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Lee Jussim's avatar

All,

For the second time since launching, I have removed two of someone's comments, those of the person anonymously posting as "Hazel-Rah." Because the comments were so filled with ad hominem attacks, personal insults, and vitriol, that it was exactly the type of discourse I do not want around here. I first warned "Hazel-Rah" to cut the crap out, but this evoked more vitriol, which, as promised, I simply deleted.

For now, I am: 1. Leaving the other comments by "Hazel-rah" up for all to see how NOT to behave here; 2. I have informed "Hazel-rah" that he will be banned from commenting altogether if he continues bombing the comments with insults. I hope it does not come to that, but my experience suggests it likely will.

Completely predictably, after my first warning, "Hazel-rah" (in between calling me "emotional and irrational" and telling me to go fuck myself), pled "Free speech!" Yes indeed, free speech. "Hazel-rah" is completely free to stand on a soapbox in Time Square declaring how ridiculous, irrational and stupid we all are and how we should all go fuck ourselves. And probably free to do so on many (social) media platforms too. But "Hazel-rah's" free speech imposes no requirement on me whatsoever to tolerate insults and "fuck yous" in the comments here. In fact, I do give some leeway for some of this, which you can see by virtue of the fact that, for now, I am leaving "Hazel-rah's" comments up. If, as I suspect, this will evoke another tirade, they will all be removed too.

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Not so young anymore.'s avatar

Personally I don’t like a lot of the stuff Amy Wax has said. But free speech seems to start only when Jews complain about virulent anti Semitism. Funny how that works. And why can’t Palestinian writers meet and discuss culture without making it all about destroying Israel? Do they have anything else to add here? I assume they must but they’re not showing it.

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Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

Hazel...why have you not commented on the topic of Lee's piece? Despite what you may think...I actually know a great deal about this subject and got to hear Amy Wax discussing her case on FIRE webinar long before this piece was published. My homework is just fine. You, however, have offered nothing but vitriol in response to everyone here. Are you truly that incapable of responding to Lee's well written piece?

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Hazel-rah's avatar

Continuing to ask someone the same question they've already answered is kinda harassing, dude. But you keep right on. Unlike Lee, I support your right to comment the way you want.

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Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

I have not known Lee to censor anyone. But Hazel...with all due respect....everyone reading this thread can see who chose to use the ability to post to attack the positions and persons of others without actually having anything to say. Your continued refusal to address the topic of Lee's thread demonstrates that your intent it not to contribute to the discussion... but to engage in harassment of your own. That is sadly the common approach of those who have nothing to say.

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Hazel-rah's avatar

Feel free to repeat yourself as many times as you want. It’s your right.

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Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

Hazel knows nothing but how to express hateful drivel.

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Matt Osborne's avatar

Is this not the same UPenn that tells women on the swim team they cannot complain when Lia Thomas walks in and swings his di*k around, because their Title IX rights are "hate speech" now? The one that warned no one on the team, or changed the sign on the door of the locker room to "unisex," and then silenced the swimmers after and told them to seek counseling and educate themselves? All for the Lia Thomas with the Fetlife where his autogynephilia is in the open?

I sense a brand new "defund" movement coming.

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Not so young anymore.'s avatar

Yes. That same U of P indulging in the delusion that lia Thomas is a woman.

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

cmon man, you've been doing this long enough now:

Left morality is always WHO/WHOM.

Jews are evil white oppressors aka kulaks who need to be eradicated in the name of Justice; Palestinians are poor brown oppressed victims (the proletariat and/or wretched of the earth) who cannot be held responsible for their actions and who must always be supported even if they put a knife to your throat.

"Everything that allows the triumph of the revolution is moral. Everything that stands in its way is immoral." Sergey Nechayev

We've lived through all this before and the response of American academia is only surprising if you haven't been paying attention.

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Hazel-rah's avatar

Yeah you're right, people who judge an entire population by the actions of a cherry-picked few are terrible.

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Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

I agree that UPenn is engaging in utter hypocrisy in using Principle 1 against Amy Wax in some circumstances while following Principle 2 in others. It would help to know what specifically Wax said that is being called "racist" because I suspect Wax's "offense" is not that she made racist statements. As we see in the Nature editorial policies, truthful, data-supported statements relevant to policy or conclusions under discussion can be considered bigoted because they offend the sensibilities or agenda or advocates for a particular group. That does not make them racist. The only test of academic free speech, or free speech generally, should be whether or not the statement is supported by data and is presented honestly and in context.

Example: It is a fact that violent crime rates among African American males are roughly 10 times higher than for white males of the same age. It is also a fact that most of the victims of these crimes are also African American. If a professor like Amy Wax or Heather MacDonald points out this fact as evidence to demonstrate that, contrary to the leftist narrative, African Americans are actually UNDER-policed relative to whites based on actual crime rates, the speaker is NOT being racist against African Americans. They are speaking the truth that must be accounted for in determining how best to address crime. Given that the victims of these crimes tend to be African-American themselves, I would argue that failure to call out these crimes honestly out of fear of offending liberal activists is itself the act of racism and bigotry because it clearly says that the black victims of these crimes aren't important enough for us to speak the truth about those harming them.

What Lee is pointing out as antisemitism by UPenn is just a specific example of the hypocrisy of academia dominated by progressives who seek to censor and silence ANY opinion that conflicts with their world view. Since Jews are currently defined as "white" and "oppressors" they are inherently unworthy of defense and can be harmed by those identified as "oppressed" or "victims" in the progressive hierarchy with impunity. In this twisted progressive universe, barbaric Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians are justifiable resistance that Israel simply must endure for its crime of existing, while Israeli defensive counterstrikes are considered genocidal acts on the "innocent" Palestinians who are NEVER accountable for anything that is done by any member of their population or by the government officials they elected and acting in their name. This is antisemitic of course. Unfortunately, the same hypocritical argument by progressive academics would be used against men who dare to challenge false accusations of sexual harassment/rape or have the audacity to suggest that due process protections apply in such cases. So...the while there is certainly plenty of antisemitism in academia as seen in the UPenn example, the problem is really with progressive ideology generally.

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Hazel-rah's avatar

It would've taken you much less time to just click on the links to see what Wax said than it did to write this half-ignorant post.

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Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

Excuse me Hazel, but what did you find "half-ignorant"? You didn't provide any links....

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Hazel-rah's avatar

The entire post, in the absence of your clicking on any of the links provided in the article to what Wax actually said.

"It would help to know what specifically Wax said that is being called "racist""

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Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

Given your responses to others who have contributed to this thread makes quite clear that you actually don't have anything to say...just hatred to express. Truly sad.

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Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

Hazel, with all due respect, if you have something to say about about what I said, why not simply say it? All I see here is a personal attack. One who engages in personal attacks without having anything to actually say themselves will be seen as lacking in smarts. If you have nothing to say...then perhaps you shouldn't pretend otherwise.

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Hazel-rah's avatar

You really aren't that smart. When you post a long comment about something you haven't read fully, you look like a pompous oblivious idiot. People won't bother to read what you have to say.

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Sadredin Moosavi's avatar

Still waiting to see a comment relevant to the content of the thread from you Hazel. Perhaps the language involved was beyond you?

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Ulysses Outis's avatar

Your friends are 100% correct. And so are you. It is antisemitism (together with anti-white racism and oppressor/oppressed categorisation -- for the moral mess of the latter over more than 100 years at this point, may I bring forward here our eminent friend Chomsky, our distinguished friend Finkelstein? Both irredeemably Jewish, both still incapable of seeing Jewish victims because Israel-Jews-rich-capitalist monsters-USA Satan).

The way that the narrative about oppressor/oppressed conflates with antisemitism (and racism, and genocide denial -- not just of Jews -- through the creation of 'worthy victims' and 'unworthy victims') is brilliantly explained in this article by a young researcher:

https://forward.com/opinion/393107/how-anti-semitisms-true-origin-makes-it-invisible-to-the-left/

My apologies if I have posted it before, my ability to keep track is reduced.

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Notes from the Under Dog L.'s avatar

Frankly -- and I've been saying this for a while -- all of the "white supremacy" BS at universities is 1930s Germany, Pol Pott, and Mao all over again. But try conveying this to your brainwashed Democrat-voting Useful Idiots -- even when they're Jewish, they're oblivious, chanting that the nation's biggest threat is "white supremacy." I go blue in the face trying to explain it to people too old or out of the academic / media loop to comprehend. They just rush to judging the messenger as "fascist" and "right wing."

What's going on now is, ironically, the only hope in making them see what's really going on here.

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SquidbillyCPO, UltraMAGA's avatar

Jews have been called the Canary in the coal mine when it comes to how far gone a nation is when it comes to totalitarianism and genocide. The Canary in the coal mine of the western world is gasping for air right now. Anglo Saxon ethnic European people aka, white people and Christians have been getting the Jewish treatment for a decade from the cultural Marxists of the communist party U.S.A. aka, the democrat party. Now they no longer find the Jewish useful idiots useful and are now openly calling for the genocide of them. A big part of this is related to mass immigration, the communists have made the decision that they have a large enough number of third world immigrants were they can openly cast aside the Jews and make them boogieman for societies ills. This is exactly what Hitler did and what happened in Soviet Russia. It is a tale and strategy used by genocidal madmen for thousands of years.

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Hazel-rah's avatar

Yes, UPenn are being grossly and ridiculously hypocritical.

No, condemning Israel for their actions is not antisemitism, and anyone trying to equate the two is engaging in pathetic, MAGAt-level BS.

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Not so young anymore.'s avatar

Sorry Hazel. The blinders are off. Anti Zionism is antiSemism. Or to further explain. Jew hatred.

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Hazel-rah's avatar

The anti-Zionist Jewish Left is anti-Semitic? Lol. Nice try.

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Not so young anymore.'s avatar

It’s perverse. That’s for sure. Especially after October 7. Nice try you.

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Hazel-rah's avatar

Happily, exterminating Hamas and implementing a 2-state solution aren't mutually exclusive. Once the Israelis are done with their retribution, it should be time for some arm-twisting by the US and Iran-Lebanon.

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Not so young anymore.'s avatar

If you are in favor of a 2 state solution what are the two states? If one is Israel then by definition you are not anti Zionist. So you are at best unclear.

Also exterminating Hamas is Israel’s goal. Not retribution.

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Hazel-rah's avatar

A real Zionist would have been screaming NAZI at me by now. Faker.

Oh all right, I suppose you deserve a real answer.

I'm in favor of ending the 75-year war, and a 2-state solution is the best bet for that. I don't care what they're called, and I don't care what I'm called. Your preoccupation with labels is silly. But anyway, the 2 countries need to be kept as separate as possible with the border-drawing. Shortest linear miles of border that can be managed. That 1948 fudge-swirl was possibly the worst global mistake ever made by mankind.

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Wayward Science's avatar

Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, but saying death to Israel or wearing a Nazi uniform while criticizing Israel sure seems anti-Semitic to this half Jew.

The MAGA comparison is gratuitous and ridiculous. Cmon.

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Oct 30, 2023Edited
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Wayward Science's avatar

I have no idea what you’re talking about. You either did not read Jussim’s article or are incapable of making a coherent point about it. I suspect the latter.

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Hazel-rah's avatar

I don't know anymore what I was talking about either, so I deleted it. Sorry about that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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man of aran's avatar

Nonsense. There are legitimate reasons to criticize any state, but Israel is the one country for which that justification is VERY often used as a cover for what is really virulent anti-semitism. I note also, that it was commonplace on the left to go after ANYONE criticizing China during Covid for harboring anti-Asian racist views. Face it, for the woke totalitarian liberals, whatever supports the narrative of POCs good (including barbaric terrorists), white/Western bad (including Jewish) is deemed to be 'on the right side of history'. The narrative subsumes normal moral reckoning and common humanity.

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SquidbillyCPO, UltraMAGA's avatar

Strange I don't see you condemning what hamas did on October 7th. That tells me that you are a Jew hating anti-Semitic piece of communist trash.

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man of aran's avatar

Brilliant exposure of the hypocrisy. It all tracks with 'social justice' ideology of course. It's a double whammy for Jews because they are not just Jewish, now they are, a la Whoopi Goldberg, 'white' or 'hyper' white. It boggles my mind how thoroughly a simplistic and totalitarian narrative can take over and become so dominant, wiping out thought, common sense, history and basic moral sensibility and reasoning.

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Bernard Capaldi's avatar

First they came for the socialist and I did not speak out because I am not a socialist. Then they came for the unionist but I did not speak out because I am not a unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speakout because I am not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left tospeak out for me. Martin Niemoller

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Hazel-rah's avatar

First they came for my sympathy, and I was fine with that, because I am a sympathetic person.

Then they came for my judgement, and I was OK with that, because being empathetic is important.

Then they came for my common sense, and I wondered why I was starting to feel uncomfortable about it, but decided that I should just be empathetic.

Then they came for my morality - and I could no longer tell who was in the wrong.

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Bernard Capaldi's avatar

That is interesting that Martin Niemoller wrote about 'people' and you wrote about opinions. Is that a moment in time thing do you think?

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Paul Kearslake's avatar

Cutting the multi million dollar taxpayer funding of these Public Universities would soon focus the administrative blob on the realities of visceral day to day life.

Excellent article.

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JC Collins's avatar

Between this and their cheating at swimming with Lia Thomas, I'm done with that school.

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