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Monday, October 21, 2024

Annals of Irony

Joan Wallach Scott has a new article in Daedalus (reprinted in the Journal of Free Speech Law) titled “Academic Freedom & The Politics of the University,” in which the introduction notes: “In one of those inversions of meaning so adroitly practiced by the right, censorship is being enacted in the name of free speech and/or academic freedom.”

Scott, of course, is one of the leading voices promoting academic boycotts in the name of academic freedom – especially in support of the AAUP’s reversal of position – just the sort of inversion that her essay claims to abhor. Perhaps needless to say, Scott’s Daedalus piece mentions this discrepancy not at all. Her sole reference to Jews or Israel is to the asserted confusion of ‘political disagreement with discrimination, as when Zionist students, protesting a teacher’s presentation of material that calls into question Israel’s official story of itself, claim they do not feel ‘safe’ in the face of what they deem anti-Semitism.”

Unlike other situations, there is no citation for this claimed confusion, much any mention of explicit antisemitism on campuses. Scott’s accompanying example of anti-Muslim prejudice, with citation to the events at Hamline University, concludes that the “student grievances had to do with structural issues that were not being addressed,” even though the specific “safety” complaint was unfounded. Jewish students, it seems, are unable to raise “structural issues.”

Posted by Steve Lubet on October 21, 2024 at 07:18 AM | Permalink

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