Meanwhile, at Harvard...

[Horace]

@jon-nyc said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

@Horace said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

You keep going back to the first amendment, when the question is explicitly about university policy. That's exactly what got people giggled at a few months ago, when it so happens that it was the right, rather than the mainstream center left, that was doing it. It's known as a "bad free speech take".

This makes no sense, the university presidents had good free speech takes. Show me someone who said what they did who got giggles.

They were not asked about the first amendment. They were asked about their policies.

People on the right often referenced constitutional free speech when complaining about Twitter policies. You giggled at those takes. You wanted to start a thread to keep track of them, they were so hilarious. And now here you are referencing constitutional free speech when trying to justify Harvard's policies.

This conversation is about Harvard's (and MIT's etc) policies and the incoherence of the authorities who apply it.

[George K]

@jon-nyc said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

The ‘on your front lawn’ part makes it with the intent to intimidate.

I was unclear. If I burn a cross on MY front lawn, does it cross the line?

[Renauda]

@George-K

If I burn a cross on MY front lawn, does it cross the line?

It may cross municipal open fire regulations and bylaws. Even worse being that your front law is in the USA, it may not comply with HOA rules regarding lawn ornaments and accessories.

One thing for sure is that it would generate a lot of local gossip that could be totally out of context with your intentions to burn the cross in the first place.

[Copper]

@jon-nyc said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

They were asked about “harassment and bullying” policies in the viral clip.

That's right.

Are either of those illegal?

Or was it simply a question about the schools' policy and whether it was evenly applied?

I'm not sure if the Congresswoman ever got a straight answer to her question so I couldn't tell exactly where she was going.

[LuFins Dad]

@Copper said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

@jon-nyc said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

They were asked about “harassment and bullying” policies in the viral clip.

That's right.

Are either of those illegal?

Yes. If charged as a misdemeanor, it would be 6-12 months in jail. If charged as a class 6 felony, it would be 1-5 years.

[George K]

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/opinion/antisemitism-university-presidents.html?smid=url-share

What the University Presidents Got Right and Wrong About Antisemitic Speech

I had a singular thought: Censorship helped put these presidents in their predicament, and censorship will not help them escape.

I’m a former litigator who spent much of my legal career battling censorship on college campuses, and the thing that struck me about the presidents’ answers wasn’t their legal insufficiency but rather their stunning hypocrisy. And it’s that hypocrisy, not the presidents’ understanding of the law, that has created a campus crisis.

First, let’s deal with the law. Harvard, Penn and M.I.T. are private universities. Unlike public schools, they’re not bound by the First Amendment, and they therefore possess enormous freedom to fashion their own custom speech policies. But while they are not bound by law to protect free speech, they are required, as educational institutions that receive federal funds, to protect students against discriminatory harassment, including — in some instances — student-on-student peer harassment.

Supreme Court has held that in the absence of an actual, immediate threat — such as an incitement to violence — the government cannot punish a person who advocates violence.

So if the university presidents were largely (though clumsily) correct about the legal balance, why the outrage? To quote the presidents back to themselves, context matters. For decades now, we’ve watched as campus administrators from coast to coast have constructed a comprehensive web of policies and practices intended to suppress so-called hate speech and to support students who find themselves distressed by speech they find offensive.

The result has been a network of speech codes, bias response teams, safe spaces and glossaries of microaggressions that are all designed to protect students from alleged emotional harm. But not all students. When, as a student at Harvard Law School, I was booed and hissed and told to “go die” for articulating pro-life or other conservative views, exactly zero administrators cared about my feelings. Nor did it cross my mind to ask them for help. I was an adult. I could handle my classmates’ anger.

But reform can’t be confined to policies. It also has to apply to cultures. As Pinker notes, that means disempowering a diversity, equity and inclusion apparatus that is itself all too often an engine of censorship and extreme political bias. Most important, universities need to take affirmative steps to embrace greater viewpoint diversity. Ideological monocultures breed groupthink, intolerance and oppression.

Universities must absorb the fundamental truth that the best answer to bad speech is better speech, not censorship. Recently I watched and listened to a video of a Jewish student’s

with pro-Palestinian demonstrators at Columbia University. Her voice shakes, and there’s no doubt that it was hard for her to speak. I’d urge you to listen to the entire thing. She seeks a “genuine and real conversation” but also tells her audience exactly what it means to her when she hears terms like “Zionist dogs.”

[Jolly]

Hiding behind their virtue masks...

[89th]

People getting really worked up over words. Sticks and stones are real... but not at these silly college campuses right now.

ANYWAY....... curious if @Ivorythumper 's tree neighbor (lawyer at Penn?) is involved?

[George K]

@89th said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

People getting really worked up over words.

That's sort of the point. When "misgendering" someone gets you hauled before a panel at the university, there's a problem.

[George K]

[jon-nyc]

Whites and Jews the only groups? That’s nonsense. I don’t a Mormon affinity celebration, or a Buddhist affinity celebration, or….

[George K]

No Lithuanians either.

Though, one could make the case that Buddhists, Mormons and Lithuanians are not a "race."

[Horace]

I went to a college graduation a few months ago where the black students got a special sash that said "Black Excellence". Nobody else got sashes. I wondered whether they would get pats on the head as they received their diplomas, but sadly, none were offered. Racist.

I'm nonplussed that any of this is surprising. These are dead center mainstream popular culture antics at colleges.

[jon-nyc]

@George-K said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

No Lithuanians either.

Though, one could make the case that Buddhists, Mormons and Lithuanians are not a "race."

Neither are LGBTQwxyz

[LuFins Dad]

@jon-nyc said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

@George-K said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

No Lithuanians either.

Though, one could make the case that Buddhists, Mormons and Lithuanians are not a "race."

Neither are LGBTQwxyz

Simple math. The Human Race has 2 genders. Many of these individuals don’t fit within those 2 genders. Therefore they must be some other type of race…

[jon-nyc]

Lol

[George K]

@jon-nyc said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

Neither are LGBTQwxyz

Yeah to that one too.

But, in today's schools they are a "protected group."

In a civil rights kind of way.

[LuFins Dad]

Technically, since they can’t naturally breed with each other, I’m not sure they are even the same species as each other, let alone a race within that species…

[bachophile]

[jon-nyc]

@LuFins-Dad said in Meanwhile, at Harvard...:

Technically, since they can’t naturally breed with each other, I’m not sure they are even the same species as each other, let alone a race within that species…

Actually the Ls can breed with the Gs just fine.