A university president makes a case against cowardice
newyorker.com398 points by pseudolus a day ago
398 points by pseudolus a day ago
Some personal highlights:
"They’re excellent schools, and they have excellent scientists, and if one of Vice-President Vance’s kids is sick, he’s going to want the doctor to have gone to one of these schools; he’s not going to want them to have gone to Viktor Orbán’s university."
"People have said to me, “Well, you take all that money from the government, why don’t you listen to them?” The answer is, because the money doesn’t come with a loyalty oath."
"I don’t have to agree with the mayor to get the fire department to come put out a fire. And that’s what they’re saying to these international students: “Well, you came to this country. What makes you think you can write an op-ed in the newspaper?” Well, what makes you think that is, this is a free country. "
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You don't know how they feel, so what you're saying is "they have to show/express appreciation," which is synonymous with a loyalty oath.
Your post is written as if don't you understand the definitions of one more or of the following words and terms: synonymous, appreciation, and loyalty oath.
The government pays to get good universities which attract smart foreign who come to the US to study on these universities.
Maybe the government should appreciate them not the other way around.
Yeah, I agree. The government appreciates, or should appreciate, the good uses its taxpayers' money is put towards. As to the other intractables above, appreciation and loyalty are very far from the same thing.
Why do you think this?
Because it's a transcation and there are two parties to the transaction. And for these transaction to occur in a repeated fashion neither side should feel they are being taken advantage of.
Consider that any competent manager will value polite debate and constructive criticism far more than the empty words of "yes" men.
Guess which category "reasonable ... consideration and appreciation" falls into.
Put another way, if you read North Korean state media, you will find that they always have a reasonable level of consideration and appreciation for their government.
Oh hey, Wesleyan on HN! I’m an alumnus (matriculated a year or two after Roth became president). Wesleyan has a rich history of activism and protest, and not always entirely peaceful (Roth’s predecessor, Doug Bennet, had his office firebombed at one point).
I’ve had a few opportunities to speak with Roth since the Gaza war started, and I’ve always found him particularly thoughtful about balancing freedom of expression with a need to provide a safe and open learning environment for everyone on campus. In particular, he never gave in to the unlimited demands of protestors while still defending their right to protest.
In part, he had the moral weight to do that because—unlike many university presidents—he did not give in to the illiberal demands of the left to chill speech post-2020, which then were turned against the left over the past year.
I don’t see any particularly good outcome from any of this; the risk of damaging the incredibly successful American university system is high. Certainly smart foreign students who long dreamed of studying in the US will be having second thoughts if they can be arbitrarily and indefinitely detained.
But I hope the universities that do make it through do with a stronger commitment to the (small l) liberal values of freedom of expression , academic freedom, and intellectual diversity.
What unlimited demands are those? Every protest I have read about asks at most for divesting from Israel, which is arguably (and more likely than not) engaged in genocide. If these United States cannot divest from a country that did not exist 70 years ago, we have a huge problem. We won WW2 with Israel being a mythical state taught in myths and religious books, since it did not exist until after WW2. I swear someday Atlantis will be formed by billionaires as a resort for their progeny, and the rest of us will be compelled to fund it. Ridiculous
People are being abducted off the street for writing tame op-eds and we're still complaining about the left chilling speech post-2020? What are we doing here?
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The government may be within its legal rights. As an expression of values however it's hard not to see the expulsion of these students as petty politicalized retaliation. The sort of thing you would see in an electoral autocracy as opposed to a liberal democracy.
That only Americans have the right to participate in our political system is an expression of values. And it’s entirely compatible with democracy. The citizen versus non-citizen distinction is fundamental to democracy.
It absolutely is not. And your views are very concerning. Everyone residing in the US is entitled to the ammendments. That is exactly why Guantanamo bay was formed, as a matter of fact. What makes this so much worse is these individuals were not arrested for criticizing these United States, but for criticizing a hostile foreign nation, that just so happens to be the darling of billionaires of a certain faith, who constitute an overwhelming majority in the aristocracy of the US (and have been there since around the 70s). It can in fact be traced back to AZC, when JFK forced them to register as foreign agents.
If you're a guest, act like a guest. Anti-Israel protests are by extension a protest against the US foreign policy, so yeah... You protest your host in a violent and disruptive manner, you probably shouldn't have been allowed in to begin with.
Not in my America.
I welcome any and all persons from anywhere in the world if they want to come and protest the American war machine
Our forefathers would be absolutely ashamed at what you just said. Protesting a totalitarian government that lacks proper representation is the most American thing you can possibly do, and that makes these immigrants more American than you will ever be, as long as you hold such views.
Edit: It seems you have edited your post in order to remove the extremely distasteful language you originally expressed. I assume you still hold such views or you'd not have expressed them to begin with, and as such my comment still stands.
> Our forefathers would be absolutely ashamed...
Well, like half of our forefathers. Maybe 30%.
America has always been this weird combined project of Hopeless Idealists and The Worst People In The World. Our forefathers sought independence for freedom and self-determination and all sorts of other noble things, but also because many of them owned a bunch of slaves and were worried that was going to be outlawed in the near future. And then sought independence again a century later out of the same fear.
That's a good point, I often use "forefathers" loosely when I really mean just the good forefathers, such as Franklin, Paine, etc. I need to figure out a way to be more precise about this without being too verbose.
Fuck that!
We have this thing called the First Amendment. It applies to all people under the jurisdiction of the United States. There’s no exception for “guests.” Criticizing the government is a time-honored American tradition. Throwing people out for it is absolutely vile.
Americans can criticize their government all they want. Foreigners shouldn’t have no input in the american political system. The first amendment is the exception to the democratic rule, not the other way around.
Foreigners aren't allowed to vote or donate. They should be allowed to voice their opinions on the government, though. In my opinion, anyone who says foreigners in the country shouldn't criticize the government is less American than said foreigners.
>the First Amendment . . . applies to all people under the jurisdiction of the United States.
Not according to the Supreme Court it doesn't.
Making America subservient to Israel's interests is anti-American. The fascist zionists play at being "America first" but this couldn't be further from the truth.
I do not accept this view. Anti-Israel protests are by extension a protest against Jewish billionaires, who out of religiosity believe Israel must prosper even if America burns or the ammendments are ammended. Israel's formation and genocide is alien to the morals of the United States and the values the founding fathers held dear. America's foreign policy is shaped by lobbying. You are absolutely wrong my dude, but you are a testament that the ROI on propaganda for billionaires does have a high return indeed.
> The US has the prerogative to filter immigrants based on their views and affiliations.
What comes before “filter[ing] immigrants” is due process. Resident aliens have the right to due process which the current US administration is not providing.
Alien residents with every right to be here are being removed from the US illegally and mistakenly.
I am not sure there's technically a due process right in the case of immigration visa revocation and the ensuing deportation. There is a due process right in the case of crimes, but getting your visa revoked is not a crime.
The best argument I have heard is that visa revocation may be like firing: the US can do it for almost any reason and you can fire someone for no reason, but can't do it for specific prohibited reasons. Speech would probably be one of those bad reasons under the US's civil rights framework.
> The best argument I have heard is that visa revocation may be like firing: the US can do it for almost any reason and you can fire someone for no reason, but can't do it for specific prohibited reasons. Speech would probably be one of those bad reasons under the US's civil rights framework.
No, the U.S. has the prerogative to pick and choose foreigners who are allowed to immigrate based on categories that would be impermissible for employers. That includes nationality, e.g. our green card quota system, as well as speech and affiliation. The Supreme Court has upheld deporting communists who are foreign nationals: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/342/580/.
This is reflected in the statute. Aliens can specifically be excluded for political beliefs and views if the Secretary of State determines that is necessary: "An alien, not described in clause (ii), shall not be excludable or subject to restrictions or conditions on entry into the United States under clause (i) because of the alien's past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States, unless the Secretary of State personally determines that the alien's admission would compromise a compelling United States foreign policy interest." 8 USC 1182(a)(4)(C)(iii).
I think the real argument here is a constitutional one about that statute, not about the statute itself. It is unlikely, though, that the supreme court would reverse its stance here.
The current statute reflects the Supreme Court’s precedents on the issue. The Supreme Court precedent, in turn, reflects the fundamental difference between citizens and non-citizens. The government has plenary power, constitutionally, to decide who is permitted to enter the united states and on what terms.
If there's no due process for everyone, that distinction literally does not matter in the slightest!
Dozens of citizens could have been sent into slave labor for all we know, and no judge has been able to provide the constitutionally mandated oversight. It has been upheld many times and for hundreds of years that the Due Process clause applies to non-citizens for this reason.
Due process only means “This is the minimum required process for the government to act”. It doesn’t mean that every non-citizen is entitled to a jury trial that can escalate to the USSC.
In some cases, “due process” is “Your name made it into a spreadsheet, the President can drone strike you”
> The US has the prerogative to filter immigrants based on their views and affiliations.
Just to point, the prerogative to "filter" immigrants does not allow the US to keep them in jail, torture, or send them to foreign countries non-supervised labor camps.
The left banning the use of certain words and the right banning the use of certain words are flip sides of the same coin.
Of course, if you point that out, you get yelled at by both sides.
Except one side of the coin complains on twitter and maybe gets you fired from your job whereas the other side of that coin systematically removes over a hundred million dollars of research grants based on language and is literally disappearing people for their writing
but yeah, same thing. sorry someone put you through the absolute hell of saying they/them at work
Your attitude and inability to see anything but your own view is exactly the problem we've seen in the new left.
"Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire livelihood you're trivializing.
Any attempt to control speech and silence opposition is wrong, no matter how you slice it. "Your side" isn't any better than the other's.
When I see the left's recent brazen devotion to "winning" and "sticking it to the other side", sometimes it feels like Democrats have started acting like Republicans.
And it turns out that wasn't sustainable.
I know it's glib and coarse and lacking in nuance but when I hear American conservatives complain about the ways of the liberal countrymen I can't help but think, "That's how you guys sounded for a long time. Now they're doing it, lo and behold: everyone loses."
>"Maybe gets you fired from your job" is someone's entire livelihood you're trivializing.
>Any attempt to control speech and silence opposition is wrong, no matter how you slice it.
I don't know why "Hey company, this person you employ sucks, you should fire them" doesn't qualify as speech that should be protected. It shows that you aren't asking for free speech, you are asking for speech without consequences.
Not part of the rest of the conversation, just narrowing in on the idea of speech being free if there are consequences. That sounds like some sort of 1950's-era doublespeak. If there are consequences, how would speech be free? It's a very American-centric perspective that "Free Speech" is defined as "1st Amendment". Free speech means not getting fired, jumped, killed, poisoned, expelled, etc. Fired is something that would happen in Soviet Times as well, in the USSR, and in the McCarthy era, in the U.S.
Apologies for the "two sidesism".
How do you define which speech is speech worthy of protection and which speech is a consequence of speech and therefore not worthy of protection?
For example, imagine some CEO says something politically objectionable, as is their right granted by allowing free speech. Do I have the right to protest or boycott their company as part of my free speech rights or would that illegal because I'm rendering a consequence for the CEO's speech?
I just have trouble conceptualizing what you think a world with consequence free speech would actually look like.
Free speech doesn’t mean not getting fired. You can get fired in any county for things that you say (e.g. insulting your coworkers, lying to your boss, defaming your employer on social media, …). The exact laws and social conventions obviously vary from country to country, but this shouldn’t be a difficult concept in general.
Someone doxxing you and pressuring your employee to fire you because you said something they don't agree with politically is the same as you insulting your coworkers in your eyes?
You don't see any discrepancy between those two scenarios?
And you don't see anything wrong with the former scenario?