UPenn: Antisemitism by "Policy"

UPenn invokes and ignores stated policies, depending primarily on whether invoking or ignoring helps punish or target Jews. They may do this unintentionally, but this is what they do.

When a Jewish professor made racist comments, the UPenn administration punished her. When several of their departments sponsored a whole cadre of antisemites for a “festival” on campus, the UPenn administration defended it on the grounds of free speech and academic freedom.

In this essay, I show that UPenn policy is this:

Hate speech? If a Jew does it, punish the Jew. If it targets Jews, it is just fine.

Why This Matters for NonJews

Why it matters for Jews is obvious. But why should it matter for nonJews?

1. It reflects the political corruption and depravity that now infects much of academia. When one of our institutions supposedly devoted to making sense of the world is this politically corrupt, it is bad for everyone.

2. It is a tribute to the grotesque manner in which “justice” (usually framed as “social justice”) is sometimes endorsed and implemented in parts of academia.

3. Students, the next generation of Americans, are being socialized into systems that advance these values and this worldview.¹

4. There is a long and ugly history wherein the systematic and official targeting of Jews’ presages much worse things to come for everyone.

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UPenn Sanctions and Investigates Amy Wax

The professor in question is Amy Wax and you can find a slew of her comments here to decide if you think they are racist (in my view, some are and some held up as racist are not, but my opinion about Wax’s comments is not relevant to understanding the antisemitic nature of UPenn’s handling of her case). She has been in trouble with the UPenn administration for several years now, and is currently suspended from teaching and undergoing an investigation to determine whether UPenn will institute some sort of major sanction against her, presumably up to revoking her tenure and firing her (for stories on this, go here, here, here, or here). Amy Wax is Jewish.

There is an argument to be made that once a professor makes racist comments, anywhere, she has violated professional standards and students should be neither required nor expected to take classes with such a person. Many academics have made arguments that free speech and/or academic freedom are mere masks for bigoted hate speech and/or need to be limited to protect students and the wider society from “harmful” speech of various sorts (see this article titled “Freedom of Racist Speech”; see this call by Princeton faculty, grad students, students, and alumni for a Big Brother-style committee to ensure that nothing “racist” ever escapes Princeton). Then there is this editorial by the apex journal Nature which justifies editorial censorship on the grounds of perceived harm (variations of the word “harm” appear 22 times in it). It includes this statement:

There is a fine balance between academic freedom and the protection of the dignity and rights of individuals and human groups.

In this “fine balance/free speech is racist/authorities must monitor and censor racist speech” view, some sort of sanction of Wax is justified. Furthermore, by virtue of having tenure and a job there, in this view, UPenn is facilitating and supporting this person and her vile views, and maybe the UPenn administration thinks it does not want to do that, nor is required to do so.

Agree or not, we have a principle, let’s call it Principle 1: If a person at UPenn expresses views many consider vile bigotry², they should be excluded from UPenn’s normal activities.

Meme/cartoon once commonly found on social media when someone seeks to justify social censorship, cancelation attacks, firing people for speech and the like

UPenn Welcomes Antisemites and Defends Doing So Because it Supports Free and Open Discussion

UPenn hosted The Palestine Writes Literature Festival on Sept 22-24, 2023. UPenn’s Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations program co-sponsored the event and described it this way:

The 2023 Palestine Writes literature festival is gathering dozens of writers, artists, publishers, performers, and scholars to explore the richness and diversity of Palestinian culture.

I did not attend the event and have no idea whether it lived up to this billing. And certainly, an event that fit this description would most certainly belong on a college campus.

But that’s not the operative principle here. If the principle is that UPenn will exclude those who hold vile views (no matter where they were expressed), then it hardly matters what happened at the conference. What matters is if those invited ever, anywhere, expressed vile views.

Invited speakers included a long list of people long accused of expressions of antisemitism. One can find stories identifying them and their comments here, here, and here, and see also this one which reports how one attendee was declared antisemitic by the U.S. Dept. of State). You can decide for yourself whether their comments are antisemitic.

When all this was exposed to the public, there was a firestorm of controversy (such as here, here, and here) and led a slew of wealthy donors to Penn withdrawing their support.

It also led the UPenn President to issue this justification for holding this “festival,” a ringing, principled endorsement of free and open discourse:

many have raised deep concerns about several speakers who have a documented and troubling history of engaging in antisemitism by speaking and acting in ways that denigrate Jewish people. We unequivocally -- and emphatically -- condemn antisemitism as antithetical to our institutional values. As a university, we also fiercely support the free exchange of ideas as central to our educational mission. This includes the expression of views that are controversial and even those that are incompatible with our institutional values.

So now, agree or not, we also have a principle, let’s call it Principle 2: UPenn will protect expression of controversial views, even views many (including the U.S. Dept. of State) have identified as vile bigotry.

This, too, is a defensible principle. If a university is to be able to openly address controversial issues, then its constituents must not be sanctioned, even if their views upset, offend, make some people (in modern parlance) “feel unsafe” or even if their views are racist, sexist, antisemitic or bigoted in some other way.

In Which I (Barely) Refrain from a Profanity-Laced Rant

When Jewish Amy Wax engaged in racist speech, the operative principle was Principle 1: If a person at UPenn expresses views many consider vile bigotry, they should be excluded from UPenn’s normal activities.

When multiple UPenn Departments sponsored a festival filled with speakers many considered to be vile antisemites, however, Principle 1 was nowhere to be found. “Hey, have we articulated principles whereby vile bigotry is not permitted by UPenn? I can’t think of anything, can you?”

Instead, Principle 2 was invoked to protect the ostensibly antisemitic festival: UPenn will protect expression of controversial views, even views many (including the U.S. Dept. of State) have identified as vile bigotry.

So where was Principle 2 when Amy Wax was being suspended and investigated? Nowhere to be found. “Hey, have we articulated principles whereby expression of controversial views, even views many consider vile bigotry, constitute protected speech at UPenn? Naaah. We have never said that. I can’t think of anything, can you?”

UPenn: Get the Jews

When they have a choice between policies that would protect Jews or target Jews, UPenn “just happens” to systematically settle on the policy that allows the targeting of Jews.

NonJews³ receive protections that Jews do not receive at Penn. Jews at UPenn are “legitimate” targets for both antisemites and the UPenn administration. What is going on at UPenn is not merely the rantings of depraved faculty, though others have documented such depravity throughout academia (and it can be quite severe, such as here and here). Because it is being enforced by their administrators pointing to official policies as justifications, it is, at UPenn, a form of bias that is actually systemic.

At UPenn:

Hate speech? If a Jew does it, punish the Jew. If it targets Jews, it is just fine.

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Addendum: Is it Really Antisemitism?

Two comrades-in-arms (at least one of whom is Jewish and one of whom is a UPenn alumni), each proposed a slightly different yet related alternative explanation to antisemitism for this nonsense. Both are good points.

One argued the main trigger of the grotesque double standard is not antisemitism, but that Wax is (viewed as) White.⁴ Put differently, White people are not afforded UPenn’s “controversial speech” protections; those are reserved only for “vulnerable minorities.” Even though some of the festival’s presenters are White, there is some truth to this general analysis. Demonization and virulent views about and attacks on White people on the political left, including academia, are common, and something I’ve posted about (such as here, here, and here).

The second argued not that it was the “oppressor” vs. “oppressed” identity of the speaker that triggered the double standard, but that it was the oppressor vs. oppressed target of the speech. In this analysis, by virtue of Wax’s comments on vulnerable minorities, she became a target of UPenn’s punishment; by virtue of engaging in hate speech targeting Jews (now widely seen as an oppressor group among progressives), the festival speakers were granted controversial speech protections.

These perspectives are not wrong; there is much merit to each. To understand why I stand by my analysis (which I do), let’s stipulate that both are 100% correct. What is going on here is still antisemitism, even if other sources of double standards are also in play. Consider the recent SCOTUS case that overturned the preferential selection form of affirmative action in higher education. Even though it was an Asian group that sued Harvard, SCOTUS ruled that advantaging Black applicants constituted discrimination against other groups (including both Asian and White applicants).

A similar analysis should be applied here. I doubt that UPenn administrators hold particular animus towards Jews. But even if other groups,⁵ too, might hypothetically be caught up in the same application of double standards, if the double standards they applied are systematically biased against Jews, it is antisemitism.

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Appendix

Sources on the radicalization and political corruption of academia, and on antisemitism on the far left, including academia:

Reality of the Rise of an Intolerant and Radical Left on Campus, 2018. Essay by me.

Radicalization of the American Academy. First Unsafe Science post!

Academic Grievance Studies and the Corruption of Scholarship. The original, by Lindsay, Boghossian & Pluckrose.

Campus Cowardice and Where the Buck Stops, Bari Weiss, 2023.

Soviet antizionism and contemporary left antisemitism, 2019. Izabella Tabarovsky.

https://twitter.com/PsychRabble/status/1718128431169233153

Allington et al, 2023. Antisemitism is predicted by anti-hierarchical aggression, totalitarianism, and belief in malevolent global conspiracies. Nature.

Burley, 2019. The socialism of fools. Journal of Social Justice.

Costello et al (2021). Clarifying the structure and nature of left-wing authoritarianism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Farber & Sherry, 1995. Is the radical critique of merit antisemitic? California Law Review. (tl;dr: “yes”).

Frisby et al, 2023, edited book with 33 chapters (one mine). Ideological and bias in psychology.

Kaufman, Shayshon, Levy. (2021). Erasive anti-semitism. Reut Group.

Paresky, P. 2021. Critical race theory and the hyper-White Jew. Sapir Journal.

Sunshine, 2019. Looking left at antisemitism. Journal of Social Justice.

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Footnote

1. College students socialized into these values. I have not said they are being successfully indoctrinated into them, though that is an open question and possibility.

2. Sanctioning a person for vile views. Some of you may see the problem here. “Vile” is so deeply subjective that it rapidly flows into the type of censorship regime that is a clear violation of academic freedom. On the other hand, I do not want Nazis or advocates of political violence directed at U.S. institutions holding jobs at my university. On yet a third hand, what “I want” is not really relevant to what is and is not protected by legal principles (free speech, academic freedom, contractual commitments). Much more could be said about this, but this essay is not the place to do it.

3. Projects Jews do not receive. Yes, I realize I only discussed Amy Wax. But that’s not the point. If Amy Wax’s speech is not protected, but others’ is, a reasonable inference is that the UPenn administration will not have the backs of Jews at UPenn who engage in virulent speech. The UPenn administration, however, in the case of the Palestine Writes Festival indicates that they do have the backs of these particular nonJews, at least as long as they nonJews direct hate at Jewish targets. Further note: I neither stated nor believe that the UPenn administration targets all Jews this way. “Some” and “disproportionately” are sufficient for their policies (or the way they implement them) to be antisemitic.

4. “Vulnerable minorities.” This is progressive social justice-speak for what regular people might think of as those from disadvantaged or stigmatized groups. But “vulnerable” actually has a conventional meaning for regular people: It means something like “at greater risk of suffering some sort of harm.” By this normal everyday definition, Jews’ history probably renders them (us) one of the most “vulnerable” minorities on Earth so there is also a disturbing irony in any perspective that excludes Jews from “vulnerable minorities.” Besides the obvious (Spanish Inquisition, Nazis), the 14th century plague inspired mass murder of Jews, Jews were disproportionately caught up in medieval witch hunts, the Chmielnicki massacres of the 17th century, expulsions from most of North African and the Middle East in the mid-20th century, and the repeated attempts to eliminate Israel, the modern manifestation of which is “From the river to the sea.” Even here in the U.S., Jews are victimized by hate crimes at a higher rate (proportional to their population) than any other racial/ethnic group.

5. Other groups and double standards. I actually do not know of any nonJewish White faculty caught in UPenn’s web of double standards. This is not really relevant, though. If the implicit driver of the double standard is not “get the Jew,” but, rather, “White people can’t say that!” and a Jew “says that” and is punished, the “White people can’t say that” standard, if presumed to include Jews as required by this alternative explanation, is still antisemitic.