PAW’s January issue illustrated the moral vacuum that appears to exist at Princeton today. President Eisgruber turned over his page to an anodyne essay by a student who celebrated “constructive dialogue” and the use of Robert’s Rules of Order — who would oppose that? — but elided the moral imperative to take a stand when necessary. On the facing page PAW highlighted a letter from Ron Cohen ’77 lambasting the SPIA for allowing a human rights researcher to speak about the devastation in Gaza. Ms. Albanese reported in great detail about widespread human rights abuses by the Israelis and has stated that the Oct. 7 attacks were motivated not by antisemitism, as properly understood, but by the oppression of Palestinians. Calling this widely held view antisemitic is a backdoor way to suppress speech and distract from the horrors in Gaza. Mr. Cohen stopped just short of demanding the speaker’s cancellation but censured the University for allowing her to speak. What happened to the “constructive dialogue” so celebrated on the prior page? Why was his letter selected for prominence?
I was at the 1973 debate Mr. Cohen referred to where Shockley made his infantile arguments. There were protesters outside and inside but — in a triumph for free speech that I was there to defend — the debate went on. The ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine and wholesale murder of thousands of innocent people bankrolled, armed, and facilitated by the U.S. government will go down as one of the great crimes of this century. But at the Princeton of today the vast majority of students are silent, either by choice or by intimidation. The University’s response to a several hour occupation to protest Israel’s war crimes was to arrest the students. Contrast this with the 2016 Black Justice League protest that occupied the president’s office for 33 hours and where President Eisgruber bent over backwards to accommodate students who had shouted him down. For some reason the protesters of an indiscriminate bombing campaign that has killed and maimed tens of thousands, including a horrendous number of children, get a very different treatment. For them the University has chosen to facilitate a municipal prosecutor taking them to court. It is not hard to see that calls for “constructive dialogue,” such a lovely and important phrase, can be seen, in cynical hands, as just code for “speak the wrong words or protest injustice and the hammer will be brought down.”
PAW’s January issue illustrated the moral vacuum that appears to exist at Princeton today. President Eisgruber turned over his page to an anodyne essay by a student who celebrated “constructive dialogue” and the use of Robert’s Rules of Order — who would oppose that? — but elided the moral imperative to take a stand when necessary. On the facing page PAW highlighted a letter from Ron Cohen ’77 lambasting the SPIA for allowing a human rights researcher to speak about the devastation in Gaza. Ms. Albanese reported in great detail about widespread human rights abuses by the Israelis and has stated that the Oct. 7 attacks were motivated not by antisemitism, as properly understood, but by the oppression of Palestinians. Calling this widely held view antisemitic is a backdoor way to suppress speech and distract from the horrors in Gaza. Mr. Cohen stopped just short of demanding the speaker’s cancellation but censured the University for allowing her to speak. What happened to the “constructive dialogue” so celebrated on the prior page? Why was his letter selected for prominence?
I was at the 1973 debate Mr. Cohen referred to where Shockley made his infantile arguments. There were protesters outside and inside but — in a triumph for free speech that I was there to defend — the debate went on. The ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine and wholesale murder of thousands of innocent people bankrolled, armed, and facilitated by the U.S. government will go down as one of the great crimes of this century. But at the Princeton of today the vast majority of students are silent, either by choice or by intimidation. The University’s response to a several hour occupation to protest Israel’s war crimes was to arrest the students. Contrast this with the 2016 Black Justice League protest that occupied the president’s office for 33 hours and where President Eisgruber bent over backwards to accommodate students who had shouted him down. For some reason the protesters of an indiscriminate bombing campaign that has killed and maimed tens of thousands, including a horrendous number of children, get a very different treatment. For them the University has chosen to facilitate a municipal prosecutor taking them to court. It is not hard to see that calls for “constructive dialogue,” such a lovely and important phrase, can be seen, in cynical hands, as just code for “speak the wrong words or protest injustice and the hammer will be brought down.”