Category Archives: cancel culture

Those “Drowned Out” Zionists

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Fatwas, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

Joshua Leifer’s “Conflictedly Connected” Liberal Zionist Center

The well-regarded left Zionist writer Joshua Leifer has a much fawned-over piece in Ha’aretz that’s been adopted in some quarters as the expression of profound wisdom. In it he argues that there’s a “conflictedly connected” Zionist quasi-left “majority” that’s been “drowned out” by the extremist voices of the “ultra-hawkish right” and the “anti-Zionist left.” If only this “conflictedly connected” majority could be liberated from the shackles placed on it by these twin extremists, the Golden Mean would prevail, and virtue would flourish on the topic of Israel and Palestine. Continue reading →

The Immigrant Trust Tour: Clifton Redux

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, migrant defense, Palestine

Chris D’Amato, Migrant Rights, and the Exploitation of Anti-Semitism
I mentioned the campaign for an Immigrant Trust Resolution in Clifton a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, I had a scheduling conflict and had to miss the follow-up meeting yesterday. Below the fold is a depressing report from my friend Jeff Hoey, a Clifton resident who’s been leading the campaign. It’s a perfect example of the cynicism that masquerades as philo-Semitism nowadays–and also the right-wing virtue-signaling that passes itself off as “anti-woke.” I encountered a similar phenomenon when I spoke last week in West Orange, which I’ll describe here in the near future. It’s obviously a trend. Continue reading →

APPE/Felician Roundtable Cancelled

Posted on by under cancel culture, Health Care Series

Apologies for the short notice, but unfortunately, the APPE/Felician University Roundtable on health care that I mentioned here on October 4th–originally scheduled for November 5–has been cancelled. Apparently, two of the panelists were forced to cancel, and it was decided by the organizers that new ones couldn’t be found on short notice. So incredibly enough, this is a non-ideological cancellation. Believe it or not, they happen.

Morituri Te Salutant

Posted on by under cancel culture, Memorials and Obituaries, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

I woke up this morning to find an email from one of my best friends in Palestine, someone who lives in a small village in the South Hebron Hills. I’ve excerpted it below, deleting personal names, and omitting place names and other particulars, and corrected the grammar of one sentence for clarity. It’s in English, but I’ve provided a tl; dr translation just after the block quote. The word “football” refers throughout to soccer. Continue reading →

Montgomery Twp Issues ITA Proclamation

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, migrant defense, Neutrality and Complicity

Apropos of my last post, Montgomery Township has just issued an official proclamation in favor of the Immigrant Trust Act. A proclamation has a somewhat lower official status than a resolution; unlike a resolution, it’s issued collectively by the mayor and Council, and doesn’t require individualized votes by Council members. So it’s not exactly what we wanted, but it’s still a win. 

Whether coincidentally or not, two Council members who were present last time were absent today, notably Dennis Ahn and Vincent Barragan.

Continue reading →

Institutional Neutrality: Another Day, Another Exception

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity

Institutional neutrality is the doctrine that institutions like universities should refrain from issuing public comment on matters of public controversy. As I’ve argued here at PoT (and elsewhere), one canonical exception to neutrality is institutional self-defense: a university is obliged to speak up when the university itself comes under attack. Predictably, we now have yet another exception to add to the list: the Charlie Kirk Exception. This exception asserts that when a famous right-wing loudmouth is shot on a university campus, all institutions hitherto bound by solemn pledges of institutional neutrality are obliged to carve out a special dispensation to condemn the act. Continue reading →

Z is for Zyklon

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Fatwas, moralism

You’ve likely encountered Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s suggestion that we deal with the problem of homelessness by killing mentally ill homeless people. The remark has widely been treated as an isolated, one-off, a kind of non-sequitur that Kilmeade dreamed up out of the blue, and for which he has now apologized. So, case closed. 

In fact, Kilmeade’s comment is no one-off non-sequitur at all. If you read through the relevant part of transcript of the show, and work through a few minor interpretive puzzles, you come to realize that what Kilmeade did was to draw a logically valid inference from an argument that Lawrence Jones, his co-host, had set up. Far from being a one-off, Kilmeade’s claim only makes sense as an inference from Jones’s argument, implicating both of them in the same set of claims. And far from being a non-sequitur, what the two of them offered up to the public was a well-structured argument. In a very real sense, they’ve done us the service of laying out the logical structure of genocide. Continue reading →

Kiosks and Cowardice

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, cancel culture, Fatwas, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity

I wrote this in May, but forgot to post it. I happened to notice it today while cleaning out old files. It seems a fitting start to the academic year.

In Princeton, where I live, there are two kiosks on Nassau Street, the main drag, on which people put up up flyers of various sorts, sometimes announcements of cultural events, sometimes flyers of a more political nature. Most but not all of the political flyers tend to the left of the political spectrum, and some of these target either the municipality or the University. The kiosks are deeply resented by elites at both institutions, who regard them, with predictable hauteur, as “eyesores.” Despite determined public opposition, the local town council has voted to demolish the kiosks and replace them with something that it can (in the words of one proponent) “control.”

They’re still there for now. The stated rule governing them is that flyers are taken down on the first of every month. Today is the 22nd of May. And yet, as I walked through town this morning and then this evening, I found all of the flyers systematically taken down on both kiosks. Continue reading →

Is It Time to Bomb Columbia University?

Posted on by under activism, anarchism, cancel culture, moralism, Neutrality and Complicity, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine

I had a conversation the other day with a friend who just started law school at Columbia. This person told me that on the first day of orientation, the first-year law students were visited by officials from Columbia’s so-called Office of Institutional Equity (OIE). According to OIE, the chant “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” is presumptively to be understood as advocacy of genocide, as discrimination against Jews, and therefore as a violation of Title VI. Anyone who chants it thereby becomes a candidate for reprimand, suspension, and/or expulsion. So they were instructed not to chant it. A couple of things can be said about this, I think. Continue reading →