A university president makes a case against cowardice

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.

Who is supporting terrorist groups? Pro-Palestinian protesting is not support for terrorism.

Nothing in that article implies supporting terrorism. They support Palestine.

People conflating supporting Palestine with supporting terrorism should be ashamed of themselves, as Israel is the biggest terror state in the world.

Well, when it comes to conflating, I'll take your calling Israel a terror state as a standard: The democratically elected government of Gaza-Palestine is the Hamas, which is a terrorist organisation. Thus by your conflation regarding Israel to be a terror state, the Gaza strip part of Palestine is as well. Its population chose a known terrorist organisation, everything is run by a terrorist organisation, they did terrorist things such as bombings, abductions and murders of innocent civilians. Thus (Gaza-)Palestine is therefore a terror state. Supporting it is therefore supporting terrorism.

Thus either you apply your conflating standard equally, Palestine and Israel are both terror states, and any support of them is supporting terrorism. Or you rather differentiate, and separate Palestine as an abstract concept of a hypothetical future homestead of the Palestinians from the Hamas, the Fatah and other (mostly terrorist) organisations that govern it, and the population that, in parts, is governed by them and elects and supports or opposes them and their actions. But if you do that, you will also have to differentiate between Israel as a state, its military, government, parties, population and their respective support and actions.

In that second case you can support Palestine as an abstract idea without supporting terrorism, you can support the population and their rights, hopes and struggle. As you can do with Israel and their people. However, on pro-Palestine protests, I've never really seen this kind of differentiation applied, I've seen far too many Hamas flags, heard far too many calls to wipe Israel from the map, far too many praises for terrorists (called "martyrs"). Thus, in practically all cases, I'd without hesitation call supporters of Palestine supporters of terrorism.

A few issues:

- "The democratically elected government of Gaza-Palestine is the Hamas" Hamas is not a democratic government, period. Elections you're talking about were almost 20 years ago. It's like calling Trumpistan 20 years from now a democracy, if Trump today declares he'll live forever, and that there will be no more elections, and enough MAGA Americans help him persevering.

- Israel's struggle is the Zionist dream of creating a Jewish state by any means. Means have been pretty violent and treacherous, from international terrorism, assassinations of diplomats, to mass killings and violent displacement of 100s of thousands of indigenous people, unilateral declaration of statehood over someone else's land, etc. Indigenous people have been revolting against this since way before Hamas even existed. It's quite something to bothside this, or even invert this, and call indigenous people terrorists, while violent immigrant invaders and land thieves are somehow legitimate state.

- Martyr != terrorist, it's anyone killed in some manner in relation to the above political context. If a child is shot in the head by Israel's soldiers, it will be called a martyr. Executed ICRC workers were called martyrs, etc.

The Hamas government isn't democratic, but it was democratically elected. And voters knew whom they were voting for, Hamas didn't change, they were a terrorist organization back then as well. Voters democratically elect all kinds of dictatorships. Still their fault.

Indigenous people (legitimately imho) started a war over that territory and lost it. Started a few more and lost those as well, together with some neighboring states. If you lost the war for that land, it isn't your land anymore. Simple as that. And terrorism isn't an acceptable means of warfare.