Window Dressing: Day After Congressional Letter Threatening Funding, Cornell Condemns Student Social Media Post That “Zionists Must Die”
“The problem is not what some student put on his or her personal social media, as hateful as the statements may be, but the campus DEI culture that enables and encourages such hatred based on false oppressor-oppressed and decolonization narratives that leave Israel and Jews dehumanized.”
One of the more odd Cornell presidential statements showed up in everyone’s email at 2:16 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, January 11, 2024:
Dear Cornell community,
This morning we learned of a post on social media allegedly from a Cornell student explicitly stating that “Zionists must die.” Cornell Police and the Office of Student Conduct are investigating and if we determine that it was posted by a member of the Cornell community, they will be held fully accountable and appropriately sanctioned. This post is heinous, and I condemn it in the strongest terms.
Sincerely,
Martha E. Pollack
President
Someone posted something on the internet. That person “allegedly” is a Cornell student. (It does appear to be a Cornell student, the post has been circulating widely after the all-campus email blast.)
Sure, the statement was offensive, but it’s no more offensive than the chants for “Intifada” and “From the River To The Sea” that are common on campus. If anything, saying “Zionists must die” is a more honest reflection of the sentiment of the anti-Israel activists on and off campus – that student said the quiet part out loud, and now may be punished. But we all know it’s what other students mean by the other slogans, so why did THIS social media post merit a presidential statement? Presidential statements are not that common.
The social media post was not a ‘true threat’ unlike the other Cornell student last fall who threatened in a popular chat room to shoot up the Kosher dining hall and slit people’s throats. (That person now is in federal custody.) The statement “Zionists must die” probably is protected under the First Amendment when done as a generalized social media post, but Cornell like many universities invokes the First Amendment selectively. Unlike the statement by a prominent Cornell professor about feeling “exhilarated” on October 7, made before a crowd that included students and was not far from campus, it’s not clear what connection to campus this social media post had that required university administration involvement.
The whole thing struck me as odd. While I obviously disagree with the sentiment in the social media post, I’m also uncomfortable with the Cornell administration serving as internet hall monitor, at least not for things that do not directly touch campus. So WHY the presidential statement and all-campus email?
Then the timing seemed to make sense.
Someone sent me or I saw on Twitter (I don’t remember which) a tweet on January 11 afternoon from Rep. Jason Smith, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, indicating that earlier in the week a letter was sent to the presidents of Cornell, Harvard, U. Penn, and MIT:
Earlier this week, I sent a letter to the presidents of Harvard, MIT, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania demanding additional information about why they failed to protect their Jewish students from antisemitic violence and harassment.
My letter details how it is incumbent upon these universities – which enjoy lucrative financial benefits through the tax code – to protect their students, and their failure to do so calls into question their tax-exempt status.
Read my full letter below⬇️⬇️⬇️
https://gop-waysandmeans.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Chair-Smith-Letter-to-Universities-on-Antisemitism.pdf
Earlier this week, I sent a letter to the presidents of Harvard, MIT, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania demanding additional information about why they failed to protect their Jewish students from antisemitic violence and harassment.
My letter details how it is…
— Rep. Jason Smith (@RepJasonSmith) January 11, 2024
The letter, dated January 10, 2024 (full embed at bottom of post), the day before Cornell’s presidential statement about the social media post, put the schools’ federal tax exempt status and federal funding on the line because of the weak reaction to campus antisemitism (emphasis added):
… As you know, your institutions are aided by the beneficial treatment provided to nonprofit, tax-exempt entities. Your universities also receive funding from federal grants and appropriations, support for student loan assistance, lucrative financial benefits from your taxexempt status, and the advantageous tax treatment of your institutions’ endowments.
You may also be aware that there are certain standards your institutions must meet to receive this highly advantageous and preferential treatment…. Additionally, since your institutions receive federal funds from the U.S. Department of Education, you are also required to comply with relevant antidiscrimination laws.4
Given the disappointing and lackluster responses by your respective universities to Hamas’ attacks and your subsequent failure to adequately protect Jewish students from discrimination and harassment, we question whether your institutions are satisfying the requirements to receive these benefits….
This, however, is not the first time we have heard of concerning responses to antisemitism on college campuses. During a November 15, 2023, U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means hearing, we heard from a student at Cornell University, Talia Dror, who shared that, “[s]tudents, professors and administrators at Cornell celebrated the massacre of innocent civilians,”8 and that while Cornell made firm statements on a variety of topics and incidents in the past, the university was silent when it came to condemning explicit antisemitism and endorsements of terrorism under the guise of free speech.9
This alarming conduct is not limited to statements made during congressional hearings. Rather, it also includes behavior occurring on your campuses. Look no further than Cornell, where antisemitic threats of violence targeting Jewish students were posted on message boards, eventually leading to an Federal Bureau of Investigation (“FBI”) investigation and federal charges against the student who made the direct and violent threats.10 ….
Free speech should be protected – even speech we disdain. But your universities have long practiced the protection of preferred speech rather than truly protecting all speech. In so doing, you appear to have lost the ability to recognize when speech crosses the line into conduct, especially on topics that do not fit into your preferred categories. You have also failed to exercise effective leadership to handle protected antisemitic speech in the way a leader should – with more speech. As leaders on your campuses, you set the tone. You have found your voices before on numerous other topics, but not on this one. If antisemitic speech crosses the line into unprotected conduct, it must be punished severely. If disgusting antisemitic speech remains in the protected category, it should be condemned, not coddled. Your words and actions matter. Condemning barbaric terrorism against Israel and disgusting antisemitism should not be difficult. Protecting Jewish students on campus as you protect other students, should not be a challenge. This is not that hard….
These actions, inconsistencies, and lack of a substantive response raise several questions, including whether your institutions are fulfilling their educational purposes as required to receive 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, and whether your institutions are adequately protecting Jewish students from harassment and acts of violence in compliance with antidiscrimination laws….
Ultimately, as the U.S. House Committee with primary jurisdiction over tax-exempt institutions and the treatment of their endowments, we are left to wonder whether reexamining the current benefits and tax treatment afforded to your institutions is necessary.
I bet that letter got attention.
Only the Cornell administration knows its internal deliberations, but the presidential statement about the student’s social media post sure seems to be following the congressional directive the day before to “condemn” protected “disgusting antisemitic speech.” It looks like window dressing to satisfy congressional investigators that Cornell is doing ‘something’ so as to protect it’s tax-exempt status and federal funding from being challenged.
Yet as I have pointed out many times in the past, this same administration has doubled down on the racialist group identity Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) obsession that contributes to the antisemitism and anti-Israel vitriol on campus. See, My Call To Action For The Cornell Board of Trustees. How about trying to change the culture the administration helped create of which this student is a symptom?
The congressional letter raised the issue of DEI as well:
This alarming approach to protecting free speech while not simultaneously protecting students on campuses comes at a time when diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI”) activity is surging across the country.23 Despite the burgeoning growth of this sector and purported support for all people regardless of background across the country, Jewish students are facing antisemitism more than ever,24 and reports suggest that campus DEI staff “are unwelcoming toward Jewish students.”25 The lack of support for Jewish students from the DEI community does not only place Jewish students at risk, contrary to the DEI framework, but also highlights the issues with embracing divisive DEI bureaucracies that stifle dissent, shun different or opposing perspectives, and raise questions about moral clarity. As part of your campuses’ educational missions, all students should be protected and supported regardless of background. Specialized, divisive, and ideologically driven DEI bureaucracies are not the answer.
Condeming some student for something on the internet is easy. Dismantling DEI, which has been a signature agenda-item for this Cornell administration since the announcement of a presidential ‘anti-racism’ initiative in July 2020 (in reaction to George Floyd), would take much more self-reflection and courage to admit failure and correct course.
Fox News digital (additional link) wrote about the presidential statement and my criticisms, in an article that spent multiple days on the home page:
A prominent Cornell University professor has called the Ivy League president’s recent statement on continued antisemitism on campus mere “window dressing” as the school faces threats of the removal of federal funding.
“Coming a day after a congressional letter putting Cornell’s federal funding at risk, the Cornell administration’s reaction seems like window dressing, to make it seem they are doing something,” William Jacobson, a clinical professor at Cornell Law School who joined the faculty in 2007, said in a statement to Fox News Digital….
Following Pollack’s statement and Smith’s letter, Jacobson pointed to the university’s DEI culture as the root cause of continued antisemitism.
“The problem is not what some student put on his or her personal social media, as hateful as the statements may be, but the campus DEI culture that enables and encourages such hatred based on false oppressor-oppressed and decolonization narratives that leave Israel and Jews dehumanized,” Jacobson said.
The Cornell professor said that the administration appears to be “doubling down on DEI” rather than eliminating it altogether.
“The administration is doubling down on DEI rather than eliminating it,” Jacobson said. “I once again call on the Cornell administration and Board of Trustees to begin the process of eliminating the group-identity balkanization of the campus, and to return us to the focus on academics and the rights and dignity of the individual.”
Rep. Jason Smith and Cornell University did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
I’m awaiting the Cornell presidential statement and Board of Trustees announcement admitting that the DEI initiative focused on identity groups was a failure and mistake, that DEI is being dismantled, and that a new course is being charted centered around the rights and dignity of every individual without regard to race or ethnicity.
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Comments
“Window dressing” is correct, but a very soft way of describing it.
Part of Cornell’s problem might be related to Cornell’s close relationship to Qatar. I recently read a description of Qatar’s close relationship with Hamas at Memri. Cornell is probably trying to avoid having to choose between Israel and Qatar.
As a reference point:
Weill Cornell Medicine in Qatar, the first US medical school established outside the United States, is at the forefront of medical education, biomedical research, and population health in the Middle East. It was founded in 2001 through a partnership between Cornell University and the Qatar Foundation. The main source of funding comes from the State of Qatar, through the Qatar National Research Fund, a member organization of Qatar Foundation.
Professor, Given the actions of Hamas, I would say that “Zionists must die” is an actionable threat. After all. Hamas has killed a bunch of people in a heinous manner, and its supporters continue to threaten to do it again.
I think we should take them seriously, because if we do not do it now, we will soon have to deal with murders within our country.
No, it’s not a threat at all, and is certainly not a true threat. It’s not threatening murder, it’s merely advocating it, and mere advocacy is at the very core of the freedom of speech. In a free country one is free to advocate absolutely anything at all, including genocide, slavery, and insurrection. One is not free to incite those things, but this is not incitement; it is neither intended nor likely to cause anyone to imminently carry out the advocated act, and incitement requires all three of those elements.
Suppose the people invading the kosher dining room had used the passive rather than an active speech, would that be protected speech?
What people invading which kosher dining room? And what do you mean by “used the passive rather than an active speech”?
If you are referring to the threat to shoot up the kosher hall at Cornell (in which case, what invasion?), and supposing that rather than threaten to shoot the place up the email had said “Someone ought to shoot that place up”, then yes, that would absolutely be protected speech. It’s not even a question. How would you distinguish it from “We’re not a revengent organization, but if our President, our Congress, our Supreme Court, continues to suppress the white, Caucasian race, it’s possible that there might have to be some revengeance taken”, or, referring to the failed assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, “if they go for him again, I hope they get him”?
I disagree with your argument. In trying to understand your argument, does a Jewish student actually have to be attacked or murdered on campus before the chant is determined to be a threat. Do safe spaces and harassment free zones not apply to Jewish students because of their faith and religious beliefs?
“Zionists must die” is a call to action. If not, then what is it? It’s certainly not a compliment or a funny slogan. It’s chanted for a reason that doing so will influence a weak minded person to commit the act of killing a Jew.
To prove a point: Try chanting “Blacks must die”, or “Gays must die”, or “Palestinians must die” on campus and see how far that gets you before the FBI shows up at your front door at 5:00 AM.
Even if that were to happen, it still wouldn’t be a threat.
It is advocacy, which is precisely what the first amendment protects. That’s not a matter of opinion, and not controversial; it’s black letter law.
That is just not true. You may well be expelled, but the FBI won’t be able to touch you. If they do, you sue them as individuals, they don’t get qualified immunity, and you take their houses and pensions. They know this, so they won’t do it.
“Zionists must die,” while despicable, is protected speech. It was sent as an all-campus email. As the professor noted, it is not the same as the Hilel incident, which contained a direct threat to Cornell students.
Both sides are idiots.
The right answer to Zionists must die is that Israel has a history of trying to raise the standard of living of Palestinians through trade (trade is the source of all wealth), and it’s always been sabotaged with fatal results by Hamas.
Sick Palestinians still are treated in Israeli hospitals.
Ask why it isn’t Palestinians that must die, all things considered.
Get the criteria used.
Of course they’re trying to look clean, after they got caught.
Unfortunately for them, one-off window dressing only works if the scrutinizers look away. You keep looking clean under ongoing scrutiny by actually being clean.
Kinda tells us what oversight has to do here.
The vile Dhimmi-crats’ and Muslim supremacists’/Islamofascists’ persistent invoking of “Zionist” and “Zionism” as derogatory epithets isn’t fooling people possessing common sense and moral probity.
A “Zionist” is simply a person who supports Jews’ right to self-determination and their right to live in the modern revival of their millennia-old, ancient homeland, unmolested by Muslims’ 1,400-year-old displays of supremacism, totalitarianism, belligerence and hatred. So, references to the word “Zionist” are simply an obvious substitute for “Jew.”
It’s not a simple substitute for “Jew”, because there are very many zionists who are not themselves Jews. One needn’t be a Jew to support Jewish people’s rights, just as one needn’t be black to support black people’s rights.
It is also technically possible to be anti-zionist while not being antisemitic. But one cannot support the “Palestinian” cause without being antisemitic, and in practice almost all “anti-zionists” do support that cause, which means that their “anti-zionism” is motivated by their antisemitism.
The major moral insight of Judaism is that everybody is a Jew. The situation that their religion puts them in is the human situation in general.
You must study different Jewish texts than I do as I can find nothing in Gemara, Tanakh, Halacha or (from what little of it I have studied) chasidus to support your most interesting conclusion.
Would they all DO support is the idea that every human being was created in the Divine image, is there four of infinite worth, & has the duty and responsibility to conform their behavior to the Creator’s standards, and the Jews (through their behavior and adherence to the standards, which are considerably more demanding than they are for NJ) have the special mission to bring that message to humanity.
You need a commentator who’s attuned to it. Emmanuel Levinas _DIfficult Freedom: Essays on Judaism_.
If it weren’t the human condition in general, it would just be another collection of odd rituals.
One quote at hand is commentary on Sanhedrin 98b-99a
“We have just seen that the Messiah is the just man who suffers, who has taken on the suffering of others. Who finally takes on the suffering of others, if not the being who says ‘Me’ [Moi]?
The fact of not evading the burden imposed by the suffering of others defines ipseity itself. All persons are the Messiah.” p.89
Everybody is a Jew is somewhere I don’t have my finger on, either there or in his _Nine Talmudic Readings_.
PS Levinas’s orientation is the phenomenology of ethics, how ethics presents itself to consciousness, as a philosophical problem. The sacred texts are a resource, but that makes his orientation pretty universal. The simplest way in is his chapter “A Religion for Adults” in Difficult Freedom.
“Ethics is not the corollary of the vision of God, it is that very vision. Ethics is an optic, such that everything I know of God and everything I can hear of His word and reasonably say to Him must find an ethical expression. In the Holy Ark from which the voice of God is heard by Moses, there are only the tablets of the Law. The knowledge of God which we can have and which is expressed, according to Maimonides, in the form of negative attributes, receives a positive meaning from the moral “God is merciful,’ which means : “Be merciful like Him.’ The attributes of God are given not in the indicative, but in the imperative. The knowledge of God comes to us like a commandment, like a Mitzvah. To know God is to know what must be done…” p.17
My feeling is that Levinas is rescuing the religion by showing it to be universal, as an orientation.
This comments section needs an edit feature. That should be therefore, not there four, and non-Jews, not NJ.
Occupational hazards of dictating into one’s phone while walking.
That is exactly the opposite of the truth. Judaism says that one must not need to be a Jew to be righteous, but in Judaism there is a clear demarcation between Jews and Gentiles. In the Torah G-d orders Jews NOT to assimilate.
I take that as referring to rituals, not the moral system.
I’m remembering that “Everybody is a Jew” is a final line of an essay on Chosen People, “chosen” meaning chosen for special responsibilities, which turn out to be the responsibilities every man has for his others. This comes close
“A truth is universal when it applies to every reasonable being. A religion is universal when it is open to all. In this sense, the Judaism that links the Divine to the moral has always aspired to be universal. But the revelation of morality, which discovers a human society, also discovers the place of election, which, in this universal society, returns to the person who receives this revelation. This election is made up not of privileges but of responsibilities. It is a nobility based not on royalties or a birthright conferred by divine caprice, but on the position of each human I. Each one, as an ‘I’, is separate from all the others to whom the moral duty is due. The basic intuition of the majority perhaps consists in perceiving that I am not the equal of the Other. This applies in the very strict sense: I see myself obligated with respect to the Other; consequently I am infinitely more demanding of myself than of others. “The more just I am, the more harshly I am judges,” states one Talmudic text.
From then on, there is no moral awareness that is not an awareness of this exceptional position, an awareness of being chosen. Reciprocity is a structure founded on an original inequality. For equality to makes its entry into the world, beings must be able demand more of themselves than of the Other, feel responsibilities on which the fate of humanity hangs…”
p.21-22
Levinas is not an authority on Judaism. Most serious scholars of Judaism have probably never even heard of him. He is certainly not taught in even the most modern yeshivos!
That is contrary to thousands of years of Jewish teaching, which emphasizes that it is made up of both privileges and responsibilities. More importantly, those responsibilities are not to gentiles but to God. The Jewish people’s mission in the world is not towards other nations; it is focused inward on itself and on God, not on the rest of the world. When Isaiah said that Israel would be the nations’ light, and that the nations would walk by its light, he meant not that Israel would reach out to them or preach to them, but that they would see Israel’s example and follow it of their own accord.
They are not really separable.
Levinas got invited to speak to Jewish religious experts fairly often, so they’re interested. I’m drawing a blank of where I have a transcript. Google turns up this though:
In 1947, much before his famous works, he wrote “…Judaism became aware that with respect to ideas it had nothing to defend against the world. Not that its ideas were inferior to or less true than the surrounding civilization, but because, poured into the common patrimony of humanity, the idea no longer belongs to you. In the final analysis, the idea has no origin. Of what one has, it is least private; a world where one communicates by ideas is a world of equals.”
https://jst.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2018/08/beingJewish.pdf
Other than ideas there’s just ancestor worship.
I doubt that very much. Any “experts” who invited him to speak to them were probably no more authentic than he was.
That’s nonsense on stilts. It’s nonsense of any idea; every idea has an originator. All the more so when dealing with ideas whose Originator is not even human.
Huh????!!! That is possibly the most bizarre statement I have ever seen about the topic. Universalism is a Christian teaching, and very much not a Jewish one.
Jewish teaching cannot be clearer about the fundamental and existential difference between Jews and gentiles. Any teaching that denies that distinction or minimizes it is not Jewish.
The Torah says that Israel is meant to be “a people that dwells alone, and is not counted among the nations”.
When Yitzchak Rabin triumphantly announced that his so-called “peace” treaties with Jordan and the PLO meant that “We are no longer a people that dwells alone”, he was explicitly rejecting the Torah and everything Jews stand for.
Not for the first time either, or the last. The last thing he did before being shot was to publicly sing a nihilist and anti-patriotic song denying that there is anything after death; he had the lyrics in his pocket as he died. This was a final rejection of Jewish values.
Fair enough, Milhouse. Sure, not every Zionist is a Jew. Churchill proudly proclaimed, “I am a Zionist. And, I’m aware that the Satmar sect (I believe) opposed the formation of the state of Israel, on the basis that the founding was improper, before the messiah’s arrival.
That said, my point is that in the specific context of brazen, Jew-hating sentiment, references to “Zionist” are transparent code for “Jew.” All because of the fig leaf evasion proffered by dhimmis and Dhimmi-crats, that posits that being “anti-Zionist” is not the same thing as being anti-Semitic. Which is or could be theoretically true, but for the fact that the dhimmis’ and Dhimmi-crats’ so-called “anti-Zionist” sentiments are as reliably dishonest, unfair, slanderous and ignorant as their “criticisms” of Israel (e.g., Gaza is an “open-air prison;” Israel is a “colonial-settler” project; Israel is an apartheid state; Israel is committing genocide against the Arab Muslim “Palestinians;” etc. etc.).
What we’re witnessing is the Left’s attempt — aided by their Muslim supremacist allies — to turn the laudable and innocuous concept of Zionism into a dirty word, under the premise that Zionism is alleged “white supremacy.” Yes, that contention has already been frequently made, as manifestly absurd as it is.
Most religious Jews opposed the establishment of the State of Israel, and described themselves as “anti-zionist”. Satmar is unique only in refusing to accept that they lost that dispute and adapt to the new reality that the state exists and must be dealt with.
But when Satmar describes itself as “anti-zionist”, the definition of “zionism” that it has in mind and that it opposes is only significant from a very close-up perspective. Satmar emphatically does not support the “Palestinian” cause, and does all it can to distance itself from that. From the point of view of most so-called “anti-zionists” in the world, Satmar is even more zionist than the so-called “zionists”, many/most of whom have since descended into the left-wing position that they call “post-zionism”.
Satmar, like the zionists and even more so, asserts that the Land of Israel belongs to the People of Israel, and that the Arabs are trespassers there. Satmarers, like all observant Jews, pray three times a day for the reestablishment of David’s kingdom in the Land of Israel. The only dispute is over the timing. From a gentile perspective, any gentile perspective, that makes Satmarers zionist!
Thank you; I appreciate your background elaboration on this.
PS: The twenty or thirty crazy men in hasidic-type costume who appear at pro-“Palestinian” rallies and are constantly shown on TV ranting about Israeli “genocide” are not Satmar. In fact they’re not even Neturei Karta, though they have appropriated that name. They don’t dare show their faces in real Neturei Karta synagogues, lest they get the **** beaten out of them. They’re mostly mentally ill people who love the publicity; the rest are being paid to do this. (Their former leader, Moshe Hirsch, was found to be literally on Arafat’s payroll list, when the IDF raided Arafat’s HQ and seized his papers.)
They are to Neturei Karta what the Tzfatim are to Chabad, or what Fred Phelps was to Baptists.
It isn’t possible without a time machine.
Being anti-Zionist would mean you favor ethnic cleansing of a majority of Jews from their homes (at best; with genocide being a lot more likely).
The only way to be anti-Zionist without that would be a time machine to make sure Jews are never there in the first place.
Simon Schama is someone I usually disagree with, he did a great job defining zionism and starting a pushback on using it as an epithet (which is done in order to dehumanize Jews as subhuman. Ask most anti-Semites before WW2 and they would tell you they just hate the way Jews monopolize institutions and keep everyone else out).
No, it doesn’t have to mean that. Supporting the “Palestinian” cause does mean that. But it is possible to oppose zionism without supporting the “Palestinians”, and in that case it’s possible to be anti-zionist without being antisemitic.
Satmar is anti-zionist by its own definition, but by the definition used by the broad “anti-zionist” (i.e. pro-“Palestinian”) movement, Satmar is super-zionist.
These feckless Cornell administrators are only moved to action — as minimal and lacking in forcefulness as such action is — when their funding dollars are threatened. These reprobates lack the basic decency and moral probity to proactively punish Jew-hating bigots as a reflexive, morally proper course of action.
I graduated Cornell Engineering in the 1970’s. Saw in Cornell Review that a large portion of Carpenter (Engineering) Library is being repurposed to DEI. So yes, doubling down for sure.
Because blacks are under-represented in engineering at cornell. So next comes the AfroEngineering course, taught by black professor, with no grade less than B, and no final exam. It won’t end there, as other DEI frauds demand courses like GayGeology, and FeministPhysics.
Another chick in charge?? What, were they having a sale on female Presidents? I know you only have to pay them 77% as much as the guys, but … sheesh.
I get a kick out of her letter. “Zionists must die” …. I hate to break it to her but … everyone must die. It goes along with “everyone must pay taxes” (except for Hunter).
This is all getting pretty comical. I have to say that I feel a lot safer with these idiots running Ivy League schools and not out in the real world designing safety tests for airplane door plugs or building pedestrian bridges or what have you.
Simpleton.
All these universities
How do you send your kid to any of them outside of Liberty or Heritage ?
Generally people don’t “send” their kids to any university. The kids choose on their own where to go, and the only choice the parents have is whether to pay for it or be the kids’ enemies.
I love Amy Wax. She says the colleges are run by midwit gynocrats. There is more explanation in this succinct description than in the tons of articles written on the problem.
I understand the Office of Student Conduct investigating, but what the **** are the police doing here? This is clearly protected speech, and thus not only not illegal but can’t be illegal, so the very involvement of the police, and its chilling effect on others who might write a similar thing, is itself a violation of the first amendment.
Cornell is a private university, not bound by the first amendment, so it can and should discipline the student who wrote that, since that is not the way it should want its students to behave. But the police must remain strictly out of it unless there is an actual threat, which this is not.
(It’s not only not a “true threat”, it’s not a threat at all. “X must die” is not the same as “I will kill X”, which is a threat, but may still not be a “true threat”, depending on the context.)
Sure the speech itself isn’t actionable as crime on its own. Though making such statements, which many do (correctly or incorrectly) in fact perceive as threat given the context, does IMO warrant further investigation of the individuals and/or groups making the statements. Has the individual posted other statements that are a direct threat? Have they purchased 500 lbs of ammonium nitrate? Add up all the separate clues, it any, and determine if the person is an actual threat or just a kooky loudmouth keyboard wannabe.
If I send out an email stating “Democrats are the real threat to democracy; they should be wiped out,” should I be investigated? Have my private email account examined, my social media history scrutinized, my purchase history probed?
I’ve read that sentiment on several conservative blogs, posted by numerous participants — I may have even read it here. Would Democrats perceive my statement as a direct threat?
No, b/c there isn’t any underlying context which would make the potential harm in your example more than irrational fear. It isn’t contingent upon how a person views but how a rational person views it. We can’t go to place where Karen is in charge but we also have to stop dropping the ball on folks shooting up places who LEO already knew about but our mental health system no longer provides effective answers for.
Free speech is allowed. Say and write whatever you wish. However other people do get to decide from the general context and your specific language used whether a rational person would view the speech as something to ID you for further examination. Not a neurotic Karen not some soft as butter, looking to be offended person or for a reason to shut you up based solely on the speech.
As an example this case. No LEO shouldn’t SWAT the guy that’s not called for. But taking a look at his public social media posts, who he ‘likes’, who he follows. If this turns up association with known bad guys or groups or recent unusual (for him) purchases then maybe look into a warrant for email. If a guy is writing odd shit and making their first weapons purchase, and buying 5000 lbs of ammonium nitrate and publicly posting about it ….I think that’s enough to take a deeper look. Speech + behavior not just speech.
What they are doing is letting you know neither is actually investigating by adding their name to it.
Why would muzzies want to shoot up the kosher dining hall? Kosher same as halal. Anywho those types threats need to be taken seriously in this era of mass school shootings.
1. I have seen nothing to indicate that Patrick Dai, the student who made the threat, is a Moslem. He certainly didn’t grow up that way; it’s possible that he converted, but there’s been nothing in the news to indicate that.
2. Why shoot up the kosher dining hall? Because that’s where you’ll find Jews. That’s why. Plain and simple.
3. Kosher isn’t the same as halal; they’re similar in principle, but not the same. In general kosher is stricter than halal, but that is only in general. Depending on their madhab, most Moslems can eat kosher food unless it contains alcohol; but Jews can’t eat most halal food.