2 ms·

"and they must be directly targeted" Woof, so I change my position from 'just have him apologize' - to - he definitely losses his job over this, and may face c

"and they must be directly targeted" Woof, so I change my position from 'just have him apologize' - to - he definitely losses his job over this, and may face criminal charges (although I don't think people should be charged for loose statements they make, if he formed an organization and made this an 'organizing principle' i.e. 'Jews must be targeted' - well, that would be 'hate speech', and I'm the last person to think that kind of thing applies, but I mean, this is bad.) Academic freedom gives you a lot of room to make statements that you think are true. Academic freedom does not give you the right to rally and politically organize, under the guise of said academic freedom, and then to directly promote the 'targeting' of minority groups. And I say this as someone who views many Israeli state and foreign policy actions as being highly suspect.

noduerme 5y ago
>> And I say this as someone who views many Israeli state and foreign policy actions as being highly suspect. It's a shame that this even has to be disclaimed to point out antisemitism. If he made a claim that Chinese students were pawns of the CCP and had to be "targeted", no one would need to say "and I don't support CCP policies" to make a credible allegation of racism.
- jollybean 5y ago
  The terms 'racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitic' are tossed around casually, and, I believe used inappropriately even by institutional entities in the media, government, and most scary, the judiciary. There's nary that much real authority on the use of those words, so we're forced to be nuanced and come to our own conclusions. For example, there's a big difference between 'agents of Israel' and 'Israel has direct influence among the student body' - even though they kind of mean the same thing. And of course, the Israeli government does have very material influence, the CCP even more so, institutionally, it's a real issue but we have to be careful how we talk about it. I also don't put to much stock in arbitrary comments made off of the cuff, and I think we should cut people some slack when speaking, which is different than what they might publish. The word 'targeted' wasn't really brought to the fore in the Miller issue, which is too bad, because that one word in particularly is strongly indicting. If the Unis press release were to have made specific reference to this, there might be a lot less hubub.

noduerme 5y ago

>> And I say this as someone who views many Israeli state and foreign policy actions as being highly suspect. It's a shame that this even has to be disclaimed to point out antisemitism. If he made a claim that Chinese students were pawns of the CCP and had to be "targeted", no one would need to say "and I don't support CCP policies" to make a credible allegation of racism.

jollybean 5y ago
The terms 'racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, antisemitic' are tossed around casually, and, I believe used inappropriately even by institutional entities in the media, government, and most scary, the judiciary. There's nary that much real authority on the use of those words, so we're forced to be nuanced and come to our own conclusions. For example, there's a big difference between 'agents of Israel' and 'Israel has direct influence among the student body' - even though they kind of mean the same thing. And of course, the Israeli government does have very material influence, the CCP even more so, institutionally, it's a real issue but we have to be careful how we talk about it. I also don't put to much stock in arbitrary comments made off of the cuff, and I think we should cut people some slack when speaking, which is different than what they might publish. The word 'targeted' wasn't really brought to the fore in the Miller issue, which is too bad, because that one word in particularly is strongly indicting. If the Unis press release were to have made specific reference to this, there might be a lot less hubub.