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

[ingemann]

The fact that so many of these are law students is especially disturbing to me. You're supposed to have some semblance of rationality to enter the legal profession, and ideally you should have some brains to get into one of these T14 schools in the first place. It scares the hell out of me that these of all people are supposed to be our future lawyers and leaders. It wasn't like this when I was in law school just 10 years ago.

The good news: I'm already seeing reports that this might well get a lot of these lunatics blacklisted from the legal profession, and they'll find themselves working at Subway instead of a Biglaw firm once they graduate from these top tier schools. THAT is karma.

Yes, there’s no way that will cause a backlash. /s

This rhetoric is incredible harmful, but honestly it’s no different from what have come out these kind of institutions for years just targeting groups who aren’t able to blacklist them. This rhetoric are logical  conclusion from what these people have been taught, and use the institutional power to crush them, will just confirm them and other in their conclusions. The real solutions is to go after the institutions not the individuals.

[ingemann]

Hot Take :

American academia is more sympathetic to Palestine because they are stuck in a Cold War mentality, where Israel is seen as a puppet regime of the United States, and imperialism is bad.

Not really, this is a natural development of the beliefs American social progressive holds:

1: White people are privileged.
2: Settler states are illegal states.
3: Marginalized groups are always right.

When those belief meet the fact on the ground:

1: American Jews are a wealthy White group.
2: Israel is a settler state.
3: Palestinian are marginalized.

This is the logical result.

This has nothing to do with the Cold War and communism, as communism didn't embrace this primitive understanding of the world. What's surprising is not that this backlash happened but that no one saw it coming. I would also say that the very same students who is victimized by this, were 100% onboard until the Leopard Ate Their Face, if this had been about the Rohingya conflict and it was Buddhist students being target, they would at very least have turned their eyes the other way, if they hadn't taken active part in it.

[ingemann]

Hot Take :

American academia is more sympathetic to Palestine because they are stuck in a Cold War mentality, where Israel is seen as a puppet regime of the United States, and imperialism is bad.

No, it's entirely about skin color. It's not even that Palestine is anti-US because if that were the case then we'd see much more academic support for Russia than we do.

It's actually sillier: it's about imagined skin color. Palestinians and Israelis don't actually typically look very different.

They have similarities, but Ashkenazim and Sephardic Jews are visual more European looking (one of my friends are Sephardic and he and I look similar in skin tone, hair color and physical traits, while I'm darker than the average Dane, I'm not someone who would be seen as Mediterranean, at most people think I'm a Yugoslav), while I can't see the difference between Palestinians and Mizrahim.

[ingemann]

Hot Take :

American academia is more sympathetic to Palestine because they are stuck in a Cold War mentality, where Israel is seen as a puppet regime of the United States, and imperialism is bad.

No, it's entirely about skin color. It's not even that Palestine is anti-US because if that were the case then we'd see much more academic support for Russia than we do.

This is backwards, I think. The focus on 'skin color' - real or contorted - and 'whiteness', reframing modern issues as between "colonizers"/"the colonized" was built out of a desire a few decades ago to have the Palestinian cause reframed as the ultimate litmus test of good versus evil. This tendency is not the "end result" of this type of discourse: it is the origin.

Islam darkens the skin (not literal), we tend to see Muslim as more distinct and darker than they are. Some of this is that we connect Arabic facial features with dark skin and European features with lighter skin.

[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.