It sounds like Magill said some really stupid shit.
In their testimony, the presidents evaded questions on whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their institutions’ codes of conduct.
Penn President Elizabeth Magill said: “If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment.”
Calling for genocide isn’t harassment, according to her. Guess I can go to U Penn and start loudly telling everyone we should exterminate the lesser races and it’s fine.
She was asked point blank if calling for genocide was against their rules, and she said “it depends on the context”. How is that not the easiest, most softball question? How hard is it to say “absolutely it’s against the rules, but I will clarify that I don’t believe supporting the Palestinian people is the same as calling for genocide”?
I think this was an important quote from the article for context.
“In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies aligned with the US Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable,” Magill said in the video. “I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil — plain and simple.”
That’s a fair statement. It’s still a bad idea to take a vague center approach when the topic of genocide comes up, IMO. This, of all times, was the time to take a stand.
It sounds like Magill said some really stupid shit.
Calling for genocide isn’t harassment, according to her. Guess I can go to U Penn and start loudly telling everyone we should exterminate the lesser races and it’s fine.
She was asked point blank if calling for genocide was against their rules, and she said “it depends on the context”. How is that not the easiest, most softball question? How hard is it to say “absolutely it’s against the rules, but I will clarify that I don’t believe supporting the Palestinian people is the same as calling for genocide”?
I think this was an important quote from the article for context.
“In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies aligned with the US Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable,” Magill said in the video. “I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil — plain and simple.”
That’s a fair statement. It’s still a bad idea to take a vague center approach when the topic of genocide comes up, IMO. This, of all times, was the time to take a stand.