Category: censorship

USC forbids its hijab-clad valedictorian to speak at graduation because she minored in genocide

April 16, 2024 • 9:20 am

This is a true test of people like me who are pro-Israel in the current conflict but are also in favor of free speech. But it’s not a hard decision, for if you’re a hard line free-speech advocate, you must accept the fact that it’s most important to allow freedom of speech when what the person says offends you or many others.

And that is the situation in the case of Asna Tabassum, the valedictorian of the University of Southern California (USC), who, apparently because she might talk about (Israeli) genocide or advocate for a Palestine “from the river to the sea”, isn’t going to be allowed to speak at graduation. (Of course, the USC administration uses other excuses for censorship, like “safety”.)

I was alerted to the situation by this tweet sent to me by Luana:

Is this the case? Does USC really have a minor in genocide? Did the valedictorian minor in genocide?  And did USC also prevent its valedictorian from speaking because of the possibility she might discuss genocide? The answer to all four questions appears to be “yes”. But I think it’s wrong to prevent her from speaking—not if USC has a tradition of having valedictorians speak, which there is.

First, yes, USC does have a minor in genocide, or rather “resistance to genocide”. Here are part of the details of that minor (click to read), but if you look at the the courses, there’s nothing about Israel/Palestine: most of them are about the Shoah (Holocaust of Jews during WWII), Native American genocide, the Armenian genocide, and genocide and the law. It seems like a creditable minor.  Of course one suspects that Tabassum might have minored in this because of a belief that Palestine is undergoing genocide, but we don’t know that, and at any rate it’s irrelevant to this kerfuffle.

This article from the school’s site USC Today (click headline below to read) confirms that Tabassum was indeed the valedictorian:

USC’s 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, was also recognized. Tabassum, who is graduating with a major in biomedical engineering a minor in resistance to genocide, has studied how technology, immigration and literacy affect the type of medical care people receive. She has also been an advocate for the community through her service with the Muslim Student Union and the Mobile Clinic at USC.

 

And here are two articles, the first from the Los Angeles Times and the second from USC Annenberg Media, both confirming that Tabassum has indeed been banned buy USC’s administration from speaking. Click both to read, though the quotes below come from the L.A. Times.

From the L.A. Times:

And from the USC Annenberg site:

Quotes from the LA Times:

Saying “tradition must give way to safety,” the University of Southern California on Monday made the unprecedented move of barring an undergraduate valedictorian who has come under fire for her pro-Palestinian views from giving a speech at its May graduation ceremony.

The move, according to USC officials, is the first time the university has banned a valedictorian from the traditional chance to speak onstage at the annual commencement ceremony, which typically draws more than 65,000 people to the Los Angeles campus.

In a campuswide letter, USC Provost Andrew T. Guzman cited unnamed threats that have poured in shortly after the university publicized the valedictorian’s name and biography this month. Guzman said attacks against the student for her pro-Palestinian views have reached an “alarming tenor” and “escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement.”

. . .“After careful consideration, we have decided that our student valedictorian will not deliver a speech at commencement. … There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period,” Guzman wrote.

The student, whom the letter does not name, is biomedical engineering major Asna Tabassum. USC officials chose Tabassum from nearly 100 student applicants who had GPAs of 3.98 or higher.

But after USC President Carol Folt announced her selection, a swarm of on- and off-campus groups attacked Tabassum. They targeted her minor, resistance to genocide, as well as her pro-Palestinian views and “likes” expressed through her Instagram account.

Here’s an Instagram post quoting Tabassum and calling for her deplatforming. Her own Instagram site is now private, but note that the words are probably not hers, but from a link in her own Instagram biography.

And even if the words quoted above were hers, do they promote imminent violence (presumably towards Jews)? Nope. It’s not a First-Amendment exception to call Zionism a “racist settler-colonial ideology, nor to call for the complete abolition of Israel. If it were, half of Twitter would be taken down.

As expected, Tabassum didn’t like this decision, and issued a mature but passionate statement:

In a statement, Tabassum opposed the decision, saying USC has “abandoned” her.

“Although this should have been a time of celebration for my family, friends, professors, and classmates, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian voices have subjected me to a campaign of racist hatred because of my uncompromising belief in human rights for all,” said Tabassum, who is Muslim.

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“This campaign to prevent me from addressing my peers at commencement has evidently accomplished its goal: today, USC administrators informed me that the university will no longer allow me to speak at commencement due to supposed security concerns,” she wrote.

“I am both shocked by this decision and profoundly disappointed that the university is succumbing to a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice. I am not surprised by those who attempt to propagate hatred. I am surprised that my own university—my home for four years—has abandoned me.”

And of course the university issued a weaselly decision:

In an interview, Guzman said the university has been “in close contact with the student” and would “provide her support.” He added that “we weren’t seeking her opinion” on the ban.

“This is a security decision,” he said. “This is not about the identity of the speaker, it’s not about the things the valedictorian has said in the past. We have to put as our top priority ensuring that the campus and community is safe.”

A screenshot from Provost Andrew Guzman, who singlehandedly decided to ban Tabassum (he doesn’t even have the guts to name her in the letter):

Some of those who objected were, of course, Jewish groups:

We Are Tov, a group that uses the Hebrew word for “good” and describes itself as “dedicated to combating antisemitism,” posted Tabassum’s image on its Instagram account and said she “openly promotes antisemitic writings.” The group also criticized Tabassum for liking Instagram posts from “Trojans for Palestine.” Tabassum’s Instagram bio links to a landing page that says “learn about what’s happening in Palestine, and how to help.”

The campus group Trojans for Israel also posted on its Instagram account, calling for Folt’s “reconsideration” of Tabassum for what it described as her “antisemitic and anti-Zionist rhetoric.” The group said Tabassum’s Instagram bio linked to a page that called Zionism a “racist settler-colonial ideology.”

Well, I have little doubt, based on the above, that Tabassum is pro-Palestinian, may feel that Israel is committing genocide, and has made social-media posts that may smack of antisemitism and perhaps a desire to eliminate Israel.  But none of that is relevant here. The only consideration is whether Tabassum’s words are calculated and intended to promote imminent and lawless violence—something that would violate her First-Amendment freedom to speak. And, as a private university, USC doesn’t need to adhere to the First Amendment. They could ban Tabassum without citing freedom of speech. But, like any decent university, public or private, USC should follow the First Amendment. The only exception is that universities should allow “time, place, and manner” expressions of speech that don’t disturb the mission of the university. That means no disrupting speeches or blocking access to university facilities like classes.

Further, USC promotes First-Amendment-like freedom of speech on their website.  Here’s one bit from USC’s Policy on Free Speech:

As the Faculty Handbook declares, the University recognizes that students are exposed to thought-provoking ideas as part of their educational experience, and some of these ideas may challenge their beliefs and may lead a student to claim that an educational experience is offensive.  Therefore any such issues that arise in the educational context will be considered in keeping with the University’s commitment to academic freedom.

Except, of course, when the issue arises in a graduation speech!

Yes, there may have been threats, but it’s up to USC to have enough security on hand to both protect Ms. Tabassum and also allow her to speak without heckling. The mere citation of threats and palaver about “security decisions” is simply a way that USC can ban a controversial speaker without having to provide the conditions where and when she can speak freely.

Tabassum is a valedictorian, valedictorians traditionally speak at USC, and her speech is almost certainly not designed to incite imminent lawless violence. Even if she accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, that is not sufficient grounds to ban her. (If USC is worried about First-Amendment exceptions, they can vet her speech in advance, but they better have constitutional lawyers look at it, too!).

In my view, USC is cowardly and censorious in preventing Tabassum from speaking at graduation.  The school is, as she notes, robbing her of her big moment: her reward for working hard over four years to become the best student in her class. I urge USC to change their minds and let her speak, but of course it’s too late.  The gutless wonders, fond of selective censorship, appear to be running USC. And the great irony here is that although the school offers a minor in genocide, it prevents someone from speaking because they might bring up the subject.

_______________

Full disclosure: I was the valedictorian in my college class, too, and was also prevented from the traditional (short) speech because the administration knew I was an antiwar activist. Thus they announced my award from the stage while I was in the audience. I got to stand up when I was recognized, but I was wearing a black armband and made the “Black Power” fist salute. (That cost me a summer job.)  I, too, felt a bit cheated, and for reasons similar to those of Tabassum. But I think that  the censorship of Tabassum is a much bigger deal than mine given that she was supposed to make a full speech and not just an elongated “thank you”. And, of course, free speech is especially important to emphasize these days.  Too many schools are using “safetyism” as a reason to cancel speakers, which merely empowers those who are encouraged to give the “heckler’s veto” and make threats. If a speaker isn’t going to violate the First Amendment, it’s up to the university to protect her and remove those who try to shout her down.

h/t: Luana Maroja

Theater tries to cancel Israeli film due to protests by pro-Palestinian activists, court overturns cancellation, Streisand effect goes into action

April 11, 2024 • 11:30 am

NBC 10 in Philly reports a disturbing case of censorship, and of course it’s Jewish stuff that’s censored. Fortunately, a court stepped in and undid the censorship with a restraining order. Click the headline to read, and you can also find a shorter account on ABC 6 in Philly.

What happened is summarized by the bullet points in the report above:

 

What’s bizarre about all this is that while the pro-Palestinian groups wanted to cancel the entire showing, the BMFI decided to pull just one of the movies, and one that had absolutely nothing to do with the war, or anything related to it.

Guy Brodetzki, an Israeli man who currently resides in Lower Merion, also organized a grassroots group of concerned citizens called the Hope for Israel Alliance – Philadelphia. Brodetzki told NBC10 “The Child Within Me” has nothing to do with the Israel-Hamas War.

“Very famous singer. The movie is about him. And he’s very special,” Brodetzki said. “He was gay when it wasn’t that easy to be gay. He’s the son of Holocaust survivors. Many of his songs are about being a child of Holocaust survivors. This is the movie. There’s no mentioning of the Arab-Israeli conflict at all. There’s no mentioning of the war. There’s no mentioning of Palestinians. Nothing. It’s all about him. It’s about Jewish-Israeli culture. So why on earth would you want to cancel the showing of this kind of movie?”

Before lawyers got involved, BMFI issued a pathetic excuse for canceling the movie. Get a load of this dissimulation!:

“Bryn Mawr Film Institute is not a political organization. We don’t endorse or oppose any causes. In past years, we have not regarded hosting a screening from the Israeli Film Festival as a political partnership or taking a stance on any issues,” a BMFI spokesperson wrote. “This was our feeling when we arranged the 2024 screening many months ago. However, as the situation in Israel and Gaza has developed, it has become clear that our showing this movie is being widely taken among individuals and institutions in our community as an endorsement of Israel’s recent and ongoing actions. This is not a statement we intended or wish to make. For this reason, BMFI is canceling the sole screening of the music documentary, The Child Within Me.”

That’s pathetic, showing a complete lack of backbone and principle. It’s like a library pulling a book from the shelves because it offends some of the public. If they’re not political, then they shouldn’t worry about looking as if they endorsed a film. Does a library endorse Mein Kampf, for crying out loud?  As ABC 6 reported, “Film Institute Executive Director Samuel Scott said the issue was not the film itself but concerns over heated political protests regarding the film’s screening.

 

And then the law stepped in:

Brodetzki’s group planned a protest outside the Bryn Mawr Film Institute on Tuesday. After the protest was planned, Lori Lowenthal Marcus, an attorney representing the Israeli Film Festival, told NBC10 the movie would still be screened at BMFI Tuesday evening following a court order. Marcus accused BMFI of breaching its contract when they attempted to pull the film from the festival.

Here’s the restraining order forcing the BMFI to show the movies. It’s short and sweet:

 

That’s all it took, and the film festival caved, saying that they were “flawed human being” making “bad calls” (see below).  Their intention was surely not to hurt and offend Jews, but it was certainly to avoid Palestinian ire.  It is due to fear of Palestinian action against the film that the BMFI took action. I wonder if they would bow to pressure from any other group about non-Israeli films.

So here’s the apology, which, as Shania Twain said, “don’t impress me much.”

h/t: Alex

Israeli writer pulls out of scheduled talks before she gets canceled for having “wrong views”

March 14, 2024 • 11:00 am

Dina Rubina is a prominent Russian Israeli Jew who writes in Russian. Wikipedia gives this precis:

Rubina is one of the most prominent Russian-language Israeli writers. Her books have been translated into 30 languages. Her major themes are Jewish and Israeli history, migration, nomadism, neo-indigeneity, messianism, metaphysics, theatre, autobiography and the interplay between the Israeli and Russian Jewish cultures and languages.

This letter from Rubina comes from a site I don’t know, Truth of the Middle East (click on screenshot). It shows how Rubina staved off cancelation (for being Jewish) by canceling her appearance first. Click to read:

First, the intro:

Not long ago the Pushkin House in London together with the University of London invited the famous Israeli writer Dina Rubina to hold a meeting.
The topic was to be literary – a discussion of the writer’s books.
 Some time ago, Dina received a letter from the moderator of the meeting:

Then the email came that smells strongly like an impending cancelation:

“Good afternoon, Dina
The Pushkin House advertised our upcoming discussion on social media and immediately received critical messages regarding your position on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They would like to understand your position on this issue before reacting in any way.
Could you formulate your position and send it to me as soon as possible?”
Natalia! “

That letter is an arrant insult. Rubina was going to discuss her books, and her political stand on the war has no bearing on that. Even if it did, she had already been invited.  But the Pushkin House and the University of London are spineless, and surely wanted some groveling letter from Rubina that smacked of “both side-ism.” But that’s stupid given that she is an Israeli, a fact that, again, has no bearing on her book talk.

But Rubina has spine, and I put her response below. Instead of being canceled, she canceled her own talk and rebuked Pushkin House. I put her whole letter below because you should read it, because it’s “open”, and because she says exactly what needed to be said in response to Natlia’s insulting communication.

AN OPEN LETTER

from Dina Rubina

Dear Natalia!

    You have written beautifully about my novels; I am very sorry for the time you have wasted. But it seems we’ll have to cancel our meeting. The University of Warsaw and the University of Torun have just cancelled lectures by the remarkable Israeli Russian-speaking writer Yakov Shechter on the life of Jews in Galicia in the 17th and 19th centuries – “to avoid aggravating the situation”. I suspected that this would also happen to me, because now the academic environment is the main nursery of the most disgusting and rabid anti-Semitism, hiding behind the so-called “criticism of Israel”. I was expecting something like this, and even sat down three times to write you a letter on the subject… but I decided to wait, and so I have waited.

That’s what I want to say to all those who expect from me a quick and obsequious account of my position on my beloved country, which now (and always) lives in a circle of ardent enemies who seek its destruction; on my country, which is now waging a just patriotic war against a violent, ruthless, deceitful and sophisticated enemy:

The last time in my life I apologised in the headmaster’s office, in the ninth grade. Since then, I have done what I think is right, listening only to my conscience and expressing only my understanding of the world order and human laws of justice.

And so on.

I’m really sorry, Natalia, for your efforts and the hope that you could “cook something with me” – something that everyone will like.

Therefore, I ask you personally to send my reply to all those who are interested:

On Saturday 7 October, the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, the ruthless, well-trained, carefully prepared and perfectly equipped with Iranian weapons Hamas terrorist regime ruling the Gaza enclave (which Israel left some 20 years ago) attacked dozens of peaceful kibbutzim and simultaneously pelted the territory of my country with tens of thousands of rockets. Atrocities that even the Bible cannot describe, atrocities and horrors that make the crimes of Sodom and Gomorrah pale in comparison (captured, by the way, by the frontal and chest cameras of the murderers themselves and boastfully sent by them in real time to the Internet), can shock any normal person. For several hours, thousands of gleeful, blood-drunk animals raped women, children and men, shot their victims in the crotch and in the head, cut off women’s breasts and played football with them, cut babies out of the bellies of pregnant women and immediately beheaded them, tied up small children and burned them. There were so many charred and completely burnt bodies that for many weeks the pathologists could not cope with the enormous burden of identifying individuals.

   My friend, who worked in a New York hospital waiting room for 20 years and then spent another 15 years in Israel identifying remains, was one of the first to arrive in the burned and blood-soaked kibbutzim with a group of rescuers and medics… She still can’t sleep. A medic used to cutting up bodies – she fainted from what she saw and then vomited all the way back to the car. What these people have seen is beyond words.

    Together with the Hamas fighters, the “civilian population” rushed into the holes in the fence, joined the pogroms on an unprecedented scale, robbed, killed and dragged whatever they could get their hands on into Gaza. Among these “peaceful Palestinians” were 450 members of the UN’s UNRWA scum. Everyone was there, and judging by the stormy total joy of the population (also captured in these inconvenient times by hundreds of mobile cameras) – there were a lot of people – Hamas supports and approves, at least before the real fighting starts, of almost the entire population of Gaza… The main problem: our residents were dragged into the beast’s lair, more than two hundred of them, including women, children, the elderly and non-essential foreign workers. About a hundred of them are now rotting and dying in the Hamas dungeons. Needless to say, these harassed victims are of little concern to the “academic community”.

But that’s not what I’m talking about. I am not writing this to make anyone sympathise with the tragedy of my people.

For all these years, when the world community has literally poured hundreds of millions of dollars into this piece of land (the Gaza Strip) – and the annual budget of the UNRWA organisation alone is a BILLION dollars! – All these years, Hamas has used this money to build an empire of the most complex underground tunnel system, to stockpile weapons, to teach primary school children how to dismantle and reassemble a Kalashnikov assault rifle, to print textbooks in which the hatred of Israel defies description, in which even the maths problems go like this: “There were ten Jews, Shahid killed four, how many are left?” – with every word calling for the murder of Jews.

And now that Israel, shocked at last by the monstrous crime of these bastards, is waging a war to destroy the Hamas terrorists, who have prepared this war so carefully, planting thousands of shells in all the hospitals, schools, kindergartens… – here the academic world of the whole world has risen up, worried about the “genocide of the Palestinian people”, based, of course, on data provided by… who? That’s right, by the same Hamas, by the same UNRWA… The academic community, which was not concerned about the massacres in Syria, the massacre in Somalia, the mockery of the Uighurs or the millions of Kurds persecuted for decades by the Turkish regime – this very concerned public, wearing “Arafat” around their necks, the trademark of the murderers, rallies under the banners “Free Palestine from the river to the sea! – which means the total destruction of Israel (yes, many of these “academics”, as surveys show, have no idea where this river is, what it is called, where some borders are…). – Now this very public asks me to “take a clear position on this issue”.

Are you serious?! Are you serious?!!

You see, I’m a writer by profession. All my life, for more than fifty years, I have been folding words. My novels have been translated into 40 languages, including Albanian, Turkish, Chinese, Esperanto… and many others.

Now, with great pleasure, without using too many expressions, I sincerely and with all the strength of my soul send all the brainless “intellectuals” interested in my position go to ass. In fact, very soon you will all be there without me”.

Dina Rubina

********************

It’s their loss.

Notice that she says there were 450 UNRWA members at the October 7 massacre. I knew that there were 13 who had been fired, but this higher figure may well be accurate, though I can’t confirm it yet. There are 13,000 UNRWA staff in Gaza, so if it was 450, that would be 3.5% of the entire staff, all present at the butchery.

And I wonder how many Palestinian writers or Arab writers would be asked to “clarify” their position before they gave a book talk.

FIRE gives awards for the Ten Worst Censors of 2024; Harvard gets sixth Lifetime Censorship Award

February 13, 2024 • 9:00 am

At midnight last night, FIRE (The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) put up its list of the “10 Worst Censors of 2024”.

Part of the intro:

Each year, FIRE names and shames the worst-of-the-worst silencers, bowdlerizers, and steamrollers of free speech.

This year, we’ve included five free speech villains whose chilling misdeeds happened off of  college campuses. Thelist belowincludes people guilty of many forms of censorship  including raiding a small-town newspaper, punishing a middle schooler for wearing eye black at a football game, canceling students and professors for their views on the Israel-Hamas war, and retroactively censoring famous authors without their consent. The 13th annual Lifetime Censorship Award went to Harvard University, a university as censorial as it is famous.

Previous lists were limited to campuses, but no longer: off-campus censors were also in the running.  The list below is in no particular order, and there’s a longer explanation of each ranking at the website given at the top.

I was particularly interested in the Razzies given to the California Community Colleges (for requiring faculty to pledge allegiance to DEI) and Texas A&M (a state school) for its pattern of firing, deplatforming, and censorship.

Last but not least, Harvard University will receive FIRE’s sixth Lifetime Censorship Award, reserved for those colleges that deserve special recognition for their commitment to censorship. The school earned the award for landing at the bottom of FIRE’s annual free speech rankings, threatening the New York Post with a defamation lawsuit, driving out lecturer Carole Hooven for arguing that biological sex is real, and rescinding a fellowship for form

I wanted to show you why Harvard got the lowest ranking; and the ranking was assigned well before Claudine Gay and the Presidents of MIT and Penn were excoriated for their testimony before a House committee:

Harvard University came in dead last on this year’s College Free Speech Rankings — achieving a worst-ever score. When asked about Harvard’s abysmal ranking during her congressional testimony in December, then-Harvard President Claudine Gay said she didn’t think the ranking was “an accurate representation” of Harvard’s respect for free speech. But all one needs to do to understand Harvard’s disrespect for free speech is look at its record of censorship.

Only a few weeks before Gay’s testimony, Harvard hired self-advertised “media assassins” to threaten the New York Post with a defamation lawsuit and “immense” damages if the paper published a story alleging Gay plagiarized some of her scholarship. So much for placing “a high priority on freedom of speech” — or freedom of the press for that matter. Gay resigned on Jan. 2, after more than 40 allegations of plagiarism came to light.

Long before Harvard threatened news outlets with litigation for their reporting, it punished faculty and students for their speech. School administrators drove out lecturer Carole Hooven for arguing that biological sex is real. It rescinded a fellowship for former Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth over his purported “anti-Israel bias.” It effectively fired an economics professor for an op-ed he published in India. It canceled a professor’s course on policing following student uproar. It fired professor Ronald Sullivan from his deanship after students protested his role on Harvey Weinstein’s criminal defense team. It bizarrely demanded students take down a Nicki Minaj flag because the community could find it “offensive.” And the list goes on.

Even outside speakers invited to campus aren’t safe from Harvard’s censorial glare. In 2022, feminist philosopher Devin Buckley was disinvited from an English department colloquium because of her views on sex and gender. Her talk was supposed to be on the separate topic of British romanticism.

Harvard students clearly feel the chill. Students report low administrative support for free speech and low comfort expressing ideas, placing the school near the bottom of FIRE’s College Free Speech Rankings in both individual categories. Unfortunately, Harvard students themselves may also contribute to the problem. If the efforts to oust Sullivan and cancel the policing class aren’t evidence enough, an alarming 30% of Harvard students think using violence to stop a campus speech is acceptable in at least some circumstances.

For its long track record of censorship, Harvard is receiving FIRE’s Lifetime Censorship Award. It joins Georgetown University, Yale University, Syracuse University, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and DePaul University in receiving this “honor.” It’s past time Harvard truly commits to its ostensible truth-seeking mission and the principles of free speech and academic freedom that make it possible. But that may be wishful thinking, the triumph of hope over experience.

The new President of Harvard hasn’t yet been chosen, but I suspect it will have to be another black woman lest Harvard be criticized for, well, Sarah Haider talks about this in her nice new analysis of DEI, including a tweet:

This is why there were numerous calls to replace Claudine Gay with another black woman. The honor was bestowed on Black Womanhood, the political category, not on the black woman herself. This illustrates one important sense in which modern tokenism is unlike its predecessor: far from being objected to as a sign of contempt and condescension, tokenism today is demanded by activists.

Hill is a professor of CUNY and a “television personality”.

Banned and censored scenes from Tom and Jerry cartoons

December 29, 2023 • 12:30 pm

When I was in Cambridge I watched some cartoons with my friend’s grandchildren, and I was struck at how anodyne they were. Nothing dark happened, everything was wonderful and happy (and of course diverse), and there wasn’t anything I thought the least bit funny. Nevertheless, the kids were engaged. I wonder if that’s because all the cartoons that are on t.v. these days.  Now think of Bugs Bunny, the Roadrunner, and Tom & Jerry, which had many moments that weren’t sweetness and light.

In fact, when some of these cartoons (masterpieces of the genre: remember “Acme”?) are shown today, they censor them.  Granted, some feed into racist stereotypes, and are best seen by adults who can put them in context of the time, but others show violence (tail severing, spanking hammer blows, etc.), and other bad stuff like smoking, aggression, and even Tom painted up like HITLER.  But of course Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner had tons of violence.  Here’s a 20-minute narrated video of all the Tom & Jerry scenes that have been banned or censored.

The YouTube notes:

Tom and Jerry is a beloved cartoon series that originally ran from 1940 – 1957. And has since become a timeless classic over the years. But since it’s original airing, the series has actually undergone some major censoring, some resulting in a few scenes being cut, whilst others resorting to the banning of entire episodes.

Skip the first 2 minutes and 45 second, as it’s a big ad for VPN.

Censorship in science: a compilation of references

December 24, 2023 • 9:45 am

If you’re interested in STEM subjects, it’s salubrious to follow the Heterodox STEM Substack site, where you’ll see takes on science that are sufficiently heterodox that they’d be hard to publish in regular journals. Also, there are useful summaries of the literature, including as this one on scientific censorship published today by Anna Krylov and Jan Tanzman.

Their article has an introduction, a report on the increase in scientific censorship, and then a useful list of articles about the nature, causes, and effects of that censorship. If you don’t think the practice exists, or is exerted only minimally, have a look at the piece and the papers it cites.

Click on the screenshot to read:

The introduction:

We have prepared a compilation of recent articles documenting present-day censorship in science and explaining the mechanism by which censorship in science operates.

Recently, science journals and publishers have opened a new and disturbing chapter in the history of scientific censorship: the censorship of scientific articles that are alleged to be “harmful” to a particular group or population, a practice that violates the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The practice began with scientific journals retracting articles in response to the demands of online mobs, but has since been codified into policy by various editorial boards and scientific publishers.

Censorship is objectionable on both philosophical and pragmatic grounds. On the philosophical side, the notion that that the public must be protected from dangerous or harmful knowledge is at odds with liberal Enlightenment values, according to which knowledge is power, which the public is capable of using responsibly. On the practical level, by hiding selected facts, censorship distorts our understanding of the world, thereby undermining our ability to solve challenging problems. Censorship also leads to distrust in science. When scientists hide selected facts to promote their political agendas, the public rightfully perceives them as politically motivated agents rather than objective and trustworthy experts.

Despite the long history of scientific censorship and its current prevalence, the mechanisms by which censorship operates, the agents who impose censorship and their motives, and the ultimate costs of censorship have not been systematically investigated. A recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by Cory Clark and 38 co-authors, Prosocial Motives Underlie Scientific Censorship by Scientists: A Perspective and Research Agenda (Clark et al. 2023), takes a stab at this issue. The paper lays out important questions regarding the nature and consequences of censorship and puts out a call for systematic research on the subject.

One of the paper’s co-authors, psychology professor Steve Stewart-Williams, summarizes the evidence for the current wave of scientific censorship and self-censorship, as well as the rise of censorious attitudes among scientists, which motivated the paper:

  • Increasing numbers of scientists report being sanctioned for conducting politically contentious research.
  • Retractions of papers have become more and more common over the last decade, and at least some of these appear to have been driven primarily by concerns other than scientific merit. One group of scholars even retracted their own paper, not because it was scientifically flawed, but because it was being cited by conservatives in ways the authors didn’t approve of.
  • Several lines of research suggest that studies reaching politically unpalatable conclusions may have a harder time negotiating the peer-review process than they would if the conclusions were in the opposite direction. As the paper notes, “When scholars misattribute their rejection of disfavored conclusions to quality concerns that they do not consistently apply, bias and censorship are masquerading as scientific rejection.”
  • Recent surveys suggest that many academics support censuring or censoring controversial research, with support being strongest among younger scholars.
  • Unsurprisingly, recent polls also suggest that many academics now self-censor on even mildly controversial topics.
  • A large number of academics express a willingness to discriminate against conservatives when it comes to hiring, publications, grants, and promotions. Unsurprisingly, conservative scholars are particularly likely to self-censor.
  • A growing number of journals have explicitly committed to judging scientific papers not just on the quality of the research but also on their (supposed) social or political impact. “In effect,” note Clark et al., “editors are granting themselves vast leeway to censor high-quality research that offends their own moral sensibilities.”

Table 1 of Clark et al. presents the following taxonomy of censorship:

As the Table shows, and as Luana and I emphasized in our paper on the ideological subversion of biology, this wave of censorship differs from previous ones because scientists and science journals themselves are involved in censoring. We’re muzzling ourselves!

The intro continues:

. . . Motivated by publication of this foundational paper (Clark et al. 2023), we have compiled a virtual collection of scientific papers, viewpoints, and op-eds that document the modern rise of censorship in science. Our list is most likely incomplete and we encourage readers to add relevant references in the comments.

There follow a list of 38 papers, with some commentary by Anna and Jay. It’s an extremely useful compilation of discussions about how scientific truths are prevented from coming to light, usually because they are politically unpalatable or present data and conclusions that make people uncomfortable in a “progressive” climate.

To be a wee bit self-aggrandizing, I’ll show two examples given by Anna and Jay of useful scientific critiques that had a hard time finding a home (I helped write one of them). I’m familiar with both, and the first one (not mine) is a doozy. The first one is discussed in the paper by Reichhardt et al. (2023), Resistance to Critiques in the Academic Literature: An Example from Physics Education Research,  Eur. Review 31 547, 2023.

The authors present a rebuttal of a paper recently published in the physics education journal Physical Review—Physics Education Research. The paper, which is titled Observing Whiteness in Introductory Physics: A Case Study, arguably sounds more like a hoax than an actual paper with content relevant to physics education. But the rebuttal treats the paper seriously and offers a substantive, professional, and detailed critique. The rebuttal, which was submitted to the same journal as the original paper, was rejected by the editors. The main reason cited for the rejection was that the rebuttal was “framed from the perspective of a research paradigm that is different from the one of the research being critiqued”—indeed, the authors used scientific methods to debunk a postmodernist paper. The communication between the authors and the journal revealed the true nature of rejection.

The second example is the story of how a paper with the seemingly mundane title In Defense of Merit in Science (Abbot et al. 2023) wound up being published in the Journal of Controversial Ideas. The story is narrated by Coyne and Krylov in The ‘Hurtful’ Idea of Scientific Merit, an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal (for a non-paywalled transcript see Our Wall Street Journal Op-ed: Free at Last!, published by Coyne on Why Evolution is True).

The reference list gives a lot more, some of which cite papers like the “whiteness in physics one” which are so off the rails that they instantiate the last thing Luana and I wrote:

Unless there is a change in the Zeitgeist, and unless scientists finally find the courage to speak up against the toxic effects of ideology on their field, in a few decades science will be very different from what it is now. Indeed, it’s doubtful that we’d recognize it as science at all.

University of Edinburgh academics demand cancellation of book on sex and gender

October 12, 2023 • 11:45 am

One thing that seems clear, at least to me, is that Scotland is woker than England, for you see more stuff like this happening to the North of Blighty than from its south. But even if you disagree with my assessment, it’s hard to approve of the bad behavior of academics from the University of Edinburgh who are calling for the banning of a book on sex and gender. The article below comes is from the Times of London; click below to read, and if it’s paywalled you can find it archived here.


It’s a simple matter of ignorance and censoriousness, with the excuse that the book promotes “transphobia”—which means it has an honest discussion of trans issues.   An excerpt from the Times:

Academics at the University of Edinburgh have been accused of an “horrific” and “nonsensical attack” on free speech after calling for the launch of a book about gender politics to be cancelled.

Members of the University and College Union have written to an estimated 2,000 staff and research students calling for a protest at the event on Wednesday and told Sir Peter Mathieson, the university principal, it should be scrapped.

The union branch said essays in the book, Sex and Gender: A Contemporary Reader, reduce “trans people to an abstract anomaly or sinister cabal” and breached the Equality Act.

It told union members in a mass mailing of its “concerns about the launch of a transphobic book on campus” and said it would be holding a protest at the event. The claims were rejected out of hand by contributors to the book and by other academics.

UCU Edinburgh was previously criticised for preventing free speech after it twice supported demonstrations and stopped the screening of the documentary Adult Human Female, billed as a critique of “transgender ideology”.

Shereen Benjamin, a senior lecturer in primary education, and a contributor to the book, said the UCU’s claims were “outrageous”, adding that she was horrified by the email to academic colleagues.

Benjamin said: “The individuals in charge of the branch have used their position to try to suppress legitimate academic discussion where it challenges views they personally hold, by exploiting policies intended to make the university a decent, fair environment, and smearing anyone who disagrees with them.”

. . .In its letter to Mathieson, the UCU accused Benjamin, a founder of the Edinburgh branch of Academics for Academic Freedom, of “debunking” the rights of trans people.

I haven’t found the email from the Union, which is a student group, but the UCU Edinburgh is clearly deeply Pecksniffian, having stopped the screening of a movie that, while you may disagree with it, makes some good points and certainly doesn’t deserve banning. (You can see the whole movie free on Youtube.)

Of course if you say anything that’s not 100% in agreement with the assertions of trans activists, you’re going to get labeled a “transphobe”, even if you  simply disagree with the right of trans women to compete in women’s athletics. The way the ideologues control discourse is to make their opponents so fearful of being called names that the opponents shut up (it’s worked with critics of “indigenous ways of knowing” in New Zealand). If that fails, try to ban their books.

A form of this banning is the refusal of scientific journals to publish criticism of weak papers.  One example occurred when Colin Wright wrote to the editors of  Integrative and Comparative Biology asking if several of us could submit a critique of a dreadful paper they published, “Multimodal models of animal sex: breaking binaries leads to a better understanding of ecology and evolution” (see here and here for some criticisms).  Colin never got a response after writing the editors several times. This is reprehensible behavior on their part, and, worse, it’s their attempt to promulgate dubious science by simply censoring its opponents.  They want to avoid social media criticism: what a great excuse for suppressing scientific discourse!

But I digress. Edinburgh Uni has issued a statement saying what’s below, which is a bit self-contradictory:

Edinburgh University said it attached great importance to freedom of expression and academic freedom and “would not seek to influence any lawful events held on our campus”.

A spokeswoman added: “Given the size of our community, it is inevitable that there will be differing views and opinions. We always encourage respectful debate and discussion, and we remain steadfast in our determination to facilitate a safe environment where challenging topics can be explored. We also firmly uphold the right of people to take part in peaceful and lawful protest.

But an environment that explores challenging topics will be perforce deemed UNSAFE, so how do they deal with that? But I do trust that Edinburgh Uni will take no steps to censor or ban this book. It’s always the students who make all the noise.

But is the book “transphobic”? Have a look at the description of the book and title page here:

The title page:

I don’t see anything obviously transphobic here, but of course the Pecksniffs can find something in this lineup of sex and gender criminals to foster banning the book. Where is ACLU lawyer Chase Strangio when we need him?  Sadly, he can’t stop the circulation of this book, because the kerfuffle is in the U.K.

More mishigas: Two anthropology societies cancel an accepted symposium on sex and gender because it would “harm” their members

September 27, 2023 • 12:30 pm

I’m probably late to the party, but the latest gossip about the Authoritarian Left involves the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA) deciding to deplatform an entire symposium on sex and gender in anthropology—all because of the claim that it could cause mental “harm”to some people.

There are three letters involved, all of which you can see at a site set up by Elizabeth Weiss, a physical anthropologist at San Jose State (I’ve written about her before, as she’s been professionally demonized for wanting to scientifically study Native American remains).

You can see all the letters in the tweets below from Colin Wright, or at Weiss’s site.

Here’s the skinny in three parts

1.) Six women anthropologists proposed to hold a symposium at the AAA and CASCA’s joint meeting in Toronto called “Let’s Talk about sex, baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology.” (The title comes from a popular song by Salt N Pepa.) You can see their proposal here. It’s a mixed bag, with some intriguing talks, like Weiss’s, and some others that are postmodern or confusing.  But that’s irrelevant to what happened. At any rate, you might intuit from the title why the seminar got ditched. Guess!

Kathleen Lowery at the University of Alberta organized the symposium. Here’s the summary:

Session Descripton: While it has become increasingly common in anthropology and public life to substitute ‘sex’ with ‘gender’, there are multiple domains of research in which biological sex remains irreplaceably relevant to anthropological analysis. Contesting the transition from sex to gender in anthropological scholarship deserves much more critical consideration than it has hitherto received in major disciplinary fora like AAA / CASCA. This diverse international panel brings together scholars from socio-cultural anthropology, archaeology, and biological anthropology who describe why in their work gender is not helpful and only sex will do. This is particularly the case when the work is concerned with equity and the deep analysis of power, and which has as an aim the achievement of genuine inclusivity. With research foci from hominin evolution to contemporary artificial intelligence, from the anthropology of education to the debates within contemporary feminism about surrogacy, panelists make the case that while not all anthropologists need to talk about sex, baby, some absolutely do.

Elizabeth told me that the contributions, which you can see at the link, were so diverse and wide-ranging that it was likely that the six panelists would have disagreed with each other.

As I said, the proposal was accepted by the AAA and CASCA for the meeting. But then they has second thoughts—and rejected it (see below).  I suspect that the main issue was Weiss’s talk, which maintained that “skeletons are binary”, which is true, but not something that cultural anthropologists, at least, would find comfortable. THERE IS NO BINARY IN WOKEWORLD!

Here’s Elizabeth’s own proposed presentation, which I think helped scupper the symposium (not her fault!):

No bones about it: skeletons are binary; people may not be. Sex identification – whether an individual was male or female – using the skeleton is one of the most fundamental components in bioarchaeology and forensic anthropology. Anthropologists have improved their ability to determine sex since their initial studies on skeletal remains, which depended on subjective assessment of skeletal robusticity to say whether someone was male or female. An understanding of physical differences in the pelvis related to childbirth, hormonal impacts on bones, and extensive comparative studies have provided anthropologists with an array of traits, such as those in the Phenice Method, to determine sex using just bones. The use of DNA to identify sex in skeletons by their 23rd chromosomes enables anthropologists to say whether infants are male or female for use in both criminal abuse cases and archaeological cases, such as in recognizing infanticide practices. Anthropologists’ ability to determine whether a skeleton is male or female is not dependent on time or culture; the same traits can be used to make a sex estimate in a forensic case in Canada, or to estimate sex in a Paleoindian dated around 11,500 years ago in Brazil. As anthropologists study more remains from more cultures and time periods, sex identification has improved, because sex differences are biologically-determined. In forensics, however, anthropologists should be (and are) working on ways to ensure that skeletal finds are identified by both biological sex and their gender identity, which is essential due to the current rise in transitioning individuals and their overrepresentation as crime victims. —Elizabeth Weiss

Note that Weiss even mentions that there may be forensic ways to identify gender identity (e.g., she mentioned the presence of “signs of plastic surgery” to me). But I suspect the assertion of the binary nature of skeletons is what eventually raised hackles,

At any rate, the symposium was still accepted and scheduled for the meetings.

2.) But then, in November, the two societies decided to deep-six the panel, and here are the reasons they gave:

Dear panelists,

We write to inform you that at the request of numerous members the respective executive boards of AAA and CASCA reviewed the panel submission “Let’s Talk about Sex Baby: Why biological sex remains a necessary analytic category in anthropology” and reached a decision to remove the session from the AAA/CASCA 2023 conference program(me). This decision was based on extensive consultation and was reached in the spirit of respect for our values, the safety and dignity of our members, and the scientific integrity of the program (me). The reason the session deserved further scrutiny was that the ideas were advanced in such a way as to cause harm to members represented by the Trans and LGBTQI of the anthropological community as well as the community at large.

While there were those who disagree with this decision, we would hope they know their voice was heard and was very much a part of the conversation. It is our hope that we continue to work together so that we become stronger and more unified within each of our associations. Going forward, we will undertake a major review of the processes

There’s a lot to say about this, but you can see the problem: the assertion of “our values” (which of course are unstated and surely not shared by all), the ritual invocation that the panel would harm “the safety and dignity of our members” (you’d have to be a fool to buy that), and the ludicrous claim that the sessions would “harm” members of the trans and LGBTQ1 anthropology community and “the community at large” (my response is “no they wouldn’t”).

This is all nonsense, of course. If scientists can’t listen to presentations like the ones accepted without being “harmed”, they need therapy, not canceled talks.  And, of course, the societies are imposing ideological standards on the community that will chill dissent: exactly what you don’t want in science.  That’s clear from the last paragraph, which implies that all symposia will be vetted in the future for political correctness.

Here we see a good example of how science is being bowdlerized via some topics being declared taboo. It’s infuriating, and the two societies should be embarrassed.

3.) In a very good defense of their symposium, the panelists wrote back to the societies; you can see their letter here.

But of course despite their good objections, the AAA and CASCA aren’t going to move.  The symposium is considered “harmful”, and so it can’t go on.

How many of these things have to happen before scientists realize that the chilling of speech, the declaring of topics taboo to both research and discuss, and the ritual invocation of “harm” to minority groups by the to-and-fro discussion inherent in science—that all of this is going to kill off science as we know it? But they don’t care, for their main concern is not the discovery of scientific truth but adherence to the current liberal and orthodox ideology.

Colin’s tweets on the fracas: