I will always have reservations about the government using force (arrest, detention, and even deportation) when it appears to silence open expression, especially dissent. Absent actual threats or proof of incitement (that results in personal or property damage), let them speak.
Yes, I wrote about this yesterday, but it’s important to keep digging into every angle, especially if I get to make fun of lefties in the process.
I do not have a problem with flying guests, legal, temporary, or illegal, out of the country if they are no longer welcome. Every nation in the world does that, so protestation ( including from many on the right) to the practice is a distraction.
What is not is Democrats stepping up to defend speech. But it is speech that incites threats and violence ala Mahmoud Kalil/Columbia or the epidemic Democrat-on-Democrat arson, and vandalism ala Teslas. I’ve not seen much denouncing by Dems of these matters.
They are pro-violence and pro terrorism against what are ostensibly their own interests. EVs owned primarily by Dems and now 1400 Academics are protesting Columbia. They have called for a boycott of the elite institution for trying to pare back all the Jew hatred on campus. The academics who are – to the man women or whatever – likely (if not vociferous) advocates for hate speech laws) claim that,
“Universities cannot pretend to hold higher education sacred while repressing students and faculty, undermining free speech and academic freedom, and prohibiting dissent,” the statement read. “Every such act of craven suppression and compliance only further undermines the university and emboldens the reactionary forces intent on destroying it.”
Where have you been for the past ten years while non-liberal speakers have been effectively banned from speaking at schools like Columbia by threats of violence, mobs, and partisan practice? Why is your faculty nearly 95+ percent liberal, where the minority holds its tongue to avoid threats, violence, reprimand, or termination? Where students cannot openly hold opinions or support issues anathema to the progressive project.
Having said that, the hypocrites have a point. Columbia should not be silencing respectful, if uncomfortable, open debate about Israel, Jews, Arabs, and Gaza. This is also particularly troubling in the absence of even reasonable evidence of incitement.
A recent arrest of a foreign student took place in Somerville Massachusetts on Tuesday March 25th when Turkish graduate student Rumeysa Ozturk was on her way to meet friends at an Iftar dinner to break their Ramadan fast, but she never made it. Instead, the 30-year-old was arrested and physically restrained by six armed plainclothes immigration officers near her apartment, close to Tufts University’s campus where she was a PhD student. Surveillance cameras show how one officer wearing a hat and hoodie grabbed her arms, causing her to shriek in fear while another confiscated her cell phone. The officers reportedly only showed their badges after Ozturk was restrained with her hands cuffed behind her back. According to the University, she was enrolled in a doctorate program at Tufts University on a valid F-1 visa, which allows international students to pursue full time academic studies, in which she was in good standing. A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesman issued a statement on Wednesday claiming that Ozturk “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, that relishes the killing of Americans” but didn’t specify what those alleged activities were. In fact, friends report that Ozturk has not even been active in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The DHS spokesman never the less pressed on and explained “A visa is a privilege not a right. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated. This is commonsense security.” Nevertheless, no actual charges have been filed against Ozturk but the State Department has indicated that her visa has been terminated and she has been transferred to the Central Louisiana Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in Basile, where other students are also being held.
We have long warned that operations of this nature could be leveraged to suppress even reasonable exercises of free speech. Nor should the Trump Administration expect a moratorium on the subject or its debate. However, 1400 academics are probably not the best group to make the case, given their historical objection to any speech they deem disagreeable. [Related: Did Outraged Pro-Palestine Protesters at UNH Just Guarantee Speech Protections for Opinions They Hate?]
It is, however, amusing to see them gesticulate so wildly over something they hate so much (free speech). Make sure, dear readers, that you screen grab similar expressions from local Dems to share should the pendulum swing the other way and they return to their old ways.
