Liz Magill and the Chairman of Penn's Board of Trustees Resigns

As you probably know, UPenn president Liz Magill resigned, as predicted, on Saturday.

She keeps her job as a professor of Bullshit.

Adam Carolla pointed out something about Magill's answers to the question of whether calling for genocide against Jews was against UPenn's rule -- she repeatedly said that if it crossed the line "into action," it was against the rules.

Well of course if you actually commit murder it's against the rules, Carolla exploded. That's obvious, but that's not what's being asked.

Is that the only thing that's against the rules?

That has certainly not been the only speech violation that's against UPenn's rules. Remember, UPenn told Will "Lia" Thomas' female swim team victims to keep silent about their discomfort about changing with Thomas or else face serious consequences.

Heather Mac Donald argues that conservatives chose the most expeditious path to getting vengeance on the woke left, but not the right one. And that the woke left will weaponize our mistake against us:

Critics of the American university have seized on what they perceive as the most efficacious means for discrediting academia. But though accusations of tolerance for the genocide of Jews guarantees the most media coverage, conservatives are making a mistake in highlighting that alleged tolerance as the main reason to revamp the university. This mistake will come back to haunt them.

Absent a complete turnover of university personnel, a renewed authority to limit speech will be used overwhelmingly against conservatives. Even now, Penn is weighing sanctions against law professor Amy Wax for her challenges to campus orthodoxy. Had the public consensus been that the universities' mistake was in not extending the same tolerance they showed to the pro-Hamas demonstrators to dissenters from leftist nostrums, Wax could have argued that she is entitled to the same protections for controversial speech. Now, with renewed support, even from the right, for student "safety," Penn can argue that its newfound concern for Jewish student safety requires it to intensify its solicitude for the "marginalized" groups whom Wax allegedly jeopardized with her contrarian opinions.

A colleague of Wax's has published an op-ed in the Washington Post unironically headlined: "To fight antisemitism on campuses, we must restrict speech." "Isn't it time for university presidents to rethink the role that open expression and academic freedom play in the educational mission of their institutions?" asks law professor Claire Finkelstein. However fanciful the question's premise--the universities currently honor academic freedom--it is chilling that the answer is increasingly affirmative, even from many on the right.

I think many on the right try to make the argument, which is difficult to make, that they have created this system, which we abhor and would like to see repudiated, but so long as they have this system of Safetyism in place, then Safetyism must be applied equally to everybody.

It's all a bit convoluted, I know. But everything fucking woke is convoluted.

What is the alternative, though? That I'm to support the wokies when they allow calls for genocide against Jews -- or whites or straights or men, for that matter -- and must suffer their censorship and debanking if I say anything that merely hurts the feeling of one of their protected groups?

I think Heather Mac Donald has a point -- but I think she's out to lunch to suggest that there is some strategically perfect play here.

I'm supposed to support these women who have championed the suppression of free speech on campus for their entire terms, because in this one case, supporting calls for intifada on campus, they made arguably the right, principled free speech absolutist call?

Mac Donald is making the point that by demanding Magill's ouster, we're also inadvertently supporting the idea that universities should punish unpopular speech. The trouble is, by supporting Magill, we'd also be supporting the idea that universities should punish unpopular speech, because Magill's entire term has been all about that.

So what are we to do? I just don't see a clean path to full victory here. Is there some way we can actually pressure Harvard, UPenn, and MIT to renounce their entire manner of punishing free speech going forward?

No, there's not.

So to be honest I think just sticking a knife in where you can is the only option open to us.

Well put:

It is possible to argue two things at once:

1) we should have true free speech on college campuses; and

2) as long as you are going to have and enforce "speech codes" we want them enforced equally to leftists as they are to righties.

McDonald thinks that if you argue "1", you cannot argue "2". That's stupid.It's called arguing in the alternative. Yes, I would prefer "1" in a perfect world, and I will try to fight for 1, but in the meantime i'm going to demand that "2" be applied.

I'm against a lot of the idiocy in the tax code, but I'm going to take advantage of the stuff as long as it's on the books. I'm not paying more in taxes out of "principle". The left never does, why should I?

Posted by: I forgot my name b/c I haven't posted in 6 months

You'll never believe this -- SNL was 1, unfunny in covering this story and 2, found a way to make the people objecting to the embrace of intifada on campuses the bad guys.

posted by Disinformation Expert Ace at 12:25 PM

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