Category: deplatforming

Charles Murray returns to Middlebury College

March 11, 2020 • 1:50 pm

A bad reason to invite Charles Murray to Middlebury College is to incite violence, which is what happened when he was last invited three years ago (see several of my reports here). Although Murray wasn’t going to talk about race or intelligence then, that didn’t matter: he’s been forever deemed a racist for co-authoring The Bell Curve. (I strongly doubt that more than 1% of the protestors had ever read that book [I haven’t]; they were going on social-media outrage). During Murray’s last visit, his talk was interrupted (eventually it was livestreamed from an empty hall) and both he and his host were attacked, with the host, Allison Stanger, sustaining a neck injury and, as I recall, a concussion.  Along with other “cancel culture” incidents at Middlebury in the past few years, this has given the college somewhat of a bad reputation. It was becoming The Evergreen State College of the East.

A good reason for inviting Charles Murray is twofold: so the students can hear what he has to say, and so they can be tested to see if they’ve grown up. If the latter is the case, Middlebury’s reputation will be somewhat restored, and the students will have learned the art of peaceful protest. Or (my recommendation), they shouldn’t protest if they don’t know anything about Murray’s work, but simply ignore his talk, though that’s not so great, either. Actually, they should go to his talk and ask questions.

At any rate, Murray has been re-invited, though the College is now closed because of coronavirus. And the students and faculty are beginning to ramp up their protests, at least according to this letter to the editor (sent to the Middlebury President and her Senior Leadership Group) in the Middlebury Campus, the student newspaper. The letter is written by two named faculty as well as a lot of faculty too scared to divulge their identities (see below). Click on the screenshot to read about the protest.

The authors are a sociology professor and a film and media culture professor (humanities profs, of course: scientists don’t do this stuff). The rest of the signatories are part of the “Middlebury Faculty for an Inclusive Community” (MFIC), whose website says this:

Rather than generating a list of signatories, we offer some specific contacts for different areas of our work and representatives on relevant committees. Not all of members of our group want to identify themselves publicly, but here are many who feel comfortable doing so.

What a bunch of cowards—and they are professors! At any rate, the letter gives four reasons why Murray should not have been invited. Only one is partly valid, and another is weakly valid. The rest is bunk.

The first reason is the usual—Murray’s presence will “endanger members of our community”, “cause significant psychological stress”, and other ridiculous claims:

We believe that over the past three years, our campus has grown significantly in becoming a more inclusive, self-aware and responsive institution, that is open to frank conversations about racial and other inequities that structure our community and broader world. A lecture by an ultimately insignificant, debunked pseudo-scholar, arguing that race, class, and gender inequalities are a product of genetics rather than social systems and practices, would typically be a laughable and easy-to-ignore event. However, the presence of this particular insignificant, debunked pseudo-scholar reopens many wounds that we have worked hard to heal over the past three years.

We write to our administrative colleagues in Old Chapel seeking answers that we hope to receive in a public forum. The largest question that dogs us is, “How did you allow this to happen?” As stewards of Middlebury’s institutional culture, mission and reputation, you certainly recognize the many ways that this is a bad idea — no matter how events might play out on March 31, the event will cause many of us significant psychological distress, provoke in-fighting, generate bad publicity, potentially endanger members of our community, waste hours of time planning and stressing, and ultimately yield nothing beyond rekindled hostility. We believe you could — and should — have taken steps to stop this event from happening on the grounds that it was not in the best interest of the institution and goes directly against our core values of integrity, inclusivity and intellectual honesty. Murray’s talk seems predicated on the “pillar” of academic freedom, but also contradicts our other two pillars of integrity and respect.

I am so tired of rebutting this malarkey. First, Murray wasn’t (and probably isn’t) going to talk about the genetics of IQ and race. Ergo, you can’t censor him based on a 26-year-old book about those topics that you haven’t even read. Second, there’s the implicit and shabby claims that free speech is great BUT in this case Murray isn’t a valid scholar and is also purveying hate speech.

As for the psychological damage and stress, my advice to the students is this: DO NOT GO TO THE TALK! Is that so hard? Why torture yourself?

A more valid complaint by the writers is that only three people invited Murray to speak, and even the College Republicans, whom they represent, didn’t get a say. If that’s the case, the procedure for inviting speakers has been violated. Whether that should mandate cancellation is above my pay grade.

The third reason is that the College Handbook says that a full-time faculty or staff member must be the advisor of the inviting group. However, the advisor of the College Republicans is an “Executive in Residence,” one James Douglas—one of the inviters.. However, Douglas happens to be the former (Republican) governor of Vermont, the state where the College resides.  According to the MFIC’s letter, such a man can’t possibly have an understanding of the impact of the decision. That’s dubious, but if the College wanted to censor a speaker based on a technicality, they have this and the reason above to lean on. But those seem like lame excuses for censorship.

Finally, the letter says that Murray’s talk would require significant “security and facilities staffing”. Sadly, the College requires student organizations to “bear full responsibility for arranging and financing any Department of Public Safety Services that may be necessary in connection with controversial speakers.” That should not be the case, for it prevents groups from inviting the very speakers the students need to hear: controversial ones. Middlebury needs to ditch that rule immediately. And besides, if the College Republicans can fund security, why should the MFICers beef?

However, WHY would they need significant security? It’s because the protestors could wreak havoc and possibly attack the speaker and his supporters. This would not be an issue if the protestors were peaceful, or simply had a counter-event or didn’t go to the talk. A group should never be afraid to invite a controversial speaker because the protestors might be violent. If they are, they should be arrested or suspended. (As I recall, some of the protestors of Murray’s last talk were sanctioned by the College, but their punishment was never revealed.) And no group should be the costs of inviting a speaker, or at least the costs should be equalized among student groups.

In the end, because I don’t know Murray’s work or the topic of his prospective talk, I can’t judge the wisdom of inviting him. But it least it will be a test of whether Middlebury truly tolerates free speech, and whether the students and faculty have grown up. Judging by the letter above, they have a ways to go.

I’ll end with a comment made on the article by one writer:

 

Peter Singer deplatformed in New Zealand for his stand on euthanasia of newborns

February 19, 2020 • 9:30 am

It seems to me that an enlightened philosophy would allow people to be able to end their lives in a humane way if they’ve undergone proper medical and psychiatric vetting. Some form of this “assisted suicide” is already legal in Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Colombia, Switzerland, Victoria in Australia, and and in some states of the U.S. (California, Colorado, Washington state, Oregon, and—by court order—in Montana).

I further believe—and I’ve gotten into trouble for this—that we should also allow newborns afflicted with incurable conditions—conditions from which they will suffer and die young—to be euthanized humanely. The conditions under which I think this is not only allowable, but ethical, were first laid out in this post of mine.  I was aware at the time that philosopher Peter Singer had agreed with and defended this view, but I can’t remember whether I arrived at it independently or read it in some of his writings. No matter, for it’s a view that people need to consider, and of course Singer has defended this view far more extensively and ably than I.

For his views, Singer has undergone considerable pushback, and has been not only deplatformed, but subject to calls for his resignation from Princeton (he splits his time between Princeton and the University of Melbourne). I, too, was subject to a surprising amount of publicity, nearly all negative, for my one website post about this. On her own website Heather’s Homilies, Heather Hastie defended my views, summarizing and answering some of the pushback I got (thanks, Heather!),  I also wrote about the surprising opposition to my views here and here.

The opposition, of course, comes largely from believers, who see euthanasia of any sort as “playing God.” I swear that some of these people are Mother-Teresa-like in preferring horrible suffering to a merciful end. After all, Jesus suffered! (That was Mother Teresa’s excuse.)

But others object because they see the euthanasia argument as a slippery slope, leading to scenarios in which we can do away with Grandma in the nursing home simply by signing a paper. It doesn’t work like that, of course, as the states and countries who allow adult euthanasia have strict regulations. And euthanizing newborns with horrible and fatal conditions, like anencephaly, is even more unacceptable. Even though such infants are doomed, there’s something about them having been born that makes the prospect of euthanasia especially appalling to people. Of course I agree that strict procedures, including the agreement of doctors and parents, are essential here, but since these infants will die I see no credible objection to letting them have a peaceful death.

Against the strong negative publicity and many emails I got saying I’m a latter-day Satan (I also got emails from some handicapped people accusing me of wanting to deprive them of life), I received several letters from nurses and doctors who, having seen infants suffer and die, agreed with me. But these people, understandably, don’t want their views made public. I stand by what I said, and Singer stands by what he said. The man is clearly no monster, as his books and papers on ethics are extremely humane. And he walks the walk, giving away lots of his own income to the poor. (I should add that Singer is a recipient of the honor of Companion of the Order of Australia, that country’s highest civilian honor.)

Singer has been deplatformed for his views on infant euthanasia (see here, for instance). And, according to the Newshub article below (click on screenshot, and see a similar piece in Think, Inc.), now a country that’s supposed to be extremely liberal and enlightened, New Zealand, has deplatformed him as well. Singer had a contract to speak at SkyCity in Auckland in June, but the venue canceled his contract.  And this was also due to his views on euthanasia.

Although Think, Inc. says that the Auckand incident shows that Singer “has been de-platformed for the first time in his 50-year career”, that’s not really true. Singer was disinvited from a philosophy meeting in Germany and also effectively deplatformed at the University of Victoria in British Columbia when shouting students made his talk inaudible. Those disruptions were also for his views on euthanasia of newborns, although Singer’s talk in Canada was about effective altruism, not euthanasia.

Anyway, the New Zealand story is here:

 

A quote from the piece above:

Singer, a philosopher who has been recognised both as the Australian Humanist of the Year and the most dangerous person in the world, was scheduled to appear at the Auckland central venue on June 14 for ‘An Evening with Peter Singer’.

However, the figure now says the event had been cancelled by SkyCity after a “news article attacking” his view that it may be ethical for parents to choose euthanasia for severely disabled newborn infants.

“We decided that yes it was a reasonable decision for parents and doctors to make that it was better that infants with this condition should not live,” he has said.

On Saturday, Newshub reported that the New Zealand disabled community was frustrated by his appearance. Dr Huhana Hickey, who has used a wheelchair since 1996 and was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2010, said he wasn’t an expert in disability.

Do you have to be an expert in disability to know when a childhood condition or deformity is invariably fatal and causes suffering

Even Singer says it was the first time he was deplatformed, which mystifies me. But never mind. His contract was canceled because of a “free speech but. . ” argument (my emphasis below):

A statement from Singer on Wednesday said that this was the first time he had been “de-platformed” in his 50-year career.

“It’s extraordinary that Skycity should cancel my speaking engagement on the basis of a newspaper article without contacting either me or the organiser of my speaking tour to check the facts on which it appears to be basing the cancellation,” Singer said.

“I have been welcomed as a speaker in New Zealand on many occasions and spent an enjoyable month as an Erskine Fellow at the University of Canterbury more than 20 years ago. If New Zealand has become less tolerant of controversial views since then, that’s a matter for deep regret.”

A SkyCity spokesperson told Newshub: “Following concerns raised by the public and local media, SkyCity has cancelled the venue hire agreement for ‘An Evening with Peter Singer’.

“Whilst SkyCity supports the right of free speech, some of the themes promoted by this speaker do not reflect our values of diversity and inclusivity.”

Is it “inclusive” to allow children born with only part of a brain, or a brain outside the skull—children doomed to die within days or weeks—to suffer before their deaths? For that is what this is all about. In fact, in September Kiwi citizens will have a referendum on the legalization of voluntary euthanasia for adults with less than six months to live.  At a time when they’re debating this, it is not only proper but essential to discuss the euthanasia of doomed newborns, who suffer but cannot give consent. As Wikipedia notes, “A poll in July 2019 found that 72% of the [New Zealand] public supported some kind of assisted dying for the terminally ill. Support over the past 20 years has averaged around 68%.” Why must the “terminally ill” include only adults?

In such a climate, it’s unconscionable to deplatform somebody for his views, especially when it’s not even clear that his “evening with Peter Singer” was going to touch on this subject. As the report notes above, nobody checked with Singer before canceling his contect.

Promoters of the talk are looking for a new venue, and I’ll report back if they find one.

Finally, here’s cartoon from Heather’s post, underscoring the futility of religion when it comes to helping the afflicted:

h/t: Paul

Stanford students walk out of talk about whether repealing DACA is legal

February 13, 2020 • 9:15 am

The episode I’ll discuss this morning doesn’t really constitute deplatforming, since the speaker got to speak. It’s not disinvitation, either, as the speaker spoke and his invitation wasn’t rescinded. Nor is it “censorship” in the formal sense because nobody prevented the speaker from speaking. So let’s call it “disruption of a talk”, which is nearly as bad because it prevented people from hearing a speaker whose views contravened those of Left-wing students. Well, it’s not even that since the speaker in this case, Texas Solicitor General Kyle Hawkins, was supposed to be presenting both sides of the argument for whether DACA (the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy) was legal.

A wee bit of background: DACA offers those who came to the United States illegally as children a path to getting a work permit, though not citizenship. (The latter is the purview of the DREAM Act, which has never been passed.) DACA was established by President Obama in 2012, and its remit expanded two years later. Texas and 25 other states sued the government to block the expansion, a federal judge agreed, and an appeal to the Supreme Court gave a divided verdict (4-4) which meant the lower-court ruling stood.

That meant that although the expansion of DACA was blocked, and still is, the original DACA remains in force. Republicans oppose DACA in general, but I’m in favor of it as it’s a reasonable way to deal with those who came to the U.S. as minors and has had beneficial effects on the well-being of immigrants.

But the original and still-in-force DACA is still the subject of legal dispute, hinging on whether Obama had the executive power to create such a program that may really be the purview of Congress. One judge (in Texas) ruled in 2018 that the program is “probably illegal” but left it in place pending further litigation.

The upshot is that there’s a debate about the legality of DACA and whether a President has the power to institute it; and the lawsuits are ongoing.

This report, from the student newspaper The Stanford Daily, gives details about how Hawkins’s talk, which was supposed to give both sides of the issue, was disrupted by students (click on screenshot):

The nature of the disruption was twofold. First, a large number of students showed up, requiring the talk to be moved to a bigger room. They were also holding up posters, which I see as disruptive (it disrupts the speaker and blocks audience view.) When the audience was moved, and after Hawkins’s talk began, three-quarters of the students walked out, which also denied those who wanted to hear the talk, but couldn’t get in, a chance to listen. The walkout was organized by the Stanford Latinx Law Student organization in conjunction with 11 other student groups. (The walk-outs of course didn’t hear the talk either.)

It seems clear that (although Hawkins is probably opposed to DACA, he did give some arguments on both sides, presumably because they couldn’t find a professor to debate with him. From the paper:

Initially speaking before a packed room of students holding posters reading “No human being is illegal” or “Everyone is welcome here,” Hawkins prefaced his talk by saying that, since there was no planned rebuttal for the event, he would be arguing both sides.

But Hawkins’ track record aligns him with DACA’s legal opponents, and he spent the majority of his lecture explaining the substantive and procedural ways Trump could repeal DACA — emphasizing that he was making a purely legal argument.

“[Trump’s motion] did not say DACA is a bad policy,” he said. “It did not say that DACA was unworkable. … It just says that DACA is unlawful.”

Sidestepping questions of the value and impact of DACA, however, was exactly what those who walked out opposed.

“Purely legalistic discussions of DACA ignore the human element, which must be front and center,” SLLSA and the other groups wrote in a joint statement. “We cannot afford to disregard the presence and importance of DREAMers in all places, including here at SLS.”

But apparently Hawkins did argue both sides, though perhaps not with equal vehemence:

“DACA is unlawful for the same reason that DAPA was unlawful, according to the fifth circuit,” Hawkins said.

The arguments against DACA assert that former President Barack Obama did not have the power to institute the measure in the first place. DACA “confers on someone a status Congress would otherwise deny,” Hawkins said, including work authorization and lawful presence.

Pivoting to a pro-DACA legal argument, Hawkins said that the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) grants the executive branch some leeway in enacting the U.S.’s body of immigration law.

“What the folks on the right need to grapple with is that the executive has discretion in enforcing the terms of the INA,” he said.

Well, DREAMers aren’t yet in existence, and DACA’s legality is still under debate, so one would think that, given the pending litigation, a discussion of its legality would be of interest. In other words, let the damn speaker talk!

But the students didn’t consider the issue even worth debating. A few excerpts show that view, including the claim above that the lecture was on an “intellectually cheap and morally affronting topic.” “Morally affronting topics” are, however, precisely those that are most crucial to debate! Here’s a student whining about how the talk was inappropriate:

Some who walked out of the event felt DACA’s legality isn’t even a question at all.

“It’s incredibly unfair that my fellow students have to face these extra burdens and then be reminded of them in school,” first-year law student Zoe Packman said. “We shouldn’t be discussing the legality of our student population. It’s not a valid question, there is no question there.”

Yes it is a valid question. Even if I hold, as I do, the position that DACA should be in place; I have no idea whether it’s legal. (The Congress could make it legal, but fat chance of that with a Republican Senate!) I have no sympathy for students like Packman who take it upon themselves to be The Deciders—to pronounce on what questions shouldn’t even be discussed at their school.

The Federalist Society, which sponsored the talk, said that they’d invited 11 professors to give a rebuttal to Hawkins’s talk, but none agreed. The protestors said that this was an inadequate “effort.” Well, for crying out loud, why didn’t they organize their own counter-discussion? (Apparently there was to be no Q&A after Hawkins’s talk.) I guess they can’t be arsed to do that kind of work. Instead, they just assert that debating the legality of DACA is not a valid question.

These are Stanford students, probably from both the Law School and the undergraduate school, and they are among the intellectual elite of America. Yet they’re extraordinarily censorious, and even afraid of hearing certain arguments. One would think that law students, at least, would appreciate the First Amendment. Yes, Stanford is a private school, but the arguments for freedom of speech still obtain. But they haven’t penetrated the crania of many Stanford students.

 

Vanderbilt students protest Steve Pinker’s appearance because of his “ties” to Jeffrey Epstein

December 3, 2019 • 10:45 am

From the Vanderbilt Hustler, the student newspaper of that Nashville, Tennessee university, we learn that the demonized people subject to being deplatformed by the Left is—you guessed it—Steve Pinker. Read the article below, which describes a petition the students are putting together demanding that Pinker get booted from an upcoming panel on global issues. The reason is given in the sub-headline: Pinker’s “history of ties to Jeffrey Epstein.”


To be sure, there are only about 120 signatures on the petition, and the chances that it will work seem quite low. What’s important is that Pinker is increasingly regarded by the woke as ideologically polluted, regardless of the value of his books and works, because he had a tangential connection with Epstein—a connection that doesn’t implicate Pinker in any misconduct, sexual or otherwise.

Here’s a small excerpt from the Vanderbilt piece:

Junior Edie Duncan started a petition Nov. 25 to protest the upcoming Chancellor’s Lectures Series event that hosts cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker for his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein.

As of Sunday, Dec. 1, the petition had garnered around 120 signatures. Duncan said a faculty member approached her and suggested that she should spread the word because they thought Vanderbilt administration would listen to students more than a faculty member. [JAC: I wonder who that faculty member is, and why he/she remain anonymous.]

Pinker, a Harvard professor, is scheduled to be featured in a panel event Dec. 3 alongside journalist Carl Zimmer and Vanderbilt professor and author Amanda Little. The panel is set to be moderated by political science professor Jon Meacham. The topic of the panel is “2020 and Beyond: Tackling Global Issues in the Decades to Come.”

The petition goes on to indict Pinker for flying on Epstein’s plane and being photographed next to him, and mentions some construals of legal language that Pinker gave to his friend Alan Dershowitz, who was on Epstein’s defense team:

The petition against Pinker reads: “He has appeared in Epstein’s flight logs among other prominent figures, the same flight that would travel to places across the world, including the island where Epstein allegedly hosted a sex-trafficking ring involving minors. Pinker was also photographed with Epstein in 2014, well after Epstein received his sentence and became a notorious sex offender.”

It also discusses allegations that Pinker gave Epstein advice on how to manipulate the language of a law regarding usage of the internet to lure minors across state lines for sexual abuse, which Epstein was accused of violating in 2006.

The petition acknowledges that Pinker denies association with Epstein but states that the connection cannot be dismissed as a coincidence in good conscience.

“A truly upstanding individual would not agree to manipulate language to downplay the laws surrounding prostitution of minors, and would not casually end up in a photograph with a convicted sex offender years later,” the petition reads.

. . . “My main point is that these connections are too much to be coincidental,” Duncan said. “The theme of the lecture series is ‘caring and respect’ – someone that we look up to for those values would not have coincidentally been involved like this with such a notorious sex offender as Jeffrey Epstein. True role models needs to be intentional about their actions.”

Too much to be coincidental? Is Duncan then implying that Pinker somehow overlooks or excuses Epstein’s behavior, or is a raging misogynist? What we see here is a complete lack of understanding of, and forgiveness for, the only action of Pinker that could possibly be faulted: helping Dershowitz with Epstein’s defense.

But I too am guilty in that way, for I was on O. J. Simpson’s defense team when he was tried for murdering Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. (I helped analyze the DNA evidence against Simpson.) In fact, I surely did at least as much for Simpson as Pinker did for Epstein.

Now Simpson was found not guilty, but I believe he was indeed the murderer. I helped because I wanted to ensure that the government could not use shoddy DNA evidence to convict somebody, even if that somebody was a famous person accused of an egregious crime. And of course Simpson later was found culpable in a civil trial, and, even later, went to jail for nine years for, among other crimes, armed robbery. Simpson is not someone you’d want to associate with.

But I did, in the same way Pinker did with Epstein, though I never met O. J. nor was photographed with him. I therefore tell people, “If you’re going to incriminate Pinker because he helped in a small way with Epstein’s defense, please incriminate and deplatform me as well because I helped in a larger way with O. J. Simpson’s defense.” Well, do it! I’m waiting for my first deplatforming!

In fact, Pinker explained his association with Epstein in a July 12 post on this website. Read it for yourself; here’s an excerpt:

The annoying irony is that I could never stand the guy, never took research funding from him, and always tried to keep my distance. Friends and colleagues described him to me as a quantitative genius and a scientific sophisticate, and they invited me to salons and coffee klatches at which he held court. But I found him to be a kibitzer and a dilettante — he would abruptly change the subject ADD style, dismiss an observation with an adolescent wisecrack, and privilege his own intuitions over systematic data. I think the dislike was mutual—according to a friend, he “voted me off the island,” presumably because he was sick of me trying to keep the conversation on track and correcting him when he shot off his mouth on topics he knew nothing about. But Epstein had insinuated himself with so many people I intersected with (Alan Dershowitz, Martin Nowak, John Brockman, Steve Kosslyn, Lawrence Krauss) and so many institutions he helped fund (Harvard’s Program in Evolutionary Dynamics, ASU’s Origins Project, even Harvard Hillel) that I often ended up at the same place with him. (Most of these gatherings were prior to the revelation of his sex crimes, such as the 2002 plane trip to TED with Dawkins, Dennett, the Brockmans, and others, but Krauss’s Origins Project Meeting came after he served his sentence.) Since I was often the most recognizable person in the room, someone would snap a picture; some of them resurfaced this past week, circulated by people who disagree with me on various topics and apparently believe that the photos are effective arguments.

(Here’s one of the photos, which is included in the Vanderbilt petition, designed to provoke a feeling of guilt by association. Pinker explained it above.

A bit more from Steve’s statement:

In the interests of full disclosure, there was another connection. Alan Dershowitz and I are friends and colleagues, and we taught a course together at Harvard. He often asks me questions about syntax and semantics of laws, most recently the impeachment statute. While he was representing Epstein, he asked me about the natural interpretation of one of the relevant laws, and I offered my opinion; this was cited in a court document. I did it as a favor to a friend and colleague, not as a paid expert witness, but I now regret that I did so. And needless to say I find Epstein’s behavior reprehensible.

So there’s an apology for helping in a small way with Epstein’s defense, and that’s hardly “manipulating the language of a law”—it’s interpreting the language of a law.

What we see here is a group of students so unforgiving, so bent on punishing those who have violated their impossibly difficult standards of purity, that they must deplatform someone who’s already satisfactorily (to me) explained his “association” with Epstein and who’s added he regrets helping Dershowitz.  The overweening message of the Vanderbilt action is that Social Justice Warriors—and I mean by that people who pretend to effect social justice but only pound a keyboard and flaunt their virtue—lack the nuance to discriminate between enablers of Epstein’s behavior and Pinker’s far more innocuous behavior. These people are authoritarians, and that’s why I call this the Authoritarian Left.

What do they hope to accomplish by keeping Pinker off the panel?

h/t: Michael

My alma mater disinvites Ralph Northam

February 5, 2019 • 2:15 pm

Well this is a bit disturbing: reader Woody wrote me that my own alma mater, The College of William and Mary, has disinvited Virginia Governor Ralph Northam from speaking after accusations that he appeared in a picture showing a Klan member and a white person in blackface. Yahoo News reports, apparently from the National Review (click on screenshot):

Virginia governor Ralph Northam’s previously scheduled speaking appearance at the College of William and Mary’s charter day and inauguration ceremony on Friday has been cancelled, the university announced Monday.

Northam, a Democrat, came under fire on Friday after it was revealed that his 1984 Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook page featured an image of two men, one in blackface and the other in a Ku Klux Klan uniform.

“That behavior has no place in civil society – not 35 years ago, not today. It stands in stark opposition to William & Mary’s core values of equity and inclusion, which sustain our mission of learning, teaching, and research,” College president Katherine Rowe said of the photo in a Monday statement.

Rowe, who was sworn in to her position by Northam in 2017, went on to praise the governor for serving as a “a welcoming ambassador for the Commonwealth,” but said his appearance would disrupt Friday’s proceedings.

“Under the circumstances, it has become clear that the Governor’s presence would fundamentally disrupt the sense of campus unity we aspire to and hope for with this event,” she wrote.

Now Northam denies he was in that picture, or even knew about it. I don’t really believe him, but even if he did, I’m not at all sure whether we should hold such youthful bigotry against him if he’s behaved in exemplary ways since then. I don’t think so, but it’s clear that as Governor, Northam is toast. He’s been neutered as an effective Governor, and will, I think, step down within about four days. And his waffling about the incident has been disturbing.

Even so, unless he’s been proven to be a bigot, the address should not have been canceled. President Rowe is assuming that Northam did indeed appear in that picture, and she’s also saying that he’s still responsible for that bigotry 35 years on.

She’s also saying that Northam would “disrupt Friday’s proceedings.” No, he wouldn’t. It would be other people who would disrupt those proceedings, and they shouldn’t be allowed to. When W&M students shouted down the Virginia ACLU director in 2017, I wrote to the then President in anger, and was told that it wouldn’t happen again. But President Reveley resigned and now we have President Rowe, and she’s blaming any disruption on the speaker. I am not down with that, and am dragging and throwing shade on the new President.

 

Rutgers pretends it didn’t deplatform a journalist accused of “Isamophobia”, but says it was a “postponement” and yay for free speech

October 18, 2018 • 11:30 am

Lisa Daftari is a journalist who is a Jew of Iranian descent, and, well, I’ll give the Wikipedia data to show she’s a credible person to speak at a university:

Lisa Daftari is an investigative journalist focusing on foreign affairs with a focus on the Middle East and counterterrorism. She regularly appears on television and radio with commentary and analysis, providing exclusive reporting on vital developments in the region. Currently, she is an on-air Fox News political analyst and has previously been featured on CBS, NBC, PBS, the Washington Post, NPR, ABC, Voice of America, and others. Lisa also serves as founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Foreign Desk, an international news and U.S. foreign policy news website.

Should somebody like this be deplatformed or banned from speaking? Well, Rutgers University thought so. As I reported a short while back, Daftari was invited by the University to speak, but they then canceled her appearance because of her supposed “Islamophobia”. As Mediaite reported then:

Fox News contributor Lisa Daftari had a speaking engagement cancelled on her by Rutgers University.

Daftari, a Middle East and counterterrorism analyst who was a graduate from Rutgers and an Iranian Jew, was scheduled to speak on “Radicalism on College Campuses,” which would put focus on free speech on college campuses.

However, a student-led petition accused her of Islamophobia, citing this remark she said to the Heritage Foundation as a “small sample of harmful rhetoric.”

“Islamic terror takes its guidance and teachings from the Quran, which is Sharia law.”

Actually, her quote was this, which isn’t quite the same;

“Islamic terror, as we know, claims to take its teachings and its guidance from the Quran, which is Sharia law.”

Proof? Here’s the recording:

Regardless, the quote happens to be true, and is critical of Islamic terrorism, not Muslims or even Islam in general. And despite that, Rutgers gave Daftari the boot.

Later on, Rutgers issued a statement saying they “postponed” her visit (without giving a reason, which of course was because there was student pushback), and making lip-service noises to free speech. But it wasn’t a postponement in the first place; it was a cancellation, pure and simple:

See Daftari’s claim on Fox News that she was told by Rutgers it would be called a “postponement” for public relations reasons, but really was a cancellation.

After reading Rutgers’s weaselly statement, I wrote to both the President of Rutgers and its director of public relations objecting to this deplatforming (you can see my letter here), and heard back from both offices. Their letters were nearly identical, and neither admitted that they disinvited Daftari, a graduate of Rutgers. You can see the musteline responses below.

Dear Professor Coyne,

Thank you for your message about the postponement of the Rutgers–New Brunswick event organized by Undergraduate Academic Affairs at which alumna Lisa Daftari was to speak.  We appreciate having your viewpoint on this matter.  As you may have learned, the University has written to Ms. Daftari in the hope of rescheduling the event and has proposed several possible dates for her to come to campus in November.  We are also aware that student groups at Rutgers may have also invited her to speak on campus.

We welcome the free exchange of ideas and hope that Ms. Daftari will ultimately agree to speak on one of the proposed new dates, or on another mutually agreeable date, if her schedule permits.  Please see below for Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Academic Affairs Ben Sifuentes-Jáuregui’s invitation to Ms. Daftari, which was sent early Monday afternoon.

Sincerely,
Michael Meagher
Office of the President

And here’s the letter they enclosed which they sent to Daftari:

Dear Lisa:

I want to write to clear up any confusion regarding your invitation to speak at the University.  To the degree that I may have contributed to the confusion, I hope you will accept my apology.

Please know that Rutgers values the free and open exchange of all viewpoints and that you are welcome to speak here.  I understand, in fact, that you may have been invited by student groups to speak at the University as well as the event that was scheduled for tomorrow night.

With respect to rescheduling the event sponsored by Undergraduate Academic Affairs, I would like to propose the following dates for an appearance at the Rutgers New Brunswick campus:

  • Wednesday, November 14
  • Monday, November 19
  • Monday, November 26
  • Wednesday, November 28

I am certain that in the course of your comments and follow-up questions from our students, your views will be fully articulated and will generate respectful and vigorous discussion both by those who agree and those who disagree with those views.

Our position on the free exchange of ideas is clear; the ability to respectfully present, discuss and debate matters in the public interest is at the heart of what every great university does.  Such free and respectful discussion is fundamental to Rutgers’ core values and is practiced every day at Rutgers.

Please let me know if any of these dates can be accommodated in your schedule.

Sincerely,

Ben

Daftari didn’t take this lying down, but responded in an article in the Jewish Journal (click on the screenshot to read it). She also notes that the University refuses to admit it canceled her event.

An excerpt from the article:

In a text message to the Journal, Daftari called the timing of Sifuentes-Jáuregui’s email “curious” and that it “only further supports the truth of what happened. She sent the Journal her response to his email “since the university felt it necessary to share our correspondence publicly without my knowledge.”

“With all due respect, in all our previous correspondence and communication, it was clear that the university unilaterally decided to cancel the event,” Daftari wrote to Sifuentes-Jáuregui. “To come back after the damage has been done to my reputation and suggest that this was some misunderstanding and to continue with the premise that the event was merely postponed, lacks the integrity and respect that I would have hoped from my alma mater.”

Daftari said, “Just as the university was sensitive to the concerns of a group of students who slandered my good name based on falsified quotes, I would hope that the university would now demonstrate the same level of consideration as we move on.”

I’ve written back to the President and office of public affairs, asking them to be straight with me and tell me whether or not they disinvited Daftari, and why. Needless to say, I didn’t get a response.

Put Rutgers in the “censorious university” column.

Lisa Daftari

 

Bard College President has a genius response to snowflake professors beefing about a right-wing speaker

November 1, 2017 • 1:30 pm

Yes, the title is HuffPoe-ian clickbait, but I couldn’t resist.

A big group of 56 Offended Academics, all of course in the humanities, wrote an open letter in the Chronicle of Higher Education, objecting to the appearance of a far-right-wing German politician at a conference on “Crises of Democracy” at Bard College in New York (Steely Dan fans will recognize Bard from the song “My Old School”). Their beef was that the appearance of a right-wing, anti-immigrant speaker would lend legitimacy and patina to that speaker by giving him a spot at a prestigious conference at a prestigious think tank. (I recognize only one of the letter’s signatories, all professors or students at good schools: the execrable, long-winded, and obscurantist Judith Butler at Berkeley.)

The huffy letter, addressed to both Roger Berkowitz, Director of the Hannah Arendt Center and Leon Botstein, President of Bard College, begins as follows (my emphases):

We are writing to make clear our objections to the invited talk given by the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) politician Marc Jongen during the 2017 Annual Conference of the Hannah Arendt Center, “Crises of Democracy: Thinking in Dark Times” (October 12-13, 2017) (program) as well as your subsequent defense of that invitation. We believe that Jongen’s participation in the conference, regardless of the organizers’ intentions, enabled him to leverage Hannah Arendt’s legacy to legitimize and normalize the AfD’s far-right ideology. The leadership of the Hannah Arendt Center and of Bard College has so far disregarded pressing questions of personal and institutional responsibility arising from this legitimation and normalization. This disregard is particularly troubling given that Hannah Arendt was a German-Jewish refugee who fled National Socialism and wrote powerfully about the plight of the stateless and the special dangers posed by race-based ideologies.

A few more statements from their Big Beef:

. . . We agree with Professor Berkowitz that there is a need to engage with a wide range of political views, including illiberal and even neofascist ones. We also believe, however, that organizers of highly publicized events have crucial responsibilities when the speaker makes statements that vilify already vulnerable groups. [JAC: The groups are immigrants, refugees, and Muslims.]

. . . Accordingly, the center lent its institutional legitimacy and communicative power to Jongen’s statements.What remains to be taken into account by the organizers is how this online content serves the interests of far-right propagandists.

. . . Jongen and the AfD have significant institutional representation in the Bundestag. They have no difficulty finding public outlets to express their opinions. But the underprivileged and terrorized groups whom Jongen and the AfD regularly attack have no such power or privilege. [JAC: Well, not precisely true, as there are many people, including these 56 big names, who give them a voice.]

. . . Arendt’s name and the center’s reputation have now been used to legitimize the AfD’s far-right politics. That is a direct threat to the plurality the Arendt Center says it wants to promote and defend. Unfortunately, the statements of Professor Berkowitz and Professor Botstein fail to address such dangers of legitimation and include no discussion of the concrete steps, if any, they will take to mitigate the damage that has been done.

Note the call for repentance and damage mitigation. Here again we have the Cultural Revolution being enacted in our time. What do they want: for Berkowitz and Botstein to put on paper cone hats and sit in shame with signs around their necks reading, “We invited Marc Jongen to our conference”?

A week ago, Bard President Leon Botstein responded, also in the Chronicle, in no uncertain terms. He wrote what the censorious professors need to hear, and I give the entire response (my emphasies):

I read with some sadness the open letter to the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities and Bard College, signed by a stellar cast of distinguished colleagues. The number and quality of the signatories are impressive. But that does not make the argument in the letter right. I am afraid therefore that we will have to agree to disagree.

The invitation by an academic center on a college campus, even one named for a distinguished individual, does not constitute either legitimation or endorsement. Right-wing and neo-fascist parties are a reality of modern political life. We cannot pretend they do not exist. We need to hear what their representatives claim directly so that they can be properly challenged. In this case, the speech was followed by a response from Ian Buruma, a preeminent intellectual and scholar, a longtime member of the Bard faculty, and now editor of The New York Review of Books. The event was part of a two-day conference featuring over 25 esteemed speakers on the crisis facing liberal democracies. The speaker was not presented in any context of endorsement or legitimation.

Neither Bard nor Roger Berkowitz, director of the Arendt center, needs to apologize or issue a denunciation. The accusation of an implied endorsement is actually an insult, given the public record of the college, the Arendt center, and the published public record of both Roger Berkowitz and myself. The self-righteous stance of the signatories and the moral condemnation in the letter do, sadly, bear a family resemblance to the public denouncements of the Soviet era by party committees in the arts that put terror in the hearts of young musicians and writers, and deterred them from speaking and acting against a group consensus.

The issues here are the survival of open debate and of academic censorship. I do not need to be reminded by this open letter of the horrors of fascism and right-wing xenophobia, any more than would Hannah Arendt. I was a child immigrant to the United States in a Polish-Russian, stateless family. My father was the only survivor on his side, and two uncles perished in the Warsaw Ghetto. The lesson I learned growing up, which was reinforced by Arendt in her role as a teacher, is that freedom is a political category and that it is incumbent on colleges to protect it. Allowing the expression, in a public discussion forum, of views and positions that we find reprehensible is a necessary part of the exercise of freedom in the public realm. This is particularly true in the academy.

I am therefore, much as Hannah Arendt might have been, disappointed but honored by the chorus of well-credentialed critics.

I find it amusing that Botstein mentions the “stellar cast” and “chorus of well-credentialed critics,” for of course one’s status doesn’t make one’s arguments right. To steal from yet another rock song, one by Dire Straits, I’d say about Botstein’s answer, “That’s the way you do it.”

As far as “damage,” well, author Francine Prose teaches at Bard, and several members of her literature class went to hear Jongen’s speech (and challenges to it) the morning before the class discussed some literature on the Holocaust (that included Primo Levi’s superb book Survival in Auschwitz). Writing about it in the Guardian, Prose adamantly claims that going to that talk was a valuable lesson for her students:

None [of the students] believed that Jongen’s presence had legitimized his ideas; he hadn’t been awarded an honorary degree. Being invited to address a conference at a college, they agreed, was not like being asked to speak at a public rally. They were proud to be associated with a school that trusted their ability to weigh unpopular ideas, an institution brave enough to invite Jongen: an educational institution. They felt that hearing Jongen had been part of their education.

It was. Seeing Jongen made them realize that the past is not the past (as Jongen insists) but the present as well, that the evil espoused by Hitler and carried out by Stangl did not die with them.

Gessen writes that “what Jongen said has been heard before, and could have been discussed in his absence”. I disagree.

I could have assigned my class to read about far-right ideology, or to watch a video, but it wouldn’t have been the same. It would not have had the effect of seeing Marc Jongen (as it were, in the flesh) and realizing that men of that sort are not all dead and gone, but remain a living, pernicious force in the world that my students are about to inherit.

Those students are smarter than all those big name professors put together!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, and comrades, is why all those huffy professors, despite flaunting their credentials, are deeply misguided. I once again repeat what John Stuart Mill said in 1859: unless each generation hears and discusses the offensive arguments of the previous generation, they’ll forget not only those arguments, but also how to refute them.

h/t: Randy