Response to those critiques. I didn’t see the original comments - sounds similar to the infamous academic 3 - equivocating about a clear evil first, and then attempting to explain the nuance. That’s bass ackwards - as the Harvard and Penn presidents clarified. There’s no grey in a call to genocide. There’s no grey in raping civilians as a tool of war. Both are instantly condemnable. If they’d get that order of operation right, they’d find themselves complaining less that legit political criticism is conflated with antisemitism by critics.

I read Jayapal’s response here, she gets the benefit of the doubt, from me anyway. I actually saw an author I’ve read, Stephen Pinker, who teaches at Harvard and is Jewish himself I believe, who expressed ambivalence about whether the Harvard pres steps down. His words - we don’t need sacrificial lambs. We need a real honest debate about the underlying worldviews being pushed in academia, which is allowing these things to bubble to the surface, as indicators of this new worldview so many on the left seem desperately to not want to see. Or to rationalize. But is Penn going to do that, or is it going to hire someone like minded with current academic orthodoxy and move on, proud that it “addressed the issue”?

A mass rape in a terrorist attack against any other group of people would not elicit the uncomfortable silence from women’s rights groups, as this one has. I agree with Tuck’s link. Why is that? Things like this really make me think I’d find college life (among other aspects of life) unrecognizable from my day. But cancel culture, or inflexible gotcha moments like this against Jayapal, just get everyone shouting at each other. I don’t think it’s helpful.


[Post edited by hoolstoptheheels at 12/12/2023 08:44AM]