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

[David Green via Peace-discuss]

What we also see is that criticizing Israel in particular--and perhaps uniquely--is still an invitation to blatant repression.
 
DG 


On Wednesday, September 3, 2014 3:59 PM, Ian K <iankdavis at gmail.com> wrote:
  

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>Thanks for passing that along, David. I was particularly struck by the following line:
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>"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.
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>"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. 
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>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."
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>IKD 
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>On Wed, Sep 3, 2014 at 3:22 PM, David Green via OccupyCU <occupycu at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
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>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 
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>>On Wednesday, September 3, 2014 3:11 PM, C. G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
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>>>http://chronicle.com/article/A-Growing-Hunt-for-Heretics-/148589/
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>>>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."
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>>>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?
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>>>It would be hard to find arguments as silly as that within 20th century totalitarianisms. It's the absurd if vicious end of Postmodernism.
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>>>--CGE
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>>_______________________________________________
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