The college presidents' debacle, Trump's words, and the lives of scammers

TWS Notes on the News #4

Below you’ll find a few stories that I felt were worth commenting on. The main story I wrote about — the conflict in Israel-Palestine — turned out to be a little long, so I’m going to publish it on its own later this week.

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College presidents under fire — what if the tables were turned?

In the last couple weeks, the presidents of Harvard, MIT, and UPenn have drawn intense criticism for what many have called their “legalistic” and “evasive” responses to a “simple yes or no question” by congresswoman Elise Stefanik. She asked each of them, in turn, whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their college’s rules on harassment? Their response: It depends on the context.

While this answer might seem infuriating to some, we can ask: How should they have responded? Was any other response possible? Just imagine that the tables were turned and Stefanik was asked the same question — whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates her state’s rules (laws) on harassment? She’d have to respond the same way: It depends on the context.

The question simply isn’t black or white. For instance, does intention matter? What if a white professor jokingly tweets “All I want for Christmas is white genocide,” as happened in 2018? Should he be disciplined? And what exactly constitutes a call for genocide? The only example that Stefanik referenced was the chant, “There’s only one solution: intifada, revolution.” But Palestinians and their supporters differ as to whether the revolution should be violent or nonviolent. So is intifada a call for genocide? Well, it’s possible some people mean it that way — it depends on whose saying it. The context matters.

The upside to this whole issue is that it has brought to light the glaring hypocrisy of college speech codes. Students and professors are disciplined for some types of speech — especially speech that offends the left — but not other types. There are inevitably double standards.

It’s also brought to light the endless hypocrisy of liberals and conservatives. In recent years, liberals have fought to limit free speech in the name of safety, while conservatives have fought to expand it (albeit selectively — how about all those book bans and laws censoring CRT?) With this issue they’ve flipped. The left’s cherished principle of safety and the right’s passionate cry for free speech have both been tossed out the window because they’re no longer convenient.

And really, thinking about these issues in terms of left and right is scrambling our brains. The time has come to let go of party allegiances and grab hold of the principles themselves. The reality is that speech codes simply don’t work. Safety doesn’t magically appear when people are forced to be silent. It’s an illusion. We can’t erase people’s views that way. In fact, suppression will only make them stronger. Safety only comes along the difficult road of freedom. It only comes by allowing people to air their differences and by creating a space to understand and resolve them. Hopefully this is the road that not only colleges, but all of us, will commit ourselves to taking in the future.

For some insightful articles on this issue, see Nico Perrino’s article on the FIRE website, and Bret Stephen’s op-ed in the New York Times.

Correction: After publishing, it was brought to my attention by readers that conservative support for free speech hasn’t been general and widespread but selective — they care about their own speech (which is increasingly censored) but not about the speech of their enemies. This is an entirely valid point, so I’ve amended the above article by adding “(albeit selectively — how about all those book bans and laws censoring CRT?)”

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Trump: should we really take him at his word?

I don’t want to talk about Trump, but he’s been all over the news in the last month because he said some things that made the media mad and they’ve been pushing hard to convince the public that this time he means what he says.

First he called his enemies “vermin,” a word Hitler used. Then he complained bitterly about Biden’s Justice Department indicting him, and said he might reciprocate and send the DOJ after Biden if he’s re-elected. And then he said he’d be a dictator for a day — the first day of his presidency — when he’d close the border and restart oil drilling. And, as he said these things, the mainstream media lost its mind.

This is the only reason I’m writing about Trump, because it feels awfully like we’re sliding back into Trump hysteria again and we need to shake ourselves out of it before it gets bad. If every fire is a 5 alarm fire, then people will glaze over and let the building burn when there’s an actual blaze.

Yes. He did use the word “vermin.” Is it really that much worse than “scum” and “animal” and the thousands of other insults that he spouted between 2015 and 2021 on his Twitter account alone?

And yes. He said he might go after Biden. But what did he say about “Crooked” Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election? It was all raucous chants of “LOCK HER UP” for months on end. And what happened when he got elected? Nothing. Crickets. I never heard him mention it again. (Of course, he might very well go after Biden, but does anyone really think he could get Biden locked up if he didn’t commit a crime? Is the country really there yet? I don’t think so.)

Then there’s his “Dictator on Day 1” comment. What does it even mean? And why, in heaven’s name, hasn’t any journalist bothered to unpack it? Here’s an attempt: In terms of drilling, I’m pretty sure it just means he’s going to sign some totally legal executive orders. And when it comes to the border… maybe, maybe, he’ll do something that he doesn’t have the actual authority to do and it will be challenged in the courts and overturned. Maybe. I don’t know. But, really… dictator for a day? It’s just silly. And it’s even sillier that people are becoming unraveled by it.

I don’t mean to make light of the ravings of our next president (yes, at this point I’m assuming he’ll probably win). I’m just trying to urge people to take them with at least a grain of salt, especially the news stories about them. When you read the mainstream stories about Trump the language is incredibly inflammatory. But if you follow the links to what Trump actually said, it’s usually something weird and snarly and vulgar. Definitely not a coherent agenda for action.

So although mainstream journalists are probably going to descend into madness and live there for the next five years, we don’t have to join them. We can read their articles, and follow the links, and see what actually happened. And judge for ourselves whether its a 5 alarm fire, or a 4, or a 3. And not lose our minds. We’re going to need them.

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Scammers are people too

During times of reflection, when we look more closely at our lives, we might find ourselves asking: Am I really serving the world, or am I just serving myself? Am I giving more, or taking more, in the larger balance of things? 

I’ve found that most people really don’t want to be parasites. We don’t want to burden others. In order to feel self-respect, we feel the need to contribute our fair share (or at least fool ourselves into thinking we are). And we often judge others who we think are taking advantage of the system. They might be the jobless poor, living off social security, or the jobless rich, living off their inheritance and investments.

Ultimately though there’s probably no group more universally despised for freeloading than scammers — people who trick others in order to profit at their expense. We generally revile such people, and we feel justified in our revulsion.

But what would drive someone to this kind of “work”? Is it really that they’re just so lazy and evil that they want to rip other people off for a living? Or is it more likely they have to survive, and this might be the only option they have. Why? Because there’s no place for them in society. Because we haven’t formed society in such a way where we prioritize the development of people’s gifts (a truly free and individualized educational system), and then making sure there’s a place in society for them to give those gifts (a solidarity economy). Instead, we’ve gone with the cheap, dog-eat-dog model of society.

I recently read an article in the Guardian that made this reality even more stark by describing how hundreds of thousands of scammers are actually slaves. It depicted how these people are themselves the victims of scamming. Coming from all over south-east Asia, they’ve been lured by free travel and promises of high-paying jobs, only to then find themselves imprisoned on “cyberscam-farms.”

It’s worth reading about, and it’s worth keeping in mind the next time you get an email or phone call which is clearly a scam. Our usual reaction is outrage (it seems like it’s our go-to emotion these days), but maybe now we can realize the person on the other side of the line might not be such a monster after all, just a person trying to survive. And probably much, much worse off than we are. We don’t need to give them our information (you should still keep that to yourself), but maybe we can at least try to give them a little empathy.

Yes, writers have to eat, but paywalls just punish low-income people, and why shouldn’t they have access to the knowledge they want?