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.

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.

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.

Not in my America.

I welcome any and all persons from anywhere in the world if they want to come and protest the American war machine

Our forefathers would be absolutely ashamed at what you just said. Protesting a totalitarian government that lacks proper representation is the most American thing you can possibly do, and that makes these immigrants more American than you will ever be, as long as you hold such views.

Edit: It seems you have edited your post in order to remove the extremely distasteful language you originally expressed. I assume you still hold such views or you'd not have expressed them to begin with, and as such my comment still stands.

> Our forefathers would be absolutely ashamed...

Well, like half of our forefathers. Maybe 30%.

America has always been this weird combined project of Hopeless Idealists and The Worst People In The World. Our forefathers sought independence for freedom and self-determination and all sorts of other noble things, but also because many of them owned a bunch of slaves and were worried that was going to be outlawed in the near future. And then sought independence again a century later out of the same fear.

That's a good point, I often use "forefathers" loosely when I really mean just the good forefathers, such as Franklin, Paine, etc. I need to figure out a way to be more precise about this without being too verbose.

The good forefathers? What is the basis for deciding? Like back in 2017 there was the Unite the Right rally on the UVA campus. I am guessing you would not support that kind of anti-Semitic speech and "protest against totalitarian government" although there's not really much difference in speech said at that rally versus the anti-Israel ones at Columbia except by who was saying it. Maybe I am wrong and you are a free speech absolutist but if not I would be interested in hearing how to decide which hate speech should be cracked down upon and which shouldn't.

> What is the basis for deciding?

For one, whether or not they supported abolition.

I also will not engage in a debate with a poisoned premise: To be clear, supporting Israel today means supporting genocide. That is the beginning and end of it. You can denounce Israel and still denounce Hamas. You can support an individual Jewish person's right to life and liberty without making the mistake of supporting their genocidal government.

Given that my own government, the United States, is also genocidal and has a history of bloody colonialism, I appreciate when people can make this distinction. I condemn my own government and still support my fellow countrymen.

None of this needs pointing out. Any attempt to paint an anti-Israel stance as an antisemitic stance is deliberately deceitful and wholly reprehensible. Israel the government is illegitimate and Netanyahu is wanted in the International Criminal Court for genocidal crimes.

For the record I am not really defending Israel. I think they routinely violate conventions and illegally expand their territory. They also mistreat non-Jewish people. So it is reasonable to protest against Israel.

I am more interested in knowing how someone decides what is moral and immoral, i.e. which causes they choose to support. I have my theories. I have very mixed feelings towards the pro-Palestine protestors on campuses stemming from the tactics used, how they directed protests at universities themselves and not Israel, and the subtle implications that universities were "Zionist" for vague reasons. I guess that by extension most Americans are Zionist also?? I am not sure if that's fair and then obviously there's an element of conspiracy theory that is also kind of nasty.

I note you mentioned abolition, colonialism, and genocide so I think it's not a stretch to say you decide based on anti-Fascism which I'll leave open to definition.