This post may be less solicitous of your feelings than you may hope.
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you → hope → feelings
America faces many problems.
asserted
America → face → problems
The easy ones we solve or ignore.
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we → solve → ?
We struggle with the hard ones.
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We → struggle → ones
Hard problems raise complex questions that lack glib, one-word answers.
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that → raise → answers
It’s anti-intellectual, pro-ignorance, pro-stupidity, pro-bigotry, pro-reactionary, pro-totalitarianism, pro-tyranny, pro-mob.
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It → ’ → ?
Take this week’s Congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses, titled “Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.”
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Leaders → take → Antisemitism
A generous interpretation — a credulous one — would be that the hearing was designed to inquire why colleges aren’t protecting Jewish students from antisemitic harassment.
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colleges → design → harassment
A more realistic interpretation is that the hearing was a crass show trial primarily intended to convey that a wide variety of dissenting speech about Israel is inherently antisemitic, that American colleges are shitholes of evil liberalism, and that Democrats suck.
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Democrats → intend → liberalism
Since Democrats do suck, they mostly cooperated.
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they → suck → ?
The core Two-Minute Hate of this carnival was Rep. Elise Stefanik’s demand for yes-or-no answers to questions about whether policies at Harvard, Penn, and MIT would prohibit calling for the genocide of Jews.
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policies → prohibit → Jews
You might think Elise Stefanik is an unlikely standard-bearer for a crusade against antisemitism, given that she’s a repeat promoter of Great Replacement Theory, the antisemitic trope that Jews are bringing foreigners into America to undermine it.
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Jews → think → it
But if you bought Stefanik’s bullshit, you probably didn’t think that far.
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you → buy → bullshit
The college presidents did a rather clumsy job of saying, accurately but unconvincingly, that the answer depends on the context.
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answer → do → context
Stefanik and every politician our loudmouth who wants you to hate and distrust college education and Palestinians pounced on it.
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you → want → it
And many of you fell for it.
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many → fall → it
You — and I say this with love — absolute fucking dupes.
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I → say → love
If you think the question “is calling for the genocide of a group against your policy” is an easy question with a one-word answer, you’re wrong.
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you → think → answer
I understand you want the answer to be easy, but that’s not the same thing as it being easy.
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it → understand → ?
Even though private colleges aren’t bound by the First Amendment, let’s first look at it as a First Amendment question, as the outer limits of what’s permitted.
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what → bind → limits
Is calling for the genocide of a group protected by the First Amendment?
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calling → call → Amendment
In America, the answer is yes, unless it also falls into an established First Amendment exception.
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it → fall → exception
The First Amendment protects advocacy of the moral, historical, and practical correctness of monstrous, immoral, and illegal things, unless they are:
Conveyed as a true threat — that is a threat intended to be taken, and likely to be taken by a reasonable observer, as a sincere expression of intent to do harm to someone;
Conveyed as incitement — that is, intended and likely to cause imminent lawless action;
Part of a pattern of harassment — that is, directed to someone under protected circumstances (such as an employee or student) and meeting a stringent test for harassment, described below.
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that → protect → harassment
Private colleges don’t have to follow the First Amendment, do they?
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they → have → Amendment
But despite wall-to-wall propaganda about how American colleges routinely suppress any speech seen as remotely racist, many colleges have speech policies that are either vague or that protect speech rather broadly and robustly.
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that → suppress → speech
Since Harvard was on the hot seat, let’s look at theirs.
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’s → let → theirs
Here is the most recent update to their Nondiscrimination and Harassment policy:
Discriminatory harassment is unwelcome and offensive conduct that is based on an individual or group’s protected status.
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that → base → status
Discriminatory harassment may be considered to violate this policy when it is so severe or pervasive, and objectively offensive, that it creates a work, educational, or living environment that a reasonable person would consider intimidating, hostile, or abusive and denies the individual an equal opportunity to participate in the benefits of the workplace or the institution’s programs and activities.
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person → consider → workplace
These factors will be considered in assessing whether discriminatory harassment violates this policy:
• Frequency of the conduct
• Severity and pervasiveness of the conduct
• Whether it is physically threatening
• Degree to which the conduct interfered with an employee’s work performance or a student’s academic performance or ability to participate in or benefit from academic/campus programs and activities
• The relationship between the alleged harasser and the subject or subjects of the harassment.
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conduct → consider → harassment
That policy mirrors federal law - specifically, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits certain kinds of sex discrimination in education.
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which → mirror → education
In other words, Harvard prohibits speech that would violate federal educational anti-discrimination law.
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that → prohibit → law
Just as the law gradually came to recognize sexual harassment as sex discrimination, sexual or racial harassment can be educational discrimination.
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harassment → come → discrimination
But not everything that offends someone is illegal discrimination, at work or at school.
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that → offend → school
As with the test for sexual harassment, the bar is set pretty high.
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bar → set → harassment
Here’s how the Supreme Court described what speech or conduct would constitute harassment violating Title IX: “plaintiff must show harassment that is so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive, and that so undermines and detracts from the victims' educational experience, that the victims are effectively denied equal access to an institution's resources and opportunities.”
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victims → ’ → resources
As you can see, Harvard’s policy echoes that language.
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policy → see → language
Whether calling for the genocide of the Jews, or any other group, violates a school’s policy depends on the context.
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violates → call → context
For instance:
Going to a campus chapter of Hillel and chanting “kill all Jews” is probably so severe, objectively offensive, and destructive of students’ educational experience that it violates the standard.
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it → go → standard
If four students are talking politics in a dorm room, and one (by dramatic convention, a sophomore) says “we should just wipe all the Palestinians out,” and one of the four repeats that to someone else later, and that person is horrified, that is almost certainly not severe or pervasive or contextually destructive of the educational experience enough to qualify.
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that → talk → experience
If a professor uses the Israel-Palestinian conflict to discuss whether armed revolution is morally or legally justified, and presents the argument that armed revolution by Palestinians is justified, that almost certainly doesn’t violate the standard, although some people argue that it inherently calls for the genocide of the Jews.
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it → use → Jews
…and 41 more, not listed.
The Aporia
