The Volokh Conspiracy
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Incoming Stanford President Jonathan Levin on University Statements
From Stanford Report (Chelcey Adami) on Jan. 25, 2024, reporting on a Stanford Faculty Senate meeting:
Multiple [faculty] senators asked for more details regarding when university leadership should speak on an issue, and Graduate School of Business Dean Jonathan Levin said issuing a statement with absolute moral clarity shortly after an incident does not reflect how the university wants its students to act.
"I think it models the wrong thing for our students, and it actually undermines our basic educational mission …," Levin said. "We want them to think slowly, to hear from different people, to weigh things carefully, and we should model that and have the focus after an event in the world to be around listening and learning."
Thanks to James Creigh and Steve McGuire for the pointer.
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A good lesson for David Bernstein and Josh Blackman.
Except that Professors Bernstein and Blackman speak for themselves, not for their universities.
In the above, ‘think slowly, to hear from different people, to weigh things carefully’ is not just how universities should think
But a university president has different considerations.
It is surprising that the quote from Levin does not mention those.
To be specific, the university president has a duty of care toward its students and employees. In the case of horrendous external events, those person may need strong support from the university. An expression of means of available support (say from student health, etc.) should not wait. The statement should be that some of our community are hurting badly, and we offer them our resources (identify them) for support.
Sure, as long as it’s a consistent approach that doesn’t vary by political perspective. That is, if there’s a political dimension to why certain people are hurting (e.g., one side being upset if the other side wins an election, for example…), then the compassion should be offered neutrally and without regard to which side is impacted…
Indeed, it is crucial that compassion and support be offered to all employees and students neutrally and without regard to side.
There is no reason to wait to support those to whom a duty of care is owed.
I can’t help thinking that Dean Levin would kinda like to have another crack at that answer. “Our students are slow thinkers” is not really what you want your school to be known for.
Thinking a lot before opening the pie hole. Sure.
Thinking all the way round a question and examining different frames, before rioting. Sure.
Not stopping thinking once you’ve got to your first impression. Sure.
Thinking carefully, clearly, logically and deeply; and not emotionally, slapdashly and shallowly. Sure.
But that sort of thing is correlated with thinking fast.
Mental tire kicking is hard work, it requires lots of mental labor. If you’re a slow thinker, you’re never going to arrive at a sensible answer to a difficult question. Slow thinking means less thinking.
If you’re a slow thinker, you shouldn’t be in college. Doesn’t make you a bad person, or a worthless person. But horses for courses. You should be getting stuck into something that fits your slower speed of thought.
No, careful consideration and broad-mindedness is not correlated with thinking fast, what the fuck are you talking about?
It’s all there in my comment, if you only stopped the mouth and thought about it 🙂
“Careful consideration” includes things like not jumping to conclusions and checking that each step in your line of thinking makes sense.
“Broad-mindedness” includes things like being open to other frames, considering whether the evidence supports different conclusions and so on.
But all this is mental work. And the quicker you can do that mental work, the quicker you can solve the puzzle. Or put another way, if by Wednesday, you can get to where everybody else in the class can get to by Friday, that means that by Friday you can get further along yet.
You are confusing “thinking fast” with arriving at your answer fast. You can arrive at your answer fast by not thinking – ie leaping to conclusions, not checking your line of argument, not considering other frames, or other implications of the evidence. But that’s not thinking fast, it’s skipping over the necessary thinking.
Thinking fast is doing all the mental work that needs doing…fast. It doesn’t mean doing less mental work. It means you have time for more.
All reasonably intelligent people over the age of twenty or so – except John von Neumann – will have had the annoying experience of struggling for a long time with something hard, eventually “getting it”, feeling pleased with yourself, and later being asked to explain it to someone who knows nothing about it. And then the someone not only “gets it” in a matter of minutes, if not seconds, all from a standing start, but then mentions a few implications and ramifications that never occured to you. Demonstrating that not only have they caught up with your three month mental effort in ten minutes, but have understood it better than you and have cantered off into the distance ahead of you.
The faster you can think, the more thinking you can do.
Thinking is not a one-dimensional continuum from fast to slow.
There are a ton of types of mental work, and a ton of approaches different people use to attack different mental tasks that may not be linear in what kind of processing their conscious mind has access to.
You’re analysis is reductive to the point of comedy.
“But that sort of thing is correlated with thinking fast.”
Depends on Your terminology.
The comment is a reference to Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Thinking carefully, clearly, logically and deeply is most definitely not “thinking fast”.
It’s a good book. I think you’d enjoy reading it.
Mrs Moore threatened to buy it for my birthday, with the more limited goal of encouraging me to think at all ????
My deep researches (wiki) suggested that some of the underlying science might be a little on the shaky side, so I might wait for the film to come out.
But it remains my contention that the faster you can think, the more of it you can do. I am not recommending not thinking.
I should say en passant that while John von Neumann was famous for his speed (and depth) of thought, he did also suffer from overconfidence and occasionally got caught out by a tortoise who spotted that he’d missed a step.
Are there really two sides on genocide?
Do we have to listen thoughtfully either to Zionists or to Nazis?
[We could ask a similar question about slaving or about cannibalism.]
A Summary of the White States’ Betrayal of the International Anti-Genocide Legal Regime in the Context of Palestine
Today the State of Israel is perpetrating actus rei (criminal acts) of genocide with mens rea (criminal mentality) of genocide and with dolus specialis (specific malicious strategy) of genocide. Zionist leaders have been crystal clear about their goal since the invention of Zionism in 1881, and the Zionist movement has developed dolus specialis of physical destruction of the Palestinian group since 1881.
Zionist leader Vladimir Dubnow, wrote in October 1882: “The ultimate goal … is, in time, to take over the Land of Israel and to restore to the Jews the political independence they have been deprived of for these two thousand years… The Jews will yet arise and, arms in hand (if need be), declare that they are the masters of their ancient homeland.”[1]
In January 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference, Weizmann “The Zionist objective was gradually to make Palestine as Jewish as England was English.”[2] This goal is predicated on destruction of Palestinian group (genocide by today’s legal definition). In 1919, genocide was a sovereign right. Count Three of the Indictment of the 1946 Nuremberg International Tribunal provides the first international legal definition of the crime of genocide.
The 1946 Nuremberg International Tribunal convicted Julius Streicher of genocide incitement
1. even though he had neither harmed anyone nor ordered harm to be inflicted on anyone and
2. even though hyperbolic or inflammatory speech during a war is rarely considered a war crime.
The Nuremberg International Tribunal concluded
1. that Streicher’s speech was in anachronistic terminology genocide incitement that was an intrinsic element of a deliberate and systematic strategy [specific malicious strategy (dolus specialis)] of physical destruction of a group and
2. that this genocide incitement merited the death penalty.
The 1946 Nuremberg International Tribunal ended on Oct 1, 1946, and Streicher was hanged on Oct 16, 1946.
At this point in time, this precedent of customary international law made genocide into a defined crime during wartime.
[I question whether customary international law of genocide requires dolus specialis. Lemkin, who wrote Count Three was familiar with common law doctrines. These doctrines determine liability by categorizing the type of malice accompanying any given criminal action between:
Express malice – deliberate intent to bring harm to the victim; and
Implied malice – Indifference to harm that a victim may suffer due to the defendant’s carelessness or inattentiveness.
Lemkin seems to have meant that genocide should be a crime of deliberate and systematic express malice and did not ever intend to require dolus specialis in order prove that a crime of genocide had take place. Dolus specialis is nowhere mentioned in the Genocide Convention.]
On Dec 11, 1946 the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) unanimously banned genocide either in wartime or in peacetime by means of A/RES/96. No United Nations Security Counsel (UNSC) resolution was necessary
1. for A/RES/96 to have force of international law and
2. for the ban to become jus cogens (a non-derogatable peremptory international legal norm).
“[A] treaty is void if, at the time of its conclusion, it conflicts with a peremptory norm [jus cogens] of general international law.”[3]
Likewise even if an action or a right is based on a treaty, the action becomes banned and the right becomes invalid if the action or the right conflicts with a later defined peremptory norm [jus cogens] of general international law.
Dec 11, 1946 marks the start of the international anti-genocide legal regime.
Because Zionism became a criminal genocidal ideology on Dec 11, 1946, the Zionist leadership, which hoped that the major powers were still too exhausted from WWII to take any action against Zionist colonial settlers, put into high gear the planning of the logistics, PR, and legal defense for the final solution to the presence of a Palestinian native majority in Palestine.
On September 30, 1947, the US Military Government for Germany reconstituted Military Tribunal I, which had earlier been convened for the Doctors’ Trial, to try the RuSHA Case (United States of America vs. Ulrich Greifelt, et al). This was Case #8 of the Subsequent Nuremberg Proceedings.
When the US Zionist movement succeeded in pressuring Truman to support Zionism’s genocidal goal, the US compelled the UNGA to support the optional non-obligatory Partition Proposal of United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) in violation of the international law of a Class A LoN Mandatory Territory.
Because the Zionist leadership feared a UNSC veto and had no interest in a dialogue with the Palestinian leadership, the Zionist leadership gave Palestinians no chance to respond to the Partition Proposal and immediately started the genocidal crimes that are now called the Nakba. The brutality of the Nakba was probably greater than the Gaza Holocaust and is the start of the never ending genocide that continues until Palestinians return to their homes, property, villages, and country.
On March 10, 1948 in the midst of Zionist genocidal crimes, the US subsequent Nuremberg Tribunal of the RuSHA case concluded with the conviction of Nazi leaders of the genocidal crime of Germanization, which is defined in Count Three of the 1946 Nuremberg International Tribunal.
Lemkin explicitly calls Germanization a form of genocide in Chapter IX of his book, which is entitled Axis Rule in Occupied Europe.
Nazi Germanization is no less a crime and no less genocide when Zionism renames Germanization to Judaization.
Because Palestinians are darker non-Europeans, the white states gave the Zionist colonial settlers a pass to commit genocide with impunity approximately one year after the international community banned genocide. The mere existence of the Zionist state negates the international anti-genocide legal regime and undermines international law because no one can take international law seriously if international law is not enforced uniformly and equally. Since its founding 75 years ago, the Zionist state has been a suppurating festering cancerous tumor in international law and on the surface of the planet.[3a]
In resolution 260 A (III) of December 9, 1948, the UNGA approved the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and proposed the Convention for signature and ratification or accession by means of General Assembly resolution 260 A (III) of December 9, 1948. The Convention entered into force January 1951, in accordance with its article XIII.
Apartheid and persecution of Palestinians under Zionist domination are byproducts of the ongoing genocide. In addition, apartheid and persecution are directed to “deliberately inflicting on the [Palestinian] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”[4] The Zionist colonial settlers hoped that Palestinians would be pressured into leaving their stolen homeland. Instead, when Netanyahu started his latest term in Dec 2022, the native Palestinian population under Zionist domination had become larger than the Zionist colonial settler population, and the Palestinian population was much younger than the Zionist colonial settler population is.
The Zionist colonial settlers have become crazed and frantic. Since Dec 2022, the attacks of Zionist colonial settlers on Palestinians, on Palestinian property, and on Palestinian communities have been steeply increasing. Zionist colonial settlers have kidnapped and imprisoned thousands of Palestinians. Zionist colonial settlers have been terrorizing Palestinian children and schools. Zionist colonial settlers have besieged Palestinian religious sites. Zionist colonial settlers have stepped up efforts of Judaization of Jerusalem and of Hebron.
Hamas is a native resistance movement within stolen Palestine and hardly differs from a native resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Europe. Just as the Nazis called the native resistance terrorist, the Zionists and their supporters call Hamas terrorist even though Hamas like the French or Polish resistance to the Nazis is heroic. On Oct 7, 2023, Hamas reacted to the unspeakable barbarism of the Zionist regime.
The kibbutzim of the Gaza Envelope are military bases
1. that are intended to make irreversible the ongoing genocide, which started in Dec 1947 and
2. that have been been camouflaged with civilians that have the role of human shields.
A native resistance movement like Hamas is fully justified in attacking such military bases. The civilian residents of such military bases are not protected noncombatants.
Hamas broke out of Gaza to seize Zionist colonial settlers so that they could be traded for kidnapped Palestinians and for a cessation of attacks on Palestinian religious sites.[5] The US federal code defines such prisoner/hostage taking for exchange to be a legitimate non-criminal act during a war that has no international character. See 18 U.S. Code § 2441 – War crimes.
When Zionist forces understood the actions of Hamas fighters, the Zionist military perpetrated unspeakably heinous and random slaughter in accord with the Hannibal Directive. Zionist military seems to have caused practically all civilian casualties and deaths during Oct 7. Then the Zionist government concocted the accusations against Hamas of baby-beheading, mass slaughter, and rape for the purpose of genocide incitement.
The incompetent but depraved, murderous, and genocidal Golani Brigade collapsed.
In response, the Zionist regime has revenged itself on the Palestinian population by destroying Gaza just as Nazi forces destroyed Warsaw. Even though genocide is not a legal or legitimate response to any act, the Zionist regime has achieved the grand slam of crimes of genocide:
• mass murder genocide (Gen. Con. Art. IIa),
• physical and psychological maiming genocide (Gen. Con. Art. IIb),
• toxic conditions genocide (Gen. Con. Art. IIc),
• birth prevention genocide (Gen. Con. Art. IId), and
• child-kidnapping genocide (Gen. Con. Art. IIe, mostly in the West Bank).
Notes
1. This claim is arrant nonsense. Rabbinic Judaism is a Babylonian religion that has little connection to Palestine. After the maniac Bar Kochba and depraved Tannaim like Rabbi Akiva completely discredited Judaism by persecuting the Judean peasantry during the moronic rebellion against Rome, the Judean peasantry rapidly abandoned Biblical Judaism and converted to Christianity. Later the descendants of the peasantry converted substantially to Islam and became modern Palestinians. The Roman Expulsion can be considered a metaphor for the transformation of Judaism from the religion of Judea into a religion that only descendants of non-Judean converts practice. Vicious bloodthirsty racial supremacist Zionist colonial settler invaders, interlopers, thieves, and impostors have been committing genocide against the true descendants of Greco-Roman Judeans on the basis of a fairy tale.
2. Wikipedia, Chaim Weizmann.
3. Legal Information Institute, jus cogens, https://law.cornell.edu/wex/jus_cogens. Accessed on Jan 23, 2024.
3a. For 12 years the Nazis indoctrinated Germans and propagandized other Europeans with the falsehood that asserts European Jews are non-European and belong in Palestine. This lie is a fundamental principle of Zionism. Thus Germans especially but other whites continued to carry out Nazi genocidal policies even though the Nazi government had been eradicated. The effects of Nazi indoctrination and propaganda seems finally beginning to wear off despite the efforts of hyperwealthy Zionists to maintain a Zionist cultural hegemony throughout the world.
4. UN General Assembly, Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 9 December 1948, United Nations, Treaty Series, vol. 78, p. 277.
5. Hamas, Our Narrative… Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Published: Jan 21, 2024.
The present conflict in Gaza was not started by Israel, of course, and of course Jews were in the region long before the invention of Islam, and Israel has offered numerous concessions during its modern history even while being repeatedly attacked by neighbors.
Beyond starting the conflict with its genocidal atrocities, Hamas bears primary blame for Palestinian suffering due in part to its use of human shields, abuse of protected facilities, and funneling of aid resources toward terrorism. If one third of Palestinian casualties are Hamas–which is lower than Israeli estimates–Israel has been quite successful in minimizing true civilian deaths in a dense urban conflict. Other militaries have not been able to achieve a similarly high combatant to innocent casualty rate in other wars, even in less urban contexts.
Israel has admitted mistakes and has a record of investigating and prosecuting its own people for violation of international humanitarian law. But of course war always leads to suffering of innocents, and again–this war was not started by Israel.
The current conflict starts when white racial supremacist Ashkenazim created Zionism in 1881. Zionism has always been an ideology of native replacement (replacement genocide). Vicious bloodthirsty white racial supremacist Ashkenazim immediately started to plan the genocide of Palestinians.
Rabbinic Jews don’t exist before the 10th century CE when Rabbinic Judaism crystallizes. Rabbinic Judaism is to Biblical Judaism as Mormonism is to Roman Catholicism. These are all completely distinct religions. and Rabbinic Judaism, which is a Mesopotamian religion, has less connection to Palestine than Mormonism has to Rome.
There was no Roman Expulsion, and even if there were, the Roman Expulsion would not provide a defense to an accusation of genocide.
Modern Palestinians descend from Greco-Roman Judeans, who converted to Christianity. The descendants of Greco-Roman Judeans converted substantially to Islam and became modern Palestinians. Judaism was a massive proselytizing religion in ancient times. All modern Jews are descendants of non-Judean converts.
A Zionist colonial settler in stolen Palestine is an invader, interloper, thief, impostor, and perpetrator of genocide.
Except for Palestinian Christians no modern Christian and no modern Jew has a legitimate claim to Palestine. (Modern Palestinian Muslims like modern Palestinian Christians are the rightful inhabitants of Palestine.)
International law requires the abolition of the Zionist baby killer nation and the transfer of every Zionist colonial settler to a detention camp where he can await trial for the international capital crime of genocide.
“We want them to think slowly…”
Is there a government or private school that accepts government funding that has not already surpassed that goal by teaching its students not to think at all?
compare (source):
Many university presidents who had previously sent out campus-wide emails condemning the murder of George Floyd, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the overruling of Roe v. Wade, and countless other world events suddenly discovered the Kalven Principles and claimed it would be inappropriate for them to take sides, or issued weak statements about how the situation in the Middle East was complicated. This double standard continued as some universities responded to student calls for genocide of Jews by invoking principles of free speech, principles that had been notably ignored when the speech in question was directed at other groups.
The murder of George Floyd does not involve the capital crime of genocide. On Dec 11, 1946 The international community banned genocide and made this ban jus cogens.
The mere existence of the baby-killer nation negates the international anti-genocide legal regime and undermines international law.
A Zionist is not a Jew, and if a Zionist is a descendant of a Rabbinic Jewish community, the Zionist is post-Judaism because Zionism murdered Judaism by transforming Judaism into a program of genocide.
To reestablish the integrity of international law, the baby killer nation must be abolished, and every Zionist must be transferred to a detention camp to await trial in a court of appropriate jurisdiction for the capital crime of genocide. This crime has no statute of limitations.
Prof. Volokh will be a much better fit at an old-timey, bigot-embracing, right-wing-mouthpieces-for-hire shop than he was at a modern, liberal-libertarian mainstream, inclusive academic institution.
He, and the new Standford President he was writing about there, are both far more tolerant and inclusive (in all directions) than your narrow, rigid, hateful ideology that lacks any intellectual curiosity or grace towards people who are different (at least, different in ways that you don’t like…).
He expressed his tolerance, inclusivity, and love by habitually publishing vile racial slurs.
He expressed his tolerance toward Artie Ray Lee Wayne Jim-Bob Kirkland by banning him. He expressed his tolerance toward me by repeatedly censoring me. He expresses his tolerance of those who regularly make graphic threats to kill liberals, however, by declining to censor them.
He expresses his tolerance and inclusiveness by targeting Republican racists, superstitious gay-bashers, on-the-spectrum misogynists, conservative xenophobes, right-wing transphobes, chanting antisemites, and backwater Islamophobes as an audience, then lathering his carefully cultivated collection of bigots into a sputtering, daily froth with a steady stream of trans-Muslim-drag queen-trans-white grievance-trans-Black crime-lesbian content.
He demonstrates his inclusiveness by operating a remarkably white, odds-defyingly male blog.
He signals his devotion to tolerance and inclusiveness with respect to gays by endorsing un-American bigot John Eastman and associating with the gay-bashers at Schaerr Jaffe. He confirms his level of tolerance and inclusiveness with respect to women by supporting disgraced workplace misogynist Alex Kozinski.
Anything you care to add on the subjects of tolerance and inclusivity?
Genocide is a US federal capital crime. No Zionist can be welcome in any US university community.
“Publishing” slurs is a sleight of hand, and you know it. Libertarians (both right-leaning and left-leaning) are notoriously concerned with free speech issues, where the most offensive speech tends to come up a lot…
He shouldn’t censor inconsistently, but…I think those examples were a long time ago. He now tolerates bigotry and hate in the comments from (ahem) all corners equally…
Short of actively moderating, he can’t control the obnoxious commenters, from either side. Other than posting about things that happen to involve heated rhetoric (per the first point, above), he does nothing to provoke the incivility in either direction…
Good grief, your obsession with the demographics of the bloggers is deranged. Prove active discrimination or STFU.
Your guilt-by-association for specific individuals is practically Stalin-esque. And you engage in more sleight of hand, with phrasing calculated to imply endorsement of problematic things associated with such individuals, without the nuance that mature people apply to make critical distinctions…
______________
The cultural conservatives of 20 years ago lost their culture war, and rightly so. The woke-mind-virus left is now in the process of losing theirs. Pluralism and (actual) tolerance will prevail in the end.
Libertarian?
Often libertarian?
Libertarianish?
These defensive, disingenuous, white, male right-wingers bouncing about in garish, cheap, unconvincing libertarian drag? The white, male, conservative culture war losers who place “libertarian” at their masthead but never mention “conservative,” “movement conservative,” “right-wing,” or “clinger?”
You are the defender the Volokh Conspiracy deserves.
Deliberation is good. Unequivocal condemnation of terrorist atrocities by groups who explicitly seek the elimination of another group does not take much deliberation or courage. Examples of moral clarity would also benefit students.
Condemn all clearly bad things seems itself a difficult policy to work.
Getting schools out of the political statement biz entirely seemed to be the consensus around here I thought.
“Consensus” might be a workable standard, if defined carefully.