This is not an encouraging situation.
Last week, the University of North Carolina’s Faculty Council met to consider, among other matters, a resolution condemning anti-Semitism on school’s campus. An on-campus event in November included a speaker who said, referring to the barbaric terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, that “October 7 was for many of us from the region a beautiful day.” No one at the event did or said anything to reject that sentiment. The proposed resolution stated, “We strongly condemn the antisemitic statements made during a Unity roundtable event No Peace Without Justice held on November 28, 2023.”
That wouldn’t seem too difficult to agree with or too controversial, would it? Yet the resolution failed to pass. The Faculty Council voted 32-29, with six abstentions, to table the resolution for the foreseeable future. Here are some of the most striking comments made by those who objected to the resolution:
“There is no mention of Islamophobia here. There is no mention here of the disproportionate use of force that Israel has been, in my opinion, exerting in Gaza.”
“Why single this out and not address ongoing harassment of Muslim faculty going on right now on campus?”
“This resolution contributes to a hostile campus environment for many students, staff and faculty who fear being branded as anti-Semitic.”
“I don’t feel comfortable voting for a resolution that condemns any opinion that is not a pro-Israel opinion.”
“I fear that the is no right answer here because the resolution forces us to take sides in a larger battle.”
“There have been comments made about condemning of violence, like speech advocating violence, but we have so much military on this campus and courses taught about the military.”
“We cannot be confident that everyone has the same understanding of the concept of the term anti-Semitism…without clarifying that, I feel uncomfortable making a decision about this resolution.”
“If we vote for the resolution, I am afraid, I have received emails from some members of the community who are worried because they feel marginalized by us not addressing other issues related to this, like war in Gaza.”
These statements exemplify the culture and values that are currently being taught on most, if not all, of our college campuses. The resolyion was not overly broad, and did not even aspire to condemning anti-Semitism in general. All it asked for is faculty approval of a statement that advocating—cheering on, approving— terrorist acts against Jews is not considered acceptable at the University of North Carolina. The ethics rot in higher education has proceeded this far.
Now what?
Ethics Alarms 
Imho, Nothing will change until/unless the people responsible for the rot are removed. They won’t change their minds.
I honestly didn’t think I could hate people more than I already do. Then I come here and read stuff and realize that yes, yes I can.
They probably don’t even recognize what’s wrong with their statements. God help us all.
> Now what?
Burn it down and salt the earth.
I feel like I need to channel the spirit of Cato in regards to all of our institutions have been corrupted by the progressive culture. They must be destroyed. Sometimes the rot is so pervasive there is no saving an institution. Some of the reasons I’ve hesitated in the past to saying these must be destroyed is that typically there must be something to replace them, else the vacuum will sow far more chaos and mayhem. So the question now is, is the likely chaos and mayhem actually preferable to propped up these rotting institutions?
Let’s consider the universities. If we purged them from the country, what would be the net effect? Would we lose higher learning? Many people are turning to online courses already, with private institutions offering more and more content. There are also more resources available for individual study than ever before. Would we lose out on research?
Companies already conduct their own research, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that research would continue in more privately funded ventures. What about peer review? That has been showed to be ineffective at keeping junk from being published, but even so, peer review does not have to be tied to universities by any stretch. What about STEM professions? Internships, apprenticeships, and the like could practically replace a great deal of what universities teach. What about sports? I suppose it would be devastating if the NCAA went away. I do love the Wyoming Cowboys, however much I am unimpressed by the university anymore. But it seems to me that amateur sports can survive outside a university context. I’m now at the point where I’m unsure what benefit universities provide anymore that could not be handled (and handled better) elsewhere. The main devastation would be to the communities built up around universities. But that does not justify maintaining the universities when they have become such toxic places.
Carthago delenda est!
*sigh*
It’s not even a free speech issue, since that resolution simply condemned the statement, it didn’t say that the speaker did not have the right to make it.
The Board of Trustees for UNC has been making some steps to rein in some of the worst abuses at the university. The state legislature (which has a Republican supermajority at the moment) has tried to ensure that there are conservative — or perhaps at least sane voices on the Board. It is not going to be amused by this.
Of course, I think the faculty council, if memory serves, was also up in arms about the Board creating a Free Speech school at the university. That was a true threat, apparently.
*sigh*
Free speech arguments are indeed relevant to a significant number of campus incidents over the last few weeks, but I agree with Diego Garcia that this is not one of them. I’d also suggest that tabling the motion is an act of intellectual cowardice: if you disagree with the motion, vote against it. Tabling it is simply an attempt to avoid taking responsibility.
That said, I do think the second of the quotations–the one about ongoing harassment of Muslim faculty–is worth considering. I saw what Muslim students and colleagues had to endure in the aftermath of the takeover of the US embassy in Tehran and again after 9/11. I don’t know about the severity or the frequency of the harassment at UNC, but it’s certainly possible that it was qualitatively and/or quantitatively significant. If so, then it would seem appropriate for the Faculty Council to stand up for its own constituents at least concurrently with a denunciation of what an unidentified (outside?) speaker is said to have said.
Didn’t that objection strike you as disingenuous, and an excuse not to take a necessary stand using the perfect as the enemy of the good?
Actually, no, it didn’t. I’ve seen too much Islamophobia to think this is a one-sided issue. I’m perfectly willing to grant that the other arguments are pretty weak, and that this one might be, but I strongly suspect that there’s some legitimacy there. And remember that it’s faculty–the very people the Faculty Council is supposed to be representing–who are the alleged victims of that harassment. (Of course, I’ve never believed that any Faculty Council/Senate/whatever ever had my interests at heart; why should Muslim faculty at UNC be any different?
Remember, this is the same faculty senate that condemned the firing of an English faculty member for directing scholarship money to undergraduates if they were having affairs with him. He was having sex with undergraduate students in his office, was having students referred to him and he was referring students to other faculty (for sex). He was fired because adultery is against the law in North Carolina, so he broke the law by having sex with students in his office. Breaking the law on campus is a firing offense even with tenure. The faculty senate passed a resolution stating that faculty who previously lived in the Northeast should be exempt from the state laws of the outdated and unsophisticated people of North Carolina.