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A university president makes a case against cowardice

newyorker.com

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Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#661
post #525

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There is an ongoing genocide in Gaza and genocidal language is commonplace in Zionist discourse. If there are cases of hate speech on the pro Palestinian side, they pale in comparison to speech from the other side. Regardless we shouldn’t be rounding up and imprisoning folks if they disagree with your politics. This is what is getting lost in this specific case.

I don't remember the pro single state pro Israel protest. Don't know what it has to do with the question

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#662
post #611

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In a free country, private employers should be allowed to choose who they employ, with very narrow exceptions for discrimination based on race, religion, etc. In a free country, citizens should be allowed to read what other citizens write in public. Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that? IM…

I think you're missing the basic distinction between private parties and government. Private parties (including companies) largely have freedom of association. There are (theoretically) protections in "commerce" against a company discriminating against a person or group based on "innate" factors (such as skin color or gender). But largely, people and companies have a wide degree of latitude about what they are and ar…

I don't understand where you think I've missed that distinction.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#663
post #620

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You have case law to back that up?

It’s like due process 101: https://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-14/05-proce...

(See link for footnotes.)

> Non-Judicial Proceedings.—A court proceeding is not a requisite of due process.745 Administrative and executive proceedings are not judicial, yet they may satisfy the Due Process Clause.746 Moreover, the Due Process Clause does not require de novo judicial review of the factual conclusions of state regulatory agencies,747 and may not require judicial review at all.748 Nor does the Fourteenth Amendment prohibit a state from conferring judicial functions upon non-judicial bodies, or from delegating powers to a court that are legislative in nature.749 Further, it is up to a state to determine to what extent its legislative, executive, and judicial powers should be kept distinct and separate.750

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#664
post #449

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This is a conversation about American politics, so I don't think how other countries acted is relevant. The political landscape also changes regularly - I don't think the Republicans of a few decades ago were attacking schools so vigorously, so I'm not sure going further back than that for examples is relevant either. > efforts of left-wing people in the 60's-90's to reduce their influence on society. Can you elabora…

In terms of use of hard power against religion: Mandatory prayer in school was outlawed in 1962. Teaching creationism in public schools was banned in 1987. Teaching the Bible (and other religious texts) in public schools is mostly banned. Title VII of the civil rights act prevented employers and many other institutions from discriminating based on religion in 1964. These were all passed by the left. In terms of soft…

School prayer was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Does that count as being 'passed by the left'? I'm not sure about the others but thank you for the examples.

> In general, I think you underestimate how much power religion had in 1950's America. It was constantly pushed on young people, and if you wanted to get a good job, you had to have "strong moral character" that was demonstrated by where you went on Sundays.

I don't think I do, because that is basically what I said in my last paragraph :) My point was that religious institutions certainly had a tremendous amount of power and influence not that long ago - in disagreement with you saying that universities have reached a point that religious institutions never have.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#665

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Eh, I’ve railed quite a bit against the left. But looking back, we should have fired and deplatformed more aggressively. The social menaces who weren’t fired or arrested went on to become a plague.

The thing is, right wingers are very likely to protest over losing jobs. In Covid times, what made the right finally start actually marching in the streets was losing their jobs. They don’t protest over most things, but threaten their livelihood and yeah they’ll come for you.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#666
post #570
post #525

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>Do you think calling for the genocide of Jews I'm guessing the motte associated with this particular bailey won't be nearly as clear in its violation of such codes.

If someone said they wanted another kistallnacht while holding torches and refusing to allow jews to walk down the street, would you know what they meant? Are they just talking about breaking some glass at a jewish wedding? Maybe they just want to go to one of those rage rooms?

Just so we're clear, people are still losing their minds when someone "finds" a noose-like knot in the vicinity.

There is no baily here.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#667

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> That's because the extent of the illiberal behavior of the radical left was yelling and "cancel culture" while the present behavior of the illiberal right is abductions and overseas slave camps. You can see why people might find having the two equated a little ridiculous, right? You are correct - one is objectively worse than the other. The unfortunate truth is that, also, one is a consequence of the other. Trump i…

The unfortunate truth is that, also, one is a consequence of the other.

This is just the 'you made me do it' defense argued by every abuser ever. Someone is behaving as an ass, they get told 'you're an ass, stop that' and then they escalate and say 'you made me do this'. It happens in families, it happens in schoolyards, it happens on streets, it happens in business, it happens in dictatorships. Just yesterday, the president of South Korea was formally removed from office after trying to stage a military coup and this was his whole defense.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mostly agree with you. > Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that? If the employer happened to see it, then yes I think that's well within rights. But I think having some random stranger see something and actively campaign against the employee to their employer is a little bit different. It'…

OK, it's bad behavior. Now what? That means nothing.

Should we encourage bad behavior? I tend to think not. Agreeing it is bad behavior is a critical step! Now we can start discouraging it

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#669
post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not part of the rest of the conversation, just narrowing in on the idea of speech being free if there are consequences. That sounds like some sort of 1950's-era doublespeak. If there are consequences, how would speech be free? It's a very American-centric perspective that "Free Speech" is defined as "1st Amendment". Free speech means not getting fired, jumped, killed, poisoned, expelled, etc. Fired is something that…

How do you define which speech is speech worthy of protection and which speech is a consequence of speech and therefore not worthy of protection? For example, imagine some CEO says something politically objectionable, as is their right granted by allowing free speech. Do I have the right to protest or boycott their company as part of my free speech rights or would that be illegal because I'm rendering a consequence f…

This is a good question that would require a long debate to answer, but the answer obviously is neither of these two extremes:

- Every entity except the US govt is allowed to enforce consequences for speech

- there should never ever be any consequences for any speech ever

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#670
post #614
post #475

Columbia has an endowment that stands (pre- Liberation Day) at 15 billion dollars. They kowtowed to some of the militant Zionist interests involved in that endowment in order to attain a fractionally higher return, and betrayed their students. They kowtowed to the fascist administration on the grounds that it was threatening 400 million dollars in grants, and betrayed their students to the point of facilitating a pro…

And specifically the ivy league schools and "elite" ones are cementing their reputation among younger students and soon to be college applicants. They are paying attention. I've seen several boycotts of Columbia and other universities from students.

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