Freedom of speech and the left

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josh

FIVE GROUPS PROVIDING public defender services in New York City are cracking down on speech about Palestine. Leadership at the groups are pushing back on statements or internal communications that reference the siege on Gaza, and at least one staffer has been forced to resign.

https://theintercept.com/2023/11/17/public-defender-gaza-legal-aid-bronx...

josh
epaulo13

Hamilton Wentworth District School Board of Trustees Launches External Investigation into my Advocacy in support of Palestinian Human Rights

At the end of October, the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board of Trustees launched an external investigation into my social media activity as it relates to my posts on Palestine, alleging that my advocacy is a breach of the Trustee Code of Conduct. 

I am concerned that this investigation is an attempt to silence me for my vocal condemnation of Israeli apartheid and reprimand me for my posts about protests that were calling for the end to the siege of Gaza.

I reaffirm my position: I condemn Israeli apartheid and believe that for there to be peace, the siege of Gaza must be lifted and the occupation must end. I reject the conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. As trusted elected officials in education, I would expect and implore us to do the difficult and necessary work of teaching and taking leadership in difficult times like these. That includes having difficult conversations that challenge harmful, oppressive, anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic narratives. 

As this investigation is underway, I have been advised by my legal counsel to not make any further comments as it relates to the alleged breach of the code of conduct. I will provide updates at the appropriate time.

It’s important to note that students across Ontario’s education system are telling us that they are facing repercussions for daring to say “Free Palestine”. They are being silenced and threatened with disciplinary measures, amongst other serious incidents of anti-Palestinian racism. To students across Ontario: know that I have your back and that your voice is important. You deserve a learning space free from anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. I call on Minister Lecce to unequivocally condemn anti-Palestinian racism, and Islamophobia across Ontario’s education system and to take steps to ensure all students are safe in their schools. 

I encourage all of us to stay committed to learning, listening, and speaking up about Palestine. Even when unsure, uncertain, or scared, show up for Palestine.

Love, Solidarity and Free Palestine! 

Sabreina Dahab, Hamilton Wentworth District School Board Ward 2 Trustee 

epaulo13

'Silence our dissent': Doctor charged in vandalism at MP's office speaks out

Hours before he was arrested and charged with vandalizing a Liberal MP’s office, a London doctor and humanitarian activist accused police of trying to silence the pro-Palestinian protest movement.

Tarek Loubani, 42, is charged with mischief for the alleged vandalism at Peter Fragiskatos’s office on Oct. 22, when ketchup was sprayed on the front door and windows of the building at 231 Hyman St.

Investigators determined a group not affiliated with the demonstration stopped at the office, where one suspect removed a bottle of ketchup from his backpack and squirted it on the building before handing bottles of the condiment to three others to do the same, London police said.

quote:

Loubani, who was part of a group of protestors who gathered outside of Fragiskatos’s office Wednesday, said police had recently showed up at his home multiple times while he was away doing humanitarian work overseas.....

josh

The comments that reportedly led to Melissa Barrera being fired from ‘Scream 7’ were:

“Gaza is currently being treated like a concentration camp. Cornering everyone together, with nowhere to go, no electricity no water...people are still silently watching it all happen. THIS IS GENOCIDE & ETHNIC CLEANSING.”

josh

CTV told journalists not to use the word “Palestine” and cultivated a “culture of fear” about reporting critically on Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

https://breachmedia.ca/ctv-bell-media-forbids-palestine-suppresses-criti...

josh

Several Ontario doctors tell me they are being hauled up for supporting Palestinian rights including for signing a "don't bomb hospitals" petition. Higher-ups have told them there were complaints and accused them of making Jewish colleagues feel unsafe.

https://x.com/ShreeParadkar/status/1729159523502575983?s=20

Paladin1

josh wrote:
Several Ontario doctors tell me they are being hauled up for supporting Palestinian rights including for signing a "don't bomb hospitals" petition. Higher-ups have told them there were complaints and accused them of making Jewish colleagues feel unsafe.

https://x.com/ShreeParadkar/status/1729159523502575983?s=20[/quote]

Good.
Doctors like Ben Thomson thought it was cool to post on social media about "no confirmed reports of rape".

Mobo2000

Bummer Paladin, I thought you were in support of freedom of speech, even speech you find deplorable.  

I thought this article by Matt Yglesis wass surprisingly good. He is a fairly centrist democrat favouring 2 state solution, not endorsing his position, but very good on freedom of speech related to Israel/Palestine.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/israel-palestine-and-the-need-for

"The Israel-Palestine dispute is an excellent illustration of the general principle that it’s challenging to draw a bright line between passionate arguments about public policy and bigotry, especially when you incentivize people to make claims about the latter in order to shut down the former. And we’re also already seeing swathes of American society being ripped apart by a war happening thousands of miles away because of a culture that encourages people to cultivate their own sense of subjective fragility in order to silence enemies.

That is bad when it happens on the left, and it’s bad when happens on the right. There’s no need for people on the center or center-right to practice unilateral disarmament on this topic, but it is essential to keep a clear view of the importance of free speech and to push cultural institutions to resolve their hypocrisies in a productive way."

The view that “Zionism is racism” strikes some people as so self-evidently absurd that anyone holding it must be antisemitic. And indeed, there is a push from the ADL and the AJC to argue that anti-Zionism is antisemitism.

To me, both “Zionism is racism” and “anti-Zionism is antisemitism” are absurd viewpoints, but their embrace underscores the power of this kind of overreach.

The basic reality is that there is no neutral point outside the parameters of the conflict itself from which one can judge the exact meaning or reasonableness of the specific things that people say. I’ve recently heard American rally-goers and even high school students chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” I think it would be good for the people organizing rallies to understand that most Jewish people, both in Israel and in the diaspora, understand this slogan to entail calling for the elimination of Israel’s Jewish population. But I also think it’s important for Jews (and our friends) to understand that to the people chanting, in this context, this is not what it means. Their understanding of themselves is that they are calling for a unitary secular democratic state encompassing both Jews and Arabs."

JKR

None of the two dozen Arabs countries in the world are secular democracies. Hamas obviously is violently opposed to that idea even though they always very loudly trumpet "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free." We all know the Palestine they want is Jew free just like all the Arab countries are now after they once had significant Jewish populations.

JKR

Maybe Israel's neighbors, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon should become secular democracies before they expect Israel to become a secular democracy with Jews as a minority? If these Arab majority countries don't want to become secular democraces why should they think Jewish Israelis should want to be a minority in another country? Every Arab country Jews have lived in now has basically no Jews. Why should Jewish Israelis think yet another Arab country would be any different than the other 22 countries?

Paladin1

Mobo2000 wrote:

Bummer Paladin, I thought you were in support of freedom of speech, even speech you find deplorable.  

Depends on the context of freedom of speech. I don't think he should be thrown in jail but if someone says something stupid then actions have consequences, such as losing your job.

The doctor I mentioned questioned the veracity of sexual assault claims. Stupid thing to do for someone in the health care profession to do.

josh

Paladin1 wrote:
josh wrote:
Several Ontario doctors tell me they are being hauled up for supporting Palestinian rights including for signing a "don't bomb hospitals" petition. Higher-ups have told them there were complaints and accused them of making Jewish colleagues feel unsafe.

https://x.com/ShreeParadkar/status/1729159523502575983?s=20

Good.
Doctors like Ben Thomson thought it was cool to post on social media about "no confirmed reports of rape".[/quote]

Questioning something that was not clearly confirmed at the time justifies punishment? What’s next, questioning whether babies were beheaded or cooked in an oven costs you your license?

Mobo2000

Yeah, pretty weak Paladin.   If you support freedom of speech you should support the right of employees to make political statements on their own time, and those statements should not be the business of their employer.   This is part of the concern about DEI initiatives - they grant unjustified power to employers to regulate the speech of people they employ, based on a subjective sense of "the safety" of other employees.

Haaretz has been investigating and reporting on the numbers killed and composition of them, which resulted in a downgraded figure of 1200 killed instead of the initially reported 1400.   Questioning or doubting reports from a conflict area is not the same as denying an individual's claim of sexual assault.   

Here is the latest they report, according to my google, as I don't have a subscription:

https://www.haaretz.com/haaretz-explains/2023-11-23/ty-article-magazine/...

"Of the total number of fatalities on our current list, 851 are civilians (including 59 from the police force and 13 from the emergency services) and 368 are IDF soldiers. Of these, 1,105 died on October 7. The Haaretz list has a filter option."

Paladin1

josh wrote:

Questioning something that was not clearly confirmed at the time justifies punishment? What’s next, questioning whether babies were beheaded or cooked in an oven costs you your license?

As a doctor he's a public figure and in a position of trust. He chose to comment on a politically charged topic and in doing so appeared to call into question rape allegations. It was a stupid thing to do. He has the freedom of speech to do it. His employer also has the freedom to cease his employment.

kropotkin1951

JKR wrote:

None of the two dozen Arabs countries in the world are secular democracies. Hamas obviously is violently opposed to that idea even though they always very loudly trumpet "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free." We all know the Palestine they want is Jew free just like all the Arab countries are now after they once had significant Jewish populations.

Israel is not a secular democracy. Syria, Libya and Iraq were all socialist republics not theocracies. Because they were not "democracies" the West destroyed them to make them democratic. So far it has not done any good for the people. Israel has killed more Palestinian dissidents than any of the Arab one party states ever did to its dissidents.

josh

MSNBC cancels Mehdi Hasan show .

You can only go against the pro-Israel line in the U.S. media so far and for so long. Just as in 2003 when they canceled Phil Donahue because of his opposition to the Iraq war, NBC enforces political correctness.

Paladin1

josh wrote:
MSNBC cancels Mehdi Hasan show .

The guy who called non-Muslims animals? Seems nice.

Mobo2000

Toronto city councillor trying to cancel appearance by Norman Finklestein tonight, Dec 5 at Toronto Reference Library:

https://www.cp24.com/news/councillor-calls-on-toronto-public-library-to-...

... using the sleazy implication that Finklestein, who's family died in the Holocaust, is a Holocaust denier.

"“To invite an author who has been accused of making false accusations and misrepresentations in his book about the Holocaust and survivors and justifying the October 7 terrorist attacks against Israel is the last thing we need in the City of Toronto. We should not be welcoming someone who spreads disinformation and conspiracy theories about Jews and the Holocaust."

National Post article on the same, noting Finklestein is on the panel to discuss academic freedom, oh irony of ironies.

https://nationalpost.com/news/toronto-public-library-norman-finkelstein-...

U.S. author Norman Finkelstein is part of a panel, titled ‘I’ll Burn That Bridge When I Get to It’, that will discuss academic freedom and its implications beyond academia, including the consequences of faculty facing restrictions or censorship due to unpopular or politically sensitive opinions or research."

"The sold-out event, which has not been promoted on TPL’s social media, is part of a series focusing on the stakes involved when intellectual freedom is under threat. It is scheduled to take place Dec. 5 from 7 to 8 p.m. at Toronto Reference Library."

josh

Ceasefire now!
"Antisemitic"

Stop killing children!
"Antisemitic"

Turn the water back on!
"Antisemitic"

Palestine will be free!
"Antisemitic"

From the river to the...
"Double Antisemitic"

What can we say?
"Keep bombing"

https://x.com/anthonyzenkus/status/1733339294297719209?s=20

JKR

josh wrote:
Ceasefire now!
"Antisemitic"

When you say ceasefire, do you mean both sides or just Israel?

Paladin1

JKR wrote:
josh wrote:
Ceasefire now!
"Antisemitic"

When you say ceasefire, do you mean both sides or just Israel?

Obviously just Israel. Because once Israel pulls back Hamas will return all the hostages (including the missing ones sold into slavery), and stop shooting rockets every day.

josh

JKR wrote:
josh wrote:
Ceasefire now!
"Antisemitic"

When you say ceasefire, do you mean both sides or just Israel?

Of course both sides. That’s what the Security Council resolution called for

NDPP

Parenti & Finkelstein: On Woke Authoritarianism (&vid)

https://twitter.com/normanfinkelstein/status/1733523115777384540

"What's at stake..."

josh

UK:

As the march formed up, officers identified a man with a placard making comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany. He has been arrested on suspicion of a racially aggravated public order offence.

https://x.com/metpoliceuk/status/1733475499718926464?s=20

josh

In 1948, Hannah Arendt wrote an open letter that began, “Among the most disturbing political phenomena of our times is the emergence in the newly created state of Israel of the ‘Freedom Party’ (Tnuat Haherut), a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy, and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.” Just three years after the Holocaust, Arendt was comparing a Jewish Israeli party to the Nazi Party, an act that today would be a clear violation of the I.H.R.A.’s definition of antisemitism.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-weekend-essay/in-the-shadow-of-the-ho...

epaulo13

..more on the above link. 

quote:

 Arendt based her comparison on an attack carried out in part by the Irgun, a paramilitary predecessor of the Freedom Party, on the Arab village of Deir Yassin, which had not been involved in the war and was not a military objective. The attackers “killed most of its inhabitants—240 men, women, and children—and kept a few of them alive to parade as captives through the streets of Jerusalem.”

The occasion for Arendt’s letter was a planned visit to the United States by the party’s leader, Menachem Begin. Albert Einstein, another German Jew who fled the Nazis, added his signature. Thirty years later, Begin became Prime Minister of Israel. Another half century later, in Berlin, the philosopher Susan Neiman, who leads a research institute named for Einstein, spoke at the opening of a conference called “Hijacking Memory: The Holocaust and the New Right.” She suggested that she might face repercussions for challenging the ways in which Germany now wields its memory culture. Neiman is an Israeli citizen and a scholar of memory and morals. One of her books is called “Learning from the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil.” In the past couple of years, Neiman said, memory culture had “gone haywire.”

josh

British social media user arrested and held for 7hrs under section 12 of the “terrorism act” for supporting Palestine and refusing to denounce it.

https://x.com/swilkinsonbc/status/1734516261084696967?s=20

josh

Staff at Birmingham Law School had permission withdrawn to host an event on the legal situation in Palestine on the basis that the advertising flier contained 'watermelon emojis'.

https://x.com/DrAlanGreene/status/1734876327595942070?s=20

josh

And the Heinrich Boll Stiftung (political foundation) just cancelled Masha Gessen‘s Hannah Arendt prize (announced in August & to be awarded Friday) after this powerful essay—very much in the tradition of Hannah Arendt—because it compared „besieged Gaza" to "ghettoized Jews"

https://x.com/Return2Sanders/status/1734982374297866480?s=20

josh

The French publishing house Fayard withdraws "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" by the Jewish historian Ilan Pappé.

https://x.com/QudsNen/status/1735073834322079918?s=20

JKR

The Liar as Hero

https://newrepublic.com/article/85344/ilan-pappe-sloppy-dishonest-historian
 

At best, Ilan Pappe must be one of the world’s sloppiest historians; at worst, one of the most dishonest. In truth, he probably merits a place somewhere between the two.

josh
JKR

josh wrote:
Call the cops!

https://x.com/RabbiPoupko/status/1735021992980443628?s=20

Would you support people throwing rocks at your head? It sounds like you think that heads getting smashed with rocks is ok when Jews you disagree with are the one’s getting killed. Yale should protect their Jewish students from being the targets of violence.

josh

Uh, it's the United States.  Not Israel.  Maybe David and Goliath depictions now deserve a police visit. And a drawing of support for Israel with an Israeli tank or bomber.

JKR

Uh, it's Yale University. Like all universities, Yale University is responsible for maintaining a safe learning environment for all their students and teachers including their Jewish students and teachers. There have been far too many cases at universities of Jewish students and teachers in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere of being harassed even physically by pro-Palestinian protesters.

josh

The complainant contacted the New Haven police, not Yale University.  The drawing was not directed at students, Jewish or otherwise, but at an oppressive Goliath.

JKR

The poster was put up by a Yale University student group. Antisemitism on university campuses has exploded including violent antisemitism.

josh

Supporting Palestine is not anti-Semitism.  The alleged anti-Semitism on campus to which you refer is support for Palestinians which, you understandably, want to crush.  The objector, who as far as I know has no connection to the university, reported it to the city police.  Fortunately in the U.S., it is still not a crime to express a political view.  Although Israel and its supporters are trying their best to create an Israeli exception to that right.

JKR

josh wrote:

Supporting Palestine is not anti-Semitism.  The alleged anti-Semitism on campus to which you refer is support for Palestinians which, you understandably, want to crush.  The objector, who as far as I know has no connection to the university, reported it to the city police.  Fortunately in the U.S., it is still not a crime to express a political view.  Although Israel and its supporters are trying their best to create an Israeli exception to that right.

Calls for raping and killing Jewish students at Cornell bring police response, condemnation

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2023/10/30/anti-semitism-th...

————

Five Liberal MPs call on Canadian universities to better protect Jewish students on campus

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/five-liberal-mps-call-on-canadian...

————

University leaders condemn Jewish genocide rhetoric as backlash grows

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna128502

————
73% of Jewish college students report antisemitism on campus this school year

https://www.axios.com/2023/11/29/antisemitism-college-campus-adl-survey-...

————

Jewish faculty, students face hostility and lack of support

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post-mobile.php?story=20231201212454204

josh

Save for your first example, those are not anti-Semitism because anti-Semitism is being defined as hostility to Israel by those with a vested interest in silencing support for Palestinians. Meanwhile:

Awartani, one of the three Palestinian college students who were shot while walking in Vermont over Thanksgiving weekend, is paralyzed from the chest down after a bullet became lodged in his spine, his mother said.

https://abc7chicago.com/hisham-awartani-burlington-vermont-shooting-pale...

JKR

Islamaphobia and antisemitism both have to be opposed. As far as students are concerned, all students should be safe.

Paladin1
kropotkin1951

"Appeasing the Marxist identity politics mob should not be a consideration. The person for the job might be a middle to older age white Jewish man who believes in classical liberalism."

The Zionist propaganda regime brooks no opposition and the right wing Fox news has the answer.

Paladin1

Plagerisim at Harvard? Depends on the context.

Harvard president Claudine Gay is guilty of over 40 instances of plagerisim. Instead of firing her the school decided to rewrite the definition.

Duplicative language without appropriate attribution.

 

JKR

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/12/harvard-claudine-gay-p...

Harvard Has a Veritas Problem

President Claudine Gay is in a tough spot. The Harvard Corporation deserves to be in a much tougher spot.

By Eliot A. Cohen

 

The Atlantic

 

Like many alumni of Harvard, I have been following the misadventures of President Claudine Gay—first her coolly calibrated reflections on arguments for the genocide of Jews, and now accusations about the intellectual integrity of her published work—with appalled fascination. It is the latter topic on which I can claim some expertise.

I learned about plagiarism at Harvard by an accident of academic politics. The department of government, where I had received my Ph.D., had an opening for an assistant professor in the field of international affairs, and it had (in the department’s opinion) two equally attractive candidates. With Solomonic wisdom, they divided the position in half, offering me and my competitor half-time administrative positions. Mine was as the Allston Burr Senior Tutor in Quincy House.

The Harvard houses are modified versions of Oxford or Cambridge colleges. They are residences but not dormitories. Associated with each house was a group of faculty and visiting fellows who regularly dined and spoke there, and who helped constitute each house’s Senior Common Room. There was a staff of resident tutors, mainly graduate students, who taught sections of major courses and advised students in a variety of ways. And then there were the master and the senior tutor, also resident. The former presided over the collective life of the house; the latter was responsible for the students as individuals.

I should note here that the term senior tutor connoted a function that was chiefly educational. Harvard now calls them resident deans, because they came to do everything but educate, including directing students to mental-health resources and responding to the varied crises of a student’s life in the pressure cooker that is the college. Harvard dropped the term master in 2016 because it reeked of the antebellum plantation. (Oddly enough, this compunction has not prevented Harvard from continuing to offer master’s degrees, for which it charges very healthy tuition.)

Harvard then took plagiarism seriously—and in one way still does, disciplining dozens of students every year for this gravest of academic sins. Even transgressions falling short of plagiarism could still constitute “misuse of sources,” for which a year’s probation and suspension from participation in extracurricular activities were the usual response. Plagiarists, meanwhile—those who had lifted someone else’s language without quotation marks or citation—were bounced from the college for a year, during which time they were required to work at a nonacademic job (no year-long backpacking trip) and refrain from visiting Cambridge. They would be readmitted after submitting a statement that examined their original misdeed and reflected on it.

The senior tutor was the one who received any initial complaint from a faculty member, some of whom were (or feigned to be) shocked when they learned that plagiarism could have material consequences. They would assemble the dossier, counsel the student, and present the case to the administrative board, composed of all the senior tutors and a few faculty and deans, about 20 people in all. The senior tutor would present the student’s case to his or her colleagues, and we would deliberate.

If the board voted to rusticate the offender, the student could make a personal appeal, which was surprisingly rare. After long conversations with their senior tutor, most of the students understood that they had gone seriously astray, and left with a feeling of, if not relief, then catharsis. They could return to school with the slate wiped clean, and with much greater maturity and sense of purpose. This was, in part, because most plagiarists are not depraved or even lazy, but simply insecure. They came back as much more independent and self-reliant characters, which was what we wanted.

It was a very good system. Harvard’s approach to plagiarism then rested on the notion that even a disciplinary process should be educational. At its heart was the importance of accepting responsibility for one’s actions. It was not enough to correct the errant document; it was necessary to look at oneself in the mirror and say, “I did this, and it was wrong.” I believe that this approach was rooted in Harvard’s lingering mission of developing leaders of integrity and courage.

A leader must begin with a deeply rooted sense of responsibility; from there one moves to accountability, the ability to own one’s organization’s failings. For example, if Jewish students are being harassed and threatened on the university campus where one is president, it means saying, “I own this. I will fix it,” in simple and unqualified terms.

The members of the administrative board were predominantly teachers and scholars, not administrators, and that was crucial. We did not bring in lawyers. We did not hire expensive plagiarism experts as consultants. We read the materials carefully (the dossiers could be quite thick), deliberated, and made a decision. If a senior tutor got carried away defending a student from their house, their colleagues would gently but firmly nail the case to the undisputed facts. And when faculty members tried to intercede, they were equally firmly told that they were responsible for the grading side of the education, and we were covering the disciplinary side.

It is undisputed that Claudine Gay used other scholars’ language, often with the slightest modification or none, and occasionally without even a footnote acknowledgment. Were that not so, she would not have recently requested corrections to work dating back to her dissertation. I have looked at the evidence presented in various places, none of which has been controverted, and it is clear to me that this is plagiarism. For example, as The Harvard Crimson reports, her 1997 Ph.D. dissertation includes this paragraph:

The average turnout rate seems toincrease linearly as African-Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. (If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct’s racial mix, which is one way to think about bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatterplot. A linear form would only result if the changes in one race’s turnout were compensated by changes in the turnout of the other race across the graph.)

A 1996 scholarly paper by Bradley Palmquist and Stephen Voss reads as follows:

The average turnout rate seems todecrease linearly as African Americans become a larger proportion of the population. This is one sign that the data contain little aggregation bias. If racial turnout rates changed depending upon a precinct’s racial mix, which is onedescription of bias, a linear form would be unlikely in a simple scatter plot (resulting only when changes in one race’s turnout rate somehow compensated for changes in the other’s across the graph).

It is a pretty complete steal, with the bizarre substitution of “increase” for “decrease.”

Even if, in the most tolerant and sympathetic of readings, this and similar copying merely constitute “misuse of sources,” it is disqualifying for a position of leadership at any university. Her failure to accept responsibility in stark and unqualified terms makes matters worse.

The Harvard Corporation has stood by President Gay, even as scandal has mounted. The New York Post reports that when it first raised the plagiarism accusations with Harvard, the response was not a comment on the evidence, but a 15-page letter from Harvard’s defamation lawyer. Instead of standing up for Harvard’s motto, Veritas (“truth”), the corporation has hunkered down.

Students have a keen scent for the stink of hypocrisy; they understand Gay’s original misdeeds and the evasions of the Harvard Corporation. They may even realize that something has gone deeply awry with the university when a Harvard professor dismisses the claims as a right-wing attack and tells The New York Times, “If it came from some other quarter, I might be granting [the accusations] some credence,” as though the facts depend on the politics of those who point them out.

I have no idea how as a teacher at Harvard today I could look an undergraduate in the eye and hold forth about why plagiarism is a violation of the values inherent in the academic enterprise. They would laugh, openly or secretly, at the corruption and double standards. And I would not blame them for doing so.

President Gay is in a tough spot. The Harvard Corporation deserves to be in a much tougher spot, because it has betrayed the values that the university once cherished and that it still proclaims. In both cases, the remedy indicated is the one we senior tutors applied to many a student years ago: fess up, withdraw, and reflect.

epaulo13

Ontario government screened law students who signed pro-Palestine letter

Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General required law students from Toronto Metropolitan University who have “current or upcoming employment opportunities” with the ministry to sign a form saying that they did not join an open letter in solidarity with Palestine, which scores of students at the university signed in October—in a hiring policy experts say is designed to punish those who support Palestinians.

The Ministry of the Attorney General’s form represents one of the most extreme moves in Canada to retaliate against students who have protested against the Israeli bombardment and invasion of Gaza, though it is far from the only one...... 

josh

Arrested for a tweet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony Greenstein

 

@TonyGreenstein

·
Follow

I support the Palestinians that is enough and I support Hamas against the Israeli army.

https://azvsas.blogspot.com/2023/12/on-wednesday-7-am-i-was-arrested-by....

In the UK.

josh

Israeli Jew Iris Hefets once again arrested in Berlin Neukölln for holding a “Jews against Genocide” sign

https://x.com/derJamesJackson/status/1741488229201658142?s=20

Paladin1

Harvard President Claudine Gay Resigns Amid Plagiarism Allegations And Leadership Criticism

Why was the Harvard president allowed to get away with plagerisim so long? Why was she held to a different academic standard than your average Harvard student?

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