“Organized activity”–aka, peaceful political activity–has been banned at Princeton University’s Cannon Green since the enforced closure of Gaza Solidarity Encampment in May 2024, a first since the British Army’s occupation of Princeton in 1777.
There’s one notable exception: ROTC. That’s what you’re looking at just above. I took the photo last Friday morning. It’s Princeton’s Army ROTC unit using Cannon Green for military training.
Continue readingMore on the Jason Arday Controversy
Whenever I discuss the Jason Arday case, I get accused of “whataboutism.” As I’ve argued at some length, I find this an unimpressive criticism, but there’s a simpler and more obvious way of putting things than I previously did. The fact is that there is no way to avoid whataboutism when discussing the Arday case, and no one is in fact avoiding it. The people accusing people like me of whataboutism are simply blind to their own engagement in it. The issue is not whether to engage in whataboutism, but which whataboutism to engage in. About what should we be whatabout-ing?
“Jason Arday’s hiring at Cambridge shows us that higher education needs to take a hard look at the structural problems at its core!”
And what does Nathan Cofnas’s presence at Ghent show us? Any structural problems there?
If Jason Arday’s presence at Cambridge proved that academia is full of undeserving black hires, why doesn’t Nathan Cofnas’s presence at Ghent prove that academia is full of Zionist hereditarians bent on using higher education as a launching pad for a eugenicist revolution? How did Arday become the tip of a submerged iceberg, and Cofnas a mere anomaly?
The Knicks play at Madison Square Garden. The World Cup is taking place at the Meadowlands. The Delaney Hall concentration camp is in the industrial sector of Newark. All three places are within half an hour of each other. I asked ChatGPT to run a quantitative analysis of the amount of mass media coverage each event was getting in mainstream reporting in the New York metro area. This is what it said:
Continue readingA challenge for anyone throwing around the “No Kings” slogan: if you’re really opposed to monarchy, now is the time to support the overthrow of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which consists of six repressive monarchies: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman. All six countries are ruled by kings long propped up by the United States. All six now face existential crisis. No kings? Opportunity beckons. Start there.
You’re an academic. Your Dean walks in.
“We need viewpoint diversity,” she says.
“OK,” you say. She’s your boss. She’s obviously just read some bullshit in CHE about viewpoint diversity, and feels the need to start Deaning. Deaning demands faculty uptake, so you’d better answer. “So what do we do?”
It’s a kosher question. As it stands, her claim has no action-guiding implications. We could need viewpoint diversity, but we might already have it. Or we might have too much of it. Or we might need more. “We need it” doesn’t resolve any of that.
“Well, we need more,” she says. It’s a non-sequitur, but you let it go. “Pretending that stupid shit isn’t stupid” is your career-long coping strategy. It’s worked so far.
Continue reading
I spoke tonight at Clifton City Council in Passaic County, north Jersey. Thanks to Jeff Hoey for the invitation to speak, and to both Jeff and the folks at the Palestinian-American Community Center of Clifton for the camaraderie. There was a rather different atmosphere in Clifton than, say, Princeton, West Windsor, or Cranbury–a circus atmosphere, at times. “Viewpoint diversity,” I think the savants call it.
A couple of members of the public expressed the widely-held view that while their ancestors came here legally, they have no sympathy for those who’ve come illegally. “Illegals,” on this view, deserve whatever anyone, including ICE, dishes out to them, including indefinite detention, deportation, impoverishment, expropriation, family dissolution, and premature death. Continue reading
Peace and Justice in Swarthmore
I’m at the Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA) conference at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Having a great time. Wish you were here.
Swarthmore is practically a caricature of an old school liberal arts college, half institution of higher education, half feudal estate. It’s hard not to love, but then, I myself am half academic and half landlord–an erstwhile academic with a last name that means “landlord.” So it’s easy enough for me to fantasize having a tenure-stream job here, taking sanctuary from the world amidst the ivy, the wildflowers, the curious, well-heeled students, and the crenellated towers of stone. I didn’t see any administrators, either. Maybe there aren’t any? Continue reading
Policy of Truth 