There is so much hyperbole about attempts by the Trump administration to exclude and remove Jihadist terrorism supporting foreigners here on visas or green cards. The comparisons to Nazi Germany are legion at this point – when haven’t they been when the left doesn’t get its way?
My position, staked out in numberous media interviews, is that foreign visitors here do have ‘free speech’ rights but also are subject to the immigration laws (unlike citizens), and if the government can prove a ground under the immigration laws for exclusion or removal, then that’s not a ‘free speech’ violation. The Constitution gives the Congress the power to control immigration, and the Congress has passed restrictions that the president is enforcing.
There’s more than a certain amount of hypocrisy at play, particularly in academia, which has been the least free place in society for a long time.
Just scroll through our Cancel Culture tag, particularly the earlier posts dating back a decade, to see how we documented in real time the absolute reign of terror against almost anyone right-of-center throughout higher education. Also scroll through the BDS tag, to see the internationally-funded and backed attempt to deprive Israelis and Israel-supporters of their free speech. There has been almost no ‘academic freedom’ for non-liberals and pro-Israel faculty – it’s very diffucult (almost impossible) to get hired or promoted holding either openly ‘conservative’ or pro-Israel views.
We have several hundred posts over 15 years devoted to cancel culture against conservatives and BDS attempts to smother pro-Israelis and pro-Israel viewpoints. Shout-downs, distruptions, violence — it all predated the pro-Hamas protests starting after October 7, it has become baked into campus culture.
How bad has it been? Scroll through the Christina Hoff Sommers tag to see how she was tormented when she tried to speak on campuses. One of the nicest and most intellectually-rigorous non-liberal speakers was hounded relentlessly. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of similar stories in our archives of 15+ years at Legal Insurrection.
Now that the tide has turned politically, and campus DEI and pro-Jihadism are under pressure, it’s hard to have sympathy either intellectually or personally for the people who hunted people like me and the others who have born testimony to the repression.
Which brings me to a Letter to the Editor in The Wall Street Journal (h/t Steve McGuire), from which I pulled the headline to this post:
Regarding your editorial “Columbia Learns a Hard Lesson” (March 24): In a recent report about the Trump administration’s investigation into higher ed, Wesleyan University President Michael Roth says: “There is a lot of fear. I’ve never seen anything like it. . . . People are afraid to speak out.”If so, Mr. Roth hasn’t been paying attention. During my terms on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation, from 2015-21, many of my fellow trustees were afraid to speak out against MIT’s curtailment of free speech and excesses of affirmative action and DEI. The fear in higher education isn’t new; the groups who fear have simply flipped.John D. Chisholm
My response on X:
So true, there has been a reign of terror on campuses for a generation against almost everyone right of center and in the last decade pro Israel. Turns out the boycotters don’t like being boycotted.
In a better world, the aggressors of the past two decades would recognize the error of their ways. But this is not a better world. They are showing no signs that they have learned from the past, so they will try to repeat history if they gain the power again.
[Featured Image Student Mob at Middlebury Attacks Speaker and Sends Prof to Hospital – March 4, 2017]
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