Is Free Speech Under Attack in this Country?
- Thread starter sturg33
- Start date
For one, my main point is I don’t think college grads should be at risk of anything for simply supporting a cause. If a college wants to revoke a degree or end someone’s employment over it, I believe it’s within their rights to do so, but I’d discourage it in most cases.
But to your point, I think this is a combination of a few things. First is my main reason for supporting an end to the violence, which is that I don’t accept the argument Israel is acting solely in self-defense nor that it is doing enough to limit civilian casualties. If it were, there’d be a more measured response. If you just look at the sheer amount of destruction and death and how one-sided it is, many have come to the same conclusion. If the roles were reversed and Israel was being reduced to rubble, I’d support stopping that too. Using one’s immense military superiority to kill innocent people is just not my (or many others’) cup of tea.
Second, there can be a tendency to embrace a shared sense of oppression in leftist communities. I’m personally much less compelled by this line of thinking, but I think it contributes to the link between students who would themselves be victimized by Hamas and their support for Palestine.
You’re quite correct that gay people would likely not enjoy their time in Palestine. But I do think we should be open to protecting the human rights of even people who might not be open to the same. It’s why I think the people on the left celebrating right-wingers losing their jobs, businesses or rights is gross. We can have empathy for those we disagree with.
I would not support defunding institutions over it personally. It also just so happens that the article itself is making a different point, but that doesn’t change anything for me. Even if this were exactly what Lee and other conservative commentators suggest it is, I would not think the right approach is to target that university. I’ll grant to you that many of the left wouldn’t agree, but much like many on the right, they aren’t actually all super good about free speech.