A university president makes a case against cowardice

Wild that he is some kind of exception. Rolling over, folding is not the university culture I remember.

Not sure when you graduated, but I've seen a complete inversion.

Much like 90s rockers, they now rage exclusively on behalf of the machine.

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First we're not allowed to call the detention camps "concentration camps" because there aren't ovens, now we can't call them "disappearances" because they're not getting thrown out of helicopters. Forget that people are getting shipped to a foreign torture slave camp from which nobody has been released with, and with no due process.

I think this language policing may be because people don't want to allow opposition to these things, rather than out of honor for the dead. The way to honor the dead is to prevent the circumstances of their deaths from happening again.

Which is exactly why we must stand up against the disappearances, the camps, the collaborators, the secret police.

This is exactly how it went in Russia. First it was, ‘Well, this isn’t that bad.’ Then, ‘Okay, sure, this isn’t great—but it’s not like we need to take action yet.’ And bit by bit, people kept rationalizing, minimizing, delaying—until suddenly it was, ‘Well… we’re f’d.’ That’s why we should speak up now.

We’re already at the point where one side is openly arguing that due process isn’t guaranteed by the Constitution—because it's inconvenient. So how many rights do we have to give up before it’s acceptable to call it out? How many norms have to be broken? How many lines crossed?

It's not like (other than Elon) they're going to show up in Hugo Boss suits one day and announce 'we have crossed the line to where you can criticize us now'.

I agree. But did you stand up against discrimination against innocent people under the banner of DEI? Did you stand up against government directed censorship campaigns on social media?

The time to stand up was actually way before the extreme actions of the left inspired this extreme reactionary overcorrection from the right. You're supposed to stand up while you're still in power, not after you've lost it, it's a bit late. I still remember people insisting "but deplatforming works!" as they justified mass censorship of conservatives. Honestly if you have not stood up for the people you politically disagreed with as the noose tightened over the last 10 years you are part of the cause of this terrible over-correction.

I can only hope that people start noticing this pattern and the inevitable next "correction" is not so extreme and we get some damping on the seemingly accelerating pendulum back and fourth.