I’m sympathetic to the idea that the university as an institution should maintain neutrality. However, at the same time, individual professors, students, and even administrators should be protected by the university when engaging in speech.
1. shouting down anyone with a different view
2. requiring "loyalty oaths" from the staff
3. harassing others who disagree with them
4. trying to block roads and otherwise impede people from going about their business
that is anti-American.
And who are you to tell other Americans what's American or not? That assertion is what is fundamentally un-American. It's everyone else's country as much as yours.
> 4. trying to block roads and otherwise impede people from going about their business
That is the fundamental nature of protest, stopping people from going about their business. The whole point is that the issue is being ignored.
Suddenly, all protest is suspect in our great democracy.
They infringe on our rights. Do you really believe there is a right to harass others?
> What does it have to do with the US in particular?
It's the US that has a Constitution, a Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, etc. Of course, any other nation is free to adopt them as well, and become American.
> And who are you to tell other Americans what's American or not?
I'm an American. I have relatives that fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WW1, WW2, and the Korean War. In particular, these are my father's opinions, very strongly held by him. I did not earn them like he did in combat, but he's gone now and so I carry on. He told me once that he fought so I wouldn't have to. Never forget that our freedoms were all paid for with blood, lots of blood.
> It's everyone else's country as much as yours.
Yes. I see people all the time eager to throw away our rights that were so bitterly fought for. The Constitution also has a lot of checks and balances meant to make it difficult to for people to throw it away.
> all protest is suspect in our great democracy
You can protest all you like. But our freedoms do not include the right to impede other peoples' rights to go about their business.
If somebody tried that today, they would (and should) be liable for the cost of the tea. There is no right to destroy other peoples' property.
It depends on your definition of "harass", but yes, absolutely. You have a right to express, including through protest, your opinions to others who don't want to hear them.
Specifically, there is no right to not be harassed. There are laws against certain forms of it, but that's not a 'right' in a traditional sense, like the right to free speech, or 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'.
Obviously, 'harassment' is such a broad term, it's a way to censor and oppress and especially to silence anyone who disagrees with the status quo. They must allow the status quo to continue or they are harassers.
>> And who are you to tell other Americans what's American or not?
> I'm an American. I have relatives that fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WW1, WW2, and the Korean War.
The other people are Americans too; you have no extra rights there. What you or your relatives did gives you no extra rights at all under any law or democratic custom.
> I see people all the time eager to throw away our rights that were so bitterly fought for.
That's what I see you advocating, trying to suppress dissent that you don't like.
> our freedoms do not include the right to impede other peoples' rights to go about their business.
They absolutely do, again depending the definition of "impede". That's what protest is, and you can see it in protests going back centuries. It's a free country and you're going to have to deal with people doing things you don't like.
Also, it's an argument for the status quo - going about their business may mean impeding others' rights. As the admittedly over-simplistic example, slave merchants impeded others' rights, and impeding the merchants protected rights.
I explicitly wrote otherwise.
> slave merchants impeded others' rights, and impeding the merchants protected rights.
I'm sadly amused that you interpret an assertion that all have a right to liberty is a right to enslave people. It's not a very clever argument, I see it all the time. I was hoping for better from you.
If that isn't indoctrination, I'm not sure what is.
Indoctrination isn't bad, and students should be able to have a choice between whether they want to get indoctrinated by the types of people who created the nuclear bomb, if they want to get indoctrinated by hippies, or if they want to get indoctrinated by a church-funded university.
Education is inherently ideological, and the market is really leaning toward hippie faculty at the moment. Allowing market forces to do what they will seems fine. It'll come back around eventually, and in the meantime, state school kids are doing what prestigious university students are too good for. Look at Anduril, which is far more impressive a defense achievement than anything that's come out of Caltech since before you were a student.
Sure. But I draw the line when people try to force their anti-American agenda on people.
> Look at Anduril, which is far more impressive a defense achievement than anything that's come out of Caltech since before you were a student.
Caltech is a very small university.
> Education is inherently ideological
My education at Caltech was nearly entirely math, science, engineering, etc. I don't see that as ideological. I did get a palpable sense from the profs that these subjects were exciting.
I never heard any defense propaganda from the Caltech faculty, none at all. JPL was there, but not a single soul pushed me to apply for a job there.
The only propaganda I recall was my economics professor pushing Marxism, and if you didn't regurgitate his Marxist views on the exams, you received a bad grade. I learned my lesson, and instead satisfied the social studies requirement by taking business accounting - something useful.
This doesn't happen, though; there are a lot of universities that love pro-American sentiment in professors. A university deciding to be anti-American seems fine, and quite American. As an employer, it should be able to choose who it wants to offer positions. No one is forced, they just fail to incentivize prestigious universities in maintaining their employment under conditions they desire.