hckrnws

https://archive.ph/a9ie5

Some personal highlights:

"They’re excellent schools, and they have excellent scientists, and if one of Vice-President Vance’s kids is sick, he’s going to want the doctor to have gone to one of these schools; he’s not going to want them to have gone to Viktor Orbán’s university."

"People have said to me, “Well, you take all that money from the government, why don’t you listen to them?” The answer is, because the money doesn’t come with a loyalty oath."

"I don’t have to agree with the mayor to get the fire department to come put out a fire. And that’s what they’re saying to these international students: “Well, you came to this country. What makes you think you can write an op-ed in the newspaper?” Well, what makes you think that is, this is a free country. "

> "They’re excellent schools, and they have excellent scientists, and if one of Vice-President Vance’s kids is sick, he’s going to want the doctor to have gone to one of these schools; he’s not going to want them to have gone to Viktor Orbán’s university."

I'm not sure I understand. If I want a medical doctor, I'm not looking for someone based on his political views or spirited independence from the Hungarian government, but for someone with training in a very narrow discipline, namely medicine. I really don't want someone who is more interested in "the modern and the postmodern" prescribing me meds, but I do want someone who conforms to the current pharmacological standards.

The University President in question does not even run a medical school; Wesleyan does not, to my knowledge, teach anyone the art of medicine, however highly it might rank as a liberal arts institution. Semmelweis University in Budapest, however, is older than the United States, is the largest healthcare provider in Hungary, and is ranked among the top 300 universities in the world. Therefore, if I had to chose between someone who went to Wesleyan and someone who went to Semmelweis, which I'll take as "Viktor Orbán's university," I should much rather have the Hungarian who actually knows medicine rather than the liberal arts PhD who might be able to lecture me on what postmodernism should mean to me.

What are you purporting not to understand? It seems you’re fighting your own straw man.

The author of the article seems to accept "appeal to authority" he just wishes it was more critically refined to a point that it might somehow be justifiable.

The OP is expressing dismay at this obviously compromised position. There is no purportment or strawmen that I can detect.

In that specific quote he’s talking about Ivy League universities, not Wesleyan, but the quote would be too long. I thought it was clear, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Regardless, I absolutely agree with you, except for one thing: I would have no problem being under care of a Hungarian, but I doubt you’d ever see a MAGA enthusiast saying he prefers that than an American doctor.

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The money comes from the public, not the government

And I for one would much rather it go to subsidize university research than subsidize the defense industry

You need both if you want it to remain a free and sovereign country.

But not anywhere near what we have in terms of military power and spending.

Also, economic decline is a much greater threat to the US than military decline. China is eager to dethrone us economically; an invasion of the US would be extremely costly and highly unlikely even if the US' military were significantly smaller.

How much? 1 trillion a year?

Can I have statistics for this? Because I always thought it was mostly from the government, not from the public.

Where do you think the government gets its money from?

Printing?

btw, you got my upvote

Do you not understand that money coming from the government has been acquired from taxes, ergo the money comes from the people.

Surely he could have expressed himself better than that. Insulting some other country's universities seems a very odd thing to do when trying to make a point about your own universities. This is especially odd as the choice of country to insult has several universities that are well inside the top 10% worldwide and rank higher than Wesleyan.

We should expect better rhetoric from the rector of a liberal arts university.

Unfortunately I can't read the actual article to see what the rest of his argument was like. I wish that HN would automatically provide links to bypass paywalls.

There was no insult. The point is very clear if you are not trying to intentionally make him look bad. He said that Vance would never send his kids to a hospital in Hungary; he never said hospitals in Hungary are bad, or that Hungarians are peasants, for example. What he’s trying to show you is that you’re being manipulated, that what they say is not what they do, so you shouldn’t believe them. But I guess most people prefer to trust the snake oil sellers than open their eyes.

Edit: and by the way Orbán is not Hungary, in the same way that Trump is not America, although they would very much like you to think so. I wonder why?

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What are you conflicted about? The op-eds written by these international students contained none of the things you mentioned that are supposedly not compatible with the US.

On the other hand, while the US is bombing civilians in Yemen, revoking womens' rights and moving towards persecuting lgbt people, it would seem that ironically the the US is exactly the jam for that. A perfect fit.

Valuing Palestinian lives is not supporting terrorism.

Sure, hopefully we all value Palestinian lives. I certainly do. Where the consensus breaks down is what does that mean in practice? Should Israel be allowed to attack terrorist organizations in Palestine? If so, is there an "acceptable" level of civilian casualties (collateral damage)? Does that level change if the terrorists intentionally use civilians as human shields, for example by using a hospital as an operating base or launching rockets from civilian residential neighborhoods?

To be clear I am not attempting to defend war crimes or terrorist activity or anything like that. I'm just pointing out that simply valuing Palestinian lives is rather meaningless and empty unless it translates into action.

I don't normally get into this type of political debate but ...

>Should Israel be allowed to attack terrorist organizations in Palestine?

yes. I think actual terrorists should be eligible for being attacked anywhere. The real question you didn't ask is who gets to label what is and is not a terrorist? Black Panthers were considered terrorists in the US in the 60s and 70s but heros to the Black community now. In the US, again, our founding fathers were all considered terrorists by Britain.

>If so, is there an "acceptable" level of civilian casualties (collateral damage)?

The "acceptable" level of civilian casualties or collateral damage is zero. With the understanding that accidents happen, but all plans should be for zero.

>Does that level change if the terrorists intentionally use civilians as human shields

No. This routinely happens in the US over the years where criminals or even terrorists take hostages on a plane, bank, school, hospital, or other place with innocent people. We do not drop bombs on the building killing all the innocents to get at the evil-doers. Have you noticed that no country in the Western civilized world would even consider that? Modern military should be able to go in and do surgical strikes or a surrender. Hell, in the US, we have small towns with volunteer SWAT teams that do this routinely with basically 100% success rate.

I think the biggest problem, which is covered in most war-time conventions, is that you should treat civilians and innocent people the same as you would treat your own innocent civilians. This is somehow being argued that it does not apply in the middle East or Ukraine or Russia where people just remotely drop bombs and blame "human shields".

Not too long ago the US would be ashamed to admit it even did something like this, because it seems like incompetence or cowardice, but now we support it somehow?

That is such an unrealistic and out of touch comment that I barely know where to begin. The USA (and its allies) killed millions of enemy civilians in WWII. This was not an accident; military leaders knew exactly what they were doing and were proud of it. Strategic bombing campaigns leveled cities. Submarine forces sank unarmed merchant vessels with all hands. This was considered acceptable to win the war. Should we now hold other countries to a different standard?

Hamas is a terrorist organization. There can be no possible debate about that point.

Real life is not like what you see in the movies. Modern militaries are in no way able to consistently do surgical strikes with no collateral damage. That is magical thinking.

Your comparison with civilian law enforcement is so specious that I suspect you're not even commenting in good faith. There no "volunteer SWAT teams", that's not a real thing (the officers on those teams do volunteer for the duty but they get paid). SWAT teams aren't tasked with fighting their way through hundreds of terrorists to capture a suspect; they're generally up against no more than a few criminals armed with small arms. And it's unfortunately fairly common for law enforcement to accidentally shoot innocent bystanders or hostages.

It's cheap easy to criticize and claim the moral high ground when you don't have to make hard choices or deal with the consequences. Again I'm not attempting to justify war crimes but the decisions get a lot messier when you step away from your computer and operate in the real world.

> This was considered acceptable to win the war. Should we now hold other countries to a different standard?

Yes, we saw what happened and labeled them as war crimes. We don’t consider them to be acceptable anymore.

No, we didn't label them as war crimes. None of the WWII Allied military commanders or political leaders were charged with war crimes. They are still revered as heroes today. And if we faced an existential threat we would do the same to enemy civilians again, or even more.

"Before we're through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell."

-Admiral William "Bull" Halsey, Jr. 1941

I don't necessarily agree with the sentiment, but his was quite a popular opinion at the time.

We do. Look up “Tokyo firebombing” on Wikipedia and I guarantee you there is a modern analysis of indiscriminate civilian casualties being analyzed as war crimes. Of course not everyone is willing to participate in that discussion but it does exist.

Nah. I don't know which "we" you're referring to but Wikipedia isn't a valid source for anything more controversial than Pokemon episode summaries. Many of the articles are highly biased depending on which clique of editors managed to gain control. Intelligent people don't take it seriously.

That aside, I have seen a loony fringe of revisionist historians and lawyers level spurious claims of "war crimes" against Allied leaders who are no longer even alive to defend themselves. They had no moral or legal duty to protect enemy civilians, and any amount of enemy civilian deaths were acceptable to save Allied lives.

If you're looking for war criminals, start with Tojo, Hitler, and Mussolini and work your way down the list of Axis leaders. The Allied powers were always clear that they would stop the attacks as soon as their adversaries issued unconditional surrenders. Therefore all enemy civilian deaths were 100% the fault of Axis leaders who started and continued the war.

That’s…not how war crimes work. If you conduct an attack that indiscriminately kills civilians, or torture prisoners of war, or deploy chemical weapons, those are all war crimes even if you say you’ll stop the moment you win. By your definition nothing would ever be a war crime because when one side unconditionally surrenders the war is over. Doing these things outside of an active conflict is state-sponsored terrorism or genocide instead.

Ok, then I guess they should only go after the people who are supporting actually designated terrorist organizations.

Problem solved, right?

Strongly agree. The problem is that Hamas represents them (illegitimately IMHO).

Thus you have a lot of Palestinian supporters advocating for Hamas, and that is effectively "supporting" terrorism.

> Strongly agree. The problem is that Hamas represents them (illegitimately IMHO)

Thats a dangerous line of argument to make. Zionists work VERY hard to promote the idea that they represent all jews. I for one would take great offense to the idea that all jews are land stealing colonialist savages. Its just as dangerous to normalize the idea that hammas represents palestinians

I think you misunderstood me -- my point about Hamas is they hold the power over the Palestinians. They represent them as much as Trump represents me.

Even if you hold those views (with which we'd all, I hope, vigorously disagree), America is _still_ your jam, up to and until they mutate into crimes / criminal attempts / incitements to crime etc. The ways this administration has persued removal either violate that boundary, or require stretching the boundary around the right-hand side to its absolute limit.

Popper and "the paradox of tolerance" to the rescue. You can, and should, tolerate anything but intolerance.

There are US citizens who want to shoot gays, kill people different in creed or heritage, and bomb people for religious reasons. We had the gay panic defense (the legal defense to kill gay people just because you found out they were gay, and the shock justified you killing them). We had people shooting sikhs assuming they're muslim. We had folks bombing abortion clinics. There are US citizens who have done far more, and far worse, than writing an op-ed or taking over a building.

So, frankly, why not treat these people the same we treated like these other folk-- a trial and then appropriate punishment proven in the court of law. If an immigrant is violating the terms of their visa, the US gov't can prove it in their own courts and then deport them appropriately.

Those situations aren't comparable. While I oppose bigoted behavior by US citizens, for better or worse they have an absolute and inviolable right to remain in this country. Aliens generally have no such right. Entering and remaining in the country is a privilege. I oppose arbitrary arrests and deportations conducted without due process, but in principle there's nothing wrong with holding aliens to a different standard than citizens.

From a political standpoint, why should US citizens pay taxes to educate people who are apparently hostile to our fundamental values?

> why should US citizens pay taxes to educate people who are apparently hostile to our fundamental values?

Because that's where Americans come from - the educated and acculturated sons and daughters of immigrants who came bearing all manner of prejudice.

> Because that's where Americans come from - the educated and acculturated sons and daughters of immigrants who came bearing all manner of prejudice.

This is a phenomenal example of a non-sequitur argument.

Are “freedom of speech” and “due process” not American fundamental values? It seems to me that the people hostile to fundamental values are the masked ICE officers kidnapping random, harmless people from the street and moving them to a different state before the judge had the chance to order them to not do that.

Or did Trump add “disregard for human decency” and “imposing widespread fear through arbitrary state violence” to the list of fundamental values with one of his executive decisions?

What about is always a bad answer. It comes of a defensive.

Indeed, I agree with you. There are US citizens who want to do reprehensible things, and I still say: maybe the US is not their jam. No, I'm not advocating exile or illegal detention. Just stating a fact.

the whole "not your jam" thing seems to be you retreating to meaninglessness. this isn't a debate about how a person should feel, it's a debate about how a government should act.

When you're talking about due process, "what about these other people who got due process?" is a reasonable response.

Whataboutism would be something like, "what about Nazi Germany, where even more people got sent to foreign prison camps without due process: look, the US isn't so bad!".

> The answer is, because the money doesn’t come with a loyalty oath

But it does come with some reasonable level of consideration and appreciation.

You don't know how they feel, so what you're saying is "they have to show/express appreciation," which is synonymous with a loyalty oath.

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The government pays to get good universities which attract smart foreign who come to the US to study on these universities.

Maybe the government should appreciate them not the other way around.

Yeah, I agree. The government appreciates, or should appreciate, the good uses its taxpayers' money is put towards. As to the other intractables above, appreciation and loyalty are very far from the same thing.

I don't think it ever crosses these people's minds that some other country PAID FOR these people's education and they are now USING that education elsewhere for the profit of a foreign nation.

All my high school and college education was at free schools/colleges in my home country, paid for by taxpayer money. All incredibly competitive places, with very high maintenance costs compared to the other colleges around, not a single US dollar was invested in me and here I am paying taxes and improving this place.

The bargain the US gets from this is one of the biggest reasons it can do what it does, the investments it makes are compounded by the work of the people that it never put a dime for.

It is their right to be there. They do not have to show appreciation and the current government should never be one deciding these what is appreciation. Bowing to authority is exactly the opposite of what education is about.

Being paid what you're owed doesn't necessitate gratitude.

For those who disagree with this, when was the last time you thanked your boss for your paycheck?

But, I bet many have thanked their boss for the opportunity given to them. This statement of gratitude is a tacit acknowledgement of salary.

> But, I bet many have thanked their boss for the opportunity given to them.

I literally don't know anybody who has any desire of expressing gratitude to their boss for the "opportunity" given to them. What kind of servile lapdogs do consider their work an "opportunity"? How about the bosses realize that without workers, their businesses will implode, and thank their workers for the "opportunity" to have a working business instead?

Jobs are an exchange of a worker's time and skills for a wage. If you expect workers with a touch servility on top, I suggest you go back to the medieval times of lords and servants.

I agree in general with your points, except that I believe both parties “should“ (can) be grateful for each other and in that acknowledge they both need each other. It’s nice for wellbeing to be grateful for everything good that happens, it doesn’t necessarily imply servitude.

> except that I believe both parties “should“ (can) be grateful for each other and in that acknowledge they both need each other.

Hard disagree on both needing each other.

Employers can't exist or build their own riches without workers, while workers have existed for thousands of years, much before employers. If we are considering the relationship in adversarial terms, always remember that workers are the only ones actually producing anything of value.

Without workers, garbage won't be collected, water won't be delivered to households, buildings won't be built, and food won't be grown.

The people pushing the paternalistic narrative telling us that we should be "grateful" for the "opportunity" to merely work for a wage have forgotten the French Revolution, the Bolshevik revolution, and all the strikes and revolutions of workers that have advanced our rights to where we have them today. The 5 day work week and the 9-to-5, child labor protections, and workers' rights were not brought to you by the employers. In fact, employers often actively resisted those, and had to be put in their rightful place by their workers.

> It’s nice for wellbeing to be grateful for everything good that happens

Judging by what happened to the employers and the rich during the workers' revolutions, it's probably a good advice for the wellbeing of the work-givers to start practicing daily gratitude towards their own employees. You see, it's just the workers that find themselves more often in the possession of pitchforks and torches.

> Without workers, garbage won't be collected, water won't be delivered to households, buildings won't be built, and food won't be grown.

Again I agree with everything you say but disagree on the part about needing each other/gratitude. The worker also wants all that, and for it to happen, they need collaboration and exchange/division of labor, for which they are allowed to be grateful for.

Depends on the worker I guess.

In many skilled professions, you are more likely to see the boss thanking the worker, for chossing to work there and provide their badly needed skills, than the other way around.

It probably depends on the local unemployment rate.

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Why do you think this?

Because it's a transcation and there are two parties to the transaction. And for these transaction to occur in a repeated fashion neither side should feel they are being taken advantage of.

I don't think anyone feels taken advantage of. I think most people involved in academia value the complexities and jagged edges that come with an international student body. And the outcome - the preeminent education system in the world that keeps the US at the cutting edge of science and technology and has for nearly a hundred years - is indisputable.

A government is not a person who “feels” anything. Anyone who is in the USA for work/study has agreed to a contract, and there is nothing in that contract that requires intelectual subservience. If the USA government finds that the person is not doing their part according to the contract, which would mean being taken advantage of, they are more than welcome to act on that. This has nothing to do with what’s happening.

You’re applying social norms that exist between humans, based on feelings, to a completely different relationship that includes no feelings at all. Would you like another government, with another political direction opposed to yours, to start asking you for appreciation?

One of the problems with trying to apply the Objectivist view to a situation like this is that often experts need to tell their patrons true things they don't want to hear. I'll leave any sociological or economic examples aside and say, to pick a couple that Ayn Rand herself didn't believe, that smoking causes cancer and air pollution is bad for the human body. If the patron doesn't want to believe this new fact they have been told, they might feel taken advantage of. They might feel that if a science department got public funding only to come to those conclusions, that the scientists should be fired.

What about e.g. writing an op-ed expressing one's views conveys a lack of consideration and appreciation?

Consider that any competent manager will value polite debate and constructive criticism far more than the empty words of "yes" men.

Guess which category "reasonable ... consideration and appreciation" falls into.

Put another way, if you read North Korean state media, you will find that they always have a reasonable level of consideration and appreciation for their government.

"you didn't say thank you!!!"

Oh hey, Wesleyan on HN! I’m an alumnus (matriculated a year or two after Roth became president). Wesleyan has a rich history of activism and protest, and not always entirely peaceful (Roth’s predecessor, Doug Bennet, had his office firebombed at one point).

I’ve had a few opportunities to speak with Roth since the Gaza war started, and I’ve always found him particularly thoughtful about balancing freedom of expression with a need to provide a safe and open learning environment for everyone on campus. In particular, he never gave in to the unlimited demands of protestors while still defending their right to protest.

In part, he had the moral weight to do that because—unlike many university presidents—he did not give in to the illiberal demands of the left to chill speech post-2020, which then were turned against the left over the past year.

I don’t see any particularly good outcome from any of this; the risk of damaging the incredibly successful American university system is high. Certainly smart foreign students who long dreamed of studying in the US will be having second thoughts if they can be arbitrarily and indefinitely detained.

But I hope the universities that do make it through do with a stronger commitment to the (small l) liberal values of freedom of expression , academic freedom, and intellectual diversity.

Ok, I'll bite: in your view, what were the illiberal "demands" post-2020? Reading tfa, this kind of rendering feels a little too pat for him. Namely, its one thing to argue against the kind of knee-jerk moralism of well-meaning woke liberal arts kids, its quite another to imply a kind of "capital L" program to "chill speech."

Like, c'mon, are we really still doing this now? Roth himself is sensible enough to not be, in his words, "blaming the victim" at this point, what calls you to essentially do it for him anyway? It's nothing but out of touch at this point, and adds nothing to the discourse but conspiratorial noise. If I may assume a rough age based on your forthrightness, any single kid in school in 2020 was and is a lot less culpable for this current moment than you or I. We can set an example and be mature enough to own that, instead of, I don't know, forever being tortured by the real or perceived condescension of kids.

It is a smaller step to further the justifications than to deal with the often severe implications (to the self-image) of having been wrong. The more obvious it becomes having been wrong, the more necessary the justifications are and the more absurd they become. As having someone accepting your absurd justifications becomes proof of being blameless.

I should add that I'm not referring to beepbooptheory, but in response to "are we really still doing this now?".

It's nothing but out of touch at this point, and adds nothing to the discourse

Exactly. Its a communications problem.

Its hard to have a decent critical conversation when one side has a biased view about $symbol. Both communicating parties need to reach the same interpretation of a message, otherwise the conversation is broken. Thats why you shouldnt say the N-word or throw out a heil heart on stage (unless you want to hide behind this ambiguity). Or why its so difficult to have critical conversations with strong believers, for you its just evolution or vaccines but for the other side it may affect the core of their identity and the ape goes defense mode.

The result is that the discourse does not deal with differentiated cases but _only_ with simplistic labels like "chill speech", "woke", etc. because the more biased side drags it down into the mud.

For instance, the "chill speech" label is actually dependent on the "racist" label that initiated it. If a case shows clear racist behavior, then dismissing the lefts reaction as censorship is unjustified or biased. The other way works too, if there is no racist behavior, the censorship blame would be justified.

And since you cant look into peoples heads to clearly identify racist intentions, it falls back to interpreting messages. The problem with biased people is, they are not aware even of their unawareness. If you would ask Musk whether he is a neo-nazi, his response would be something like "hell no". Fast forward the dystopian timeline and his response might be "always have been".

The left has IMO more unbiased awareness about systemic issues -- but is not free of bias either. The right is in its core biased indentity politics about $culture -- but is not totally host to tribalism either.

My advise, avoid popular symbols at all cost and if you come close to using one, augment it with case specific background, even a vague "_unjustified_ chill of speech" would suffice. If someone opens with "the woke left" and shows no signs of differentiation -- or even better, acknowledgement of core leftist topics -- i mentally turn away. The comment you replied to was about personal anekdotes and projections and the one symbol that rubs me the wrong way too, even before trumps abuse.

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ah, some both sides claims while people are disappeared

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>It's not that hard as a foreign student to not join political protests in favor of terrorist groups.

I obviously don't support terrorism, but people unambiguously have the right to protest in favour of terrorist groups. It's only when they provide material support to these groups that they actually commit a crime.

Who is supporting terrorist groups? Pro-Palestinian protesting is not support for terrorism.

Nothing in that article implies supporting terrorism. They support Palestine.

People conflating supporting Palestine with supporting terrorism should be ashamed of themselves, as Israel is the biggest terror state in the world.

Well, when it comes to conflating, I'll take your calling Israel a terror state as a standard: The democratically elected government of Gaza-Palestine is the Hamas, which is a terrorist organisation. Thus by your conflation regarding Israel to be a terror state, the Gaza strip part of Palestine is as well. Its population chose a known terrorist organisation, everything is run by a terrorist organisation, they did terrorist things such as bombings, abductions and murders of innocent civilians. Thus (Gaza-)Palestine is therefore a terror state. Supporting it is therefore supporting terrorism.

Thus either you apply your conflating standard equally, Palestine and Israel are both terror states, and any support of them is supporting terrorism. Or you rather differentiate, and separate Palestine as an abstract concept of a hypothetical future homestead of the Palestinians from the Hamas, the Fatah and other (mostly terrorist) organisations that govern it, and the population that, in parts, is governed by them and elects and supports or opposes them and their actions. But if you do that, you will also have to differentiate between Israel as a state, its military, government, parties, population and their respective support and actions.

In that second case you can support Palestine as an abstract idea without supporting terrorism, you can support the population and their rights, hopes and struggle. As you can do with Israel and their people. However, on pro-Palestine protests, I've never really seen this kind of differentiation applied, I've seen far too many Hamas flags, heard far too many calls to wipe Israel from the map, far too many praises for terrorists (called "martyrs"). Thus, in practically all cases, I'd without hesitation call supporters of Palestine supporters of terrorism.

> Hamas, which is a terrorist organisation.

According to the New York Times, Netanhayu was propping up Hamas in the weeks and months before the current conflict ( https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-q... ). This has been happening since the beginning of Hamas.

The government over there has been supporting Hamas since the beginning, because they don't want to deal with Fatah going to the UN. Everything recently is the result of that. So don't come around talking about Hamas. Especially since Netanyahu and his US counterparts are trying to sideline Fatah, and are persecuting secular Palestinians like Samidoun and the PFLP more than Hamas. The US, Canada, Germany etc. crack down on the seculat, left-leaning Samidoun so that only Hamas is left standing in Gaza.

All that doesn't make them any less terrorist.

I think it's wise to separate the future of both Israel and Palestine from their present. In 100 years there will be surviving Israelis and surviving Palestinians and they'll have a view of the present generation.

"The antisemite does not accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence."

Although I laud your unassailable argument highlighting yet another instance of double standards against Jews, ultimately there is little upside in engaging with the "no, no, technically there is a difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism" crowd. I am sad that Hacker News is rife with this kind of bigotry, but I don't see the tide of this battle turning anytime soon.

In case, dear reader, you are one of the intellectually curious ones who holds the opposing viewpoint, ask yourself why you demand that only the Jews lack the right to self determination?

I'll bite.

Most demands for self-determination were for self-rule on land already inhabited by the group in question.

Zionism was unique in that it demanded self-determination on land inhabited almost 100% by a different group of people.

Given that the Jews were forcibly expelled from their homeland by the Romans, by definition, any Jewish self-determination would need to take place in a land that is at least partially[0] already inhabited. You now have two choices:

1. Deny Jews the right to self-determination altogether, continuing the dispossession of an actively persecuted people, indeed, the same one that was about to face the Holocaust in Europe, thereby punishing them for their own historical victimization, or

2. Acknowledge the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination, even if it takes root in their historical homeland and entails negotiating with and sharing the land with other peoples, thereby accepting that historical justice often requires grappling with imperfect realities, and that two national claims can coexist without one invalidating the other.

Or are you arguing that self-determination only applies to groups of people who haven't been exiled from their homeland (i.e. the people that need self determination the least)?

[0] Before Zionism, the population of Mandatory Palestine was 98% smaller than the same region today. Even the Arab population has increased 26-fold. So, yes, technically it was inhabited, but dramatically less developed. And even then, Jerusalem was 60% Jewish.

> Given that the Jews were forcibly expelled from their homeland by the Romans

2000 years ago.

You're saying that events from millennia in the past mean that the Palestinians should have had to cede the land they lived on to a group of outsiders from Europe.

People can make of that what they may (I think it's ridiculous), but you at least have to admit that it completely invalidates your argument that Zionism is just like any other demand for self-determination. We're talking about a demand for other people's land, based on appeals to events from thousands of years ago.

You're changing the topic. Nobody is talking about ceding land, we're talking about re-establishing a nation in the historic homeland of the Jewish people. And besides, no Zionist demanded land or induced anyone to cede their land prior to 1947 anyway, since all Zionist land acquisition was through voluntary purchases and legal land transfers.

So are you arguing that the Jews are not a people that merit self determination? Or are you saying that because they were expelled from their homeland so long ago, they forfeited the legitimate claim to self determination?

> Nobody is talking about ceding land, we're talking about re-establishing a nation in the historic homeland of the Jewish people

You're saying the same thing with different words. In order to "re-establish" that nation, they had to take over control of Palestine, against the will of the people who actually lived there.

> no Zionist demanded land or induced anyone to cede their land prior to 1947 anyway

That's not true at all. The entire point of Zionism was to take over political control of Palestine and found a Jewish state there. The mainstream Zionist movement wanted all of Palestine, and the radical right wing of Zionism (the "Revisionists," who eventually became Likud, Netanyahu's party) even wanted what is now Jordan.

> all Zionist land acquisition was through voluntary purchases and legal land transfers

That's formally correct before 1947, but the goal was to take over all of Palestine. The leadership of the Jewish Agency (the Zionist quasi-government in British-run Palestine until early 1948) knew that ultimately, it would come down to war with the Arabs, and they prepared for it. They were also very interested in forced "population transfer" (which today would be called "ethnic cleansing"), which they hoped the major powers would agree to.

Even the land purchases were extremely predatory. Imagine the worst aspects of gentrification, but at the scale of a country and enacted for explicitly racist reasons. The Zionists bought up land from landlords who didn't even live in Palestine, and then forcibly removed the Palestinian farmers who lived on the land.

Even so, they never purchased more than about 6% of Palestine, before they forcibly took most of the rest in 1947-48.

> So are you arguing that the Jews are not a people that merit self determination?

First, the obvious question, as I've said, is "where?" Is easy and relatively harmless to say in the abstract that "this group of people is a nation and deserves self-determination." But when you start laying claims to other people's lands, that becomes a problem.

I don't really want to get into who is "a people," but I'll just point out that what you're saying implies that American Jews are just Israelis who happen to live abroad. I think that's incredibly wrong. Jews belong to many different nationalities.

It sounds like you're against the idea of national self determination altogether. Can you think of an example of a successful assertion of the right to self determinism which didn't involve a national entity asserting sovereignty over a body of land populated by a diverse group of people?

As we have already established, the population in the land of the historical mandate has exploded, including a manifold increase of Arabs (living peacefully within the borders of modern Israel as equal citizens, I might add), so clearly it is possible to accommodate this diverse population in a Jewish state.

Are you against all national self determination? Or is there some threshold of homogeneous concentration of one people after which it becomes legitimate? If the Zionist pioneers had managed to achieve a 99% majority of Jewish population in Palestine through legal immigration before asserting sovereignty, would that pass your test?

Or would you just prefer to see the European Jewry perish in toto under the Holocaust and Eastern European pogroms?

> If the Zionist pioneers had managed to achieve a 99% majority of Jewish population in Palestine through legal immigration before asserting sovereignty, would that pass your test?

The whole enterprise was illegitimate, because it was carried out against the will of the population of Palestine. The population did not want a foreign group of people to come in, settle the land and take over. The British colonial rulers forced Zionism on the Palestinian population undemocratically.

You keep on appealing to self-determination, but you completely ignore the Palestinians' right to self-determination on the land they had inhabited for centuries.

> Or would you just prefer to see the European Jewry perish in toto under the Holocaust and Eastern European pogroms?

The way to avert the Holocaust would have been to prevent the rise of fascism in Europe. The vast majority of Jews were anti-Zionist, and did not want to leave their home countries. The idea that Polish Jews would have all left Poland for the Middle East before WWII is just fanciful. Only a small percentage of them wanted to pack up and go to Palestine, a far-away place they knew nothing about.

This isn't a serious argument. You want the Jews to have self determination if and only if they can conjure into existence a magical fairy land free of compromise or can will into existence powers like militarily defeating the Nazis despite lacking even a basic police force.

> Only a small percentage of them wanted to pack up and go to Palestine, a far-away place they knew nothing about.

And pray tell, what happened to the ones who stayed?

> You want the Jews to have self determination if and only if they can conjure into existence a magical fairy land free of compromise

I think it's much more serious than arguing that they had the right to take over land already inhabited by another group of people, because of events from 2000 years ago. It just doesn't seem to occur to you that the Palestinians also have rights, and shouldn't have been forced to give up their land.

> or can will into existence powers like militarily defeating the Nazis despite lacking even a basic police force.

You're supposing that Jews would have left Europe en masse for Palestine. They wouldn't have. Most Jews before WWII did not accept Zionism. For example, in Poland, the dominant Jewish political movement was the Jewish Labour Bund, which was hostile to Zionism and which strove for Jewish civil rights inside the Polish Republic. In the real world, the only way the Jews of Europe could have been saved would have been by preventing the rise of fascism.

To get back to your original point, you still haven't acknowledged that Zionism was fundamentally different from other movements for self-determination. It was a movement for self-determination on land that the group in question did not inhabit, and which an entirely different group of people already inhabited. When Zionism succeeded, it created a massive refugee population (the previous inhabitants of the land the Zionists wanted for their own "self-determination") and sparked a conflict that has been going on for nearly a century now.

No, you're dodging the point. You're basically saying Jews deserved self-determination only if they could pull off the impossible: either magically prevent fascism, or create a homeland without upsetting anyone. That's not how history works. Zionism wasn't a luxury ideology, it was a response to existential threat. Jews didn't have the option to stay in Europe: Europe made that brutally clear. And yes, the land was inhabited, but so what? Every nationalist movement has had to contend with messy realities. The alternative you're proposing amounts to telling the Jews: stay stateless, stay vulnerable, or wait for miracles. That's not a serious moral position; at best it's an abdication, at worst a double standard against the Jews (i.e. antisemitism).

Actually, I've never said that Jews deserved self-determination in a separate country specifically created for Jews. Jews lived (and still live today) in many countries. They deserve equal rights in their home countries.

> The alternative you're proposing amounts to telling the Jews: stay stateless, stay vulnerable

Jews were not stateless. They were Polish, German, French, Russian, English, American, etc. You mean to say that there was no Jewish state, which is something entirely different from being stateless. American Jews today, for example, are "stateless" by your loose terminology, but arguably have more rights than and are safer than Israeli Jews.

> Jews didn't have the option to stay in Europe: Europe made that brutally clear.

Without the rise of Hitler, Jews would have been able to remain in Europe. The rise of fascism and WWII were a catastrophe for civilization, which could have been averted.

> magically prevent fascism

There's nothing magic about it. For example, if the Social Democrats and Communists had coordinated against fascism, they might have been able to prevent Hilter's rise. If France and Britain had decided to defend Czechoslovakia in 1938 or prevent the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936, there may very well have been no WWII and no Holocaust. However, one thing I can tell you for certain is that the chance that most Jews would have decided to move to the Middle East is basically zero. They weren't Zionists and didn't want to leave their home countries.

> Every nationalist movement has had to contend with messy realities.

You're hiding a lot behind that phrase, "messy realities."

I have yet to see you acknowledge the Palestinians and their rights in any way. You're asserting the right of Jews to take over control of Palestine, depriving the Palestinians not only of the right of self-determination, but taking their land and expelling them. You've now justified this in two completely different ways: first by an appeal to ancient history, and then by an appeal to the Holocaust.

> That's not a serious moral position; at best it's an abdication, at worst a double standard against the Jews (i.e. antisemitism).

I was wondering how long it would take you to explicity come out and start accusing me of antisemitism. But if you really want to choose the right insult, you should call me a "self-hating Jew."

Let me just summarize your position: European Jews, facing extermination, should have tried harder to stop Hitler, trusted the same governments that sold them out, stayed put in countries that were turning into slaughterhouses and politely avoided seeking refuge in the only place in the world that would take them just because it might offend your sensibilities. And now, after a few of them survived the industrial attempt to wipe them out, you want to tell them they were wrong to have escaped.

You dress up your objection to Zionism behind a pseudomoralistic veneer of Palestinian rights, but your real position is that Jewish survival was a problem because it confuses your personal narrative of Palestinian nationalism. That’s not a serious moral argument. That’s historical cruelty crudely disguised as moral purity.

And no, I never insulted you, but the position that European Jews should have just tried harder against the Nazis is a laughably sadistic viewpoint regardless of who holds it.

You did a terrible job of summarizing my position.

> the position that European Jews should have just tried harder against the Nazis

If you think I wrote anything like that, you have a serious lack of reading comprehension.

> your real position is that Jewish survival was a problem because it confuses your personal narrative of Palestinian nationalism.

Oh gee, thanks for informing me that my "real" position is that I shouldn't survive.

I'll bite as well.

There is a difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism. The former is condemning a land-grab because of some 2000 year old claim. The latter is hating Jews because they are Jews. There is a world of difference there.

The forefathers of everyone in Europe, with very few exceptions, occupied a different strip of land 2000 years ago and were driven out by romans, goths, huns, germans or whomever. Most pieces of land changed hands a dozen times or more. Should we now rearrange all the maps and revert to our 2000 year old original national lands and identities? Why 2000 years, why not 500, 5000 or 10000? The maps looked different in those periods as well.

Set aside the 2000 year old history for a moment. Given that the Jews were a persecuted minority across Europe - and indeed faced the a campaign of extermination far worse than early Zionists feared - one can see the moral necessity for their self determination.

Anti-Zionism is antisemitic because it declares that no, it is preferable for Jews to continue to face the Holocaust and other attempts at their genocide than to concede their right to self defense as a people.

There are different things here that you are glossing over and conflating.

Yes, there is a moral right and necessity for self-determination and self-defense for the Jews after the Holocaust. But there is no necessity or justification for that to happen in Palestine, especially when this means displacing and slaughtering the Palestinians who have lived there for quite a few centuries. And indeed Palestinians do have a moral right of self-determination and self-defense as well. So the essence of Zionism, which is the idea of taking over Palestine for a Jewish state, is deeply immoral because of that. And this immorality doesn't simply disappear because of the wrongs that were done to the Jews by non-Palestinians. And because of that, anti-Zionism is a moral imperative, because it aims to correct an immorality. Whereas antisemitism is something completely different.

> Anti-Zionism is antisemitic because it declares that no, it is preferable for Jews to continue to face the Holocaust and other attempts at their genocide than to concede their right to self defense as a people.

Which means that you think the only possible way to avoid a genocide of Jews and for Jews to defend themselves is to settle in Palestine? Nothing else would have done? Given that there were quite a few wars around the establishment of Israel which could have very well wiped Israel off the map that is quite a bold statement.

I rather think this idea of self-defense and self-determination of the Jewish people being only possible in Israel/Palestine is a religiously derived idea, nothing that has any basis in political and military facts or morals. It was just a "wouldn't it be nice to do this in Gods Promised Land?" kind of thing, current inhabitants be damned...

Got it, so you only specifically object to the Jews settling in their ancestral homeland which they immigrated to legally and was 98% less populated than today, because the Nazi-aligned mufti of Jerusalem objected to their presence.

Care to suggest a superior choice of venue for Jewish sovereignty where the Jews had a better claim to the land, and the locals were prepared to welcome their national project?

A few issues:

- "The democratically elected government of Gaza-Palestine is the Hamas" Hamas is not a democratic government, period. Elections you're talking about were almost 20 years ago. It's like calling Trumpistan 20 years from now a democracy, if Trump today declares he'll live forever, and that there will be no more elections, and enough MAGA Americans help him persevering.

- Israel's struggle is the Zionist dream of creating a Jewish state by any means. Means have been pretty violent and treacherous, from international terrorism, assassinations of diplomats, to mass killings and violent displacement of 100s of thousands of indigenous people, unilateral declaration of statehood over someone else's land, etc. Indigenous people have been revolting against this since way before Hamas even existed. It's quite something to bothside this, or even invert this, and call indigenous people terrorists, while violent immigrant invaders and land thieves are somehow legitimate state.

- Martyr != terrorist, it's anyone killed in some manner in relation to the above political context. If a child is shot in the head by Israel's soldiers, it will be called a martyr. Executed ICRC workers were called martyrs, etc.

The Hamas government isn't democratic, but it was democratically elected. And voters knew whom they were voting for, Hamas didn't change, they were a terrorist organization back then as well. Voters democratically elect all kinds of dictatorships. Still their fault.

Indigenous people (legitimately imho) started a war over that territory and lost it. Started a few more and lost those as well, together with some neighboring states. If you lost the war for that land, it isn't your land anymore. Simple as that. And terrorism isn't an acceptable means of warfare.

I'm pretty sure the violent colonizers who implemented a pre-meditated plan of conquest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Dalet are those who started the war in this case. "Right of conquest" was not part of international law anymore at that time.

They did not really win either, given that indigenous people, and their descendants, did not yet settle for their complete submission. Unless you call victory as having to hide behind walls and running to shelters every once in a while, and constantly making new enemies by bombing shit out of everyone around you.

As to the fault of the voters for what happened after elections. Yeah, that's easily debatable, given the massive foreign interference into the post-election Palestine's politics and society from occupation, and third countries, and attempts to coopt oposition for violent overthrow of elected government. Also Palestinians did not vote for terrorism, but for "change and reform" at the time http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4606482.stm

It literally doesn't matter.

What Hamas did or does, doesn't give any right to Israel to ethnically cleanse, forcibly displace, massacre 100+ people every day and commit a genocide in Gaza. 100 people, most of them kids!

These are people with lives, families, hope and compassion. Just imagine if the Ukrainian war came even close to this. People are not numbers.

And these are WARCRIMES, the entire global system was built to stop such things from happening, letting the occupation do whatever it wants while making a joke of any and every concept of the "international rule based order" will come back to bite the west, hard.

If this is allowed to happen, what's different about Taiwan and Ukraine then? Let the stronger one win right?

As we are currently seeing in international relations, the "international rule based order" needs someone to impose order, otherwise it won't work. Putin called the bluff and he seems to win that hand.

So as in all the other areas of life, rules are for the small, puny ones, not for the big or well-connected ones. If you are big or have big supporters, might makes right. Morals and rules are then only relevant for propaganda, not for actual behavior

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If that was the case the west bank would at peace, instead it's getting annexed with a pending ethnic cleaning plan.

They literally shot ambulances a few days ago on purpose:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/world/middleeast/gaza-isr...

Well Hamas’s massacre didn’t buy Palestine any good will/support, did it? I think the approval rate of Hamas was at historic levels after the massacre so that should tell you about the people in Gaza/Palestine(politically speaking of course)

Now Israel can do whatever they want because “nobody” is going to support what seamed like a terrorist state.

They chose violence and violence they get. It didn’t pay off. Not many people want to get involved into Palestine now. Not even the Arab states.

This guy perhaps?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c934y9kv07eo.amp

> Many countries completely ban non citizens from joining political protests, even ostensibly western countries.

Which ones?

In the UK we don't discriminate based on citizenship, or even if the protests are political or not !

Protest marches - no wait, the term is less specific: "public processions" - can have restrictions imposed for basically any reason. Restrictions can be imposed if (this is just a selection):

- They basically generate noise

- May cause prolonged disruption of access to any essential goods or any essential service

- May cause the prevention of, or a hindrance that is more than minor to, the carrying out of day-to-day activities

- May cause the prevention of, or a delay that is more than minor to, the delivery of a time-sensitive product to consumers of that product

Not forgetting there are probably 10-20 general Public Order Offences that can be used against a person, such as wilful obstruction of a highway or public nuisance.

Then we also have Serious Disruption Prevention Orders (SDPOs). SDPOs are civil orders that enable courts to place conditions or restrictions on an individual aged over 18 (such as restrictions on where they can go and when) with the aim of preventing them from engaging in protest-related activity that could cause disruption. Breaching an SDPO is a criminal offence.

And the cherry on the cake: by law you must tell the police in writing 6 days before a public march if you're the organiser (which is to say, get the police's permission)

Laws around protests here in the UK are certainly problematic, but I haven't heard of ant cases where this would have been specifically used against students from abroad.

The subjects of His Majesty have never been free

Technically we're subjects but the King has zero executive powers. His soft powers are perhaps another topic. Point being we're in effect, citizens and subject to the (very variable) laws of the country like any other country. Currently freedom of expression in the UK is highly problematic but that's a temporary issue with the current administration. No subjects or citizens in any country are ever free as in free beer. So I suppose you're correct.

There are very very few people who can be classed as "British subjects", the vast majority are British citizens since at least 1983.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_subject :

"Currently, it refers to people possessing a class of British nationality largely granted under limited circumstances to those connected with Ireland or British India born before 1949. Individuals with this nationality are British nationals and Commonwealth citizens, but not British citizens."

Germany bans pro-Palestine protests (officially they're still legal, but they've been arresting people since it began and they've just started deporting people for participating in completely legal protests) but I think that's a slightly different criterion than the one you asked for.

While the protests are per se not illegal, the people arrested aren't accused of just protesting, they are accused of supporting a terrorist organisation. The right to free speech isn't as all-encompassing in Germany as it is in the USA, so shouting the wrong slogans can very well get you in trouble.

Also, the right to protest in public only applies to German citizens: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gg/art_8.html

Foreigners are usually still free to do it, but they don't have a constitutionally protected right to public protests.

> While the protests are per se not illegal, the people arrested aren't accused of just protesting, they are accused of supporting a terrorist organisation. The right to free speech isn't as all-encompassing in Germany as it is in the USA, so shouting the wrong slogans can very well get you in trouble.

Yes, that's correct. Anyone who protests and grabs the attention of the police is accused of supporting a terrorist organisation. That's why I added the information that although they protest completely legally, they still get arrested and deported. The pretense for the arrest and deportation is that protesting to stop the carpet bombing of Gaza supports Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organisation.

Thousands for weeks on end protested the carpet bombing of Gaza, Germans as well as Foreigners. Many respectable foreign and German organisations invited to participate and organized those protests. And only very few of those protesting were arrested or even investigated.

Those who were usually did something more than protest, like showing support for terrorist organizations like Hamas or ISIS by showing the respective flag, harassing counter-protesters, shouting controversial slogans like "from the river to the sea..." (which is thought to imply destroying Israel and therefore "Volksverhetzung", although I'm not sure if the courts are already through with that one) or just plainly calling for the killing of Jews or the eradication of Israel.

Actually, the police was very patient and tame with those protests, too patient and too tame for the taste of many. A common, not totally unjustified opinion was that if those protests were just Germans protesting about a strictly German issue (like "Stuttgart21" or "Startbahn West" back in the day) and behaving like the pro-Palestine protestors did, there would have been riot police tear-gassing and bludgeoning everyone within half an hour.

Non-citizens in Germany have no free speech rights period. You get banned and deported even for making lectures about unfavorable topics, as it seems.

That's quite different from protesting, since you're not making anyone listen to you. Lecture/conference is an offer, that Germans and others may take out of their own interest to learn about what you have to say.

That also infringes on the German citizens, because you're attempting to limit them from what they may choose to learn.

> Non-citizens in Germany have no free speech rights period. You get banned and deported even for making lectures about unfavorable topics, as it seems.

No, the right to utter your opinion in Germany applies to everyone, not only Germans. The constitution has two categories of people, Germans and Everyone, some rights apply only to Germans, some to Everyone. The right to assembly and public protests is one just for Germans, the right to freely utter your opinion applies to everyone.

However, that right isn't what Americans think when they hear "free speech" (which is why I avoided the term earlier): There are far more limits to it, like the criminalization of giving offense ("Beleidigung"), promoting or misinforming about Nazism and other crimes against humanity ("Volksverhetzung"), deadnaming, speaking ill of foreign heads of state or domestic politicians, and condoning criminal acts. Also, only an opinion is protected, not a statement of fact, no matter if it is right or wrong. For example, a journalist was fined for writing about chancellor Schroeder dying his hair. The court didn't even try to find out if it was right or wrong, it was a statement of fact, so unprotected, and it was offensive to Schroeder, so an offense ("Beleidigung").

So in conclusion you are kind of right in that there is actually no freedom of speech for anyone in Germany, not even Germans, that right simply doesn't exist. Its just that foreigners are treated the same as Germans, there is no difference in rights there.

Several counterexamples recently:

https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/video-donald-trump-germany-cr...

22:20 ("social center raid for a progressive resistance flyer") 26:20 ("hate crimes") 30:25 (shutting down a congress) ...

Those are not counterexamples, you are agreeing with me. There is no such thing as free speech in Germany, only some weaker right. There are laws limiting speech, and actually (as that article seems to complain about) they are applied to citizens and non-citizens equally, meaning that even a Jewish citizen of Israel can be deported from Germany for uttering anti-semitic statemens. Everyone arrested should have known about those laws, they have been there since the founding of the modern german state after WW2.

What I don't know about is the turn of things in the US, US laws didn't include those kinds of crimes and used to protect freedom of speech in a far more comprehensive manner. Things seem to have changed there, I don't know.

Btw. my personal opinion is that Germany should have US-like free speech and that the only limits to free speech should be where someone is directly and immediately put in danger of physical harm by it. (e.g. shouting "Jump!" to a suicidal person on a railing, or shouting "Fire!" in a dense crowd)

If Germany keeps finding that Jewish citizens of Israel are being antisemitic and wishing for their own deaths, perhaps it's actually Germany's antisemitism detector that is miscalibrated?

Not many people in Germany dare to bring this up, because suggesting that German's antisemitism detector could be miscalibrated, is, itself, something which Germany detects as antisemitism. Which, if you think for more than five milliseconds, is further evidence that it might be the case.

So in other words,

> Non-citizens in Germany have no free speech rights period. You get banned and deported even for making lectures about unfavorable topics, as it seems.

and neither do citizens, who get fined and imprisoned instead of banned and deported.

Some restrictions on speech are reasonable, including the ones Germany claims to have, but not the ones it actually has.

Correct. Here's a DW video on it: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-deport-pro-palestinian-prot...

There is a fight over this being done with or without due process.

Incorrect:

"They are accused of indirectly supporting Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization in Germany."

2nd sentence from your link.

Supporting terrorist organizations is not legal in Germany. Supporting terrorist organizations is not the same a being Pro-Palestinian. Unless you think that all Palestinians are terrorists, which I do not.

Yes, and Germany considers protests against anything Israel does in Gaza to be support for Hamas, which is designated as a terrorist organization in Germany.

That's why I told you: officially, protesting is legal, but they still arrest and deport people for protesting.

This newspaper may not think they're the same thing, but the police do.

> Germany considers protests against anything Israel does in Gaza to be support for Hamas

This is patently untrue.

I live in Berlin and constantly see protests. Far from being too strict, the police are way to lax in enforcing applicable laws.

The Jewish community in Berlin is scared, because they feel completely left alone by the authorities. We have people running around freely in effin Berlin, right next to the Holocaust memorial calling of the extermination of the Jewish state and all Jews. And virtually nothing is being done about it.

It's perverse.

I live in Berlin, I've visited some protests, I constantly see police arrest people. I visited a camp in front of the Reichstag building. The organizers told me about ridiculous police behaviour. Then I saw some ridiculous police behaviour at that camp. Arrests and intimidation tactics. The police banned speaking any language other than German or English. I saw them take away some people in handcuffs for the crime of speaking Arabic. I know that was the reason, because the police told the leaders, who told the whole camp. I saw them "patrol" by walking in random straight lines through the camp, pushing away everyone who happens to be in the path of that straight line even if they could easily walk around. I did not see any threatening behaviour from the camp members, just holding signs and chanting, as you would expect at any legal protest.

I've observed street marchse too. Police are required to let these happen provided they are registered in advance. Nonetheless I see police barge into crowds (again being violent against everyone who happens to be standing in the straight line between A and B), grab someone seemingly at random, and haul them off to who knows where. One time I tried to film such a thing happening, and was shouted at, then kicked until I put my phone down, so. I won't be releasing that video for fear of further retaliation.

I don't believe Jews are feeling scared, but I don't actually know any Jews (or Muslims), so feel free to prove me wrong. Every synagogue has a permanent police watch outside it, even before the 2023 escalation of the Gaza genocide, and I don't hear of any crimes or attempted crimes there. Now look at the other side, and it's people getting assaulted, arrested and deported for protesting. I sure would be scared if I believed that Netanyahu did something wrong, because if the government thought I disliked Israel's genocide on Gaza, it certainly seems like I could be deported for that.

Interestingly enough, I heard of one cultural institution (but I forgot which) that's hosting a lot of anti-genocide events... because the government had already set a date for it to shut down, so it had nothing to lose. Something in the general vicinity of Möckernbrücke.

There was another cultural institution somewhere in Neukölln that was shut down, immediately, following the choice to host one speech one time about Gaza.

And there was a *Jewish center* that was raided by police for hosting a Yanis Varoufakis speech by video call. If Jewish centers should be afraid of anything right now, it seems to be the police.

It makes me angry when people continually deny police misbehaviour that I have seen with my own eyes, heard with my ears and felt on my skin. I have to wonder if it's a particular kind of terminal online-ness where things one reads on the internet feel absolutely true because it's the closest to truth that one ever engages with. The alternative is that I'm clinically insane and shouldn't trust my own lying eyes, which I don't think is true. I never go to protests any more, even to observe, because I am afraid of the police. Most of the pro-Palestine protestors (as opposed to the COVID-19 protestors) I've ever talked with have seemed like relatively reasonable people, and I never saw violence instigated by anyone other than the police. Unless, of course, you believe that signs and chants are violent terrorism, as Germany apparently does.

Someone told me it's not Germany-wide, and not federal thing, but specifically the Berlin police who are ruthless with Palestine protests, and that there's no problem with Palestine protests in any other part of Germany. I wouldn't know, since my eyeballs don't reach Germany-wide. Given the disconnect between media and observed reality in Berlin, I don't rely on the media for information about how the rest of Germany is doing on this issue.

What is your rebuttal?

> The police banned speaking any language other than German or English.

Incorrect. That was a court order, because people were quite obviously subverting the prohibition of calling for genocide by using languages law enforcement does not understand.

> I don't actually know any Jews (or Muslims),

I know both Jews and Muslins: you are incredibly wrong.

"You are incredibly wrong." is such a great rebuttal. It applies in any situation and you don't even have to bring any evidence.

My rebuttal to your rebuttal: You are incredibly wrong.

(And who cares if it was the police or the courts? Both are branches of the government. And if the court order was as you described, then why did the police march someone off in handcuffs for speaking Arabic privately to another person who spoke Arabic?)

It is sufficient when you admit that you actually have no data to back up your claims.

And if you can't tell, or don't care about, the difference between police overreach and the police enforcing the law of the land, we don't have anything further to discuss.

Have a good day.

No. What is not allowed is calls for genocide ("From the river to the sea") and support for terrorist organizations.

And yes, if you are a guest in a country, supporting genocide and terrorism can get you deported.

But the police has been extremely lax in enforcement. These protests still basically always have these characteristics and there is no action by the police.

It is pathetic.

Protesting against Israel's carpet bombing and mass starvation of civilians, targeted missile strikes and sniper strikes on journalists (more than any other war in history and there might not be any left by now) and so on is considered to be supporting Hamas. Because if you weren't a Hamas terrorist, you'd support everything Israel says it does to get rid of Hamas. That six year old girl and the paramedics trying to save her? All Hamas. The flour massacre? Hamas. Journalists? Hamas. I'm skeptical that you haven't seen this rhetoric constantly since Oct 7 2023.

Are you aware that people were chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free", because it rhymes, and they were not chanting "from the river to the sea, let's gas all the Jews again"?

> is considered to be supporting Hamas.

No it is not. Even if it almost certainly is. These protests used to run almost daily, and were often allowed to proceed even if actual calls for genocide were included.

And of course you are also wrong on the content: those accusations are largely untrue, and Israel is an absolute leader in avoiding civilian casualties in urban combat, achieving a 1:1 ratio of civilian to combatant deaths, whereas the world average is 10:1. And this despite Hamas's openly stated and obviously carried out policy of creating as many civilian casualties in their own population as possible.

And no, calling for genocide does not become legal if it rhymes.

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Supporting Palestinians that Israel has been killing for over a year (+50k killed, most were women and children), while starving the rest and ethnically cleansing them, is not supporting terrorism.

Too many have been killed, for sure, but you should probably use sources other than the Hamas Health Ministry:

https://www.euronews.com/2025/04/03/hamas-run-health-ministr...

>Too many have been killed

How many killed would have been "not too many"?

That depends on your vantage point.

If you accept the mainstream Palestinian viewpoint, i.e. the one that endorses Hamas and the Simchat Torah massacre, there is no such thing as too many, because every Palestinian death furthers the jihadist cause of demonizing Israel.

If you accept the mainstream Israeli viewpoint, all of these deaths were unnecessary because they directly resulted from an unprovoked onslaught against innocent civilians, and all of the casualties could have been avoided but for the Gazan misadventure of October 7th.

I'm not sure which camp GP subscribes to, however.

1. Hamas bears the moral responsibility for all of the suffering in the war they started on October 7th, and the Palestinian people bear the moral responsibility of electing and supporting them (and participating in the invasion, and not returning the hostages).

2. Even Hamas now admits most deaths have been military aged males: https://m.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-848592

3. How can you argue that Gaza has been starved and ethnically cleansed when the population of the Gaza strip has increased since the start of the war?

Not supporting Palestine is supporting terrorism.

Except that in USA "You're brown, I don't like you" is terrorism.

Except when the government is doing it.

I strongly agree, unfortunately they feel strongly differently after spending a lot of money to get on the courses. Frankly the law of the land is the latter, but this is one of the problems with cladding cultures and attitudes which needs addressing rather than glossing over...

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Who was in the US illegally?

> Wesleyan has a rich history of activism and protest, and not always entirely peaceful (Roth’s predecessor, Doug Bennet, had his office firebombed at one point).

Arson is not protest. Arson is a VIOLENT type of activism, which is legally classified as terrorism.

Trump (or anybody) shouldn't be allowed to punish folks for speech or peaceful protest. Unfortunately, folks are calling VIOLENT acts like arson and battery "protest", and threats of bodily harm "speech" ("harassment" or "assault" under most US criminal law) -- we should be in favor of the government stepping in to protect people from arson, battery, and assault/ harassment.

> he did not give in to the illiberal demands of the left to chill speech post-2020,

Roth has been president since 2007. What was his response to Nick Christakis's struggle session (plenty of video of that) or Erika Christakis leaving Yale, after she penned an e-mail that students should be able to handle Halloween costumes they find offensive?

The American Left has been illiberal and going after speech for decades; it didn't start post-2020.

If the state is illegitimate then it is permissible or perhaps an obligation to topple it, according to people like the revolutionaries that founded the USA. That is, it doesn't necessarily matter what is legal or not, if the state misbehaves then you should put it to the guillotine or fire or bear arms or whatever suits you.

As an outsider it's always funny to see people write about the "American Left", as if there were any leftist movements of national importance in the US. As if Food Not Bombs had at some point had a majority in congress or something, it's just a ridiculous idea. If that happened there would be a bloody purge, Pinochet style but bigger.

> The American Left has been illiberal and going after speech for decades; it didn't start post-2020.

Good that the free-speech absolutist Musk is there to ban everyone on Twitter who calls him out on his lies, trying to buy democratic elections, and do nazi salutes.

> Arson is a VIOLENT type of activism, which is legally classified as terrorism.

Lithium-ion batteries in badly made cars are prone to ...combustion.

Just so. The First Amendment assures the right to peacefully assemble and speak your mind, not to commit arson. Violent attacks aren't free speech and should always be prosecuted.

They'll make it through if they bend the knee. Otherwise the regime will destroy them, and the conclusion will be that it's all because of these darned radical leftists.

> They'll make it through if they bend the knee. Otherwise the regime will destroy them, and the conclusion will be that it's all because of these darned radical leftists.

Well, it is, isn't it? They required complete loyalty to the ideology before accepting any faculty: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/ucla-dei-statement.htm...

They shouldn't have gone that far.

> University of Toronto

I understand you’re fighting for what you believe in. Keep going, you’re almost there.

> I understand you’re fighting for what you believe in.

In your mind, what do you think I believe in?

I ask this because the only point I made in that message was in response to the "bend the knee" comment.

The one side required "bend the knee". Now the other side requires it. Why be surprised?

I don't see much talk of donors? My impression is that, as in many situations, the super-wealthy are forming a dominant class - as if it's their right - rather than respect democracy and freedom, and attacking university freedom. Didn't some person engineer the Harvard leader's exit?

Roth says the Wesleyan board is supportive; maybe they are just lucky.

Being a super wealthy alum is a prerequisite for being a Trustee, and University Trustees are the group that University Presidents report to.

This is why I always have and always will prefer community colleges. Their boards are elected officials. Not perfect, but 1000 times better than just having wealth.

Election is a bad way to choose almost anything. The enthusiasm of Americans for adding yet more elected roles rather than, say, having anything done by anybody competent is part of how they got here. The only place elections are even a plausible choice is political office - with an election and as close as you can to universal suffrage now the idiots running things are everybody's fault, although Americans even managed to screw that up pretty good. Sortition would probably be cheaper, but elections are fine for this purpose.

> Election is a bad way to choose almost anything.

Except the alternatives! No form of government is more effective, competent, just, or free of corruption.

That's false. Everything comes down to good leadership. Monarchies with good leadership very well might have incredibly effective anti-corruption techniques and competency. China is managing a billion people and their infrastructure and tech is incredible.

The problems are two fold. The first is vetoing of bad ideas. No leader is right 100% of the time, and when they are wrong, someone must have the power to veto. There must be some way for reason to triumph over power, and a leader who chooses to be responsible is capable of deferring to expertise.

The second is succession. A good leader today may be succeeded by rotten leader tomorrow, but both have the same legitimacy, because the legitimacy comes from power alone and not reason.

> effective, competent, just, or free of corruption.

These things are a result of culture, not a result of the government itself. The government influences culture, but they are first and foremost functions of culture, specifically a culture of tolerating speaking truth to power, dissent, critical thinking, tolerance, and solidarity.

I think people get confused into thinking that democracy is about voting when it is should be about reducing prolonged concentrations of power, because of the innate tendency for it to be abused and hoarded. So to support your point, if your culture does not support the concept of good "democratic" governance, and no one strives for the institutions and constitutions to support it, you might be better off with a benevolent dictator, for as long as they last before a not-so-benevolent one.

Timothy Snyder would encapsulate this idea as "Democracy is not something you are, but something you do."

Which makes a lot of sense if you say the same thing about Christianity. Christian isn't something you are, Christianity is something you do.

Both have hallowed dogmas that are poorly understood by their followers, the constitution and the bible/teachings of jesus respectively.

> I think people get confused into thinking that democracy is about voting when it is should be about reducing prolonged concentrations of power

Voting is the definition and core mechanism of democracy: Government by the consent of the governed, to protect their rights, their lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

What's bizarre is, probably in a place where you have the benefits of centuries of overwhelming success, your extreme attempts to redefine it.

cui bono?, other than dictators. What has worked better than democracy?

> if your culture does not support the concept of good "democratic" governance, and no one strives for the institutions and constitutions to support it, you might be better off with a benevolent dictator, for as long as they last before a not-so-benevolent one.

Which culture? Democracy has been an incredible success all over the world - unprecedented success in history in most places it's taken hold.

Yours are the old propaganda of dictators - our 'culture', that undefined nonsense people cite for their prejudices, isn't compatible. The question is, why do you take up their cause?

They also love that you are sitting on the sidelines distracted, criticizing, rather than acting as a democratic citizen.

Democracy and elections are not opinion polls. It's a distribution of political power.

That's true but it's not usefully true.

Even avoiding things like gerrymandering, are voters choosing politicians or are politicians choosing voters?

Do candidates send out emails asking for you to talk to your friends, or do they ask for more money? Do candidates have principled stances founded on an underlying philosophy, or do they focus on issues that are emotional in order to drum up support.

I think "why do candidates ask for money" is a very very important question to ruminate on as is "why are we talking about abortion and race rather than health and housing"?

Before a general election there is a primary and before a primary there is fundraising. In order to succeed in a primary, in general, you have to do OK at fundraising. Fundraising is not dissimilar to an election and it happens before primaries. This means money votes first, which is why it feels like we have a "democracy" approved of by those with money, we literally do.

Money votes first.

It's very imperfect - like every human institution ever - but still democracy has enormous power. Why do you think so many invest so much trying to manipulate voters? What are they spending the money on?

Also, fundraising is a signal of democratic appeal. Some fundraise with mass collections of smaller donations.

Still, I agree that money has too much influence. So what do you think, as a democratic citizen, should we do about the influence of money? It's our country. The moneyed influences love that you are distracted, on the sidelines, debating rather than acting.

> That's false. Everything comes down to good leadership. Monarchies with good leadership very well might have incredibly effective anti-corruption techniques and competency. China is managing a billion people and their infrastructure and tech is incredible.

Can you name a monarchy that is nearly as free, safe, and prosperous as advanced democracies? That is less corrupt? Is China? (No.)

> These things are a result of culture, not a result of the government itself.

How do you explain all the cultures around the world with successful democracies that meet my descriptions? How about Taiwan and (formerly) Hong Kong - same cultures as communist China, far more free, prosperous, non-corrupt, safe ....

There is also the issue of rights. What right does someone have to rule me without my consent? Who the heck are they, other than thugs with guns?

> Can you name a monarchy that is nearly as free, safe, and prosperous as advanced democracies?

Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom.

Andorra, Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden.

Liechtenstein and Monaco.

As you have listed advanced democracies with figurehead relics of monarchy, we agree!

That's the point the parent made. Elections are suitable for political officers.

Once you start electing other jobs, like judges or plumbers, then you get whoever you elected, rather than necessarily a person able to do the job.

In other words, getting elected is a specific skill set. Doing the job is a different skill set. In most fields those skill sets do not overlap.

Even in govt the overlap is marginal. Which is why some elected officials are pretty useless at actually "governing".

To my American friends all I can say is "you voted for this".

Well,of course you get who ever you elected, that's a trueism that holds for any method.

What method do you prefer?Trust in the market and chose the one with the highest price, or, choose the one recommended by most, aka the popular choice or the elected?

You're offering two choices which prove the point that electing is a poor way to fill a post.

"popularity" does not imply competence. Popularity is easily gamed and bought. Given that unlimited business money can be spent on elections, it's mostly bought.

I'm not sure what you mean by market, or highest price, but I assume you mean the above?

The opposite of elections is appointment. Based on competence. So, for example, in my company I want job x done well, so I appoint a person based on their ability to do x.

Of course this assumes I want x done well. If I'm elected, and I want x done badly, then I can appoint someone based on other factors, like ideology or loyalty etc.

> free of corruption.

There are just plenty examples of corruption among the people we elect, everywhere.

This is a dangerous axiom which will take you to wrong conclusions. Elected officials may be better, more efficient and less corrupt at a local level, but this does not scale.

democracy is bad but its still better than more autocratic systems because it encourages change which keeps succession well-oiled and also acts as a vent for tyranny to curtail its worst excesses. This applies as much to politics as it does a school board.

Democracy doesn’t entail having tons of minor roles being elected. That’s actually completely unique to the US, as far as I know. A lot of the positions that are elected in the US would be neutral civil servants in any other democratic country I can think of.

> neutral civil servants

Look I'm not saying we don't have these but the set of positions that are neutral is much smaller. Thanks to the political whipping boys de jour any position of power within academic or educational institutions has become politicized.

Having judges and university trustees hired on merit rather than campaigning to be elected does not make a system autocratic.

Being super rich != merit. This is what seems to be happening in practice.

What better merit is there than public approval for positions like that?

If you ask five people who can't speak French to tell me which French-language essay deserves a higher grade, you'll quickly discover that their merit-finding abilities are a coin flip.

The whole purpose of elections is tangential to merit. There's important reasons to have them, but finding the 'best' candidate isn't one of them.

Who chooses them? What makes you think they choose them on merit?

It's the whole theological foundation of northern european and american protestantism = being rich means good loves you, so you're a good person.

How they got there from jesus saying rich people can't go to heaven is one of those theological acrobacies they criticise so much in catholics, but don't disregard doing themselves when suits them.

It also ensures that many people, including people others don't like and dismiss, get a voice and some real power.

I prefer the way it used to be in Finland (and still mostly is). Board members are elected by the people affiliated with the university. Votes might be split 4:3:3 or 5:4:4 between professors, other staff, and students. Some board positions are representatives of the three internal groups, while the rest are outsiders. You get all kinds of interesting people from business leaders to activists to former national presidents in the board, while avoiding politruks elected or appointed by random outsiders.

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Columbia has an endowment that stands (pre- Liberation Day) at 15 billion dollars.

They kowtowed to some of the militant Zionist interests involved in that endowment in order to attain a fractionally higher return, and betrayed their students.

They kowtowed to the fascist administration on the grounds that it was threatening 400 million dollars in grants, and betrayed their students to the point of facilitating a project to unilaterally deport many of them based on Constitutionally protected quasi-private speech.

At this point I don't think they want or deserve to be called a university. Let's go with "Tax-exempt investment fund".

And specifically the ivy league schools and "elite" ones are cementing their reputation among younger students and soon to be college applicants. They are paying attention. I've seen several boycotts of Columbia and other universities from students.

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There is an ongoing genocide in Gaza and genocidal language is commonplace in Zionist discourse. If there are cases of hate speech on the pro Palestinian side, they pale in comparison to speech from the other side.

Regardless we shouldn’t be rounding up and imprisoning folks if they disagree with your politics. This is what is getting lost in this specific case.

I don't remember the pro single state pro Israel protest. Don't know what it has to do with the question

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>Do you think calling for the genocide of Jews

I'm guessing the motte associated with this particular bailey won't be nearly as clear in its violation of such codes.

If someone said they wanted another kistallnacht while holding torches and refusing to allow jews to walk down the street, would you know what they meant? Are they just talking about breaking some glass at a jewish wedding? Maybe they just want to go to one of those rage rooms?

Just so we're clear, people are still losing their minds when someone "finds" a noose-like knot in the vicinity.

There is no baily here.

You're still stuck on the bailey. Let's see the motte (in this case, some evidence of a pattern of calling for genocide of Jews at Columbia)

How about outright harassment of Jewish students at Columbia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_at_Columbia_Unive...

Does that qualify? No? Now replace Jewish with African American. Is that still OK in your book?

There was no significant harassment, and what harassment there was was a fraction compared to the harassment of Palestinian supports by others (including Jewish students and faculty). Even the article you posted points out that it's bunk at the top lol

Oh? No harassment. Well shoot, we should let the Jewish students know.

Jewish Students Sheltered Inside College Library During Protest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eFbKViNrMo

35 percent of of Jewish students say there has been violence or acts of hate targeting Jews on their campus https://www.hillel.org/more-than-one-third-of-jewish-college...

But sure, all good. The apologist for the violent maniacs says it's all good. So then it must be good.

That's like asking Stormfront if they think there's a threat from non-whites.

Comparing Jews to Nazis. I think you might be a horrible person and a troll.

Some of them were (kapos) and helped found Israel. They watched and learned a lot.

you got your terms confused, regardless Kristallnacht == intifada. People calling for a globalized intifada are literally calling for genocide of Jews everyone (including Columbia).

No, my terms are correct.

The bailey is: "they are calling for the genocide of Jews!!!"

Once challenged, you will retreat to the more easily proven: "they are advocating for the return the land to the Palestinian people", as you just did there. I can promise you that no group of people needs to be allowed to occupy a previously settled region with violence in order to continue to exist. I've heard this argument from white nationalists who call for a white nation to similarly preserve their people from perceived threats, as well as heard it numerous times in African settler colonies (Rhodesia, South Africa, etc.) It's a standard ethnostate talking point, and none of us are fooled by it.

Yes now you've corrected the terms, in your previous comment you claimed the motte was calls for genocide. Regardless, I'm defending what you're calling the bailey as it's easily defensible based on observable current events.

Care to explain how Kristallnacht is in any way different from an intifada? They are literally the same thing, a disorganized mob raping, murdering and attacking innocent civilians. The Arabs have done two intifadas, both resulted in countless dead and injured Jews who were attacked solely for being "el-yahud" aka "yuden" aka Jews.

As I said above, there is no motte and bailey fallacy here. You're the one making false claims about harassment of hamas supporters.

>Care to explain how Kristallnacht is in any way different from an intifada

Calls for a "global intifada" are simply calls to oppose the existence of the state of Israel as a settler colony in the land formerly known as Palestine. That's it. It is an immoral country, built by settlers as an ethnostate, and its existence is a moral stain on the world. Has literally nothing to do with "Jews" (I feel the same way about the Muslims in Nagorno-Karabakh right now) and everything to do with a bunch of jack boot fascists who ethnically cleansed an area and continue to oppress the remainder of the people there at gunpoint in massive concentration camps.

Calling for an intifada (which just means "resistance") against that is no difference than calling for the end of Rhodesia. This is a nation that made a man into a celebrity for raping prisoners.

Your whole comment is a lie and you and I both know that but I appreciate you lying so openly, makes it much easier to know who the nazis are. There is literally no difference between intifada and Kristallnacht, or a pogrom or a lynch mob, they're all the same thing. You haven't explained at all how they're different, instead you again whitewashed two 5+ year periods of murder, terror, harassment, hate, bigotry, and abuse that was directed at jews, and you are now saying more is needed because of an imagined history of "ethnic cleansing" by some supposed "ethnostate" (whatever that means). You claim Jews are a moral stain on the world... which again sounds so similar to what a certain failed Austrian artist whose book happens to be super popular in gaza used to say...

Really, you right now are guilty of the motte and bailey fallacy, because as you just made up a bunch of indefensible claims so I really am interested to know what your motte is here. how turn the tables...

If you don't know what an ethnostate is, you shouldn't have posted this so late on a school night hahaha

But am I to understand from your comment that the current campaign in Gaza is intrinsically tied to Judaism?

What does that even mean?

Why not answer the original question instead of speaking in non sequiturs?

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Your argument is so out of touch I can only assume it’s being made in bad faith.

Many of the pro-Palestinian protesters are also Jewish. Equating all Jewish people with Israel and Zionism is insidious and misleading.

What on Earth? How is their argument out of touch or made in bad faith? It's a reasonable and popular line of reasoning that you disagree with strongly. Assuming the best possible interpretation is one of our community guidelines, please follow it.

The punishment needs to be commisserate with the crime, and dealt with through due process; to do otherwise is distinctly un-american (see 1st amendment on freedom of assembly, 4th amendment on freedoms from unreasonable state actions: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons[...] against unreasonable searches and seizures", and especially the 5th amendment: "[no person shall] be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law").

What we are seeing at Colombia University (as well as the country at large) is the continual abridgement of these rights. Note that for the fifth amendendment specifically, the constitution refers to any person, not just citizens. Those here legally are entitled to due process protections under the law.

The following argument relies on the following: (1) Universities historically have been the the catalysts of change through student protest. (2) Peaceful protest is a right of the people that shall not be abridged. (3) Public Universities (being government institutuions themselves; see campus police and jurisdiction) have a duty of care to protect their students.

With the above holding true, the argument against this being a "betrayal" falls facially flat, as it is a severe consequence that the university capitulated to, and had a duty to prevent. The arument boiled down to "they were being disruptive, so we should get rid of them," because the betrayal amounted to the jailing and deportations (or attempted deportations, in some cases) for the "crime" of being nonviolently disruptive in a public place.

Without articulating a legally rationed basis for a criminally sanctionable offense, an equivalent is threatening to jail and deport construction workers when they block a business entryway. In general, you do not have a right to be merely inconvienced by others in a public space.

The second paragraph answers your second question, actually.

How so? I don't see how that answers any of my questions. It just adds more color and nuance to the situation being discussed.

Except they're not mainstream Jewish. Jewish Voice for Peace has been linked to known terrorists and receives support from anti-Jewish interests. At best, they're "useful idiots" but more realistically they were long corrupted by anti-semitic interests.

https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/jewish-voice-peac...

You can be 100% correct while not being mainstream.

And you're laundering what the linked page says--they try to paint a picture of JVP being anti-semitic, but don't specifically accuse them of that. They do call them anti-Israel and anti-Zionist but you must not conflate that with anti-Semitism.

Do you find the ADL credible anyway. Seems they themselves could be accused of anti-semitism: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5097676-elon-mus...

Saying Musk's anti-semitic behavior isn't anti-semitic is definitely stretching the truth.

So you're pointing out one particular action of ADL and calling them anti-semitic? After decades of action? And they are historical collaboration and cross-pollination with SPLC, too. Are you going to attack SPLC?

Classic straw-manning. You should know better than that.

What is SPLC? What have they done?

I'm also wondering why the ADL would defend Musk at all. Can someone explain their motivation for that?

If you're asking what the SPLC is, even if you google it and see the first result, you have no skin in this game. Sit this discussion out. You're just using this opportunity to leak your anti-semitism and you're not even being subtle about it.

Maybe just explain what it is instead of avoiding my point?

Those who defend Israeli colonialism actually increase anti-semitism in the world and no amount of intentional conflation of Judaism and Zionism will erase that. Maybe you'll realize that one day.

No, I will not explain because you clearly have no background or any prior knowledge in the fight against antisemitism and racism. You're just parroting using the cause du jour as an excuse to express your own antisemitic beliefs.

GTFO about Israeli colonialism. Jews are the indigenous people of the land. The archaeological record is clear on this.

Once again evading the substance of my comment.

> Jews are the indigenous people of the land

Rank propaganda. Enjoy your genocide.

> Many of the pro-Palestinian protesters are also Jewish

Nearly every person who claims to be jewish, when pushed turns out to be "jewish" it's essentially a strange version of blackface and fairly bigoted.

Exactly. Most people of Jewish faith I have met puts the interests of Israel above those of the United States, because it is in their religion to return to the homeland. Look no further than Pelosi arguing that if the Capitol burned to the ground, as long as Israel prospers, elected officials will remain committed to Israel (and the crowd at that Jewish council cheered on). Btw, one cannot find this video anywhere anymore (you will find it on Facebook using Pelosi Capitol). I wonder why.... People advocating for Israel at this point are traitors to the United States and should be treated as such. When elected officials like Pelosi would rather the capitol burns to the ground but Israel prospers, I feel nothing short of dread. But students writting opeds opposing Genocide is the story...

> What you're looking for is a town square where everyone can protest to their hearts content. You're not looking for a place of quiet contemplation and study.

The university quad, a multipurpose public space designated for students, is basically the only type of public, physical town square left in this entire country.

I’m Jewish. If you want to support me, you’ll let people protest and definitely not throw people out of the country just because they wrote something supporting Gaza.

As another Jew, the way non-Jews are using us as a cudgel to crack down on free speech certainly doesn't feel like "support". As one of history's leading targets when it comes time to scapegoat a minority, I get more antisemitic vibes from the "we have to sacrifice our American ideals to protect the Jews" folks than the "stop killing Palestinians" ones.

Right on. And the conflation of anti-Israel and anti-Jew feels really dangerous, considering the current state of affairs in Israel.

I'm an American, thankyouverymuch. I've been to Israel once. I don't care a whole lot about the place either way. Acting like I must be aggrieved when someone attacks that country is doing far more damage to me than the attack.

I remember first hearing of the "not in our name" protests (very early on) and thinking "I'm so glad I'm not the only person who realizes that what is being presented as patronization is blame."

A significant number of Columbia students are Jewish and were largely protesting the genocide. Almost the entirety of this movement had zero issue with Jews, only with the actions of Israel and Zionism. A significant number of outside agitators were older Jewish Zionists or (often) Zionist evangelicals who lived within driving distance and wanted to start a fight. 50 year old drunk men wearing Israeli flags and pushing into the crowd in groups.

I watched this narrative get created and promoted without any evidence; Video after video showed peaceful and surprisingly media-savvy students (I mean, it is Columbia). Every politician and most media organizations taking direct input from Israeli government officials or AIPAC. On MSNBC and CNN we heard voice after voice after voice pronouncing expert opinions on the shame of this protest/terrorism in an Israeli accent. Administration officials trying to expel anybody caught on camera who was identifiable. While the bombs dropped on Gaza.

I can't say with any confidence that there was absolutely zero conflict, but the absolute confidence that every figure of authority immediately brought to bear on the subject of all Jews being purged by Hamas terrorists from Columbia and needing the National Guard to be called out to protect them? It was beyond the pale.

All of the video I watched of actual Zionist students (or student-aged people) had them victim-posing for social media after throwing themselves into the protest and being largely ignored.

It bothers me how frequently these Jewish students and organizations are erased.

The complaint was passed through the US President.

Against a liberal university.

And ICE is picking students up.

—

I mean… this isn’t the kind of liberal university I think of; places which have fought regularly for their ideas and for advancement.

Harvard's rolling over was particularly annoying, they have a 52 billion dollar endowment! If any university could afford to make a stand and lose funding over it it's Harvard. What's the point of this massive pile of money if you never dip into it in exceptional circumstances?

Harvard is a hedge fund that happens to do some education and research as a tax-advantaged side gig.

who gets to withdraw that money?

The university uses it for salaries, financial aid and other operations.

Universities typically only spend about 5% of their endowments per year, since it has to last forever. And much of it comes with restrictions on what it can be spent on, those come from the donors wishes. So money in the endowment that's for the theater department or to support an econ professorship can't be repurposed to support federal funds that supported cancer research.

Yeah they try to make them perpetual by only spending less than their growth each year but with 52 billion you could afford to draw down a billion or two (2.6 billion would be 5%) and that would fund research for years.

Harvard's endowment could fund all research at the university for many decades.

Harvard chose to roll over for Trump, and I think the main reason is that the board of the Harvard Corporation largely agrees with him.

That surprised me. It set the pattern for lesser schools, too.

A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions? Is there anything they could have done differently in the past decade or two to have broader sympathy now, or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?

There are some reasons that I think you probably know, which don't receive enough time and attention

1) Despite an appearance of being "left leaning" (according to polls of faculty political sentiment) they continue to gatekeep education behind prohibitively expensive tuition that is out of reach of lower economic strata without crippling debt, and have simultaneously struggled to produce graduates whose economic differential easily makes up for that expense and lost work time.

2) They enjoy a tax free status while receiving significant tax money despite many failing to grow their student bodies in tandem with the growth of the US population, leading to people questioning whether they deserve those benefits as institutions that serve the public.

3) There is a sentiment that basic literacy and numeracy of graduates has dropped over the last decades outside of a narrow area of studies, because of a shift to a model where students are customers buying a credential instead of getting an education.

(These are all interrelated, of course.)

I have multiple family members that are frustrated with higher learning because their children came out of the system more liberal-minded than when they entered. In this politically divided climate they feel like the university system “stole” their children from them.

In reality I don’t think people’s political opinions change very much and they are just mad that their children individuated.

> In reality I don’t think people’s political opinions change very much and they are just mad that their children individuated.

I think this probably the case as well. If I look back at how my own views shifted, the shift very likely would’ve happened regardless of if I’d attended university, assuming everything else was the same. It wasn’t the university that resulted in the shift as much as it was my getting out of my local bubble out into the world and experiencing it for myself.

Basically any kind of life experience that brings a young person to actually think and more deeply consider the world around them is likely to result in some level of individuation and shift away from inherited views. It’s perfectly natural and healthy.

But the most likely life experiences to do that are ones that put a person in touch with new ideas and new situations. Universities are much better positioned to generate such experiences than, say, most jobs. To some degree, those that have attempted to be at least nominally more diverse (economically/racially/...) are also the sorts of places where students are more likely to meet other people who are not like them in some important ways, and this has always been the sort of experience that preferentially tilts most people towards liberal/progressive ideas.

I believe students are much more homogenic than you find in school (eg dumb people are around) or in joining the military (you meet conservative people).

There are many axes on which to measure homogeneity or diversity.

I don't think you're wrong about the axes for "academic intelligence" or "political outlook". But those are just two of many. Geographic, racial, economic, class (in the European sense), language, culture .. these are all equally valid, and likely to vary more in a university than in a workplace (even in the military).

People's political opinions definitely change, especially with age and wealth.

They do change to some degree, but I believe that age and wealth are not nearly as strong of factors as popular culture might have one think.

I guess it depends. 40 years later, I vote completely opposite to what I did when I was 18-20 years old.

That sort of breaks out as to personal values versus Overton window. It has been an extreme shift towards authoritarianism in the US -- to the point where case after case of folks with moral courage call it out despite where they stood even 10 years ago.

Just curious: in which direction on the political spectrum have your preferences moved?

Younger people with student loans, credit card balances, and good health might eventually become older people with retirement savings, investments, and poor health.

The biggest change happens if your mental horizon widens.

> In reality I don’t think people’s political opinions change very much and they are just mad that their children individuated.

That seems to be missing the elephant in the room - they sent kids in their most formative intellectual years to immerse themselves in a culture where there is a very high child:adult ratio. Then the kids come back with this wild culture that would make a lot of sense to a bunch of teenagers and young adults. It isn't just that the kids individuating, it is dumping them into one of the most elitist, authoritarian and artificial subcultures society maintains - populated mostly by near-juveniles I repeat - giving them independence to form themselves and discovering that dislocates them from their parents subculture.

It should be obvious that will happen but parents tend to be pretty dumb. No real training course for parenting I suppose.

Also to some degree there is anti-elitist backlash after being told you need to have a bachelor's, which is very expensive at these universities, but also it's basically impossible to get an entry-level white collar job without one these days; and for a while the economy bifurcated with different outcomes for white-collar knowledge vs. blue-collar workers.

60% of the US workforce these days is white collar, and it's one of the great illusions of our time. Most of these jobs only exist to keep busy the 60% of the US workforce that has a degree. In the 1940's about 30% of the US workforce was white collar and only 5% had degrees. What caused this change? It's probably because blue collar workers made so much money and had so much leverage that businesses shipped all their jobs overseas. Blue collar people actually make real things and perform useful toil for society, whereas now they're working fake jobs for less money which they're told has higher social status. It's genius the way the system works. The way it takes from people (student loans, less pay) while persuading them they got a better deal. But how can you have a society where the majority of workers are administrators? Well you needn't look any further than America to find your answer. One day the music is going to stop and other nations, like China, whose workers held no such delusions of grandeur, will have the advantage. Their illusion is that the government is a dictatorship of proles, which makes people think it's high status to be a prole. Plus when your government is officially one big labor union, you can effectively ban unions from interfering with production.

One of the reasons white collar is desirable is the physical toll that work over a lifetime can take on a persons body. So, in one sense, it could be perceived as a better deal. Whether it actually is or not is another thing.

Chinese industry is not known for caring overly much about the long term effects on the bodies of their workers. They have more.

And yes, I find it scary to think of what the world is competing with in China. It is hard to compete with their brutal workforce ethics (or lack thereof) and as they seem to be getting well on top of technology too the future is theirs it seems.

It is until it is not.

Chinese working hours are mostly long to balance out low productivity. This worked for Japan until it did not; Japanese growth stalled until Japanese workers were poorer than Taiwanese or South Koreans by some measures. And China is racing fastest towards demographic collapse, particularly in its largest, most productive cities by. People 60 and older make up 37% of the population in Shanghai, and there the TFR is 0.6.

"White collar" labor, in a service / knowledge economy doesn't mean "not making real things". Most (?) people on this board do something software or science or product related. Software is real, even if it's intangible. Research is real, even if it's inscrutable. Heck, Design is real, even if it's ineffable.

(Yes, yes, there's vapor-ware, and useless products, and certainly "fake jobs". Those existed in the '40s, too, and in any other time period or economy you care to look at.)

In my view, the problem is that white collar workers stopped thinking of themselves as Workers. Any of us who rely on a company for a paycheck (and, perniciously, in the US for health insurance) aren't Capital, even if we make high salaries. Maybe we're aspiring to join that class - we'll hit the startup lottery, or FIRE, or our IRA portfolio will go up forever - but we ain't yet. (That's fine, by the way: I'm using Marxist terms, but I'm not a Marxist. Pursuing financial independence, and the real - even if remote - possibility of attaining it is what's made the US such a dynamic economy.)

However, allowing our aspirations for wealth, or the relative comfort of white-collar jobs, to lead us to identify with the political goals of Capital - or worse, to adopt an elitist attitude towards people who work in what you call the "real economy" - is what's got the US into the mess we're currently in. That's the "genius" you identify in the present system, and the origin of the cruelty within it.

In reality, we're all Working Class (well, 99% of us are - although that proportion is way out of whack on this board, of all places!), and we need to (politically) act like it.

A lot of white collar work is just larping as the 1%. It's due to the over-manufacturing of elites. Roles that exist to keep people busy while confering illusory social status aren't very useful to society. Freedom and usefulness comes from humility and devotion to others. For example, you don't need to be in the 1% to have financial independence. You just have to not spend money on things that cargo cult the 1% like a fancy home, fancy car, and fancy dress, since that's a weakness in yourself that the 1% exploits to keep folks dependent on paychecks. Refusing to covet what the 1% has is how you act like a true 99%er. Not through politics, but by changing what's in your heart.

I agree with everything you say about elite over-production, chasing social status, and cargo-culting material goods. It is indeed, bullshit, that makes many exploitable - which, of course, is the whole point, from the "system's" point of view. On an individual level, for those of us in sufficiently privileged positions, breaking that dynamic is as you say.

However, I don't think you can ignore politics! "Changing what's in your heart", does diddly if you're, say, working in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. It took a +century of dedicated labor activism and political effort to get to a point where any workers at all could dream of breaking free, and in the US we've arguably backslid in recent decades. Continued political action and worker solidarity are desperately needed.

Sorry I believe in collective giving, not collective taking.

I live my life palms down, not palms up.

Difference in perspective, man. I practice "collective giving" by donating money and time to help those less blessed than I have been, and by voting for measures I believe will strengthen society, even if they're against to my (narrowly defined) economic self-interest. We're all part of the collective, and owe each other that.

I disagree with everything you just said. It's like you have the complete opposite morality as me.

I think there are more valuable things you can give people than money. I like to enrich others by writing open source code and blogging about it. It's scalable. It doesn't make me poorer. It provides others with entertainment, useful tools, and most importantly knowledge.

Giving money to the desperate offers a bad return on investment for society. Money is better given to people who are having the most impact enriching society.

Voting is about as impactful as praying.

Every altruistic person has a responsibility to look after their self-interests first. Since if you're not strong and healthy, then you won't be capable of giving to others.

Finally, you don't owe anyone anything. The moment people expect you to give, it stops being a gift.

> I think there are more valuable things you can give people than money.

I do agree with you about that. In the context of labor law (where this discussion started), the most important - a 40-hour work-week, overtime, minimum wage, worker-safety protections, the right to unionize, federal holidays - don't directly redistribute money, but they make life better for everyone. Public education, state-funded universities and health-care systems: same. Public roads and bridges. Research institutions. I will vote to raise my own taxes to support all of those things. More directly, I am a YIMBY (google it, if you're not familiar with the term), even if it hurts my home's value.

Like you say, you and I have very different moral frameworks. Yours is certainly ascendant in the US right now. I don't think it's going to go well, but let's check back in a few years and see if either of us have changed our minds?

Those policies ostensibly make life better for people, but the main reason they exist is because they stimulate technological development by driving up the cost of labor. Societies where labor was cheap, like dixie and ancient rome, weren't going to get us to the singularity. Their smart people were too comfortable. As for YIMBY now that's something we can agree on.

great illusions of our time, like there's not data to back it up?

He's saying that the economic viability of the model is illusory.

And this anti elitist backlash will lead to… greater wealth inequality as the middle class is forced to cash out their equity and investments in a down market to be gobbled up by the top 1% like Elon Musk.

While I know this, I will say there is a communication issue in which sneering and lecturing is not really an effective way to persuade others.

> many failing to grow their student bodies in tandem with the growth of the US population

this is mostly true of elite schools (who nowadays are mostly selling a brand more than an education), not so much of state schools

Ironically, many elite universities are actually either free or nearly free, for lower-income students. The super-rich probably don't care. While we middle-class families don't qualify for need-based aid, and are on the hook to pay outrageous sums, largely to subsidize the aid for others.

Lower economic strata doesn't take on debt, they get aid and free rides, cherry work study jobs to put some money in the pocket too. It is the middle class or upper middle class that insists in eschewing their state school benefit for a more or less comparable school in another state (or without favorable scholarship and aid package) that take the brunt of the loans.

I sure had to. Work study sure was nicer than the crap jobs I'd had but no cake walk: I graded a lot of homework and exams as well as helping a lot of rich kids ace their class.

[edit: I should admit that it's been 20 years, things may have shifted a lot]

Work study jobs vary a lot. Some of them are just wiping whiteboards after the lecture ends in the 300 person classrooms or walking around the library taking headcount every 30 mins. Front desk shifts at the dorm were also another easy one; hand over a package every now and then just do homework or slack off otherwise. Other ones probably work you like a dog and it isn't clear to be fair what the best ones might be as far as working in homework at the same time unless you get an upperclassman to tell you.

While not about resentment towards universities specifically, I thought this article in The Baffler [1] did a good job of framing a dynamic that, I think, contributes to this phenomenon.

My interpretation: As the country has entered the post-industrial era, holding a college degree has increasingly become a table-stakes credential for entering the white collar labor force. The higher education system has struggled or failed to grow to meet increased demand for these credentials, which both drives up the cost and increases selectivity of higher-ed institutions. A lot of people get burned by this and become locked out of and, crucially, geographically separated from labor markets that now constitute the majority of US GDP. This split causes non degree holders to view degree holders as their class enemies, and the universities as the class gateway that divides them.

[1] https://thebaffler.com/latest/one-elite-two-elites-red-elite...

Remember all those people who are resentful (of course that word) towards degree-holders because they wish they had one themselves? Me neither. That’s a they-hate-me-cause’-they-ain’t-me kind of logic.[1]

True othering comes from people living in different worlds and hating the other person’s world.

[1] I did not read the the article but I’ve read this argument in a Graeber article.

I don't think you're necessarily drawing the right conclusion from what the GP said. It seems more likely to me that non-degree-holders aren't resentful about not having a degree, but are resentful that white collar work more or less requires a degree these days. It wasn't always that way; degree holders used to be a minority in white collar work.

Why has that shifted? Can we blame the university system and their "marketing" that has pushed a degree as the One True Way of leaving the working class? If so, that's an understandable reason to be anti-university.

> Can we blame the university system and their "marketing" that has pushed a degree as the One True Way of leaving the working class?

I’m not sure Universities are to blame for this so much as lazy ass HR departments looking for an easy filter.

> degree holders used to be a minority in white collar work.

That's still nearly true, if not true. 60% of jobs are white collar. 40% of the workforce has a degree. Data quality starts to decline somewhat here, but it is expected that 20% of degree holders work in trades or manual labour jobs. So, degree holders only just barely make up a majority on that basis. And maybe not even that as blue collar is usually considered to be more than just trades and manual labour, not to mention that we haven't even delved into other collars (e.g. pink collar) that further take from the degree holding population.

> because they wish they had one themselves

I don't think the OP actually said this specifically. But the economy truly had, for a while, bifurcated in outcomes for people with degrees vs. everybody else. You shouldn't need a degree to live a decent life, but now we are in a timeline where you can put DoorDash on Klarna installments.

> Remember all those people who are resentful (of course that word) towards degree-holders because they wish they had one themselves?

I think the fair comparison isn't they have a degree and I don't, it's they have a better life/savings/house/car than me, which is enabled in general by getting a degree, which becomes the common contention point.

Or more directly: many people with degrees are given management positions unjustifiably.

It's bizarre to see it all playing out in the open.

The political and ideological divide speaks for itself, but on behalf of the common folk universities have been failing their core mission - to provide the people with a quality education. The inversion and disconnect between the cost of tuition and economic outcomes is stunning. Too many kids who don't know better are pressured into pursuing higher education and taking on massive debt, only to graduate without any job prospects or reasonable hopes of paying off their loans. The salt in the wounds is that universities are flush with cash, yet its spent on anything and everything except for the welfare of the students.

> The salt in the wounds is that universities are flush with cash, yet its spent on anything and everything except for the welfare of the students.

Maybe the elites. State schools and small colleges are not flush with cash and many have been shuttered or severely downsized recently. Though they could still spend their limited funds better.

Spending massive amounts of money on sports is something state schools are very much into.

They will shutter academic departments but continue to pay a football coach more than the University president.

Not all schools do this but it is part of the conversation, sports spending has grown out of control along with everything else.

Recent events alone do not fully represent the affairs of the past 2+ decades. Community, state, ivy, all levels were gorging themselves on federal funding and endowments. I have no comment on the current admin, but blatantly inefficient use of funds is an understatement.

What does "gorging themselves on endowments" even mean? If they did that, they wouldn't be very endowed in quick order.

Charitably, they may mean "the proceeds from their endowments" (or maybe "engorging their endowments", if that's even a proper use of the word), but I think that's a weak point. Proportionally very, very few institutions have significant endowments.

You're both wrong. I'm saying they're engorged AND well endowed. Many consider this a strong point.

Oh, yeah. Some certainly are. I think they're the subset towards whom Summers is addressing his argument, in the article under discussion.

It feels to me like part of the disconnect is that education and job training isn't necessarily the same thing. For many majors improving economic outcomes is not the core mission.

Its an implicit promise, and we can already see the pendulum swinging back in the form of lower enrollment as more people catch on.

> Its an implicit promise

It's an inferred promise, not an implicit promise. Lots of schools do try to make it an explicit, qualified promise (e.g. "80% of grads work in their field!"), and even more are shifting towards becoming what are effectively vocational schools, but this was never the intended purpose of a liberal arts education.

> but on behalf of the common folk universities have been failing their core mission - to provide the people with a quality education.

I see this a lot and it’s a concerningly reductive argument. Say what you want about a lot of colleges but when you talk about that mission you are talking about public colleges. Most have far lower endowments and most are very reasonably priced or free for instate students.

Georgia and California are great examples of this. The support for these institutions that used to come from states has gone down enormously while the cost of goods has gone up.

As a result it is not unreasonable to me for them to charge out of state and international students much much more. Georgia shouldn’t be subsidizing the college degrees of Alabamans, nor California of Arizonans.

All that to say the economics here are far more variable than people give much thought to and it’s easy to point at headline grabbing numbers that don’t reflect reality.

Schools rent the ones pressuring kids…their parents and society is.

Have they been failing at their core missions, though? You say there has been an inversion/disconnect between cost of tuition and economic outcomes, but looking at the data doesn't back that. At least, I have yet to see anything that supports an inversion. Diminished returns maybe. Certainly a good case to not take out loans to get into school if you don't have a reasonable chance of graduation.

But that is true of everything we do loans for, nowadays. The amount of consumer debt that people contort themselves into justifying is insane. If you want to use that as evidence that grade schools are failing in education, I can largely agree with you.

Tuition is skyrocketing and wages are stagnant. I'm not making a hard claim about inversion of ROI, but I don't need to. What's the reason for college becoming so expensive?

You claim it is inverted. That is a hard claim, full stop. One that is, notably, not supported by any figures.

I can largely agree that it, similar to other things, has become too expensive. I cannot agree that it is not worth it for folks that can do it.

You know it's kind of rude to dismiss someone when they clarify and then stuff words in their mouth?

Totally inverted? Of course not. But there is a very real portion of individuals for whom debts exceed earnings and it is very much in the data. But if you want to ignore reality to win on semantics go right ahead.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-relationship-between-...

I'm not dismissing, I'm pointing out that you made a hard claim, even if you didn't intend it.

Again, I can agree if you are claiming it is of diminishing benefits. I'll go further and agree that there have been predatory practices to get people to take out loans they shouldn't take out. This is directly addressed by your source. Which, notably, still supports that people have higher incomes after graduation.

What I cannot at all agree with is it being "inverted." Nor can I agree that they are failing to educate people. By the stats I have seen, this just isn't the case.

Their core mission is to provide society with a endless surplus of food and energy from air

No such thing as a free lunch! Universities exist for the benefit of society, not the other way around.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings was arguably a worse time for universities.

Protesting attracts reprisals. Universities taught people, both explicitly and by example, to stand up for what they believed in, but have undersold students on how dangerous that is. Universities could have done a better job explaining that certain injustices are load-bearing, and that calling them out will make half the country hate you.

People in the 1960s were murdered for protesting. You might imagine that this motivated an end to protest, and everyone calmed down. But in fact, it didn't. The very best way to motivate increased protest is to act like a bunch of monsters.

> certain injustices are load-bearing

This is an excellent way of explaining why some injustices are ignored and others decried. Thank you

The right's problem with universities is the same as the left's problem with churches:

1. They are institutions of "indoctrination" by the other side. Faculty are something like 98% registered democrats and many subjects ("X studies") have an explicitly left-leaning bent.

2. They have tax advantages and other significant government subsidies.

3. They exercise significant amounts of ideological control over the narrative for their groups of people.

4. They are exclusionary of people outside the club.

Add to that the fact that universities are getting increasingly expensive and real life outcomes for college-educated people are getting worse. The perceived costs used to come with significant benefits, but the costs are getting higher and the benefits are reducing, so there is less tolerance for giving them favored status.

Left leaning, but authoritarian, governments have also cracked down on universities. The issue isn't the political lean.

People with a more authoritarian bent view dissent itself as objectionable. That's central to their whole worldview. Any institution or social organization that allows debate or questioning things is a problem for them.

Maybe I just live in a bubble, but I don't think "the left" has acted as strongly against churches as "the right" has against schools.

[flagged]

> Universities today, though, have a status that religious organizations have never reached. Not only being tax free but also heavily taxpayer-funded, and with a university credential being virtually required for most jobs.

It's almost like they produce something of actual value.

This is a conversation about American politics, so I don't think how other countries acted is relevant.

The political landscape also changes regularly - I don't think the Republicans of a few decades ago were attacking schools so vigorously, so I'm not sure going further back than that for examples is relevant either.

> efforts of left-wing people in the 60's-90's to reduce their influence on society.

Can you elaborate on this?

> Universities today, though, have a status that religious organizations have never reached. Not only being tax free but also heavily taxpayer-funded, and with a university credential being virtually required for most jobs.

I suspect that if you go back not even that long ago, you'd find religious institutions having nearly as much importance, particularly in how faiths would prevent others from joining the workforce or society itself. In any case, I wonder what % of jobs actually do require a university education these days. I would not expect a majority of them to, but maybe I'm wrong.

In terms of use of hard power against religion: Mandatory prayer in school was outlawed in 1962. Teaching creationism in public schools was banned in 1987. Teaching the Bible (and other religious texts) in public schools is mostly banned. Title VII of the civil rights act prevented employers and many other institutions from discriminating based on religion in 1964. These were all passed by the left.

In terms of soft power: Huge cultural movements (driven by left-leaning people) against church attendance and in favor of atheism really began in the 1960-1990 period. The hippie movement and all things associated with it, as well as the new age movement are big parts of this.

In general, I think you underestimate how much power religion had in 1950's America. It was constantly pushed on young people, and if you wanted to get a good job, you had to have "strong moral character" that was demonstrated by where you went on Sundays.

School prayer was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Does that count as being 'passed by the left'? I'm not sure about the others but thank you for the examples.

> In general, I think you underestimate how much power religion had in 1950's America. It was constantly pushed on young people, and if you wanted to get a good job, you had to have "strong moral character" that was demonstrated by where you went on Sundays.

I don't think I do, because that is basically what I said in my last paragraph :) My point was that religious institutions certainly had a tremendous amount of power and influence not that long ago - in disagreement with you saying that universities have reached a point that religious institutions never have.

Yes, in those cases, a left-leaning supreme court made a ruling on a case brought by a left-leaning plaintiff with support from left-leaning nonprofits.

What I meant there was about the level of state funding and state support. The bachelor's requirement is also more universal than the church requirement was.

There's a highly emotional Right-Left culture war going on in America. Many of our "flagship" universities conspicuously sided with the Left - at least on most of the "litmus test" issues. And where universities didn't do that, the Right found it advantageous to talk up the association & outrage anyway.

Any decent History Prof. could have explained to the U's that openly taking one side in long-term cultural wars was not a viable long-term strategy.

(Or, maybe that's why so many universities cut their History Dept's so brutally? Though "just shoot inconvenient messengers" is also not a viable long-term strategy.)

> Many of our "flagship" universities conspicuously sided with the Left

I wonder if that’s related to universities often being places where ‘reasoning’ is taught.

And then by extension, that tells you a lot about the arguments on either side…

I probably have a skewed sample, but in my observations those with the best reasoning skills tended to have a mix of views that would be labelled "left" and "right". The better the reasoning skills the less likely they were to just agree with things like "trans women are women" or "capitalism is the best economic system" and the more likely they were to dissect the statement and terms.

Sure, but you are picking things that are debatable. I’m thinking more of (somehow) controversial things like ‘climate change is bad’.

Actually, even there there would be caveats. E.g. maybe Russia would benefit from climate change? Maybe the cost benefit curve with my time discounting and likely tech advancement means its not worth doing anything about now?

Billionaires shifted the overton window by pouring money into extreme right-wing media outlets and social media platforms. Every other existing institution now appears "left-wing" by comparison. That's not universities' fault.

Not true, at least on social issues, which is what the universities are getting burned for. Policy positions that were mainstream in 2000 are now painted as far-right.

That's how society progresses though. Before 1865, slavery was mainstream and abolitionists were weird radical crazies. Before 1965, "Jim Crow" laws that said non-whites had to use different bathrooms and drinking fountains were mainstream, and people who opposed them were seen as unreasonable.

And back in the 1960s a planned economy was normal and reasonable, and many progressives openly called for normalisation of sex with teenagers. Sometimes shifts in attitudes are progress. Sometimes they're just a random walk. Sometimes the left is right, sometimes the right is.

Eugenics as in forcible sterilization of the “unfit” was similarly Progressive back in the early 20th.

I'm not sure either of those are particularly progressive -- the current president seems to be a fan of tariffs, a form of planned economy popular in the 19th century (and condemned by most economists since, who favor free trade). And child brides are a common feature of many right-wing religious groups, argued on the grounds that that people (particularly female) traditionally married in their teen years.

> Policy positions that were mainstream in 2000 are now painted as far-right.

Such as?

gay marriage?

Presumably you mean opposition to gay marriage?

Yes, opposition to gay marriage was so mainstream that even Barack Obama campaigned supporting Clinton's Defense of Marriage Act. Even in the Democratic primaries, as late as 2008, being pro gay marriage was seen as a liability.

I don't know that it's painted as far right as much as conservative (which it is) and by some as bigoted.

The Overton Window moves. Upper marginal tax rates above 90% were not just a position but the actual law in USA during the 1960s, but now are seen here as "far left". Seatbelt requirements were initially felt to be over-intrusion by government, and are now seen by almost everyone as just common sense. And so on and so forth.

> Policy positions that were mainstream in 2000 are now painted as far-right.

Painted? Historically, there is a bunch of groups that were opposed to homosexual rights. I wonder how do you think those organization are "painted" on the political spectrum?

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_homosexuals_in_...

- https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230294158_9

- https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-00994-6

> Policy positions that were mainstream in 2000 are now painted as far-right.

Maybe that speaks something about a country that still has the KKK, and allowed its African American population to vote in 1965, not even 40 years before 2000.

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_segregation

- https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/white-supremacist-ideals-o...

Honestly man since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left in the US threw their whole weight into pushing the Overton window on identity politics/intersectionality to the point that "real" old time leftists and communists (like my father) were treated like some sort of conservatives, lol. They went way past the sustainable point.

I feel like the people who say things like "communists were treated like some sort of conservatives because of identity politics" are telling on themselves.

If you look at the people on the actual political left in the US (Bernie, AOC, etc) are they talking about identity politics? Last time I checked they were talking about the problems that impact non-billionaire Americans: Healthcare, Social Security, Raising Minimum Wage, and other efforts to improve quality of life for Americans.

The only times I ever hear about identity politics is when I listen to conservatives describe what people on the left are talking about.

> If you look at the people on the actual political left in the US (Bernie, AOC, etc) are they talking about identity politics?

Great example! So... what happened to Bernie in the Democratic party?

I'm saying that the problem isn't identity politics, but that the American right is terrified of actual policies from the American Left. And they're so terrified they have to make a bid deal of the more divisive social policies (characteristic of the term "identity politics") rather than their economic policies that are incredibly popular.

The majority of the Democratic party is the group being actually shifted by the Overton window away from the actual political left. They are mostly centrists, and not leftists. Frequently they are conservatives. I wish Harris suggested half of the policies that got ascribed to her, but she was honestly to the right of Clinton.

>Healthcare, Social Security, Raising Minimum Wage, and other efforts to improve quality of life for Americans.

But then why are they supported, for the most part, not by the most oppressed masses, but by the oppressive elites?

Gosh "who is an oppressive elite?"

Musk, Trump and the billionaires in their administration sure look like "oppressive elites" to me. Can you name multiple oppressive elites?

Edit: I think you answer your own question here. The actual oppressive elites have convinced the masses (and you) that there's a different amorphous group of "oppressive elites" that aren't the obvious ones standing right in front of your eyes. Obligatory https://xkcd.com/1013/

They talk about identity politics all the time. It is us vs them on everything. Worker vs employer is the quintessential example. Two groups that in the real world must work together, and do. But in the mind of the political left they are not just people that occasionally have adverse interests but mostly shared interests (my success is yours). No, they are sworn enemies.

I don't think you know what "identity politics" are, which is kinda funny to me. I would love to have discussions where identity politics meant "Worker vs Employer".

Worker vs Employer aren't actually 2 groups of people, unless you really consider corporations as people.

Well firstly, bodies corporate are obviously legal persons and nobody with any clue disagrees with that. But that isn't what I am talking about.

Every company has a board of directors who are natural persons, and ownership eventually is traceable back to natural persons, and their officers are natural persons. Grouping people up doesn't make them unpersons.

Worker and employer not your preferred languahe? Call it worker and manager, worker and executive, worker and CEO. Whatever you want. But the sentiment is very real. It is about treating the workplace as an antagonistic, conflict-driven, zero-sum environment. If I win, you lose. If you win, I lose.

I don't think that is how real workplaces actually work. I like my employer and I like my boss. Without them, I'd be out if a job. Without me, they'd be out of a worker. I don't think we have opposing interests at all.

It is definitely identity politics. It is the original identity politics: Marxism. The proletariat against the bourgeoisie and all that rubbish.

The culture war was over about sixty days into the Trump administration. Lots of people just haven't realized it yet.

Hum, kinda. Trump has tainted a lot of concepts by associating with them, and those should fall outside of our culture as soon as he loses power.

But there's an entire other set of equivalently bad-faith exclusionary and authoritarian ones that presented as in opposition of them. Those weren't actually very powerful before, but may get empowered depending on how things go.

Provide a way to get a lower-cost credential without using the tuition to subsidize research/athletics/arts/social programs.

But that might be counter to their whole nature. Doesn't mean anyone's being irrational though. They're now de-facto gatekeepers on entering the professional class. I don't think it's unreasonable for the gate-kept to have opinions about the -keepers.

I've got the ticket to get in the gate and I'm pretty resentful of having to get it. Looking back there were a lot better ways to spend 4 years and 100k.

Resentful of what? Directed at whom? There are lots of options that cost less and many are shorter than four years.

Honestly, it feels like the kind of thing that companies which actually want merit-based graduates should want to subsidize more aggressively.

If you're a billion-dollar company that only hires college grads, it feels like there's gotta be value to you in making sure there's more meritocracy in the process of getting degrees.

It would also change who the customer is so that the university doesn't "owe" the student a degree which makes the evaluation that universities do a little less rigorous.

Why do they want meritocracy? The companies I've seen up close want "certified Smart Kid", in which case nearly any degree will do; "pre-trained worker", in which case they require a degree in a particular field; or "someone well-connected", in which case they want someone from a limited set of schools.

(Companies do subsidize that limited set of schools, and pretty heavily, but it probably has more to do with social connections than economic merit.)

The system might break down to the point that what you're suggesting makes sense. On the other hand, "Indebted Worker" (from any of the three types above) allows companies a lot of power over their employees, so it might not.

oh, yeah, the "indebted worker" concept there sounds scary and bad and not what I'm looking for.

I think a lot of companies like to appeal to the idea of a meritocracy. I'm just saying this could make it a convincing appeal.

I think "appeal to" is the operative term, without necessarily much substance behind it.

I mean, that's why I'm trying to find the performative case they could make that they actually do it, that also results in them doing it.

Most people don't care about university protests. They're largely a means to get laid while achieving nothing and at worst destroying their own university. As long as they don't spill out into the surrounding town any outrage is essentially theater.

It was the progressive push of theoretically neutral institutions taking stands on moral politics. People who were fine with universities being staffed with liberals, but neutral in practice, realized their tax dollars were subsidizing institutions that were actively taking a side in national politics.

For example, universities burned a lot of political capital, and opened themselves up to a great deal of legal liability, with aggressively pursing affirmative action policies. When you depend on public grants, it’s probably a bad idea to publicly discriminate against the racial group that comprises the majority of taxpayers.

As to what universities should have done, the answer is “just dribble.” Universities should be places that are just as eager to research effective approaches to mass deportations as all the DEI stuff they do.

Sure, and why not open an Institute of Enhanced Interrogation Studies while you’re at it? Ugh.

Because torturing people is illegal and contrary to our fundamental values, while deporting illegal immigrants is a very popular and sensible policy that is uncontroversial everywhere except the United States of Exceptionalism.

Torturing people was considered very cool and very legal until quite recently. Some of the leaders involved in Iraq and Afghanistan era torture are still in positions of power. And I would not be shocked in the slightest if it came back under Trump II.

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If you are shocked you might consider getting out of your bubble. A recent poll shows Americans support Trump’s deportation program 58-42: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opinion-poll-trump-economy-tari...

Meanwhile, 68% support the Supreme Court’s ban on Harvard’s affirmative action admissions policies: https://thehill.com/homenews/education/4411246-majority-supp...

Universities, as institutions, were actively working against the public on both of these issues, from legal clinics trying to block deportations to extensive programs of racial preferences. It’s not surprising many people don’t want the taxpayer to subsidize that.

Millions of people think the Earth is flat and that dinosaurs roamed the Earth alongside humans. Should universities be teaching that as well?

Popularity is a poor barometer for educational value and policy.

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First, what is a "fact"? For example, is climate change a fact? Prominent members of the current administration do not seem to think so; they're basically a step removed from labeling it woke and DEI.

As for things that aren't "facts," but are nonetheless extensively studied and have wide consensus: should universities, for example, teach that the Civil War was actually about states' rights and that slaves benefitted from slavery? There is no historical evidence for these claims, yet a large percentage of the public believes them due to punditry, party loyalty, and other truth-distorting forces.

> In 2023, Florida banned DEI initiatives in its public university system. The ban resulted in changes to the state’s African American history curriculum, including a reinterpretation of the effects of chattel slavery to include that enslaved people gained beneficial skills.

Should universities fall in line with this kind of thinking, or is there a moral imperative for educators and academics to push back against propaganda? I think it's clearly the latter. Otherwise, the university system just becomes a Soviet-style state organ, good for only certain kinds of STEM.

Second, you said:

> As to what universities should have done, the answer is “just dribble.” Universities should be places that are just as eager to research effective approaches to mass deportations as all the DEI stuff they do.

That sounds like you're saying that universities should be blank slates, essentially devoid of values. But they should also kowtow to the values and ideology of the public...? So which is it?

In my opinion, given that academia is (by definition) the vanguard of knowledge, it must hold to its own set of internal values and principles, not ones delivered by outside forces. Pursuit of knowledge should be the primary driving force and not, for example, commercial pressure to bolster "clean coal" at the expense of sustainable energy.

Third, I should remind you that, in all likelihood, at least 50% of the population believes that universities today are pursuing activities consistent with their values and ideology. They pay taxes, too — perhaps even more taxes than conservatives. In a democracy, the plurality should not have dictatorial control over things like university policy; it's tantamount to taxation without representation. These things must be decided by consensus-building, not royal decree.

Also, as an aside, I suspect that when affirmative action was first introduced, a majority of the public still opposed civil rights and desegregation. Was that "DEI"? Barring direct state intervention, should universities have acquiesced to the masses? I stand by what I said: popularity is a poor barometer for educational value and policy.

The issue isn't the universities teaching "woke facts" or something. I think most people accept that university lecturers should be able to use their judgement to decide what to teach. The issue is their conduct in engaging in racial discrimination. That is unpopular and unlawful.

The reason that it happens is that these institutions have been captured by a new ideology. Facts, evidence, reason: these don't matter any more. All that matters is conformity with the ideology that has no better name than "woke" (If I knew a better name I'd use it, because the term does upset people.) But the fundamental issue isn't the woke teaching, it is WHY it happens: the median humanities lecturer in the West is either far-left or completely incapable or unwilling to challenge far-left ideology.

A coordinate result is that they also use their judgement and teach a lot of woke rubbish. There is little internal pressure within the university not to teach courses with descriptions like this:

> This course examines the representations, contexts, and politics of gender, sexuality and the media. By interrogating the discourses of gender and sexuality as they are 'mediated' in a variety of forms (including television, film, popular music, social media, advertising), we will examine the construction and disruption of categories of gender and sexual identity, and their intersection with other identity frameworks.

If you talked this way in real life, you would be ridiculed and rightly so. Interrogating the discourses? Really? Construction and disruption of categories of sexual and gender identity?

Yet there are no classes taught by people with equivalently ridiculous fringe views on the other end of the spectrum. In fact, not even centrist perspectives are tolerated. Can you imagine a course at a public American university that looked at the development of gender ideology neutrally, covering founding figures like John Money and the cruel experiments he did on young boys?

The Overton window of the university barely overlaps with the Overton window of the real world.

Also I take issue with your 50% claim. I think it is likely that the vast majority of the public is opposed to using public money to teach far-left politics (Marxism, gender ideology, etc.) to young impressionable minds.

Yes you are right. They shouldn't be researching how to racially discriminate at all. They should be focused exclusively on researching effective mass deportation instead of DEI.

>or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?

    am·biv·a·lence  /amˈbiv(ə)ləns/ noun
    the state of having mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about something or someone.

>A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions?

There are a lot of very real things that are rotten in academia if you exclude the social politics center to this article.

So when people see they're loosing federal funding... yeah, some will think along the lines of "eh, whatever, fuck 'em, maybe they'll figure out how to clean their own house." Especially if the university is also known for both sitting on a large endowment and for prioritizing self-serving administrators over doing academics.

One thing I haven’t seen anyone mention in the replies. There are millions of conservative parents who sent their children to college and then “lost” those children when they turned into a “liberal.”

The ideas that it’s ok if your child becomes a liberal, or that there might be good reasons why people who undertake higher education often become less conservative, are too horrible to contemplate. So they settle for “universities are bad.”

I can't speak to universities specifically, but I've always felt there has been a strain of anti-intellectualism underlying a great deal of mainstream America for as long as I can remember.

It's the little things like tv shows or movies with characters who seem to glorify ignorance, people who state self deprecating things like "I'm bad at math" and wear it like a bizarre badge of honor, etc.

They could have not been so partisan (https://readlion.com/93-of-college-profs-political-donations... ), supported rational discourse ( https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/2025-college-free-spe... ) , not used race to discriminate on certain out groups ( https://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/issue/discriminatio... ). Just for starters

>> Is there anything they could have done differently in the past decade or two to have broader sympathy now

> not used race to discriminate on certain out groups ( https://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/issue/discriminatio... )

Since we have documentation of discrimination in university admissions for over a century, I don't think this particular issue produces "broader sympathy now".

In fact, I will be speechless if I ever learn the new administration policies do not lead to even higher levels of, but I suppose different, discrimination. Check back in 6 months.

They could try hiring some conservative professors.

https://www.nas.org/academic-questions/31/2/homogenous_the_p...

You can't really just hire some, though. You need to hire enough so that they don't get run out of the school for thought crime

https://www.thedoe.com/article/conservative-college-professo...

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-coddling-of-the-am...

A lot of these examples have been pretty thoroughly debunked as either non-existent, or about something other than the professors expressing "conservative views".

This one is, I assume intentionally, anonymized and so we can't actually verify that it happened or what the circumstances around it were. But I'll call out one of the most common "views" I've heard on college campuses from professors that got in trouble for something was that "professors should be allowed to sleep with their students." So if professors are taking heat for thinking that they should be able to take advantage of barely legal kids... I don't really care.

If there are legitimate examples of professors just expressing that they have conservative beliefs, then that is suspicious because school administrators and alumni tend to lean pretty conservative themselves, and often make the final decisions on such issues after a frustrating amount of investigation.

Wait, there are attacks on universities? Or are we just using that word for any expression of free speech?

I'm referring to threats to pull hundreds of thousands of dollars of funding if certain demands aren't met. But yes, there are also plenty of rhetorical attacks.

Isn't that how funding works? We give you money, you meet demands. How is that an attack?

Yeah fair enough. I agree Trump was elected democratically and he's acting on behalf of "the people" when he threatens to pull funding. Perhaps attack was the wrong word.

It's about reclaiming lost social status. In their minds it's part of the liberal gollum that makes them feel alienated from society and disrespected.

Why did the Germans burn books? Look there for your answers. And I mean that sincerely. There’s really nothing new under the sun.

Or the Cultural Revolution.

Fox News. I don't think it's 100% irrational but perhaps 99% irrational. These ideas usually contain a nugget of truth.

From what I've been able to gather, a mix of jealousy for not being involved with institutions along with some form of Dunning Kruger effect thinking that the institutions have no merit or value (i.e. the individual thinks they could do better / have no need / are somehow subject to the outcomes of the institution).

I think there's class warfare practically baked in with how paying for college works today. Imagine trying to determine how much a fancy car costs, and being told "it depends on how much money you have". That's on the upper-middle-class side.

The other side is just part of the worldview of the rampant anti-intellectualism which Trump rode to power.

> attacks on universities

This really feels like bad phrasing, when people read that they roll their eyes. Basically every major republican politician went to college, nobody is attacking universities, they're trying to help the students.

Yes they went to universities. No, they are not trying to help the students. They don't even pretend to be trying to do so. They are nit trying to make it cheaper and they are not trying to make it more accessible.

They agenda was either openly the opposite or they ignored the students. Except when they think they are too progressive and attack then verbally.

I mean, at a minimum, they think they're helping students. Nobody would vote for a politician who just makes things worse, that doesn't make sense.

In this case, they're trying to make universities more fair and to reduce government waste in universities by removing DEI programs. There's lots of logic to that.

>Nobody would vote for a politician who just makes things worse

Why not? One thing is the campaign, another one is exercising his power. To quote a famous Argentinian President: "If I said what I would do, they wouldn't have voted for me".

I can't find the source of that quote (possibly a misquote?), but if I had to guess, he's saying he sold people on the problem, knowing they wouldn't like the solution. Everyone likes the idea of fixing the budget deficit, and some people like the idea of cutting wasteful government spending, but the act of fixing the budget means people lose jobs, and lives are destroyed. Even though it has to happen, people don't like watching it happen.

I don't think your "quote" says what you think it says.

I think they were thinking of Carlos Menem's "si hubiera dicho lo que iba a hacer, no me votaba nadie” , but AFAIK thats a misquote [1]

A more recent Argentinian president (Mauricio Macri) said a similar thing though: " If I had told them everything I was going to do, they would have voted to lock me up in an asylum" (Tl mine).

Original [2]: "Si les decía todo lo que iba a hacer, votaban por encerrarme en el manicomio"

[1]: https://www.infobae.com/sociedad/2023/11/12/si-decia-lo-que-...

[2] https://www.cronista.com/economia-politica/Macri-Si-les-deci...

> Nobody would vote for a politician who just makes things worse, that doesn't make sense.

Yet, that's what they did. Repeatedly. After he already demonstrated how much worse he would make things.

Oh yeah, he denied that he would execute the planes for how he would make things much, much, MUCH worse, that had been very openly stated by his close associates.

That's enough for it to "make sense" to you, I suppose.

> They are nit trying to make it cheaper and they are not trying to make it more accessible

Should they be doing these things?

Maybe I've read too much Caplan, but credential inflation seems to be wasting the new generation's best years.

For the original argument above about Republicans and college I would focus more on things like who has been trying to make student debt as something special, something near impossible to get out of.

I don't accept an argument of personal responsibility in this case, because student loans target one of the most vulnerable groups: Inexperienced and with a great need. To me, this is malicious.

I'm all for personal responsibility, in this point I'm more on the conservative side, but reality also includes that humans are not perfect machines, and targeting their weaknesses is easy and impossible to avoid as an individual. This principle does not work when it's an individual against sophisticated well-funded organization (here, there is not one but many who influenced policy), even worse when it's someone too young or too old for their brains to be at their best (not yet experienced enough in the one case, the brain no longer working at its best in the other).

Then you're reading the right amount of Caplan. So you probably also want more babies and immigrants.

In what way does an intellectual race to the bottom help students? If students want to learn on the cheap they can use the internet.

Students want to feel like their time spent studying is worth it, not a weird blend of trivia, online classes you finish in a week or useless skills that you spend months practicing and lose 6 months after the class.

Millions of people could be working productive manufacturing jobs, instead they are doing effectively nothing all because of a disproven belief from 100 years ago that if you study enough you will increase your innate intelligence.

apologies, I meant to suggest that Trump & MAGA are very hostile towards universities and Trump is threatening to pull so much federal funding some colleges may have to close, and a lot of Americans seem OK with that. I'm not making a value statement on that, Trump was elected to run the government, hence him reallocating funds (in this case) is part of our democratic process. People chose to put him in charge because they wanted him in charge.

To tip my hand: I personally think universities don't have more people rallying to their defence because they have abdicated their responsibilities to provide space for open inquiry, and have instead allowed themselves to be institutionally & ideologically captured by a group of people with activist leanings and fringe beliefs not held by 90+% of Americans.

My answer to my question above is "in the past two decades, the universities could have done more to protect speech across the board and not pick favourites to protect and others to abandon, as they have clearly done. In the last two years they could have refused to tolerate lawlessness on their campuses (not just 'speech' but actual law-breaking, including assaults, going unprosecuted) instead of turning a blind eye when the criminality was from a favoured cause du jour." I think if Universities had not abandoned their leadership duties, they wouldn't have Trump bringing the hammer down on them with so much public support.

Hard not to see this as a class war that has been fed by some of the personalities that were big in the "conservative" sphere for a long time. Modern podcast influencers are big, but this isn't exactly a new thing. Rush and his ilk were big on lashing out against "ivory tower" theories. And they didn't invent the idea. Just went after easy targets.

None of which is to say that mistakes weren't made in the institutions. They were. Mistakes were also made by the critics. Populism, sadly, has a habit of celebrating their worst and elevating them to heights they flat out can't handle.

I think it's actually extremely simple.. because the herd mentality is extremely simple. Intellectuals think it's complex because intellectuals love complexity.. This is what happened..

The right witnessed riots over the past decade. These riots were in response to police brutality and perceived racism. The ideas behind anti-racism spawned a perceived new ideology - "wokism". This frightened the right. Intellectuals on the right mapped the origins of this new ideology to philosophies from elite institutions. Therefore, these institutions must be punished to be kept in check.

It's really that simple..

What I find interesting about this guy is that in a way he actually is "caving" to the demands of the administration. This uni president advocates for more heterodox thinking - which is in alignment with what the Trump admin wants as well... maybe that's why Wesleyan won't be punished..

Nothing about this is new - the right has harbored a particular hatred for "academics" and "intellectuals" since at least the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s. Today's fear of "wokism" is just the prior generation's fear of "cultural marxism" with a new coat of paint.

But this kind of political talk is against the guidelines. Good hackers don't care about any of this. So Javascript is getting crazy, huh?

When the politics get crazy enough it bleeds into everything, which is why it's now acceptable to discuss here.

I think you'll find that no matter how crazy it gets or what it bleeds into, it's never going to be acceptable to discuss here. As soon as people get a whiff of "politics" they're going to start flagging. Especially if they see the "T" word.

The regime could be rolling dissidents into mass graves and the only valid point of discussion for most people here would be packing algorithms.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is the "T" word in this context?

Tigger

Oh no Pooh, you’re eating liberalism!

China

Trump.

You're framing this in an odd way if you want neutral responses. Is withdrawing federal funding an attack? The government has always used the power of the purse as a lever to influence many institutions, including universities, and it often uses this mechanism to exert influence for ideological purposes. The most famous example is withholding funding for roads until states mandated a drinking age of 21. It's how the federal-state power asymmetry works. The disturbing thing is that Congress isn't really the one exerting it in this case, not that it's being used at all.

As for the roads example, which would go to my second point if I understand you correctly, I think the analogy is limited: roads aren't gate-kept by admissions committees for certain intangible criteria for who can ride on them, with an artificial limit on how many cars overall, while they receive federal funding. If that was happening, then you'd have a similar situation to what universities are doing.

It's not meant as an analogy for this case, so don't worry about it too much. My only point in bringing it up is an example of evidence for prior governments being more than willing to use funding as a lever to influence the policy of institutions they are not directly responsible for. I don't believe it was to be 1:1 to make that point, as indeed it is not.

Brown just got targeted next, after releasing a statement that it would "not compromise on academic freedom". We're about to find out how true that is or not. But if universities don't start fighting back, they will all find themselves in the same boat as Columbia -- and ultimately regret it.

The US's universities are one of its greatest assets, if not the greatest. The repercussions of this are highly damaging.

America has done an absolutely terrible job of teaching people about rights.

If governments granted rights then they would be privileges not rights. In western tradition governments exist to protect rights, such as the freedom of expression, not to grant them. If you believe these are human rights, rather than your privilege as an American, then you must protect their rights to seek justice too.

People are already being robbed of due process, which means they are robbed of the process that determines their right to "protections" and citizenship status. Almost all authoritarian regimes presume the right to rob people of the protections of their state. You perceive citizenship to be some indelible legal status, but citizenship can be revoked either tacitly or explicitly which is a prelude to the violation of someone else's rights and their human dignity.

The law can't protect or enforce itself. If the ruling regime chooses not to be bound by law then what should happen or what is supposed to happen is supplanted by what can happen. Even a cursory look of what can happen in authoritarian regimes should turn anyone's stomach.

I think what's going on is a helpful reminder that there's no such thing as "rights" in the way you describe. Everything we have, everything we're permitted to do, is at the pleasure and permission of our governments. Constitutions and laws are only worth anything if the people in charge honor them. Might may not make right, but might does let you impose whatever you want on people who don't have your might.

You can try to design systems where one group of people don't have all the might, and so those who balance them are somewhat adversarial in their goals and desires. We always thought the US had such a system, but when you put law enforcement and the military under a single group, and give the other two groups no teeth, you really don't have that sort of system.

> Everything we have, everything we're permitted to do, is at the pleasure and permission of our governments.

Wrong! The people are ultimately responsible for reigning-in their governments and are the ultimate source of any rules or rights that the governments end up enforcing.

If you think that the ultimate authority is with the government, then you have justified every authoritarian regime out there.

There are two basic world views.

One is based on order and rule. You have a leviathan, an absolute ruler, who imposes order on society.

The other is one based on freedom and law/justice. A society based on affirmative mutual consent and a system orthogonal to power to handle disputes.

Unfortunately, power determining the outcome of disputes is the default, and a system of law or justice cannot enforce itself without the participation of those bound by it. The core founding principle of western society is solidarity via collective bargaining, what other option is there than other than to submit to someone more powerful than any individual?

Do you want to submit to a man, or submit to an idea? If you submit to an idea you must defend it. If you submit to a man, you deny your own agency and your own rights.

> The core founding principle of western society is solidarity via collective bargaining

What is the basis of that assertion? If you go back as far as the Greeks, this only holds true if you focus on one specific city-state, and ignore that said city-state disenfranchised foreigners and legally permitted the ownership of slaves. Similar problems occur if we attribute western civilization to the Romans.

I am far from a historian, but my understanding is that the protestant reformation birthed the enlightenment by shifting people's idea of god as something to be interpreted by an authority structure (the church) to something that is interpreted internally. Is your relationship with god mediated by a church or a direct relationship with god? The reformation is more closely related to "westenrism" than the Greeks or Romans who laid some of the philosophical groundwork.

Out of the enlightenment we get John Locke who provided much of America's founding philosophy:

Locke argued that a government's legitimacy comes from the citizens' delegation to the government of their absolute right of violence (reserving the inalienable right of self-defense or "self-preservation"), along with elements of other rights (e.g. property will be liable to taxation) as necessary to achieve the goal of security through granting the state a monopoly of violence, whereby the government, as an impartial judge, may use the collective force of the populace to administer and enforce the law, rather than each man acting as his own judge, jury, and executioner—the condition in the state of nature.

My claim is that this is isomorphic to solidarity via collective bargaining when you account for the idea that the government being an impartial judge is not black and white but grey.

I think it's fair not to say that it is not the core founding principle. I think it's probably more correct to say that it's the theory of power that must be true to support human rights or ideas of freedom.

> The reformation is more closely related to "westenrism" than the Greeks or Romans who laid some of the philosophical groundwork.

I can see where you're getting this, but I would disagree. Western civilization is inseparable from the Greeks and Romans. What you are describing sounds more like a particular development that occurred in Northern Europe which resulted in a radical re-engineering of social structures, ultimately culminating in parliamentary democracy. I don't know enough of the history well enough to determine whether this happened because of the reformation, a scientific revolution, economic changes, or whatever other reason we could come up with, but I do understand the trend that you're talking about. Today we would broadly associate it with Anglo-American liberal democracy. The issue I took with your comment was that I don't think there's a compelling case to be made that "the West" is predicated on these values, since historically speaking they are comparatively new.

There is some scholarship that tries to make this argument (e.g. I can remember reading an article many years ago which tried to argue that western civilization originates in the Near East after the adoption of massed-infantry by the Hittites), but the more of it that I read, the more convinced I became that it was simply an attempt to view history through the lens of contemporary attitudes (e.g. of Anglo-American liberal democracy being the culmination of all historical development).

> I think it's fair not to say that it is not the core founding principle. I think it's probably more correct to say that it's the theory of power that must be true to support human rights or ideas of freedom.

I don't have a strong opinion on this one way or the other, but you may be interested to know that there is a considerable tradition which rejects this conclusion in the reactionaries. Some element of the tradition rejects the premise of human rights entirely, but others are rooted in a far more critical reading of power and how it (ostensibly) must operate. Most people who have read into these issues will be familiar with the reactionaries who reject human rights as a principle, but very few are even aware of the sort who reject the prescriptions of the sort of governance you are describing while (at least nominally) sharing its aims re: justice and freedom.

It is not collective bargaining. You refer to the social contract.

The idea of the social contract has issues. For one, the fundamental of contract is consent, which is missing.

Realism tells us that we do not delegate anything to the state.

You’re making useful points but you’re also just choosing convenient definitions that make your point of view “correct”.

The parent comment has a definition of “rights” that admits their existence… and I think what you’ve demonstrated is that you have a different definition of “rights”. In other words, you’ve demonstrated that you haven’t really grasped the underlying meaning that the parent comment is getting at, and you’re instead responding to the words that they used to express it.

If you start with a definition for “rights” you can make arguments about whether they exist. But if you start with a different definition and get to a different conclusion, it doesn’t mean you’ve discovered some logical flaw in the argument, it just means that the two of you have failed to communicate with each other.

I appreciate your analysis, but another way to consider this discussion is that asserting the existence of "rights" is an unsupported conversational maneuver that frames the debate. The grandparent is defining a concept into existence, which is a questionable move IMO, despite being tradition.

All you have to do is recognize it as a statement of opinion. It’s not a “maneuver”, it’s just an argument, and you can disagree with it.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"

These are the kind of men that founded our country, better men than exist today. This is the type of thinking that led to America, and these are the cultural echo's many young culturally American boys hear from their fathers and grandfathers.

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" and if being bound in that manner, is not slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God. Thomas Paine - The Crisis

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God - Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson (https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...)

If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! John Henry -- Give me liberty or give me death.

You say you have no power and so let the world inflict itself on you, these were men that inflicted themselves upon the world. These men chose reason over comfort. These men chose not to be slaves through their action.

> We always thought the US had such a system, but when you put law enforcement and the military under a single group, and give the other two groups no teeth, you really don't have that sort of system.

More like the two other groups (the elected group more so than the appointed judges) willingly gave up their teeth.

> In western tradition governments exist to protect rights, such as the freedom of expression, not to grant them.

You may be overgeneralizing here, only the US has enshrined freedom of expression in their constitution. Pretty much in any other western government such protections do not exist and freedom of expression has been under attack for a long time

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights is enshrined in legislation in the UK and Ireland, and offers protections for signatories of the convention.

(Edit: Oh, and the Bill of Rights gives parliamentarians quite an extreme version)

Also Canada : https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/how-righ...

How were such freedoms protected during the trucker protests in Canada? That was not so long ago, and the government declared emergency powers to break the peaceful protests and freeze protesters' bank accounts.

> Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights is enshrined in legislation in the UK and Ireland, and offers protections for signatories of the convention.

it's enforced nowhere, since the European Convention on Human Rights has never attacked any of its members for putting people in jail or fining them for what they posted online. So, you can have all the laws on paper that you want, if nobody respects them, they might as well not exist.

> So, you can have all the laws on paper that you want, if nobody respects them, they might as well not exist.

Are you talking about the US at the moment?

- https://www.context.news/big-tech/us-prison-social-media-cra...

- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rnzp4ye5zo

- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/04/un-human-rig...

Basically freedom of expression is fine, as long as you don't:

- criticize the genocide that the US government is partial to (and funds) in Palestine

- criticize the US government for backing out of all climate deals

- criticize Trump for being orange and weird and Musk for being a robot?

I wonder if in recent political history we can find a parallel with some parties in Germany and Italy in the past century.

> You may be overgeneralizing here, only the US has enshrined freedom of expression in their constitution.

Sounds very progressive considering voting for the African American population came about in 1965, and having McCarthyism in the 50s (which was basically persecution of free speech and freedom of expression, the same thing the Trump administration is doing atm).

Freedom of expression being "enshrined" in the Constitution sounds good, but if it comes with no voting if I am black, and with being persecuted for leaning left, maybe that's not exactly "freedom of expression".

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_Rights_Act_of_1965

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism

What a strange view. America has done a poor job of teaching you about rights. They are legal only - natural law (the proper name for the doctrine of so-called "human rights") is religion. God-given rights you may have but rights in law they are not.

The rule of law is crucial to a free, just, and good society but you conflate the rule of law with the law saying what you would have it say. If the law is changed or the powers given under law are used in a way you do not like then that is not unlawful.

Dictators vary in how much they rely on law. Some have used law to do their evil: take Hitler. Some do their evil outside the law. This tells us that in truth the rule of law is but one part of what we need to have a good society.

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So far the fight/not fight decisions can be predicted in advanced based on whether an institution has a medical center with NIH grants.

And if they hire the right alumni lobbyists - major reason why you don't hear about Dartmouth in the news [0] despite a similarly active student activism scene.

Most other private universities could have easily managed the relationship, but a mix of inertia and vindictiveness from certain alumni (eg. Ackman) messed it up.

Mind you, Dartmouth is also kind of unique in that their alumni relations team actually TRY to maintain a relationship. The other high prestige colleges (excluding USC) ignore you until they need to hit fundraising KPIs.

A Tuck or Dartmouth College grad will always fight for an alum if they make it to the shortlist - most other Ivy grads don't (Wharton kinda, but that's only for Wharton). This really helps build loyalty.

[0] - https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/19/trump-is-bombarding...

The way I saw the Columbia protests was that Donny's trial was downtown, and because it was not televised, producers told their crews to stop filming the doors to the courthouse. So, looking for any story at all, they took the subway uptown to the hippies camping out on the quad. Hey, at least it's better than literally staring at a door, right? Next thing you know, the student protest thing blew up. Why? Because there was literally nothing else going on for the TV news crews to film those days. Soon as graduation happened and the trial wrapped up, we never heard another thing.

Dartmouth, sure, it may have a high energy protest scene and be smart and whatever. But no-one knows about it - not because they are crafty - but because it's in freakin Hanover.

Dartmouth is smaller and has, historically, had a stronger and more intense ongoing alumni connection in various ways than is probably the norm with the Ivies in general.

> Dartmouth is smaller

Yale and Dartmouth are similar in student body size, yet Yale has been hit by investigations [0] while Dartmouth has been spared.

[0] - https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/office-civil-rig...

Fair enough. Yale has more/bigger grad schools--though Dartmouth has tended to expand in that respect (though it doesn't have a law school).

Dartmouth is also famously the "conservative" Ivy.

More "conservative" than Columbia but still fairly liberal - the overwhelming majority of students backed Harris [0] and support abortion rights [1]

The Israel-Palestine protests (which sparked this whole university culture war issue) were fairly active at Dartmouth as well, but messaging around it was better handled by their admin.

The only conservative-ish and kinda prestigious college (not university) I can think of is Claremont McKenna, but they are drowned out within the larger Claremont community.

[0] - https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2024/11/2024-election-a...

[1] - https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2023/11/2023-election-s...

Dartmouth's time may still come. Brown is apparently about to be targeted next. Trump is clearly not done yet.

He states in the interview that Wesleyan has NIH grants. They are preparing to let scientists go if it comes to it.

Wesleyan does not have a medical center and according to the NIH’s public reporting, they have under $2 million in NIH grants, compared to $600 million for Columbia. (Edited from $400 million, which is the value cut.)

Wesleyan has a $250 million operating budget, so the (from what REPORTER indicates) $1.6 million in NIH funding represents 0.6% of their budget. In contrast, the $600 million in NIH funding to Columbia represents about 10% of its $6 billion operating budget.

So both in terms of absolute numbers and relative numbers, the NIH contributions to Wesleyan are de minimis.

That makes a strong case for academic institutions not being substantially dependent on government research dollars.

No it doesn’t. The First amendment is supposed to prevent the government from conditionalizing access to government services based on the speech of the recipient. Private institutions are not subject to such restrictions. If we want to encourage academic freedom, we want to find this behavior by the government to be illegal.

If you're going to resort to Constitutional arguments, you shouldn't gloss over the fact that the federal government is supposed to be one of enumerated powers, and there's no 'bribing universities to do what you want' federal power.

Unfortunately, that's not true. Article 1 gives congress very broad budgetary powers. Basically congress can spend money how they want, including bribing universities.

It depends on your understanding of Article 1 Section 8:

>"The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;"

What does "general Welfare" mean in this context? Are those words just meaningless filler, or should they be interpreted to indicate that the spending must be in furtherance of another specifically enumerated power? I believe the latter (Madisonian take), but this is a contentious subject:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxing_and_Spending_Clause#Gen...

I don't think the first amendment protects this. The first amendment protects against prosecution from speech. In this case, they are not being prosecuted, they are just being denied funding. Where are you getting that the "First amendment is supposed to prevent the government from conditionalizing access to government services based on the speech of the recipient." It does not state that at all

> we want to find this behavior by the government to be illegal

of course we do - but we're sadly discovering how easy it is for the government to target and coerce these universities, with nobody stepping up to stop them

So we want universities to get their funding from private sources that are expressly entitled to impose the same kind of conditions? Or do we want universities to spend more time and overhead on cobbling their funding together from a large number of intellectually and morally diverse sources? Where will these sources get their money without the power of taxation?

It's nice to be against something, but incomplete to uselessness if you are leaving out your alternative suggestion(s). They will always be dependent on someone.

If you were to go the most direct route, you might want to let the actual "customers", the students, pay for it all, delayed until they have a job of course?

A different version of student loans, it's the university itself that lets them study for free to collect later. I have no idea how that would turn out, I'm sure there would be so many different cases, impossible for me to tell what this would mean and look like.

The biggest problem I can see right away is that it's probably going to increase inequality between institutions. Ever more sorting of the rich and the poor into different places, with huge disparity of funding. So, probably a terrible idea unless the goal is dystopia.

Which leads me back to my question: What is your alternative? I think the government is better than pretty much all others. Private donors are quite problematic to rely on, and you only get the 1% to have even more power over education.

What do you think that 10% of budget is paying for that the university is spending on? It's more or less paying for the building and all that goes into it for the research that the NIH called for grant proposals to happen in. This is the entire idiocy about indirect benefits. Yes, paying for the building is not spending money directly on research. But you can't exactly do lab work without a lab building you know.

It's ironic that we're re-discovering this in 2025, it was pretty transparent in the late 1960s and early 70s, to students protesting their govt-funded universities' involvements in supporting the Vietnam War. The demands of students back then involved withdrawing from govt-funded grants and programs.

If you take money from an entity, you become an extension of that entity.

And NSF grants?

I’m not familiar with the NSF funding mechanisms or how people track NSF funding. Not saying NSF is not relevant, just that I’m not using it for my personal heuristic right now.

https://dellweb.bfa.nsf.gov/awdlst2/default.asp shows the NSF funding for Wesleyan.

You can drill down and infer some of the details about the funding programs.

Thank you. So, another de minimis amount ($1.8 million): it's not exactly zero, but it's just about as much as their NIH support. Columbia, as a comparator, gets $100 million in NSF funding.

I also found a DOE grant, about $800K.

I think this is the full list, NIH looks like a subset of overall HHS funding, and NSF is the actual single largest (around $2.5M)

https://ncsesdata.nsf.gov/profiles/site?method=report&tin=U3...

Wesleyan falls into a really weird bucket: a private liberal arts university, generally considered a "little Ivy" with a modest, slightly better than its competitors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ivies) in terms of research clout. The impact of losing all scientific federal funding would be noticeable, but presumably, not fatal; I don't think they structured the operating costs of the university to be dependent on federal research funding like many other schools.

I grew up at Wesleyan- both my parents worked there, it paid for my university education, gave me access to the internet in the 1980s (via NSF funding), and gave me insight into liberal education, all of which prepared me to go off to a California university, maximize my education, and deploy that into my career. I think many people don't recognize the intense second order effects (mostly positive) of federal funding of research.

I have fond memories of the game MacWesleyan. I wonder how true the depiction of campus was.

They could fight back with, "We will not accept students from politicians that support anti-education policies". Further they could kick out any students currently enrolled, "if they wrote a college essay promoting their anti-education values, we wouldn't have let them in - so they were clearly lying and we're just remedying that mistake"

> "We will not accept students from politicians that support anti-education policies"

Given how many stories there are about children seriously at odds with their parents about political issues, I don't think that is a good idea. At all.

Do you want to be judged by how your parents think or behave, or think that is acceptable?

This wasn't a serious proposal, I was mocking the cruelty and logic of the current administration.

Were you? The current administration is punishing students who directly voiced support for terrorism. That's not at all equivalent to punishing students for their parents' much less objectionable beliefs.

The last year and a half in particular has exposed just what a sham the academic freedom fo colleges really is.

We've always heard that the college tenure system encourages freedom of expression and academic freedom without the pressure of potential job loss. Instead what we have iscollege professors and administrations who move is absolute lockstep and have acted like jack-booted Gestapos to crush and punish First Amendment expression where some people merely said "maybe we shouldn't bomb children".

Norm Finkelstein, who is a national treasure, does not have tenure. He is a world-authority on these issues. Why doesn't he have tenure? Because he embarrassed Alan Dershowtiz by exposing him as a rampant plagiarist and general fraud.

Int he 1960s we had the National Guard open fire on anti-Vietnam protestors at Kent State, killing several, to repress anti-government speech. I swear we're not far from college administrators open firing on protestors directly.

The collaboration between colleges (particularly Columbia) and the administration pales in comparison to the anti-Vietnam era. Colleges are standing by letting agitators attack protestors (ie UCLA) and then later using that violence as an excuse to crush the protest. They're cooperating with law enforcement to crush protests.

But they're going beyond that. These protestors who have been illegally deported have largely been named and targeted by college administrations as well as organizations like the Canary Mission.

Think about that: colleges are knowingly cooperating with people who are black-bagging people protesting against genocide, fully knowing they will end up in places like prisons in El Salvadore.

Norm is a hero.

I have not heard of any protesters ending up in El Salvador, source?

I guess the downvoters must have information to which I am not privy...

What bothers me the most about all these protests and going-ons at universities and colleges is that they are generally by 18-22 year olds who are pre-adults still in their formative years who still have a lot of learning and growing up to do.

> who still have a lot of learning and growing up to do

I’m 60, and I have a fair bit of learning to do yet. And as the father of a student in roughly the 18-22 I would be proud to see her standing up for views that she feels strongly about whether her knowledge is fully complete or not.

Yes, i guess you'd be a proud father of a Cultural Revolution participant ... right until they send you to reeducation.

I suppose that means you don't know about the rich history of college protests that were instrumental in progressing human rights over the last 100 years?

It would be useful if you mentioned say a couple examples.

It would be even more useful if you were able to show that the effect of such student protests moving progress forward exceeded the effect of the student protests moving progress backward, like the Cultural or Iranian Revolutions. I think you'd not be able to show it.

OK. Does that mean you think they shouldn't protest because they're naive, or that people (especially in government) shouldn't be freaking out so much when they do protest?

What bothers me is the ageist assumption that "full-adults", say, boomers, are somehow more educated, less indoctrinated, or less prejudiced than young adults

Pretty sure that this wasn't implied. It's more about being "life wise".

Not sure if Michael Roth is related to Philip Roth, but it somehow reminds me of American Pastoral and that era of protests against the Vietnam War and its aftermath. I'm not entirely sure how those demonstrations compare to the ones we’re seeing today, but the parallels are striking

Wild that he is some kind of exception. Rolling over, folding is not the university culture I remember.

There wasn't, historically, the level of enormous potential negative consequences legally and practically if the universities talked back.

Universities, like many institutions, have also become more like large incumbent businesses than previously - e.g. perpetuating their own existence over having strong core values.

This is really well articulated. It's like how a company uses fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to justify a pivot away from some kind of principled stance.

Might have been a mistake to let some of them turn into real estate hedge funds.

Biden was considering withholding federal funds from schools over their vaccine policies[1], and tried to withhold federal funds from schools based on how they treat transgender students[2], but that was blocked by a judge. Obama did a similar thing regarding transgender students[3].

Things like this are why Hillsdale College rejects all federal funds. So they can do what they want without threat of the government revoking funding[4].

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-vaccines-delta...

[2] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/06/12/texas-title-ix-lgbtq...

[3] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/05/13/477896804...

[4] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/07/the-co...

Sure, but my argument was not "the federal government has never done this", but that "colleges have usually felt secure that this would not be done to them if they defended student protests", or at least, if we're being cynical, "that they would have an opportunity to walk it back if their calculations were incorrect".

I don’t feel like the reasons behind this are the same.

Biden/Obama: We want you to accept and protect everyone

Trump: I want you to deliberately reject certain races and nationalities, and close all the departments studying stuff I don’t like.

> Trump: I want you to deliberately reject certain races

Which race are colleges not allowed to accept? Source for this?

The current administration refers to inclusion of PoC and women as "DEI", so when they talk about ending DEI, that's what they mean.

See https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/17/defense-depa... for one example where it's particularly blatant.

> The current administration refers to inclusion of PoC and women as "DEI", so when they talk about ending DEI, that's what they mean.

I call bullshit on them wanting to ban women and black people from colleges, that is not what they mean when they say end "DEI", you are crazy.

Can you post a single link where they even hinted at wanting to ban black people and women from colleges? That is such an egregious accusation that you need more than just that they took down a page about a black guy.

> I call bullshit on them wanting to ban women and black people from colleges

Oh I’m sure it’s not as egregious as them wanting to ‘literally’ ban them. There’s no need for something quite that drastic. But think of how much nicer the place would be (not to mention more useful for networking) if none of these poor people were ever accepted in the first place.

Not sure when you graduated, but I've seen a complete inversion.

Much like 90s rockers, they now rage exclusively on behalf of the machine.

1990, FWIW.

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Well I think that is the point. The university now are rolling over, not protecting their student.

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First we're not allowed to call the detention camps "concentration camps" because there aren't ovens, now we can't call them "disappearances" because they're not getting thrown out of helicopters. Forget that people are getting shipped to a foreign torture slave camp from which nobody has been released with, and with no due process.

I think this language policing may be because people don't want to allow opposition to these things, rather than out of honor for the dead. The way to honor the dead is to prevent the circumstances of their deaths from happening again.

Which is exactly why we must stand up against the disappearances, the camps, the collaborators, the secret police.

This is exactly how it went in Russia. First it was, ‘Well, this isn’t that bad.’ Then, ‘Okay, sure, this isn’t great—but it’s not like we need to take action yet.’ And bit by bit, people kept rationalizing, minimizing, delaying—until suddenly it was, ‘Well… we’re f’d.’ That’s why we should speak up now.

We’re already at the point where one side is openly arguing that due process isn’t guaranteed by the Constitution—because it's inconvenient. So how many rights do we have to give up before it’s acceptable to call it out? How many norms have to be broken? How many lines crossed?

It's not like (other than Elon) they're going to show up in Hugo Boss suits one day and announce 'we have crossed the line to where you can criticize us now'.

I agree. But did you stand up against discrimination against innocent people under the banner of DEI? Did you stand up against government directed censorship campaigns on social media?

The time to stand up was actually way before the extreme actions of the left inspired this extreme reactionary overcorrection from the right. You're supposed to stand up while you're still in power, not after you've lost it, it's a bit late. I still remember people insisting "but deplatforming works!" as they justified mass censorship of conservatives. Honestly if you have not stood up for the people you politically disagreed with as the noose tightened over the last 10 years you are part of the cause of this terrible over-correction.

I can only hope that people start noticing this pattern and the inevitable next "correction" is not so extreme and we get some damping on the seemingly accelerating pendulum back and fourth.

The government never prevented anyone from speaking. Free speech was not violated when assholes were banned from platforms for being assholes. The owners of those platforms are not the government.

https://leftycartoons.com/2018/08/01/i-have-been-silenced/

Read the Twitter files. The government was actively involved in censorship. Zuckerberg has also stated the FBI was demanding certain posts be removed / demoted, users shadow banned, etc. The CIA also infiltrates and subverts many organizations and platforms. Wouldn't be surprised if they operate here, they've definitely been manipulating Reddit for at least the past decade.

You wouldn't have to keep referencing a tenuous connection in The Twitter Files (cue: X-Files theme music) if you came around to seeing government and corpos as quite similar creatures on a spectrum of coercion rather than as completely disjoint and disparate things.

So called "conservatives" were soooo close to being able to have this realization before they regained the power of the government, vested it all in a unitary execuking, and went back to seeing that extraconstitutional coercion as a feature (like many "progressives" had for ~10 years or so).

Yes actually, i've been ranting about this for a long time, sufficiently powerful corporations are a form of government. I'm not conservative though despite being anti-dei so make of that what you will, i think a lot of people on the left are being lumped in with people on the right because we oppose the types of discrimination and racism now popular with the "left".

Great! It sounds like we're coming from a similar place. I wouldn't describe myself as "on the left" - more of a general libertarian that sees the merits and flaws in both rightist and leftist thinking. I had never voted for a major party in a national election until 2020, after the Republican party went batshit crazy.

The reason I judge The Twitter Files as a rightist talking point is that it's trying to pigeonhole the motivation for censorship solely onto the government. If an argument is simply about the coercive power wielded by corporations and governments, you don't need a smoking gun of cooperation/direction to tie the two - seeing them as similar organizations with similar top-down motivations suffices. That evidence is only important if you're aiming for reform using the first amendment (an understandable desire, but the wrong tool for the job), or trying to absolve the corpos as mere victims of the de jure government (delusional).

You mean the Twitter files, which relied on Matt Taibbi getting the name of a government agency wrong to form the key connection he then turned into a conspiracy?

Yes for the most part.

The fact that current 'conservatives' kicked out pretty much all the historical conservatives I know as being not actual conservative/rinos tell us that this isn't about 'conservative' speech but something much, much different that is being labeled as 'conservative' speech when it is not.

I was a (hippie) libertarian at one point. Today the party of 'merit' has as their figure head... a nepo baby. They can't even be bothered to pretend to be 'conservative' or 'libertarian' anymore.

I don't shop where Confederate flags are sold. Requiring stores I shop at not to celebrate/promote racist anti-american losers by selling Confederate flags isn't me deplatforming anyone (BTW Amazon? Lots of Confederate flags FYI) it's me having standards for how I use my time/attention/money.

Very different. They were not kidnapped by secret police or held in inhumane conditions in far away jails.

because invalid comparisons weaken your argument and make you seem like you are oblivious of truth

The fact that very bad things happened to the Disappeared of Argentina makes me more concerned about the Disappeared of US, not less.

Did you go down to Plaza de Mayo to speak to some of las Madres and ask how they feel about it, or where is your idea coming from?

Kidnapped off the streets? I think for “bodies burned in pits” I might prefer “slaughtered” or “butchered”. Disappeared sounds rather light for what we’re currently discussing to my ear.

"Disappeared" does strongly imply that those people are dead, because that's what usually to happen to people that the government decides to kidnap.

But then, that's what usually happen to the people that the government decides to kidnap. So the OP's usage is perfectly correct, and the expectation that those people are dead should exist. Including the people that we know that were sent to the concentration camp, because despite nobody claiming it's an extermination camp the leading one does strongly tend to morph into the later.

I agree getting shipped off to a concentration camp ("detention center") without resource to justice is not on par with getting thrown out of a helicopter, but it's starting to get pretty damn close. And Trump is only getting started. If he had 7 years like the Junta did, we might wind up with our own contingent of desaparecidos.

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Many universities are more like family offices that operate schools. Columbia is historically one of the biggest slumlords in NYC through their various entities.

> not the university culture I remember.

that's because universities are now businesses first, research institutions second, and academic institutions third

This point gets to the heart of the matter. The more I look into it, everything else seems downstream from this.

And yet the US has some of the best universities in the world academically.

it absolutely does not. you pay for paper and the network. the education, except at few rare exemptions, is subpar. talk to any asian and european and ask what they think of attending uni in the US :)

The real cowardice was when student mobs took over campuses and harassed jewish students but the universities did nothing about. They hoped it would fizzle out and go away, and even though the worst of it did, it didn't go away entirely and the underlying tensions still simmered. Jewish students who were terrified to walk to class, lest they be harassed by some masked terrorist supporters, wanted to make sure the worst offenders of the protests were dealt with. Most universities still did nothing, and then Trump was elected. He has been consistently pro-Israel, and the organized Jewish community has been able to make inroads with his administration. So now he's dealing with it in the way that he deals with every issue.

What we are seeing now is entirely the fault of university administrators who failed to deal with the issue when it started.

And pray tell how did they harass jewish students?

Here's one example: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-rules-jewish-stud...

"the protesters created a “Jew Exclusion Zone” where in order to pass “a person had to make a statement pledging their allegiance to the activists’ view.” Those who complied with the protesters’ view were issued wristbands to allow them to pass through, the complaint says, which effectively barred Jewish students who supported Israel and denied them access to the heart of campus."

How is this connected to the submission? Or is a random tangent because the article mentions "student activism" and "Trump" in the opening? The only part mentioning anyone Jewish is:

> You have prominent Jewish figures around the country who get comfortable with Trump, it seems to me, because they can say he’s fighting antisemitism: “He’s good for the Jews.” It’s pathetic. It’s a travesty of Jewish values, in my view.

But I'm not sure how that is connected to what you wrote.

The entire article is about anti-Israel student protests and how the Trump administration is punishing universities for not squelching them.

Some of that so-called activism seems to be closer to suppressing any thoughts someone dislikes. Removing that from university life is not cool, that „activism“ itself went off the rails too.

I know someone who works for a university in event planning. They were putting together an event for a civil rights icon. Because of the new policies, they were forced to go through all of the brochures and pamphlets and censor any use of words such as "racism" and "black" (when referring to the man's skin color).

They literally couldn't say "black man fighting against racism" about a civil rights icon without losing millions in funding. I have no idea how someone can argue that this kind of censorship targeting universities is acceptable

It is not acceptable. But at the same time the US „antiracist“ campaign itself looks just like (reverse) racism in many case. Two unacceptables don’t cancel each other out. But you reap what you saw.

Just my 2 euro cents.

> But at the same time the US „antiracist“ campaign itself looks just like (reverse) racism in many case.

And what do you propose instead? I'm not seeing the EU doing any better than the US with their lowest socioeconomic class groups.

Talking points are nifty. But, at some point, you have to propose an actual solution that does something.

Bigotry exists. What are you going to do about it? It seems that the most popular answers right now vary from "Not a goddamn thing" to "Fuck those bastards."

(In reality, I'm pessimistic that there is much that can be actively done. The bigots who threw slurs at my immigrant ancestors didn't so much get better as much as just change epithets and targets. Sadly, so it goes.)

> And what do you propose instead? I'm not seeing the EU doing any better than the US with their lowest socioeconomic class groups.

Key word „socioeconomic“ groups. It should not be racist policies based on skin color. Help poor people, help people growing up in shitty neighbourhods. True diversity is people with different life experiences. Sometimes it correlates with skin color, sometimes it doesn't. Just like poor economic situation and shitty upbringing.

> Bigotry exists. What are you going to do about it? It seems that the most popular answers right now vary from "Not a goddamn thing" to "Fuck those bastards."

Of course. Including among those so-called „anti racists“.

Slightly offtoic, but it's funny that modern „antifa“ is one of the most authoritarian-minded people I've met. While a good chunk of far-right people are full-on anarchistic-minded people. With about equal amount of bigotry on either side. People loooove abusing labels to further their agenda.

> (In reality, I'm pessimistic that there is much that can be actively done. The bigots who threw slurs at my immigrant ancestors didn't so much get better as much as just change epithets and targets. Sadly, so it goes.)

And then there're bigot immigrants who talk shit about locals. My country was a major source of migration two decades ago and it's horrible what our people would say about locals. Now tables switched and we got more incoming migration. And now we're on the other side of the same transaction guests not respecting our culture. Bigots are everywhere. But current policies tend to focus on one side of bigots which just breeds more resent on the other side.

> It should not be racist policies based on skin color. Help poor people, help people growing up in shitty neighbourhods.

That is, in fact, what a lot of those DEI programs did. The problem is that "lower socioeconomic status" is a high correlate proxy for "minority" in the US. There are simply a lot more minorities in the US in the lower socioeconomic brackets.

The problem, at the end of the day, is that the a lot of the market became zero sum. When there were lots of jobs and lots of college slots, nobody cared so much about affirmative action-type programs.

According to the Supreme Court ruling[1], college admissions where explicitly taking race into account, either as a proxy for or in addition to socioeconomic status.

[1] https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

>They literally couldn't say "black man fighting against racism" about a civil rights icon without losing millions in funding. I have no idea how someone can argue that this kind of censorship targeting universities is acceptable

Sounds like they are being forced to take the Morgan Freeman Approach to Ending Racism: stop talking about race. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2RwJlQdzpE

> They literally couldn't say "black man fighting against racism" about a civil rights icon without losing millions in funding.

They could. They just preferred to play the victim.

Freedom of speech necessarily implies that a group of people might team up and loudly announce that the people they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or even ostracized. That's the price of freedom of speech, and it's a fair price.

Being annoyed, inconvenienced, or even negatively impacted by the speech acts of others is by design. To throw that out is to make a calculation that without freedom of speech, your perspective will be the natural default without activism to upset it. A dangerous assumption.

Problem is that in the past two decades university admins gave in to various deplatforming causes and enforced codes. If they had stood firm before, the arguments against them wouldn't be nearly as strong. Unfortunately, they didn't. So when they now use the "free speech" argument themselves it rings hollow.

Those policies were designed to promote free speech from vulnerable groups. Political vulnerability has a huge influence on free speech (and freedom), and that's what they have been addressing.

(Picking two random groups:) If you are Pakistani and are in a room of all Indian people, and the others say how horrible Pakistanis are and how research shows that Pakistanis are less intelligent or prone to violence, that is a very intimidating atmosphere and it would be hard to endure, much less speak up.

If that one Pakistani says the same about Indians, it's obnoxious and annoying, but it's no threat to anyone. The many Indians are not vulnerable. That's the difference.

Furthermore, the dominant groups in a culture tend to create systems and knowledge that support them to the exclusion of others - sometimes explicitly and intentionally. That's systemic discrimination - the system naturally generates it if you follow the usual path. It takes some effort to create space for other points of view.

Whether the typical DEI policies are optimal is another question. I haven't heard anyone come up with a great solution. Some pretend it's not a problem and there is no prejudice, which is absurd and not a solution; it's just sticking one's head in the sand - because they can, because they are not vulnerable.

> (Picking two random groups:) If you are Pakistani and are in a room of all Indian people, and the others say how horrible Pakistanis are and how research shows that Pakistanis are less intelligent or prone to violence, that is a very intimidating atmosphere and it would be hard to endure, much less speak up.

Much like a right-winger or a Christian at one of these universities.

The policies didn't help the groups they were supposedly about helping, they helped the groups that were already dominant (race and religion matter a lot less in a group that's all upper class), whether by design or because they evolved to.

> The policies didn't help the groups they were supposedly about helping

Do you have any evidence?

> Much like a right-winger or a Christian at one of these universities.

So is the first quote not based on evidence, but based on your ideology? There's no reason any vulnerable minority shouldn't be protected, though 'right-wingers' and Christians (usually meaning conservative Christians) are hardly vulnerable in the US, even if they are a minority on many campuses. They rule the country and always have, have access to every job and privilege.

Nobody knows you're a Christian or right winger at a university until you open your mouth to let all the women and LGBT people know that you think they don't deserve rights, and it's not discrimination when people don't like you for being an asshole. The vast majority of Christians go to college, don't get mad that LGBT and non-Christians exist, and didn't get discriminated against.

The absolute narcissism on display here is crazy.

Not all conservative Christians and right wingers think "women and LGBT people ... don't deserve rights". I find that if I approach people that way, it brings out the worst in them - they feel cornered and they fight. There's not much room for discussion when someone dismisses 'crazy antifa terrorists'. Are you going to reason with them?

It destroys social trust, which is what the real radicals aim at. If you want to fight the far right, work to build it.

I think the DEI rule should be simply to ban intolerance, with some education about how norms can be intolerant of minorities, and the experience of being a vulnerable minority in a room of majority.

> Not all conservative Christians and right wingers think "women and LGBT people ... don't deserve rights

Weird how those specific Christians who think women and LGBT are people don't feel discriminated against.

Weird how you keep taking the same approach - so blind to the possibility of social trust that you don't realize I already effectively agreed.

I think all groups engage in in group preference. If you look at businesses run by Indians in the US, they clearly favor hiring Indians, you see the same with other groups. Same with various East Asians, Jewish people etc.

It isn't just the dominate group, it is everyone.

So simplifying, if you have only 2 groups, one being 30% and the other 70% of the population, it would at first appear the 70% group has an advantage for finding jobs, but in reality they do not, as while they are favored at 70% of jobs, they are also competing against an equivalently larger group of people.

Anyway the implementation of racial preferences in college applications, and DEI has led to a system that systematical favors certain groups, and gaslighting that somehow this isn't the case.

I don't support Trump but liberals denying this reality, along with various other incredibly stupid woke positions, has led to the current situation, where we have a complete and utter imbecile running the country, because hey, at least he doesn't deny reality in regards DIE/social issues.

> incredibly stupid

Never a smart thing to write; only a reflection on the author's blindness and arrogance - a toxic combination that is, indeed, what you describe.

> has led to the current situation

> he doesn't deny reality in regards DIE/social issues.

No it doesn't ring hallow. It is just that the issue is old.

> they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or even ostracized

You have that right. But doing this is not always wise. Labeling people as immoral and ostracizing them, especially on 50/50 issues, is one of the reason why the American political system is so radicalized at the moment.

That's a question of tactics, though. Moral outrage can be extremely effective, and it can also be counterproductive. And striking the right balance has been a challenge in American politics as long as American politics have existed.

In his Second Inaugural, Lincoln threads the needle in a way that is frankly unachievable for even most skilled politicians. "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God and each invokes His aid against the other" seems like an acknowledgement of moral nuance, but he follows it up with, "It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces but let us judge not that we be not judged."

Speaking to a nation in which a part of it is in open revolt over the right to keep other humans as slaves is certainly an extreme case. But it isn't categorically different from any other political struggle. People are going to accuse one another of being immoral. It's the human condition. A legal system that protects this behavior is the bedrock of democracy. It doesn't matter how annoying you find the people doing the judging.

I’ll defend other people rights to offend me. But nowadays some people think others, even just between themselves, can’t say what would offend them.

A lot of people are fair-weather friends of freedom of speech. It's all well and good if everybody is allowed to express themselves as long as everybody, if they don't like me, at least respects me.

I guess some people were never in favor of freedom of speech, they just wanted a world where they faced minimal interpersonal conflict, and the current order for a while was serving that purpose.

> Freedom of speech necessarily implies that a group of people might team up and loudly announce that the people they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or even ostracized. That's the price of freedom of speech, and it's a fair price.

Sure, agreed. But groups and institutions taking even a dime of tax money should not get to place a thumb on the scales of those arguments. US universities, in particular, chose a side and then silenced all opposing viewpoints.

It was inevitable that the silenced would eventually mobilise, and they did. And now the group has to abandon their arguments about allowing "punching up" and instead pontificate on "free speech".

Myself (and many others) argued over the last decade and more that the pendulum always swings back, so lets be a little less extreme in the left/right argument. I, on this site, got labeled a non-thinking right-winger apologist for pointing out that the mainstream views on transgender for minors does not match the views that the powers-that-be were pushing.

You can't push for normalising the silencing of views for well over a decade without you yourself eventually falling victim to the same normalisation.

What did US universities do to "silence all opposing viewpoints" on any issues? Did they kick students out of school because of their viewports? Claw back their financial aid? Get them deported? Physically harm them? I sure don't remember things like that happening in widespread manner to conservative students, let alone happening in a way that was organized top-down by the universities' leadership.

> Did they kick students out of school because of their viewports?

Yes actually! Almost every presigious/non public college has speech codes. And those speech codes have consequences. Up to, and including, expulsion if you keep breaking them.

Check out how well each college is doing here: https://www.thefire.org/colleges

I want to assume you are asking in good faith and really aren't aware of academic administration's attempts to silence specific and common viewpoints.

Your comment surprises me, because at this point, there really isn't any contention over the fact that universities have been doing exactly this.

So while I am assuming that you don't actually know, I'll give you a short list of links (I'm not doing research that takes me more than 5m).

> What did US universities do to "silence all opposing viewpoints" on any issues?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/musbahshaheen/2024/06/05/stop-r...

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/diversity-statemen...

https://www.thefire.org/news/anti-free-speech-trends-campus-...

https://www.thefire.org/facultyreport

https://www.hrdive.com/news/stop-requiring-diversity-stateme...

(UK, but still the same idea) https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/kathleen-stock...

https://www.thefire.org/news/speaker-disinvited-uncomfortabl...

https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-disinvited-speakers-...

And, finally, some charts: https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/ne...

    Analysis of the data FIRE has collected reveals a clear political trend in the likelihood that a speaker will be targeted with a disinvitation effort. Speakers are far more likely to face disinvitation efforts from opponents to their political left than from those to their right. Since 2000, those behind the disinvitation efforts targeted speakers with views more conservative than their own nearly three times more frequently (97 attempts) than they targeted speakers with views more liberal than their own (36 attempts).

It pains me to say it, but it aligns with my experience.

> Did they kick students out of school because of their viewports? Claw back their financial aid? Get them deported? Physically harm them?

None of that is required to silence opposing views.

> I sure don't remember things like that happening in widespread manner to conservative students, let alone happening in a way that was organized top-down by the universities' leadership.

"Allowing only one viewpoint" doesn't require that the university administration has a top-down directive to expel students, only that they allow one viewpoint and silence the other.

Once again, that this happened is not in dispute, so I am left wondering where you were going with this response.

I think it's vice versa. Some students prevent other students from exercising their free speech rights. E.g. try to prevent speakers they don't like from speaking on campus. Or harass some people for their ethnicity in context of Hamas/Israel war. Then universities look the other way.

Can you be a bit more specific what kind of "thought suppression" you mean?

We all know that isn't the kind of activism being targeted.

I don't mind saying this is some serious Nazi stuff going on. The federal government is trying to obstruct free speech, jailing people for free speech... we are in a bad place.

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They are detaining people for op-Ed’s though.

What did I miss?

a Tufts student had her visa cancelled and then was kidnapped by ICE for publishing an op Ed saying "hey, maybe genocide is bad"

Cowardice is in the eye of the beholder and the article is self-serving.

The article makes the point that it's cowardly to cave to administration pressure to limit the activities of anti-Israel/Pro-Palestine protesters.

Someone on the other side of the issue could make the argument "it is cowardly to kowtow to a small but vocal minority who justifies interfering with other students' ability to learn, as 'free speech'".

It is dishonest to describe non-speech activity such as intimidation and forceful prevention of access, as "speech", even if you like the motivation or outcome. "Speech" is talking with words. Physically using your body to prevent someone else from acting in a desired way, is something other than "speech".

The best solution here is for universities to become less involved with government money. They should have to compete for students and research on an even playing field, and we shouldn't be creating politically aligned fields through government spending.

No. Research Universities are about Research. There are non governmental sources of funding for research, but they pale in comparison with government funding. If you want to make the case that the private industry should take on research, the problem is that there is no immediate profit in it. It can take decades, and few companies can invest decades of funding hoping for some eventual breakthrough. Moreover, in that model, research is slowed because companies are notoriously bad at sharing research with competitors. So you either create national research centers, or you use research universities.

The issue with these ideas is they lack an understanding of anything really about how we fund research in this country. We collect taxes and disperse these taxes in the form of research grants that we have boards of experts in the field call for proposals about realistically achievable topics that would benefit the American citizen in health, wealth, or some other form of prosperity. We only have a few national labs and most of this research is conducted in the university system, which simultaneously trains the next crop of researchers.

Now you are proposing this work doing/training aspect be cut off. What is your replacement? You have to come up with one that gets trainees hands on experience, as well as provides economies of scale benefits for expensive experimental apparatus or sample or data/compute resources, fosters collaboration and idea generation, and shares this work with other grant funded researchers in the field so that they might further their own efforts.

Or, you could just not blow the whole system apart with a broadside strike, and enjoy the striking benefits in fields like medicine we have enjoyed over the decades.

Surprised at how it hasn't been pointed out here but - the "general public" wants the sausage, but not how it's made. They wouldn't if they knew what it entailed. Cutbacks to student aid, shuttering of departments, eliminating of PhD positions, etc.

The Trump administrations attacks are able to go so far now, because institutions already rolled over under a Democratic administration.

Take for instance University of Pennsylvania. In 2023, student anonymously projected "Let Gaza Live" onto a building. The next day then-college president Liz Magill publicly called in the FBI to investigate this as an "antisemitic hate crime". She was later forced to resign for "not doing enough" to combat alleged antisemitism.

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This is rich. The Universities that caved to student activists engaged in antisemitism and other egregious activities should now fight for their rights to be cowards? Or the Universities that engaged in racist DEI programs are now going to stand on principal?

Give me a break.

If tenure was designed to protect intellectual freedom, but academics are consistently the biggest cowards failing to stand up to anything - what does that say about academia?

I thought private institutions weren't supposed to worry about federal guidelines. Does this mean Trump University can be attacked if a sufficiently powerful liberal wants to smear their university president for his antisemitic behavior?

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Then they would need to tax nonprofit religious organizations too.

Why don't they just make the special interests pay their own multi-trillion dollar war bills instead of sabotaging US universities with surprise taxes?

If you increase expenses and cut revenue, what should you expect for your companies?

Why not just make a flat tax for everyone and end all the special interest pandering and exceptions for the rich. It is a poisonous misapplication of the time of our government to constantly be fiddling with tax code to favor one group or another.

Because a lot of people, including many economists, believe capital accumulating endlessly to the same class of thousand-ish people is bad. A flat income tax exacerbates wealth inequality considerably.

Our tax now is worse than flat. Warren buffet brags about paying less % than his secretary.

Either compare ideal tax structures with “no loopholes” (none of these exist in the real world) or compare actually-existing tax structures.

Comparing your ideal flat income tax with the current system is apples to oranges.

>>Why don't they just make the special interests pay their own multi-trillion dollar war bills instead of sabotaging US universities with surprise taxes?

>Either compare ideal tax structures with “no loopholes” (none of these exist in the real world) or compare actually-existing tax structures.

Hence I cannot compare your suggestion with the current system as it is apple to oranges because loopholes would exist.

My thesis is a flat tax would help to minimize the very loopholes you damn. The larger the tax code and the more it panders to particular interest, generally the more opportunity for 'loopholes.'

When you say "tax loopholes" I think "corporate welfare," which is sometimes rational but typically exploited.

A tax code with fewer loopholes would be more flat (or progressive).

IDK if it's bragging or voiced concern.

I don't want to work for a business created by, uh, upper class folks that wouldn't have done it if not for temporary tax breaks by a pandering grifter executive.

I believe in a strong middle class and upward mobility for all.

I don't think we want businesses that are dependent on war, hate, fear, and division for continued profitability.

I don't know whether a flat or a regressive or a progressive tax system is more fair or more total society optimal.

I suspect it is true that, Higher income individuals receive more total subsidies than lower-income individuals.

You don't want a job at a firm that an already-wealthy founder could only pull off due to short-term tax breaks and wouldn't have founded if taxes go any higher.

You want a job at a firm run by people who are going to keep solving for their mission regardless of high taxes due to immediately necessary war expenses, for example.

In the interests of long-term economic health and national security of the United States, I don't think they should be cutting science and medical research funding.

Science funding has positive returns. Science funding has greater returns than illegal wars (that still aren't paid for).

Find 1980 on these charts of tax receipts, GDP, and income inequality: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43140500 :

> "Federal Receipts as Percent of Gross Domestic Product" https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S

> "Federal Debt: Total Public Debt as Percent of Gross Domestic Product" https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43220833 re: income inequality:

> GINI Index for the United States: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SIPOVGINIUSA

Find 1980 on a GINI index chart.

Yeah, I mean, I think we agree on most points.

I think there’s too many confounding economic factors to look at GINI alone and conclude the 1980 turning point was caused by nerfing the top income tax bracket. But a compelling argument could probably be made with more supporting data, which of course this margin is too narrow to contain and etc.

Which factors confound? Oil price shock hostage situation and recession and then wars by oil people who did not pay their bill by cutting taxes and increasing expenses to meddle without just returns.

Better would be to remove inheritance after death, instead distributing that wealth among the citizenship equally.

List of countries by inheritance tax rates: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_inheritan...

I suspect it's about putting infrastructure in place to ensure loyalty in times of turbulence.

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Endowments are typically restricted funds (imposed by the fund provider) and can't be used (unless the restrictions are removed) to be used for general operating budget.

Harvard generally uses the interest on the fund principal to pay for things and it was a massive internal controversy when folks proposed drawing down the (absolutely enormous) principal as payment for capital expenditures (among other controversies).

Those giant university endowments are partially used to allow those who couldn't afford it but otherwise have shown they have what the university is looking for in students to attend for significantly/entirely reduced costs. Meanwhile, the most visible billionaires are using their money to try to buy elections so they can dismantle the government for personal gain while oftentimes employing people with such low wages that they depend on the government to be able to afford such luxuries as eating three meals a day. It's pretty easy to see why the large parts of the public find one acceptable and the other less acceptable.

Everyone can afford it if given a loan. If the job you get after can't afford to pay back the loan, it's time to look for another career, and for the schools to be on the hook for the miss, not the taxpayer.

And yes you are right acceptability, because polls show that the government bailing out students making poor career choices and schools paying for bloated staff is definitely not acceptable to the majority of Americans.

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I consider UC's statement of diversity (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/us/ucla-dei-statement.htm... and then 6 months later https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/us/diversity-statements-u...) to be a form of ideology over truth seeking: """Candidates who did not “look outstanding” on diversity, the vice provost at U.C. Davis instructed search committees, could not advance, no matter the quality of their academic research. Credentials and experience would be examined in a later round."""

Regardless of your stance on affirmative action, it should be very suspicious that all prestigious universities implemented it until it was banned while support in the general population is mixed.

I'm not sure how that follows. Do elite universities typically track the general population?

> I'm not sure how that follows. Do elite universities typically track the general population?

He's saying that the universities are out of touch with the general population, which is never a good thing.

Was it ever the case they were in touch the with the general population... they are elite after all...

Does it matter if they did or didn't? Universities have indisputably lost the mandate of heaven, have they not? Arguing over whether they actually did any of those things is irrelevant, if a politically powerful group of people think they did! None of them have an objective definition, so it's going to come down to values, and universities / academics as a class have alienated themselves from a substantial portion of the population.

... or have anti-intellectual media whipped up that resentment as part of their culture war?

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How has this happened? What are your concrete examples of this having happened?

I suspect all of the example(s) you might have are going to be overblown news storie(s) But if there are decades of this, I'd love to see the evidence.

I was a university student myself not too long ago. I experienced it personally.

So vague! Experienced what??

Mandatory political indoctrination courses is the biggest thing. But also, having to fund left-wing events with mandatory activities fee. And it was much easier to get funding as a student group if you have the correct political opinions. Finally, if you say the wrong things, you might get reported to a political commissar (this was really rare at my uni though, there were signs everywhere saying how to make a report but in practice people didn’t do it).

I don’t know that Universities cower before leftist ideology. They are leftist, and are the generators of leftist ideology. It’s more like the wallow in it than cower before it.

Universities have endorsed leftist ideas. Not cowered .

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Also, they require academic applicants to submit mandatory diversity statements: https://www.wesleyan.edu/inclusion/whatwedo/recruitment-reso...

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I dispute that the left ever had any kind of monopoly on chilling speech. Getting people fired from their jobs for exercising speech isn't a specialty of the left. The fact that it consistently made headlines when the SJWs scored a win showed how relatively rare it was. It was and remains much more common for people to get fired for left-leaning speech, such as union organizing efforts. And which side imposed "Don't say gay" laws?

Remember when people lost their shit when it came out that the Biden administration was leaning on social media platforms to stop the spread of certain ideas? Yet now we see the current administration openly and flagrantly punishing and extorting private universities and law firms, even disappearing people for attending rallies, to thunderous silence from the right. It's as if all the outrage about free speech was a farce.

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> "Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire livelihood you're trivializing.

yes, the left doing that was pretty bad and I have gotten into many arguments over my left leaning friends over it. But it was largely private companies capitulating to pressure. To compare that to people being abducted and incarcerated by the government without trial or even an actual law being broken is worse.

You do understand why thats worse right?

How many of the conservatives complaining about it would support government regulations preventing people from being fired for expressing controversial viewpoints? AFAIK those complaining are the same people who support ‘at will’ employment and the liberty of religious organizations to impose more or less arbitrarily discriminatory hiring standards. So yeah, in that lax regulatory environment, your employer might decide to fire you if you (e.g.) feel the need to be an asshole to your trans colleagues.

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Well for brevity I did trivialize it but I will expand:

The left side got people fired. This is objectively not as bad as getting people disappeared. You can get a new fucking job. You can’t get freedom from detention and you cannot easily return to the country (if at all)

Additionally there is the motivational factor behind both sides:

The lefts argument in policing language was to reduce harm to marginalized groups. You may not agree with it, but that is the rational.

The rights argument is to erase those marginalized groups.

These are extremely different in motivation. Asking you to respect a persons gender identity in professional contexts is far different than forcing someone to not be able to express it on federal documentation.

One side of this was “we want to create inclusive spaces that make people comfortable and if you don’t want to participate in that there is the door”. The other side is “we did not want to participate in that so go fuck yourself and we will do whatever we can to deny your right to express your identity”

“Any attempt to control speech” is an absolutist statement that is absurd in its fallacy. So I can say I can murder you? I can say you’re planning a terrorist attack? I can say you want to kill the president? Of course not. Speech is limited contextually and by law

You're still trivializing. The cancel culture would often follow the people it wanted to cancel to make it hard for them to get another job again.

Also, I'll add that the "there is the door" comment is entirely wrong. There are countless stories of open source maintainers being harassed to make language changes to their code base, master/slave, whitelist/blacklist. The harassers never offered to do the work themselves just demanded it be done for them or they'll keep harassing. These were people matching into someone else's "safe space" to police their private language.

The government disappearing people and dismantling the country is very bad, and nothing good can be said about it. What I'm talking about are the individuals on both sides not formally in power, and their equal efforts to stifle what they see as "bad speech". It's that mentality, on both sides, that led us to where we are.

Harassment is bad. Extraordinary rendition is bad. One of them is significantly worse than the other. And the side complaining about A whilst celebrating B is significantly more hypocritical.

What about the side that complains about A and complains about B, and complains that constant polarizing rhetoric has been ratcheting up to get us from the less bad A to the very bad B?

1) Plenty of "Polarizing rhetoric" has come from the side of the current administration. 2) "Polarizing rhetoric" is not remotely a valid justification of disappearing people.

i think that puts you in case A, harassing people for their speech, in this case, the "polarizing rhetoric" is the speech to be protected

Ah yes, it is the left's fault the right is spiraling the country into despotism. Feeling a lot of "Why do you make them hit you?" energy in this thread.

Because it actually is, in no small part, the illiberal left's fault for going all out to emphasize identity instead of unity, dividing and polarizing the U.S. population.

The illiberal left must be held accountable for their role in the Democratic defeats of 2024, expelled and publicly repudiated, and then the Democratic Party can work on rebuilding trust with voters.

It is everyone who kept on the path instead of saying 'I don't care what you say I'll defend your right to say it'. If you can't allow someone else to say things you don't like you are at fault - it doesn't matter how good hou think you are.

So because a vocal minority 'cancelled' speech in private spheres for a few years, it's the fault of (all?) progressives that the right wildly overreacted and installed facism and government enforced censorship?

By this logic if one member of my family makes you feel unwelcome then its my own fault that you got the cops to beat me up?

There are a lot of people on the "right" who are horrified about how Trump is doing anything and have no clue what they can do about it.

There are evil people on both sides, always have been, always will be. It always looks like the other side is more evil than your side because you have a human bias to assume people who agree with your are not evil with a few small exceptions. Because of this bias it is always wrong to try to paint the other side worse than yours.

The important take away: power shifts, it always has and always will. Next time your side is in power how will you recognize where they are doing evil and oppose them. The first is at least something you can partially train yourself to do with great effort - I have no clue what you can usefully do about it though.

The left is loud about the hypocrisy and faults of its own. Whether that's drone striking US citizens, trading on insider info, or taking literal bribes. The left has prosecuted its own far more often than the right.

My whole point is both sides deserve the rebutes and criticism they have earned, and at this moment one side is objectively far, far worse. Which doesn't excuse faults on the left. But it certainly is not the left who has embraced facism and kleptocracy, nor has anyone except the Republican party and their voters caused this.

> There are a lot of people on the "right" who are horrified about how Trump is doing anything

Citation needed