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.

One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you.

The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.)

It's odd that one ban operates within the constraints of freedom (the freedom to associate requires the exercise of the freedom to not associate), while the other does not. It's almost like there's a categorical distinction.

It's utterly pointless to say that the starting point is the same, when one is an utter sabotage of all of society's rights and values... While the other is people affirming those rights.

>(The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.)

As one of the 'Free Speech folks', I'll bite.

I absolutely condemn the administration rounding up someone like Mahmoud Khalil if the only thing he did was speak a rallies. If you look up Uncivil Law's video on Mahmoud Khalil Deportation, he is saying the same thing.

Now, let's flip this around. Where are all my left wing friends willing to condemn the investigation into Trump for his Jan. 6th speech? Are you willing to join us now?

The speech isn't why he would go to prison in a just world (that would be Georgia, the fake electors, and the toilet paper documents), and the impeachment that was a consequence of the speech is always a purely political trial. Someone can be impeached for any reason and no reason whatsoever, that is unfortunately how the system is designed. Two kinds of justice, with a few batshit SCOTUS rulings that make a criminal president unprosecutable as long as 34 senators are willing to go to bat for him.

It's not his speech that gave him trouble with the DOJ (before he dismissed all charges against himself), it's all the other parts of his conspiracy to steal the election.

Notice how none of the talking heads on TV were in legal trouble over their speech on the matter.

Every one of the cases against him had a bit more to it than 'well he said some bad words', the same way that a conman doesn't go to prison just for saying some bad words, or the same way that a war criminal gets a noose, despite simply saying words - giving orders.