There is something f’n rotten in major student orgs on campuses

[gerritcole]

Does anyone find it strange there won't be any protests about Pakistan's expulsion/ethnic cleansing of Afghans by these people? i wonder why

[ingemann]

Does anyone find it strange there won't be any protests about Pakistan's expulsion/ethnic cleansing of Afghans by these people? i wonder why

Not really the hypocrisy around this have been around for decades and honestly you could have made the same argument about apartheid, some conflicts or injustices just fill more than other, and honestly it’s the same way for us who support Israel, the dead Israelis means more to me than the dead Palestinians, it’s a truth I have to admit to myself but still feel deeply uncomfortable about.

[WalterWhite]

There seems to be a large subset of humanities majors (and yes, mostly humanities majors) who appear to be unable to distinguish a government and the nationality it supposedly represents. The Israeli government is certainly committing atrocities against Palestinians both in Palestinian and Israeli territory, but that by no means means that Israelis are responsible for this. This sort of essentialist thinking led to the Rwandan Genocide; it has disastrous consequences. Israeli people are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, and Palestinian people are not responsible for the actions of Hamas. It is important to emphasize that while the Israeli government is oppressive, Israeli people are not oppressors—and that it is ridiculous to make that connection.

The refusal for many humanities majors to acknowledge people's individual circumstances—instead lumping everyone into categories of "oppressed" and "oppressor"—is ironically very anti-intersectionalist and could lead to the very reactionary thinking many of these humanities majors oppose. It is true that Arabs were shamefully ethnically cleansed from Palestine; however, military officials were responsible for this ethnic cleansing, not average Jewish settlers. Thinking that Jews are occupying rightful Palestinian land because Palestinians were technically inhabiting the land before Ashkenazi Jews is very xenophobic and racist; it is just as xenophobic as claiming that Mexicans are invading the United States just became there are many Mexican people immigrating into the United States; it is just as xenophobic as claiming that Muslims are invading Europe because of the large amount of Muslims entering the continent.

Of course, this is simply a byproduct of the subjective nature of humanities majors: these people can B.S. their way into supporting any position they hold with a number of possible frameworks of analysis. The fact that there is often no correct objective way to interpret events leads to people with insane ideas gaining prominence and credibility in these fields simply because of their writing skills. There should be more rigorous standards on the types of analysis acceptable in humanities majors if the humanities want to survive in this day and age.

[HisGrace]

Does anyone find it strange there won't be any protests about Pakistan's expulsion/ethnic cleansing of Afghans by these people? i wonder why

You could point to scores of things happening all over the world that are significantly worse human rights abuses that anything going on with the Palestinians, which is largely the fault of their own awful leadership unfortunately. But they don't get 1% of the coverage that Israel/Palestine does. Which is a lot of where the antisemitism allegations come from, Israel is getting held to a standard that no other country does.

[Intell]

https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1721604858795442220

[HisGrace]

I am personally pretty uncomfortable with universities expelling students for personal views, even if they are truly loathsome ones like this. But we all know if this was a white student saying he felt "joyful" when George Floyd died or something he'd have been expelled in two seconds. Which means Penn not taking disciplinary action here constitutes a tacit endorsement of what she said. Either free speech for all students or they're responsible for anything their students say if they're going to pick and choose what's allowed.

[dead0man]

what do the "give peace a chance" people say to the "from the river to the sea" people at the rallies?  You would assume they'd be on opposite sides, ya know, 'cause they want two very different things, but they seem to be on the same side.  If I were to throw a peace rally and those bigots showed up, I'd be super pissed.

[HisGrace]

what do the "give peace a chance" people say to the "from the river to the sea" people at the rallies?  You would assume they'd be on opposite sides, ya know, 'cause they want two very different things, but they seem to be on the same side.  If I were to throw a peace rally and those bigots showed up, I'd be super pissed.

The American "peace" movement has always had this hypocrisy. It's the same thing as students waiving VC flags while demanding "peace" in the 60's. Their definition of "peace" is just supporting whoever opposes America.

[Lief 🗽]

Thank you Columbia, very cool.
https://twitter.com/alexbkane/status/1723060621447446675?s=46&t=o2RmfeV6yYJk...

[Associate Justice PiT]

Does anyone find it strange there won't be any protests about Pakistan's expulsion/ethnic cleansing of Afghans by these people? i wonder why

     Meh, to be fair that is not nearly as prominent in the news. I was talking to my boss about the violence around the world and I offhandedly mentioned the Armenians fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh; she had no idea that this was a thing, or even that Armenia was a sovereign nation in the year A.D. 2023. Not everyone is as plugged in to current events around the world as we are, though I am sure they would not be as passionate about this as they are about Gaza even if they were equally aware of it.

[Ferguson97]

https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1721604858795442220

This student has been arrested for stealing an Israeli flag from a campus house.

[dead0man]

https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1721604858795442220

This student has been arrested for stealing an Israeli flag from a campus house.

less than a month before she celebrated murdering babies, she was writing articles about Why Penn should protect its students from colonial backlash, Palestinian and Arab students deserve to feel more safe on campus.  Does she want students to feel safe? nah, she just wants students that look and think like her to feel safe on campus.

[Ferguson97]

https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1721604858795442220

This student has been arrested for stealing an Israeli flag from a campus house.

less than a month before she celebrated murdering babies, she was writing articles about Why Penn should protect its students from colonial backlash, Palestinian and Arab students deserve to feel more safe on campus.  Does she want students to feel safe? nah, she just wants students that look and think like her to feel safe on campus.

Right now, the young left's biggest problem is that their brains short-circuit when there are instances of "minority on minority" bigotry. They're fundamentally unequipped to handle it, and usually respond by either arbitrarily designating one group sufficiently white-adjacent enough that they can rationalize it as "punching up", or by ignoring it altogether.

[Hindsight was 2020]

https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1721604858795442220

This student has been arrested for stealing an Israeli flag from a campus house.

less than a month before she celebrated murdering babies, she was writing articles about Why Penn should protect its students from colonial backlash, Palestinian and Arab students deserve to feel more safe on campus.  Does she want students to feel safe? nah, she just wants students that look and think like her to feel safe on campus.

Right now, the young left's biggest problem is that their brains short-circuit when there are instances of "minority on minority" bigotry. They're fundamentally unequipped to handle it, and usually respond by either arbitrarily designating one group sufficiently white-adjacent enough that they can rationalize it as "punching up", or by ignoring it altogether.

God help them if they ever found out Hamas attitude on gender equality or gay rights

[WalterWhite]

https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1721604858795442220

This student has been arrested for stealing an Israeli flag from a campus house.

less than a month before she celebrated murdering babies, she was writing articles about Why Penn should protect its students from colonial backlash, Palestinian and Arab students deserve to feel more safe on campus.  Does she want students to feel safe? nah, she just wants students that look and think like her to feel safe on campus.

Right now, the young left's biggest problem is that their brains short-circuit when there are instances of "minority on minority" bigotry. They're fundamentally unequipped to handle it, and usually respond by either arbitrarily designating one group sufficiently white-adjacent enough that they can rationalize it as "punching up", or by ignoring it altogether.

The issue is that humanities majors cannot distinguish governments and the nationality they supposedly represent.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1721604858795442220

This student has been arrested for stealing an Israeli flag from a campus house.

less than a month before she celebrated murdering babies, she was writing articles about Why Penn should protect its students from colonial backlash, Palestinian and Arab students deserve to feel more safe on campus.  Does she want students to feel safe? nah, she just wants students that look and think like her to feel safe on campus.

Right now, the young left's biggest problem is that their brains short-circuit when there are instances of "minority on minority" bigotry. They're fundamentally unequipped to handle it, and usually respond by either arbitrarily designating one group sufficiently white-adjacent enough that they can rationalize it as "punching up", or by ignoring it altogether.

This is not how I would have worded this but it's true. I'm always seeing people say things like "all oppressive systems intertwine and stand or fall together" (not to sound bronzian, but that's a very close paraphrase), which is utterly absurd if you've studied history, especially the history of countries besides the United States; most oppressive systems within the United States are currently pretty tightly interlinked, but foreign countries (such as, but not limited to, the past) are swarming with cases in which two or more different oppressive systems are actively and violently hostile to one another. Famously so, in many cases. There's a whole world out there where, often, The Oppressors are going at one another hammer and tongs, and you do actually have to either pick a lesser evil or just admit that both are bad.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

Threads like this will be fun to revisit 11 months from now when leftists and red avatars will be begging young voters to GOTV

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

Threads like this will be fun to revisit 11 months from now when leftists and red avatars will be begging for young voters to GOTV

Oh please! Dems do not have problems turning out young white leftists. Some of them may vote for some third party green candidate but most of them will hold their nose and vote for Biden. Hillary lost because she lost people in the middle, period, not because of "MUH JILL STEIN"! That's how most elections are decided!

[dead0man]

these kids today just don't understand how this "lesser evil" thing is supposed to work.  Sometimes (all of the time) you have to vote for someone "who isn't quite perfect".  But much more frequently you are asked to vote for someone "who isn't quite as perfectly horrible as the other guy".  Some of them have to be reminded that this next election "is the most important election in history!" every 2 or 4 years.  Can't let that other guy win, even.one.time.

[Stand With Israel. Crush Hamas]

The thing to understand about the chaos agents threatening not to vote for Biden over this issue is that they were never planning to in the first place.

No thinking, engaged person who cares about Palestinians can look at this scenario and decide that Trumps is the better option/equivalent, unless their goal is simply to cause pain.

[Open Source Intelligence]

https://twitter.com/RitchieTorres/status/1721604858795442220

This student has been arrested for stealing an Israeli flag from a campus house.

less than a month before she celebrated murdering babies, she was writing articles about Why Penn should protect its students from colonial backlash, Palestinian and Arab students deserve to feel more safe on campus.  Does she want students to feel safe? nah, she just wants students that look and think like her to feel safe on campus.

Right now, the young left's biggest problem is that their brains short-circuit when there are instances of "minority on minority" bigotry. They're fundamentally unequipped to handle it, and usually respond by either arbitrarily designating one group sufficiently white-adjacent enough that they can rationalize it as "punching up", or by ignoring it altogether.

The "young left" doesn't view Jews as a minority, they view them as privileged white people of European ancestry.

[WalterWhite]

There have been both a pro-Israel (in all reality Islamophobic) and a pro-Palestine (in all reality anti-Semitic) group suspended at a university for violating the code of conduct at that university. (The exact name of the university escapes me.) The issue of essentialist thinking is not only prevalent amongst anti-Semites at universities; this is also prevalent amongst Islamophobes at universities. Essentialist thinking leads to the regressive notion that entire religious/ethnic groups are responsible for the actions of governments. In most contexts, this sort of essentialist thinking is shunned.

Most of these people would be appalled (and rightfully so) at the idea that a single crime committed by a Muslim/Jew/Christian indicates something deeper about Muslims/Jews/Christians as a whole or the idea that a single extremist mosque/synagogue/church reflects something deeper about Muslims/Jews/Christians as a whole; yet Israel/Palestine somehow breaks the brains of these people and leads to both Islamophobic and anti-Semitic ideas being espoused. The logic that Israelis/Palestinians should be expelled from the Levant could be made to support the deportation of the vast majority of immigrants, yet most of these people would rightfully be appalled at such a notion.

The humanities promote this inconsistent thinking by having no standard framework of analysis. The major issue with humanities is that there exists no "correct" interpretation of events, and the standards applied to one event might be different from the standards applied to another event. Differing viewpoints leads to healthy debate, but if a "correct" viewpoint cannot be determined through a rigorous process, fringe viewpoints (such as the idea that all Israelis/Palestinians should be expelled from the Levant) gain traction.

It is not difficult to fix this issue. There should be agreed-upon axioms through which analysis of historical/current events are conducted: axioms such as that the actions of institutions and the actions of the general public are separate, that the standards through which one set of events is judged must be applied for all such instances, that people are not responsible for the sins of their ancestors, that all non-fabricated evidence must be considered, and that any analysis of an event must be able to predict the outcomes of similar events in the future. In other words, institutions and people should be analyzed separately, and all humanities studies should become more scientific in their approaches. Many humanities majors might view these axioms as thought-stopping. However, axioms such as these might be the only way to save humanities from being consumed by fringe extremists.

What is the value in letting humanities continue to be dominated via subjective analysis? What is the value of subjective analysis if it means that no "correct" interpretation of events could be reached? What is the value of subjective analysis if it allows for extremists advocating for ethnic cleansing to flourish? The subjective analysis that is pervasive amongst the humanities is directly responsible for humanities majors espousing blatantly anti-Semitic and Islamophobic rhetoric (and in some instances, committing acts of violence). To retain future credibility, humanities must ditch subjectivity altogether and agree upon "correct" interpretations of events.

[HisGrace]

Threads like this will be fun to revisit 11 months from now when leftists and red avatars will be begging young voters to GOTV

The Dems don't need twits like this. They need WWC, Hispanics, and big black turnout in cities in swing states like Philly and Detroit.

[Lief 🗽]

Yale’s Ballet Folklorico club “accidentally” solicited donations for Hamas-linked militant groups, as these people increasingly move beyond parody…
https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1724514922984337716?s=46&t=o2RmfeV6yYJk03d...

[GeneralMacArthur]

Yale’s Ballet Folklorico club “accidentally” solicited donations for Hamas-linked militant groups, as these people increasingly move beyond parody…
https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/1724514922984337716?s=46&t=o2RmfeV6yYJk03d...

Oh man those pictures are absolute gold.  Imagine you're a ballet dancer and you've spent months practicing for your show and telling all your friends to come, and then you show up and the leader of your ballet org, without consulting anyone, decided to put up a big "Support Palestine" message above your performance, with a QR Code that goes to an anarchist Instagram post celebrating the 10/7 attacks and soliciting donations to Hamas.