Sunday, December 8, 2024
Here is the headline from the New York Times on August 8th (Otterman, 2024):
3 Columbia University Deans Who Sent Insulting Texts Have Resigned
No fanfare here – nothing out of the ordinary. The only thing that is out of the ordinary is that this kind of extraordinary practice is being normalized as ordinary.
What kind of practice? No – not insulting people. That’s been normal for a long time. The practice is firing people – not even for insulting people – but instead for writing private texts to each other that onlookers found to be insulting!
The headline continues:
The deans were put on leave earlier in the summer after sending messages that disparaged Jewish panelists.
The infraction here is being disparaging to a particular group of people. Let’s take a look at what the Deans were accused of doing. Frankly, it shouldn’t really even matter what they were saying – because it was intended to be private. Up until recently, people have had the right to their private thoughts. When people speak privately, they are communicating their private thoughts privately to others. The same is true when people write something over a medium that they expect to be private.
It doesn’t matter if an onlooker peers over their shoulders to read something that the onlooker finds offensive. It doesn’t matter if the message intended to be private could potentially become public by someone overstretching their gaze. What matters is that people should have the right to their private thoughts and their private conversations – no matter how offensive.
We draw the line with action that hurts, not language that people can take to be offensive.
Cancel culture is a term that refers to our current tendency to punish, shame, humiliate, terminate or otherwise “cancel” people who perform actions and make remarks that some people feel violate moral standards. Cancel culture is rooted, I suggest, in a crude theory of character. This is the theory that people have an essential (moral) nature, and that what a person says and does is a reflection of that essential nature. And so, when a person says something that is regarded as offensive, that person can be seen as having bad character.
And if that person has a bad or immoral character, they can and should be cancelled.
Of course, this theory of character is deeply flawed. While we all should strive to act with reference to moral values, none of us has an essential moral character. We never live up to the ideals we set for ourselves. We make mistakes. We are always evolving.
What’s more, cancel culture is also founded in a profound lack of humility. When we judge that someone else is done something offensive or immoral, we have to be very careful. We have to ask ourselves, what standards am I using to judge this person’s actions as immoral? Are these standards valid? Is there any sense in which I can be wrong? Humility calls on us to raise the possibility that our judgments might actually be wrong. When we have humility, we don’t abandon our moral beliefs; but we do reflect on them and question them. That’s the only way we learn and develop.
The Deans in question were texting during a May 31 panel presentation called “Jewish Life on Campus: Past, Present, and Future.” During the panel, Susan Chang-Kim, the former Vice Dean and CEO of Columbia College texted that the speech of the panelists:
comes from such a place of privilege.
She added sarcastically that it was:
hard to hear the ‘woe is me’; we need to huddle at the Kraft Center”[Columbia’s Jewish Student Center].
At some point later, in a reply, next a set of “vomit” emojis, former Dean of Undergraduate Student Life Cristen Kromm texted:
Yup. Blind to the idea that non-Israel supporting Jews have no space to come together… Amazing what $$$$ can do”.
Kromm later wrote,
If only every identity community had these resources and support.
As Brian Cohen, Executive Director of Columbia’s Hillel was speaking, Chang-Kim wrote,
He is such a problem!…painting our students as dangerous.
Former Associate Dean for Student Support Matthew Patashnick replied,
He knows exactly what he’s doing and has to take full advantage of this moment. Huge fundraising potential.
Later on, Chang-Kim texted,
Smoke and mirrors…trying to be open minded to understand but the doors are closing.
The President of Columbia, Dr. Nemat Shafik, described the texts as unacceptable and deeply upsetting, conveying a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community.” She added that the texts had “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes” that were “antithetical to our university’s values.”
Well, depending upon who you speak to, of course! One can easily expect that the panelists, many Jewish students and faculty, parents, campus administrators, donors to the college, and others, would easily have been offended by these remarks.
Well of course! They were meant to be critical of positions adopted by at least some Jews.
The Deans were expressing opinions. The opinions of the Deans are neither true nor untrue. People are entitled to their opinions. How about the “facts” on which these opinions are based? Is it “true”, for example, that not all identity groups on campus have the same resources to express their positions? Is it “true” that the occasion of the panel was an opportunity to for the college to raise funds? Is it “true” that the speakers’ statements come from a place of privilege? The problem with these statements is that there is no hard and fast line between “opinion” and “fact”. None of these statements is a mere statement of “fact”. If they were, statements could be challenged by pointing to the “facts”. These statements are largely opinions – evaluations of some state of affairs – based on “facts” that can be contested one way or another in the context of debate.
The statements indicate or otherwise imply that the speakers statements came from “a place of privilege”; that, to the extent that this is the case, it was difficulty to have sympathy for the statements; that an individual Jewish speaker was “a problem” because he was seen as unfairly criticizing certain groups of students; that the occasion could be seen as a fundraising opportunity – perhaps an opportunity to preserve or attract donations from donors – Jewish or otherwise.
An antisemitic statement is one that disparages Jews as Jews; it attributes some negative essentializing characteristic to a person or group on the basis of their Jewishness. By this standard, the statements expressed were not antisemitic. They did not express hate toward Jews as Jews.
The Deans were fired because a powerful people – administrators, student collectives, the public at large, donors – Jewish or not Jewish – found the remarks offensive to Jews.
It’s not nice to be offensive. But it’s not antisemitic either.
When Columbia admonished these Deans, they were punishing them for their opinions – for their thoughts – for having private conversations. (No, they were not fired for texting during a panel discussion.) They were punished for having private conversations in which they expressed their opinions.
That’s what people do – especially in private. We express opinions. We are not always nice. We disapprove and we get to disapprove. To punish people for their opinions is the antithesis of a free society. When we do this, we pretend that only bad people – people of poor character – make “offensive” remarks. We forget that we are those very bad people.
Who among us is ready and willing to turn your phone over to your boss? Are you willing to submit your private text messages to public scrutiny?
If you don’t like someone’s opinion – indeed, if you feel that someone is expressing hate — the proper course of action is to engage that person – both intellectually and emotionally. To legislate against certain forms of speech is to drive those thoughts and feelings underground. When this happens, the thoughts we take to be offensive do not go away. They simply fester and emerge in increasingly trenchant forms.
If we disagree with someone, don’t give in; don’t give up. Engage them openly. They may learn something. And, despite our protests, so might we.
If you like what we are doing, please support us in any way that you can.
