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Comment by BoiledCabbage | Hacker News Reader

Where did all the free speech defenders in the right go?

Why do so many positions claimed to be extremely important on the right seem to only matter when selectively applied?

There isn’t a single Trump voter who ever cared about free speech as anything other than virtue signaling or a cudgel (and there isn’t a single Republican who will go against Trump in anything). Everyone crying about it the last few years was a liar or a fraud.

Doesn’t matter - they’ll pressure universities and every single one will capitulate and teach anything Trump wants them to teach. This is the death of the Ivies, to start.

and there isn’t a single Republican who will go against Trump in anything

Well, just about one that holds federal office and intends to run for reelection. Murkowski. We have ranked choice voting to thank for her.

You're misunderstanding what is happening. Harvard is a private institution that takes funding from the federal government. The federal government is reviewing the funding under allegations of anti-Semitism: -In November 2023, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened a Title VI investigation into allegations of antisemitism on the campus. -In January 2024, six students sued the University, alleging that Harvard had become a “bastion of rampant anti-Jewish hatred and harassment.” This was followed by a February 2024 alumni-led lawsuit that claimed Harvard’s “unrestrained” campus antisemitism has caused the university reputational damage. -In July 2024, the Department of Education ended its investigation into allegations of antisemitic harassment at Harvard as a lawsuit filed in federal court contained the same allegations. -In January 2025, Harvard settled two antisemitism lawsuits by agreeing to provide additional protections for Jewish students, including by adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism has some troubling anti-free speech aspects that the JDA definition responds to. https://jerusalemdeclaration.org/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/13/antise...

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