Opposing SB37
Yesterday, the Texas State Legislature heard public comments about SB37, a bill that would give a state board direct oversight over course content and faculty hiring at public universities, perhaps inspired by Trump’s national crackdown on higher education. (See here or here for coverage.) So, encouraged by a friend in the history department, I submitted the following public comment, whatever good it will do.
I’m a computer science professor at UT, although I’m writing in my personal capacity. For 20 years, on my blog and elsewhere, I’ve been outspoken in opposing woke radicalism on campus and (especially) obsessive hatred of Israel that often veers into antisemitism, even when that’s caused me to get attacked from my left. Nevertheless, I write to strongly oppose SB37 in its current form, because of my certainty that no world-class research university can survive ceding control over its curriculum and faculty hiring to the state. If this bill passes, for example, it will severely impact my ability to recruit the most talented computer scientists to UT Austin, if they have competing options that will safeguard their academic freedom as traditionally conceived. Even if our candidates are approved, the new layer of bureaucracy will make it difficult and slow for us to do anything. For those concerned about intellectual diversity in academia, a much better solution would include safeguarding tenure and other protections for faculty with heterodox views, and actually enforcing content-neutral time, place, and manner rules for protests and disruptions. UT has actually done a better job on these things than many other universities in the US, and could serve as a national model for how viewpoint diversity can work — but not under an intolerably stifling regime like the one proposed by this bill.
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Comment #1 May 6th, 2025 at 3:37 pm
Man, recently every post of yours could be summarised by “dear face eating leopard party, I myself have been opposed to faces, at great personal cost, so would you please consider not eating mine?”
Comment #2 May 6th, 2025 at 3:49 pm
An attempt to set mathematical truth by fiat in 1897 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill.
Comment #3 May 6th, 2025 at 3:57 pm
Dear Scott,
I agree with your opposition to the bill on slightly different grounds: you object to “ceding control over its curriculum and faculty hiring to the state”, and I object to the ongoing for decades ceding control over curriculum and faculty hiring to politically motivated bureaucrats. Curriculum should not be politicized; this is where I agree with Trump’s actions that you describe as “crackdown on higher education” and I would interpret as “crackdown on the ongoing politicizing higher education by the left.” Alas, SB37 would lead to politicizing from the right, which is likely to be at least as bad.
Many years ago you wrote an absolutely wonderful piece on “eigenmorality” and “eigendemocracy”. I would love to see a sequel to that. The reason is that I think that the current unipolar bias in numerous universities may be attributed to a trend of hiring those, whose opinions are more in-line with the opinions of the university’s majority. This iterative process is naturally converging to a certain “eigenopinion” that eventually excludes everything else.
I hope SB37 fails because that would require faculty to, as you put it in a previous post, “bend the knee” to politics to even a greater extent. I used to live in USSR in my youth, and quite familiar to the magnitude of the effect that politicizing curriculum would have on education. You personally may be immune: politicians don’t normally meddle in Math or CS or Physics because they just don’t understand any of that. However, humanities will be devastated and even Biology may be affected.
Comment #4 May 6th, 2025 at 4:08 pm
::applauds::
Comment #5 May 6th, 2025 at 4:53 pm
Leo #1: My experience has been that both ideological camps have unleashed leopards to eat the faces of STEM nerds like me, with each one pointing to the other’s leopards as justification.
I agree that the Right’s leopards are vastly more menacing to the world right now, but the Left’s leopards have if anything taken bigger bites out of me personally.
So it would seem to make perfect sense for me to say to the Right: “look, I called attention to the Left’s face-eating leopards even at great personal cost. So please, please don’t release your own face-eating leopards onto my campus in the name of protecting me from the Left’s leopards. No more face-eating leopards period!”
Comment #6 May 6th, 2025 at 7:23 pm
I agree with Leo #1. Scott, it’s been disorienting to see your apparent shift from Enlightenment Values champion able to Reluctant Tribal Defender of Authoritarians.
There are obligatory murmurs against the great wrongs of Trump and Netanyahu, but invariable the energy, vitriol and impassioned argument is reserved for the liberals who have apparently committed equivalent or even greater sins.
The crux of the matter seems to be that October 7 hit too close to home.
You seem to (absurdly) in my view connect protesting students at Columbia with imminent antisemitic attacks on your own family. And I say this in full agreement that such protestors should not be allowed to disrupt/disparage their fellow Jewish students. And you seem unable to muster much energy to acknowledge or push back against the mass continuing slaughter of the Palestinians.
The comment #5 here is another example. Is there really any defensible equivalence between what the woke brigade did to STEM researchers versus what Trump is doing? Granted you’ve long nurtured scars from personal attacks by certain woke people (many of us sympathize!), but at any level relevant to SB37, it seems slippery to claim equivalence between the two.
After years of high-minded nuanced discussion on this blog, your perspective towards the wokesters vs the authoritarians reminds me of the Beatles’ Bungalow Bill:
The children asked him if to kill was not a sin
“Not when he looked so fierce”, his mummy butted in
“If looks could kill, it would have been us instead of him”
Comment #7 May 6th, 2025 at 8:46 pm
MattP #6: I’m trying to spend a smaller fraction of my life arguing in my comment section across gaps as vast as the one that separates me from you. Two brief points though:
1) My decade’s worth of vehement anti-Trump posts (search the archives!) speak for themselves, as do the many thousands of dollars I’ve donated to Trump’s opponents. But now that, despite my and your best efforts, the madman is back in charge destroying our civilization, who do you think is likelier to get through to someone in his circle: someone who was viciously attacked by the madman’s woke enemies and has battle scars to prove it? Or someone who thought wokeness was wonderful all along? If the former, why interfere when such a person does try to get through?
2) Regarding the tentifada protesters: it would have been completely different if they had said from the beginning, “of course we want a two-state solution, where Israel and Palestine both get to continue existing. Of course we want peace and coexistence, not the destruction of one or the other side. We just think X,Y,Z would be a better approach than this brutal war against Hamas, and here’s why…”
But they didn’t say anything like that. You know they didn’t. That was a choice they made. Starting when the corpses of Oct 7 were still strewn across the kibbutzim and the families were still being gunned down in their safe rooms, the position the student protesters took, inspired by decades of decolonial theory, was that the attack was justified (or at any rate, that Israel was “entirely responsible,” as the 35 Harvard student groups famously put it), and indeed that Israel is an illegitimate settler entity that should never have existed and that should be dismantled now.
The problem is that no one, certainly not the protesters, has ever put forward a plan for how to dismantle Israel that wouldn’t quickly result in a genocide of its Jews by their neighbors. Not “genocide” in the sense of 50,000 dead, but in the sense of 7,000,000 dead—Hamas’s crystal-clear intention whether you look at their words or their actions. And so, even if the protesters don’t themselves want a Jewish genocide, or think they want one, they are breathtakingly, recklessly, culpably indifferent to the likelihood of Jewish genocide should their demands ever be granted, and to the need (alas) for constant military vigilance against the large fraction of humanity for whom murdering the Jews is the highest possible expression of its values, a fraction of humanity of whose existence only a dunce could have been unaware since WWII.
Comment #8 May 7th, 2025 at 4:26 am
What the Universities didn’t realize is that when they become playground for a party, the other side is not just going to sit with twiddling thumbs. This is one more thing that has been handed on a platter
Comment #9 May 7th, 2025 at 4:47 am
After reading the post I knew that Scott, in his very Scott way, was turning both cheeks at once, if that is even possible, to be abused by left and right.
I just don’t know why some people on the left don’t understand that if they want moderates and enlightened people like Scott to join forces, they should at least tolerate, if not address, their concerns. So MattP #6, is it that hard to understand why “October 7 hit too close to home” in Scott’s case?
Comment #10 May 7th, 2025 at 6:31 am
“The problem is that no one, certainly not the protesters, has ever put forward a plan for how to dismantle Israel that wouldn’t quickly result in a genocide of its Jews by their neighbors. Not “genocide” in the sense of 50,000 dead, but in the sense of 7,000,000 dead.”
Just move them all to the US. There are already 7 million Jews in the US, and plenty of vast empty beautiful space… Look at the 7 million Mormons near the Zion National Park.
Comment #11 May 7th, 2025 at 8:18 am
fred #10: Yes, that possibility has often been discussed (including on this blog). The problem, besides millions of Jews not wanting to be forced out of their homes yet again (or to give up the place that’s been the center of their entire religion and culture for 3000 years), is that I’ve only ever seen this advocated by weird right-wing libertarian types. The kinds of people who call Israel an “illegitimate settler-colony” tend to believe that the United States is also an illegitimate settler-colony (“Turtle Island”), albeit one that will be harder to dismantle, and they don’t want to import more “Zionazi scum” or whatever else they call us.
Comment #12 May 7th, 2025 at 9:34 am
Scott #11
I’m no right-wing libertarian.
A few points
1) I wanted to write “Let’s just invite them all here in the US” and not “Just move them all in the US” (which comes out harsh, like I’m for some forced relocation).
2) I wasn’t sure how to interpret what you meant by “dismantle Israel”. I assumed to just give up the territory. I of course agree that it would be extremely difficult and unrealistic. Israelis don’t want to move any more than Palestinians want to move, because I think the religious factor plays a huge part, obviously (a lot of magic is attributed to some old stones), and at this point it’s a matter of pride and decades of pain and sacrifices invested on both side.
But you were saying that no-one ever proposed even one solution that saves lives, so that’s what prompted my post.
3) inviting all Israelis to the US is the least unrealistic thing I can think of, assuming Israel would become unlivable for them.
But I’ve said on this blog as well that many Arab nations should also be ready to welcome Palestinians (should Gaza become unlivable for them), which shouldn’t be as unrealistic, but seems to be (because many of those nations have motives to keep the Palestinians as they are).
Comment #13 May 7th, 2025 at 9:48 am
fred #10: I know you are well intended, but this proposal is at level of Gazatrump. One needs to be a Trump (or perhaps a Netanyahu) to feel excited about the genius idea of forcing a population to leave and dispose their land, a novel peaceful solution for humankind. (For economic purposes, minimizing the number of people times displacement, I dare to say that Trump’s idea is better in this case.)
But now that we are on the same page, if I were the king of Spain, with absolute power like some of my predecessors, I would actually revert Isabella’s decree offering lands to the Jews to create the New Toledo and similar cities, where Hebrew could be the official language, etc (it can’t be any harder than to learn Basque). We have land, similar climate and habits, but lack ingenuity. Welcome back!
Comment #14 May 7th, 2025 at 10:01 am
As to whether or not such actions will make a difference, as the old psychiatrist said to Carmela Soprano in the series, at least they can never say they weren’t told.
Comment #15 May 7th, 2025 at 12:14 pm
Max Madera #13
I’m aware, but this was to Scott’s direct assertion that any “dismantling” (or different course of action of what’s currently going on in Gaza) means the automatic deaths of 7 million Jews – this goes beyond rationality and deals with fear and survival, which is impossible to argue with – e.g. how many ‘enemy’ children are worth sacrificing to save my own kids?… a moral question impossible to answer rationally.
Anyway, having Israelis be welcome in the US would be an obviously welcome alternative if you really believe in that.
Now, in the reality on the ground, we all know that Israel has a massive military/tactical upper hand, the US support being a huge part of it. It is what it is.
And what’s coming very soon – with Bibi waiting for Trump’s visit to kick in the next phase of the Gaza take over – will be that very same question of annihilation vs relocation, but on the Gaza side, and Bibi has acknowledged that he’s really okay with GazaTrump.
Again, I’m neither Jew nor Arab/Muslim, but, watching French news media these last few days, I can tell that lots of French intellectual Jews are now openly dreading what’s about to happen in Gaza, not as much what it means for the Gaza population (they’ve been dying for quite a while already), but what terrible long term damage it will do to the moral standing of Israel, not just internationally, but as a moral reckoning at their own personal level.
Comment #16 May 7th, 2025 at 3:41 pm
So, Trump’s “as big as it gets” announcement was the Persian Gulf is being renamed the Arabian Gulf?!
I thought it would be some kind of deal with Iran, but I can’t imagine he would ever suggest renaming the Persian Gulf if there was some kind of deal with the Iranians, right?
Or he got Angola to agree to take all Gazan Palestinians?
It all gets weirder and weirder…
Comment #17 May 7th, 2025 at 3:51 pm
On a positive note, HB 4751 (Texas Quantum Initiative) passed last night! Next, it will go on to the Texas Senate.
Comment #18 May 7th, 2025 at 3:54 pm
Dang… it’s very likely that Trump has no idea that Persia and Iran are the same.
Comment #19 May 7th, 2025 at 6:31 pm
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/-palestinian-protests-resurface-columbia-days-israel-announces-plan-ta-rcna205486
Looks like it’s put up or shut up time for Columbia. Scott, given your view that Columbia fully capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands, how do you predict these ~100 protestors will be disciplined?
Comment #20 May 7th, 2025 at 6:43 pm
Vladimir #19: Yeah, I was just reading the news. So far, it’s hard to say what President Shipman could do beyond what she’s already done (eg immediately call in the NYPD and publicly condemn the disruptive protest). With the federal government and millions of people now scrutinizing everything that happens on this tiny campus, I find it hard to imagine that the vandals won’t be expelled if they turn out to be Columbia students, but I guess we’ll need to wait and see…
Comment #21 May 7th, 2025 at 6:57 pm
Hi Scott, what’s the situation like for pro-Israel students at UT? Any antisemitic incidents or anti-Israel protests? Is there an anti-Israel bias in the humanities departments and among Middle East studies faculty, like at many other universities? I think if there is an uncomfortable environment here for supporters of Israel, it shifts the balance more definitively in favor of some government intervention.
Comment #22 May 7th, 2025 at 7:27 pm
Julian #21: There were certainly anti-Israel protests at UT (I witnessed at least a half-dozen), but Governor Abbott ordered the students arrested who were going to set up a tent encampment before they even pitched the tents.
Overall, while the basic dynamics are similar to elsewhere, I’d say that things didn’t get nearly as tense here as they got at (say) Columbia or UCLA. I’ve had almost all pleasant interactions with colleagues in many departments here, including humanities ones.
Comment #23 May 8th, 2025 at 3:45 am
Hi Scott! I’ve listened to you and read your thoughts quite a bit now and I think I understand your worldview pretty well at this point. Maybe you’ve already done this and if so i apologize but I was wondering if you have a working definition of what “woke” is. It’s become such a weaponized word, when you use it I take it to mean the intolerant flank of the left, people who would silence others because they’re so assured of the righteousness of their cause, or the cancel culture crowd, people who seem gleeful about getting someone fired. But these days, unfortunately, I also see Republicans describe things like due process as woke. I think pretty much everyone uses it derogatorily now and if I remember correctly it began as a term that certain people on the left were proud of. Maybe certain people still are but I rarely hear it used that way anymore. Anyway, my point is, I wish people of good conscience such as yourself had a different word, or collection fo words, to describe the behavior on the left you oppose.
Comment #24 May 8th, 2025 at 8:08 am
Scott #22: I see, that’s good to hear. I am curious, though, if you would support an analogous bill for a public university like UCLA, where there is a real antisemitism/anti-Zionism problem. I saw videos from the UCLA campus of anti-Zionist protesters setting up checkpoints to enter different parts of the campus, stopping students from going to the library unless they swore an oath to anti-Zionism. Surely the state government should step in when that happens? I know you’ve argued that bills like this will make it harder to attract top talent, but anti-Zionist checkpoints already make it hard to attract any Jewish talent, or to be honest, any talent who aren’t anti-Zionist anti-colonialist radicals.
Comment #25 May 8th, 2025 at 9:16 am
David #23,
“woke” is a “weaponized word”
Either all words are weapons or no word is a weapon. You don’t like Scott using it because it makes you doubt his tribal loyalties, yes? You seem to acknowledge that there are contexts in which “woke” used as a derogatory might be appropriate; to mean the intolerant flank of the left that has unfairly demonized Scott and tried to get him fired.
The question is whether Scott is using the word in an appropriate context. You seem to acknowledge he is. That should be good enough. That your tribal enemies use that word in an inappropriate way is not on Scott. It isn’t his responsibility. Your time and energy would be better spent policing and deriding your own side for making it so easy to turn into a pejorative.
What a tremendous own goal; the left continuing to come after allies that grow their tent rather than taking that same time and energy to kick out the intolerant radicals in their midst or even acknowledge that those intolerant radicals exist and are a big problem.
Comment #26 May 8th, 2025 at 9:42 am
fred #15:
> Again, I’m neither Jew nor Arab/Muslim, but, watching French news media these last few days, I can tell that lots of French intellectual Jews are now openly dreading what’s about to happen in Gaza, […]
A lot of Israelis are similarly dreading what’s going to happen! Remember that Israelis currently overwhelmingly support a deal to bring the hostages home and end the war.
Moshe Ya’alon, a former Chief of Staff of the Israeli army, former defense secretary and former deputy prime minister, is in the news now saying that the current Chief of Staff of the army must not agree to carry out the new Gaza plan because it’s an illegal order, and he’d be sending soldiers to perform ethnic cleansing. And Moshe Ya’alon isn’t a leftist intellectual or anything, he was originally on the Israeli right.
Scott #22:
Do you mind expanding on what kind of views you’re seeing among your current colleagues in the humanities? I’m trying to get a sense of whether the anti-colonial (and anti-Israel) framing is very common in the humanities, or just amplified at places like Columbia and Harvard.
Unrelatedly, did you hear about the Pulitzer prize being awarded to a Palestinian poet who previously made statements against the hostages, specifically Emily Damari, and made other less-than-stellar statements? Emily Damari wrote a post against him which is worth reading.
Comment #27 May 8th, 2025 at 11:43 am
Julian #24: There’s a Title VI lawsuit against UCLA, for standing by while sections of its campus were declared “off-limits to Zionists,” that was working its way through the courts even before Trump’s reelection. That sort of thing seems to me like a better, more targeted approach than totally destroying UCLA’s autonomy (something that, in any case, would have no chance of passing in California even if the analogous thing might pass in Texas … and also, even if it did pass, the California state bureaucrats who’d be given control might be even more anti-Zionist than the UCLA ones!).
Comment #28 May 8th, 2025 at 11:43 am
Fred,
Moving 7 million Israelis to the US isn’t remotely possible. Into what housing? Into what nursing homes and hospitals for those who are currently in need of that care? Even if Israelis wanted this and the US wanted it, it would be out of the question. Moving Palestinians out of Gaza into Jordan or wherever else is equally impossible. You can’t place-shift shift millions of people without a lot of them dying in the process. The danger to the people of Gaza is much less theoretical right now given Netanyahu’s plans, but let’s not pretend that Israelis abandoning Israel is workable.
Comment #29 May 8th, 2025 at 11:51 am
David Skelton #23: I use “woke” simply as a rough shorthand for the variant of social-justice leftism that peaked around 2010-2020, and which was characterized (at least from outsiders’ perspective) by intense opposition to classical liberal ideals like impartiality and meritocracy; cancellations and denunciations of individuals (often erstwhile allies who had strayed on a single point); and hatred of straight white males, Silicon Valley, capitalism, Zionism, and “gross, creepy” STEM nerds. If you have a different word I should use instead, I’m happy to hear your suggestion!
Comment #30 May 8th, 2025 at 12:03 pm
Edan Maor #26:
Do you mind expanding on what kind of views you’re seeing among your current colleagues in the humanities? I’m trying to get a sense of whether the anti-colonial (and anti-Israel) framing is very common in the humanities, or just amplified at places like Columbia and Harvard.
Alas, I’m the wrong person to field this question, because I talk only to what might be a wildly unrepresentative sample of humanities people: namely, the ones who’d want to talk to someone like me! 😀
Having said that: to the extent I’ve discussed politics with humanities colleagues at all, I found a lot of sanity and agreement! They’re generally on the left, of course, but they also ask after my family in Israel and despise antisemitism and want peace and love and understanding. But I’ve also heard from them that there is a lot of strident anti-Zionism in their departments and that it would be difficult in those departments to be an outspoken Zionist.
Unrelatedly, did you hear about the Pulitzer prize being awarded to a Palestinian poet who previously made statements against the hostages, specifically Emily Damari, and made other less-than-stellar statements? Emily Damari wrote a post against him which is worth reading.
Yes, I read all about it this morning from Seth Mandel. The Pulitzer is, alas, far from the only prestigious prize to have been completely captured by ideologues.
Comment #31 May 8th, 2025 at 1:08 pm
I totally get the panic over a few dozens radical students occupying a library and shouting “Free Palestine!”, but those students’ very own President just said this about the Houthis, an Islamist terrorist organization that lobbed a missile on the Tel-Aviv airport:
“We take their word for it… We hit them very hard. They had a great capacity to withstand punishment, you could say there’s a lot of bravery there.”
Comment #32 May 8th, 2025 at 1:15 pm
fred #31: Not clear what point you’re trying to make. Across a wide spectrum of views about Trump, Israel, and the war in Gaza, surely we can agree that striking back against the Houthis is morally and strategically justified if anything ever was?
Comment #33 May 8th, 2025 at 1:50 pm
@Scott @32,
Unfortunately, there is a segment of the left who has decided that the Houthis themselves are worthy of praise and defense, and are not motivated by antisemitism, despite having a flag which literally says “curse the Jews” or “damn the Jews” depending on translation. There’s a point where the distinction between people being antisemites and people merely turning a blind eye to antisemitism becomes almost meaningless, and this looks like it is past that point.
Comment #34 May 8th, 2025 at 1:53 pm
Joshua #33: Yeah, I’m aware that such people exist! But surely Fred isn’t one of them…?
Comment #35 May 8th, 2025 at 1:57 pm
I suspect Fred’s, ummmm, logic, is something along the lines of “if Trump can say something positive about the Houthis, why can’t Columbia students support Hamas?”.
Comment #36 May 8th, 2025 at 2:46 pm
No, Vladimir,
the, “ummmm, logic” is that you should open your freaking eyes and see that the Raptors are actually the smaller of your two problems, at the moment: the T-Rex is only faking an appetite for the Raptors, he’s really only pretending to eat them to keep you distracted and relieved, while he’s moving closer to you. What it really wants is your flesh.
Comment #37 May 8th, 2025 at 3:29 pm
My entire life, the people I’ve always admired the most are literally all Jewish.
Scientists: Feynman, Einstein, Brian Greene, Scott (obviously!)
Actors/directors/comedians: Woody Allen, Spielberg, the Cohen Brothers, Elaine May, Seinfeld, Ben Stiller, Roman Polanski, Claude Berri, Dustin Hoffman, Jeff Goldblum,…
Mystics/thinkers: Joseph Goldstein, Sam Harris, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Andrew Weil,..
Singers: Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Serge Gainsbourg,…
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve cried watching “Nuit et Brouillard”, it was one of the most important films of my childhood.
Growing up, I’ve always stood up against the rampant antisemitism in my close circles.
So each time I get accused here of anti-zionism, anti-semitism, being pro-Hamas, etc, it’s a like a little punch in the guts. But it’s okay.
The only reason I’m posting here is that I’m truly horrified of the long term path Netanyahu and Trump are taking Israel and the Jewish community at large.
Unfortunately, Netanyahu has set up that path like a master chess player, he can’t be stopped (well, if he can be stopped, it has to be done by Jewish people).
Comment #38 May 8th, 2025 at 3:51 pm
fred #37: I appreciate your long list of Jews you admire (should I make a list of all the Gentiles I admire? 😀 ).
Without responding to all your points, let me just submit the following:
If Netanyahu is ever defeated, it will have to be by a different Israeli politician, who’s hopefully less extreme and corrupt, but who will also believe in the IDF vociferously fighting Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran so that a murderous invasion like that of Oct. 7 can never happen again.
Likewise, if Trumpism is ever defeated, it will presumably be by moderate Democrats who will agree that wokeism went too far.
These are both developments that I’ll fervently support and do what I can to help happen.
Comment #39 May 8th, 2025 at 4:21 pm
Scott #38
You should know better than to call Netanyahu an extremist, especially considering you’ve been listening to, and signal-boosting, Haviv Rettig Gur. In reality, Bibi is something of an Israeli Hober Mallow (“When I’m boss of this Foundation, I’m going to do nothing. One hundred percent of nothing, and that is the secret of this crisis”).
Comment #40 May 8th, 2025 at 4:37 pm
Scott #38
the problem is that with those two characters, it’s not just a question of politics as usual, like we wait it out and we’ll be fine eventually… no, the level of damage will be so immense that it will be hard to reverse, if ever.
E.g. the reputation and alliances the US has built over the last 80+ years are being torn down while humiliating our closest friends, and there’s no reason to think that we’ll ever get it back. The world forgave us after the first Trump term, but not this time. They just won’t have any long term reason to rely or align with us, it would be reckless.
For the US we will characterize it as global anti-americanism, for Israel as global anti-semitism (because of the insistance to now associate Israel with Jewishness).
Comment #41 May 8th, 2025 at 5:50 pm
Adam Treat #25
Maybe the way I expressed myself wasn’t clear. I’m not trying to police anybody, and I understand the context in which Scott is using the term. I was lamenting that the term, like socialism, has no agreed upon definition in popular usage. Scott is one of the clearest communicators I’ve come across, it just occurred to me that the context he used the word in his public comment on the proposed legislation could be understood to have a totally different meaning by someone reading it. I certainly wasn’t trying to criticize Scott, I was trying to articulate my frustration with the way that word has had its meaning expanded to include pretty much anything the right dislikes.
Comment #42 May 8th, 2025 at 6:01 pm
Scott 29
Unfortunately I don’t have a better word! To be clear I wasn’t criticizing your use of it at all! I was just conplaining about the way its meaning has expanded. I think it was used effectively as a cudgel and the Rufo school of political warfare is to take a term that has a specific meaning and that describes behavior most people dislike, and then expand its definition to include all sorts of other things that only their side dislikes. It’s pretty diabolical and I guess I was just lamenting how seemingly effective it is. I wish I knew a way to combat it and could give you a better, instantly recognizable word that would describe the specific behavior you want to speak out against!
Comment #43 May 8th, 2025 at 6:18 pm
Vladimir #39: Alright, the more precise description than “extremist” for Netanyahu is “someone who empowers extremists, like Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, if it will help ensure his political survival.” To much of the outside world, though, this is a distinction without a difference. If Ben-Gvir hung a portrait of Baruch Goldstein in his house, they ask, and if Netanyahu willingly entered an alliance with Ben-Gvir, then how is Netanyahu better than Sinwar or any other terrorist?
(To be clear: yes, there are cogent answers to this question! But I’d much rather have an Israeli PM for whom the question didn’t arise.)
Comment #44 May 8th, 2025 at 7:49 pm
Scott #43
It’d be even more accurate to say that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich are mostly empowering Bibi rather than the other way around. Granted, the optics would be a bit better if these guys weren’t in the government, but it’s a far cry from acknowledging that to treating “[…] how is Netanyahu better than Sinwar or any other terrorist?” as a legitimate question.
Comment #45 May 8th, 2025 at 10:15 pm
Fred-you’re a funny guy. Bruce Springsteen is not Jewish he is Catholic. His drummer is Jewish though LOL-
Comment #46 May 9th, 2025 at 9:35 am
Dave #45
lol, looks like it’s a common mistake…ok, I swap him for Michel Berger and Paul Simon! (I like those two even more than Springsteen)
Comment #47 May 10th, 2025 at 7:15 am
Dave #45
For me most puzzling american thing I’ve experienced, is that americans always think that being jew is religion. Do you now that Ukrainian president is christian?
Another slightly less nonsensical american thing “Sweden is socialist country”.
Well, maybe something is really wrong with american education.
Comment #48 May 10th, 2025 at 1:36 pm
It is not just Smotrich or Ben Gvir. Members of the Likud, not some extremist party, have publicly called for burning Gaza to the ground with no regard for uninvolved civilians, because every person in Gaza is a terrorist. None of these people have been disciplined in any way, investigations into such statements have been dismissed. I’m not asking for prison time, some political sidelining is what I would like to see, but I haven’t seen it. If I was in America I would not protest against this because I’d be afraid I’d be disappeared and deported, and the people protesting this seem to be all in for Hamas for some bizarre reason, but I think there’s something rotten going on here, and I don’t know what me or anyone else for that matter can do about it.
Comment #49 May 10th, 2025 at 2:10 pm
Sych #47:
Bruce Springsteen doesn’t have any Jewish DNA either-Steen is Dutch, it is not Stein, LOL. His parents have Italian, Dutch and Irish ancestry.
Comment #50 May 12th, 2025 at 11:41 am
Yea, Steen is dutch, like Mary Steenburgen, she’s not Jewish.
Other celebrities who aren’t Jewish:
Zachary Levi, actor in Shazam and The Marvelous Mrs Masel.
Norman Jewison, director of Fiddler on the Roof.
Comment #51 May 12th, 2025 at 3:50 pm
Btw, the thing that may throw people off when it comes to names like Springsteen or Steenburgen is that in English the pronunciation of steen got transformed to “stean” while in original dutch it would be more like “stain” (i.e. the same sound as for “een” which is Dutch for ‘one’).
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/steen
Comment #52 May 13th, 2025 at 4:16 am
I think that the original source of the confusion is in the way how English speakers mispronounce the German -stein which should be -shtayn and not -steen.
Comment #53 May 19th, 2025 at 4:41 pm
Peter Woit seems a couple of weeks away from singing along to Kanye’s latest.
Comment #54 May 21st, 2025 at 1:28 am
Mr. Aaronson, stop doing yourself any more harm and give up your middle ground. Join the leading worldview. Denounce your Jewish heritage and bloodline. Sure, you’ll spend a few years in prison for the thoughtcrime you’ve committed thus far when the next regime rolls around, but it’s not too late to go back. Your resistance is futile and your interests are not aligned with going against the regime. Please just behave like the rest of us.
Comment #55 June 7th, 2025 at 8:50 am
Hi Scott:
Sorry to be off topic, searched your blog, but could not locate any discussion of the diamond with nitrogen vacancy methods of hybrid quantum computing at room temperature originally claimed developed in Australia. Would be interested in your opinion of the error rate(s) of such method compared to supercooled processors ?
https://nachrichten.idw-online.de/2025/06/05/up-and-running-first-room-temperature-quantum-accelerator-of-its-kind-in-europe