A lot of the protests and kerfuffles on campus two years ago involved a student organization, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Their favorite metier seemed to be disrupting access through the Quad, using bullhorns to shout slogans (“river to the sea. . . ” etc.), and in general touting the actions of Hamas and demonizing Israel. Now when these actions are done according to campus rules, they’re fine—it’s free speech, and that kind of expression is of the glories of our University. But often SJP people are involved in violating campus regulations; in April of last year I documented four instances of the organization or its members violating campus regulations. Those included sit-ins that constituted trespassing and led to the arrest of both students and faculty. But, this being Chicago with a woke mayor, all charges were dropped.
What about the rest of the violations? There was almost no discipline: the University, as noted in the link above, simply gave SJP a slap on the wrist, for the last thing the University of Chicago wants to see is officials or police “laying hands on students”. Below is the “punishment” that the Standing Disciplinary Committee on Disruptive Conduct meted out to SJP after they shouted down a Jewish “teach-in” in 2023, violating campus rules.
This isn’t even a slap on the wrist, but a tap on the wrist. It’s even lighter punishment than the warning the cops give you if they catch you speeding a little.
In light of SJP’s repeated violations of university rules, I wrote a letter to the student newspaper in January of last year asking “Should Students for Justice in Palestine be a recognized student organization?” I provided no answer save to say that the University should mete out genuine punishment to people who repeatedly violate campus rules about public demonstrations. The University did get serious once, when it used the UC police—the Chicago police refused to participate—in taking down the illegal encampment that defaced our quad and prevented free access to buildings.
Things have been quiet for the last year, and probably for two reasons: Hamas has been trounced in Gaza, and a lot of the participants in anti-Israel demonstrations appear to be outsiders rather than members of the University community. Demonstrators may well be afraid to have a public presence because Trump sent ICE to Chicago, and if you entered the country illegally, now is not the time you want to fall into the hands of the authorities.
Regardless, I continue to promote free speech that adheres to our policies while at the same time deploring the hatred and antisemitism that seems to motivate groups and individuals like the SJP. And so they’ve put up a legal “installation” on our quad again. It’s okay that they did so, but it’s a performative, misguided, and hate-filled “installation.” It went up a few days ago for a week, and here are some photos:
Note that it was erected by SJP.
What we have here is a work of art accusing one John Kirby of genocide. Well, I didn’t know who John Kirby was, but Wikipedia says he was a rear admiral in the U.S. Navy who later took up positions in the media and also in the government under Democratic Presidents:
In the Biden administration, he served as United States Department of Defense Press Secretary and Assistant to the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs from 2021 to 2022 and as White House National Security Communications Advisor from 2022 to 2025. He worked as a military and diplomatic analyst for CNN from 2017 to 2021. In the second Obama administration, he served as United States Department of Defense Press Secretary from 2013 to 2015 and as Spokesperson for the United States Department of State and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs from 2015 to 2017.
Kirby has also just been appointed as director of the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, a nonpartisan venue for free discussion aimed at inspiring students to go into politics and public service. It has invited people from all sides of the ideological spectrum to speak, though when someone who doesn’t hate Israel speaks, miscreants sometimes have demonstrations outside the building or have even invaded the building (they were heaved out). Again, those demonstrations are legal if they don’t violate university rules, but they sometimes have (I have heard of no punsihments).
At any rate, Kirby’s position in the military, and some words he said, prominently displayed in the first photo below, convinced SJP that he is complicit in GENOCIDE. In fact, Kirby has been careful about the use of the word than has SJP, applying it only to Hamas. This is from the Guardian when Kirby was working under Biden:
Challenged at a White House briefing to confront the term “Genocide Joe” by some protesters to described Biden, Kirby, who had previously ruled out “drawing red lines” for Israel’s actions in Gaza, embarked on an animated exposition.
“People can say what they want on the sidewalk and we respect that. That’s what the first amendment’s about,” he said. “But this word genocide’s getting thrown around in a pretty inappropriate way by lots of different folks. What Hamas wants, make no mistake about it, is genocide. They want to wipe Israel off the map.
“And they’ve said that they’re not going to stop. What happened on the 7th of October is going to happen again and again and again. And what happened on the 7th of October? Murder; slaughter of innocent people in their homes or at a music festival. That’s genocidal intentions.
“Yes, there are too many civilian casualties in Gaza … And yes, we continue to urge the Israelis to be as careful and cautious as possible. But Israel is not trying to wipe the Palestinian people off the map. Israel’s not trying to wipe Gaza off the map. Israel is trying to defend itself against a genocidal terrorist threat. If we’re going to start using that word – fine. Let’s use it appropriately.”
There are three quotes from Kirby (one of them fell over last night), including one that apparently refers to the U.S. providing aid to Israel (second photo). The other two seem to show him claiming that Israel did not violate international human rights law (you can read them by clocking twice on the first photo to enlarge it).
Two points:
1.) This is a performative “installation” that accomplishes nothing. There was never a “genocide,” and even if you think there was, there’s now a cease-fire.
2.) Why do you never see students demonstrating against a real genocide: the one that’s a huge goal of Hamas, which wants to kill all the Jews and wipe out Israel? (Read the Hamas Covenant of 1988, especially the introduction and Article Seven.)
3.) It shows, in my view, that hatred of Jews and Israel hasn’t disappeared here (who would ever think that, anyway?) but is bubbling under the surface, waiting to emerge should the conflict in Gaza begin again.
4.) These installations, while they should be legal, nevertheless forment the atmosphere of hatred that, in my view, keeps Jewish students (who never erect similar “installations” about Hamas) from speaking their minds or wearing paraphernalia like Stars of David and yarmulkes (I’ve heard this directly from Jewish students). This kind of intimidation—which in America also chills discussions about abortion and gender issues,—still falls within University regulations, so there’s nothing to do about it, but according to statistics, it does chill speech.
In kindergarten I did something that annoyed my teacher, and she told me that what I did might have to “go on my permanent record.” That’s not much different from the “official warning” you cite above. SJP must be running scared now.
I think that it is unfortunate that Kirby’s program has to conduct its work in this kind of climate. Rather than defame him with anonymous placards on the lawn, why not put together a presentation to present at Kirby’s Institute of Politics?
Yes, these kinds of protests fall within university guidelines, but the university should stand at the ready to remove the installation the moment that it is used to threaten or disrupt.
Fundamentally, the Arab and Muslim worlds are green with envy. Such worlds never went through the Reformation, Enlightenment, French Revolution, etc. Later “religions” from the early medieval period onward try to claim some earlier “ancient” legitimacy, simply making stuff up. Any thinking individual knows that’s true.
That, and they are insane with cognitive dissonance. Islam is supposed to be the greatest expression of the will of God, and Muslims are supposed to be ruling the world. Yet, they lose any war against the West, consistently fail to run functional societies, and if not for oil wealth, they would have no influence on the world at all.
Neil deGrasse Tyson points out in a YouTube that most of the stars and heavenly bodies retain their Arabic names. Baghdad used to be the intellectual center of the Universe, developing modern mathematics, etc. We still use Arabic numbers.
But about 1100 AD, Islamic philosophy turned inward, idolizing revelation, and has still, to this day, never recovered. Considering how many Muslims there are today, their scientific achievements are about 1/4000th of what they should be. Islam has a lot to answer for.
Indo-Arabic numerals.
Ha. Yes. A great improvement over Roman numerals (not numbers.)
I was once trying to spell my e-mail address over the phone. It is, in retrospect, poorly chosen because it has ambiguous spelling. At one point I said “Arabic-numeral-2” (to distinguish it from the preceding letters.). The person on the other end suspiciously went “Huh? What do you mean Arabic?” I could imagine her frantically looking at her keyboard to figure out how to render modern Arabic script. I’m betting her previous caller lived on a street recently given one of those indigenous names that have to be rendered in IPA, aspirates and glottal stops and all.
Oʊ ˈKænədə
The Mamluks ended the crusades. They annihilated the debauched Islamic leadership in Alexandria and ruled the Middle East with a very fundamentalist form of Islam which haunts us to this day. They turned the golden age of Islam into its dark age. How tough were they, well they defeated the Mongols and no crusaders came back to take them on again. Saladin is no hero to Muslims, they celebrate the Mumluk leader Baibars. So, who created the inward looking Middle East? Our crusader ancestors did.
BTW, I got this info from Monty Python alumni Terry Jones’ – he has a PhD in History – 1995 serial documentary ‘Crusades’
Blaming the crusades for the arab world’s problems is almost exactly equivalent to blaming the norman conquest for all of britain’s problems (1099 v 1066).
It was almost exactly the same sort of people in both invasions, and possibly in some cases even the same people. William the b*****d’s eldest son was on the first crusade.
The main difference is that some of the descendants of the norman invaders are still in charge in britain.
It’s interesting that accounts from the time suggest that the new norman ruling class in britain were genuinely more oppressive than the previous anglo-saxon ruling class, whereas the franco/german/norman ruling class in the middle east were less repressive than the previous arab/turkish ruling class, but I don’t know if anyone has done a proper analysis of this.
Dr. Coyne wrote, above:
” I wrote a letter to the student newspaper in January of last year asking “Should Students for Justice in Palestine be a recognized student organization?” …
Fordham University was granted the ability not to recognize SJP as a legitimate student organization in an appellate court case in 2020. The court said:
“even if we had found that standing exists and therefore had considered the merits of the petition, we would have concluded that the [SJP] petition should not have been granted. . . . . [Fordham’s] conclusion that the proposed [SJP] club, which would have been affiliated with [the] national [SJP] organization reported to have engaged in disruptive and coercive actions on other campuses, would work against, rather than enhance, [Fordham’s] commitment open dialogue and mutual learning and understanding, was not ‘without sound basis in reason’ or ‘taken without regard to the facts.’
Fordham’s dean explained that the students’ proposed club’s “call for [BDS]” and desire to affiliate with the national SJP organization presented a “barrier to open dialogue and mutual learning and understanding” and would likely “lead to polarization rather than dialogue” about Israeli-Palestinian issues on campus.
The court, and Fordham’s Dean, took into account an amicus brief by The Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), which was based on a 2019 90-page ISGAP report documenting anti-Semitism, violence, and associations with terrorism of SJP’s national parent group, the NSJP. The report can be found here:
https://isgap.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/NSJP-2019-ISGAP-Report-Long-Version.pdf
Re legal actions, RAdm Kirby has a plausible defamation case against SJP, and just maybe against UoC as its “publisher”. IANAL; and anyhow I’m sure he has much better things to do with his time. But maybe a lawyer’s letter to UoC could have some effect.
I have watched John Kirby endure much worse opprobrium than this; he is a pro, but still should not have to take such personal attacks from these little shits. On one hand it would be nice if Hillel or Chabad or an ad hoc student group could counter with a bit of education; on the other, they should not have to nor should anyone feel obligated to.
And I do strongly agree that without punishment or at least a real threat of such for violating policy, there is no corrective force and asymptotically anarchy reigns in the yards of UChicago.
A possible corrective force would be to hire some student “background actors” to stage a counter-demonstration. I’d be glad to help with the slogans.
Let me know when there is a protest about Yemen or Syria or Nigeria….
No mention of Sudan? It truly is a forgotten war…