would begin immediately to put the 12 million undocumented people in America into detention camps before moving to deport them all. His Republican convention policy director, Russell Vought, has laid out many of these plans as have his closest advisers, Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon, and Michael Flynn, among others. Free elections would be a thing of the past, with more radical partisan judges turning a blind eye to attempts to protect elections and voting rights. He has openly flirted with the idea that he would ignore the 22nd Amendment and stay beyond his term of office.

The battle plan of his allies in the Heritage Foundation, working closely with his campaign via Project 2025, includes many of the aims above, and more; it would also tighten the screws on abortion after Dobbs, move against contraception, reinstate criminal sanctions against gay sex while overturning the right to same-sex marriage, among other things. His top foreign policy adviser, Richard Grenell, has reiterated what Trump has said about his isolationist-in-the-extreme foreign policy—jettison NATO, abandon support for Ukraine and give Putin a green light to go after Poland and other NATO countries, and reorient American alliances to create one of strongmen dictators including Kim Jong-un. Shockingly, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson violated sacred norms and endangered security by bypassing qualified lawmakers and appointing to the House Intelligence Committee two dangerous and manifestly unqualified members—one insurrectionist sympathizer, Rep. Scott Perry, who has sued the FBI, and one extremist demoted by the military for drunkenness, pill pushing, and other offenses, Rep. Ronny Jackson—simply because Donald Trump demanded it. They will have access to America’s most critical secrets and will likely share them with Trump if his status as a convicted felon denies him access to top secret information during the campaign. This is part of a broader pattern in which GOP lawmakers do what Trump wants, no matter how extreme or reckless….

We are worried about this baseline assumption that everything is fine until someone alerts us that nothing is fine, that of course our system will hold because it always has. We worry that we are exceptionally good at telling ourselves that shocking things won’t happen, and then when they do happen, we don’t know what to do. We worry that every time we say “the system held” it implies that “holding” equals “winning” as opposed to barely scraping by. We worry that while Trump has armies of surrogates out there arguing that Trump is an all-powerful God proxy, the rule of law has no surrogates out there arguing for anything because nobody ever came to a rally for a Rule 11 motion. The Biden administration has largely taken the position that the felony conviction is irrelevant because it’s proof that the status quo isn’t in danger. But the reality is that Republicans are openly campaigning against judges, juries, and prosecutors. Overt declarations of blowing up our checks and balances and following the blueprints to autocracy set by Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán, meanwhile, are treated with shrugs by mainstream journalists and commentators. What’s more, Republicans in Congress have shown a willingness to kowtow to every Trump demand. The signals are flashing red that our fundamental system is in danger.

“The system is holding” is not a plan for a knowable future. It never was.

Please open the link and read the article in full.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Lies, Republicans, Trump

Harvard Abandons Mandatory Diversity Statement

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2024 //
40

The Boston Globe reported on Harvard’s decision to ban mandatory diversity statements. In recent years, many universities required applicants to the faculty to write a statement demonstrating their fealty to diversity, equity and inclusion. One of Harvard’s most prominent African-American professors—Randall Kennedy of the Harvard Law School—wrote an opinion piece in the campus newspaper opposing the requirement as a breach of academic freedom. Other universities, including MIT and the University of North Carolina, have already dropped the diversity pledge, likening it to a loyalty oath.

Less than five years ago, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences followed a trend that was then sweeping across American higher education. It instituted a requirement that professors who wished to work at Harvard submit an essay explaining how they would advance “diversity, inclusion, and belonging” in their work.

On Monday, the university’s largest division announced it had reversed course, eliminating the requirement after receiving “feedback from numerous faculty members” who were concerned about the mandatory statements.

A seemingly routine part of academic hiring, diversity statements have become the focus of intense scrutiny as universities grapple with the question of whether well-intentioned efforts to diversify the elite ranks of American institutions have sometimes collided with other core values of academia.

“By requiring academics to profess — and flaunt — faith in DEI, the proliferation of diversity statements poses a profound challenge to academic freedom,” Randall Kennedy, a scholar of race and civil rights at Harvard Law School, wrote in an April op-ed in the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper.

That essay was widely read in academic circles. It was also cited approvingly in a recent Washington Post editorial that criticized mandatory diversity statements and praised the recent decision by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to ban their use…

In an announcement Monday, dean of faculty affairs Nina Zipser, said that going forward candidates for tenure-track positions would be required to provide a more broadly focused “service statement,” instead of a statement focused specifically on “diversity, inclusion, and belonging.” A service statement could include a candidate’s efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, but is not required to focus on those topics….

Ryan Enos, a Harvard political scientist and director of the Center for American Political Studies, said he generally pays little attention to diversity statements when vetting candidates. “You got the impression that they reflected more about candidates knowing the right things to say rather than an actual commitment to improving the department on diversity and other matters,” he said.

Of course, critics of the decision complained that universities were backing down from their commitment to diversity due to political harassment by rightwing politicians who object to diversity. But where values are deeply embedded, they are unlikely to disappear.

Categories Equity, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education

Harvard Adopts a Policy of “Institutional Neutrality” on Political Issues

By dianeravitch
May 29, 2024 //
22

After months of heated controversy over the war in Gaza, Harvard University has adopted a policy of “institutional neutrality,” asserting that the core function of the university is to protect free speech and debate and to advance learning, not to take sides. Other universities are considering following Harvard’s lead.

I personally think that this is the proper path for institutions of higher education. They should be places where debates about public policy may occur without intimidation by students or wealthy donors.

The Boston Globe reports:

After months of controversies tied to the Israel-Hamas war, Harvard University said Tuesday that its administration would no longer issue official statements about public matters that “do not directly affect the university’s core function.”

The school made the announcement more than a month after an Institutional Voice Working Group was established to consider the matter. It come as conversations around the country debate whether to issue public statements on divisive issues of the day.

“The integrity and credibility of the institution are compromised when the university speaks officially on matters outside its institutional area of expertise,” the working group said in a report, which was accepted by Harvard’s administration….

Harvard was engulfed last fall in controversies over what to say about the Israel-Hamas war. A growing chorus of professors and administrators proposed a simple solution: silence.

At Harvard and other universities, momentum has been building for “institutional neutrality,” the principle that university leaders should refrain from taking positions on weighty social and political matters. That idea was, until recently, a fairly obscure concept debated within the academy.

But after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel plunged many American universities into turmoil, and thrust their leaders into debates over an intractable conflict, schools from Cambridge to California are considering adopting institutional neutrality as a matter of official policy.

Interim Harvard president Alan Garber assembled the working group to study the matter. Columbia’s University Senate recently adopted institutional neutrality in a unanimous vote. Faculty groups at the University of Pennsylvaniaand Yale University are pushing their leaders to do the same.

Proponents argue that adopting neutrality will make universities more governable and protect their mission of fostering open inquiry. Universities, they say, should be forums for debates, not participants in them. But critics say the idea of a neutral university is a chimera. Endowments invest in fossil fuel stocks and some schools accept donations from representatives of autocratic regimes. Neutrality, critics say, is a way to deflect scrutiny and avoid taking morally correct but inconvenient stands…

However, in its report, the Harvard working group said that “the university is not a neutral institution.”

“It values open inquiry, expertise, and diverse points of view, for these are the means through which it pursues truth,” read the report. “The policy of speaking officially only on matters directly related to the university’s core function, not beyond, serves those values.”

Categories Academic Freedom, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education

House Republicans Attack University Presidents as “Anti-Semitic” for not Clearing Campus Protests

By dianeravitch
May 24, 2024 //
30

From the beginning of the pro-Palestinian campus protests, I have objected to the students’ one-sided support of one side—Hamas. Their chant of “from the river to the sea” implicitly endorses Hamas’ demand to eliminate the state of Israel and to “Islamicize” all the land that includes Israel. With a better knowledge of history, the students would have condemned Hamas’ terrorism and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has launched a campaign of intimidation and terror against the civilian population of Gaza, who have been victims of not only mass bombing but famine.

The Washington Post reported that the campus protests have failed to win the support of the American public. Perhaps they remember 9/11 or the USS Cole or any number of other terrorist attacks where the victims were Americans.

Multiple polls in recent weeks have shown relatively little sympathy for the protesters or approval of their actions. And notably, large numbers of Americans have attached the “antisemitic” label to them.

The most recent data on this come in the form of a striking poll in New York, a hotbed of the protests at Columbia University, in particular.
The Siena College poll shows residents even of that blue-leaning state — Democrats tend to sympathize more with the Palestinian cause — agreed 70 percent to 22 percent that the protests “went too far, and I support the police being called in to shut them down.”

Public sentiment has encouraged Republicans to politicize the issue by harassing university presidents for their failure to close down the student protests. There is something richly ironic about the new-found Republican interest in anti-Semitism. If they really cared about Jew-hatred, they would ask Trump to testify about his relationships to known anti-Semites and neo-Nazis.

But no. Their audiences want to see them pillory the presidents of elite universities, to please their base. The most aggressive of the questioners, Rep. Elise Stefanik, is a graduate of Harvard University. Her low tactics are a disgrace to her university.

Yesterday, members of Congress, mostly Republicans, harangued three university presidents for ignoring anti-Semitism displayed by campus protestors who support Palestinians, and in some cases, the terrorist group Hamas.

Three university leaders were accused on Thursday, during a congressional hearing, of turning a blind eye to antisemitism on their campuses, while capitulating to “pro-Hamas” and “pro-terror” student groups.

During more than three hours of grueling questioning, Northwestern University President Michael Schill, Rutgers University Jonathan Holloway and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block were often bullied and taunted by members of the House Committee on Education & the Workforce for not cracking down more forcefully on anti-Israel protesters who had set up unauthorized encampments on their campuses.

“Each of you should be ashamed of your decisions that allowed antisemitic encampments to endanger Jewish students,” said Chairwoman Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina.

Schill and Holloway bore the brunt of the wrath of the Republican-controlled committee for also cutting deals with the protesters rather than calling in police to clear the encampments. Seven Jewish members of a committee tasked with fighting antisemitism at Northwestern resigned in protest at the concessions made by their university president to the protesters.

Neither university agreed to an academic boycott of Israel, but they promised to hold discussions in the future on the possibility of divesting from companies with ties to Israel. As part of its agreement, Northwestern also promised to take in students from Gaza displaced by the war, while Rutgers agreed to form a partnership with Birzeit University in the West Bank.

“I think your performance here has been very embarrassing to your school,” U.S. Representative Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, told Schill after the president of Northwestern refused to answer questions about a journalism professor at his university who had participated in the protests and scuffled with police.

When asked by Banks whether he allows professors at Northwestern to praise Hamas, Schill, who is Jewish, responded: “They have all the rights of free speech.”

Banks retorted: “Four billion dollars have gone to your university. We should not give you another taxpayers’ dollar for the joke your university has become.”

Elise Stefanik, the Republican congresswoman from New York, was especially hostile, accusing Schill of “unilateral capitulation to the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, antisemitic encampment.“

When he tried to clarify a point, Stefanik – who has been fashioning herself as a leading voice against the pro-Palestinian student protests – cut him off. “I’m asking the questions here,” she said angrily.

When asked by Stefanik if it was true that he had asked the director of the Hillel chapter at Northwestern whether it was possible to hire an ant-Zionist rabbi as university chaplain, Schill responded emphatically that he had never made such an inquiry.

“That’s not true according to the whistleblowers who’ve come forth to this committee,” retorted Stefanik.

Holloway was interrogated by Congressman Bob Good, a Republican from Virginia, about a think tank at Rutgers that has referred to Israel’s government as genocidal, among other anti-Israel statements it has issued in recent months. When asked, Holloway said he had no intention of closing down this Center for Security, Race and Rights.

Good: “Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?“

Holloway: “Sir, I don’t have an opinion about Israel in terms of that phrase.”

Good: “You do not have an opinion as to whether or not Israel’s government is genocidal?”

Holloway: “No, sir. I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself.”

Good: “Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?”

Holloway: “I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself, sir.”

Good: “But you will not say that Israel’s government is not genocidal? You can’t say that?”

Holloway: “Sir, I believe the government . . . “

Good: “Are you in a position to answer any questions? Do you have an opinion on anything?

Later on in the hearing, Holloway was given a second chance to address the question, phrased somewhat differently. When asked by Congressman Eric Burlison, a Republican from Missouri, whether they believed Israel was genocidal, all three university leaders responded that they did not.

Categories Academic Freedom, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump

Washington Post: Putin Is Turning Russia into a Militaristic, Authoritarian Society

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2024 //
177

Robyn Dixon and other staff of The Washington Post wrote a stunning account of the “new Russia” that Putin is determined to create. It’s worth subscribing to read it in full. The “new Russia” is militaristic; dissent is forbidden; women are encouraged to have eight children; LGBT people and symbols are stigmatized; Stalin is revered.

Here are some excerpts from an important and upsetting article:

Vladimir Putin is positioning Russia as America’s most dangerous and aggressive enemy, and transforming his country in ways that stand to make it a bitter adversary of the West for decades to come.

Over more than six months, The Washington Post examined the profound changes sweeping Russia as Putin has used his war in Ukraine to cement his authoritarian grip on power.

The Russian leader is militarizing his society and infusing it with patriotic fervor, reshaping the education system, condemning scientists as traitors, promoting a new Orthodox religiosity and retrograde roles for women, and conditioning a new generation of youth to view the West as a mortal enemy in a fight for Russia’s very survival…

Russia’s leader-for-life is working to restore his country’s global power of the Soviet era — not as a Communist bulwark but as a champion of Orthodox Christian values and an opponent of liberal freedoms in permanent conflict with the West, in a world redivided by big powers into spheres of influence where authoritarianism is an accepted alternative to democracy. Flouting global norms and thumbing his nose at international institutions, Putin is forging military partnerships with other totalitarian regimes that also view the United States as a threat, including China, Iran and North Korea.

The new Russia claims to defend Orthodox values against Western cultural influences.

In November 2022, Putin signed a decree defining Orthodox values, puritanical morality and the rejection of LGBTQ+ identity as crucial to Russia’s national security. Putin has outlined a messianic mission to save the world from what he calls a decadent, permissive West, an approach he hopes will resonate in socially conservative nations in the Global South. The highly politicized judicial system and media heavily controlled by the Kremlin are being used to crack down on nightclubs and parties, and new patriotic mandates are being imposed on artists, filmmakers and cultural institutions.

The new Russia is militarizing society and indoctrinating a new generation of patriots.

Harnessing the war in Ukraine, Putin has engineered a deeply militarized society, rewarding war veterans and their children with places in higher education; introducing military training in schools; and elevating those involved in the war into leadership roles. Telegram channels tell women how to be good soldiers’ wives (by not complaining or crying); schoolchildren make drone fins, trench candles and custom socks for soldiers with amputed limbs. The education system has been imbued with patriotic fervor. Liberal humanities programs are shut down in favor of programs that promote nationalist ideology, and partnerships with Western schools have been canceled.

The new Russia is glorifying Stalin and rewriting history to whitewash Soviet crimes

Some people who had close contact with Putin in his early years as president described his fervent mission to rebuild Russia as a superpower and his admiration not only for imperial czars but also for the Soviet dictator and wartime leader Joseph Stalin, who engineered the Great Terror, the purges of the mid-to-late 1930s, sent millions to the gulag system of prisons and forced labor camps, and had about 800,000 people executed for political reasons. At least 95 of the 110 Stalin monuments in Russia were erected during Putin’s time as leader.

The new Russia is crushing all dissent and restricting personal freedoms.

Putin has squashed the political opposition in Russia making protests illegal, criminalizing criticism of the war, and designating liberal nongovernmental organizations and independent media, journalists, writers, lawyers and activists as foreign agents, undesirable organizations, extremists or terrorists. Hundreds of political activists have been jailed. Tens of thousands of Russians have fled in a historic exodus, with some worried they would be cut off from the world by sanctions, some afraid of being conscripted and sent to the front, and others fearing they would be persecuted for opposing Putin or the war.

Robyn Dixon goes into detail in another article that is part of the series “Remastering Russia.”

MOSCOW — As Vladimir Putin persists in his bloody campaign to conquer Ukraine, the Russian leader is directing an equally momentous transformation at home — re-engineering his country into a regressive, militarized society that views the West as its mortal enemy.

Putin’s inauguration on Tuesday for a fifth term will not only mark his 25-year-long grip on power but also showcase Russia’s shift into what pro-Kremlin commentators call a “revolutionary power,” set on upending the global order, making its own rules, and demanding that totalitarian autocracy be respected as a legitimate alternative to democracy in a world redivided by big powers into spheres of influence…

To carry out this transformation, the Kremlin is:

  • Forging an ultraconservative, puritanical society mobilized against liberal freedoms and especially hostile to gay and transgender people, in which family policy and social welfare spending boost traditional Orthodox values.
  • Reshaping education at all levels to indoctrinate a new generation of turbo-patriot youth, with textbooks rewritten to reflect Kremlin propaganda, patriotic curriculums set by the state and, from September, compulsory military lessons taught by soldiers called “Basics of Security and Protection of the Motherland,” which will include training on handling Kalashnikov assault rifles, grenades and drones.
  • Sterilizing cultural life with blacklists of liberal or antiwar performers, directors, writers and artists, and with new nationalistic mandates for museums and filmmakers.
  • Mobilizing zealous pro-war activism under the brutal Z symbol, which was initially painted on the side of Russian tanks invading Ukraine but has since spread to government buildings, posters, schools and orchestrated demonstrations.
  • Rolling back women’s rights with a torrent of propaganda about the need to give birth — young and often — and by curbing ease of access to abortions, and charging feminist activists and liberal female journalists with terrorism, extremism, discrediting the military and other offenses.
  • Rewriting history to celebrate Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator who sent millions to the gulag, through at least 95 of the 110 monuments in Russia erected during Putin’s time as leader. Meanwhile, Memorial, a human rights group that exposed Stalin’s crimes and shared the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, was shut down and its pacificist co-chairman Oleg Orlov, 71, jailed.
  • Accusing scientists of treason; equating criticism of the war or of Putin with terrorism or extremism; and building a new, militarized elite of “warriors and workers” willing to take up arms, redraw international boundaries and violate global norms on orders of Russia’s strongman ruler.

“They’re trying to develop this scientific Putinism as a basis of propaganda, as a basis of ideology, as a basis of historical education,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. “They need an obedient new generation — indoctrinated robots in an ideological sense — supporting Putin, supporting his ideas, supporting this militarization of consciousness.”

Kolesnikov, speaking in an interview in Moscow, added: “They need cannon fodder for the future…”

As he fractures global ties and girds his nation for a forever war with the West, riot police in Russia are raiding nightclubs and private parties, beating up guests and prosecuting gay bar owners. Russians have been jailed or fined for wearing rainbow earrings or displaying rainbow flags. Dissidents who were imprisoned in Soviet times are once again behind bars — this time for denouncing the war.

The Kremlin has defended the crackdown as responding to popular demand…

“In Russian families, many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had seven or eight children, and even more. Let’s preserve and revive these wonderful traditions,” Putin said in a November speech dedicated to “a thousand-year, eternal Russia.”

The emphasis is on a special and powerful state dominated by Putin, on centuries-old Russian self-reliance and stoicism, and the sacrifice of individual rights to the regime. Men give their lives in war or work. Women should give their bodies by birthing children.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, International

Anand G.: A University President Who Respects Student Protest Without Pandering to Students

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2024 //
17

Anand Giridharadas is a brilliant writer and thinker who blogs at The Ink. In this post, he interviews Michael Roth, the President of Wesleyan College in Connecticut, who describes how he has handled student protests without calling in the police or trampling on free speech rights. Just days ago, Roth wrote an article in The New York Times advising that the best college choice is one where you don’t fit in; go outside your comfort zone. Be a nonconformist.

Anand writes:

In recent weeks, the wave of antiwar protest that began at Columbia University spread across the country, as did the backlash against it.

Many university leaders responded by shutting down student speakers, canceling commencement ceremonies, and ultimately calling in police to clear encampments and campus building occupations with mass arrests. Thousands of students, professors, and other protestors have been arrested nationwide; meanwhile, protests are ongoing, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce continues its fishing-expedition investigation of higher education, and the domestic battle over the campus protests continues to distract attention from the ongoing war in Gaza.

What is right here? Should universities crack down on students who disrupt campus life, even if their cause is just? Are there steps student groups could take to more clearly separate their movements from elements of antisemitism? Can the rest of society muster enough historical memory and thick enough skin to remember that students are often telling us something that we need to hear, even if we don’t want to?

One university leader has been grappling with these questions in an especially thoughtful way, in part because, in addition to running a university, he is a scholar of universities and of education. That grounding shows. Under Michael Roth, Wesleyan University has cut a different path from many campuses, by clearly and calmly reiterating students’ right to protest peacefully, as Roth did in this letter:

The students there know that they are in violation of university rules and seem willing to accept the consequences. The protest has been non-violent and has not disrupted normal campus operations. As long as it continues in this way, the University will not attempt to clear the encampment.

At the same time, Roth has been clear about the importance of keeping people’s focus on the underlying war, not elite campuses; on the very real problem of antisemitic elements in and around the protests; and about the need to sustain campuses as places where students and teachers and others expect a mix of safety and challenge.

We caught up with Roth the other day for a conversation you won’t want to miss if you’ve been following not only the war but the fight over the war and are craving, as we have been, more light and less heat.

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Your statement of Wesleyan’s position on the continuing protests is notable for its simple recognition of the rights and responsibilities of all parties. 

Can you talk about the decisions that went into your statement and why such statements have been so rare?

I am happy to talk about my statement, but I really want to emphasize that we need to turn more political energy toward demanding that the U.S. force a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, a return of the hostages, and, then, negotiations toward a sustainable peace.

As for protests at Wesleyan University: We could have immediately closed down the encampment because the protesters hadn’t gotten advance permission for tents, or because they were writing messages on the adjacent buildings in chalk. But in the context of national protest movements, it seemed wrong to me to use “time and place restrictions” other schools have cited as reasons for shutting down protests. 

Over the last week, I’ve gotten many notes from alumni, parents, and strangers chastising me for not making the protesters “pay a price” for breaking the rules.

So why haven’t I made them feel those consequences? Cops don’t always give people tickets for going a few miles over the speed limit. Context matters, whatever Congresswoman Elise Stefanik says.

In this case, I knew the students were part of a broad protest movement, and protest movements often put a strain on an institution’s rules. They are meant to do that. The encampment was “non-violent and has not disrupted normal campus operations,” I wrote, and “as long as it continues in this way, the University will not attempt to clear the encampment.” I added that we would “not tolerate intimidation or harassment of students, staff, or faculty,” and that the protesters, as far as I could tell, were not moving in those directions. I want to emphasize that this can change and that if the protesters choose to more seriously disrupt our work as an educational institution, they will face much more significant repercussions.

Last Tuesday we saw two very different conclusions to major campus protests; at Columbia, the administration — claiming it had “no choice” — called in the NYPD, made multiple arrests and cleared the Hamilton Hall occupation and lawn encampment. (Yale, UCLA, and others did similarly.) Reportedly, Columbia has arranged for the NYPD to remain on campus through the conclusion of the term on May 17. On the other hand, student protestors at Brown finally reached an agreement with the Corporation of Brown University to dismantle their encampment in exchange for a vote on divestment from firms connected to the Israeli military campaign. Admittedly, I am asking you to speculate, but can you think through what the process behind these different decisions might have been? 

At Columbia, the combination of outside participants, intimidating antisemitic chants, and — most importantly — the destructive occupation of a building necessitated a much stronger response than has been necessary elsewhere. Administrators seemed to judge that the university couldn’t safely continue to operate. If that was the case — and I know there remain significant disputes about the facts — the protesters had to be cleared, and the penalties on offenders, I suspect, will be severe. 

At UCLA, early indications are that police allowed counter-protesters to engage in violence. At other schools, students and administrators have been able to decide to do something positive for the situation in Gaza without engaging in empty but symbolically satisfying gestures. Divestment is a distraction. There is little indication that it has the desired effects, even in the long run. Gazans need a ceasefire and massive humanitarian aid now.

I’m curious as to how your scholarly work might have informed your thinking on this. Several of your books speak pretty directly to what’s happening (I think in particular of Beyond the University, Safe Enough Spaces,and The Student: A Short History). How does your work as a theorist of liberal education figure into your response to these protests?

All my scholarship is animated by a pragmatist approach, which means that I have a general suspicion of abstract principles and a commitment to working through problems so as to be in a better position to pursue one’s most important goals. My work before these education books was heavily influenced by Hegelian and Freudian models of thinking: an expectation that conflict is necessary for any important change and that unconscious motivations are always in play in crises. To put it simply: I expect conflict, and I expect acting out. 

I believe that liberal education in America is always connected to civic engagement. We want our students to learn how to be better citizens while they come to understand the ideas and the contexts of whatever field they study. In Safe Enough Spaces, I argue that civic preparedness (to use Danielle Allen’s term) develops when students value free speech and political participation in contexts that prohibit violence and intimidation. Students don’t need to be protected from offensiveness, but they do need to be educated in situations in which they learn to think for themselves in the company of others. That’s what I call “practicing freedom.”

That’s why ideally we can make crisis moments like ours educational for the students. This does not mean we pander to them. On the contrary, they learn from teachers who resist their popular but dumb ideas, and who help students understand better how to pursue meaningful objectives over time.

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The House Education Committee has now called three more university presidents — for the first time, three men, and two of them leading public universities: Peter Salovey, president of Yale University; Gene Block, chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles; and Santa Ono, president of the University of Michigan.

It seems quite clear that the committee’s animus towards the elite universities isn’t actually about the threat of antisemitism, protecting free-speech rights, or even ensuring student safety. What do you think the goal actually is for Foxx, Stefanik, and the other Republican members?

Despite my many years working on Freud and psychoanalysis, I don’t understand the deep motivations behind people who on some days cozy up to Replacement Theory and Christian Nationalism and on other days paint themselves as anti-antisemites.

For over a century, one has said that antisemitism is the socialism of fools. Today, anti-antisemitism has become the conservatism of knaves.

The political motivations of extreme right politicians are clear: they are riding the anti-elites train, the wave of rejecting people with expertise and credentials. By attacking so-called cultural elites, the extreme right avoids talking about economic elites. It distracts people with real grievances from the profound issues of inequality that plague this country. Rather than deal with child poverty, the so-called conservatives attack Ivy Leaguers; rather than force billionaires to pay their fair share of taxes, they turn our attention to protesters on campus.

Some news coverage has described university actions against protesters as driven by these Congressional hearings. Is that the case? What about donors or boards? Are you feeling any such pressure? 

No.

What do you make of the charge that the protesters are antisemitic? Do you have a sense that there are actual connections among opposition to Israeli military action, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism? Or are we seeing a toxic mixture of bad-faith political entrepreneurship and angry, less-than-fully-informed student groups?

Of course, one can be anti-Zionist and not be antisemitic. It is clear that many Jewish students have joined the protests and that one can be very much opposed to the politics of Israel’s government (I am) and not be antisemitic (I am not).

I also think it’s pretty obvious that some of the protesters use antisemitic tropes, and that some of them don’t consider it possible for a Jew to be an innocent civilian. Hamas, which some protesters applaud, is viciously antisemitic. It considers the rape of Jewish women and the killing of Jewish babies not just tactics of war but an occasion for ecstatic rejoicing. It doesn’t get more antisemitic than that. 

I remain appalled (but, alas, no longer shocked) that many protesters don’t seem to be concerned about their association with this terrorist organization. They don’t care. Although only a small minority of protesters might be overtly antisemitic, it is far too easy for many to accept Jewish deaths as the price for someone to be free.

This doesn’t have to be explicit for it to be hateful, especially from people who not long ago were concerned with microaggressions against other groups. Antisemitism enables far too many to accept the cheapening of Jewish life; it’s classic scapegoating. This is a very old story on the right, and also for more than fifty years among people who want to be thought of as progressive. If Israel changed its ways, would these people still be antisemitic? Yes. The thrill of being part of a movement trumps their basic moral sense.

Speaking of Trump, of course this will help him. If his people were smart enough to instigate the protests to divide the left and to whip up anger at kids on campus, they couldn’t have done a better job. My hope is that the civic preparedness that may be enhanced by young folks’ involvement in this movement will energize them to protect democracy in the fall.

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What are the protesters’ specific demands at Wesleyan? What’s your sense of their actual overall motivations?

Also, what do you make of the common media framing of the protesters as “pro-Palestinian” versus counterprotestors who are “pro-Israel?” If we’re making the 1968 comparison, why not “antiwar” instead, since in a practical context they are mainly pushing for a ceasefire at this point?

The demands at Wesleyan resemble the BDS demands of some years ago. Very little to do with Gaza in particular; the demands have to do with isolating Israel economically and culturally. I would hope that students will turn their attention to having an impact on U.S. foreign policy and not the “cancellation” of a complicated country with a complex history.

As for being antiwar, I wish there was more of that idealism across the country. I prefer that good old naivete to what one hears from many in today’s movement. Many in today’s movement seem to think war (violence) is justified as long as you are “on the right side of history,” which today for them means the “anti-colonial” side. This is insipid, lazy thinking, and it leads to some of the self-righteous, close-minded rhetoric of people who in other moods might be defending free speech, democracy, and the development of the rule of law. It also leads to the same vicious moral callousness that the U.S. displayed in, say, Iraq and that Israel displays today in Gaza. People who had “God on their side” have done lots of damage, as will people who think they have “history on their side” today.

One thing I’ve been wondering is whether everyone is making a mistake by thinking of this movement in light of 1968. Is there built-in hyperbole here — on the left, seeing a protest movement as a looming problem for the Democratic convention, as a threat to a second Biden term; on the right, the useful specter of 60s-style counterculture opposition — that works against peaceful resolution of the conflict, regardless of how the students might see themselves? I don’t see as much media comparison to the actions against apartheid of the 1980s, which seems more useful (and in many cases then, university administrators either ignored or came to terms with the student movement).

Some of the opposition to the students is based on procedures. They are in the wrong space at the wrong time. Other opposition is based on the clear indications from many protesters that Israel should not exist as a state. These protesters have yet to opine as far as I know about the legitimacy of other states in the region.

Yes, I think the protests are a problem for politics in the fall unless young people take the political energies they’ve experienced and turn those energies toward building coalitions at home to win the next round of elections and to pass legislation that might facilitate the creation of a more just and peaceful world. 

But at a time when we should be putting our full attention on getting a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza, we are instead talking about fancy college campuses. At some schools, protesters seem more interested in investment policies or in campus disruption than in doing anything meaningful for Gazans. The media finds it easier to cover Columbia than Rafah. Let’s instead pay attention to the right things: We need a ceasefire and a return of the hostages now, and we need to get aid to Gaza.

Categories Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education

Dana Milbank: Gaza Protestors Are Helping to Elect Trump, Who Won’t Tolerate Them

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2024 //
9

Dana Milbank wrote recently about the latest foibles of Trump: his endless verbal gaffes; his inability to stay awake at his trial in New York City; his endless lies about everything.

But the main point of his article is that the students protesting against Israel and calling Biden “Genocide Joe” are helping to elect Trump.

Trump will be far harsher towards student protestors than Biden and far closer to Netanyahu. Trump promises to use the National Guard to crack down on student protestors and to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.

He wrote that Trump:

….said he would change the law to reverse “a bias against White” people: “I think there is a definite anti-White feeling in this country and that can’t be allowed.” He walked away from his previous support for a Palestinian state, saying “I’m not sure a two-state solution anymore is going to work.” And he said he wouldn’t hesitate to use the National Guard against pro-Palestinian protesters while also leaving open the possibility of using the broader U.S. military against them.

Those last Trump positions — the restoration of white power, the rejection of a Palestinian homeland, the willingness to mobilize troops against peaceful demonstrators — show how deeply misguided those on the far left are as they protest Biden’s policies on Gaza. Their frustration with the president’s support for Israel is understandable. But in making Biden the enemy, including with chants of “Genocide Joe,” the plans to trash the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the proliferation of vows of the “uncommitted” never to vote for Biden, they are in effect working to elect Trump. This isn’t principled protest; it’s nihilism.

They are working to help return to office an authoritarian who just last week said the neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville was “like a peanut compared to the riots and the anti-Israel protests that are happening all over our country.” In recent months, Trump said Israel should be allowed to “finish the job” in Gaza and boasted about cutting off aid to Palestinians. And he has vowed, if elected, to reimpose his travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries and “expand it even further.”

For those student protesters too young to remember, this is the guy who led the anti-Muslim “birther” campaign against President Barack Obama; who claimed thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 terrorist attacks; who said “Islam hates us” and employed several anti-Muslim bigots in his administration; who wanted to have police surveillance of U.S. mosques; who called for a “complete and total shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”; who retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda videos by a white supremacist; and who told figures such as Palestinian American Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Somali American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

So it’s entirely consistent that, in Wisconsin on Wednesday, he said that he’s “restoring the travel ban, suspending refugee admissions and keeping terrorists the hell out of our country.” He went on: “We’ve seen what happened when Europe opened their doors to jihad. Look at Paris, Look at London. They’re no longer recognizable.”
Trump, on Hannity’s show this week, called the demonstrators at Columbia “paid agitators” and “brainwashed.” At his Wisconsin rally, he condemned the “raging lunatics and Hamas sympathizers at Columbia and other colleges.” He called for authorities to “vanquish the radicals,” many of whom “come from foreign countries.”

None of this should be surprising, either, for this is the same guy who called thousands of National Guard troops to Washington and federal police to Oregon to combat racial-justice demonstrators after the George Floyd killing; who held a Bible-wielding photo op in Lafayette Square after authorities cleared a peaceful demonstration with tear gas; who, according to his own former defense secretary, suggested to military leaders that they shoot demonstrators; who calls the free press the “enemy of the American people”; who defended the “very fine people” among the Nazis in Charlottesville and who called those convicted of attacking the Capitol “hostages.”

Yet the pro-Palestinian activists, through their actions, would return the author of this ugliness to the White House. They must have been doing for the last eight years what Trump has been doing in court the last three weeks: napping.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, Trump
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