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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

#691

Post by settrans »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #686
settrans wrote: post #651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given that the Jews were forcibly expelled from their homeland by the Romans, by definition, any Jewish self-determination would need to take place in a land that is at least partially[0] already inhabited. You now have two choices: 1. Deny Jews the right to self-determination altogether, continuing the dispossession of an actively persecuted people, indeed, the same one that was about to face the Holocaust in Europe…

> Given that the Jews were forcibly expelled from their homeland by the Romans 2000 years ago. You're saying that events from millennia in the past mean that the Palestinians should have had to cede the land they lived on to a group of outsiders from Europe. People can make of that what they may (I think it's ridiculous), but you at least have to admit that it completely invalidates your argument that Zionism is just…

You're changing the topic. Nobody is talking about ceding land, we're talking about re-establishing a nation in the historic homeland of the Jewish people. And besides, no Zionist demanded land or induced anyone to cede their land prior to 1947 anyway, since all Zionist land acquisition was through voluntary purchases and legal land transfers.

So are you arguing that the Jews are not a people that merit self determination? Or are you saying that because they were expelled from their homeland so long ago, they forfeited the legitimate claim to self determination?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#692

Post by ceejayoz »

mathgradthrow wrote: post #688
ceejayoz wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not arguing in favor of el salvadoran prisons, but he's not in an el salvadoran prison. He might wind up there; a judge has halted the deportation process for now. The administration is demonstrably sending folks (some with no criminal record: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit... ) there, including via "clerical error" they can't undo ( https://apnews.com/video/white-house-says-maryla…

he was working for thw UNRWA during october of 2023. This needs to be mentioned on your visa application.

Again, as an unpaid intern. (And their visa application was in 2022. Two related, but separate things.)

The judicial process will now determine if that was a willful oversight on the permanent residency application, and if it would have had material impact on the application.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/doj-says-mahmoud-khalil...

> However, the government will have to prove to the immigration judge that Khalil willfully failed to disclose that information, and whether that disclosure would have impacted his eligibility for permanent residency.

It may even be that the administration is lying. They do that.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#693

Post by kyralis »

rendall wrote: post #672
anigbrowl wrote: post #652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with such reflexive absolutism, as I've pointed out many times, is that you end up advocating for the speech rights of people who are advocating for genocide. I shouldn't need to point out that killing people also terminates their speech rights and that advocacy of genocide is thus an attack on free speech. You do not have to defend the free speech rights of people who are themselves attacking free speech…

[flagged]

Advocating for the end of a state is not the same as advocating for the eradication of a people.

Someone can firmly believe that the existence of the state of Israel is a mistake that should be corrected while still also believing that the Jewish people have every right to their own existence and freedom of religion.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#694

Post by Edman274 »

vkou wrote: post #389
robertlagrant wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you. Many people have been fired / expelled / and many more silenced by those examples. If you can't tell the truth about your side (from how you're writing I assume you think in sides) then there's no point saying it. > The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.) I have…

If the past decade is any indication, nothing has stopped the long list of cancelled right wing grifters, racists, and various other flavors of fools and bigots from finding gainful employment and signal boosting and platforming among like-minded people who do exercise their right to associate with them, despite their behavior. For (allegedly) being so persecuted and silenced, it's weird how so many of them have so m…

If the argument is that it's not a big deal because it doesn't even work, then why collectively are we even bothering? Either it works and is something for reactionaries to fear and is effective social pressure, or it's a bunch of ineffective sound and fury that gives cover to your right wing aunt to tell stories about how "someone she knows" got fired for telling a joke. If it works, then let's own it completely, with all its flaws. If it doesn't work, then why bother at all? If it doesn't even work, then why try to defend the practice? Do we want it to work? Do we want it to be an effective form of social control?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#695

Post by wizzwizz4 »

rendall wrote: post #682
KittenInABox wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are US citizens who want to shoot gays, kill people different in creed or heritage, and bomb people for religious reasons. We had the gay panic defense (the legal defense to kill gay people just because you found out they were gay, and the shock justified you killing them). We had people shooting sikhs assuming they're muslim. We had folks bombing abortion clinics. There are US citizens who have done far more,…

What about is always a bad answer. It comes of a defensive. Indeed, I agree with you. There are US citizens who want to do reprehensible things, and I still say: maybe the US is not their jam. No, I'm not advocating exile or illegal detention. Just stating a fact.

When you're talking about due process, "what about these other people who got due process?" is a reasonable response.

Whataboutism would be something like, "what about Nazi Germany, where even more people got sent to foreign prison camps without due process: look, the US isn't so bad!".

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#696

Post by settrans »

tome wrote: post #448
kitd wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many have been killed, for sure, but you should probably use sources other than the Hamas Health Ministry: https://www.euronews.com/2025/04/03/hamas-run-health-ministr...

>Too many have been killed How many killed would have been "not too many"?

That depends on your vantage point.

If you accept the mainstream Palestinian viewpoint, i.e. the one that endorses Hamas and the Simchat Torah massacre, there is no such thing as too many, because every Palestinian death furthers the jihadist cause of demonizing Israel.

If you accept the mainstream Israeli viewpoint, all of these deaths were unnecessary because they directly resulted from an unprovoked onslaught against innocent civilians, and all of the casualties could have been avoided but for the Gazan misadventure of October 7th.

I'm not sure which camp GP subscribes to, however.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#697

Post by alsetmusic »

rendall wrote: post #671
low_tech_love wrote: post #425

Some personal highlights: "They’re excellent schools, and they have excellent scientists, and if one of Vice-President Vance’s kids is sick, he’s going to want the doctor to have gone to one of these schools; he’s not going to want them to have gone to Viktor Orbán’s university." "People have said to me, “Well, you take all that money from the government, why don’t you listen to them?” The answer is, because the mone…

[flagged]

Valuing Palestinian lives is not supporting terrorism.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#698

Post by kurikuri »

decimalenough wrote: post #320
kevingadd wrote: post #309

[flagged]

[flagged]

This false equivalency, if you honestly believe it, is shallow at best.

The ‘left’ has identified speech that is likely used to belittle or negate someone else’s existence and will appropriately label it as hate speech. Any structural changes to make these words frowned upon have taken years to get into place; people were allowed to adjust (and the length of time to do so is ridiculous in its own right), and what little change has happened did so in a way where the people who must change are barely inconvenienced. There have been few legal repercussions for the use of hate speech by anyone with a modicum of power. Sure, you could identify a few, but there are a ludicrous number of flagrant violations of any such laws (which are few) which go unpunished. The ‘left’ here being any sane member of society which has publicly pointed out that certain words are singularly incendiary.

Meanwhile, the grifters of this ‘right’ have conned the honest conservatives into believing that DEI is a term of hatred against conservatives. The ‘right’ has identified that they wish to say whatever without punishment and are structurally creating a cost for using inclusive language in any official capacity. The grifting part of the ‘right’ also doesn’t mind breaking any semblance of stability for everyone else. The ‘right’ here being the near-narcissistic people who have happened upon positions of privilege and believe that they are superior, have earned it, and that only those similar to themselves should ever attain such a position in the future.

But no, you have reduced your observation to ‘two sides are banning words.’

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#699

Post by themaninthedark »

vkou wrote: post #329
decimalenough wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you. The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.) It's odd that one ban operates within the constraints of freedom (the freedom to associate requires the exercise of the freedom to not associate), while the other does not. It's almost like there's a categorical distinction.…

>(The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.)

As one of the 'Free Speech folks', I'll bite.

I absolutely condemn the administration rounding up someone like Mahmoud Khalil if the only thing he did was speak a rallies. If you look up Uncivil Law's video on Mahmoud Khalil Deportation, he is saying the same thing.

Now, let's flip this around. Where are all my left wing friends willing to condemn the investigation into Trump for his Jan. 6th speech? Are you willing to join us now?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#700

Post by reverendsteveii »

rendall wrote: post #682
KittenInABox wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are US citizens who want to shoot gays, kill people different in creed or heritage, and bomb people for religious reasons. We had the gay panic defense (the legal defense to kill gay people just because you found out they were gay, and the shock justified you killing them). We had people shooting sikhs assuming they're muslim. We had folks bombing abortion clinics. There are US citizens who have done far more,…

What about is always a bad answer. It comes of a defensive. Indeed, I agree with you. There are US citizens who want to do reprehensible things, and I still say: maybe the US is not their jam. No, I'm not advocating exile or illegal detention. Just stating a fact.

the whole "not your jam" thing seems to be you retreating to meaninglessness. this isn't a debate about how a person should feel, it's a debate about how a government should act.
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