You refer to “anti-Zionism” as a possible explanation. This falls into their trap. When it is not just a mask for anti-semitism, the gangs and their useful idiots are redefining “Zionism”, like “Fascism”, as “anything I dislike”. On my Quora feed, one of them asked “Is Zionism a threat to the co to used existence of Israel?” In plain English, this is asking if the existence of Israel threatens the existence of Israel.
I wrote a post on the situation in Australian universities, from a legal perspective. Yes, there is an argument that applying Anglo-Australian law, you don’t have a right to camp or occupy, regardless of how peaceful you are. https://www.whatkatydid.net/p/freedom-of-speech-academic-freedom I also note that we used similar phrases, “Rights for me and not for thee” - which made me chuckle. To be fair, the Australian protests have been (mostly) peaceful - I walked past the ones at my uni the other day, before they were disbanded.
It’s the hypocrisy which gets me, with this issue and the Congress testimony of the Ivy League Presidents. People who would bend over backwards to prevent “cultural safety” for minority groups in any other context are excusing this kind of stuff on the basis of freedom of speech, when they’ve never cared about freedom of speech before. Why is the rule different for one group, but not for another? Some animals are more equal than others.
This is why the rule of law is important. You have to treat everyone consistently, across the board, regardless of whether you’re sympathetic or non-sympathetic to them. For what it’s worth, I’d personally tend to generally favour freedom of speech over cultural safety, but I’d do it across the board, and try to be consistent.
The reason Jussim’s piece is respectable is not because he is an expert in academia, but because he builds an argument with evidence and logic. He respects the reader. Notice the contrast with the other experts. They are authoritarian. They claim that we should just believe them because they are the experts.
Thank you for spending so much of your time on this work. I'm in gender studies--one of the primary suppliers of radical, anti-free expression, anti-academic freedom bullshit. My department produced one of these letters and--like the SPSP letter--it's a marvel to behold. Authoritarianism and hypocrisy all the way down.
This is an excellent analysis of the open letters by psychologists on this issue, mirroring similar letters from other academic groups. I have been closely following the open letters penned by philosophers over the past months (https://dailynous.com/tag/philosophers-on-the-israel-hamas-conflict), and the pattern is strikingly similar: they claim privileged knowledge (“as academics who spend our lives thinking about events such as these”) and then go on to make overly simplistic assertions. Intellectual interventions in public discourse should ideally help laypeople appreciate the relevant complexities rather than obscuring them and reducing the conversation to simplistic terms. I have analyzed the philosophers’ letters in greater detail elsewhere (https://streetwiseethics.substack.com/p/why-moral-philosophers-views-on-gaza), and their contributions often resemble a scenario where bioethicists, purportedly contributing to the public debate on abortions, merely repeat pro-life slogans like 'life begins at conception'—the equivalent of ‘peace and ceasefire’ in this context.
Like the psychologists, philosophers also tacitly accept significant flaws in their reasoning to support campus protests, ironically leveraging these to criticize perceived shortcomings of "prominent free-speech warriors." They draw false moral analogies and conflate campus protest with free speech, a category error (https://streetwiseethics.substack.com/p/if-we-say-nothing). Unlike privately held opinions expressed in academic journals, news articles, or debates, public protests can more easily deteriorate into threats, intimidation, incitement, or discriminatory harassment, necessitating greater caution and oversight. This is particularly salient given that pro-Palestinian protests are not merely responses to injustice and loss of innocent lives. Slogans like "From the river to the sea" and "Globalize the intifada" are not calls for peace; they incite indiscriminate violence against Jews, as evidenced by the nature of the protests detailed in your essay. Needless to say, this does not imply that protest should not be treated as another venerable democratic tradition deserving of protection; it’s just not the same as free speech.
In summary, it seems the ability to pen utterly useless open letters transcends the boundaries of academic disciplines.
Seems to me that better use of psychologists time would be to find out why humans are so susceptible to brainwashing and gaslighting. Why are we so easily persuaded of our guilt in processes and actions we really have nothing to do with? And, more critically, would not ever promote. Bssically, how does this Narrative aka propaganda work when we can see its lies with an our own eyes.
These people live in virtual reality where they make up sh*t as they go. Debunking has no effect on them. Facts do not matter to this crowd. I recently discovered an open letter signed by several dozens of journalism professors (including 13 from my own school) attempting to discredit reports on sexual violence on October 7. You can read about it and see the link to the letter here:
You refer to “anti-Zionism” as a possible explanation. This falls into their trap. When it is not just a mask for anti-semitism, the gangs and their useful idiots are redefining “Zionism”, like “Fascism”, as “anything I dislike”. On my Quora feed, one of them asked “Is Zionism a threat to the co to used existence of Israel?” In plain English, this is asking if the existence of Israel threatens the existence of Israel.
I wrote a post on the situation in Australian universities, from a legal perspective. Yes, there is an argument that applying Anglo-Australian law, you don’t have a right to camp or occupy, regardless of how peaceful you are. https://www.whatkatydid.net/p/freedom-of-speech-academic-freedom I also note that we used similar phrases, “Rights for me and not for thee” - which made me chuckle. To be fair, the Australian protests have been (mostly) peaceful - I walked past the ones at my uni the other day, before they were disbanded.
It’s the hypocrisy which gets me, with this issue and the Congress testimony of the Ivy League Presidents. People who would bend over backwards to prevent “cultural safety” for minority groups in any other context are excusing this kind of stuff on the basis of freedom of speech, when they’ve never cared about freedom of speech before. Why is the rule different for one group, but not for another? Some animals are more equal than others.
This is why the rule of law is important. You have to treat everyone consistently, across the board, regardless of whether you’re sympathetic or non-sympathetic to them. For what it’s worth, I’d personally tend to generally favour freedom of speech over cultural safety, but I’d do it across the board, and try to be consistent.
Some types of stupidity require having a PhD. Be very skeptical of anyone with a doctorate who eagerly describes themselves as an expert.
A good argument but wasted on the 213 and their sympathizers. Your cartoon sums up the situation quite well.
Heh. My target audience is not the 213, who, I agree are probably hopeless.
The reason Jussim’s piece is respectable is not because he is an expert in academia, but because he builds an argument with evidence and logic. He respects the reader. Notice the contrast with the other experts. They are authoritarian. They claim that we should just believe them because they are the experts.
Thank you for spending so much of your time on this work. I'm in gender studies--one of the primary suppliers of radical, anti-free expression, anti-academic freedom bullshit. My department produced one of these letters and--like the SPSP letter--it's a marvel to behold. Authoritarianism and hypocrisy all the way down.
This is an excellent analysis of the open letters by psychologists on this issue, mirroring similar letters from other academic groups. I have been closely following the open letters penned by philosophers over the past months (https://dailynous.com/tag/philosophers-on-the-israel-hamas-conflict), and the pattern is strikingly similar: they claim privileged knowledge (“as academics who spend our lives thinking about events such as these”) and then go on to make overly simplistic assertions. Intellectual interventions in public discourse should ideally help laypeople appreciate the relevant complexities rather than obscuring them and reducing the conversation to simplistic terms. I have analyzed the philosophers’ letters in greater detail elsewhere (https://streetwiseethics.substack.com/p/why-moral-philosophers-views-on-gaza), and their contributions often resemble a scenario where bioethicists, purportedly contributing to the public debate on abortions, merely repeat pro-life slogans like 'life begins at conception'—the equivalent of ‘peace and ceasefire’ in this context.
Like the psychologists, philosophers also tacitly accept significant flaws in their reasoning to support campus protests, ironically leveraging these to criticize perceived shortcomings of "prominent free-speech warriors." They draw false moral analogies and conflate campus protest with free speech, a category error (https://streetwiseethics.substack.com/p/if-we-say-nothing). Unlike privately held opinions expressed in academic journals, news articles, or debates, public protests can more easily deteriorate into threats, intimidation, incitement, or discriminatory harassment, necessitating greater caution and oversight. This is particularly salient given that pro-Palestinian protests are not merely responses to injustice and loss of innocent lives. Slogans like "From the river to the sea" and "Globalize the intifada" are not calls for peace; they incite indiscriminate violence against Jews, as evidenced by the nature of the protests detailed in your essay. Needless to say, this does not imply that protest should not be treated as another venerable democratic tradition deserving of protection; it’s just not the same as free speech.
In summary, it seems the ability to pen utterly useless open letters transcends the boundaries of academic disciplines.
Seems to me that better use of psychologists time would be to find out why humans are so susceptible to brainwashing and gaslighting. Why are we so easily persuaded of our guilt in processes and actions we really have nothing to do with? And, more critically, would not ever promote. Bssically, how does this Narrative aka propaganda work when we can see its lies with an our own eyes.
These people live in virtual reality where they make up sh*t as they go. Debunking has no effect on them. Facts do not matter to this crowd. I recently discovered an open letter signed by several dozens of journalism professors (including 13 from my own school) attempting to discredit reports on sexual violence on October 7. You can read about it and see the link to the letter here:
https://voicesagainstantisemitism.substack.com/p/newsletter-may-1st-2024
Scroll down towards the end.