A university president makes a case against cowardice

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.

You are correct - one is objectively worse than the other.

The unfortunate truth is that, also, one is a consequence of the other.

Trump is simply doing what his voters wanted[1]. And they voted for him precisely because `of the illiberal behavior of the radical left was yelling and "cancel culture"`.

Had the first thing not happened, then the consequence would have been a fictional story in an alternate timeline.

But here we are, and we don't get to say "Sure, we were assholes to 50% of the population, but your response is worse".

[1] Spoiler - they may not even want it anymore!

This is just the 'you made me do it' defense argued by every abuser ever. Someone is behaving as an ass, they get told 'you're an ass, stop that' and then they escalate and say 'you made me do this'. It happens in families, it happens in schoolyards, it happens on streets, it happens in business, it happens in dictatorships. Just yesterday, the president of South Korea was formally removed from office after trying to stage a military coup and this was his whole defense.