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A university president makes a case against cowardice

(www.newyorker.com)
451 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 03 Apr 25 12:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.207s | source
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necubi ◴[03 Apr 25 23:48 UTC] No.43576821[source]▶
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.

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kevingadd ◴[04 Apr 25 06:27 UTC] No.43578928[source]▶
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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rayiner[dead post] ◴[04 Apr 25 12:02 UTC] No.43581013[source]▶
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g8oz ◴[04 Apr 25 14:35 UTC] No.43583049[source]▶
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.
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somedude895 ◴[04 Apr 25 14:57 UTC] No.43583378[source]▶
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.
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1. MPSFounder ◴[04 Apr 25 19:06 UTC] No.43586501[source]▶
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. Your view is anti-American, for it puts Zionist and Israeli interests above our morals, values and chiefly in this case American interests (students contribute to our economy through spending and innovative technologies, not Palestin'es or Israel's).