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...this is sensationalism at it's best
So because two student have complained, one only about a specific professor, Northeastern is an anti-Semitic institution? Fuck the I-team, first of all.
Secondly, all of these Jewish organizations jumping to say that the institution is anti-Semitic because two students have complained should be open to lawsuits for defamation of the School.
Does it make me an anti-Semite to disagree with this bullshit? Because I do.
Ludicrous.
Woah
To be fair, the ADL just asked for an investigation. I don't really see how that is defamatory.
Because with certain things
Because with certain things the accusation is tantamount to the thing itself. Would you agree with your sentiment if instead we were talking about rape and the accused was yourself?
To be fair, NOW is just asking for an investigation. I don't really see how that is defamatory.
Systemic oppression
I don't think anyone is saying that Northeastern is a horrible antisemitic place that hates Jews and needs to be shut down. The story said that they're investigating whether some insensitivity took place.
And yes, if one professor is treating people in a way that shows obvious bias and is showing insensitivity to certain groups, then this means that the organization could stand to improve upon the ways in which they supervise and train faculty so as to be more inclusive and sensitive. This is true of most organizations, and it's a positive thing that people are bringing this up and encouraging improvement. It's a good thing if the organization finds ways to reduce bias and be more inclusive.
This isn't at all the same thing as saying that someone is a horrible person filled with hatred or that the organization is a bad organization. Most people who are not members of a minority group hold unconscious biases toward minority groups, and most people say and do things that they honestly don't realize are racist/sexist/classic/homophobic/etc. When these things are pointed out, the appropriate response is to recognize that we all make mistakes, and to take it upon ourselves to educate ourselves. It doesn't help anything to just deny there's a problem. It especially doesn't help to blame the victim; most members of minority groups let 99.999% of the biases they encounter slide, so if people are saying something, it's usually a good idea to listen.
Some exerpts
For context:
“I think the Palestinian narrative should be taught and should be taught and expressed as well as anybody can express it, but that can’t be the only thing that happens on campus.”
So Northeastern University is only teaching the Palestinian narrative? Wrong, and defamatory.
“It’s a terrible thing that at a major university in Boston, Jewish students are intimidated by faculty members who are there simply to propagate their own anti-Israel line”
Multiple faculty members are now intimidating students in order to propagate antisemitism? Because one student complained about one paper, and another student said "because it is so anti-Israel, it leads to feelings of anti-Semitism"
The problem here is the classic issue of teaching anything other than the AIPAC, zionist party line. In much the same way that Netanyahu throws around the term "anti-semitic" when Israel continues to build illegal settlements in the West Bank, this story is accusing an institution of being anti-semitic because two students have complained.
It's nonsense. Criticism of Israel and it's policies is not anti-semitism.
If I were the university I would pursue these groups aggressively, and very publicly. Of course, they'll be called anti-semites for doing so.
Oops, you showed your cards
Know how I know you're an anti-Semite? You just used the word "zionist" to describe all Jews. You suck.
Huh what?
I think my reading comprehension is pretty good, and I just can't figure out what you're talking about here. Care to point out where he/she used the term "zionist" to refer to all Jews?
Where exactly was that said?
Where exactly was that said?
Classic
I didn't call all Jewish people zionists. I called the ones who say criticizing Israel is anti-semitic zionists. You're basically demonstrating my point for me.
Thank you.
Sorry
But Anti-Israel != Anti-Semite
Unless people are equating that Israel should be a Religious Theocracy/Apartheid with a veneer of Democracy and criticism of that path is antisemitic. If that's the case, please sign me up as one!
Disagreeing with Israels far right wing policies and path away from Democracy isn't antisemitic, nor is questioning the US's blind policy of support. Lets not go down that path.
Disagreeing with Israels far
No. And arguing that Hamas is not (or, not only) a "humanitarian organization" isn't a reason to reject a paper. Everyone should be allowed to criticize everyone in a cogent, rational way. It's called debate. I'm taking the reports in the linked article at face value, because there's really not a whole lot of content to it. And certainly the university ought to have a record of a formal complaint filed by students.
Pro-Hamas, however, is
Pro-Hamas, however, is undeniably tantamount to anti-semitic, because Hamas's founding documents, policies, aims, and leaders are all expressly antisemitic.
Again, it's all in the delivery
It's just like how sociologists and others might criticize aspects of African-American culture or modern Chinese culture or Amish culture. This can be done in a way that shows knowledge and understanding of the culture, and where the criticisms are raised with sensitivity and empathy toward the people affected by the problematic aspects of the culture and an understanding that all cultures have ways in which they can improve upon their treatment of people, or it can be done in a way that feels hurtful and dismissive and racist to the members of the culture.
When someone is intimately familiar with a culture and hears criticisms from someone who isn't a member of the culture or personally familiar with it, who is making a number of factual errors and incorrect generalizations, yet won't back down from their supposed point, that person is rightfully going to feel oppressed. Institutions of higher learning have an obligation to be teaching their faculty how to be sensitive and inclusive to all viewpoints and to recognize that it's often oppressive to come at something from a "but I'm an expert" perspective when you are standing in front of actual people who've personally experienced what you're teaching about.
Delivery...and reception
If you've been geared up your whole life (heritage?) to fight, fight, fight or your culture/heritage will disappear(!), and someone presents the opinion that maybe, just maybe, these days, you've become the oppressor in the situation...
Well, expect the shitstorm, because it's coming, you anti-Semite.
The delivery of the message may be tame or even innocuous but it intrudes on your ability to remain faithful to your downtrodden and humble past. The idea that someone might suggest that your culture is wiping out another runs against everything you've been taught to believe about the humbleness of your people and clouds the fact that the delivery was so inconspicuous. If you're not poised to receive facts and arguments from someone who might present facts contrary to your own belief system, then it's not the delivery, it's the reception. But of course, crying foul of the delivery will always turn the spotlight on them for offending you.
House of cards
Puh-lease, cry me a river. White able-bodied agnostic males have no cards to play (race, gender, orientation, religion, weight, etc,) and are actually at a disadvantage unless they happen to be well-connected, how are they the privileged oppressors?
What.
I'd post a reply, except that Adam's censoring
I tried to post a reply, except that Adam is filtering anonymous comments based on his personal beliefs...
Um, no, but do go on
I may have not posted stuff because they were repetitive, but I don't think I've blocked anything else in this discussion. But here's a clue: Get a throwaway e-mail account, register a user name here, log in, delete the e-mail account so my pals in the Cabal can't track you, then you can post away. I don't look at posts from people with accounts beforehand.
Even easier
Use mailinator.com as your mail address. Anyone can access any inbox on mailinator.com, there is no account sign-up there just public inboxes. New ones are created just by linking to them or registering for something using whatever username you want.
So, there's zero privacy, but you're just looking to get a username here, so who cares.
You wanna be [email protected] or [email protected], you're welcome to them (and so is everyone else). It'll get you a login here and out of the dreaded adamg "filtering" (which really just means anti-spam).
To be honest, more than just spam
Started out that way, but I'm not going to approve anonymous postings that threaten somebody's life, that consist mainly (or entirely) of a string of expletives aimed at regular posters here and that, yes, express Herald-comment-like sentiments about particular ethnic or racial groups. I'm doing my best to keep Gresham's Law from happening here like it did on an earlier forum I ran.
Herald style statements
Adam it isn't just ethnic and racial groups. Those Herald style sentiments are also directed towards particular sexual identity groups and religious groups.
You know what doesn't help
You know what doesn't help the credibility of a story....anonymous sources.
Especially when the media goes out of
their way to emphasize to the public that they are using anonymous sources. Like stating former Northeastern student who asked that her identity be hidden".
Or the ever popular "official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of (insert one of any number of flimsy made up excuses here - from "the investigation is still ongoing" to "my dog ate the press release").
Yet, when the police fail to identify people, it's always "The authorities would not release the name..."
Pathetic double standard, if you ask me.
This comes up every few months at NU
The last time this mess surfaced the university announced it was launching a "Presidential Council on Diversity and Inclusion." A quick look over their propaganda site shows the council's done nothing since a month or so after it was launched.
From News at Northeastern:
Anti-Israel ≠ Anti-Semitism
Anti-Israel ≠ Anti-Semitism
Maybe. Maybe not, but
the same ill-informed anti-Israel cretins usually have a lot of area overlapping in the Venn Diagram of people who are anti-Semitic.
Correlation does not imply
Correlation does not imply causation. Turned around, the same argument could accuse those who support Israel of being bigoted islamophobics. Both sides have a terrible tendency of oversimplifying and vilifying their opponents.
There are many good reasons to oppose an apartheid state besides bigotry.
If you've
bought into the ludicrous idea that Israel is apartheid, then there's not much hope of convincing you of the truth. You've bought into the Palesinian-I'm a terrorist because I'm just a victim argument.
Speak to some people who have been to Israel and you'll soon discover how NOT apartheid it is, especially compared to its Arab neighbors. But don't let truth get in the way of anti-Semitic vitriol.
Please
All those Israeli Arabs are clamoring to move to Arab Muslim countries.
Oh wait, they aren't?
Oh wait, they have more rights in the Jewish state then they would in their own Palestinian state?
I don't think you people know what apartheid means.
Perhaps they stay in Israel for jobs
Rights don't feed a family, so Palestinians inside and outside the wall value hard to find work over politics.
Someone
need to take a trip to Palestine and the West Bank. The sanctions there are worse than what we’ve been doing to Iran, and I’m not even sure what they have can be called an economy anymore.
And it’s punishment of a whole people for the small band of fanatics. Which are increasing because of the broad punishments.
Many anti-Semites hide behind
Many anti-Semites hide behind that argument. It's the equivalent of a racist claiming they have black friends.
It's all in the delivery
I'm Jewish, and I disagree with a lot of Israeli policies, but I also have positive wishes for the Jewish people and the Jewish state and wish it could get its act together. Similarly, I'm American, and I disagree with a lot of our policies, but this is my home and I wish the country would get its act together and improve. I'm not going to make blanket statements that Israel sucks or that America sucks, and yes, I'd be a bit offended by someone saying either thing, because it shows that they haven't educated themselves and learned that there are good things and good people.
There are ways to criticize policy and cultural issues that show respect for a people and their culture, and there are ways that dismiss an entire people and their culture. I think we all know both when we see them. All societies have problems, but there's a real difference between talking about these things from a perspective in which we display empathy and an attempt at understanding, versus a perspective where, say, we express the sentiment that a country or culture just shouldn't exist.
(And by the way, we also live in a country that was founded by displacing the native people, and which wages wars for no good reason. Would you appreciate people saying the US should just stop existing and everyone should go back home? Of course not. Can you see why saying the same thing about Israel is inappropriate, tends to get taken personally, and is quite different from pointing out specific problems about the Israeli government?)
Well said
The problem is is just as there are racists that will hid behind anti-Israeli policy arguments, there's also those on the other side that would question someone as antisemitic for even daring to not ask policy questions.
Like always there's truth in the middle, but it's stuck between racists and religious wackos inflaming the debate for their own ends.
You there!
Yes you with your thoughtful, reasoned approach to a complicated issue! Get lost! We don't want your kind here. This space is reserved for mindless sloganeering.
I generally agree with what
I generally agree with what you're saying, but if Native Americans wanted to group together and tell the rest of us to GTFO, I sure couldn't blame them for wishing Europeans had never found this place or call them racist for it. I'll be the first in line to agree!
Oh, sure
No, I definitely have empathy and would not disagree with Native Americans who say that European-Americans should GTFO, or people who say this country was stolen, and was founded on racism. All of that is accurate information.
We can agree with that and have empathy and understanding that we don't have any "right" to this place while also realizing that it wouldn't solve anything in 2013 to just be like, OK, anyone who isn't a Native American gets deported to places that don't want us and where most of us don't have current ties. It doesn't have to be a dichotomy though, where if I acknowledge that this land was stolen and I don't actually have a moral right to be here then I need to leave, and if I acknowledge that I feel ties to this place and want to stay then I need to be a white nationalist and assert my privilege whenever possible. We can acknowledge that we're here because of some rather shitty things people did in the past, and acknowledge that others who are here still are affected by those things.
I would ask Rachel Corrie's parents
how they feel about that statement.
That unfortunate girl had
That unfortunate girl had issues.
Well, the Israeli Army sure
took care of those issues, now didn't they?
Standing in front of a slowly
Standing in front of a slowly moving armored bulldozer with poor sight lines pushing a giant pile of underbrush was not the safest form of protest. Rachel didn't try to get out of the way and her colleagues didn't notice she was about it get crushed by the debris pile to yell at the driver to stop until it was too late.
And Anti-Hamas ≠ Zionism
Believe it or not, there is a middle ground.
The Left
The left tends to be very anti-Semitic.
You are misinformed.
You are misinformed.
I'm going to guess you listen
I'm going to guess you listen to a lot of talk radio. Please post to confirm/deny.
Damn
all those anti-Semitic, self-loathing American Jews!
The right is pretty anti-Semitic as well. A good chunk of them support Israel because the Rapture can't happen until they have full control over the holy lands. At which point God will burn them all in hell on earth, and whips all the good Christians into the sky.
If that's not anti-Semitic, I don't know what is. It's also a bit cynical of Israeli factions that they know and still cynically ally with them. The enemy of my enemy I guess..
Still, you create monsters...
re: The Left By anon (not verified) - 9/19/13 - 9:46 am #1 19
Welcome, 19 deluded Herald readers who +1'd this comment!
Thank you
Thank you, I feel very welcome. What will be the main course for the evening?
Snowflakes
I think what we are dealing with here are precious snowflakes having their worldview questioned for the first time. If you grow up in an insular community where there are no competing viewpoints on religion, politics, race, etc. one can easily assume other viewpoints don't exist or are illegitimate. Accusations of anti-semitism are just a convenient way to shut down the discussion without addressing any substance of the issue.
See here for another example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Israel_Lobby_and_...