The University of Chicago doesn’t like to publicize protests about the Middle East war, as they make the school look bad. And the University is even more secretive about punishing protestors—like these—who violate the University “Protest and Demonstration Policy” by shouting down speakers (also see the President’s statement here). I have been unable to find out, in several cases, whether local punishments have been applied to disruptive students. This is kept a secret for reasons best known to the University.
These violations of University policy, involving disruptions of other people’s speech, are not protected by the University’s free expression policy, which hews very close to the First Amendment of the Constitution. But despite their illegality, they continue. And they invariably involve pro-Palestinian demonstrators, some of whom have vowed not to respect the protest and demonstration policy.
So far the University has either failed to punish violators, or has given them only a slap on the wrist, like writing an essay on “my demonstration experience.” It’s not rocket science to figure out that if demonstrators violate University regulations but aren’t punished seriously, and there’s no record of a violation on their transcript, then the illegal protests will continue. A regulation that’s not enforced is a regulation without teeth.
Below is are two short videos from Instagram showing a protest at the Medical School that occurred last month. The speaker (or “attempted speaker”) is Jesse Menachem Ehrenfeld, the new President of the prestigious American Medical Association (AMA). He is accomplished, Jewish, and gay.
The last two traits caused the protest that occurred when he was invited to speak to his alma mater, for he got his MD here. Despite his being a liberal and an honored physician, and despite his attempt to present a “Grand Rounds” talk on LGBTQ+ equity in medicine to the the Alpha Omega Alpha medical honor society, the students still harassed him.
You can see the “issues” by listening to the angry and loud protests below (note that the cowardly speakers donned masks to hide their identities). Ehrenfeld is accused of Israeli “pinkwashing” (the crazy claim that Israel only pretends to support LGBTQ+ rights to distract people from the country’s supposed crimes); accused of the AMA not having formally called for a ceasefire in Israel; and accused of being complicit in the deaths of Palestinian civilians because of Israel’s supposed war crimes.
As the Instagram post says below, “Security escorted protestors out of the lecture hall.” That’s a step in the right direction, since the University has failed to do even that during other protests. But are these protestors medical or other students at the University? If so, then they must be punished. If they’re not from the University community, then they’re likely guilty of trespassing and can be banned from campus. Whatever the University does about this, it must involve more than simply removing disruptive protestors from the venue, as that’s not really a deterrent, much less a punishment.
These protests invariably involve only pro-Palestinian students, simply because the pro-Israeli ones aren’t into this kind of disruption. And this has led pro-Palestinian demonstrators to ask why they’re being singled out by the University. But that’s a dumb question with an easy answer: “Because they’re the only group that holds these types of angry and disruptive protests with respect to the war.”
I wonder whether after Israel is victorious, as I think it will be, these protests will continue. I think they will, because the anger will only be intensified.
Here’s another post sponsored by the Students for Justice in Palestine, a registered student organization. Some of the video overlaps with that above, but they also have the temerity to tell Ehrenfeld what his ethical responsibility is:
On 2/20, Healthcare workers and medical students led disruptions and a banner drop during American Medical Association President Jesse Ehrenfeld’s talk at UChicago Medicine. AMA stop the hypocrisy, you have an ethical obligation to stand against genocide. You have an ethical obligation to stand with life, in solidarity with Palestine. Ehrenfeld, history is watching! Med Students say: Ceasefire Now!
Repost from @hcw4palichi
The students apparently disagree with the restriction that there is a time and place for free expression—times and places where it doesn’t disrupt University activity. This video also shows security asking students to leave, but they persist in a “silent protest,” holding up a banner in the classroom. I am not sure if that’s a violation of University regulations, but it should be, because it is disruptive, particularly when there are many signs held by many students. I would say, “no signs in the lecture hall.”
Your target’s reaction is your real action
Guiding principle of Beautiful Trouble and Rules for Radicals.
“LGBTQ+” :
David M. Halperin
Saint Foucault – Towards a Gay Hagiography
Oxford U. Press, 1995:
“Queer identity need not be grounded in any positive truth or in any stable reality. As the very word implies, ‘queer’ does not name some natural kind or refer to some determinate object; it acquires its meaning from its oppositional relation to the norm. Queer is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant” (p. 62).
“Gay identities”, Halperin asserts, are simply a “homosexual object-choice” – a stable, permanent reality.
So what is a “Q” doing on “LGBTQ+”? Hmmm… Dialectic, anyone?
It seems possible if not probable that LGB may break off from TQ+. Once the differences outstrip the commonalities, the string of letters are an empty symbol. At some point, almost anyone at all could locate part of themselves in the alphabet at which point it is meaningless.
“And so the dialectic progresses.”
-Delgado and Stefancic
Critical Race Theory – An Introduction
2017
As above, so below
-Hermes Trismegistus, Corpus Hermeticum / The Emerald Tablet – the origin of Hermetic alchemy
Alivisatos continues to be an empty suit. How about the board punishes him with a salary cut until violators of university policy are publicly (their names can be redacted but the cost to them for their behaviors must be made public in the Maroon). Unless of course he is carrying out the board’s wishes, as was Claudine Gay at Harvard; in which case UChicago has a much bigger and more fundamental problem, I’m afraid. Thanks for the sad update, Jerry.
To cancel Grand Rounds is sacrilege. Just another event to support Douglas Murray’s “War on the West” thesis.
Possibly the best book I’ve read in the last 5 years. Before which was his Madness of Crowds. He is the closest we have to a modern day Hitch.
Murray is a tad to the right of me but truth is truth whichever side it comes from.
D.A.
NYC
David.
The “Strange Death of Europe” is also a good but worrying read. I read it some years ago.
Noooo. You’re kidding aren’t you? NOT Pro-Pal mobs disrupting, threatening, being hooligans? Surely not.
Damnit. As I wrote lately, re-posted here from last week:
https://democracychronicles.org/palestine-and-the-company-you-keep/
Let those on the RivertoSea side ponder just who is on their side.
Or am I wrong? Do we NOT judge people and their cause by the content of their coalition? Their fellow travelers.
D.A.
NYC
Thanks for keeping us up to date on your writing.
Disgusting. Where did they learn that the heckler’s veto is a legitimate form of protest? Perhaps the students or the leaders of the organizations they represent are simply too stupid to write a letter. In any case, this mode of political speech has taken hold and probably won’t go away any time soon.
I am so glad to be out of the professoriate. I was dimly aware—when I was teaching about Darwin, the age of the earth, and human evolution in the heart of the Bible Belt—that the only thing protecting me, up on the dais all alone, was the shared tradition of civil behavior. Today, thanks to masked zealots like these, every speech is a potential incident.
They say in their second Instagram that they have “called, emailed, protested. We even tried sending a packet of information right to their [AMA] desk. But they’ve turned their backs on us every time.” WE ARE BEING IGNORED! (The agony. The horror.)
Their beef is that they can’t convince anyone to agree with them. Rather than being too stupid to write a letter, they just can’t recognize when a cause has no traction with people and can’t take that as a hint to shut up. The temptation to intimidation and violence when legal means of conversion fail flickers just below the surface with these people because it does work sometimes, but only for people who demonstrate real capacity for violence. (These med students don’t appear up to it.) We gave you the chance to listen to reason and you didn’t listen. Now the gloves come off.
“Gender Affirming Care”, which all the American medical associations endorse, is the gay/lesbian conversion therapy from hell.
When children many gay men are “sissy boys” and lesbians are “tomboys”. It is precisely those characteristics that are targeted and tagged as being “trans”, with the attendant gross medical interventions that usually follow.
The AMA, like other American medical association, refuses to engage openly with the various devastating critiques coming from countries with national health care systems (such as UK, Sweden, Finland, Germany, and soon the Netherlands).
Here are a couple of helpful twitter threads that remind of the extraordinary activist capture of these American associations/institutions…
https://twitter.com/benryanwriter/status/1761370675778912620
https://twitter.com/LeorSapir/status/1763211438590411206
While watching that video I fantasized about a different heckler’s veto:
Disrupting Student:”…when you have not said a SINGLE THING about the ongoing health CRISIS in GAZA …”
Voice in the Crowd:”Shut up!”
2nd Voice in the Crowd:”Yes, for the love of God would you just shut the hell up already. We KNOW what you think…”
3rd voice:”Yeah, WE didn’t come here to hear YOU speak..”
Growing Unrest:”That’s right … this is a lecture, not a rally … sit DOWN the whole stupid lot of you … go away… not the place … who do you think you are … as if we haven’t heard you a thousand times …I paid a lot of money for an education…”
(Protesters slink off, stage left)
If only.
It is necessary to confront this behavior outside of this specific issue. People believe their position to be so righteous that silencing others is not merely acceptable, but necessary. They do not understand free speech or perhaps they do and don’t believe in it. They deny other people’s right to hear the speech of others. Only their voice matters. This behavior needs to be called out and stopped, regardless of their position on any issue, right or left. No one’s deep passion about any issue trumps everyone else’s Constitutional rights. Agree whole-heartedly that the University has a responsibility to the entire community to stop this.
+1
Yes, they say exactly that in the second Instagram.