Thank you for keeping the liberty of free speech seperate from the acts of civil disobedience. Each has it's place and it's consequences. There is both a time to speak up and a time to listen, a time to stand up and a time to walk away. Allowing for disagreeable (non-violent) views to be expressed in a civil society and especially in an academic forum is critical if we are to understand each other and the complex issues we face. Grace and Peace to you.
Thoughtful post. One of the most disappointing aspects of this debacle on campus is the lack of "more speech" to combat the hate speech. A full-throated rebuttal of these hateful, ignorant brats on campus (students and professors, as well as outside agitators) would assure the rest of the community that there is capable leadership.
How about university administrations simply saying antisemitism on campus is unacceptable, even under the convenient guise of anti-Zionism, and they stand with Jewish students under siege? Their failure to do so, while promulgating land acknowledgments and pronouns, is why you get reasonable people cheering on Governor Abbott's overreach.
Agreed. A serious question: What's the best way to -- in the long term -- defend free speech. Is it to simply "always defend free speech" -- what FIRE attempts to do? Or, from a game theory point of view, should we model free speech as a "Prisoner's Dilemma", where the best strategy is Tit-For-Tat. To defend free speech, but only when "the other side" defends it as well?
Given the current hypocrisy from academic leaders, I think some level of Tit-for-Tat is required. So, I don't know what to think of Gov. Abbott's approach. Does there need to be some push-back in order to get *both* sides to de-escalate?
One gray area I want cleared up is, simply, noise. There's some point of volume, persistence, and kind that turns "speech" into something stress- and pain- inducing to others. I'm trying hard to not call it violence, but maybe it's generalized harassment? I'm thinking of John McWhorter's description of constant drumming and chanting that he could hear in his classroom at Columbia.
I am a veteran college professor (forced to use a pseudonym by the Thought Police) who has gradually coming around to the viewpoint that US (and to a lesser extent European) academia has become not just a self-parody but actively harmful to society, and needs to be torn down wholesale and rebuilt from the ground up.
The rebuilt academia of my dreams would not only be restricted to at most the top 20% of the bell curve (top 10% would be still more to my liking), but the students would be too busy studying and working on lab assignments to engage in agitation. The empire-building administrative class (which has executed a hostile takeover on academia) would be entirely eliminated and replaced by a rota system of the faculty, with just some clerical support staff. Oh, and DEI and all its works should die in a fire.
I appreciate you're trying to show your even-handedness. But I'm afraid you are merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
“The rebuilt academia of my dreams would not only be restricted to at most the top 20% of the bell curve (top 10% would be still more to my liking), but the students would be too busy studying and working on lab assignments to engage in agitation”
What field of academia do you teach? Because it sounds like what you want is thoughtless worker drones…
I appreciate what you are doing, especially pointing out the fact that civil disobedience, which I would limit to breaking laws and not just being annoying, is different from 1st Amendment-protected speech. I was a war tax resister in the day, and I assumed that it was probable that I would end up being arrested, tried, and sent to prison. Planned for such an outcome. (Didn't happen, but IRS agents showed up at my apartment in Milwaukee when I was not home; I had warned my roommates, so they knew to be polite...and clueless. They told me the agents were very polite and appeared to be tired and not very enthusiastic about their job. They left a card and never came back.)
One issue that came up frequently in the civil rights and Vietnam Was discords of 1960s and 1970s were concerns regarding outside agitators. I witnessed first hand different groups with their own agendas bussing people to other people's demonstrations, and strangers showing up at meetings, taking notes and photos, never to be seen again.
How would you suggest students deal with non-students joining their protests? Too often causes attract people who are angry and hateful with no real attachment to the issue at hand. And at worst, their personal agenda is one of destruction for its own sake.
Thank you. I'm the mom of a UT Austin student and I was appalled to see the images coming out of campus yesterday. Most disgusting in its irony was a photo of a phalanx of state troopers in riot gear (no protestors anywhere nearby!) waiting to begin their march/assault on students next to a poster reading "What starts here changes the world. It starts with you and what you do each day. Thank you for making it your Texas. Thank you for making it our Texas." If you can't join 'em, beat 'em, I guess.
I appreciate your principled defense of civil liberties and agree with almost all you have to say here. I think you're off base on what happened at the University of Texas, however. Put aside Abbott's frivolous diktats against what he considers "hate speech." When these groups announced they were going to "take back" the university, they were following a playbook we've seen repeatedly since the Summer of Floyd: show up, erect tents, assert control of an area, and use it as a platform to harass others and interfere with the operations of the institution. The authorities were right to nip it in the bud with a show of force, particularly at finals time on a university. They don't have to close their eyes to this group's m.o. If the protestors want permission for a demonstration limited in time and scope at the university, I would be more sympathetic, but the playbook is for continuous disruption. It should be noted that if they want to express their political opinions, the spacious grounds of the State Capitol are 10 blocks from UT.
Good post. My only pushback is that given your #1, and zero expectation that the hypocrisy will disappear anytime soon, it's self-destructive and unrealistic - from a practical power/game theoretic perspective - for people to not wield the same tools against those canceling them 2, 3, 4+ years back. If this is a prisoner's dilemma, the cooperative outcome's not happening.
Can you clarify why shouting or emailing "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" at the general student population, and more specifically at Jewish/Israeli students, can't constitute harassment? Given the first part of the slogan specifically, how it's typically paired with pictures of Israel being erased, etc.
My understanding is that the language needs to be specific, as in "let's storm the Columbia Hillel and kill all the Jews there." It is permissible to say you are ok with genocide to achieve your political aims. In that case, there's no obvious immediate threat, even if the subtext suggests it.
Legal action should focus on efforts to block students' movement, disrupting classes, and trespassing. You're right about the cooperative outcome, but there's enough there that a few dozen (hundred?) legitimate arrests, expulsions, and firings would send a strong message.
Free speech without an educated citizenry leads to totalitarianism, because fascism appeals more to base tribal instincts. The phone social media culture has led to massive ignorance of history, philosophy, politics, economics and governance and has produced cretins. I'd like to think that previous student protests were composed of more informed students, because it happened before social media. I'd like to believe that when I was protesting apartheid in South Africa, I and my fellow students at the MIT shanty town were better informed than the students protesting Israel today, but I'm not sure it's true. What about the students protesting for Nazism (and against communism and the status quo) in the Weimar republic? What about the students protesting for the cultural revolution in pre-Maoist China?
"At the same Yale protest, protesters formed a human chain to block students’ movement." That's a ploy right out of the Reagan/Bush era when anti-abortion protesters used to block women from entering abortion clinics (which Clinton put a stop to).
The very real danger is that the far left, which is coming to resemble the far right more and more each day and has adopted violence as political expression, is going to join with them and *together* they will end democracy.
I'm not sure if you are aware that the "from the river to the sea chant" means "kill all Israelis". Many of the chanters may not know this either. As such, it is not protected by the first amendment, is it? Or maybe it is because it is not advocating for genociding americans but a foreign people?
The phrase was popularized among the Palestinian population in the 1960s as a call for liberation from living under Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian control.
Netanyahu has also used the phrase. To HIM, it certainly means something else.
Serious question: Would you also agree that "It's racist" is merely one possible interpretation of the phrase "All Lives Matter"? Is "Trans women are not women" a literal call for the death of trans people, or is that just one possible interpretation?
The current administration at many of these institutions acts as if these are the only possible interpretations. While I agree, it's just one possible interpretation, the de-facto rules at these institutions do not allow for that level of nuance. So, I'd argue that by their own rules, they shouldn't allow that speech.
If it just meant liberation from living under Israel, they wouldn't say from the Jordan River to the mediterranean, they would say Gaza and West Bank (even though Gaza has not been under Israeli control since 2005, but let's not get into that). If all that region (from the river to the sea) becomes a Palestinian state, the Israelis would either have to leave (most of them wouldn't) or they would have to be killed. So the only LOGICAL interpretation is "kill all the Israelis". Netanyahu might say "from the river to the sea, Israel will be free", but he doesn't because of PR. I'm sure he thinks it though in his fantasies, with the same genocidal interpretation as the original chant.
Please consider who really is implementing "from the river to the sea." Please consider a map of what previously was Palestine and now is Israel. Please consider a map of Israeli settlements (especially one that shows the progression over the years). Please consider what really is actually happening in Gaza right now. Who actually has been killing tens of thousands of civilian noncombatants and injuring tens of thousands more over almost six months? I'm profoundly sympathetic to all victims of vicious senseless violence. I cannot pretend not to see exactly that in what is happening in Gaza.
Non sequitur. The chant is genocidal, regardless of everything else you said. But maybe it's allowed by the first amendment since it's genocidal towards non-americans? I would make the same argument if Jews were chanting "from the river to the sea, Israel will be Palestinian-free". We're not debating the morality or legality of Israel's actions, we're debating the 1st amendment protection of this particular chant.
My point is, in part, that contending that the chant is genocidal is tantamount to a confession that the action is genocidal. In part, my point is that the same people making a huge deal out of a mere chant (to protest mass murder) pretend that the mass murder, itself, is no big deal.
What? No. Which action is genocidal and how is it related to the chant? Israeli actions may or may not be genocidal, but that is irrelevant to whether the chant is genocidal or not.
Actually it looks like it's protected by the first amendment, even if it is genocidal, as long as the genocide is outside the legal purview of the US. So carry on with asking that all Israelis be killed, there is nothing in the US law to forbid it.
As you said, "many of the chanters may not know this either." It isn't an *obvious* call for genocide. Without context, it could mean, as some thought, a call for a free, secular country with equal rights for all.
Right, but when the context is pointed out to them, they double down on continuing to chant it (I only have a few data points, granted). I wonder if they would do the same if the call to genocide was about other people that get more points in their oppression olympics, like blacks, muslims, latinos, native peoples, etc.
The data points I have, among my daughter's classmates, are the reverse. They were dumb kids, saw some stuff on Tiktok, but dropped the slogan instantly upon receiving an explanation (that didn't start with the assumption they were vicious antisemites).
Also, I am aware that "antisemitism" is often a thought and speech stopper word, and I'm not doing that here. I am open to most of these students being ignorant, not antisemitic, but I wonder about the ones that keep chanting it. I don't think they're antisemitic either, just that they have an oppression hierarchy and the jews are at the bottom (despite historical evidence) so it's OK to pick on them.
What is missing from FIRE's recommendation is the need for "counter-speech" especially at educational institutions. One side of a controversial subject should never have an opportunity to monopolize free speech. Presentation of controversial subjects DEMANDS the presence of counter-speech. Justice Brandies famously said in Whitney v California:
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
99% of "free speech" in America occurs in forums where the is no opportunity for the counter-speech that can expose falsehoods and fallacies and avert evil by the process of education
National Constitution Center is charged with the mission of educating Americans about the Constitution on a non-partisan basis. Each program about a current case and most programs always includes a real expert from both the liberal and conservative (Federalist Society) perspective. Most programs begin with the host and audience reciting the above non-partisan mission statement.
If colleges had properly educated their students about history of Palestine from the earliest Zionist settlers - who arrived when colonialism was the norm - to the partition of a Palestine that was 2/3rd Arab and 1/3 Jew - to the wars and attempts to resolve the problem, many fewer would be accusing Israel of genocide. Frankly, anyone hoping for a two-state solution should be hoping that the people of Gaza are liberated from Hamas, because there will be no chance of a two-state solution that includes Hamas.
Well...FIRE's X feed still seems to be jumping to the conclusion that implementing consequences can't be done via force. Sorry, but policing is not, as the old Robin Williams joke went, "Stop! Or I'll say Stop again!" Yes, it does appear that the UT situation crossed some lines. But in general, when police are clearing out encampments (see Boston for example), when people resist/block/push, the cops aren't just going keep asking nicely.
Thank you for keeping the liberty of free speech seperate from the acts of civil disobedience. Each has it's place and it's consequences. There is both a time to speak up and a time to listen, a time to stand up and a time to walk away. Allowing for disagreeable (non-violent) views to be expressed in a civil society and especially in an academic forum is critical if we are to understand each other and the complex issues we face. Grace and Peace to you.
Thoughtful post. One of the most disappointing aspects of this debacle on campus is the lack of "more speech" to combat the hate speech. A full-throated rebuttal of these hateful, ignorant brats on campus (students and professors, as well as outside agitators) would assure the rest of the community that there is capable leadership.
How about university administrations simply saying antisemitism on campus is unacceptable, even under the convenient guise of anti-Zionism, and they stand with Jewish students under siege? Their failure to do so, while promulgating land acknowledgments and pronouns, is why you get reasonable people cheering on Governor Abbott's overreach.
Agreed. A serious question: What's the best way to -- in the long term -- defend free speech. Is it to simply "always defend free speech" -- what FIRE attempts to do? Or, from a game theory point of view, should we model free speech as a "Prisoner's Dilemma", where the best strategy is Tit-For-Tat. To defend free speech, but only when "the other side" defends it as well?
Given the current hypocrisy from academic leaders, I think some level of Tit-for-Tat is required. So, I don't know what to think of Gov. Abbott's approach. Does there need to be some push-back in order to get *both* sides to de-escalate?
One gray area I want cleared up is, simply, noise. There's some point of volume, persistence, and kind that turns "speech" into something stress- and pain- inducing to others. I'm trying hard to not call it violence, but maybe it's generalized harassment? I'm thinking of John McWhorter's description of constant drumming and chanting that he could hear in his classroom at Columbia.
I am a veteran college professor (forced to use a pseudonym by the Thought Police) who has gradually coming around to the viewpoint that US (and to a lesser extent European) academia has become not just a self-parody but actively harmful to society, and needs to be torn down wholesale and rebuilt from the ground up.
The rebuilt academia of my dreams would not only be restricted to at most the top 20% of the bell curve (top 10% would be still more to my liking), but the students would be too busy studying and working on lab assignments to engage in agitation. The empire-building administrative class (which has executed a hostile takeover on academia) would be entirely eliminated and replaced by a rota system of the faculty, with just some clerical support staff. Oh, and DEI and all its works should die in a fire.
I appreciate you're trying to show your even-handedness. But I'm afraid you are merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
“The rebuilt academia of my dreams would not only be restricted to at most the top 20% of the bell curve (top 10% would be still more to my liking), but the students would be too busy studying and working on lab assignments to engage in agitation”
What field of academia do you teach? Because it sounds like what you want is thoughtless worker drones…
I appreciate what you are doing, especially pointing out the fact that civil disobedience, which I would limit to breaking laws and not just being annoying, is different from 1st Amendment-protected speech. I was a war tax resister in the day, and I assumed that it was probable that I would end up being arrested, tried, and sent to prison. Planned for such an outcome. (Didn't happen, but IRS agents showed up at my apartment in Milwaukee when I was not home; I had warned my roommates, so they knew to be polite...and clueless. They told me the agents were very polite and appeared to be tired and not very enthusiastic about their job. They left a card and never came back.)
One issue that came up frequently in the civil rights and Vietnam Was discords of 1960s and 1970s were concerns regarding outside agitators. I witnessed first hand different groups with their own agendas bussing people to other people's demonstrations, and strangers showing up at meetings, taking notes and photos, never to be seen again.
How would you suggest students deal with non-students joining their protests? Too often causes attract people who are angry and hateful with no real attachment to the issue at hand. And at worst, their personal agenda is one of destruction for its own sake.
FIRE is pretty much the only entity behaving with consistent decency through this era. I only wish they had a Canadian branch!
Thank you. I'm the mom of a UT Austin student and I was appalled to see the images coming out of campus yesterday. Most disgusting in its irony was a photo of a phalanx of state troopers in riot gear (no protestors anywhere nearby!) waiting to begin their march/assault on students next to a poster reading "What starts here changes the world. It starts with you and what you do each day. Thank you for making it your Texas. Thank you for making it our Texas." If you can't join 'em, beat 'em, I guess.
Thank you for your work!
I appreciate your principled defense of civil liberties and agree with almost all you have to say here. I think you're off base on what happened at the University of Texas, however. Put aside Abbott's frivolous diktats against what he considers "hate speech." When these groups announced they were going to "take back" the university, they were following a playbook we've seen repeatedly since the Summer of Floyd: show up, erect tents, assert control of an area, and use it as a platform to harass others and interfere with the operations of the institution. The authorities were right to nip it in the bud with a show of force, particularly at finals time on a university. They don't have to close their eyes to this group's m.o. If the protestors want permission for a demonstration limited in time and scope at the university, I would be more sympathetic, but the playbook is for continuous disruption. It should be noted that if they want to express their political opinions, the spacious grounds of the State Capitol are 10 blocks from UT.
Good post. My only pushback is that given your #1, and zero expectation that the hypocrisy will disappear anytime soon, it's self-destructive and unrealistic - from a practical power/game theoretic perspective - for people to not wield the same tools against those canceling them 2, 3, 4+ years back. If this is a prisoner's dilemma, the cooperative outcome's not happening.
Can you clarify why shouting or emailing "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" at the general student population, and more specifically at Jewish/Israeli students, can't constitute harassment? Given the first part of the slogan specifically, how it's typically paired with pictures of Israel being erased, etc.
I want to understand where the line is.
You might find this helpful:
https://www.thefire.org/news/why-most-calls-genocide-are-protected-speech
My understanding is that the language needs to be specific, as in "let's storm the Columbia Hillel and kill all the Jews there." It is permissible to say you are ok with genocide to achieve your political aims. In that case, there's no obvious immediate threat, even if the subtext suggests it.
Legal action should focus on efforts to block students' movement, disrupting classes, and trespassing. You're right about the cooperative outcome, but there's enough there that a few dozen (hundred?) legitimate arrests, expulsions, and firings would send a strong message.
Free speech without an educated citizenry leads to totalitarianism, because fascism appeals more to base tribal instincts. The phone social media culture has led to massive ignorance of history, philosophy, politics, economics and governance and has produced cretins. I'd like to think that previous student protests were composed of more informed students, because it happened before social media. I'd like to believe that when I was protesting apartheid in South Africa, I and my fellow students at the MIT shanty town were better informed than the students protesting Israel today, but I'm not sure it's true. What about the students protesting for Nazism (and against communism and the status quo) in the Weimar republic? What about the students protesting for the cultural revolution in pre-Maoist China?
"5. A lot of what we are seeing on campus right now, including tent cities, is civil disobedience."
Looks like uncivil disobedience to me.
"At the same Yale protest, protesters formed a human chain to block students’ movement." That's a ploy right out of the Reagan/Bush era when anti-abortion protesters used to block women from entering abortion clinics (which Clinton put a stop to).
The very real danger is that the far left, which is coming to resemble the far right more and more each day and has adopted violence as political expression, is going to join with them and *together* they will end democracy.
I'm not sure if you are aware that the "from the river to the sea chant" means "kill all Israelis". Many of the chanters may not know this either. As such, it is not protected by the first amendment, is it? Or maybe it is because it is not advocating for genociding americans but a foreign people?
That's an INTERPRETATION of the phrase.
The phrase was popularized among the Palestinian population in the 1960s as a call for liberation from living under Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian control.
Netanyahu has also used the phrase. To HIM, it certainly means something else.
Serious question: Would you also agree that "It's racist" is merely one possible interpretation of the phrase "All Lives Matter"? Is "Trans women are not women" a literal call for the death of trans people, or is that just one possible interpretation?
The current administration at many of these institutions acts as if these are the only possible interpretations. While I agree, it's just one possible interpretation, the de-facto rules at these institutions do not allow for that level of nuance. So, I'd argue that by their own rules, they shouldn't allow that speech.
If it just meant liberation from living under Israel, they wouldn't say from the Jordan River to the mediterranean, they would say Gaza and West Bank (even though Gaza has not been under Israeli control since 2005, but let's not get into that). If all that region (from the river to the sea) becomes a Palestinian state, the Israelis would either have to leave (most of them wouldn't) or they would have to be killed. So the only LOGICAL interpretation is "kill all the Israelis". Netanyahu might say "from the river to the sea, Israel will be free", but he doesn't because of PR. I'm sure he thinks it though in his fantasies, with the same genocidal interpretation as the original chant.
Please consider who really is implementing "from the river to the sea." Please consider a map of what previously was Palestine and now is Israel. Please consider a map of Israeli settlements (especially one that shows the progression over the years). Please consider what really is actually happening in Gaza right now. Who actually has been killing tens of thousands of civilian noncombatants and injuring tens of thousands more over almost six months? I'm profoundly sympathetic to all victims of vicious senseless violence. I cannot pretend not to see exactly that in what is happening in Gaza.
Non sequitur. The chant is genocidal, regardless of everything else you said. But maybe it's allowed by the first amendment since it's genocidal towards non-americans? I would make the same argument if Jews were chanting "from the river to the sea, Israel will be Palestinian-free". We're not debating the morality or legality of Israel's actions, we're debating the 1st amendment protection of this particular chant.
My point is, in part, that contending that the chant is genocidal is tantamount to a confession that the action is genocidal. In part, my point is that the same people making a huge deal out of a mere chant (to protest mass murder) pretend that the mass murder, itself, is no big deal.
What? No. Which action is genocidal and how is it related to the chant? Israeli actions may or may not be genocidal, but that is irrelevant to whether the chant is genocidal or not.
Actually it looks like it's protected by the first amendment, even if it is genocidal, as long as the genocide is outside the legal purview of the US. So carry on with asking that all Israelis be killed, there is nothing in the US law to forbid it.
As you said, "many of the chanters may not know this either." It isn't an *obvious* call for genocide. Without context, it could mean, as some thought, a call for a free, secular country with equal rights for all.
Right, but when the context is pointed out to them, they double down on continuing to chant it (I only have a few data points, granted). I wonder if they would do the same if the call to genocide was about other people that get more points in their oppression olympics, like blacks, muslims, latinos, native peoples, etc.
The data points I have, among my daughter's classmates, are the reverse. They were dumb kids, saw some stuff on Tiktok, but dropped the slogan instantly upon receiving an explanation (that didn't start with the assumption they were vicious antisemites).
Also, I am aware that "antisemitism" is often a thought and speech stopper word, and I'm not doing that here. I am open to most of these students being ignorant, not antisemitic, but I wonder about the ones that keep chanting it. I don't think they're antisemitic either, just that they have an oppression hierarchy and the jews are at the bottom (despite historical evidence) so it's OK to pick on them.
OK, that's encouraging! Were they jewish?
What is missing from FIRE's recommendation is the need for "counter-speech" especially at educational institutions. One side of a controversial subject should never have an opportunity to monopolize free speech. Presentation of controversial subjects DEMANDS the presence of counter-speech. Justice Brandies famously said in Whitney v California:
"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence."
99% of "free speech" in America occurs in forums where the is no opportunity for the counter-speech that can expose falsehoods and fallacies and avert evil by the process of education
National Constitution Center is charged with the mission of educating Americans about the Constitution on a non-partisan basis. Each program about a current case and most programs always includes a real expert from both the liberal and conservative (Federalist Society) perspective. Most programs begin with the host and audience reciting the above non-partisan mission statement.
If colleges had properly educated their students about history of Palestine from the earliest Zionist settlers - who arrived when colonialism was the norm - to the partition of a Palestine that was 2/3rd Arab and 1/3 Jew - to the wars and attempts to resolve the problem, many fewer would be accusing Israel of genocide. Frankly, anyone hoping for a two-state solution should be hoping that the people of Gaza are liberated from Hamas, because there will be no chance of a two-state solution that includes Hamas.
Well...FIRE's X feed still seems to be jumping to the conclusion that implementing consequences can't be done via force. Sorry, but policing is not, as the old Robin Williams joke went, "Stop! Or I'll say Stop again!" Yes, it does appear that the UT situation crossed some lines. But in general, when police are clearing out encampments (see Boston for example), when people resist/block/push, the cops aren't just going keep asking nicely.