Category Archives: cancel culture

The Fire This Time

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

Scenes from Delaney Hall (5)
It’s a serious mistake to rely exclusively on the mainstream media for news of what’s happening at Delaney Hall. If you’re doing this, you’re being misled by omission: you’re systematically depriving yourself of information that’s relevant to getting a balanced picture of what’s happening there, or for passing a verdict on it.

To illustrate this, I want to work through a representative example of mainstream journalism, a June 4 article on Delaney Hall in The New York Times. My aim here is not to find fault with the author, or to condemn the article, but simply to point out as a matter of objective fact that whether fault is involved or not, the article systematically misleads the reader to the detriment of the protesters. It fails to supply necessary background context, fails to ask the right questions, fails to answer them, and misses salient points of detail. Again, my point is not primarily that the author should have included this or that, but simply that given what he excludes, he misleads, full stop. Why this is the case is a separate question. How it’s to be remedied, or whether it can be remedied within mainstream media at all, is also a separate question.

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Ian Austin, Outside Agitator

Posted on by under liberty and the left, moralism, cancel culture, libertarianism, activism, migrant defense

Scenes from Delaney Hall (4)
Just a postscript to my June 3 post, “Nowhere to Hide,” featuring Ian Austin. I heard last night through the activist grapevine that Austin had been arrested. The arrest is obviously a case of targeting one of the most charismatic ground-level leaders of the migrant defense movement. He’s repeatedly been arrested in just this way across the country, most often to have the charges dropped. The point is not to sustain the charges in court but to intimidate and harass him with the intention of undermining the migrant defense movement.

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Sonia Sotomayor Smiles for Palestine

Posted on by under cancel culture, Palestine, slices of life, War with Iran, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, activism, Neutrality and Complicity, Princeton University

Our Stop the Wars rally found its way into Princeton University’s Reunions celebration, where we spent several hours making our anti-war case to the approbation and disapprobation of the several thousand revelers marching in Princeton’s annual P-rade. Among those apparently expressing approbation was Princeton alumna Sonia Sotomayor, as revealed in this photo, in which she smiled directly at activist leader Sireen Sawalha, who was standing right next to me.

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Tomasi and Flier on “Commencement Neutrality”

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

I recently attended a webinar on “commencement neutrality” sponsored by Heterodox Academy. In it, the presenters, John Tomasi and Jeffrey Flier, argue that

Students receiving diplomas while a speaker condemns their political values, whether progressive or conservative, are justified in objecting.

The graduation stage is not an op-ed page, a political blog, or a partisan rally, though some wish to make it one.

This claim extends the idea of “institutional neutrality” to commencement speeches, and is elaborated at further length in Flier and Tomasi’s recent Boston Globe piece, “Keep Politics Out of Commencement Speeches” (May 14, paywalled). The basic argument is that commencement speeches have a ceremonial or celebratory function which is incompatible with the discomfort provoked by sharp political commentary. 

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Arrest Michael Kotlikoff

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

On April 30th of this year, a debate over Israel/Palestine took place at Cornell University, introduced and attended by Michael Kotlikoff, the President of the University. After the debate, Kotlikoff was followed from the venue to his car by students who asked him questions while filming him. Kotlikoff clearly didn’t want to talk to them, so he hurried to his car, and got in, closing the door. The students then surrounded the car on all three sides–the driver’s and passenger’s side as well as the rear of the vehicle–crowding fairly close to it, pressing their questions. Kotlikoff then backed up, hitting two students, and drove away. Neither student was seriously injured. Video of the event is widely available online, showing the event from various angles.

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Guns and Poses

Posted on by under cancel culture, Fatwas, Neutrality and Complicity, Palestine, princeton

For weeks now, the papers in Princeton have been full of news items about anti-Semitic graffiti discovered around town. In virtually every case, the reports have been vague to the point of deliberate concealment about what the messages have actually said. Here’s a typical example, from the April 29 issue of Town Topics:

On April 21 at 1:05 pm, officers responded to headquarters for a report of a threatening letter received at a religious organization on Cherry Hill Road. The letter, which was intended for a separate Jewish group that uses the location for gatherings, contained anti-semitic threats of violence. Investigation revealed similar letters had recently been sent to multiple Jewish organizations throughout Mercer County and Bucks County, Pa. The incident remains under investigation (p. 13).

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The Unintended, the Foreseen, and the Defamatory

Posted on by under cancel culture, Electoral Ethics and Politics, Fatwas, moralism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

“We absolutely cannot and should not ever be cheerleading and wishing for the deaths of Israeli children…”
–Sue Altman

Sue Altman and Adam Hamawy are both Democratic candidates for Congress in New Jersey’s 12th Congressional District. A controversy has recently erupted over Altman’s response to comments Hamawy made in an interview with Hasan Piker. The basics of the controversy are nicely captured in this short piece in Jewish Insider. I’ll quote the first few paragraphs, but urge readers to read the whole thing. Continue reading →

Sue Altman Is No Progressive

Posted on by under cancel culture, Electoral Ethics and Politics, Guest Post, moralism, Notes on the Anti-War Movement, Palestine, War with Iran

Sue Altman’s Rejection of Reparations, Attack on Adam Hamawy, and Pro-War Politics Show She Is Out of Step With Progressive Values

by Dr Sadaf Jaffer and Minister Elorm Ocansey

On the eve of his death, Rev. Dr Martin Luther King Jr. stood in Memphis as a witness. The speech we remember as “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” was a warning. Dr. King spoke of wages withheld, of labor exploited, of systems that consumed Black bodies and called it order. He spoke of a people who had been given a check marked “insufficient funds,” and he dared to say what too many still refuse to say: justice requires repayment. The Promised Land Dr. King saw was not symbolic. It was material. It was economic. It was reparative. New Jersey, for all its progressive language, is not innocent in this story. The New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, through the work of the New Jersey Reparations Council, has laid before us a document that reads less like a report and more like a reckoning. Page after page, it testifies: That slavery here was not distant, but deliberate. That segregation was not accidental, but engineered. That the racial wealth gap is not unfortunate, but designed. Continue reading →

Graffiti, Hate Speech, and Free Speech

Posted on by under activism, cancel culture, Palestine, princeton

Statement to Princeton Town Council
400 Witherspoon St
Princeton, New Jersey
April 27, 2026

I’ve twice previously mentioned the Princeton Police Department’s decision to investigate anti-Israel graffiti as bias intimidation, mostly while discussing other things. In this comment, I want to focus specifically on the bias intimidation issue.

As you know, the issue arises from graffiti discovered in various places around town last August. The Princeton Jewish Center brought the issue to the attention of the Council, and the Police Department decided to investigate the graffiti as bias intimidation. Given the Council’s positive response to the Jewish Center’s input on the matter, I think it’s fair to conclude that the Council accepts the Police Department’s approach. Continue reading →