The costs of waffling

Posted on July 30, 2024 by Joe Weber

A look at how some campuses are preparing for another round of Gaza War demonstrations

For most college students, the fall semester is still a few weeks away, but some antisemites eager for another year of tumult are already making their plans. So, too, are some schools that are keen to avoid a repeat of the anti-Israel encampments that plagued so many campuses in the spring.

Five schools may be representative of what is on tap — or what isn’t. Their action or, in some cases, their inaction may shape what students and faculty will face.

First, there’s my graduate alma mater, Columbia University. Protestors there set the tone for the rest of the country last spring with encampments and then the occupation of a building, a move that was smashed by police. Threats of expulsion and worse abounded.

So where is the university now in its planning? Many of us recently got a note from the university “in the spirit of keeping alumni informed” that has a fair number of words – some with several syllables. But, remarkably, the statement says nothing.

Columbia protest encampment, source NY Daily News, April 24

The university senate is “reviewing the rules” that govern conduct in protests, we were told. President Minouche Shafik, we read, wants everyone on campus to understand the unspecified expectations and consequences if rules are broken (though none were detailed).

Boldly dithering, the school is also “facilitating a process with affected students to hear their views and work toward mediated outcomes,” the note says. And there will be unspecified “new components” in student orientation programs.

Vague? For clarification, check out the president’s July 24 “Update for Our Community.” There, Shafik says the university has “been working hard to put in place more mechanisms for community consultation, more clarity about our rules going forward, more training on discrimination issues for everyone (staff, faculty, and students), better capacity to handle incidents and complaints, and stronger internal engagement and communications.”

Regarding issues raised by the student protests, she says, two faculty members from the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Program at the School of Professional Studies were asked to facilitate a process with affected students to hear their views and work toward mediated outcomes. The two have met with a lot of people so far, she adds.

“We use the word ‘mediation’ rather than ‘negotiation’ because we believe it more accurately reflects our goals: to engage in a facilitated process of productive dialogue with students to identify paths forward that can support our community’s shared educational mission,” she thunders.

Much more is under way, Shafik assures us all.

As for those expulsions and disciplinary actions? We haven’t heard much beyond a report that some students who occupied Hamilton Hall are having their cases moved from one oversight body, the rehabilitation-oriented Center for Student Success and Intervention, to another, the more legalistic University Judicial Board in the university.

But Columbia did drop trespassing charges against its campers, who had been swept out in a police action on April 18 when more than 100 people were arrested. Recall that protestors then moved their tents to a different lawn on campus, where some remained until April 30. Then, after protestors occupied Hamilton Hall, police moved in and arrested 109 more people.

In a recent deal with the Manhattan District Attorney, criminal charges brought against 13 of the occupiers, including some Columbia alumni and outsiders, will be dismissed after a six-month probationary period and completion of an in-person class on what constitutes “peaceful and legal protesting,” as the Columbia Spectator reported. The class will also cover how such protests affect both the campus and Morningside Heights community.

Now, contrast that with the University of South Florida. After it was unsettled by demonstrations, USF expelled the leader of the local chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (remember those folks?) and recently upheld that move. The student, a sociology and women’s studies major, was a senior, so her degree is in limbo. It also suspended another student, a junior, for a year.

And consider the recent move at Indiana University. As reported by Inside Higher Ed, the IU trustees on July 29 adopted a policy with real teeth. It bans camping that’s not part of a university event; prohibits “expressive activity” outside of 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.; limits water-soluble chalk to sidewalks; forbids affixing “signs and symbols” to the ground, university buildings, flagpoles and other structures; bans “light projections” without university approval; and forbids temporary “structures and/or mass physical objects” without university approval, which must be requested at least 10 days in advance.

As the news outlet reported, students who violate the rules could face punishments up to expulsion. Employees could face ramifications up to firing, depending on the seriousness of the violation.

Not a lot of dithering or vagueness in those spots.

University of Pennsylvania; source: AP, via NY Post

And take a look at the University of Pennsylvania, where a couple top administrators lost their jobs in a dustup about antisemitism on campus last December. After anti-Israel protests in the spring, the school in early June put in place temporary rules – which likely will endure – banning encampments.

“To ensure the safety of the Penn community and to protect the health and property of individuals, encampments and overnight demonstrations are not permitted in any University location, regardless of space (indoor or outdoor),” the new guidelines state. “Unauthorized overnight activities will be considered trespassing and addressed.”

As IHE reported, the rules also prohibit light projections on building without permission. Some protestors were fond of lighting up spaces with slogans on building walls.

Break the rules, the Penn folks added, and disciplinary action will follow. Students and faculty alike face actions up to suspensions.

The get-tough campuses mark a bright, bold contrast with those that have taken a softer touch.

Perhaps the best example of coddling — and its costs — is the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. In May, Chancellor Mark A. Mone and several top administrators met for three days with camping protestors from the “UWM Popular University for Palestine Coalition.” The administrators then put out a statement giving the students much of what they wanted, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and citing the International Criminal Court’s term of “plausible genocide.”

In a feeble attempt at evenhandedness, Mone et al. added: “We also condemn the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, resulting in the killing of 1,200 innocent Israeli civilians, military personnel and police.”

“Innocent civilians, especially children, must not be the targets of war,” they diplomatically said. “This is why we also call for the release of the remaining Israeli and international hostages held by Hamas and the release of Palestinian men, women and children held as hostages in military detention in Israel. We condemn all violence and call for it to end.”

But Mone and his colleagues went further. They condemned the destruction of universities in Gaza, calling it “scholasticide,” and said they would review their study-abroad programs.

They noted that Hillel sponsors visits to Israel but, drawing a line, contended that the Jewish campus organization is separate from the university and helpfully noted that the trips are not advertised on UWM.edu. And they added that a Milwaukee-based global water nonprofit, The Water Council, at Mone’s urging, severed ties with a pair of Israeli water companies accused of denying water to Gazans.

So, what did the Milwaukee diplomats get for all their concessions? Well, the encampment came down in the spring.

But now, a new year looms. So now the pro-Palestinian coalition, in a post on Instagram, took aim at “Hillel, the Jewish Federation, etc.,” calling them “local extremist groups” and saying “ANY organization or entity that supports Israel is not welcome at UWM.”

To underscore that, the coalition added: “Any organization that has not separated themselves from Israel will be treated accordingly as extremist criminals. Stay tuned.”

Vague as that threat was, it was clear enough to spur someone at the campus to show a bit more spine. In an unsigned release under the “Office of the Chancellor” logo, the school blasted the “intimidating language aimed at Jewish community members and organizations on campus that support Israel.”

“UWM strongly denounces these statements and denounces any form of antisemitism, and we will be actively monitoring campus as a result,” the statement said. “Every student, employee and community member must be safe on our campus.”

“UWM takes this post seriously and recognizes that the language in it, if acted upon, would undermine the safety of the UWM community, especially Jewish individuals and organizations,” it said. “Where speech is not protected by the First Amendment, UWM will address it through appropriate processes, which could include student and student organization disciplinary processes. While hateful or intimidating speech is often legally protected, it conflicts with the respect and conduct we ask of each member of our community.”

So, did Mone et al. get a respectful response? The initial post has disappeared from the Instagram site, but in answer, the pro-Palestinian group doubled down on its threats. It accused the administration of “extreme bias,” while insisting its threats were not against Jews or Judaism, but rather against supporters of Zionism and Israel. Some might think that’s a distinction without a difference, but not the coalition folks.

“Groups that fail to distance themselves from this rogue regime will not be normalized or welcomed on our campus,” the coalition said. Further, it said “any support of Israel is considered an extremist position, only held by extremists, and we refuse to normalize extremism on our campus.”

While they were at it, the group whined that Palestinian students “are forced” every day to walk past the Golda Meir Library, calling the late Israel prime minister “a terrorist.” Meir, whose family fled Russian pogroms to settle in Milwaukee, in 1917 attended a teacher-training school that was a predecessor of UWM. The university named its library for her in 1979, less than a year after her death.

Since at least last December, Palestinian supporters have demanded the library’s name be changed. The campus chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society demanded a new name to “honor the martyrs of Palestine.” In March, someone broke a window in the library and spray-painted “Free Palestine” on the building.

The university’s ringing response: a statement saying “Neither antisemitism or Islamophobia has any place on our campus or in our community.”

Perhaps it’s time for the folks at UWM and Columbia to demand a bit more of themselves and of the students they teach. They could take a page from IU, Penn and USF.

Hamas and Columbia — Part 4

Posted on April 28, 2024 by Joe Weber

How should the student protestors be dealt with?

Khymani James, source: The New York Times

Khymani James, one of the student leaders in the anti-Israel protests at Columbia University, turns out to be a rather confused and angry young man.

Apparently uncertain about his gender (preferring “they” to “he”), James once acknowledged hating white people, has called for the deaths of Zionists and suggested university officials should be thankful he was not murdering any. Earlier, as a student at the prestigious Boston Latin School, the now 20-year-old James quit a city high school student advisory group in Boston, citing “adultist rhetoric.”

So, is he the perfect face of the Columbia protests? Well, James has certainly been its major voice at times. In a video shot by student journalist Jessica Schwalb, he leads students in the encampment as they face down Schwalb and others they label as Zionists, moving forward in lockstep, seemingly to drive out the interlopers. He leads the protestors in various chants as they repeat them after him in sheeplike fashion.

Barred from the campus now, however, and apparently facing disciplinary action for his rhetoric, James has since apologized and has not been seen at the demonstration. When he made the statement that Zionists didn’t deserve to live, he says now, it was because “an online mob targeted me because I am visibly queer and Black,” Newsweek reported.

And, despite the threatening steps forward against students named as Zionists, Schwalb, a reporter for Columbia Spectator, said she never felt in danger. After all, these were Columbia students, whom she told The Atlantic were “too nerdy and too worried about their futures to hurt us.”

There are plenty of lessons in the James situation, not least of which is that university administrators should remember who they are dealing with in many of the students – at least the undergrads. While teaching such young people for 14 years, I learned that many of them are essentially still children. Their worldviews are malleable and changeable and their maturity levels – especially among young men – are pretty low. And they are often captive to fads and peer pressure.

And this is not just me talking. The Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Massachusetts General Hospital reported: “Scientists know that the adolescent brain is still developing, that it is highly subject to reward- and peer-influence, and its rate of development varies widely across the population…” The center used insights from studies on the point to argue for cautious and specific treatment of teens and people in their early 20s in the justice system.

I referred to the center’s work in my book “Divided Loyalities,” which charted the paths and fates of a group of young men in Minnesota who joined or attempted to join ISIS in Syria in and around 2014. The federal court dealt severely with the men, sentencing one 22-year-old to 35 years in prison, two others to 30 years each, and still others to sentences of 10 years or less. Essentially, they had ruined their lives and the court showed little mercy.

So, how severely should Columbia deal with James and his fellow travelers? Would suspension or even expulsion be appropriate for those who violated university policies against antisemitism? More than 100 have been arrested, so should criminal charges be pressed, giving them records for life?

One general approach, suitable for all, I believe, is that if they are allowed to stay in school they should be required to take a special semester-long or yearlong course in Israel-Palestine history and relations. Such a course would be developed with scholars on or off campus who are committed to peaceful coexistence between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East. Dartmouth has had great success with such a class.

I suggest that the class include being required to watch the video produced about the Hamas savagery of Oct. 7. The students should be required, too, to read the report from the UN about the sexual violence in that assault, and similar materials. They should be required to learn about lives and fates of the hostages the terrorists took and still hold.

With their chants of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” the support some show for the murderous and suicidal Hamas, and their “anti-colonial” and anti-Zionist pablum, it seems clear that most of the students know precious little about Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, sheeplike, they parrot the nonsense they hear from peers and others (perhaps even including some dimmer faculty members).

Beyond that, the approach will have to vary by individual student. There needs to be a distinction drawn between graduate students, who generally are older and should know better, and the undergrads. One of the student leaders, for instance, is Mahmoud Khalil, a former political affairs officer with the widely discredited United National Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) who earned an undergraduate degree in Beirut, according to the New York Post. Another is Aidan Parisi, a 27-year-old postgrad whom the paper reported was suspended for his activities in the incendiary Columbia Apartheid Divest Group. “Que viva la intifada,” Parisi wrote in an Instagram post addressing his original suspension — “long live the rebellion.” And “Good night. Fuck israel,” Parisi wrote on X.

It’s not clear whether education will make a difference with such older students, though all should be required to take and pass the course I mention. But education is what a university is about, after all. Such a class would also provide a forum where all views — respectfully delivered or the students would be expelled — could be aired.

Would such schooling make a dent in the antisemitism that underlay at least some of the protests? That’s not clear. The student protestors seem mainly motivated by revulsion at the losses of life in the horrific war in Gaza. Just why they aren’t motivated by the horrors of Hamas to oppose its terrorism is a mystery, but that may be rooted in the simplistic oppressor/oppressed binary lens through which some of them – particularly the less mature ones — may see the world. In such a worldview, today’s Jews cannot be seen as victims, irrespective of the history of the Holocaust.

But in the face of widespread and growing antisemitism, especially among the young, a fuller understanding of Jewish history and the challenges Israel contends with seems essential for Columbia students such as James and many others. Along with generally being bright, the Columbia students should be educable. And testing just how much they can learn would be a start.

Is Free Speech Really Free?

Posted on October 29, 2023 by Joe Weber

Taking stances can cost one a job

As anti-Israel forces on and off campuses continue to protest, some employers are launching counterprotests of their own – firing or refusing to hire those who go public with pro-Palestine stances. The trend reflects an unsettling truism about free speech: it may be anything but “free,” as speakers have to live with the consequences.

Take, for instance, the cases of two global law firms – New York-based Davis, Polk & Wardwell and Chicago-based Winston & Strawn. Davis Polk revoked job offers to three law students at Columbia and Harvard because they were leaders in student organizations that had backed letters blaming Israel for Hamas’s savage Oct. 7 attacks. Similarly, Winston & Strawn revoked an offer to an NYU student, the former president of the school’s University Bar Association, who had written a message to the group, saying “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”

Neil Barr, chair and managing partner of Davis Polk, told The New York Times that the firm did not want to employ anyone who endorsed the Hamas atrocities.

“The views expressed in certain of the statements signed by law school student organizations in recent days are in direct contravention of our firm’s value system,” the firm said in a statement. To ensure that “we continue to maintain a supportive and inclusive work environment, the student leaders responsible for signing on to these statements are no longer welcome in our firm.”

Davis Polk noted that in two of the cases, it was considering reversing course and hiring them because they said they had not endorsed the criticism of Israel. The letters blaming Israel for Hamas’s attack did not include individual names. It’s not clear what the law firm knew or didn’t know about the students, other than that they were leaders in the group or groups that backed the statements.

As for the NYU student who lost an offer at Winston & Strawn, that person has doubled down on the criticism of Israel. Ryna Workman, who appeared on ABC defending Palestine and criticizing Israel, was caught on camera covering up posters of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas with pro-Palestine signs. Appallingly, Workman repeatedly ducked questions about whether she – or “they” as Workman prefers – had any empathy for Israeli victims.

Workman was ousted by NYU law school Dean Troy McKenzie as head of the student bar association. Other members of the group had quickly distanced themselves from Workman, saying they mourned “the tremendous loss of human life,” while sidestepping any specific condemnation of Hamas. Subsequently, all members of the association quit, saying they feared for their safety, and the group disbanded.

As many American business leaders remain horrified by the Hamas atrocities, some say they will refuse to hire students who take stances similar to Workman’s. Some major Wall Street investors, including hedge fund chief William Ackman, have called on companies to blacklist members of groups that have taken pro-Hamas stances. Ackman, a Harvard graduate, also demanded that Harvard release the names of such students.

As reported by Forbes, Ackman tweeted that “a number of CEOs” approached him, asking for the student names to ensure “none of us inadvertently hire any of their members.” One CEO, Jonathan Neman of the healthy fast casual chain Sweetgreen, responded to Ackman’s post on X, saying he “would like to know so I know never to hire these people,” to which healthcare services company EasyHealth CEO David Duel responded: “Same.”

Still other outfits have canned those who refused to condemn Hamas or backed Palestinians. Artforum fired its top editor, David Velasco, after a call for a ceasefire, signed by thousands of artists, appeared on the publication’s website.

“We support Palestinian liberation and call for an end to the killing and harming of all civilians, an immediate ceasefire, the passage of humanitarian aid into Gaza, and the end of the complicity of our governing bodies in grave human rights violations and war crimes,” the letter said.

As reported by ARTNews, a sister publication, Artforum publishers Danielle McConnell and Kate Koza in a statement wrote, “On Thursday, October 19, an open letter regarding the crisis in the Middle East was shared on Artforum’s website and social platforms without our, or the requisite senior members of the editorial team’s, prior knowledge. This was not consistent with Artforum’s editorial process. Had the appropriate members of the editorial team been consulted, the letter would have been presented as a news item with the relevant context.”

Velasco was fired soon after high-profile dealers, artists, and other signed another letter that referred to “an uninformed letter signed by artists who do not represent the artistic community at large,” ARTNews reported. This new letter, titled “A United Call from the Art World: Advocating for Humanity,” referred to the Hamas attack, but not to Gazans caught up in the warfare.

For his part, Velasco, who had worked at the publication since 2005 and served as editor since 2017, was unrepentant in comments in The New York Times. “I have no regrets,” he told the paper. I’m disappointed that a magazine that has always stood for freedom of speech and the voices of artists has bent to outside pressure.”

As the Times reported, the initial letter was widely condemned, drawing responses by figures in the art world. On WhatsApp, campaigns were organized to dissuade advertisers from working with the magazine.

Similar actions are occurring at other media outlets. The board of the British-based biomedical and life sciences journal eLife fired editor-in-chief Michael Eisen, after he praised The Onion for a satirical post headlined “Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas.”

As reported by NBC News, Eisen, who is Jewish and has family in Israel, posted that he had been fired “for retweeting a @TheOnion piece that calls out indifference to the lives of Palestinian civilians,” he wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“I expressed my opinion, an opinion about the way that American institutions, especially universities, have been kind of not expressing equal concern for the deaths of Palestinians as they have Israelis, which I think is a moral mistake and a political mistake,” Eisen told NBC. “I don’t think that Israeli scientists should feel like the scientific community does not have their backs. The support has been very strong — I thought it was obvious. People don’t always express themselves well in these situations. I wish I made clear how I empathized with them, too.”

Similarly, PhillyVoice.com canned a sports reporter after he tweeted his “solidarity” with Palestine. The Philadelphia 76ers organization tweeted on X: “We stand with the people of Israel and join them in mourning the hundreds of innocent lives lost to terrorism at the hands of Hamas,” along with the hashtag #StandWithIsrael. As The Guardian reported, journalist Jackson Frank, who covered the team, responded: “This post sucks! Solidarity with Palestine always.”

And then there are the doxxing trucks. Operated by the group Accuracy in Media, these mobile billboards have shown up at campuses including Columbia, Harvard and Penn showcasing the faces of members of anti-Israel campus groups. The trucks are emblazoned with legends such as “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”

While AIM leader Adam Guillette argues the trucks merely “amplify” information, they have drawn heat as amounting to harassment. The Harvard Hillel Jewish center “strongly condemns any attempt to threaten and intimidate” students who signed the letter, Harvard’s student newspaper the Harvard Crimson reported. And the University of California Berkeley law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky called the truck “despicable,” the New York Times reported. Columbia University president Minouche Shafik issued a statement before the latest truck appeared on the university’s campus, saying some Columbia students “have been victims” of doxxing, calling it a “form of online harassment” that will “not be tolerated,” according to Forbes.

Some demonstrators at Drexel and Penn universities covered their faces and declined to speak publicly, saying they feared being targeted by university officials or losing financial aid, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Some noted the doxxing trucks and pointed to a man filming demonstrators on his phone. A Penn alumna at the rally complained, “The surveillance, harassment, and intimidate of these young people is like no other.”

In the academic world, few would dispute that the free exchange of ideas – even noxious ones – should be free of punishment. Students, especially, should be able to speak their views and debate without fear.

However, employers are also free to shun those whose views they find reprehensible. The world off campus is a lot harsher.

As the New York Times reported, in another social media post, hedge fund manager Ackman said he was “100% in support of free speech.” But, he added, “one should be prepared to stand up and be personally accountable for his or her views.”

Where are the Palestinians Appalled by Hamas?

Posted on October 11, 2023 by Joe Weber

Some students on U.S. campuses appear extraordinarily callous

Demonstrators at Cambridge City Hall, Source: Boston Herald

As Palestinian voices have grown more strident at universities all across the country in recent years, misinformation has flourished. But the latest spate of statements from organizations on campuses ranging from Ohio State to Harvard reflects astonishing insensitivity to the brutality and immorality of Hamas.

At Ohio State, the campus affiliate of the Students for Justice for Palestine praised the “heroic resistance in Gaza.” At Harvard, over 30 student organizations signed a letter written by the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee and Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine saying they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” as reported by Inside Higher Ed.

At the University of Pennsylvania, a group has called for a protest against an alleged “pro-Israel narrative” at media outlets including the NPR affiliate WHYY. At the University of Virginia, Students for Justice in Palestine celebrated the Hamas attacks as “a step towards a free Palestine,” as reported by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

At Tufts University, a Jewish student leader, Micah Gritz, told The Hill that the “campus environment” has been “horrifying.” He added: “On campus, we’re seeing students either turn a blind eye to the conflict, or we’re seeing those who are openly celebrating our pain, you know, glorifying it, justifying it … They’re casting the murder of Jews and Israelis as progressive, as liberation. It’s just honestly very, very scary as a Jewish student on campus who has friends and family in Israel.”

The moral blindness among some members of Palestinian student groups leaves one aghast. Have they not seen the horrors inflicted on innocents by Hamas? Surely, they cannot truly celebrate the ghastliness, as reported by The New York Times and media around the world.

Certainly, Palestinians have reason to protest conditions in the West Bank and in Gaza and to demand better. But for them to side with the wanton murderers of Hamas beggars belief – especially when the terrorists have done nothing to improve the lot of Gazans since Israel left the area in 2005. Instead, the group has focused on building rockets and arming their deluded followers. Siding with such vicious murderers boggles the mind.

Where are the Palestinian voices on campus calling for an end to Hamas terrorism, demanding an end to its undemocratic tyranny in Gaza? Where are the Palestinians calling for peaceful coexistence with Israel (a prospect Hamas has all but destroyed for now)? Where are the Palestinians at U.S. universities decrying the savagery of recent days? Where are the Palestinians condemning Hamas for the awful retaliation to come, as Israel moves on Gaza to root out terrorists who surely knew they would bring such devastation on their own people?

Some Arabs have courageously spoken out against the actions of the terrorists. Perhaps the most eloquent is Lucy Aharish, an Arab-Israeli who spoke of “our beloved country” – Israel – and lambasted those who failed to condemn the Hamas attack. Hear her moving comments here.

Have similar sentiments been stifled, with Palestinians cowed into submission, as so many Gazans have been suppressed by Hamas? Public support for the terrorists has been common around the world, as The Times of Israel has reported: “From Ramallah to Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo, people have distributed candies, danced and chanted prayers in support of the ‘resistance’ to Israel’s long-standing control of Palestinian land.”

And yet, backing for Hamas is hardly universal in Gaza. Half of Gazans agreed with the statement “Hamas should stop calling for Israel’s destruction, and instead accept a permanent two-state solution based on the 1967 borders” in a poll by The Washington Institute. As the FIKRA Forum reported: “In fact, Gazan frustration with Hamas governance is clear; most Gazans expressed a preference for PA administration and security officials over Hamas—the majority of Gazans (70%) supported a proposal of the PA sending ‘officials and security officers to Gaza to take over the administration there, with Hamas giving up separate armed units,’ including 47% who strongly agreed. Nor is this a new view—this proposal has had majority support in Gaza since first polled by The Washington Institute in 2014.”

Is anti-Hamas sentiment more common among Palestinians on campus than the latest headline-grabbing pronouncements by some groups suggest? Are they too fearful to speak out? A member of the Palestinian Solidarity Committee at Indiana University, asking for anonymity out of safety concerns, told the student newspaper: “We just stand for peace, it’s an emotional conflict … We don’t represent Hamas, and we don’t condone the actions of Hamas. But we also don’t condone the actions of the Israeli military. We do not want to see Palestinian children or Israeli children killed in this siege. It is a tragic event, and we hope things deescalate as soon as they can.”

One can only hope that there are other Palestinian students in the U.S. with more humanity than some of their local leaders and spokespeople appear to have. Surely, there are more Palestinians at such schools who share the revulsion of most in the civilized world. It would be heartening to hear more from them.

Is Shouting ‘Em Down the Smartest Approach?

Posted on September 26, 2023 by Joe Weber

Should exponents of unpopular — but widely held — views get a forum on campus?

Prof. Robert P. George, source: Princeton University

Princeton University Professor Robert P. George, 68, boasts a resume few could equal.

After earning degrees from Swarthmore, Harvard and Oxford, this grandson of immigrant coal miners from Morgantown, West Virginia, went on to chair the U.S. Commission on International Freedom. Earlier, he served on President George Bush’s Council on Bioethics and was a President Bill Clinton appointee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. He has also served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) and as a former Judicial Fellow at the Supreme Court of the United States.

His honors include the U.S. Presidential Citizens Medal, the Honorific Medal for the Defense of Human Rights of the Republic of Poland, the Canterbury Medal of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the Sidney Hook Memorial Award of the National Association of Scholars, the Philip Merrill Award of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, the Bradley Prize for Intellectual and Civic Achievement, the Irving Kristol Award of the American Enterprise Institute, the James Q. Wilson Award of the Association for the Study of Free Institutions, Princeton University’s President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Stanley N. Kelley, Jr. Teaching Award of the Department of Politics at Princeton.

Despite the fact that he is an outspoken conservative, he counts among his friends Harvard Prof. and noted liberal philosopher Cornel West. The two have appeared in venues together.

Profs. Cornel West and Robert P. George, source: robertpgeorge.com

George seems like someone from whom students at Washington College might learn something.

But even when his subject was “Campus Illiberalism” – the trend of speakers being silenced because of views some find repugnant – he was shouted down at the small Maryland school on Sept. 7. As The Chronicle of Higher Education just reported, a small group of protesters entered the room, yelling and playing loud music. They ignored pleas for civility from the professor who invited George, Joseph Prud’homme, who heads the school’s Institute for Religion, Politics and Culture and who had earned his doctorate at Princeton.

Prud’homme led a silenced George out of the venue.

The Princeton prof’s cancellable offense: he has opposed same-sex marriage, abortion, and expansions of transgender rights. While he wasn’t slated to speak about those topics, per se, his very appearance was enough to merit him being shut down in the view of some students.

As The Chronicle reported, shortly before his talk, an associate professor of English at Washington emailed a student a link to George’s accountability profile from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation that carried several examples of George’s anti-LGBTQ remarks. The information spread on campus and the groundwork for the protest was set.

Certainly, many reasonable folks would be repulsed by comments attributed to him. Of transgenderism, he said in 2016, “There are few superstitious beliefs as absurd as the idea that a woman can be trapped in a man’s body and [vice versa].” When New Yorkers supported gay marriage in 2011, he hearkened back to a time when being gay was “beneath the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures.” He had cofounded the National Organization for Marriage. And he argued that gay relationships have “no intelligible basis in them for the norms of monogamy, exclusivity, and the pledge of permanence.”

Moreover, it appears from a January 2023 piece in the Princeton Alumni Weekly that George hasn’t updated his views any. In that piece, titled “Crashing the Conservative Party,” he bemoaned the arrival at the university in recent years of students who “are just, you know, fully in line with — totally on board with — can give you chapter and verse as if it’s the catechism of — the whole ‘woke’ program: environmentalism, racial issues, sexual issues, and so forth.”

Of course, the students at Washington didn’t give him the chance to make his case against “illiberalism.” Nor did they challenge him to defend his views on sexual identity or abortion. They just made enough noise to drive him out.

FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, complained about the “heckler’s veto” imposed on George, suggesting that college security officials should have escorted the protesters out of the room. The outfit said they were entitled to hold signs in the back the room or make “fleeting commentary,” so long as they weren’t disruptive.

“But when the event cannot proceed as planned because protesters talk over speakers, drown them out with other sounds, or cause other disruptions that substantially impede the ability to deliver remarks, Washington College must use the resources at its disposal to prevent this pernicious form of mob censorship, and to ensure audiences can, at the very least, hear the speakers talk,” FIRE Program Officer Graham Piro wrote. “When Washington College allows silencing of speakers like George, its message to all in the campus community is that those who engage in disruptive conduct have the power to dictate which voices and views may be heard on campus.”

One could argue that, despite his achievements and honors, George is simply an intellectual dinosaur whose views on sexual matters don’t even warrant conversation. Notwithstanding their roots in his apparently deep religious faith, those attitudes are simply well past their expiration dates. After all, same-sex marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015 and long before that was declared legal in many states.

But we would then face a conundrum. In fact, those views – however benighted they seem to many – are still shared by a fair number of Americans. A year ago, the Pew Research Center reported that 37% of those surveyed thought same-sex marriage to be bad for society, for instance. And abortion continues to polarize the public.

So, does shutting down a talk by someone who espouses such attitudes make the views disappear? Would it not be more sensible, instead, to hold those stances up to scrutiny? Would it not be better for protesters even to shun his appearance and, perhaps, set up a presentation by someone who could refute the ideas? Or, even better, to put someone such as George on a stage with an intellectual opponent to argue their different cases?

After all, isn’t one of the purposes of higher education to hash out difficult matters and to teach students to think about them critically? Wouldn’t such a session serve everyone better than just making noise?

Keeping ’em in the dark

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Joe Weber

Image source: Getty Images via Scientific American

From elementary school up through college, schools have become hotbeds of political ferment. Right-wingers condemn, cancel or fire teachers who discuss such things as LGBTQ rights and race relations. The former seems to be anathema to evangelicals apparently unaware it’s 2023, while the latter falls into a weird area where whites seem oblivious to the way Black people have been treated and would rather ignore history.

An exceptional illustration of this trend appears in The Washington Post in “Her students reported her for a lesson on race. Can she trust them again?” The piece tells of a white teacher in South Carolina, Mary Wood, whose reading assignments included Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” prompting two students in her all-white Advanced Placement English Language and Composition class to report her to the school board for teaching about race.

As the Post recounted: “The students wrote in emails that the book — and accompanying videos that Wood, 47, played about systemic racism — made them ashamed to be white, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students ‘feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress’ on account of their race.”

Teacher Mary Wood, source: The Washington Post

So, in other words, if studying history and literature makes one feel uncomfortable, it’s better simply to not study such subjects. Better to remain ignorant and cozy, according to state legislators. One can only assume they are happily both.

Of course, versions of this tale are playing out all across the country. Teachers are being muzzled or censoring themselves in fear. Libraries are unshelving books that might make some readers squirm. Bans on books in schools are proliferating.

On the university level, right-wingers are finding new tools to prevent discomfiting history or viewpoints to be shared with students. Legislation all across the country would restrict academic freedom, with more than 50 bills popping up in 23 states, as of a midyear count. “The bills are being drafted in right-wing think tanks funded by dark money,” Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) told Vox. “It’s a well-funded, well-orchestrated, decades-long campaign. It’s not just springing up out of nowhere since the language in the bills is very similar.”

It’s an extraordinary attempt whose end can only be to keep the next generation in the dark about their history, blocking them from hearing opinions and points of view that the rightists find unsettling. One wonders if whole sections of the country will be populated by ignoramuses while people in other areas manage to learn things the others simply won’t know.

During one of my last semesters teaching at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, I was privileged to co-teach a class in which students investigated the racial and ethnic coverage of the Omaha World-Herald over the decades, going back to the late 1800s. The students looked into lynchings, a bus boycott, the treatment of native Americans and such immigrant groups as Greeks, among other things. As they talked with knowledgeable folks who assessed the paper’s work, the students produced exceptional material, which you can find here.

If rightists and white supremacists had their way, I’m sure, such a class would never have taken place. Indeed, students told me they were stunned that almost none of their coursework in college or in high school dealt with the topics they probed. Students of various backgrounds who had grown up in Nebraska were ignorant of their own state’s history and felt cheated for this lack of education. The course was, to them, eye-opening, as it was to me.

In a sense, today’s attempts to stifle teachers and suppress knowledge are repetitions of history. Book-banning, of course, has a long history in the United States, as does placing restrictions on teachers. Indeed, at my private high school in New Jersey there was considerable tension in the late 1960s and early 1970s between old-guard teachers (some of whom were active in the John Birch Society) and young folks formed by opposition to the Vietnam War and the cultural explosions and political unrest of that era. The oldsters loathed the newcomers with their new-fangled notions and rebellious spirits.

Richard Hofstadter, source: The New York Times

We as students were better off for the variety of viewpoints we heard. In fact, I am thankful — oddly perhaps — to have had an American History teacher who led a John Birch Society chapter in New Jersey because his conspiratorial and paranoid views of the world gave me great insights into the mental processes of Donald Trump and his ilk today. I’m just glad I was able to understand even then, thanks to some helpful academics outside of my school, about how bizarre but commonplace such attitudes were. Those academics turned me on to the works of the brilliant Richard Hofstadter.

I fear, however that in public schools across the country knowledgeable and rebellious teachers will be driven out. As a result, legions of ill-served students will remain as ignorant as their parents and their legislators probably are. Will democracy and society be well-served by such willful blindness? How could they be?

The marketplace of ideas: who gets in?

Posted on September 7, 2023 by Joe Weber

Interesting developments on the free-speech front in Arizona and Massachusetts

The battle royal over free speech on campuses is climbing a few decibels on both sides of the country, it seems. The fracas at Arizona State University is likely to grow louder in coming weeks with a reprise visit by a couple controversial conservatives. As for the East Coast, Harvard has distinguished itself by placing last in a ranking by a prominent free-speech organization.

Let’s turn to ASU. It has become a showcase of sorts for conservatives who feel aggrieved and abused, as well as for academics who find themselves uncomfortably in the crosshairs of today’s cultural warfare.

Conservative radio host Dennis Prager and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, who stirred up a hornet’s nest in February when they visited ASU, plan to speak there again on Sept. 27. Their “Health, Wealth & Happiness 2.0” session will be sponsored by a student organization, Turning Point USA at Arizona State University, rather than by an individual college such as Barrett, the honors college that controversially hosted them last time through a now-defunct center.

Conveniently setting the stage for their visit, a university report about the brouhaha over their last visit is expected to be released shortly. That report was demanded by Arizona State Sen. Anthony Kern, who led a hearing into the matter in July. Kern said the legislature’s judiciary committee will take so-far-unspecified action dealing with ASU, depending on the thoroughness of the report.

Kern, who co-chaired the Joint Legislative Ad Hoc Committee on Freedom of Expression at Arizona’s Public Universities, has already telegraphed his feelings that he expects little from ASU that would placate him. “I do not trust the Board of Regents,” Kern said at the July hearing. “I do not trust ASU. I do not trust our universities to teach our kids what needs to be taught.”

For their part, it’s not clear what Prager and Kirk plan to talk about in the coming confab, although the session will also feature at least one state legislator who served on Kern’s ad hoc committee, Austin Smith, who also is a former director of Turning Point USA. That suggests that free speech on campus could take center stage at the session, as well as hoary claims of a leftward tilt among faculty.

Smith had asked the regents to investigate the termination of the director of the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development at Barrett. That ex-official, Ann Atkinson, had complained about her firing in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, suggesting that it was in reprisal for her organizing the first Prager-Kirk session. In fact, the funding for her position fell away when donor Thomas W. Lewis pulled his backing, citing what he called “the radical ideology that now apparently dominates the college.”

Shortly before the wintertime Prager-Kirk session, 39 faculty members at the college had written a letter to their dean complaining about the men’s visit, lambasting them as “purveyors of hate who have publicly attacked women, people of color, the LGBTQ community, as well as the institutions of our democracy, including our public institutions of higher education.”

Notably from a free-speech point of view, however, the Barrett faculty members didn’t call for the session to be cancelled. Instead, as some of them wrote in an op-ed in the Arizona Republic, some had slated a teach-in prior to the session called “Defending the Public University.” They maintained that they encouraged students to attend both events and claimed that many students did so. Nor were they party to the Lewis center’s shutdown, the authors said.

While that suggests an openness to free speech, Atkinson has argued that the faculty bullied students into staying away from both the Prager-Kirk talk and the ad hoc committee hearing in July. So far, though, no evidence proving such bullying has emerged (perhaps the university report will illuminate the matter). It may be that students just found the initial talk uninteresting and that, in July, few were on hand for the legislative hearing.

There are some crucial differences between the upcoming Prager-Kirk session and the February one. For one, a student organization is sponsoring the gathering, rather than a college. Thus, while it bears the imprimatur of that student group, it doesn’t need the blessings of a college where most of the faculty find the speakers reprehensible.

Certainly, the men have distinguished themselves as advocates of notions many find toxic. Prager has criticized homosexuality, for instance, writing “I, for one, do not believe that a man’s inability to make love to a woman can be labeled normal. While such a man may be a healthy and fine human being in every other area of life, and quite possibly more kind, industrious, and ethical than many heterosexuals, in this one area he cannot be called normal.” For his part, Kirk has praised Jan. 6, 2021, rioters at the U.S. Capitol as “patriots” whose travel to Washington, D.C., was funded by Turning Point USA, as the Daily Beast reported.

So far, it doesn’t appear as if ASU faculty members plan counterprogramming to rebut likely comments by the pair, which is an interesting approach. Would such programming elevate Prager and Kirk’s status and serve only to legitimize their ideas? One faculty member suggested to me that engaging them in debate would be akin to dignifying a member of the Flat Earth Society by sharing a stage with him or her, even if only to refute the person’s arguments.

Still, the views of Prager and Kirk raise a compelling question for advocates of free speech and those who see universities as places where conflicting ideas ought to be hashed out. When is someone’s speech so far beyond the pale that it doesn’t deserve an airing? And when a school, as opposed to a student group, brings such a person in front of students does that suggest an endorsement (indeed, might it be considered educational malpractice, if there were such a thing)? The challenge in this MAGA era is amplified because a substantial minority of the public share the ideas of such men.

A daughter-in-law of mine who teaches at Princeton frames this as a matter of progress over time. She contends that the line between acceptable ideas and those rightly consigned to history’s dustbin has consistently shifted. There was a time, for instance, when advocates of slavery (indeed slaveholders) could find a forum at universities. Similarly, pro-Nazi speakers and racists were tolerated on campuses. Has the line moved such that it’s left the likes of Prager and Kirk on the wrong side, irrespective of any followings they have in the general public?

Strolling at Harvard, source: the Boston Herald

Now, as to Harvard, the school has been named the worst for free speech among universities reviewed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. As the New York Post reported, Harvard scored poorly in large part because nine professors and researchers there faced calls to be punished or fired based on what they had said or written. Indeed, seven of them were disciplined.

Moreover, much of the trouble at Harvard has to do with self-censorship — not the type imposed by authority figures. The FIRE rankings rely in large part on surveys of students. And at the Boston school, the Boston Herald reported: “Self-censorship is pervasive across the board, according to the survey. More than a quarter of students (26%) said they censor themselves at least a few times a week in conversations with friends, and 25% said they’re more likely to self-censor now than they were when starting college.”

The atmosphere at the university has grown so troublesome to free-speech advocates there that more than 100 faculty members have joined a new Council on Academic Freedom on campus. Indeed, the debate about whether free discussion is stifled at Harvard has been joined – ironically but appropriately at Harvard.

Harvard Magazine sketched out the arguments last June. In part, it cited an op-ed that founders of the new council wrote in The Boston Globe: “The reason that a truth-seeking institution must sanctify free expression is straightforward,” they wrote. “…The only way that our species has managed to learn and progress is by a process of conjecture and refutation: some people venture ideas, others probe whether they are sound, and in the long run the better ideas prevail.”

This notion, implying that the marketplace of ideas will weed out the intellectual dinosaurs, is a longstanding one, of course. For campuses nationwide, the question today is about who should be permitted into the marketplace and whose ideas deserve only to be shunned.

An Assault by the Right

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Joe Weber

George Wallace, source: The Washington Post

Conservative assaults on higher education are nothing new. Recall George Wallace’s vitriol about “pointy-headed intellectuals” in the late 1960s. Years before then, in 1952, William F. Buckley Jr. earned his spurs with the book “God and Man at Yale,” lambasting universities for straying from his dearly held Christian principles. That same year, the House Un-American Activities Committee investigated Communist methods of infiltration in education, as political analyst Pam Chamberlain explained in “The Right v. Higher Education: Change and Continuity.”

Indeed, it has become an article of faith in conservative circles that universities are dominated by lefties who don’t educate, but who indoctrinate. Ronald Reagan in his first gubernatorial campaign in 1966 stoked conservative hostility toward the University of California schools, particularly UC Berkeley, which was a center of demands for free speech on campus and a locus protest against the Vietnam war. After his attacks succeeded, and he forced the schools into a position of needing to charge tuition for the first time in their history.

Unlike these scattered efforts, however, today’s conservative movement is mounting well practiced and orchestrated assaults on what its supporters see as rampant liberalism in education. These drives are led by governors and lesser politicians who in calculated campaigns have won elections or appointments to boards of regents and higher education panels, particularly in red states.

Florida Gov.Ron DeSantis epitomized the drive in 2021 when he signed legislation designed to crack down on a perceived bias in the classrooms by requiring schools to survey themselves annually to measure “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” on their campuses. He followed up early this year by packing the board at the New College of Florida with rightists determined to remake the campus and squash liberal viewpoints there.

He’s hardly alone, however. Other officials have driven out educators they believe would espouse values they can’t stomach, especially on matters of diversity, equity and inclusion (which evidently are values they can’t abide. Consider the actions of the U.S. Supreme Court against affirmative action in university recruitment).

Most notable here are the cases of two distinguished New York Times journalists who, perhaps not coincidentally, were Black women:

— Nikole Hannah-Jones, whose leadership of the 1619 Project earned a Pulitzer Prize, was appointed in 2021 as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at the University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. But, after she was denied tenure by conservative trustees, she decamped to Howard University.

— And this year Texas A&M University drove out former New York Times editor and tenured University of Texas professor Dr. Kathleen McElroy as the new head of the journalism department. After announcing her appointment to a tenured spot, the school’s leaders steadily chipped away at the terms, eventually offering her a nontenured one-year position as a professor of practice with three years as the program director, serving at will. She refused and the university wound up settling with her for $1 million.

An alumni group had agitated against McEloy’s hire, balking at her reported advocacy of DEI. Regents echoed the worries. As The Chronicle of Higher Education reported, one regent texted the chancellor: “I thought the purpose of us starting a journalism department was to get high-quality Aggie journalist [sic] with conservative values into the market.” He wrote: “This won’t happen with someone like this leading the department.”

Take note: the regent didn’t argue for distinguished journalism chops and a commitment to such verities in the field as fairness, thoroughness and accuracy. No. Instead, he applied an ideological test, demanding “conservative values.” Indeed, for conservatives in Texas, McElroy’s affiliation with The New York Times was hardly a plus. It was as if she had worked for Pravda, McElroy said an official at the school told her.

While often underhanded – as when schools chip away at offers that right-wingers object to – some of the assaults are simply dishonest. A flap this year at Arizona State University, for instance, included an official blaming the university for eliminating her position at the school, when in fact her job went away after a funder — a conservative — pulled his support for her center. The donor was offended when faculty members objected vocally to a couple right-wing speakers coming on campus.

Ronnie D. Green, source: University of Nebraska Foundation

And, sometimes, well-regarded academics who personally may be conservative themselves are victims of the assaults — presumably because they aren’t conservative enough. At the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where I taught for 14 years, rightists led by then-Gov. Pete Ricketts attacked Chancellor Ronnie D. Green after he led an effort to promote diversity and inclusion at the school. Green, who grew up on a farm in Virginia, made his academic bones in agriculture and was known for his Christian religious commitments, wound up retiring this year as chancellor after just seven years, at age 61.

Aside from such examples, the efforts by conservatives to remake higher education have drawn heat from such groups as the American Association of University Professors. In a recent statement, the AAUP and the American Federation of Teachers condemned the efforts. Their statement said: “Right-wing lawmakers continue to wage a coordinated attack against public colleges and universities with legislation that would undermine academic freedom, chill classroom speech and impose partisan agendas on public higher education.”

The groups cited legislation introduced in at least 23 states that would limit teaching about race gender and sexual orientation, require intellectual and viewpoint diversity statements and surveys, cut funding for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, and end tenure for faculty. As the groups said, “This legislation is the latest in a multiyear effort by right-wing activists and donors to reshape academia to its liking.”

These efforts come against a backdrop in which many Americans, particularly Republicans, feel hostile to university educations. According to Gallup, only 36% of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in such schooling Among Republicans, only 19% of Americans expressed such sentiments. Given such feelings, academics who hope the public will back them in fights to preserve tenure, for instance, may be sorely disappointed.

Finally, let me share a personal anecdote. I once gave a college tour to a young man who was quite hesitant about entering the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He told me he feared that his Christian faith would be challenged at the school, despite an abundance of churches on campus. He was trying to figure out if a small Christian college, where he would find reinforcement, would be a better fit for him. I recall thinking a few things: university should be a place where many of one’s ideas as a teenager should be tested (although I doubted his Christian commitments would be), and two, his faith must be a fragile thing, indeed, if it can’t hold up to exposure to people who may believe differently.

And yet, that young man may may be representative of much of the sentiment that has coursed through the right since at least the days of William F. Buckley Jr., before conservatives hit upon the approaches they are taking now.

Today’s assaults may owe their genesis to the isolated attacks of prior decades. But, nowadays, they are well-organized and well-developed. And in a troubling number of cases they are working.

What Are the Limits of Free Speech?

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Joe Weber

“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear,” George Orwell famously said.

That, of course, is just one of innumerable quotes about free speech. Another handy one, attributed to George Washington, warns: “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

My favorite, however, comes from Oscar Wilde. His riff on a noted comment from S.G. Tallentyre was: “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.”

Lately, lots of speakers — and many who would prefer not to hear them — have either been making asses of themselves or – depending on one’s viewpoint – prompting profound questions. Consider the infamous March 9 flap at Stanford Law School, where hecklers shouted down a conservative judge, who then was criticized by the school’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion.

First, let’s grant that this was not so much about speech – really – but about a person the students deemed beyond the pale.

The noisy students weren’t furious about the subject of Appeals Court Judge Kyle Duncan’s comments – which dealt with guns, Covid and Twitter. Instead, they were offended by his record, which included defending Hobby Lobby against requirements that it provide contraceptive healthcare benefits to employees; his criticism of Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that recognized a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, as an “abject failure” that “imperils civic peace,” as well as his defense of Louisiana’s gay-marriage ban before the Supreme Court and his defense of a North Carolina law keeping transgender people out of their preferred bathrooms.

They were troubled that Duncan, a Trump appointee, had denied a transgender woman’s request to be called “she” or “her.”

But all of it – both Duncan’s appearance and the student outrage – smacked of being a setup, an orchestrated affair more reminiscent of a WWE bout than an academic gathering. His visit, at the invitation of the university chapter of The Federalist Society, was tailor-made for controversy — and it began early.

Beforehand, students posted flyers warning that Duncan advocated for laws that “would harm women, LGBTQ+ people and immigrants,” as The Stanford Daily reported. Students in the organizations OutLaw and Identity and Rights Affirmers for Trans Equality (IRATE) asked the society to cancel his event or move it to Zoom. Their email said: “While acknowledging your right to freely associate with speakers and gain mentorship from those you choose, we are writing to express specific concerns about the effect of bringing this person into our campus community…”

After the society refused the request, Duncan’s visit did not disappoint those who expected a brawl. As the school paper reported, Duncan’s critics outnumbered Federalist Society members. The paper reported that his opponents “brought posters condemning him; some also had trans flags painted on some of their cheeks. Short speeches about how Duncan’s actions are harmful to many communities were made by protest leaders and the protesters shouted call and response chants, including, ‘When our trans neighbors are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!’”

For his part, Duncan seemed to relish the attention, even as the specific attacks infuriated him. A lawyer who posted his views of the event on Substack noted that Duncan “walked into the law school filming protesters on his phone.” When asked if he tried to record, Duncan responded with, “Damn right I did. I wanted to make a record.” And, in his opening remarks, the judge said: “I’m not blind — I can see this outpouring of contempt.”

Hecklers made it difficult for Duncan to speak, so much so that DEI Associate Dean Tierien Steinbach stepped in. As reported by Bloomberg Law, she told Duncan: “Your advocacy, your opinions from the bench, land as absolute disenfranchisement of their rights,” referring to the students. But Steinbach also defended free speech, even as she questioned whether his provocations were worthwhile. She said she “wholeheartedly” welcomed Duncan to campus, but told him, “For many people here, your work has caused harm.” Twice Steinbach asked, “Is the juice worth the squeeze?” seeming to question if he believed his speech was worth the reaction.

Despite her attempt at even-handedness, right-wing outlets demanded Steinbach’s firing. While they appear not to have gotten that, Steinbach has gone on leave (voluntarily or otherwise). The conservatives also won an apology, with criticism of Steinbach, from Law School Dean Jenny S. Martinez and university president Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Indeed, the dean mandated a half day of special free speech training for law students.

Now, as The New York Times reported, Martinez released a lawyerly 10-page memo that rebuked the activists. “Some students might feel that some points should not be up for argument and therefore that they should not bear the responsibility of arguing them,” she wrote. But, she continued, that “is incompatible with the training that must be delivered in a law school.” She added, “I believe that the commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion actually means that we must protect free expression of all views.”

But does she really mean “all views?” Would one of the many neo-Nazis riling America be welcomed to speak at Stanford? Would a KKK leader be cordially invited? How about a zealous homophobe?

The debate over free speech roiling so many campuses now seems to come down to what speech goes beyond the pale, or more properly, which speakers do. Duncan has standing, of course, because of his role as a judge. But should his positions on such matters as whether to call a transgender woman “she” put him over the line of acceptability?

Mores are moving fast these days, perhaps too fast for some conservatives. But remember that there was a time when eugenicists were acceptable on campuses. Indeed, some venues encouraged flagrantly racist and anti-Semitic academics to publish, speak and teach their views. Has the line simply moved too far for some?

As they exercised what critics called “the heckler’s veto,” there’s no question that the students behaved badly. The fact that they were law students who will need to trade and tolerate views with civility in the most potentially heated courtroom situations makes it worse.

But did Duncan serve the cause of civil discourse well by calling one critic “an appalling idiot” as he left the classroom and later calling his hecklers “bullies” and “hypocrites?” Later, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he doubled down, writing “They are, and I won’t apologize for saying so. Sometimes anger is the proper response to vicious behavior.”

Indeed, one wonders how much Duncan is basking in the attention his appearance provoked. As a opinion-writer at The San Francisco Chronicle wrote: “No matter who you think behaved worse here, the answer doesn’t matter for Duncan, because he got what he wanted: fame.” Referring to a Slate writer’s comments, he added, “it’s hard not to view Duncan’s performance as a not-so-subtle audition for the next Supreme Court vacancy that arises under a Republican president.”

Like it or not, free speech has limits and, if nothing else, simple decorum demands restraint even when it’s most difficult. The problem today is we don’t know what the limits are yet. Almost certainly, l’affaire Duncan will not be the last test of them.

The college hunt gets personal — open letter to a niece

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Joe Weber

Dear Sam,

So, senior year is hard upon you. That means prom, a top spot in the cheering squad, maybe a full-court press in calc to buff up that transcript. And, of course, it’s time for you and colleges to get serious about one another.

You’ve checked out a few places already. A couple big state universities, a few state colleges – most of the places touchingly within 50 miles or so of home. You’ve probably pored over their websites, talked to folks there and maybe chatted with a teacher, coach or guidance counselor about your options. You and your parents may have checked out finances to figure out what you can afford, perhaps gotten some info about aid and scholarships.

It’s a good start, Sam, but – with any luck – not the end of the game. Let me lob a few thoughts your way. Take these from a grizzled uncle who has been around the academic block a bit, between attending a few schools, teaching at three universities and, most important, seeing three of your cousins go through the same sleuthing sessions you now are involved in.

 First, talk to more people. Start with your extended family. At least nine of your cousins have been through the mill already, in undergrad and grad schools. Some went to big, private, urban or suburban schools (Boston University, Columbia, Stanford). Some opted for smaller private schools (Bucknell, Stevens, Pomona). And some chose big public schools (West Virginia, Rutgers, Michigan State, University of Oklahoma). Some went to community colleges for a while. Find out what they liked, what they hated. They’ll tell you, in spades.

 Think about your aunts and uncles. Shockingly, they can be helpful and they’d probably talk with you. Their alma maters include Rutgers, Columbia, Colorado State and the University of Toronto, among other places. One is now pursuing a Ph.D. Even if they natter on about goldfish-swallowing, panty raids and ukulele-playing, they might have a few useful pointers to share.

 Visit more places. You must pick up the vibe on a campus to figure out whether you’d like to spend four years and lots of Mom and Dad’s money there. One cousin visited Georgetown and was turned off. Why? The girls dressed like they were at a fashion show or were stalking husbands, not like they were there to learn. Blue jeans, please, and forget the makeup. For her, Harvard’s holier-than-thou attitude was fatal for it. Another thought Berkeley’s refusal to let her stow her luggage in the visitor center for the tour was a killer sign that it wasn’t all that user-friendly. A much smaller, more indulgent school outside LA couldn’t have been more obliging, by contrast.

 Think broadly. Why limit yourself to a tiny corner of the country you’ve known all your life? The U.S. is a big place and on- and off-campus life, socially and intellectually, in the South, West and East differ. Want to climb mountains and ski on your weekends? Think about Denver or Fort Collins. Want to learn really good manners? Think about Atlanta. Want to hear people talk funny? Think Boston. Why just New Jersey, Delaware or even Pennsylvania? Sidenote to Mom and Dad: It took us a while to accept the idea of our youngest in far-off California, until we realized it was just a plane ride away, just as Massachusetts and New York were for the other two.

 Look at the US News and World Report rankings, but look deeper. Some schools rank high overall but may not be so strong in the discipline that interests you. If you really want to dig into schools, check out the websites for particular departments. Are the faculty distinguished? Indeed, will you ever see the senior faculty or, as often happens, will you be taught by grad students?

 Figure out what you want. Visits are crucial. Big urban schools are great for some folks (one cousin went to a small high school, so wanted thousands of classmates.) Smaller, more intimate colleges are better for others (after a big public high school, another cousin craved a small liberal-arts spot). Want Division One athletics? Could be exciting, but how much time do you really want to spend on the field? Unless you are quarterbacking the football team, it won’t be all there is to life in school (one cousin quit the D1 track team she’d pined for when she learned it meant no other after-school activities and not all that much time for schoolwork). Small fish in big pond or vice-versa – what works for you?

 Think about life after class. If you pick a big school, a sorority can make a cold and daunting place more intimate. It can also give you lifelong friends, the chance to learn leadership and offer great academic and social support, not to mention a nice place to live. At a smaller school, the dorms may be just fine.

 If you like the idea of a big place, find one that offers “learning communities.” These groups, which bring together like-minded students to study and sometimes live together, make a sprawling campus smaller. You might find lifelong friends there, too.

Sam, there’s a lot more to picking a place where you’ll spend some important years than just popping in on a few nearby campuses. Would you buy the first blouse you see on a rack? Would you limit yourself to just a few stores in the mall? How about the first CD in the bin? (Oh, I forgot. Nobody does that anymore).

Times do change, of course, Sam. But find out what wrong turns (and right ones) others who’ve been down the road have taken. And, whatever you do, shop around. One last thing — don’t sell yourself short. Pick a range of schools, but make sure to aim high. To mix metaphors (something a good English teacher will mark your down for), cast your net wide. Once you’ve applied to a lot of places, you can still go to the school down the block. It won’t move, but in coming months your hopes may.

Love,
Your uncle.

The Big Picture

Category Archives: college students