Tragedy in one shitty act
Far-Left Students and Faculty: We’d sooner burn universities to the ground than allow them to remain safe for the hated Zionist Jews, the baby-killing demons of the earth. We’ll disrupt their classes, bar them from student activities, smash their Hillel centers, take over campus buildings and quads, and chant for Hezbollah and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades to eradicate them like vermin. We’ll do all this because we’ve so thoroughly learned the lessons of the Holocaust.
Trump Administration [cackling]: Burn universities to the ground, you say? What a coincidence! We’d love nothing more than to do exactly that. Happy to oblige you.
Far-Left Students and Faculty: You fascist scum. We didn’t mean “call our bluff”! Was it the campus Zionists who ratted us out to you? It was, wasn’t it? You can’t do this without due process; we have rights!
Trump Administration: We don’t answer to you and we don’t care about “due process” or your supposed “rights.” We’re cutting all your funding, effective immediately. Actually, since you leftists don’t have much funding to speak of, let’s just cut any university funding whatsoever that we can reach. Cancer studies. Overhead on NIH grants. Student aid. Fellowships. Whatever universities use to keep the lights on. The more essential it is, the longer it took to build, the more we’ll enjoy the elitist professors’ screams of anguish as we destroy it all in a matter of weeks.
Far-Left Students and Faculty: This is the end, then. But if our whole little world must go up in flames, at least we’ll die having never compromised our most fundamental moral principle: the eradication of the State of Israel and the death of its inhabitants.
Sane Majorities at Universities, Including Almost Everyone in STEM: [don’t get a speaking part in this play. They’ve already bled out on the street, killed in the crossfire]
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Comment #1 March 31st, 2025 at 1:06 am
The trump administration’s actions w.r.t. Columbia are essentially DEI from the right—new sensitivity trainings, for what the university calls antisemitism; new diversity hiring initiatives, for pro-Israel scholars; new administrators, to oversee the hiring—with a lot more coercion. We are dismantling crucial American research because of a foreign conflict. This isn’t how a nation-state works.
Comment #2 March 31st, 2025 at 1:11 am
Has anything new happened?
Comment #3 March 31st, 2025 at 2:50 am
You don’t think the Trump administration would have found a different excuse to cut university funding?
Comment #4 March 31st, 2025 at 5:09 am
I’m only here today (on planet Earth) because in the 1940s a Nazi bullet missed my father’s head by inches. Odd how life runs in cycles, how history repeats itself, and there is no such thing as “Never again!”. Approaching my own end of life, I too feel I’ll be dodging Nazi bullets in some form…. just in America though, instead of Germany.
Comment #5 March 31st, 2025 at 7:44 am
Let’s not forget the rallies, activism, and energy inspiring the one to vote for the other.
Comment #6 March 31st, 2025 at 9:01 am
UAE #2:
Has anything new happened?
Weeks’ worth of news happen every day (Columbia’s president steps down, more students detained, more scientists write about their cancelled grants…). So in a broader sense, no, nothing new has happened.
Comment #7 March 31st, 2025 at 9:02 am
Emilio #3:
You don’t think the Trump administration would have found a different excuse to cut university funding?
Plausibly they would have. We handed them this one on a silver platter.
Comment #8 March 31st, 2025 at 9:30 am
If this were “only” the universities, we might be content. Sadly this is plain everything. Feels like my relatives described Germany in 1933, with a crucial difference. Back then, it was one crazy person and the others reluctantly bowing to him. Now it feels the “one crazy person” is just a pawn in the hands of a large swath of far-right billionaires and “politicians” pushing for the destruction of everything that the USA was before.
Comment #9 March 31st, 2025 at 10:23 am
I agree this is a travesty. But you forgot the prologue where the colleges took part of the STEM overhead and spent it on bringing in more of those left-wing students and faculty.
And STEM people said nothing. Because they were afraid to say anything.
Comment #10 March 31st, 2025 at 10:25 am
Far-left students and faculty don’t call the shots, administrators do. If the “sane majority” decided to leave administration to the far-left, it has only itself to blame.
Comment #11 March 31st, 2025 at 10:48 am
For how dark and sad things are right now, whether it was intentional attempt at some dark humor or not, I did at least chuckle at stem folks “not getting a speaking part”. Sadly 100% spot on. Almost everyone I interact with day to day is just another victim of crossfire
Comment #12 March 31st, 2025 at 12:02 pm
This is more broadly a war on immigration where the Trump admin wins with these deportations despite everything else they do. And also an attack on the ‘elites’. Perhaps, the way to look at it is that this is the platform on which Trump was elected.
https://x.com/Noahpinion/status/1906726733367173299
Comment #13 March 31st, 2025 at 12:18 pm
Defunding higher education has been a long-term goal of the right. They were coming for it no matter what. I see Trump as merely the useful idiot who plays golf while Steven Miller runs the government.
I have an analogous case with the rights of trans people. (I am the proud father of a trans woman, whom I love dearly.) All the discussion about trans people in sports was a stalking horse for kicking them out of government and denying them care, and labeling them as perverts and liars.
I have friends who blame those activists who pushed back in absolute terms and colorful language against banning trans people from sports. I think this is misguided. Absolute bans of trans people were always the goal. This was always coming at us.
Comment #14 March 31st, 2025 at 1:13 pm
@Jay #13 Unfortunately I don’t see right wanting to destroy higher education as unexpected.
The higher education has been (and what’s more important has been seen as!) an avowed enemy of the right for quite a long time. It appears to have made adherence to the hard-left ideology a prerequisite for getting into the “temple of learning”. How else can you explain Khymani James getting into Columbia or the guy whose college essay was “#blacklivesmatter” repeated a hundred times getting into Stanford and being celebrated for this?
Any many things that the right hates (e.g. DEI) has been supported by “science” coming out of the universities… Science being in quotes because more and more it is coming out that the claims were bogus to begin with.
It this fair to the vast majority of the academia? Not really. But they have been content with it. Alas, this meant that more and more people gave up on elite academia and it has lost a lot of potential defenders.
I wish Boaz Barak has written https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/3/28/barak-harvard-must-convince-america-of-its-value/ 2 years ago and not last week. But maybe then he was content with the state of the world.
Comment #15 March 31st, 2025 at 1:30 pm
Not only universities allowed the administrations go far left, almost entire humanities went far left, spreading nonsense and suppressing free thought. That hurt academia well before Trump and well before the recent wave of openly antisemitic riots.
When a patient ignores spreading gangrene for too long, an amputation may become inevitable. Unfortunately, Trump is not exactly known for nuanced approach. His tool is not a scalpel but a saw. That may indeed hurt the “sane majorities” that, alas, chose to remain silent for way too long.
Unless the universities act in a meaningful way to cure themselves, I’m afraid that more butchering is coming. Something like freezing all assets that came from foreign sources. Perhaps even de-accreditation of Columbia as an example to others.
One way out of this would be an earnest university reform from within. The administrations that caused many of the problems are not likely to act in a meaningful way on their own. The question is: can the “sane majorities” cause sufficient changes in the universities? What mechanisms do you have to influence university policies? If the sane is indeed the majority, and can they act?
The day after Trump froze the $400M to Columbia UCLA announced an initiative to combat campus antisemitism. The first amputation worked. The question is: can the “sane majorities” enact change before the next one?
Comment #16 March 31st, 2025 at 2:04 pm
Far leftists might be every bit as evil ar far rightists.
But there are a lot less of them. There are vastly more far rightists, they are vastly more dangerous, and they are in cahoots with the people running things. Something to worry about.
Far leftists might have been scary at a couple places like Columbia and Berkley, but most places they are basically nonexistant. I work at a mid to large midwest university, well known for being progressive, and leftists are lucky to be able to scroung up a half dozen people for anything, and everyone laughs at them when they do.
The worst problem with leftists is that they give the well funded, ready to jump, rightwing media ammunition, with bad results. For example, the inane “defund the police” stunt appears to have made a major change in US political affiliation. This has resulted in a large shift — particularly among Asian Americans, Latin Americans, and African Americans — to the Republican party. Thanks a lot!
Comment #17 March 31st, 2025 at 2:45 pm
Scott,
I’m a big fan and occasional commenter on this blog, and I think you’re way off here. You’re extremely aware of how mindlessly destructive the second Trump administration is toward academia, so why in this post and your other recent post on Columbia do you even mention the enormously less powerful protestors as a secondary cause of the problems? How many and which protestors suggested that it would be acceptable to burn down universities if they don’t oppose Zionism, and what part of the left do you think they represent?
Comment #18 March 31st, 2025 at 4:01 pm
Man, but do your posts and Dr. Woit’s posts have me torn. On one hand you’ve been agreeable and have used suppositional language with him. Tbf I think he owes you an apology and should be more specific about what he means by “misinformation out of Columbia.” Clarity is kindness, right?
That said, I think he deserves to be taken seriously on the point that this isn’t really about antisemitism to Trump. Trump eliminating $400 mil in funding to combat antisemitism is about as convincing to me as his implementing reciprocal tariffs to fight drug trafficking.
Professors are enemies of the state, thus spoke JD Vance, so what can the President conceivably do to rein in the enemy and what are more or less incubators of political opposition? A good first step is to make an example out of an Ivy League institution by leveraging timely and highly-publicized problems: antisemitism, faculty infighting, DEI this, DEI that. Boy did my university snap into place fast!
But that is just the projection of Trump’s anti-intellectualism state vector in higher ed space. How about the healthcare space, which is my realm? Why is anti-vaxxer RFK Jr. showing MD/PhDs the door and inviting in David Geier, who doesn’t have a medical degree, has been charged with practicing medicine without a degree, and has had numerous papers retracted due to lying (poorly) with statistics? It’s because somebody leveraged timely and highly-publicized problems to ‘prove’ the system was rotten to the core: defensive medicine, high drug prices, insurance fights, the medical gaslighting of women and non-white people. The enemy here? The experts with a so-so relationship with the democratization of information — that double-edge sword that convinces people that vaccines are a ‘personal choice’ that won’t have an impact on anybody!
Comment #19 March 31st, 2025 at 4:59 pm
Quasiparticular #18: I concede the point that this probably isn’t about antisemitism for the Trumpers—or rather it is, but only in the sense that the reality of an antisemitism problem creates a perfect pretext for a destruction of academia that they were salivating over anyway.
My response to this situation is simply to call it like I see it, rather than to deny the antisemitism problem because that’s instrumentally useful for the broader war. That way I preserve more credibility for the many future occasions when I’ll need to condemn Trump’s assaults on science, academia, and democracy.
To return to my Jurassic Park analogy: when the T-Rex eats the velociraptor that was about to eat you, it wasn’t “about” saving you in the T-Rex’s mind, but you can still be forgiven for being momentarily relieved (before you run to escape the T-Rex).
Comment #20 March 31st, 2025 at 6:19 pm
I don’t know what to believe about “leftists” and their anti-semitism. I mean, I am sure such people exist, as do the mentally-disturbed, but what their percentage is and what sort of power they might wield I don’t know. I do know that most of the time when Trump’s and his minions’ lips are moving, they are lying.
I guess the main thing I have learned is that no country, no matter what its constitution says and what its history books teach, is immune to being taken over by some form of fascism, usually by dividing into groups and setting some groups against others.
Comment #21 March 31st, 2025 at 6:32 pm
Quasiparticular #18, Scott #19, I disagree with the assertion that college antisemitism is just a pretext. I also disagree with equating today’s academia with intellect, as in calling the attempt to reform objectively awful academia practices “anti-intellectualism”. In fact, certain academia’s own practices, such as prioritizing identity over merit, are forms of anti-intellectualism themselves.
Quasiparticular, you are questioning the motives of those who are, for the first time in decades, shoving academia’s face into academia’s own droppings. However, the motives of the messenger should not be important in a discourse; only the veracity of the message matters. Whatever Trump’s motives are, whatever his methods of delivery are, the core message is not wrong. And that is what academia should start fixing its own ills, including institutionalized anti-white anti-asian racism and antisemitism. “DEI this, DEI that” is not nothing.
As for specifically antisemitism. Trump did and still does many terrible things, but one of the thing he’s done right, both as 45 and as 47, is the Middle East issue. Left ridiculed 45’s promise to “bring peace to the Middle East”, and yet he tripled the number of Arab states that have relationships with Israel from 2 to 6, including UAE. 46 let college antisemites harass Jews with impunity, with only a few meager catch-and-release actions; 47 initiated deportations of the ringleaders. I don’t think it’s a pretext at all.
Comment #22 March 31st, 2025 at 6:37 pm
I just keep being reminded daily that people should have read all of Eisenhower’s farewell address (https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address) instead of selectively quoting. And then taken the _other_ warnings very much to heart.
But it was convenient not to, and now the fallout is very visible….
Comment #23 March 31st, 2025 at 7:18 pm
https://yated.com/anti-israel-mob-storms-barnard-university-testing-trumps-executive-orders/
Comment #24 March 31st, 2025 at 7:52 pm
I wholeheartedly second Michael P #21.
The debate about Trump’s “motives” reminds me of a similar debate, whether “anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” When you’re obsessed with singling out the Jewish state, pathologically demonizing its clearly legitimate actions in response to an invasion (where invasion has historically been the most fundamental justification for war), applying absurd double standards to it, and then calling it a “settler colony,” you are an antisemite—regardless of your “noble” progressive motives. Similarly, when you fiercely defend the Jews, as Trump does, you are a philosemite, regardless of your alleged hidden motives.
Comment #25 March 31st, 2025 at 8:03 pm
It’s pretty clear that Scott hasn’t been keeping up with the Jurassic Park franchise
Comment #26 March 31st, 2025 at 8:41 pm
Scott,
1) I think it’s time to start running from the T-rex. Students are getting detained — snatched up by masked ICE agents — for writing op-eds and other speech acts that should be protected. You don’t think that’s a much bigger deal than offensive or antisemitic protests by a small minority of the student bodies at some of these places? How many Jewish students were actually harmed in any of these protests? There are people sitting in Louisiana prisons right now. Proportion, man.
2) What makes you think that this stuff — e.g. universities adopting actionable but highly contested definitions of antisemitism in order to appease Trump — is going to lead to less antisemitism in the end? I think it’s just as likely to *fuel* antisemitism.
Comment #27 March 31st, 2025 at 8:52 pm
If, as “Not Even Wrong” maintains, the issue is indeed reducible to the Trump Administration being “Fascist/Nazi” (in conjunction with the nefarious influence exercised by “Geskin and the six others who are behind this”), might not “the people of good will worldwide” be borderline justified in welcoming the demise of “fascist science” and “fascist universities” (thereby e.g. precluding the “Nazis” from any realistic chance of producing the equivalent of an “atomic bomb”).
Comment #28 March 31st, 2025 at 9:02 pm
Another aspect of how university officials respond to student protests:
Taking a hard line on any provocation by young adults has a decent chance of making things worse, often much worse. Thus one reasonable strategy is to let protesters make a bunch of noise until they get tired out and go home.
You see this all the time when colleges win big sporting events or championships and the students have a mini riot. In this event, prompt police responce — while everyone is still full of excitement, energy, and alcohol — can lead things to go south rapidly, whereas in a couple hours all you have to do is clean up the mess.
Another example occurs in cold winter location colleges, where most years in the spring there is a big dustup over something or other (right about when students want to be outdoors rather than in class). If a lot of students get arrested, the issue has a chance of continuing until classes resume in the fall — otherwise no one will remember what it was about.
Thus, I doubt if many college administrators are in fact leftists. It is more likely that they have a subroutine in their head that says “avoid making a bad situation worse”, and hoped that protests would fade away as soon as the war in Gaza wound down. Turns out that took a while.
Obviously you have to draw the line at some point, but you can see why one would hope to avoid having to do so.
Comment #29 March 31st, 2025 at 9:41 pm
fred #25: Indeed I haven’t! The first movie was so much fun (especially with Jeff Goldblum as chaos theorist moonlighting as the oracle of dino-doom), but after that, there’s no possible suspension of disbelief for them being dumb enough to return to the same island to get chased by dinos again.
Comment #30 March 31st, 2025 at 9:45 pm
John #26:
1) As it happens, my very next post will be about running away from the T-Rex (although the hard part is, where is there to run?).
2) Yes, that’s possible. What I want is just for rule enforcement to be neutral and consistent—e.g., protesters shutting down large parts of campus to chant “Zionists go back to Europe” should meet exactly the same reaction as them doing the same to chant “Blacks go back to Africa.” Anything beyond that seems like an overreaction to me.
Comment #31 March 31st, 2025 at 9:52 pm
Michael P #21
I agree that academia should not be equated to intellect, and insofar Trump’s crusade against DEI prioritizes merit, it is welcome. However, I suggest a change in framing of who is doing all this: an administration with a well-documented track record of lying, promoting conspiracy theories, and being generally unserious. Veracity is not the first thing that comes to mind when discussing this administration.
I don’t think the claims of antisemitism at universities are lies. I think claims that my immigrant friends eat cats are. I think leftist censorship at universities is a serious problem. I don’t think run-of-the-mill mouse model experiments are. Scientific misconduct in the medical industry is not a conspiracy theory. The claim that the MMR vaccine is more dangerous than measles is.
Every other day the Trump (2.0) administration supplies the public with reasons to question their motives. RFK Jr., to name just one cabinet member, has a twenty-year track record of spreading conspiracy theories and sowing doubt in successful public health measures. And that JD Vance quote — I didn’t pull it out of thin air. I work at a children’s hospital and Dr. Aaronson is an academic. We’ve good reasons to be worried about motives.
Comment #32 March 31st, 2025 at 9:54 pm
Xiaofeng Wang update:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/31/indiana_cybersecurity_professor_fbi/
Comment #33 March 31st, 2025 at 10:08 pm
Scott #30: you really see chants that black people should go back to Africa on the basis of their skin color as being equivalent to chants that Zionists should go back to Europe for what is essentially a political belief? I mean, I don’t like either, but one is about an immutable human characteristic while the other isn’t.
Comment #34 March 31st, 2025 at 10:15 pm
Obviously this is what causes all the ills in the world: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion that my in browser-AI helpfully defines as “efforts to create fair and welcoming environments for people of all backgrounds, emphasizing representation (diversity), ensuring fair opportunities (equity), and fostering a sense of belonging (inclusion)”.
Who would want to live in such a world?
/s
Comment #35 March 31st, 2025 at 10:19 pm
All throughout its history, humanity has imagined and wished a benevolent God, only to be betrayed by those who decided to hijack the concept to their own benefit – in spite of the bloodshed that would result…. Now that we are going to “actually create” God through advancements in AI, it will be interesting to see if those Gods want the biological and inefficient squishy Life to be around at all
Comment #36 March 31st, 2025 at 10:24 pm
I’m stunned by Peter Woit’s blog and the comments. Woit going out of his way to answer well offered criticism by attacking with ad hominem while refusing to engage with any of the facts – in this case the report about antisemitism from the Columbia task force – is deeply ironic as this was his persistent complaint for those who did the same thing to him during the String wars.
Comment #37 March 31st, 2025 at 10:33 pm
Hopkin’s funding was cut by 800 million (double that of Columbia) and they have not been under the subject of republican scrutiny. Quasiparticular #18 is probably right, the funding cuts would have happened with or without the influence of the “far-left”.
Comment #38 March 31st, 2025 at 10:40 pm
John #33: I take it as obvious that if someone says “Zionists go back to Europe,” they mean Jews should go back. (The alternative would be that Jews can stay in Israel, if and only if they deny their own right to stay there!)
In other words: Jews should go back to places that have already made it abundantly clear that they can’t, or won’t, protect them from being murdered en masse (and where they have nothing, all their family’s property having been confiscated, and where no one in their family may have set foot for a century).
A good followup question is: what about the even greater number of Jews who arrived in Israel after having been expelled from Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, etc., with all their property confiscated except for what they could carry? Should they also be repatriated to those countries? Have those countries been notified?
In short, it’s taking people who’ve survived a staggering amount of unprovoked persecution, expulsion, and genocide, then again expelling them from the only home they’ve known for generations, with (crucially) no clear new home or plan for how they survive the aftermath … to the point where it’s reasonable to wonder whether this is just another “resettlement to the East,” a Final Solution covered in euphemism.
So, explain to me how this is morally better than telling Blacks to go back to Africa?
Comment #39 April 1st, 2025 at 3:57 am
@Scott 38:
> (The alternative would be that Jews can stay in Israel, if and only if they deny their own right to stay there!)
Again, the alternative is that they stay as immigrants in the democratic multi-cultural state of Palestine. Which only exists in the protestors’ minds, of course, but that *is* how they square the circle. It’s quite analogous to people on the fringe end of land-acknowledgement movement who think quite a lot of white Americans ought to stay right where they are but become the tenants of the Native tribes on whose lands their ancestors settled (if a plurality of Natives today actively campaigned for the “white genocide” of paranoid right-wingers’ fever-dreams).
Comment #40 April 1st, 2025 at 4:37 am
Just posted a comment to Peter Woits blog, but I doubt it will get through moderation based on this comment from Peter:
All,
I’m deleting multiple comments from people who are not here and know nothing at all about what is happening here, but want to join in to support Scott’s anti-Columbia campaign and feel I’m being impolite to him. Sorry, but my uniform policy about those who want to justify the Fascist takeover of my institution using bogus accusations of antisemitism is that you should all fuck off.
So I I’ll post it here instead:
Dear Peter,
I’ll begin by acknowledging that I have never set foot in the US, and therefore have no first hand experience of the events. My views are based on what I’ve read, including your blog posts, the anti-semitism task force report, and various other documents. Yes, there is a lot of misinformation out there, but I do my best to discern that from relable info. I defer to your first hand experience of that is occurring on the ground right now.
It’s unbelievably depressing to see what the Trump administration is doing to Columbia, with antisemitism most likely being cynically exploited as a vehicle to get the job done. It goes without saying that the kidnaping people off the street and sending them to prison for criticising Israel is beyond the pale in a civilised country. Other world class centres of research and learning will be next. Dark days.
One point though, I would not say that Columbia has a “non existent antisemitism problem” if the students/faculty that have expressed the desire to see Israel violently destroyed, Israelis and Zionists murdered etc, are still members of the University. They might no longer be expressing their views, but presumably their views remain intact. There are legitimate criticisms to be made of Israel (occupation of the west bank, mass civilian casualties during the current war, the withholding of aid as a weapon of war etc … ), but some of the protestors move from there to advocating murder. Any reasonable person would find such views horrifying, and even if these people are a small minority (which they surely are) of both the overal university community, and the community of pro-palestine/anti Israel protestors, the existence of such views in a non-negligable fraction of the university body is a serious problem.
I understand why you are reluctant to engage with the antisemitism aspect here. Ultimately, the subset of protestors that hold objectionable views are essentially powerless, and most (though not all) of the protestors are merely exercising their freedom of speech. On the other hand the Trump administration is actually destroying a great university, and will likely move on to dismantling US academia more widely. The US is being taken over by fascists. Universities are under attack. The media under attack. The economy is being tanked. I get it.
Mike
Comment #41 April 1st, 2025 at 5:21 am
John #33
Being jew is as immutable as being black. There is russian joke about one jew saying to other “I’m not afraid of pogrom, In my passport is stated that I’m russian” And other answers “they will kick you in face, not in passport”
It is absolutely unimaginable how much comments here try to explain that anti-semitic meetings are just funny little thing of “young adults” you shouldn’t care about.
Comment #42 April 1st, 2025 at 6:02 am
This strikes me as a tribal conflation of all the bad guys. It is especially egregious to claim that the call of leftists to burn down universities had anything to do with decisions of the Trump Administration to cut off funding; if anything, having agreement with any coalition on the left makes it less likely that Trump might do something. Do you believe that in a counterfactual world where far left students and professors were consistently defending Universities as essential through their flaws, or even giving them the A+ as is, the administration would say “well the leftists have been defending it” and thus keep up funding?
In general, the story here so hyperbolizes the world today that it feels more satirical than frightening. There is an obvious and gargantuan difference between “the end of the state of Israel,” and the “the end of the state of Israel and the death of its inhabitants.” I know plenty of lovely, smart people who believe in the former, some of them Jewish. I have never met a college student who supported the latter.
There are definitely young Jewish people who read your blog, and this is just not an accurate description of what the vast majority of college campuses are like. Your “smashed Hillels” are perfectly fine; the antisemitic graffiti from one off vandals comes off in a day. There is no reason to convince a young person that she would be unsafe at an excellent school where she could have a great experience.
In general, the characterization of young Leftists could use a swift cutting with Hanlon’s razor. I’m curious where/if you disagree with this factually.
Comment #43 April 1st, 2025 at 7:23 am
Edmund #39:
Again, the alternative is that they stay as immigrants in the democratic multi-cultural state of Palestine. Which only exists in the protestors’ minds, of course, but that *is* how they square the circle.
I agree that this fantasy is how some of them square the circle. Others have been completely clear that they want all “colonizers”—not “Zionists” but “colonizers”—to go back to Europe (the millions of descendants of those expelled from the Arab world aren’t even on their radar).
Many others use some formulation like “it’s not my fucking problem what happens to the settler-colonialists”—which presumably allows for the solution of October 7, which they celebrated, scaled up by 5000x.
At that point, I give them props for intellectual consistency if they add that ideally, all the hundreds of millions of white people and whiter-looking Hispanic people (and half-white people? East Asian people? recent African immigrants?) in the Americas would also be murdered or expelled, while admitting that this is probably infeasible in practice.
Comment #44 April 1st, 2025 at 8:17 am
Dear Scott,
I have been a long-time avid reader of your blog because I have always admired your uncompromising readiness to try to examine any problem with deference to evidence and rationality above all. I was deeply impressed by your incredible courage many years ago to put yourself out there with some of your most intimate thoughts and concerns for the sake of helping others who find themselves in a similar situation as you in your younger years, just as I was deeply disappointed by misandrists masquerading as feminists trying to cut you down for doing that, using lies, deception and misrepresentation.
I really debated with myself whether I should write this, I have unfortunately never had the chance to meet you in person, and one does not really know another person based on their writings and a few videos. So often, I see people judging other human beings based on scant information like that, feeling supremely confident while at the same time not realizing how much of their judgment arises from nothing more than bias and what is in themselves. I really do not want to fall into that trap.
The only reasons I am writing this is because I have not seen anyone raise the question and I think it is essential to raise the question, not just for you but for anyone in this political climate. What am I talking about?
I am talking about fear. What I have found is that fear has been been not only weaponized but found to be a highly effective weapon to manipulate hundreds of millions of people in recent times. For example, I think that most Trump supporters who are not already motivated by greed (and even then) support him fundamentally for no other reason than that some kind of fear or combination of fears has convinced them to support him, whether it be fear from “illegals”, “deep state” “demonrats”, minorities, liberals, LGBTQ, adherents of other religions, atheists, or what have you.
The one common denominator I see in ordinary people embracing transparent evil is fear, and often, once it has exerted its effects as a psychological weapon, the next stage is for it to morph into hate and ill will. I get the impression that people who are manipulated by fear often do not realize how much it colors their perceptions; without any hint of self-awareness they speak of their perception of reality clouded by fear as though it were reality itself. But the clouded perception has consequences: it facilitates the commission of all sorts of cognitive biases which, in turn, reinforce the fears, creating a vicious cycle. I think once one has entered such a vicious cycle, it becomes increasingly difficult to extricate oneself from it.
Okay, why am I writing all this here? Again, I do not know you in person and I feel presumptuous in raising this issue, but at the same time I think it is essential for someone to raise it. In some of your previous posts, you mentioned how overarchingly important it is for you to ensure the safety of your family, and one should expect nothing less from a family man. But could it be that your legitimate fear for the safety of your family in light of the October 7th terror attack has given an entry point for you to be manipulated?
Please understand, I am NOT comparing you to Trump supporters, I am comparing a possible means of manipulation, and I am not making the claim that you are being manipulated, but I am raising the question.
I raise the question because of this post. I know that in your blog posts you often use over-the-top language as an ironic self-deprecating device of (much-appreciated) humor, but it appears to me that here you are not being ironic but sincere. What makes it disturbing is that this is the same kind of over-the-top language the fascists currently in power use.
One of the goals of the fascist’s use of over-the-top language is to brush people with a diversity of views with one brush. That is how so many conservatives have come to view anything left of the Republicans to be “marxists”, for instance. The over-the-top language you used in this post leaves little room, for example, for people who criticize both Israeli destruction of Gaza AND the terror attacks of Hamas.
Another goal of the fascists’s use of over-the-top language is to help attain certainty in one’s own righteousness, because certainty alleviates fear. If your opponents would “sooner burn universities to the ground than allow them to remain safe for the hated Zionist Jews”, then does this not make you so much more certain that you are right and whoever disagrees with you is wrong?
Please notice that I am not at all referencing the facts of the matter to which your post refers, something about which I am myself highly uncertain. I am only referencing your use of over-the-top language
I realize I am just some guy on the internet assessing something with extremely limited information. Have you considered asking people in your personal life whose judgments you have trusted for a long time whether they have noticed any change in your political views? Sometimes a change in us is obvious to others around us far sooner than it is to ourselves.
I have always thought that if anything, your blog posts convey the impression of somebody who is overly self-critical. This is the first time I wonder whether some of that Aaronsonian hyper-self-criticism might not actually be appropriate.
Please know that with this criticism I am not trying to cut you down like the pretenders of the past did, I am doing this because I care, and I care because I have always considered you an excellent human being with a brilliant mind.
Comment #45 April 1st, 2025 at 8:23 am
Mike #40: Thanks so much. It’s been sad to witness Peter Woit, who I’ve known and liked for decades, having this extraordinary public meltdown, abandoning any pretense of interacting fairly with people whose views differ even slightly from his own. Again and again, in public and in private, I’ve offered Peter some combination of
(1) Columbia is a great institution, with many people dear to me, that I fervently hope survives this crisis,
(2) the Trumpers are terrifying fascists, all too happy to use antisemitism as a pretext for a general crackdown on academia,
but also
(3) the report of Columbia’s own antisemitism task force made it clear to me that there is (or was) a real problem there, sufficient for me to warn Jews and Israelis who might think of attending.
Again and again, the inclusion of (3) set Peter off, causing him to call me a “right-wing fanatic” who should “fuck off,” “get mental help,” etc. etc.
By now Peter has made it abundantly clear that the only way I can avoid these wild accusations, is to agree with him that his own Columbia faculty colleagues who investigated the post-Oct-7 environment for Jewish students at Columbia are all liars or insane.
Comment #46 April 1st, 2025 at 8:41 am
If anyone needs evidence that the Trump regime doesn’t care about due process *at all*
“The Trump administration acknowledged in a court filing Monday that it had grabbed a Maryland father with protected legal status and mistakenly deported him to El Salvador, but said that U.S. courts lack jurisdiction to order his return from the megaprison where he’s now locked up.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/an-administrative-error-sends-a-man-to-a-salvadoran-prison/682254/
Comment #47 April 1st, 2025 at 9:03 am
John #33:
First, harassing or oppressing people because of how they choose to exercise their basic human rights is approximately as horrible as oppressing people because of their “immutable human characteristics”.
Second, if you think “zionist” isn’t an immutable human characteristic, you might want to check with e.g. the NSDAP about that. Or any modern “anti-zionist activist”, approximately none of whom will spend even five minutes looking into a Jew’s political beliefs before throwing a brick through their window.
Third, your take is hard to read as anything other than basically “stop whining about being oppressed; the oppression will stop as soon as you stop believing the stupid evil things you believe and instead believe the smart things I tell you to believe!”.
Scott’s comparison is entirely appropriate. If you still doubt that, consider the hypothetical where it isn’t Jews being harassed into leaving Columbia U, it’s the Israeli government kicking out all its Arab citizens unless they convert to Judaism. After all, “being a Muslim” is not an immutable human characteristic, right?
Comment #48 April 1st, 2025 at 9:05 am
Ben #42:
It is especially egregious to claim that the call of leftists to burn down universities had anything to do with decisions of the Trump Administration to cut off funding…
The whole explicit justification for the current crackdown on academia is that universities allowed themselves to be taken over by often violent, lawbreaking protesters celebrating the mass killing of Jews — and that we’d all agree on a nanosecond that this violated the universities’ Title VI obligations had the protesters instead celebrated the mass killing of Blacks, Hispanics, gays, or any other vulnerable group.
And yes, as I’ve said a hundred times: it’s entirely plausible that if this hadn’t happened, the Trumpists would’ve eventually found some other pretext to defund academia, a prospect that makes them salivate. But we sure handed them this pretext on a silver platter, didn’t we?
There is an obvious and gargantuan difference between “the end of the state of Israel,” and the “the end of the state of Israel and the death of its inhabitants.”
No, there isn’t. There’s a difference, because maybe this time the US, UK, Canada, etc. would accept millions of Jews as refugees, as they didn’t in the 1930s, once it became clear that their only other option was death. But I wouldn’t call it a gargantuan difference.
We already saw that neither the Ottoman Turks, nor the British rulers of Mandatory Palestine, had much interest in preventing pogroms that killed thousands of Jews (sometimes they assisted those pogroms). In both cases, the only thing that protected Jews was Jewish militias. It’s ludicrous to imagine that the situation would be better under Palestinian rule, when a major player (if not the majority) in any such rule would be Hamas, which has vowed a thousand more October 7ths.
In the world of the real, as opposed to the My Little Pony world of the activists, there’s no possible way to end Israel’s existence without a staggering amount of death on both sides. That’s why the decent and sane have always favored some version of partition or a two-state solution.
Comment #49 April 1st, 2025 at 9:18 am
Sych #41
“Being jew is as immutable as being black.”
Interestingly, within any ethnic/religious group there is often an implicit hierarchy based on skin tone – i.e. the whiter you are, the better. It’s true in literally every place of the world, except for California where the more tan you have, the better 😛
And as a result there’s plenty of mistaken identity going around as a result of this:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/17/miami-shooting-israeli-men
“Jewish man mistakes two Israeli tourists for Palestinians and opens fire on them in Miami.
Victims reportedly posted ‘death to Arabs’ on social media after shooting while suspect held on attempted murder charges.”
Sadly, actual violent attacks happen on both sides:
https://www.reuters.com/world/florida-man-shot-israeli-visitors-thinking-they-were-palestinians-police-say-2025-02-17/
“Human rights advocates say there has been a rise in anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and antisemitic hate in the United States since the start of U.S. ally Israel’s war in Gaza following an Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Other recent U.S. incidents include the attempted drowning of a 3-year-old Palestinian American girl in Texas, the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Illinois, the stabbing of a Palestinian American man in Texas, the beating of a Muslim man in New York, a violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters in California and the shooting of three Palestinian American students in Vermont.
Incidents raising alarm over antisemitism include threats of violence against Jews at Cornell University that led to a conviction and sentencing, an unsuccessful plot to attack a New York Jewish center and physical assaults against a Jewish man in Michigan, a rabbi in Maryland and two Jewish students in Chicago.”
And just last week in France, a rabbi was assaulted in the street (in front of his young son)
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250324-france-arrests-young-man-for-suspected-attack-on-rabbi
Comment #50 April 1st, 2025 at 9:21 am
Scott, please stay away from Woit henceforth. His behaviour towards you is shocking in the extreme. I’m sorry to say this, but the subtext of his “It’s lies, all lies” is: what else would you expect from Jews anyway? You don’t need to connect with that sort of garbage. In fact, more generally, PW is a product of toxic internet culture: I can assure you that without his blog nobody would ever have heard of him. Again, this is not the sort of thing we should be “enabling”….
Comment #51 April 1st, 2025 at 9:41 am
Tried to post this over at Woit’s blog, but I highly doubt he’ll let it through moderation. He seems to be seized.
—
Presumably, since you disallow comments from people not “on-the-ground” at Columbia from commenting on the supposition that they don’t actually know what is happening you will also refrain from commenting on what is happening “on-the-ground” at Harvard.
Are you here to tell us that no antisemitism warranting a federal response has happened at Harvard even though you are not on the ground? Or is this one you feel capable of judging at a distance unlike Scott viz a viz Columbia?
Comment #52 April 1st, 2025 at 9:53 am
Dear John
#33: “you really see chants that black people should go back to Africa on the basis of their skin color as being equivalent to chants that Zionists should go back to Europe for what is essentially a political belief? “
Would you care to let us know what precisely is the “political belief” behind being a “Zionist”? I never realized my *existence* in my ancient native homeland is “a political belief”. I mean, certainly not more of a “political belief” than a black person living in the US.
Comment #53 April 1st, 2025 at 9:54 am
Can someone in Academia explain to me what I’m missing/getting wrong here:
There are 31,000 students at Columbia.
With 70,000$ tuition cost per year (from a google search, qualified as “before aid”), it’s a cash inflow of 2.2B$ per year, which is way more than the 400M$ in federal fund at stake.
Does the tuition inflow actually includes the 400M$ as “aid” or that’s separate?
It seems to me that those private schools are getting enough cash from tuition to stay independent from any external pressure, they just need to reallocate that cash more wisely.
Comment #54 April 1st, 2025 at 10:00 am
fred #53: The $400M is grant money, apparently mostly NIH grants. Scientists use the grants to fund their research and pay their grad students and postdocs (and for other things, like travel and summer salary), and the university also takes overhead to fund its operations (although the Trumpists are also now trying to change that, capping the overhead at 15%).
Yes, $2.2B > $400M. Columbia could still exist without the $400M, but it would obviously be severely impacted. And there’s no reason why the Trumpists would stop with just this $400M.
Comment #55 April 1st, 2025 at 10:03 am
Brett McInnes #50
Peter Woit is well known for his old book criticizing string theory. The book I think was rather good, though I personaly do not hate so much strings as him or Sabine and don’t think physics is dead
Comment #56 April 1st, 2025 at 10:10 am
A #44
I think you’re totally right that the Trump regime is using FEAR as its main “tool”.
The deportations to Salvador prisons is rather limited in scope (realistically), but highly advertised on media, because its main goal is to make foreigners think twice before coming to the US as illegals.
And the accusations that the regime doesn’t use due process and that innocent/legal migrants have been wrongfully rounded up and sent there is actually by design, to create even more fear!
And the same thing applies to everything else the regime is doing.
Comment #57 April 1st, 2025 at 10:15 am
Scott #54
thanks – indeed I just read that this 400M$ is just the tip of the iceberg, that there’s even more money at stake from additional grants, worth billions.
Somehow US Universities now find themselves in a very similar situation as the European NATO allies of the US… the rug is being pulled from underneath them, and they have to confront the harsh reality that they can no longer assume that the US is on their side, and either build their own military potential or become a total vassal to every single whim of the US administration.
Comment #58 April 1st, 2025 at 10:46 am
Theorist Israel #52:
The mental gymnastics people employ to try and disentangle “Zionism” from “Judaism” is mind boggling.
One of my favorite examples of the absurdity is the following:
https://x.com/Lazer_Cohen/status/1726337109437681700
Comment #59 April 1st, 2025 at 10:48 am
I really miss the old days when the gates of Columbia were always open and anyone was welcome to walk in and stroll through the beautiful campus.
Like all 80s kids who loved Ghostbusters, it was so awesome to finally see in person the Alma Mater statue in the 90s.
Where did we go wrong? It just makes me want to f’ing cry, seriously…
Anyway, it’s always been about money
Comment #60 April 1st, 2025 at 10:59 am
Quasiparticular #31
Veracity is not the first thing that comes to mind regarding most politicians, from AOC on the left to Trump on the right. This is one of the reason we should evaluate the message, not the messenger.
Alan Dershowitz just published an opinion very relevant to this discussion, “Does the US Government Have the Right to Condition Funding to Universities?”
Quoting that:
“Finally, there is the distinction between the government officials who threatened the southern universities in the 1950s and 1960s and the current government officials who threatened Columbia. The current government, which is presided over by President Donald J. Trump, can do no right, according to liberals and civil rights advocates, even if its actions are logically indistinguishable from past approved actions. This variation on the classic ad hominem fallacy is widely accepted in academic and left-wing circles, when the hominem is Trump.”
Comment #61 April 1st, 2025 at 11:06 am
It is sad to witness the way Peter Woit gets bashed here, mostly because he clearly articulates his view of the situation at Columbia.
You think I don’t take into account how he reacted to Scott’s comment, the one Scott turned into this blog post? How should he react to such unfriendly words, without any explanation where the accusations come from? Adam Treat #36 suggests that they are based on a “report about antisemitism from the Columbia task force”, and Scott #45 seems to confirm this. Maybe it was also mentioned somewhere among all the unfriendly words in the comments on Peter Woit’s blog, but not before Peter Woit wrote: “You have lost your mind and now live in a far-right fantasy land. I’m extremely disappointed that you’ve completely ignored efforts I and others here at Columbia have made to explain to you what really is going on. Instead you insist on inhabiting a fanatic’s fever-dream.”
But you are disappointed with his reaction to the mentioning of that report, which went along the lines: “My argument has never been that there is no actual antisemitism at Columbia, just that whatever the size of that problem is, it is no different (and probably less) than the antisemitism problem anywhere else in the country. …”? Believe it or not, that is his view.
Comment #62 April 1st, 2025 at 12:03 pm
I don’t think many would be aware of this, but, last Friday, many French companies got an email from the US Embassy in France threatening them that if they don’t ditch any form of “DEI” within 5 days, they won’t be able to keep working with the US government.
And same happened in many other EU countries.
Comment #63 April 1st, 2025 at 12:04 pm
gentzen #61: Peter is welcome to express his view.
I also expressed my view, which agrees with Peter’s on several points (pro-Columbia, anti-Trump), and also disagrees on one point (namely, I tend to believe Columbia’s antisemitism task force, when it concluded there was a special problem for Jewish and Israeli students at Columbia after October 7).
Under normal circumstances, we’d either leave it there or else have a polite dialogue.
Peter, not me, is the one who decided to go straight for name-calling and expletives.
Comment #64 April 1st, 2025 at 1:14 pm
Mike #40: I believe, based on the timings, that I made one of the comments that Peter Woit was referring to in the paragraph you quoted. For what it’s worth, this is the comment that was deleted and told by Peter to “f*** off” (and incidentally was only the 2nd or 3rd occasion I’ve felt compelled to comment on Peter’s blog in 20+ years of reading it):
—
Scott has never expressed support for what the Trump administration is doing. His only point as far as I can see is that the problem of antisemitism at Columbia and elsewhere is real, and that acknowledging this is entirely consistent with being 100% anti-Trump and his actions.
And he certainly hasn’t said that any kind of protest against Israel’s actions is antisemitism (which would make him antisemitic too).
I am not qualified to judge the level of antisemitism at Columbia, past or present (though Dave’s comments do suggest the concern is far from unfounded), but even if Scott is entirely mistaken about this, it wouldn’t justify the epithets “fanatic”, “far-right” or being in need of a therapist, or the implication that he should be pleased with what Trump’s administration is doing.
—
I’ll leave others to judge the veracity of Peter’s description of this as supporting “Scott’s anti-Columbia campaign” (sic) or “justify[ing] the Fascist takeover of my institution using bogus accusations of antisemitism”.
Comment #65 April 1st, 2025 at 1:31 pm
Scott, why were the sane majority silent? What’s so hard about saying that Jewish students are not to be harassed because they are not collective guilty of something happening in the other side of the world? What’s so hard about saying that calls for genocide of Jews is a bad thing?
Another question is – can these silent people produce good science? Can they say: “and yet it moves” to the Church? I seriously doubt it.
Comment #66 April 1st, 2025 at 1:44 pm
Scott #48:
I am in Europe for most of the semester, and in the coverage I had seen of the executive orders dropping funding, the justification seemed much more about waste and DEI than violence and protest. I just did some reading and think you are correct: it is fair to say that Trump is now using protests as a pretext to go further, and I agree that this pretext matters marginally. Still, I think most of his essentially unilateral actions needed no such pretext. With regards to the “gargantuan difference”: it is a factual disagreement whether “the eradication of the State of Israel and the death of its inhabitants” and “the eradication of the State of Israel” are very different consequentially. I tend to think that they are, given the wealth/status of Jews in America/Canada/UK/etc., although certainly it would be bad for the Jewish people. All the same, this factual disagreement definitely does not reduce to activists’ “most fundamental moral principle” being the death of all Israelis. While often myopic and overzealous, genocidal these protestors are not. I do not know if it is actually your view that these people are evil, but the style of the article comes off completely in opposition to this piece https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/18/fundamental-value-differences-are-not-that-fundamental/, which I would guess you have read and agree with.
At the end of the day, I mostly agree with your politics on Israel; any eradication of Israel in the real world would surely be catastrophic for Palestinians and Israelis alike. I favor a two state solution. All the same, the characterization of leftists in this piece (and I interact with lots of college campus leftists on my leftist college campus!) and the environment for Jewish students on college campuses is downright misleading. Certainly, some small handful of protestors are so overzealous as to be basically evil. Many have accidentally traded away critical thought for signaled virtue. On the other hand, the central concern of most is, if you would believe it, the wellbeing of the Palestinian people. Putting yourself in their shoes: why wouldn’t it be? Perhaps their energies are misdirected as they try to help those people. Perhaps they hurt more than help. Still, on one of the most liberal campuses in the country (stereotypically so), I’ve seen that the vast majority are more concerned with the thousands displaced, dead and dying than with antisemitism. I have never felt unsafe walking past sit ins and marches and camp outs, sometimes with my kippah on. If young Jewish students are interested in attending a left-ish college, but fear for their safety, there is no need to aggravate that fear with a hellish caricature of what is about as physically safe a place as they can be. Your anger is justified, but I think this is hyperbole with real and negative consequences, especially for those who don’t experience the temperature of college campuses firsthand.
Comment #67 April 1st, 2025 at 2:04 pm
More than 3000 signatories so far to this petition to the Trump administration against its attack on campus communities.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRt_jMNTlIH7ABX_s7fQFuspYWf_yN2OGzfbrVzhNoO87YWlCyPQzhaq2VcWYDGYvWJRfLq7lNtpnd4/pub
The administration strategy is clear – to pick off its enemies one by one. I don’t blame the colleges for folding because they will lose. The power structure is greatly asymmetric.
Comment #68 April 1st, 2025 at 2:33 pm
Michael P #60
Touché: veracity and politics make for sound and fury in parlor rooms. I still contend the messenger deserves evaluation. The middle ground here is to not weigh messengers without considering their history, to not process messages in isolation from other messages, to refrain from forming an opinion with too few data points, and to update one’s priors over time when presented with new information. It’s rational Bayesian contemplation, necessary for building a sense for reliability and credibility; for positioning oneself to make judgement calls.
I ask that you refrain from casually grouping strangers with ‘academics and left-wingers’ who reflexively think Trump can do nothing right. It is not an ad hominem to weigh people with respect to the data they give you. Furthermore, I’m naturally going to react to the behavior of an administration full of people who have verbalized threats against what I do for a living.
Even so, despite his history of fraud, I’m going to give David Geier’s HHS-funded vaccine study a fair shake; however, I cannot will away the apprehension both RFK Jr. and Geier have earned.
Comment #69 April 1st, 2025 at 3:24 pm
I appreciated several commenters (including Scott in previous posts) bringing up the discussion on “time, manner, place” rules. One point that I do not see discussed, and I’d genuinely like to hear people’s views on it, is what should happen in the following cases:
– Suppose that there is a Palestinian student whose family members were killed by IDF. The Palestinian student feels rage and is uncomfortable to be around another member of IDF who participated in the said conflict and fought on the side of IDF, and is now currently a Columbia student also. How should the Palestinian student express their viewpoint, and what should be an acceptable rule for the Palestinian student to engage in protest?
– You can reverse the situation above. Suppose there is an Israeli student at Columbia who had a family member killed by Hamas, and there are pro-Palestinian students who are celebrating Hamas’ actions or justifying them. What should be an acceptable way for the Israeli students to express their viewpoint and engage in protest?
When answering the above, please take into account the fact that:
1. Hamas is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.
2. IDF is not considered a terrorist organization by the United States, although at this point, it is beyond doubt that they committed several war crimes.
Comment #70 April 1st, 2025 at 4:07 pm
Tony #69: It seems obvious to me that universities need to decide on “time, place, and manner” rules and then actually enforce those rules in a content-neutral manner, without regard to whether the protesting students (or the students taking offense to the protest) are white, black, Jewish, Israeli, Palestinian, or anything else. And furthermore, that many universities conspicuously failed to clear that low bar in the aftermath of October 7.
It seems equally clear to me that students who feel traumatized because of a personal connection to a conflict are at most a secondary consideration here. Yes, a few students might be given special accommodations when it’s feasible, but for the most part, once the content-neutral time, place, and manner rules are obeyed, it’s then the responsibility of each individual student to arrange to avoid things that will traumatize them, rather than of everyone else to accommodate the student.
Comment #71 April 1st, 2025 at 5:12 pm
Scott #70
Appreciate a response, and def interested in what others have to say.
That there should be rules & enforcement of rules should be uncontroversial.
However, making up rules that covers all edge cases is not an easy task. In this case, it would be good to know how you think that “acts in the grey area” should be handled (I give a specific example below). It seems to me that a lot of this controversy arises because people do not agree on definitions, unlike in mathematics. And societal problems are often too fuzzy to characterize precisely, due to too many edge cases.
#######################################
Specific example:
A pro-Palestinian student A (for sake of discussion assume it is a “he”) does one of the following acts in addition to coming to class of class-size 50: (a) wears a Palestinian flag pin on their shirt, (b) wears a keffiyeh, (c) wears a T-shirt that has “Free Palestine” written on it, (d) wears a T-shirt that has “Intifada” written on it. The student does nothing other than this, does not create a ruckus in class, and simply goes about his business. He does not do anything outwardly that reveals what each of these symbols mean – it could be that he believes destruction of Israel and its inhabitants, or it could also be that he learned about these words yesterday on TikTok and simply thinks it means advocacy for a 2 state solution. The point is nobody except him knows what he means by these expressions. Also note that these expressions (a-d) are sufficiently vague that an average American cannot possibly know the specifics or the history or the context – so for example, if the student came to class wearing (e) a T-shirt saying “I support Al-Qaeda” & “Death to America”, that could be interpreted as support for terrorism without ambiguity by most Americans.
Now suppose that there is an Israeli student B (also a “he”) in the class to whom each of these symbols represent “destruction of Israel and its Jewish inhabitants”. From the perspective of B, he feels like it is an unfriendly environment for him to be able to engage in learning. The student complains to the university, and now the university needs to act and come up with a rule to handle this case.
What should an university enact as its “manner” rules? Is A performing a protest in this case, or no? Should the university ban acts (a)-(d) in class, or should the university conclude that it has no jurisdiction over this act and decide to allow such acts in the future?
##############################
You can do the reverse scenario where a pro-Israeli student wears some symbol that is “offensive” to pro-Palestinian students. I won’t belabor the details, but people can come up with examples by themselves mirroring the above example.
Do you think our university administrators are adept to create an exhaustive list of expressions and words that are allowed vs not allowed? Let’s say the university says you cannot wear a T-shirt with “Intifada” written on it in class. Some student wears a T-shirt with “Inti-fada” written on it now. What happens?
Comment #72 April 1st, 2025 at 6:08 pm
Tony #71: While I’d personally find the “Intifada” shirt pretty horrifying, no, I would not want a university to take any action against a student simply for wearing it. I might draw the line at the student wearing a “Heil Hitler” (or “Death to Jews” or “Death to Arabs”) shirt, or at the professor wearing the Intifada shirt in front of students. (It seems 100% reasonable for a Jewish student not to expect fair treatment from that professor—any more than a Muslim student would expect fair treatment from the professor sporting an “Expel All Muslims” or “Mohammed Was a Pedophile” shirt.)
Having said that, I’d also allow individual universities plenty of leeway in coming up with different rules to suit their own cultures—as long as the rules were consistently and neutrally applied.
Comment #73 April 1st, 2025 at 7:13 pm
Y #65:
Scott, why were the sane majority silent? What’s so hard about saying that Jewish students are not to be harassed because they are not collective guilty of something happening in the other side of the world? What’s so hard about saying that calls for genocide of Jews is a bad thing?
Once you’ve seen the vituperation that Peter Woit and his friends subjected me to for treating such harassment and calls for genocide as real phenomena at all, I feel like that question answers itself…
Another question is – can these silent people produce good science?
Even some Nazis (Heisenberg, Bieberbach…) were able to produce good science. Science can be decoupled from morality and moral courage much more than you or I would like.
Comment #74 April 1st, 2025 at 7:21 pm
Ty #58:
The mental gymnastics people employ to try and disentangle “Zionism” from “Judaism” is mind boggling.
It’s been pointed out many times that, if you want Judaism without Zionism, you need to start by cutting like 80% of the Hebrew Bible…
Comment #75 April 2nd, 2025 at 1:06 am
John #33:
> Scott #30: you really see chants that black people should go back to Africa on the basis of their skin color as being equivalent to chants that Zionists should go back to Europe for what is essentially a political belief? I mean, I don’t like either, but one is about an immutable human characteristic while the other isn’t.
I’m an Israeli. Born in Israel. My father was born in Israel. My kids were born in Israel. Those are *also* immutable facts – country of origin isn’t something you can change.
My “political belief” is that the country I was born in and grew up in should continue to exist. That’s it. For this “political belief” people around the world chant that I should “go back” to a place I didn’t come from, and that my grandparent’s relatives were murdered in, those that couldn’t escape in time.
So yes, I agree with Scott (as usual) – chants of “Zionists go back to Europe” are exactly the same as “blacks go back to Africa”. And even more ironic, since similar chants in Europe 100 years ago were “Jews go back to Palestine”, before most Jews were chased out to make that happen. Until the ones that weren’t chased out were killed, that is.
Comment #76 April 2nd, 2025 at 9:42 am
Scott #63,
This shows the real dangers of social media and the resulting divided society. If accomplished individuals who you have known for decades can get to this level of behavior, imagine what the rest of the populace are at. And these are not isolated incidents, but getting pretty common place in every individual’s life.
May be human societies cant handle this kind of extreme democratization(individualization ?)of view points that can be magnify easily through social media and the resulting collapse of values that kept the society/civilization together ? Its almost as if we are on the dawn of post civilized (whatever that is )way of living
Comment #77 April 2nd, 2025 at 10:26 am
Scott #30: you really see chants that black people should go back to Africa on the basis of their skin color as being equivalent to chants that Zionists should go back to Europe for what is essentially a political belief? I mean, I don’t like either, but one is about an immutable human characteristic while the other isn’t.
It can quickly become quite confusing because all those characteristics are quite relative.
For one thing – skin color isn’t immutable.
E.g. does anyone think that Scott actually “looks” exactly like the people in the Hebrew tribe that crossed the desert during the Exodus? If not, either his ancestors who moved to Europe reinforced some “whiteness” gene through natural selection or through interbreeding with the locals (the latter more likely). So nothing’s immutable here.
Second, if we go far enough in history, we *all* come from Africa.
And what we define as our “original” land is just based on some arbitrary cut off date based on memory and tradition passed down from our ancestors.
Comment #78 April 2nd, 2025 at 12:39 pm
fred #77: Modern DNA studies have shown conclusively that Ashkenazi Jews like me are a mixture of Levantines from Israel (very close to modern Palestinians, actually) with Europeans (mostly Italians, apparently). Even without DNA studies, one could’ve inferred the same from just looking at us—e.g. my blue eyes and originally-blond hair clearly come from the European side.
Anyway, I don’t think any of this is terribly relevant. A good rule of thumb is, if something is “immutable” enough for the Nazis to have murdered me for it, or for Hamas and Iran’s other proxies to murder me for it today, if it’s immutable enough for much of the world to take the Nazis’ or Hamas’s side when that happens … then it’s also immutable enough for me to appreciate a state that’s committed to taking my side on the “do I get to live?” question.
Comment #79 April 2nd, 2025 at 1:54 pm
Scott #78
Right, every tribe in the world gets passed from the previous generation its inherited date and place of origin from whatever tradition/myth survived last in the sands of times.
And in many situations that identity can be reset by some other tribe that has the biggest guns and rewrites their history, e.g. Northern/Western Europeans whose identity got a hard reset after Caesar’s Gauls conquest, the Kabyle after the Muslim Conquests, Tibetans/Uyghurs and Communist China, and dozens of other examples.
And when that reset fails, it obviously becomes an even bigger anchor for identity.
Comment #80 April 2nd, 2025 at 3:49 pm
I wanted to add to the conversation with this detail:
Four hundred people were bombed to death in Gaza in the last few weeks. I think this fact deserves more moral outrage than it is getting.
Comment #81 April 2nd, 2025 at 4:09 pm
Hi Scott,
On the Peter Woit situation.
Yes, he lashed out at you. But by my reading, you provoked him, by telling him that he’d “sooner burn universities to the ground than allow them to remain safe for the hated Zionist Jews, the baby-killing demons of the earth.” I know Peter well, and he doesn’t have an anti-semitic bone in his body. You insulted him by saying that he (and/or his like-minded colleagues) are trying to destroy their own university out of anti-semitism. With this reading in mind, his response, while impolite, seems reasonable to me.
I think apologies are in order for BOTH of you.
Comment #82 April 2nd, 2025 at 4:12 pm
Scott #54
“although the Trumpists are also now trying to change that, capping the overhead at 15%”
I don’t know that 15% is the right number, but I wouldn’t hang my hat on this one. Why should science done in expensive cities or with expensive buildings with high upkeep given by donors as monuments to themselves get more funding than science that can be done cheaper?
I do understand cost of living adjustments for federal jobs like FBI agent or social worker in an expensive city where the job requires it, or social or environmental science done on e.g. New York itself where the scientist needs to be there.
Comment #83 April 2nd, 2025 at 4:45 pm
Major Tom #81: No, that isn’t it, because Peter himself is not one of the far-leftists I was talking about, and he knows I know that (he’s consistently opposed “wokeness,” for example, and his position on Israel/Palestine seems to be that both sides should stay away from him and let him work on the representation theory underlying the Standard Model).
I still don’t completely understand why he blew up on me, except that he has a model of the world where the fascists are destroying academia like in 1933, and if I agree with the fascists about the reality of a campus antisemitism problem—even while disagreeing about the solutions—it means that I’m knowingly aiding and abetting fascism and am basically a fascist myself.
Comment #84 April 2nd, 2025 at 4:58 pm
Scott #83, That is pretty much exactly right from what I can tell. He thinks he is living in an analogue the 1933 fascist takeover of academia and wants to firmly place himself on the right side of the issue. Apparently, he thinks to do so he must tell anyone who harbors any concerns about antisemitism on Columbia’s campus to fuck off as they are in league with fascism even if they acknowledge that the administration is likely using this as pretext. It is very much a, “you’re either with me or against me,” emotional reaction.
Comment #85 April 2nd, 2025 at 5:12 pm
Hi Scott,
I actually talk to Peter on the phone pretty frequently. Had an in-depth conversation with him about this. In his telling, there’s a few relevant things going on that you haven’t mentioned:
1. You and Peter have had a discourse about this over email dating back months. Peter pointed out specific flaws in the Columbia Antisemitism Task Force report to you (there wasn’t a real investigative process, they simply collected claims of antisemitism without actually investigating them, at least one prominent claim was discredited by security camera footage, etc.) In his telling, you two had a long back-and-forth over email about this, he even put you in touch with some people at Columbia to explain the situation to you—and you ultimately agreed with him about this, or conceded that there were serious flaws in the Columbia Antisemitism Task Force investigative process. Yet, after this extensive back-and-forth with him, you reiterated the unsubstantiated claims of the Task Force in your comment, which he found extremely frustrating. Is it true that you exchanged emails with him about the Task Force, and conceded at some point that their investigative process was flawed?
2. Bad Faith: You understand Peter’s perspective about the Task Force, and so when you claimed that Peter was discrediting his colleagues working on the Task Force as liars, you were arguing in bad faith—in actuality, Peter was not claiming that everybody working on the Task Force was a liar, but instead, that their invesitgative process was flawed, in that they were collecting anecdotes of antisemitism from students without actually investigating if they were true.
3. Peter does have friends and colleagues who would describe themselves as “far-left” or “leftist,” who are certainly NOT anti-semitic, and he felt like you were libelously attacking these like-minded colleagues of his with your comment.
4. Peter was frustrated that in your posts you have only condemned the Trump administration’s witholding of funding, while you have not condemned the arrests and deportations of students over speech. Regardless of how you fall on Israel-Palestine—and even if these students advocated for the destruction of Israel,etc.—it looks like a clear-cut first amendment case to me. You can’t be arrested for speech, no matter how offensive!
5. Peter is frustrated that, despite being “anti-woke,” you seem to have acquiesed to “woke” attacks when it comes to antisemitism—doxxing people, trying to get them fired or expelled foe offensive speech, etc.
Anyway, I’m sure you know most of this. I just want your blog readers to know that there’s more to the story than you say. Maybe you should call him on the phone and clear this up! As I said, I think both of you should apologize.
Comment #86 April 2nd, 2025 at 7:00 pm
Ground Control to Major Tom: when next you speak to Peter on the phone, run by him the following scenario:
Does Peter believe that the Taskforce should, or will, “investigate” the testimonies it collects from female students?
Can you hear me, Major Tom? Let’s try another one.
Does Peter believe that the Taskforce should, or will, “investigate” the testimonies it collects from black students?
Comment #87 April 2nd, 2025 at 7:53 pm
It’s clear that people are getting very radicalized on all sides, for all sorts of specific reasons all tied to fear.
From my own experience after living through 911 in NYC, the lesson learned is that fear is indeed the mind-killer.
I was convinced that it was only a matter of time before Al-Qaeda gets its hands on a nuke and detonates it in a US city, wiping out millions (after 911 there was a lot of talk about preventing the shipping of a nuke through a US port). For years I had recurring nightmares about collapsing buildings and sudden panic attacks when 911 would come up in discussions.
That sort of fear also has a blinding effect that spreads into all areas of your brain, reason is drowned by powerful survival emotions that boil down to “we better get them first before they get us again”.
Comment #88 April 2nd, 2025 at 8:05 pm
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/01/nx-s1-5345769/yale-university-professor-fascism-canada
Comment #89 April 2nd, 2025 at 9:19 pm
DeI #88: Jason Stanley was my philosophy professor when I was an undergrad at Cornell 25 years ago! I enjoyed his Frege/Russell/Wittgenstein course a lot, and he said very kind things about me. But that was before his main interests became political.
Countless American academics have emptily threatened to move to Canada because of Trump; lots of respect to Jason and one other guy I know for actually following through on it.
If Jason and I talked again, I expect we’d agree about some things and passionately disagree about others.
Comment #90 April 2nd, 2025 at 9:50 pm
Major Tom #85:
1. I find it bizarre that Peter would feel wronged because, despite a long back-and-forth with him, I still don’t share his position. Indeed, why shouldn’t I feel equally wronged that, despite my many attempts to explain to him the fear and isolation that Jews in US universities felt after 10/7, upon discovering that so many people they considered their friends and allies celebrated the mass-murder of their family members in Israel as inspiring resistance … and despite his seeming to understand, he quickly reverted on his blog back to the position that all claims of a special antisemitism problem were fascist lies?
Yes, Peter did put me in touch with a Columbia colleague of his who’s Orthodox Jewish but also left-wing. I had an enlightening conversation with him, in which I learned that his position was somewhere between mine and Peter’s: he thinks Columbia’s post-10/7 antisemitism problem is or was real but the task force exaggerated its extent, and at least one task force member is unreasonably extreme, and things have since calmed down, and the correct actions were already being taken before the Trumpists got involved. I appreciated this, I factored it in, but I also needed to factor in other friends at Columbia I talked to who thought the task force got it basically right.
And I also reflected that, right here at UT Austin, there might be all sorts of problems in the dorms or student clubs that, being a professor, I’d have no particular clue about unless the students came and told me.
2. If you just read Peter’s recent posts, he explicitly condemns his colleagues on the antisemitism task force as, effectively, double agents working for Zionist interests and against the interests of Columbia. It’s pretty hard to miss! And he never corrected me the many times I said some variant of, “well, it sounds like you’re saying the antisemitism task force report is full of lies, and to be disregarded completely.” And of course, the one thing all the task force members have in common is that they put their names on the report.
3. If any far-left person feels smeared by what I wrote, they’re extremely welcome to clarify that they don’t actually hold the views I ascribed to them, and that they instead believe that Israel should continue to exist as part of a two-state solution! Or that yes, Israel should be wiped off the map but Hamas, which has vowed on theological grounds to slaughter every last Jew as soon as it’s in their power, will be transformed by fairy dust and unicorns into an organization that safeguards Jewish survival. Or whatever their actual view is.
4. Then you and Peter should wait for my very next post, coming soon! (It felt inappropriate to do it on April Fools Day.)
5. I haven’t tried to get anyone fired or expelled. I’ve been 100% clear and consistent about my view: namely, that universities should institute content-neutral “time, place, and manner” rules, which allow a huge range of intellectual arguments and speakers (including ones that deeply offend people), while drawing a line at disruption, vandalism, violence, and threats. And then they should actually enforce those rules.
Comment #91 April 2nd, 2025 at 10:47 pm
Hope Scott won’t mind my digging his old comments – 8 years later, some things have changed, some haven’t, but quite prescient!
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=2969#comment-1616736
“The analogy I like is that voting for Trump as a check on campus SJWs and other left-wing authoritarians, is almost exactly like slitting your throat to relieve your high blood pressure. Can high blood pressure be a life-threatening problem? Yes: I even have some personal experience with that (well, with the SJW analogue). But the proposed remedy is still orders of magnitude worse.
Even in the 1930s, I hope you agree that it turned out to be a serious mistake to vote for Hitler as a check on the power of Stalin. But then how much greater of a mistake is it to vote for Trump, and his band of goose-stepping alt-righters, as a check on the power of Amanda Marcotte? Like, I’ll be the first person on earth to affirm that Marcotte is a nasty human being … but she commands no battalions, and she failed even in her limited goal to ruin the life of a nerdy CS professor.
And one could say the same about Mattress Girl, Sabrina Erdely, the Yale protesters, and all the other bogey(wo)men who populate the academic SJW left. Like, if I’m searching for the tiniest silver lining from a Trump administration, maybe he’ll rescind the 2011 Dear Colleague letter, which universities across the country interpreted as ordering them to dispense with due process for anyone accused of sexual harassment or assault, on pain of losing their federal funding.
But even if so (and who knows?), that has to be balanced against the 10,000 horrible things Trump will do. I’m sure there were some bad laws in Weimar Germany that the succeeding administration got rid of.
But there’s even a further issue. Namely, while I have trouble predicting exactly what Trump and his cronies will do, I have no trouble whatsoever predicting how the academic left will respond. As Scott Alexander explained in detail, faced with a complete loss of power over the direction of the country, SJWs will respond by consolidating their power over what they still do control (e.g., academia and various tech organizations), punishing the slightest dissent or heresy with a vehemence that made them look like Care Bears previously. If that’s not what happens, come back here in a few years and tell me I was wrong. 🙂”
“Obviously, what would change my view would be if, four years from now, Trump turned out not to be quite as bad as I’d feared. For example: if he didn’t gut federal science funding, didn’t pull out of the Paris accord, didn’t make it difficult or impossible for foreign scientists to get visas, didn’t deport millions of people who grew up in the US, didn’t threaten journalists, didn’t cause an economic crash by stupidly pulling out of trade agreements, didn’t use the Justice Department to go after his enemies, didn’t interfere with the 2020 election … basically, if he did few or none of the things his supporters expect him to do!”
Comment #92 April 3rd, 2025 at 2:28 am
I find it profundly disturbing that you seem to equate “far-left” with “anti-semite”.
Comment #93 April 3rd, 2025 at 6:12 am
Nicolas Rougerie #92: No, I don’t. Antisemitism, just like other forms of paranoid conspiracy thinking, is most common at both extremes of the political spectrum and least common in the center. Of course the leftist variant is the main one encountered at elite universities—where it most often takes the form of cheering for intifada (i.e., the mass murder of Jewish civilians) because such murder has been force-fit into the leftist-approved category of “the oppressed rising up against their oppressors.” It’s one of the great ironies of history that the people cheering these things, with inverted red triangles and images of paragliders, congratulate themselves for their anti-Nazism. I hope you’re equally disturbed by the phenomenon itself!
Comment #94 April 3rd, 2025 at 7:57 am
Scott #93
“images of paragliders”
It’s not often mentioned that wars are now fought not just on the battlefields but on social media as well.
It remains to be seen who still has the tools to try and scrub the internet clean of whatever still makes them embarrassed or qualifies as war crimes.
But all the aggressive power players in this world are now adapting to the fact that since everything will end up out there on social media anyway, they might as well embrace the outrage, let those images speak for themselves, and use silence as a tool:
unbearable images of violence and destruction are the medieval equivalent of planting severed heads on spikes outside the castle, to project one’s own power and use fear as a warning… “innocent or not, you don’t want to mess with us or else…”
Talking about “medieval”, it’s clear that our world is receding back into the middle ages.
Comment #95 April 3rd, 2025 at 8:38 am
As an example of my point in #94
Compare the evolution of our own communication on policies that are clearly opposed to our traditional core values:
in the first case the gov at least tried to put a humane face on it, even though it’s clearly one of the most horrible things any democracy has ever done to its own citizens.
in the second case, its main purpose is to create fear, with the open admission that innocent people may have been sent but nothing will be done about it.
Comment #96 April 3rd, 2025 at 10:25 am
regarding #93:
It is not clear that antisemitism is a core belief of leftists.
I make some effort to keep politically in the middle, in particular by ridiculing both the Left and the Right. However I am friends with a lot more leftists (who are often involved in music, nature, etc.) than rightists (who are often crazy, assholes, etc.). Thus I have (sometimes heated) conversations and online interactions with some leftists, lately often concerning the current situation in Gaza.
It is quite possible that midwest leftists (or perhaps ones that I know) are more benign than elite east and west coast university leftists. But I have not encountered any “cheering for intifada (i.e., the mass murder of Jewish civilians)”. Rather I hear much lamenting of massive civilian death toll, purported Israeli military over reaction, etc. This is a reasonable concern.
Comment #97 April 3rd, 2025 at 10:35 am
It seems to me (from afar) that when two people are strongly attached, for good reasons, to some separate issues (anti-semitism/Israel/Columbia University/fascism) and thinks the other has made light of them, tempers will flare.
In 1900 there were about a billion people on Earth. When I was born (mid 20th century), over four billion. Now over eight billion. The world is getting smaller. If we can’t learn to and want to resolve our different opinions, humanity is doomed.
(I would identify myself as something of a leftist, and have enjoyed this blog and Dr. Woits for over 20 years. Without knowing all the justifications, I thought Dr. Aaronson’s post was
‘over the top’ and Dr. Woit’s response was inexplicably harsh.)
Comment #98 April 3rd, 2025 at 11:35 am
Raoul Ohio #96: To take a huge step back, “antisemitism” is notoriously hard to prove but also not quite the relevant concept. For me, the key question is: will this person suffer both Israel and Palestine to continue existing, in a two-state solution? If they wouldn’t, then what is their plan for the millions of Israelis and Palestinians now living in the region, other than the pixies-and-rainbows ‘secular binational state’ that neither side wants?? If there’s another Holocaust, then I don’t care that those who left millions of Jews defenseless before their executioners a second time had no antisemitic intent.
Comment #99 April 3rd, 2025 at 1:34 pm
Scott #63: Thanks for answering. Sorry for not answering earlier. In the end, after I had written my answer, I decided to just save it somewhere, and only post the hurtful essential part:
It is not hard to understand that this blog post convinced Peter that you are a fanatic with an obsessions about anything related to October 7. So it is not name calling from his point of view, he really believes this. For example, he wrote:
Ignoring the fact that “fuck off” is an expletive, what really hurts here is probably the fact that he believes that people like you are part of the problem.
Comment #100 April 3rd, 2025 at 2:25 pm
gentzen #99: Yes, I understand that Peter only called me a fanatical fascist Zionist who should fuck off, because he genuinely believes I’m a fanatical fascist Zionist who should fuck off. I’m not confused about that.
From my perspective, I’d actually put a lot of effort into making my comment as balanced and reasonable as I could. I wanted to show how the far-left Hamas supporters and the Trump authoritarians are both horrible, and (step by step) how their respective horriblenesses amplified each other in a feedback loop, with American academic science potentially murdered as collateral damage.
I feel like my comment could only seem “unhinged” to someone who either doesn’t know that hard-leftists all over the world started celebrating the murder of 1200 Jewish civilians already on October 8, 2023 (it was captured on video! on social media! check!), or who knows but doesn’t care, or who sees it as some bizarre aberration totally disconnected from the previous 2,000 years of crowds celebrating the murder of Jews while considering themselves justified and righteous.
Comment #101 April 3rd, 2025 at 3:55 pm
Scott #100
“I feel like my comment could only seem “unhinged” to someone who either doesn’t know that hard-leftists all over the world started celebrating the murder of 1200 Jewish civilians already on October 8, 2023 [..] or who knows but doesn’t care”
To be fair that’s because this average “someone” correctly understands that the people who *actually* control the course of the war are Hamas and the government of Israel… not far-left activists and hardcore libertarians (*) here in the US.
(*) go listen to what Ron Paul has to say about the Gaza war.
Comment #102 April 3rd, 2025 at 4:33 pm
Scott #100
Another thing is that someone can watch “Nuit et Brouillard” or “The Killing Fields” a dozen times, cry every time, really feel awful for what those people went through, but that’s not going to actually turn them into a 1943 Jewish German or a 1985 Cambodian, because everyone has their own life to live.
And that very same ability of empathy (put ourselves into someone else’s shoes) or compassion works both ways when you’re an outsider:
if they can feel sorry for one point of view in a conflict, it’s inevitable that can also feel sorry for the other point of view as well, or at the very least think something like “Wow, I’m grateful I’m not living in that particular side in that war”.
E.g. I’m obviously grateful I didn’t end up in a concentration camp in WW2, but I’m also grateful I wasn’t on the German side during the battle of Stalingrad.
But the big difference between compassion (wanting to understand and help a fellow human) and empathy (an emotional connection with a victim) is that empathy can get out of hand, and you identify so much with a particular victim in a conflict that you take side. This can be triggered by a particular image or story. Once that happens it’s very hard to unwind it.
Comment #103 April 3rd, 2025 at 4:48 pm
fred #101: I’d say that the pro-Hamas protests actually had a very significant (tragic) impact on the course of the war. They helped convinced Hamas to keep fighting—since “the whole world is on their side, the whole world hates Israel”—rather than surrendering under some deal where they’d release the hostages, go into exile, and let the people of Gaza have a new and better government.
Comment #104 April 3rd, 2025 at 5:21 pm
Scott #103
I may be wrong, but I would think that whatever is left of Hamas at this point is the bottom of the ladder, i.e. in the trenches/tunnels and not political strategists, driven by fighting the IDF in Gaza.
Comment #105 April 4th, 2025 at 4:56 am
fred #104: Alas, Hamas has been replenishing its leadership ranks from the thousands of high-level prisoners that Israel needed to release in exchange for its hostages…
Comment #106 April 4th, 2025 at 7:09 am
I just watched this well-produced feature-length documentary about radical and mostly campus pro-Palestinian actions after 10/7:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_8_(film)
https://www.october8film.com/
I assume many people on this thread would find it worth a watch.
It comes entirely from the pro- israeli/jewish/zionist side, with which in this context i overwhelmingly agree, tho oc there is room for critiques of the film. My big disappointment was the complete lack of interviews with any extremists to try to understand these events. I admit it seems there aren’t many people willing to defend these positions and actions in a civil manner to outsider/mainstream/critical inquirers, but i feel it’s important to try. Examples ready to mind are these (not blanket endorsing the interview- ers/ees, just the general attempt):
https://www.wethefifth.com/p/434-crazed-conspiracies-moral-mulligans
https://www.reflector.show/p/growing-support-at-american-universities-714
Perhaps readers who know of other such interviews might post them?
Thx to scott and all
Comment #107 April 4th, 2025 at 3:45 pm
Scott #100
You’re incorrect that “hard-leftists all over the world started celebrating the murder of 1200 Jewish civilians already on October 8, 2023” since (a) the extent of the casualties was not known on that date and (b) around 800 civilians were killed, not 1200; the remaining 400 were soldiers and security forces.
As to why there’s a disconnect between you and someone like Woit: I don’t know him, but he appears to be a bog-standard, reasonably worldly liberal. It is completely conceivable that he’d object to treating people/groups as beyond-the-pale based on apologia for crimes that he may view as similar in scale, kind, and reporting to those that are routinely excused elsewhere. After all, ignoring the (disputed) history of the conflict, the concrete information he has might be the following:
– Civilian death: The above 800:400=2:1 civilian:military death ratio is roughly in line with the ratio of Gazan civilians:militants killed prior to October 7th: according to the UN it’s between 3:1 and 1:1, depending on how you assign disputed cases (https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties). It’s not even that far from assessments of between 1.5:1 and 1:1 by US military-aligned analysts such as John Spencer of the same ratio for Israel’s Gaza operation, unless one views 1.5 as the line between “indiscriminate” and “doing their best to avoid civilian casualties.” The “human shields” justification for Israeli-caused civilian deaths is strongly disputed by liberal NGOs.
– War crimes: Hamas targeted civilians and committed other war crimes on October 7th. It’s unclear why a liberal should weigh that more heavily than the war crimes of Israel’s Gaza operation, which mainstream publications such as the New York Times have reported include prisoner rape and systemic child-sniping. You might align with those who dispute such findings, but many liberals will believe the NYT.
– Genocidal intent: There is the question of the narrow objectives of October 7th and the broader goals of the relevant political actors. Many reasonably worldly liberals know about the ICC and ICJ cases and so might view the latter as either disputed or bad on all sides. As for the former, it is well within mainstream opinion to believe that the goal was to capture Israeli soldiers to exchange for Palestinian prisoners (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/17/yahya-sinwar-hamas-leader-profile). As many are held without charge, if this was the motivation then it would not be too different from one of the stated objectives of Israel’s Gaza operation. Indeed, suppose hostilities cease tomorrow but the hostages remain prisoners in Gaza, and some years from now Israel attacks to get them back. From the above history we should expect some war crimes and a civilian:military death ratio not that different from October 7th. Would you condemn people for celebrating that operation?
Given the above, is it terribly surprising that a liberal who likely reads the NYT and/or the Guardian, and who might still believe in international law, would think that if you were also a consistent liberal then John Fetterman (say) would also be beyond-the-pale due to his aggressive cheerleading of Israel’s Gaza operation, and not “[your] favorite person in American politics?” And that when the liberal contrasts that with you entertaining the possibility that Mahmoud Khalil “would murder [your] entire family in Israel” due to his involvement in a (decentralized and diverse) student group, despite him never saying anything remotely like that in his many interviews, the liberal might think that you’re veering into fanaticism?
Comment #108 April 4th, 2025 at 4:40 pm
Since we are discussing terrorism in the comments, let me state a statement of fact”
To quote Shaiel Ben-Ephrahim, who is a strong zionist supporter, AND not an evil person:
https://x.com/academic_la/status/1907894704152453218
“At this point, it has been well established that Israel is torturing prisoners, starving them, executing Palestinians, supporting settler terrorism, planning ethnic cleansing, and committing other terrible crimes. No one can stop it but us, Jews and Zionists.
If you truly care about our people and humanity, speak up. You will be called a traitor by the apologists, but true love requires saying enough and standing up for your principles. You don’t have to jump through hoops and support crimes to prove your Judaism or Zionism. Be true to your conscience.”
Comment #109 April 5th, 2025 at 8:59 am
max #107: Yes, I’m well-aware of the standard leftist position on Israel (“sure Hamas is bad, but the Israeli government is equally bad—so while students who cheered October 7 were over the line, so are the Zionist students who support the war Israel is fighting in response”). I don’t know whether Peter shares that position; maybe he does.
Obviously I hold a very different view. I’m with the classical liberals like Sam Harris, who perceive a moral Grand Canyon between a side that openly boasts that it would kill every Jewish child if it could and that acts consistently with that, and a side that wishes it could spare every Gazan child while defeating the first side.
But my goal here is not to argue for the classical liberal view and against the leftist one. I want to make a different point: namely, there are lots of people who take the leftist stance on Israel and with whom I nevertheless have perfectly friendly interactions. I saw no reason why it couldn’t be the same way with Peter. He’s the one who decided to foreclose that, by blowing up and calling me a fascist, fanatic, etc. etc.
Comment #110 April 5th, 2025 at 10:03 am
The standard leftist position is very much not “both sides bad” but “occupation and colonization is the fundamental cause of the conflict.” They might still believe “both sides bad” of course, which is probably what distinguishes what you might mean by “hard-leftist” vs. a liberal leftist that you can be friends with.
What I described is a liberal position, and when liberals see hyperbolic claims that do not comport with what they read in the NYT then they tend to view people making such claims as fanatics. It’s extremely not surprising that a liberal would treat the claim that Mahmoud Khalil wants to murder your family the same way they treat claims about vaccines causing autism.
Comment #111 April 5th, 2025 at 10:20 am
max #110: I was trying to be generous, and describe the respectable/mainstream leftist position rather than the lunatic one (again, in the world of actual reality, “occupation and colonization is the fundamental cause of the conflict” = “Israel needs to be eradicated” = “all 7 million Jews there should be at the mercy of those who’ve sworn to complete the Final Solution”).
If you want to call “a pox on both houses” the left-liberal position that’s fine. It’s certainly not the classical liberal position.
As for Khalil: I mean, did he support Oct 7 or not? If he did, then he supported Hamas murdering any Israeli they could get their hands on, therefore my family members if they’d happened to be there that day rather than in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
Comparing me to a vaccine denier is less persuasive than showing me the error in the above syllogism. (And please don’t hide behind “other people would think”: would those other people be justified, or not?)
Comment #112 April 5th, 2025 at 1:24 pm
As occupation and colonization are often viewed as being only in the West Bank & Gaza, opposing them does not necessitate opposing the existence of Israel. There are many people (such as the person Tony #108 quoted (Shaiel Ben-Ephraim) and Talia Ringer), that put substantial emphasis on ending occupation while being self-evidently against what you view as the obvious implication. I do not believe such people are lunatics.
I agree with the position that stating that a CUAD leader wants to murder your family is fanatical. It conflates support (by some of its members) for an action (armed violence) with support for one of that action’s consequences (civilian death). Whether that specific consequence is the point requires litigating the history of the conflict, while the focus is on understanding why someone (who may have a different or more shallow view of the conflict) had a harsh reaction to your statements. I don’t think a member of CUAD can be assumed to view that consequence as the point. I similarly do not believe that you view civilian death as the point of Israel’s Gaza operation while supporting it, and I (and likely Peter) would think that anyone who states that is fanatical.
Comment #113 April 5th, 2025 at 1:41 pm
max #112: The conflict—including the attempt to eliminate Israel and kill all the Jews—was already fully underway back when the West Bank was still part of Jordan and Gaza was part of Egypt. That is why anyone who says “occupation and colonization are the fundamental cause of the conflict” either
(1) agrees with the goal of eradicating Israel, or else
(2) is historically illiterate, a dunce.
As for CUAD, apparently a lot of its membership left in Fall 2024, when the leadership became too radical even for them. That’s when they welcomed back Khymani James (“Zionists don’t deserve to live,” “be grateful that I’m not murdering Zionists”) and apologized for ever dissociating from him. Do you not know this or do you just pretend not to know?
Comment #114 April 5th, 2025 at 2:07 pm
max #107:
I agree with Scott #111 that your post reads like you are hiding behind “other people would think” phrasing. If the “concrete information” you reference are your own beliefs, please just say so.
“You’re incorrect that “hard-leftists all over the world started celebrating the murder of 1200 Jewish civilians already on October 8, 2023” since (a) the extent of the casualties was not known on that date and (b) around 800 civilians were killed, not 1200; the remaining 400 were soldiers and security forces”
The point is people (many being “hard leftists”) WERE celebrating once it was already known hundreds of Jewish civilians had been murdered (look up print media from October 8 to see what had already been reported). Are you trying to suggest the celebrations would have been justified had they only been aware that 200 civilians had been murdered rather than 800?
“Civilian death: The above 800:400=2:1 civilian:military death ratio is roughly in line with the ratio of Gazan civilians:militants killed prior to October 7th:…”
Comparing ratios here is disingenuous as they are measuring different things. In one case, the ratio includes civilians who were deliberately targeted by Hamas et al. In the other, the ratio includes civilians who were not deliberately targeted as a matter of policy. Do you dispute this? As OCHA themselves point out in your link, “the classification of a casualty as “civilian” does not carry any implication regarding the legality of his or her killing or injury”
“There is the question of the narrow objectives of October 7th… it is well within mainstream opinion to believe that the goal was to capture Israeli soldiers to exchange for Palestinian prisoner”
Again, is this what you believe? Have you listened to what the captured Hamas members themselves said were the objectives (video has English subtitle option)?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzZ0at_G74k
max #112:
“As occupation and colonization are often viewed as being only in the West Bank & Gaza, opposing them does not necessitate opposing the existence of Israel”.
Is this what you believe? Do you believe Israel has the right to exist?
Comment #115 April 5th, 2025 at 4:55 pm
Scott #113
Okay, I was referring to ongoing causes and did not mean to use “fundamental” in a historical sense. I think that phrase plus “both sides bad” more or less characterizes movements such as Standing Together.
I did not know about that, but from the only official post I could find it looks like woke ass-covering that does not actually endorse James’s speech. I do not think one can infer CUAD leadership’s views from it. Organizations do this type of thing all the time without their other members being smeared. For example, I’d criticize the New York Post, the Washington Examiner, and The Forward for having employed Bethany “nuke these fucking animals” Mandel but I wouldn’t call their leaders genocidal without substantially more evidence.
Ty #114
Sure, I can respond with my views, but as demonstrated below they are not special and mainly lead to a relitigation of the historical conflict, rather than addressing why someone doesn’t have as negative a view of the Columbia protestors. In any case, celebrations of civilian deaths are not okay. With the state of news dissemination, it is fully conceivable that on October 8th people on that side of social media had only seen pictures of fence-breaking and paragliders. As I covered in #107, intent is clearly disputed at the ICC and ICJ, so I do not think it is disingenuous to compare casualty ratios. I agree with the Guardian that the primary goal was likely to capture Israeli soldiers; confessions obtained from POWs are not valid evidence and publishing the recordings violates the Geneva Conventions. States don’t have rights; people do.
Comment #116 April 5th, 2025 at 5:46 pm
Ty #114
Two people can play this game.
1. “The point is people (many being “hard leftists”) WERE celebrating once it was already known hundreds of Jewish civilians had been murdered (look up print media from October 8 to see what had already been reported).”
Of all “hard leftists”, a vaguely defined term that nobody defined, exactly what percentage of people were celebrating Jewish civilian deaths? Did you interview sufficient number of people to arrive at a statistically meaningful estimate? Is there polling data on this?
Would it similarly be fair to characterize all zionists are batshit crazy and insane like Betar for instance?
2.”In the other, the ratio includes civilians who were not deliberately targeted as a matter of policy.”
Is this even true and based on what? Why should we not believe what the Israeli leaders have themselves said? Israel has been going around using the same argument that the “Hamas spokesperson” said in an interview that they will do repeated Oct 7. If statements of Hamas spokesperson is adopted as the viewpoint of every single person associated with Hamas (be it from the civilian administrative wing or military wing), then why should the Israeli minister statements not be sufficient to conclude that targeting civilians was a deliberate policy?
Netanyahu & other Israeli leaders seem to find a way to go on television every few months and declare how he wants to either target civilians indiscriminately, or calls them Amalek, or declare that they will implement Trump’s plan to displace all Palestinians from Gaza, and yet this is never enough to indict the entire Israeli society of having the same goals. But one Hamas spokesperson said they want to do Oct 7 again & again, and that is reflective of the beliefs of not just anybody associated with Hamas but also every person in Gaza. Funny that!
3. “Is this what you believe? Do you believe Israel has the right to exist?”
Do you believe Palestine has a right to exist and be free of Israeli occupation and deserve to not have their land seized by violent zionist settlers, who are now getting support of the IDF and also the Israeli knesset?
Comment #117 April 9th, 2025 at 7:16 pm
This appears to be a discussion of what other people think. So noone can give an answer, without discussing what other people think.