Thanks for the insights, the fear explanation really rings true.
I live in Israel and am experiencing now, together with the whole country, the shock and fear from last weeks attacks. I'd agree with you that much of our fear is based on being afraid of the world's fear to stand up for what they know to be true, particularly younger folks who never knew the pre-2014 world. Social media in the wake of the attack is filled with slogans, slurs, and platitudes - the stuff of fear and shame - and so little genuine questioning and answering.
In my Substack, The Healthy Jew, I'm doing my little part of the solution by writing now how non-combatants can find a healthy and balanced response - emotional and spiritual - to the unfolding tragedy.
In wars against terrorists, everyone is a warrior. Our primary enemies are fear, shock, and tension. Terror teaches that the world is a bad place, that life is more pain than joy. Terror also distracts minds and hearts from life. Instead of tending to ourselves, our families, and communities, the addictive drama pulls seeks to pull us away from today’s reality, constantly firing questions that we can’t possible answer, and bombarding us with emotions that we can’t begin to face. It's social media times a thousand.
We win the war when we don’t stop life every five minutes to check the news, when we smile at strangers who have fear all over their faces, when we play with our scared children, when we go out for a refreshing run, and when we get a good night’s sleep.
There’s no more important time to take good care of our physical and emotional health: not only to make living possible, but because that’s where all good choices begin.
Thank you! We are, together with the rest of the country, still in shock and fear, but slowly getting back together, as much as is possible while all the war and its tragedies are ongoing.
Thank you Shmuel for the heart felt and thoughtful message. I certainly couldn’t get out of the doom scrolling mode in this past week. Will make a screen shot of your comment to go back to for support.
I'm with you on the doom-scrolling, the drama of it all is so gripping. Glad to be helpful! In the coming weeks, I'll be expanding more on The Healthy Jew about how to find health and sanity of body and mind during times of crisis. Be well!
The mentality of the typical banner-waving campus 'Progressive' is not even really about a concern for the Palestinian people or any other 'oppressed' people. The real driver is to signal that their privileged narcissistic little wonderful selves are an ever-virtuous elect. 'Oppression' is a shallow abstraction that serves to inflate their personal vanity as 'social justice' warriors. This poisonous vanity has been pouring out of Western academia for decades. I still remember the drug-addled anti-Zionist 'sit-in' at my UK university in 1973. They have not conquered the citizenry with bombs but with another kind of violence; they’ve hypnotised them with ex-cathedra incantations of pseudo-values so absurd that – only a few years ago – would have seemed like they must be just kidding. They have been groomed, at the West’s most prestigious schools and universities, to such pitch-perfect self-righteousness that it would never even occur to them that they might be imposing their ‘pseudo-values’ on a public with little realistic means of democratic resistance. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers.
> "The mentality of the typical banner-waving campus 'Progressive' is not even really about a concern for the Palestinian people or any other 'oppressed' people."
I don't think this is correct, Graham. I think the concerns of campus progressives are sincere, even if their opinions are shallow and lightly-held. I think they sincerely believe they can make the world better by opposing the ills faced by oppressed people.
I guess it comes down to numbers. Yes some will be as you say and others will fit my description. I do think though that there is such a thing as performative virtue (and always has been of course throughout history). In my perception it has hugely increased during the course of my lifetime but No I can't prove that.
I don't doubt that. I think social media has made it easier for people to discover and lightly support causes that previously would have required hard work and commitment.
This is a good string of thoughts. I would propose that the two are not mutually exclusive. I frequently see instances where 'concerns of campus progressives are sincere' while in the same instance they are consciously proud to be part of 'an ever-virtuous elect.' It then becomes a reinforcing feedback loop.
Aside from good intention, which I assume until verbal or physical behavior prove otherwise, I instead ask of my university students: at what point in the epistemic cycle of academic ideologies (like social justice, antiracism etc) do students (with the natural human desire to believe) arrive on campus?
Stage 1: Abstract theories
Stage 2: Established viewpoints
Stage 3: Givens/Truths
Stage 4: Myopic Conclusions
Many students of the last 10-15 yrs have arrived on campus during stages 3 and 4 of progressive ideals. Many students parrot the truths and conclusions unwittingly, ignorantly trusting the ‘expert’ professor’s opinions not as opinions but as pronouncements of objective truth. It’s naive realism emerging from an epistemic atmosphere composed predominantly of leftist literature citing more leftist literature. Siloed scholarship. By virtue of sheer scholastic volume, students are persuaded and discussions overwhelmed. Moral judgments replace reasoned arguments.
I find your analysis unfair and one-sided. You must have been triggered by particular episodes of protests. To demonize all progressives as "vain," "poisonous," "privileged," "narcissistic," "drug-addled," "ever-virtuous," and even perpetrating "another kind of violence" . . . well, enough said. You've used verbal bullets to aggrandize your cynicism, and that's not a fair interpretation of all the movements for honest and sincere social change, even if sometimes misled, that have characterized progressivism in a country that at this point badly needs it. I'm sorry, but people who demonize progressives are my personal trigger.
Have you tried asking some of the activists specific questions? For example, I once asked "criminal justice reform" activists on my undergrad campus what they believed was an alternative to law enforcement and prison terms. I got a blank stare. It was about the same reaction I got from law school classmates who were enthusiastic about immigration but shocked when they started working with domestic violence clients.
There seemed to be such a total lack of due diligence that it suggests the activism was for reasons other than actually trying to improve the situation.
I have found the activists I associate with to be some of the most intelligent citizens I know. I simply can't identify with your description. Perhaps it's because I am selective in seeking out that brand.
Certainly, there are gatherings of folks who are sincere and yet somewhat naive, especially on campuses since obviously they're still learning about life . . . you have to get a few years under your belt before you can collect the variety of experience you describe. Young activists especially can lack world experience, but the world needs their sincerity and empathy -- as we get older, we can lose some of that and harden our hearts. We don't want to lose that sincerity.
I think that the best activism includes both the young impassioned and the older seasoned individuals who can temper the conversation. But above all, activism needs experts: people who have been in the field and done/analyzed the studies. Journalists who have been there and evaluate professionally. Historians who can show us meta information. Experience should create some degree of humility -- if it doesn't, it's a red flag. That's my kind of activism, and I trust that you would be okay with that too.
Several books have been written about alternatives. Many discussions, seminars and roundtables conducted. There are viable alternatives.
"It was about the same reaction I got from law school classmates who were enthusiastic about immigration but shocked when they started working with domestic violence clients."
Some of my classmates seemed shocked to find out that 90% of the domestic violence clients they had came from immigrant populations instead of the general population.
There is a huge difference between writing a book and being very confident it is a viable alternative and it actually being a good idea. Good ideas are tested by practice, not confidence. It is very easy to use a broad word to conceal variability or to promise that scrutiny will solve problems and very hard to actually do it. I routinely see upper-class twits advocate for "criminal justice reform" who suddenly forget that poor people are the first victims of the criminals who get released when it comes time to assess safety issues in educational disparities or domestic violence cases.
"Some of my classmates seemed shocked to find out that 90% of the domestic violence clients they had came from immigrant populations instead of the general population."
=== If they know anything about poverty and statistics it should not have come as a surprise and if they are at the point of "taking clients" while simultaneously being "classmates" they would have already covered this in their education.
"Good ideas are tested by practice, not confidence."
--- Practice tests would requires laws to be changed first so that has to be worked on.
"poor people are the first victims of the criminals who get released"
=== Who's advocating for violent offenders to be set completely free on the streets? I've never come across it and that's not what criminal justice reform is about.
My classmates were activists, not analysts. They reacted angrily when I brought up statistics since they assumed I was being racist. That is the kind of activism I encountered and likely most people encounter. As for being classmates, we were learning caselaw, not the modern distribution of cases. I saw their surprise via Facebook posts after graduation.
Look at the efforts to resolve housing costs by trying to implement price ceilings. We have had practical experience with that in history such as the well studied Paris price controls bifurcating the market into luxury and slum housing. I see lots of talk about how the government should impose price controls on housing but I trust past outcomes to be a better predictor than the promises of activists.
I see multiple people around me who are in favor of short prison terms for things like armed robbery (several of my classmates in law school) and even several people in favor of prison abolition.
We clearly have a very different perspective and Yes of course comment threads like this are never going to fully express the complexity of this or any other subject. But I would just say this: my comment should be read in the context of a despair (widely shared amongst conservatives) at the state of universities in the Western world (and espescially the Anglosphere). This is something I have written on quite extensively on my own Substack including this review of Heather Mac Donald's forensic investigation of the workings of DEI 'The Diversity Delusion': https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind. I'd be surprised if anyone could read it and not feel at least some skepticism about the provenance of much campus-type social justice protest.
„little of the content of this essay could be spoken to many of my friends, family or professional colleagues without serious discord.“
Very much echos the sentiment many of us feel and hence turn to likeminded individuals on line.
Observing the world is very disorienting with contradictions everywhere. In Canada we continuously are told to celebrate multiculturalism but I don’t think most understand the often profound differences between cultures. We are not supposed to really acknowledge them. So, what are we celebrating? Difference in food and dress only? We acknowledge religious differences only as far as the perfunctory roles they play such as the nice looking rituals, but not the large differences in the role for example of women and individuals in the world.
Watching the reactions to current pro Palestinian demonstrations is interesting..
I believe in the woke is the new religion theory. I read many years ago that most people just want enough religion to feel good about themselves, but not enough to experience discomfort.
As Obama said, it is easy to post something on social media, or even go to a protest, but the heavy lifting of for example volunteering at an organization and being in the trenches day to day to solve the issues of the day, is not something many are willing to do.
Yes, I think there's no doubting that 'Social Justice' has become the religion adopted by the West's generally well-off middle classes....and for the reasons you say. I posted a comment on this theme on another Substack yesterday: "The second half of the 20th century saw a retreat, across the Western world, from the Christian conception of the individual as an intrinsically flawed being – prone to sin and prone to error.......The significance of this cultural change is hard to overstate ....A culture that acknowledges that most people are ineluctably less than perfect will be less susceptible to the sanctification of particular sub-sets as ‘victims’. And those designated as such would be less likely to feel it as a reason for abrogating any personal responsibility for the condition of their lives." https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-will-to-kneel/
Thanks for the link, well written and I agree with your points
One personal observation is that I believe much can be explained by basic psychology as in the pyramid of needs by Maslow
Most progressives are middle class or upper middle class. They cannot really relate to the struggle of having your basic needs for food, housing and security met. Only in that context does BLM and defunding the police make sense. These people are literally searching for meaning, which is what social justice gives them
They are not interested in traditional concepts promoted by the left, they are not supporting unions or those on the bottom to raise their wages. Only in that context does supporting mass immigration make sense, they are oblivious to the impact of compressing wages or of pressures on affordable housing since they are not impacted.
That is why those seeking to have their needs on the bottom of the pyramid met, have turned to Trump. He promised them to have their security needs and jobs met.
One could argue a basic trick of politics is to stoke fear of some kind, which pushes the electorate to the bottom of the pyramid. Fear needs need to be met first and foremost
Interestingly, we currently have a housing crisis in Canada, much worse than in the US, caused by mass immigration of a rate unmatched in the West. Young people now support the Conservative Party by a large margin. The largest supporters of our virtue signalling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, are women over 50, most of whom don’t have the same financial pressures as the younger generation.
Very interesting observations about the psychology of political allegiance (which is a major theme in my own writing). Your comments about the youth vote in Canada came as a surprise; in England where I live, 13 years of a particularly useless (nominally) conservative government has virtually wiped conservatism off the political map in the case of the young.
In the end people will support the party that promises to fix what they are concerned about. If they are in power for a while and fail to do so, people will turn to other parties, as they should. Hence the difference in support for conservatives in Canada vs UK.. In Canada, there are literally not enough places to rent due to huge immigration and everyone moving to desired areas of the country, which in Canada means where it is not freezing cold. I read about 4 immigrants sharing a 600 sq ft apartment. People are literally advertising to share half a queen size mattress in a 1 bedroom apt, or a mattress on the floor. People are outbidding each other to rent an apartment. So, bottom of the pyramid..
❤️Haidt❤️,:"Greg and Rikki explain the long history of efforts to silence people by threatening them with social death..."
Resilience against "social death..." may be "Death of the ego" ..."Death of the ego" is defined by CBT inventor, popular author and podcaster, Scientist Dr Burns' chapter 20 of his book "Feeling Good Together?"
Which comes first: "The 3 Great Untruths" ...aka "First Do No Harm: Stop the Lying"...
...or "Grow a Pair"... aka Exposure Therapy... aka "Don't Sweat It" is a lie: Exercise is required, Facing your fear is required?
I was born under Communism. Examples of social death were being made into an object of danger for one's family and acquaintances by secret police harassment, loss of one's job, or being formally punished in a labor project(or killed). I went to a school where all three cleaning ladies had masters degrees in engineering because they couldn't get a decent job under the Communists.
It was common for wives to be pressured to divorce dissident husbands, for children to be called upon to denounce their parents, and for neighbors to be called upon to monitor the activities of dissidents. Life was harsh for those marked for social death.
Social death is not the same as social humiliation, it is the inability to rely on the little help from others (material or emotional) that makes life bearable.
Dr Haidt:"...cognitive distortions that Greg had learned how to correct in himself when he was trained in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression."
CBT is a written debate and no therapist will tell you:
To measure before and after.
2.
The best predictor of success is "Willingness" ...aka "clients that crank up the intensity of the debate have the quickest recovery"
3.
Up to 60% of anxious people are cured by placebo, up to 50% of depressed people are cured by placebo
4.
An innocuous placebo can mutate into an insidious placebo... Followers of the Prince of Peace consistently voted for War... and vice versa: Moms replace baby's filthy thumb with a sterile pacifier.
I worked at Oregon State University until earlier this year when I was fired for Vax mandate. I do not miss the quarterly training on the 'values' of the university. These were thinly veiled propaganda videos targeting a woke value. I evaluated the applications of student appealing their rejection from a university program. In my two years on this committee I never read a student appeal to their virtue or ability. Instead they'd cite their membership in an approved marginalized group. The groupthink was tangible. Modern academics have a preternatural ability to quickly meet at right-think consensus. It is unnerving to one trained in independent thought!
It seems that a lot of people in tech who have been vocally against cancel culture over the last few years became extremely eager this past week to cancel anyone who didn't share their opinion towards the Israel/Palestine conflict. Seeing those reactions -- many of which were cast against people on the same side as them over minor nuances in what was said -- I can understand why leaders have been hesitant to make such statements.
I see a big difference between the cancelling based on the astroturfed pseudo-moralities of the day, vs. tip-toeing about/tacitly approving the most barbaric mass slaughter of innocent Jews since the Holocaust. Those people have no moral absolutes and have surrendered their humanity, and deserve to be banished from western civilization.
Yup. Moral clarity is swiftly being lost. Many of the anti-woke and anti-cancel culture people, whose work I have long followed and appreciated, are now engaging in the exact same tactics that they up until recently denounced. Name, shame, dox, defund, destroy, censor, silence, all because certain opinions are out-of-bounds, even if they veer slightly from what is acceptable.
University should commit to neutrality but you want them to comment now? If you want them to commit to neutrality, it has to start somewhere. And it makes no sense to pressure colleges to choose a side or make a statement about every event all around the world and no one seems to be pressuring them about a lot of bad events like the Azerbaijan one. It seems to me that the "Canceling of the American Mind" is exactly why there was backlash and pressure for Universities to pick a side and it's no different from other forms of coerced speech and cancel culture with donors pulling out because no statement were made or the statement were not good enough or CEO demanding students be expelled and blacklisted. This seems even severe than most cases of Cancel Culture.
Harvard released statements and speech condemning it and still people didn't think it was enough. And literally called for leaders to step down, student be punished and blacklisted. This seems exactly the same as cancel culture using threat of social ostracization and career prospects (and donations in Harvard's case) to coerce speech. And worst of all, this call is coming from famously anti cancel culture and pro free speech crowd.
Asking them to condemn every bad thing that happens all around the world makes no sense and them not releasing statements shouldn't signal their support or opposition of that event or any of the involved party. This seems like a case of guilty until proven innocent. And punishing them for a group of their students espousing views you hate and find abhorrent makes no sense either, they aren't charged with controlling the students moral views and opinions.
While it is not the job of the university’s admin to control thoughts, views, and opinions, it is there job to speak out against stunted speech rights and to foster good behavior and open discussion on campus.
What is the "stunted speech rights" and the instance of not fostering open discussion in this case. As far as I understand, the University did nothing to stop any student from saying whatever they wanted but people are angry about what some of the students say and want them to punish or expel the students which is definitely against free speech and open discussion. What do you think the unis did wrong in this case?
I was not only talking about last weeks events, I was making a broad generalization about cancel culture. Also, there is an incredible amount of self-censorship that runs rampant in our culture, particularly in academia.
Exactly, and this rampant self Censorship is exactly why I think this method of trying to force statements out of University admins and punishing students for saying something you hate or think is bad is actually bad. And it seems to be especially weird since it's coming from groups of people that have been famously pro free speech, anti cancel culture and fixing self Censorship in Colleges.
I think that the point of this article, aside from pointing out cancel culture, is to state the lack of consistency of these universities’ statements. Jonathan Haidt reported advocating for universities to be either politically neutral, or to be consistent when it comes to making statements about contemporary events. But that is what I understood from this article.
I couldn’t agree more. I have been a student for the past 6 years now and almost every time something major happened they have felt it necessary to “make a statement.” I genuinely dislike these letters. The admins seem to think that doing right by someone while doing wrong by the other group is okay. Let the students debate, the admins job is to foster and encourage free speech and free expression of thought in a safe environment and maintain civility in these times.
Unfortunately, I think the OPs point is that in todays culture, students’ ideas of “safety” are actually incompatible with civility. They think that some populations need protection from ideas, which they are certain the words and ideas are causing actual harm and must be censored to stop the harm. In this mindset, there is no such thing as civil debate anymore.
Agreed. There's a big double standard and many inconsistencies at play here. Israel should not be immune from criticism in the same way that Ukraine should not be immune from criticism, and many people seem to be on the opposite sides of those issues. Kind of reminds me of the way the American Civil Liberties Union used to support free speech but now does not. People need to be very careful how they tread here. Nobody should be sanctioned for unpopular speech, and anybody who thinks there is only one unequivocally right side to this issue has their head jammed really far up their ass.
“ In general I think universities should embrace the “Chicago Principles” and commit to institutional neutrality. See Jeff Flier’s recent application of these principles to the current situation. But if university leaders made so many pronouncements on “controversial” issues before October 7, then they should have made a strong one on October 8.”
That's my point. If you want them to commit to neutrality, they have to start somewhere, if you use the logic that because they had been commenting on controversial topics to say they must comment on this, that logic can basically be used to justify them never bein neutral now or in future. There's no better time and situation to wake them up to why they have to remain neutral than something as controversial as this but most people encouraging them to be neutral before this event seem to have joined the, you must comment, this comment is not good or strong enough, this comment is bad stance.
You shouldn't call them not to be neutral at one time, then call for them to be neutral at other times. Ask them not to punish dissenting speech one time and ask them to punish it at other times.
I took it to be more that if they’re not going to remain neutral, then they need to be consistent. I think his first choice would be for them to remain neutral on all issues.
And I think he needs to keep pushing for neutrality even now. His choice that they maintain neutrality will of course require them to break consistency of picking a side (often on select issues, there are many more issues around the world, they just ignore anyways)
So many are ignored. It is like people are operating off of a script and have their pre-approved issues that they speak out about. Personally, I’ve never understood why more people don’t speak up for all the elderly people in this country who go to bed hungry or have no heating or air conditioning and are lonely. Shouldn’t taking care of our elders be a top priority?
At an evening of sketches, long ago at university (1965 Cambridge) I recall an undergrad (to become a famous comedian) standing up at a stage podium during a 'smoker' to deliver, in cod-German accent, a speech about what "is now being done about people who'd served in the Nazi regime"; how the courts were working under new "focused legislation" to track down "these people" who are "everywhere"; how kindergartens, schools, colleges and universities were at last refining their recruitment and personnel policies to assist the state in recognising the "traits", often well-hidden, of "so-called" ex-Nazis; how businesses and local authorities and the media were winkling out "the guilty" at every level, working "fearlessly with discipline and efficient intelligence", to identify "the foulness in our midst...these people who infect our new Germany" with their "diseased sub-human thoughts". As the sketch continued the actor's initially sober voice grew heated. His words came faster, adjectives amplified and given deeper emphasis with rigid hand and then arm gestures. The sympathetic and virtuous figure who'd begun the speech had slowly transformed, growing grimmer, glistening, reddening, and in a grand finale, showing a face contorted into a mask of enthusiastic - almost joyful - rage; flecks of spittle reaching the front row of the audience; even a little foam at the mouth - near apoplexy, rage and hate personified "there will at last be a final solution to this problem!". The silence before the applause was deafening.
I agree with their approach and reasoning as sound in principle, but they picked exactly the wrong moment to announce this as their course. It smells too much like cowardice, given the context for it.
why cowardice? Isn't the moment when students are expressing controversial opinions the time to point out the policy? I particularly like their statement about the already existing time/place/manner restrictions on various protests signs, so that no group can feel it is persecuted if the signs are taken down
I think these rules have already been in place for quite some time. These rules were being mentioned so students understood them and to offer reasoning behind the removal of signs and banners outside of designated spaces. I could be wrong, but that is how I reads it.
I don't understand. Isn't calling upon Harvard as an institution to condemn one-side in a controversy (those who blame Israel) a clear violation of the Chicago Principles? Aren't such denunciations precisely what constitutes Cancel Culture?
I personally detest both anti-Semitism and terrorism. Isn't it my responsibility to debate, rather than silence, those who disagree with me?
Isn’t it progress for university presidents to recognize that weighing in on social issues is not their place? Neutrality should be the norm if we are trying to restore diversity of opinion and break away from authority figures declaring what is the “acceptable” view.
It’s fine to disagree with Israel/Hamas being the issue where they all of a sudden flip and embrace nuance, but either way it seems like a win against the soft censorship that has been prevalent.
It would be if they had consistently been neutral. But waiting until this tragedy seems suspicious, considering many of the things that some of these schools have been far from neutral about.
I understand that for many that is frustrating, but calling for authority to define the acceptable bounds of speech just because it is now speech you agree with defies the principle of the matter. College presidents shouldn’t set the terms of debate for ANY issue. This was vehemently agreed upon in forums like this up until a few days ago.
I actually feel that most people are more pointing out how quiet they have suddenly become, when in the past they were not. I don't think most people want them to say anything. Instead they are using this to point out that their silence is not really about being neutral but instead somewhere on the spectrum of "Waiting to see where the wind blows" to "They agree with what happened".
Ultimately, if you have spent years showing that you are in fact NOT going to be neutral and support people's rights to free speech, then when you suddenly are quiet or try to fly the neutral flag, folks are going to point out your BS.
100%. All I am saying is that regardless of the reasons for remaining silent in this instance, I think it’s still movement in the direction that we as free speech advocates should want. Even if it seems like a sudden flip in posture for administrators, this is what should become the norm if all speech is to be encouraged.
If I felt like this was actually a movement in the right direction, I would agree with you more. But I am a cynic, and their past behavior does not lead me to believe they will be silent when the next thing comes along.
Reading the first couple paragraphs of the Jeffrey Flier piece linked in your footnote (it's all that is available before the paywall) I can't help noting that he refers to the Hamas terrorists as "fighters from Gaza." At least he acknowledges that they "slaughtered" Israeli civilians. But why can he not just call them what they are? "Fighters" in the context of the barbarism they perpetrated is just too vanilla. Especially since terror was precisely their purpose.
Honest to goodness, if we all just petitioned our school boards to require a few classes in informal logic for all public schools it would be a whole lot harder to do all this. Do you think even a dozen high school kids in America know what is wrong with an ad hominem or a tu quoque? Most college kids would think both are just dandy Critical Theory if they even knew what they were!
You are making an informed guess here about their response (or lack thereof) to the specific events in Israel and Gaza, and although there's a good chance you are right based on the broader landscape, this feels like a disappointingly speculative basis for making your own point.
Do university leaders make a practice of issuing public statements about tragic world events? Did they issue statements about the Russian invasion of Ukraine? About racially-motivated mass shootings? About natural disasters? I don't recall anything they might have said publicly, but I don't travel in academic circles. In short, compared to their response to other things, are they being silent about Israel/Gaza?
What I have been hearing and reading, mostly, are intelligent nuanced takes: The actions by Hamas were inexcusable. Intentionally killing civilians is abhorrent. However, this did not come out of nowhere, and the world has too long ignored the suffering of the Palestinians and excused atrocities committed by Israel. Not only excused, but supported, at least in effect. The second point does not erase the first. Both things are true.
I appreciate this comment. I feel like so many people are ignoring the history behind Israel and Palestine right now, which is dangerous at a time like this. Recognizing the Israeli government's war crimes does not equal letting Hamas off the hook for their terrorist attack & antisemitism. It's frustrating to see yet another issue split along party lines when the real concern here should be the human rights violations.
Everyone has their stories. We all have our fears and frustrations surrounding all of this going down. Everyone has a question something like, What can I do about it that won’t cost me too heavy of a loss? Do I really want to end up alienated from my children and grandchildren? Don’t I have bigger fish to fry? I decided the direct route, to gently and carefully and kindly ask some questions. Is it OK if we disagree on some things? Can you tell me how you came to believe what you do? Do you ever doubt what you’re believing? I also try to personalize things some, by sharing my own struggle with one thing or another. People who fall into unhealthy ideological mindsets and obsession with other people’s problems, are often troubled by deep and painful problems in their own lives. Try to find out how they’re doing personally, emotionally, practically. If they call you names, ignore them, and see what you can do to help. Love them the best you know how.
My university professor, whom I like and respect very much, did issue a statement, in which he used a world such as "brutal", "terrorist", or etc. (I forget what) to describe the attacks. He did not make any similar characterization of the Israeli killing of Gazan civilians. That is inappropriate. Israel always kills more Palestinians than vice versa, sometimes as in this case far more, every single calendar year. No need for university presidents to point that out, since that would entail taking a side. But what you seem to be calling for is similarly for them to take the other side. I admire everything you do, Jonathan, and especially the graciousness with. which you go about it, and on this you are off-base.
Why do we expect university presidents to offer a comment on the Hamas attack? Maybe many of them didn't comment because they lack expertise on and experience in the region. Maybe they think comment is best left to diplomats, political leaders, and people on the ground who have an active stake in the issue. University presidents didn't speak up much about the brutal US supported regimes in Central America in the 80s or about Iran-Contra, which was a blatant attack Constitutional rule. Nor did they say much about the Iraq War, an unmitigated violation of international law and the "rules-based" order, with a body count significantly higher than the Israel/Palestine war. Are they morally obligated to speak out on this? Or any particular atrocities? Which ones? Is there a threshold civilian fatality rate? If so, the Israelis crossed it a long time ago. Or is it because Hamas slaughtered so many people in a couple of days instead of spreading it over weeks or months?
I bought the book (The Canceling of the American Mind) immediately after reading this After Babel article. Hard to put down, I neglected things that I needed to do to read it.
Thanks for the insights, the fear explanation really rings true.
I live in Israel and am experiencing now, together with the whole country, the shock and fear from last weeks attacks. I'd agree with you that much of our fear is based on being afraid of the world's fear to stand up for what they know to be true, particularly younger folks who never knew the pre-2014 world. Social media in the wake of the attack is filled with slogans, slurs, and platitudes - the stuff of fear and shame - and so little genuine questioning and answering.
In my Substack, The Healthy Jew, I'm doing my little part of the solution by writing now how non-combatants can find a healthy and balanced response - emotional and spiritual - to the unfolding tragedy.
In wars against terrorists, everyone is a warrior. Our primary enemies are fear, shock, and tension. Terror teaches that the world is a bad place, that life is more pain than joy. Terror also distracts minds and hearts from life. Instead of tending to ourselves, our families, and communities, the addictive drama pulls seeks to pull us away from today’s reality, constantly firing questions that we can’t possible answer, and bombarding us with emotions that we can’t begin to face. It's social media times a thousand.
We win the war when we don’t stop life every five minutes to check the news, when we smile at strangers who have fear all over their faces, when we play with our scared children, when we go out for a refreshing run, and when we get a good night’s sleep.
There’s no more important time to take good care of our physical and emotional health: not only to make living possible, but because that’s where all good choices begin.
Thank you for this wise and helpful advice.,
Thank you for this wonderful piece. I am going to try and memorize it.
Oh wow, thanks! I should try that too! It's certainly a journey living here in Israel's these days. The air is still filled with shock and fear.
I expanded on this response in my article yesterday on The Healthy Jew. Here's a link:
https://thehealthyjew.substack.com/p/israel-needs-healthy-jews
I pray you and your family are safe and well.
Thank you! We are, together with the rest of the country, still in shock and fear, but slowly getting back together, as much as is possible while all the war and its tragedies are ongoing.
Thank you Shmuel for the heart felt and thoughtful message. I certainly couldn’t get out of the doom scrolling mode in this past week. Will make a screen shot of your comment to go back to for support.
I'm with you on the doom-scrolling, the drama of it all is so gripping. Glad to be helpful! In the coming weeks, I'll be expanding more on The Healthy Jew about how to find health and sanity of body and mind during times of crisis. Be well!
The mentality of the typical banner-waving campus 'Progressive' is not even really about a concern for the Palestinian people or any other 'oppressed' people. The real driver is to signal that their privileged narcissistic little wonderful selves are an ever-virtuous elect. 'Oppression' is a shallow abstraction that serves to inflate their personal vanity as 'social justice' warriors. This poisonous vanity has been pouring out of Western academia for decades. I still remember the drug-addled anti-Zionist 'sit-in' at my UK university in 1973. They have not conquered the citizenry with bombs but with another kind of violence; they’ve hypnotised them with ex-cathedra incantations of pseudo-values so absurd that – only a few years ago – would have seemed like they must be just kidding. They have been groomed, at the West’s most prestigious schools and universities, to such pitch-perfect self-righteousness that it would never even occur to them that they might be imposing their ‘pseudo-values’ on a public with little realistic means of democratic resistance. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers.
> "The mentality of the typical banner-waving campus 'Progressive' is not even really about a concern for the Palestinian people or any other 'oppressed' people."
I don't think this is correct, Graham. I think the concerns of campus progressives are sincere, even if their opinions are shallow and lightly-held. I think they sincerely believe they can make the world better by opposing the ills faced by oppressed people.
I guess it comes down to numbers. Yes some will be as you say and others will fit my description. I do think though that there is such a thing as performative virtue (and always has been of course throughout history). In my perception it has hugely increased during the course of my lifetime but No I can't prove that.
I don't doubt that. I think social media has made it easier for people to discover and lightly support causes that previously would have required hard work and commitment.
There's us agreeing again!
This is a good string of thoughts. I would propose that the two are not mutually exclusive. I frequently see instances where 'concerns of campus progressives are sincere' while in the same instance they are consciously proud to be part of 'an ever-virtuous elect.' It then becomes a reinforcing feedback loop.
Aside from good intention, which I assume until verbal or physical behavior prove otherwise, I instead ask of my university students: at what point in the epistemic cycle of academic ideologies (like social justice, antiracism etc) do students (with the natural human desire to believe) arrive on campus?
Stage 1: Abstract theories
Stage 2: Established viewpoints
Stage 3: Givens/Truths
Stage 4: Myopic Conclusions
Many students of the last 10-15 yrs have arrived on campus during stages 3 and 4 of progressive ideals. Many students parrot the truths and conclusions unwittingly, ignorantly trusting the ‘expert’ professor’s opinions not as opinions but as pronouncements of objective truth. It’s naive realism emerging from an epistemic atmosphere composed predominantly of leftist literature citing more leftist literature. Siloed scholarship. By virtue of sheer scholastic volume, students are persuaded and discussions overwhelmed. Moral judgments replace reasoned arguments.
I find your analysis unfair and one-sided. You must have been triggered by particular episodes of protests. To demonize all progressives as "vain," "poisonous," "privileged," "narcissistic," "drug-addled," "ever-virtuous," and even perpetrating "another kind of violence" . . . well, enough said. You've used verbal bullets to aggrandize your cynicism, and that's not a fair interpretation of all the movements for honest and sincere social change, even if sometimes misled, that have characterized progressivism in a country that at this point badly needs it. I'm sorry, but people who demonize progressives are my personal trigger.
Have you tried asking some of the activists specific questions? For example, I once asked "criminal justice reform" activists on my undergrad campus what they believed was an alternative to law enforcement and prison terms. I got a blank stare. It was about the same reaction I got from law school classmates who were enthusiastic about immigration but shocked when they started working with domestic violence clients.
There seemed to be such a total lack of due diligence that it suggests the activism was for reasons other than actually trying to improve the situation.
I have found the activists I associate with to be some of the most intelligent citizens I know. I simply can't identify with your description. Perhaps it's because I am selective in seeking out that brand.
Certainly, there are gatherings of folks who are sincere and yet somewhat naive, especially on campuses since obviously they're still learning about life . . . you have to get a few years under your belt before you can collect the variety of experience you describe. Young activists especially can lack world experience, but the world needs their sincerity and empathy -- as we get older, we can lose some of that and harden our hearts. We don't want to lose that sincerity.
I think that the best activism includes both the young impassioned and the older seasoned individuals who can temper the conversation. But above all, activism needs experts: people who have been in the field and done/analyzed the studies. Journalists who have been there and evaluate professionally. Historians who can show us meta information. Experience should create some degree of humility -- if it doesn't, it's a red flag. That's my kind of activism, and I trust that you would be okay with that too.
Several books have been written about alternatives. Many discussions, seminars and roundtables conducted. There are viable alternatives.
"It was about the same reaction I got from law school classmates who were enthusiastic about immigration but shocked when they started working with domestic violence clients."
What's the shock, exactly?
Some of my classmates seemed shocked to find out that 90% of the domestic violence clients they had came from immigrant populations instead of the general population.
There is a huge difference between writing a book and being very confident it is a viable alternative and it actually being a good idea. Good ideas are tested by practice, not confidence. It is very easy to use a broad word to conceal variability or to promise that scrutiny will solve problems and very hard to actually do it. I routinely see upper-class twits advocate for "criminal justice reform" who suddenly forget that poor people are the first victims of the criminals who get released when it comes time to assess safety issues in educational disparities or domestic violence cases.
"Some of my classmates seemed shocked to find out that 90% of the domestic violence clients they had came from immigrant populations instead of the general population."
=== If they know anything about poverty and statistics it should not have come as a surprise and if they are at the point of "taking clients" while simultaneously being "classmates" they would have already covered this in their education.
"Good ideas are tested by practice, not confidence."
--- Practice tests would requires laws to be changed first so that has to be worked on.
"poor people are the first victims of the criminals who get released"
=== Who's advocating for violent offenders to be set completely free on the streets? I've never come across it and that's not what criminal justice reform is about.
My classmates were activists, not analysts. They reacted angrily when I brought up statistics since they assumed I was being racist. That is the kind of activism I encountered and likely most people encounter. As for being classmates, we were learning caselaw, not the modern distribution of cases. I saw their surprise via Facebook posts after graduation.
Look at the efforts to resolve housing costs by trying to implement price ceilings. We have had practical experience with that in history such as the well studied Paris price controls bifurcating the market into luxury and slum housing. I see lots of talk about how the government should impose price controls on housing but I trust past outcomes to be a better predictor than the promises of activists.
I see multiple people around me who are in favor of short prison terms for things like armed robbery (several of my classmates in law school) and even several people in favor of prison abolition.
We clearly have a very different perspective and Yes of course comment threads like this are never going to fully express the complexity of this or any other subject. But I would just say this: my comment should be read in the context of a despair (widely shared amongst conservatives) at the state of universities in the Western world (and espescially the Anglosphere). This is something I have written on quite extensively on my own Substack including this review of Heather Mac Donald's forensic investigation of the workings of DEI 'The Diversity Delusion': https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/how-diversity-narrows-the-mind. I'd be surprised if anyone could read it and not feel at least some skepticism about the provenance of much campus-type social justice protest.
„little of the content of this essay could be spoken to many of my friends, family or professional colleagues without serious discord.“
Very much echos the sentiment many of us feel and hence turn to likeminded individuals on line.
Observing the world is very disorienting with contradictions everywhere. In Canada we continuously are told to celebrate multiculturalism but I don’t think most understand the often profound differences between cultures. We are not supposed to really acknowledge them. So, what are we celebrating? Difference in food and dress only? We acknowledge religious differences only as far as the perfunctory roles they play such as the nice looking rituals, but not the large differences in the role for example of women and individuals in the world.
Watching the reactions to current pro Palestinian demonstrations is interesting..
I believe in the woke is the new religion theory. I read many years ago that most people just want enough religion to feel good about themselves, but not enough to experience discomfort.
As Obama said, it is easy to post something on social media, or even go to a protest, but the heavy lifting of for example volunteering at an organization and being in the trenches day to day to solve the issues of the day, is not something many are willing to do.
Yes, I think there's no doubting that 'Social Justice' has become the religion adopted by the West's generally well-off middle classes....and for the reasons you say. I posted a comment on this theme on another Substack yesterday: "The second half of the 20th century saw a retreat, across the Western world, from the Christian conception of the individual as an intrinsically flawed being – prone to sin and prone to error.......The significance of this cultural change is hard to overstate ....A culture that acknowledges that most people are ineluctably less than perfect will be less susceptible to the sanctification of particular sub-sets as ‘victims’. And those designated as such would be less likely to feel it as a reason for abrogating any personal responsibility for the condition of their lives." https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-will-to-kneel/
Thanks for the link, well written and I agree with your points
One personal observation is that I believe much can be explained by basic psychology as in the pyramid of needs by Maslow
Most progressives are middle class or upper middle class. They cannot really relate to the struggle of having your basic needs for food, housing and security met. Only in that context does BLM and defunding the police make sense. These people are literally searching for meaning, which is what social justice gives them
They are not interested in traditional concepts promoted by the left, they are not supporting unions or those on the bottom to raise their wages. Only in that context does supporting mass immigration make sense, they are oblivious to the impact of compressing wages or of pressures on affordable housing since they are not impacted.
That is why those seeking to have their needs on the bottom of the pyramid met, have turned to Trump. He promised them to have their security needs and jobs met.
One could argue a basic trick of politics is to stoke fear of some kind, which pushes the electorate to the bottom of the pyramid. Fear needs need to be met first and foremost
Interestingly, we currently have a housing crisis in Canada, much worse than in the US, caused by mass immigration of a rate unmatched in the West. Young people now support the Conservative Party by a large margin. The largest supporters of our virtue signalling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, are women over 50, most of whom don’t have the same financial pressures as the younger generation.
Very interesting observations about the psychology of political allegiance (which is a major theme in my own writing). Your comments about the youth vote in Canada came as a surprise; in England where I live, 13 years of a particularly useless (nominally) conservative government has virtually wiped conservatism off the political map in the case of the young.
In the end people will support the party that promises to fix what they are concerned about. If they are in power for a while and fail to do so, people will turn to other parties, as they should. Hence the difference in support for conservatives in Canada vs UK.. In Canada, there are literally not enough places to rent due to huge immigration and everyone moving to desired areas of the country, which in Canada means where it is not freezing cold. I read about 4 immigrants sharing a 600 sq ft apartment. People are literally advertising to share half a queen size mattress in a 1 bedroom apt, or a mattress on the floor. People are outbidding each other to rent an apartment. So, bottom of the pyramid..
Well said!🇨🇦
❤️Haidt❤️,:"Greg and Rikki explain the long history of efforts to silence people by threatening them with social death..."
Resilience against "social death..." may be "Death of the ego" ..."Death of the ego" is defined by CBT inventor, popular author and podcaster, Scientist Dr Burns' chapter 20 of his book "Feeling Good Together?"
Which comes first: "The 3 Great Untruths" ...aka "First Do No Harm: Stop the Lying"...
...or "Grow a Pair"... aka Exposure Therapy... aka "Don't Sweat It" is a lie: Exercise is required, Facing your fear is required?
I was born under Communism. Examples of social death were being made into an object of danger for one's family and acquaintances by secret police harassment, loss of one's job, or being formally punished in a labor project(or killed). I went to a school where all three cleaning ladies had masters degrees in engineering because they couldn't get a decent job under the Communists.
It was common for wives to be pressured to divorce dissident husbands, for children to be called upon to denounce their parents, and for neighbors to be called upon to monitor the activities of dissidents. Life was harsh for those marked for social death.
Social death is not the same as social humiliation, it is the inability to rely on the little help from others (material or emotional) that makes life bearable.
Let's Collaborate?
How do you propose to do that?
❤️ Haidt ❤️:"They show how today’s version of cancel culture... spread out ... to many other fields including ...psychotherapy..."
https://feelinggood.com/therapist-error-6-joining-a-school-of-psychotherapy/
"You might wonder what in the world schools of psychotherapy have in common with cults like Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple in Guyana"
..
or...
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/in-therapy/200901/seven-questions-david-d-burns
"... one of the most common causes of suicide--the therapist..."
Dr Haidt:"...cognitive distortions that Greg had learned how to correct in himself when he was trained in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for depression."
CBT is a written debate and no therapist will tell you:
To measure before and after.
2.
The best predictor of success is "Willingness" ...aka "clients that crank up the intensity of the debate have the quickest recovery"
3.
Up to 60% of anxious people are cured by placebo, up to 50% of depressed people are cured by placebo
4.
An innocuous placebo can mutate into an insidious placebo... Followers of the Prince of Peace consistently voted for War... and vice versa: Moms replace baby's filthy thumb with a sterile pacifier.
Subscribe for details 😁
How to Grieve and choice of Placebo are "Wild Cards"... they can be anything... for example, a grieving Mother often wants suicide.
I worked at Oregon State University until earlier this year when I was fired for Vax mandate. I do not miss the quarterly training on the 'values' of the university. These were thinly veiled propaganda videos targeting a woke value. I evaluated the applications of student appealing their rejection from a university program. In my two years on this committee I never read a student appeal to their virtue or ability. Instead they'd cite their membership in an approved marginalized group. The groupthink was tangible. Modern academics have a preternatural ability to quickly meet at right-think consensus. It is unnerving to one trained in independent thought!
It seems that a lot of people in tech who have been vocally against cancel culture over the last few years became extremely eager this past week to cancel anyone who didn't share their opinion towards the Israel/Palestine conflict. Seeing those reactions -- many of which were cast against people on the same side as them over minor nuances in what was said -- I can understand why leaders have been hesitant to make such statements.
I see a big difference between the cancelling based on the astroturfed pseudo-moralities of the day, vs. tip-toeing about/tacitly approving the most barbaric mass slaughter of innocent Jews since the Holocaust. Those people have no moral absolutes and have surrendered their humanity, and deserve to be banished from western civilization.
Yup. Moral clarity is swiftly being lost. Many of the anti-woke and anti-cancel culture people, whose work I have long followed and appreciated, are now engaging in the exact same tactics that they up until recently denounced. Name, shame, dox, defund, destroy, censor, silence, all because certain opinions are out-of-bounds, even if they veer slightly from what is acceptable.
Its not doxing if you sign your name on a public statement.
Yes it is if you publish their personal home address and phone number.
Nobody published their personal info.
University should commit to neutrality but you want them to comment now? If you want them to commit to neutrality, it has to start somewhere. And it makes no sense to pressure colleges to choose a side or make a statement about every event all around the world and no one seems to be pressuring them about a lot of bad events like the Azerbaijan one. It seems to me that the "Canceling of the American Mind" is exactly why there was backlash and pressure for Universities to pick a side and it's no different from other forms of coerced speech and cancel culture with donors pulling out because no statement were made or the statement were not good enough or CEO demanding students be expelled and blacklisted. This seems even severe than most cases of Cancel Culture.
Harvard released statements and speech condemning it and still people didn't think it was enough. And literally called for leaders to step down, student be punished and blacklisted. This seems exactly the same as cancel culture using threat of social ostracization and career prospects (and donations in Harvard's case) to coerce speech. And worst of all, this call is coming from famously anti cancel culture and pro free speech crowd.
Asking them to condemn every bad thing that happens all around the world makes no sense and them not releasing statements shouldn't signal their support or opposition of that event or any of the involved party. This seems like a case of guilty until proven innocent. And punishing them for a group of their students espousing views you hate and find abhorrent makes no sense either, they aren't charged with controlling the students moral views and opinions.
While it is not the job of the university’s admin to control thoughts, views, and opinions, it is there job to speak out against stunted speech rights and to foster good behavior and open discussion on campus.
What is the "stunted speech rights" and the instance of not fostering open discussion in this case. As far as I understand, the University did nothing to stop any student from saying whatever they wanted but people are angry about what some of the students say and want them to punish or expel the students which is definitely against free speech and open discussion. What do you think the unis did wrong in this case?
I was not only talking about last weeks events, I was making a broad generalization about cancel culture. Also, there is an incredible amount of self-censorship that runs rampant in our culture, particularly in academia.
Exactly, and this rampant self Censorship is exactly why I think this method of trying to force statements out of University admins and punishing students for saying something you hate or think is bad is actually bad. And it seems to be especially weird since it's coming from groups of people that have been famously pro free speech, anti cancel culture and fixing self Censorship in Colleges.
I think that the point of this article, aside from pointing out cancel culture, is to state the lack of consistency of these universities’ statements. Jonathan Haidt reported advocating for universities to be either politically neutral, or to be consistent when it comes to making statements about contemporary events. But that is what I understood from this article.
Their silence already speaks volumes about their values.
I couldn’t agree more. I have been a student for the past 6 years now and almost every time something major happened they have felt it necessary to “make a statement.” I genuinely dislike these letters. The admins seem to think that doing right by someone while doing wrong by the other group is okay. Let the students debate, the admins job is to foster and encourage free speech and free expression of thought in a safe environment and maintain civility in these times.
Unfortunately, I think the OPs point is that in todays culture, students’ ideas of “safety” are actually incompatible with civility. They think that some populations need protection from ideas, which they are certain the words and ideas are causing actual harm and must be censored to stop the harm. In this mindset, there is no such thing as civil debate anymore.
Agreed. There's a big double standard and many inconsistencies at play here. Israel should not be immune from criticism in the same way that Ukraine should not be immune from criticism, and many people seem to be on the opposite sides of those issues. Kind of reminds me of the way the American Civil Liberties Union used to support free speech but now does not. People need to be very careful how they tread here. Nobody should be sanctioned for unpopular speech, and anybody who thinks there is only one unequivocally right side to this issue has their head jammed really far up their ass.
“ In general I think universities should embrace the “Chicago Principles” and commit to institutional neutrality. See Jeff Flier’s recent application of these principles to the current situation. But if university leaders made so many pronouncements on “controversial” issues before October 7, then they should have made a strong one on October 8.”
That's my point. If you want them to commit to neutrality, they have to start somewhere, if you use the logic that because they had been commenting on controversial topics to say they must comment on this, that logic can basically be used to justify them never bein neutral now or in future. There's no better time and situation to wake them up to why they have to remain neutral than something as controversial as this but most people encouraging them to be neutral before this event seem to have joined the, you must comment, this comment is not good or strong enough, this comment is bad stance.
You shouldn't call them not to be neutral at one time, then call for them to be neutral at other times. Ask them not to punish dissenting speech one time and ask them to punish it at other times.
I took it to be more that if they’re not going to remain neutral, then they need to be consistent. I think his first choice would be for them to remain neutral on all issues.
And I think he needs to keep pushing for neutrality even now. His choice that they maintain neutrality will of course require them to break consistency of picking a side (often on select issues, there are many more issues around the world, they just ignore anyways)
So many are ignored. It is like people are operating off of a script and have their pre-approved issues that they speak out about. Personally, I’ve never understood why more people don’t speak up for all the elderly people in this country who go to bed hungry or have no heating or air conditioning and are lonely. Shouldn’t taking care of our elders be a top priority?
At an evening of sketches, long ago at university (1965 Cambridge) I recall an undergrad (to become a famous comedian) standing up at a stage podium during a 'smoker' to deliver, in cod-German accent, a speech about what "is now being done about people who'd served in the Nazi regime"; how the courts were working under new "focused legislation" to track down "these people" who are "everywhere"; how kindergartens, schools, colleges and universities were at last refining their recruitment and personnel policies to assist the state in recognising the "traits", often well-hidden, of "so-called" ex-Nazis; how businesses and local authorities and the media were winkling out "the guilty" at every level, working "fearlessly with discipline and efficient intelligence", to identify "the foulness in our midst...these people who infect our new Germany" with their "diseased sub-human thoughts". As the sketch continued the actor's initially sober voice grew heated. His words came faster, adjectives amplified and given deeper emphasis with rigid hand and then arm gestures. The sympathetic and virtuous figure who'd begun the speech had slowly transformed, growing grimmer, glistening, reddening, and in a grand finale, showing a face contorted into a mask of enthusiastic - almost joyful - rage; flecks of spittle reaching the front row of the audience; even a little foam at the mouth - near apoplexy, rage and hate personified "there will at last be a final solution to this problem!". The silence before the applause was deafening.
for an example of what I consider exactly the right approach to the complexity of Israel/Gaza, see the statement from the Stanford Administration:
https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/10/11/update-stanford-community/
I agree with their approach and reasoning as sound in principle, but they picked exactly the wrong moment to announce this as their course. It smells too much like cowardice, given the context for it.
why cowardice? Isn't the moment when students are expressing controversial opinions the time to point out the policy? I particularly like their statement about the already existing time/place/manner restrictions on various protests signs, so that no group can feel it is persecuted if the signs are taken down
I think these rules have already been in place for quite some time. These rules were being mentioned so students understood them and to offer reasoning behind the removal of signs and banners outside of designated spaces. I could be wrong, but that is how I reads it.
I don't understand. Isn't calling upon Harvard as an institution to condemn one-side in a controversy (those who blame Israel) a clear violation of the Chicago Principles? Aren't such denunciations precisely what constitutes Cancel Culture?
I personally detest both anti-Semitism and terrorism. Isn't it my responsibility to debate, rather than silence, those who disagree with me?
Isn’t it progress for university presidents to recognize that weighing in on social issues is not their place? Neutrality should be the norm if we are trying to restore diversity of opinion and break away from authority figures declaring what is the “acceptable” view.
It’s fine to disagree with Israel/Hamas being the issue where they all of a sudden flip and embrace nuance, but either way it seems like a win against the soft censorship that has been prevalent.
It would be if they had consistently been neutral. But waiting until this tragedy seems suspicious, considering many of the things that some of these schools have been far from neutral about.
I understand that for many that is frustrating, but calling for authority to define the acceptable bounds of speech just because it is now speech you agree with defies the principle of the matter. College presidents shouldn’t set the terms of debate for ANY issue. This was vehemently agreed upon in forums like this up until a few days ago.
I actually feel that most people are more pointing out how quiet they have suddenly become, when in the past they were not. I don't think most people want them to say anything. Instead they are using this to point out that their silence is not really about being neutral but instead somewhere on the spectrum of "Waiting to see where the wind blows" to "They agree with what happened".
Ultimately, if you have spent years showing that you are in fact NOT going to be neutral and support people's rights to free speech, then when you suddenly are quiet or try to fly the neutral flag, folks are going to point out your BS.
100%. All I am saying is that regardless of the reasons for remaining silent in this instance, I think it’s still movement in the direction that we as free speech advocates should want. Even if it seems like a sudden flip in posture for administrators, this is what should become the norm if all speech is to be encouraged.
If I felt like this was actually a movement in the right direction, I would agree with you more. But I am a cynic, and their past behavior does not lead me to believe they will be silent when the next thing comes along.
Reading the first couple paragraphs of the Jeffrey Flier piece linked in your footnote (it's all that is available before the paywall) I can't help noting that he refers to the Hamas terrorists as "fighters from Gaza." At least he acknowledges that they "slaughtered" Israeli civilians. But why can he not just call them what they are? "Fighters" in the context of the barbarism they perpetrated is just too vanilla. Especially since terror was precisely their purpose.
It's a really good statement from Jeffrey Flier. Paste the URL into archive(dot)ph, and you can read the entire statement.
https://archive.ph/4rrV2
Thanks for the link. I agree, it is a thoughtful, useful statement. And thanks for the tip re: pasting the URL.
Honest to goodness, if we all just petitioned our school boards to require a few classes in informal logic for all public schools it would be a whole lot harder to do all this. Do you think even a dozen high school kids in America know what is wrong with an ad hominem or a tu quoque? Most college kids would think both are just dandy Critical Theory if they even knew what they were!
You are making an informed guess here about their response (or lack thereof) to the specific events in Israel and Gaza, and although there's a good chance you are right based on the broader landscape, this feels like a disappointingly speculative basis for making your own point.
Do university leaders make a practice of issuing public statements about tragic world events? Did they issue statements about the Russian invasion of Ukraine? About racially-motivated mass shootings? About natural disasters? I don't recall anything they might have said publicly, but I don't travel in academic circles. In short, compared to their response to other things, are they being silent about Israel/Gaza?
What I have been hearing and reading, mostly, are intelligent nuanced takes: The actions by Hamas were inexcusable. Intentionally killing civilians is abhorrent. However, this did not come out of nowhere, and the world has too long ignored the suffering of the Palestinians and excused atrocities committed by Israel. Not only excused, but supported, at least in effect. The second point does not erase the first. Both things are true.
I appreciate this comment. I feel like so many people are ignoring the history behind Israel and Palestine right now, which is dangerous at a time like this. Recognizing the Israeli government's war crimes does not equal letting Hamas off the hook for their terrorist attack & antisemitism. It's frustrating to see yet another issue split along party lines when the real concern here should be the human rights violations.
Everyone has their stories. We all have our fears and frustrations surrounding all of this going down. Everyone has a question something like, What can I do about it that won’t cost me too heavy of a loss? Do I really want to end up alienated from my children and grandchildren? Don’t I have bigger fish to fry? I decided the direct route, to gently and carefully and kindly ask some questions. Is it OK if we disagree on some things? Can you tell me how you came to believe what you do? Do you ever doubt what you’re believing? I also try to personalize things some, by sharing my own struggle with one thing or another. People who fall into unhealthy ideological mindsets and obsession with other people’s problems, are often troubled by deep and painful problems in their own lives. Try to find out how they’re doing personally, emotionally, practically. If they call you names, ignore them, and see what you can do to help. Love them the best you know how.
My university professor, whom I like and respect very much, did issue a statement, in which he used a world such as "brutal", "terrorist", or etc. (I forget what) to describe the attacks. He did not make any similar characterization of the Israeli killing of Gazan civilians. That is inappropriate. Israel always kills more Palestinians than vice versa, sometimes as in this case far more, every single calendar year. No need for university presidents to point that out, since that would entail taking a side. But what you seem to be calling for is similarly for them to take the other side. I admire everything you do, Jonathan, and especially the graciousness with. which you go about it, and on this you are off-base.
Why do we expect university presidents to offer a comment on the Hamas attack? Maybe many of them didn't comment because they lack expertise on and experience in the region. Maybe they think comment is best left to diplomats, political leaders, and people on the ground who have an active stake in the issue. University presidents didn't speak up much about the brutal US supported regimes in Central America in the 80s or about Iran-Contra, which was a blatant attack Constitutional rule. Nor did they say much about the Iraq War, an unmitigated violation of international law and the "rules-based" order, with a body count significantly higher than the Israel/Palestine war. Are they morally obligated to speak out on this? Or any particular atrocities? Which ones? Is there a threshold civilian fatality rate? If so, the Israelis crossed it a long time ago. Or is it because Hamas slaughtered so many people in a couple of days instead of spreading it over weeks or months?
I bought the book (The Canceling of the American Mind) immediately after reading this After Babel article. Hard to put down, I neglected things that I needed to do to read it.
https://www.amazon.com/review/R2JRALD03V25M2/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv