David Burge explains all:
Fun facts:
(A) calling for genocide against Jews, if not delivered to incite a mob to violence, is 100% Constitutionally protected speech- only in the sense it can't be punished by government.
(B) You are not the government, you are a cowardly college administrator and in no… https://t.co/1MYvTm5gz0
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 7, 2023
I am confident David Burge, a.k.a. Iowahawk, will forgive me if I put the text of his tweet below in case something happens to it:
David Burge
@iowahawkblog
Fun facts:(A) calling for genocide against Jews, if not delivered to incite a mob to violence, is 100% Constitutionally protected speech- only in the sense it can’t be punished by government.
(B) You are not the government, you are a cowardly college administrator and in no way does the 1st Amendment force you to accept brain dead neo-Nazis in your student body.
The context is that Presidents Claudine Gay of Harvard University, Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sally Kornbluth of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were all asked by New York State Representative Elise Stefanik whether calling for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment under the rules of their respective universities, and all three were, like, “Ooh, that’s a tricky one.” You can see the video of their responses in in this tweet from Nicky Clark.
As reported by the Times of Israel:
In a high-profile congressional hearing Tuesday evening, the presidents of three of the top universities in the US refused to explicitly say that calls for genocide of Jewish people violate campus rules on harassment.
When New York Republican Representative Elise Stefanik asked directly if “calling for the genocide of Jews” is against the codes of conduct of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, all three presidents said the answer depended on the context.
“It is a context-dependent decision,” Penn president Liz Magill responded, leading Stefanik to reply, “Calling for the genocide of Jews is dependent on the context? That is not bullying or harassment? This is the easiest question to answer ‘yes,’ Ms. Magill.”
Responding to the same question, Harvard president Claudine Gay said, “When speech crosses into conduct, we take action.”
Calling for genocide is OK at Harvard so long as you don’t do any actual genociding within the precincts of the University.
MIT president Sally Kornbluth said that such language would only be “investigated as harassment if pervasive and severe.”
I would hate you to think that these illustrious universities did not care about harassment. Why, MIT has its own Institute Discrimination & Harassment Response Office, which is hard at work producing pronoun stickers.
Harvard is so focussed on combatting aggressive speech that it will even investigate cases where the aggression is unconscious: “Harvard to interrogate profs accused of ‘microaggressions’”. You see, the whole point about microaggressions is that the microagressors do not know they are committing them, so they have to be educated. In contrast those who call for genocide know exactly what they are doing, so there is no need for the University to bother them.
And I don’t know why everyone is making such a fuss about protests at the University of Pennsylvania. All that UPenn faculty members like Distinguished Professor of Political Science Anne Norton want is for more of its students and staff to feel “joyful and empowered” like UPenn student Tara Tarawneh did when she saw “the joyful and powerful images that came from the glorious October 7th”. See how happy and supportive everyone at that rally was. That’s because they knew Penn was a safe environment for them.