Are you for free speech or against it? Where is the line drawn?
These are hard questions to answer, especially in the manner they were "asked." And it's probably not exclusively up to Gay to decide & answer them.
These are hard questions to answer, especially in the manner they were "asked." And it's probably not exclusively up to Gay to decide & answer them.
If i'm wrong however and people really are allowed to say absolutely anything they want, then it would have been a very simple statement to make "we are free speech absolutists, we believe people shouldn't be punished for what they say, no matter how offensive it is, only for what they do". In which case i would have been 100% supporting her.
The problem is the pro-Israeli right was out to "scalp" Gay (Christopher Rufo said exactly that). Her testimony was bad, but largely because she was not being asked questions in good faith.
It's nobody's fault but Rufo's opponents if an Ivy League university administrator somehow becomes a cause celebre and a major 'L' for the left. He's a gigantic troll and there is no reason to empower him.
There's no reason to concede the culture war framing in the comment you responded to. We have in fact extraordinarily clear evidence that Gay engaged repeatedly in (perhaps minor, perhaps major) instances of plagiarism. Nobody has a divine mandate to serve as Harvard president; no cause depends on a particular person holding that role; no great injustice can be done by someone losing it who has, for whatever reason, become a liability to the institution. Claudine Gay will be fine. Someone else will be Harvard president.
If she wanted to be vague or super careful it should gave been on the following questions, not on that one. The least one can say is that she's not very smart.
The only reason people say “All Lives Matter” as a response to “Black Lives Matter” is to void or nullify the latter statement, and as such a very obvious dog whistle for something which is hate speech.
That said, I stand by what I said that most of the time it is being used in the latter case. Wikipedia has an article about the latter case, not the former. Searching the term in any search engine will have you scroll very far down before you see it outside the context of BLM.
Wikipedia seems to agree with my assessment:
> All Lives Matter is a slogan that was created as a negative response to the Black Lives Matter movement. It is a conservative rejection of the acknowledgement of police brutality and ethnic violence that is the purpose of the Black Lives Matter movement.
> "From the river to the sea" (Arabic: من النهر إلى البحر, romanized: min an-nahr ʾilā l-baḥr; Palestinian Arabic: من المية للمية, romanized: min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye, lit. 'from the water to the water') is a political slogan that refers geographically to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an area described as Palestine, which today includes Israel and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
> Palestinian progressives use the phrase to call for a united democracy over the whole territory while others say "it's a call for peace and equality after ... decades-long, open-ended Israeli military rule over millions of Palestinians."
Even the Hamas charter is pretty explicit about what it means (where the context is obvious):
> Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea [...] along the lines of the 4th of June 1967
>> "From the river to the sea" (Arabic: من النهر إلى البحر, romanized: min an-nahr ʾilā l-baḥr; Palestinian Arabic: من المية للمية, romanized: min il-ṃayye la-l-ṃayye, lit. 'from the water to the water') is a political slogan that refers geographically to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, an area described as Palestine, which today includes Israel and the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories, including the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
I can think of opposite interpretations of both examples. For instance, "all lives matter" is to be taken literally to be an inclusive declaration of equal treatment under the law, or "from the river to the sea" calls for ejection of jews from region. How do you arbitrate between them, without relying on an authority like wikipedia?
They mean something different, so they say something different, and keep refuting loudly and repeatedly the baseless accusations of antisemitism lobbed at them by those who want to silence their message by policing the language used to communicate it.
Yes it is. Lots of people in the current wave of demonstrations have been using the Arabic version.
The difference here is that those are all pretty young students, and have no control over any policy, while Netanyahu is the Prime minister of a country at trial for Genocide.
And while this variation of the phrase is definitely nationalistic, in the context of Palestine being colonized by a non-arab population it is probably more in line with “Colonizers go home” as opposed “No Jews allowed”, after all there are Jewish Arabs too.
And finally these very same protesters were sprayed with skunk water at the very same demonstration[1]. That really shows how the powerdynamic actually aligns and who is actually at risk.
[1]: https://twitter.com/ColumbiaSJP/status/1748729253770698944
Colonized? Jews are the indigenous people of the region. Arabs are the colonizers.
> there are Jewish Arabs too.
Not any who identify as Jewish Arabs, no: https://k-larevue.com/en/arab-jews-another-arab-denial/, https://www.jimena.org/who-is-an-arab-jew/
Have you ever heard Arabic speakers at a demonstration chant “فلسطين عربية” or “فلسطين إسلامية”?
What you did was open my own wikipedia source, scroll down to the Variations section and found this old variation there.
However if you open the original source[1] which claimed this historic use of the slogan, it specifically states that some people remember it being this way during the first intifada (1987-1993). This same source also says:
> It is true that a state of Palestine would entail the end of Israel as a Jewish ethnic-national state. But as many Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals (and others) have noted: replacing Israel with a Palestinian state need not result in genocide or the ethnic cleansing of Jews.
This article also raises an important point:
> If one of our goals is to move Jewish American audiences, we need to recognize that the Israeli state and its allies have found it easy to weaponize this particular slogan in order to incite fear among Jews.
I recommend you read this article, it is quite brilliant.
1: https://mondoweiss.net/2023/11/on-the-history-meaning-and-po...
Yes, during the current wave of violence and demonstrations.
> Friends and activists I have asked remember this phrase being used during the Oslo era, when it was adapted and developed as part of a critique of and complaint against a Palestinian leadership from Tunis that surrendered claims over historic Palestine. At some point, the phrase became the rhyming couplet that it is today: “Min al-nahr ila al-bahr / Filastin satatharrar” (“from the river to the sea / Palestine will be free”). It is this version—with its focus on freedom—that has circulated within English-language solidarity culture from at least the 1990s.
> For instance, some variants promote an Arab nationalist frame (“Palestine is Arab”), and others propose an Islamist frame (“Palestine is Islamic”). In contrast, the current version [emphasis mine] (“Palestine will be free”) expresses an open-ended but emphatic aspiration for liberation—this has allowed it to resonate with other freedom struggles.
Now I did find material for the Arab nationalist variation, including a rather catchy protest song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ldX9UEVJo0g). I don’t speak arabic so it is possible that the older variation is still used and discussed on the arabic speaking web, however I’m not finding it at all on the English speaking web, I can only find it being discussed in the historical context.
In Harvard's case yes. They have an appalling record of trying to suppress views they don't like for students, speakers, and staff. https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...
It’s even more ludicrous considering that the people attempting to push the question dishonestly are the same ones who like to cry about free speech on Twitter, a private platform, while saying free speech should be curbed if it’s objectionable in this case at a university that takes public funding.
How do you know they are the same people?
The other example you gave is free speech, because it's not a call to violence.
(I am applying my own interpretation of free speech laws, as well as the general understanding of legitimate free speech in the US; please assume I have a reasonable level of education on this).
All this discussion does is prove that there’s nuance to the question and that it’s not black and white which is exactly why I believe it was a dishonest question to begin with.
It's First Amendment protected. Universities have a long track record of having policies more restrictive than that.
[1] https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...
> The U.S. Supreme Court defined true threats in Virginia v. Black (2003) as “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.” According to the Supreme Court, true threats include when a speaker directs a threat to a person or group of persons with the intent of placing the victim in fear of bodily harm or death. [1]
https://uwm.edu/free-speech-rights-responsibilities/faqs/wha...
I broke my cardinal rule- never get involved in an internet discussion of free speech. Also, and this is purely opinion- I think the Supreme Court made an error in their ruling.
https://news.yahoo.com/supreme-court-hurtful-speech-westboro...
You don't think the doctrine applies, or you don't think it is satisfied?
I think the bigger issue here is that Harvard does not guarantee First Amendment levels of free speech protection. They caution students about all sorts of protected speech, so what the First Amendment does or doesn't protect isn't really relevant.
They did? When I learned about them in law school, we only covered their unsavory protesting at military funerals, which did not involve advocating violence. What did they do that advocated direct violence?
(All of this was a misunderstanding caused by me misparsing a statement above suggesting Westboro was protesting at Harvard)
It needs to something that a reasonable person who directly heard the speech would interpret as a “true threat” to a person or group. In the case above, the defendant made a claim that he was going to “set his sights on LBJ” if he was drafted and they “ever gave [him] a rifle”. He threatened to shoot a President of the US and his speech was found to be protected because of the qualification mentioned above. Two prior courts found him guilty and the Supreme Court reversed the decisions.
This is a great philosophy. I only wish Harvard had thought to embrace it prior to last October, instead of coming in dead last on FIRE's free speech index: https://www.thefire.org/news/harvard-gets-worst-score-ever-f...
I hope that this experience will lead Harvard to actually commit to a free speech culture across the board. But I am admittedly pessimistic that any kind of consistent application of these principles will result.
Harvard clearly scored poorly but it seems like they only scored poorly because the students aren't ok with viewpoints that are non-inclusive or borderline hate speech. It has nothing to do with the school's policies or positions on free speech and what is or isn't allowed.
> Student groups often invite speakers to campus to express their views on a range of topics. Regardless of your own views on the topic, should your school ALLOW or NOT ALLOW a speaker on campus who promotes the following idea?
Someone who truly supports free speech would say "ALLOW" even if they themselves personally disagree with the speech. Students at Harvard apparently do not.
Additionally, the survey asks students whether they support suppressing speech via deplatforming or violence, and whether they believe that the administration would defend the rights of speakers when controversy arises.
The questions can be found on page 76 of this PDF: https://www.thefire.org/sites/default/files/2023/09/CFSR%202...
> Additionally, disinvitations are measured as well despite not being examples of student speech being censored.
A second ago you said that free speech covers the Westboro Baptist Church coming on campus. Now it only applies to students? If someone is being disinvited, presumably someone invited them to begin with, whether students or faculty.
>A second ago you said that
Yes... and I also said that, as someone else pointed out also, it was irrelevant to a private university that is allowed to remove anyone from campus that it wants. Allowing Westboro to stay on campus shows that their policies on free speech extend to objectionable speech regardless of what ideology is stating it. That's not the same thing as students choosing not to invite or hear views from people whose views are readily available on the internet nor is it the same thing as student opinions overriding the actual actions of schools.
In cases like this though, perception is probably closer to reality than actual activity. For instance, I think it's pretty fair to say that society is pretty against robberies. If you did a survey asking how comfortable people are with robbing people[1], I think most people would answer "Very uncomfortable". However, if you look at FBI crime statistics[2], you see that majority of robberies don't result in arrests. If we were applying your logic, we'd conclude that clearly society/the police don't have a policy of catching robbers.
[1] For the purposes of this argument, we can further presume we're robbing a Bad Person (eg. anti-abortion protesters if you're a liberal) to get past any ethical considerations
[2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
No we wouldn't. My logic is that we'd have stats regarding how many crimes were documented, whether they were solved or not. And, as you've shown, we do.
No police department will have a 100% closure rate but that doesn't mean at all what you're claiming should be the conclusion based on that fact. The conclusion would be to look at how many cases of free speech issues were reported and what was done as a result. Transparency is what's needed, not misleading and inappropriately applied surveys.
This is why people's beliefs about whether speech is properly protected or not are relevant. If people don't believe that free speech is protected, speech can effectively be curtailed even with few actual incidents.
No they don't!
Public universities are, as institutions of the state, required to scrupulously uphold the First Amendment, and have an entire toolkit of time-tested ways to do that without making campus life unlivable for whomever the undergrads go on a moral crusade against this semester. I went to a public school that encountered some of the same controversial issues Harvard, Penn, and MIT flubbed, and did a lot freakin' better by standing for the letter of the law in distinguishing between private speech and student conduct in the course of campus activities (eg: in a classroom).
You wanna call for genocide in a campus newspaper editorial? As a hypothetical, it's free speech if the newspaper agrees to print your piece. You wanna mob someone's dorm room or community center calling them a genocidaire (much closer to what Harvard and MIT students are actually doing!), without letting them go in and out of their own space undisturbed? That's harassment insofar as you prevent any specific individual from going about their normal life, including its public component as a student (of a university) or employee (of a firm).
You don't get to walk into a random office building downtown and force the security desk to take you upstairs to the 15th floor so you can hold placards and yell slogans at desk-jockeys working for Web Marketing Firm #23. You don't get to barge into a classroom where course lectures are being given to do that either.