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

[WalterWhite]

Humanities majors are the absolute worst.

[WalterWhite]

And this is why STEM will always be superior to humanities

[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.

[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.

[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.

[WalterWhite]

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...

It is always the humanities...