I agree that even contemptible people get free speech as long as it isn't incitement to violence. So, while the grinning Cornell professor who found the Hamas attack exhilarating is someone I would cheerfully throw into Cascadilla Gorge if I could get away with it, I don't want the Cornell administration to punish him. What I do want is …
I agree that even contemptible people get free speech as long as it isn't incitement to violence. So, while the grinning Cornell professor who found the Hamas attack exhilarating is someone I would cheerfully throw into Cascadilla Gorge if I could get away with it, I don't want the Cornell administration to punish him. What I do want is for it to condemn him strongly, not with a tepid statement that his views are contrary to Cornell's values. If students parade around yelling that Jewish Israelis are colonist settlers, I don't want them punished, but I want Martha Pollack, if she is going to make a statement, to put the words Hamas and terrorist in on sentence (she did, ultimately) AND to refute the antisemitic canards. The same would go for the other university presidents, who all seem to use the same PR firm with their wordy statements that try to please all the people while remaining morally opaque.
I agree that even contemptible people get free speech as long as it isn't incitement to violence. So, while the grinning Cornell professor who found the Hamas attack exhilarating is someone I would cheerfully throw into Cascadilla Gorge if I could get away with it, I don't want the Cornell administration to punish him. What I do want is for it to condemn him strongly, not with a tepid statement that his views are contrary to Cornell's values. If students parade around yelling that Jewish Israelis are colonist settlers, I don't want them punished, but I want Martha Pollack, if she is going to make a statement, to put the words Hamas and terrorist in on sentence (she did, ultimately) AND to refute the antisemitic canards. The same would go for the other university presidents, who all seem to use the same PR firm with their wordy statements that try to please all the people while remaining morally opaque.