this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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In the Congressional hearing the question was posed:
"Is calling for the genocide of Jews harassment and against university policy?"
And the response from Claudine Gay (Harvard president), Sally Kornbluth (MIT president), and Elizabeth Magill (UPenn president): "iT dePeNds On tHe conTeXt".
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/12/09/penn-president-magill-antisemitism-harvard-mit/
I don't care if she was ousted by a right wing nut job or by winged monkeys on instruction from the Wicked Witch of the West — I say good riddance. Being black does not make her unaccountable; she should have honorably resigned after that hearing.
Being bad at mass media does not make you bad at leading a university. She was setup. They all were. By people who want Israel to eliminate Palestinians.
But isn't public speaking part of leading a University?
Yes, you are right, they were set up, but they should have been repeating over and over that much, if not all, of the speech was free from violent content with NO actual calls to kill or harm anyone. They should have made it clear that chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" at a peace rally may well be a call for equal citizenship (particularly when said by Euro/American types rallying against a distant aggression) despite sounding like a dog whistle to others.
They completely failed at that.
I missed the beginning of that hearing, but caught a fair chunk of it before turning it off as awful grandstanding by some of my least-liked politicians. I noticed the news only carried the worst bits, but honestly, I didn't really hear any 'best' bits that were overlooked. I hope they had some better moments at the beginning, but while I was watching? No. As a group the University heads were just falling into traps or getting a brief reprieve without them recovering or clarifying anything.
According to Gay, students calling for the genocide of Jews can be tolerated as long as those students don't act on it.
She could have simply said "yes, calling for genocide is wrong".
Where is the "set up"? Asking her to be accountable to Congress?
The "set up" is that students were NOT calling for genocide, and she was answering in regards to what was actually said (which, again, was not a call for genocide). She was saying that in the context of a peace rally, wanting Palestinians to be free is a call for equality and not the same as a call to eliminate all Jewish people -- though if you said the same thing while firing rockets from Gaza, it would be a call to violence (but then it would not be in English). And they were all completely incompetent and making that distinction for the cameras.
Why is the leader of a university accountable to congress? What business does congress have fucking around about this shit instead of doing the work of serving the citizenry of the nation. Fuck this culture war bullshit. That the whole country just accepts this nonsense is why there's no longer any accountability to the public.
This all happened before Israel even struck back after October 7.
We don't want to see a return to the Third Reich. Paradoxically it was the fascist party calling out the behavior because Democrats didn't have the balls.
PS Using expletives doesn't make one correct.