[Peace-discuss] [OccupyCU] Feisal G. Mohamed and Cary Nelson debate what’s at stake in the Salaita affair

[Ian K via Peace-discuss]

Thanks for passing that along, David. I was particularly struck by the
following line:

"Again, it is, in the end, the chancellor's primary role to ensure an
environment in which each and every student feels able to show up, free to
discuss and ready to learn; unfortunately, we are not convinced" Salaita,
etc.

"It is all about the students," they wail. All this rhetoric seems like an
attempt to justify imposing de facto prior restraint (on faculty
speech/scholarly activism) to prevent POTENTIAL prior restraint (on student
speech/learning). This line of reasoning, of course, does not address
whether Salaita's comments were sufficient evidence that viewpoints would
be stymied in his classrooms . . . as if lectures were conducted via
tweets.

What do we see in the Salaita case at core? We see the willingness to
tolerate abridging speech freedom for those who say the politically
unpopular to protect speech in support the political status quo. This is
precisely what Mill feared: a tyrannical majority dictating what can be
said. It is all the worse to watch this play out via claims of "decorum."

IKD


On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:22 PM, David Green via OccupyCU <
occupycu at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> For absurdity of a less post-modern vein, here's a link to the full page
> ad that was in the NG on Sunday.
> http://www.news-gazette.com/sites/all/files/pdf/2014/09/03/0831_C06_FPA.pdf
>
>
>    On Wednesday, September 3, 2014 3:11 PM, C. G. Estabrook via
> Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> http://chronicle.com/article/A-Growing-Hunt-for-Heretics-/148589/
>
> Nelson: "...Meaning is not stable and ultimately decidable, so the battle
> over what Salaita’s tweets mean in an ultimate sense is largely futile. And
> no one can be certain what Salaita intended with his tweets. But one can
> track how people experience them and what their social, cultural, and
> political impact is. And on those grounds, several tweets cross the line
> into anti-Semitism."
>
> Deciding what Salaita's tweets mean "is largely futile" and "no one can be
> certain what Salaita intended," but if some people (like large donors)
> "experience them" as anti-Semitic, he can be fired?
>
> It would be hard to find arguments as silly as that within 20th century
> totalitarianisms. It's the absurd if vicious end of Postmodernism.
>
> --CGE
>
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