My law school alma mater—I also worked as an assistant dean there for several years—has been depressingly high on the list of ideologically-obsessed law schools along with Stanford, Yale and many others. Ethics Alarms has never held its fire on GULC based on any sense of misplaced loyalty. However, this time, as the school is being assailed for sponsoring a controversial speaker, I have to take its side for a change. Which is nice.
The Jewish Insider reports that a Georgetown University Law Center student group, a chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine, will host Ribhi Karajaha (above) as a speaker next week on February 11. Karajaha is a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the U.S. government designates as a terrorist organization. He is planning to speak about “arrest, detention, and torture in the Israeli military system,” an Instagram post says. Karajaha spent three years in an Israeli prison as part of a plea deal after he admitted to knowing about a terrorist bomb plot that killed a 17-year-old Israeli girl and injured her brother and father.
GULC is being criticized for allowing him to speak. On the contrary, it may be very instructive for law students to hear his point of view and to observe how he answers critical questions. This is known as “education.”
I heard Angela Davis speak when I was student. Davis was a radical Marxist, a domestic terrorist and a criminal. Listening to her was an invaluable experience. She was charismatic and obviously brilliant, but she didn’t brainwash me with laser eyes. I witnessed first hand and in person what fanaticism looks and sounds like. Education.
Georgetwon law student Julia Wax Vanderwiel told Jewish Insider that Karajah’s presence on campus “threatens the security of all Jewish students.” What, is he going to morph into Palestinian Hulk and run amuck? He’s going to talk. Words should not make anyone feel unsafe, and if they do, even then the words are still conveying useful information. The unsafe speaker myth has been embraced by the Mad Left as a way to censor speech and muzzle political opponents.
If Georgetown law students are wise and ethical, they will allow the terrorist to speak without disruption. Unfortunately, they have been attending an institution whose Dean has endorsed partisan and political censorship, so I will be genuinely surprised if that is how this episode plays out.
Ethics Alarms 
Nice post.
A senior church friend remarked to me how he heard one of the Communist Party of the USA speakers give a speech at his university as an undergraduate, and people on campus who attended were attentive and civil, nobody disrupted the talk.
My friend state or implied that the audience wasn’t especially sympathetic, there were just curious and knew how to sit still and listen.
charles w abbott
rochester NY
Angela Davis. Famous, at least among my two senior year roommates who’d done the Hamilton College Junior Year in France program, for having been in the Hamilton College Junior Year in France program.
Fingers crossed the Palestinian terrorist gets a chance to speak. I hope he creeps out some of the delusional students at GTown.
I have mixed feelings about this. What if the history department of a university invites the David Irving for a lecture on the Holocaust? Would that be ethical?
My impression is that when a university invites or sponsors a speaker this speaker will by that very fact gain a level of respect; he will slide up the cognitive dissonance scale by his very association with that reputable institute of higher learning. After all, an invitation to speak is a honor, and honor has to be earned.
My opinion is that the speaker does not deserve any respect or honor, as he killed a 17 year old girl who was hiking with her family. Please look at the following tweet, and the correct conclusion should be that the invited speaker has morally forfeited his right to live (Genesis 9:6).
https://x.com/yaelbt/status/1888339452403007855
If the university is a stellar bastion of free speech, who loves to push the envelope on this matter, I would allow this university any credit on this point. But I think that professor Ilya Shapiro might have a bit of a different view on this matter. I have two links about the cancel culture at Georgetown below, showing that the university’s attitude on free speech is not spotless.
https://theweek.com/education/1009664/cancel-culture-comes-to-georgetown-law
https://www.thefire.org/news/half-cheer-georgetown-school-silently-declines-probably-investigate-professor-quoting-epithet
In Georgetown’s defense I will add the following link, showing that Georgetown allowed an event at campus to go forward inviting three Israeli soldiers at February 7th, 2024. This event of course gave rise to campus protests, as the article below shows.
https://thehoya.com/news/israeli-soldiers-panel-sparks-student-faculty-protests/
My view is that Georgetown University could have done much better. They may redeem themselves in my eyes if they invite somebody from the Knesset, or professor Alan Dershowitz to the campus.
Sure. I’d love to hear David Irving speak. And I’d really like to question him.
Jack, assume that OJ Simpson were still alive, would you like to hear him give a TED talk about domestic violence? Are there any ethical limits on who we should be willing to give a platform? Or limits in terms of wisdom?
I am not advocating for limits on free speech as we have in Europe, or a cancel culture like we see at many universities. But I belief that is a fundamental difference between not preventing a student organization to host an edgy speaker, and actively inviting such a speaker.
There are also varying levels of edgy. I personally would love to hear Charles Murray about the Bell curve; it is a pity that a reasonable debate about his books cannot be held at universities. One of the reason I write this because I believe Charles Murray has a lot of valuable things to say. But I would question the sanity of anybody would invite the proprietor of the Chimpmania blog for a lecture on race. Or somebody who actually murders people for ideological reasons, such as the speaker at Georgetown.
Similar reasoning may also apply to an internet forum or blog for instance. Moderators ban certain posts or writers because of viewpoints that would bring down the quality and stature of the forum or blog. E.g. the writers on Chimpmania at Ethics Alarms.
I’d LOVE to hear O.J. talk about his trial, his conviction, anything. He’s a historical figure. It’s so simple: if you don’t want to hear someone speak on a campus, don’t go. I’d love to hear John Wilkes Booth. Vlad the Impaler. Hitler. Woodrow Wilson. Hunter Biden.
But I wouldn’t cross the street to hear Kamala…
The sticking point for me is not the viewpoints of speaker. Or the fact that the speaker has a controversial personality or a sketchy life. I would love to hear Willie Sutton speak about bank robbery. I love Ian Bick’s channel at YouTube, where he interviews people who have an intimate relationship with the penal system.
When it comes to invitations to speaker I would draw the line at murder. An unrepentant murderer like Karajah should have gotten the death penalty for his crimes, or should simply be assassinated. If he escaped punishments he ought to be shunned by polite society for the remainder of his life. He surely should not honored by any invitations to speak. Sound judgement and moral propriety would have allowed for a speaker sympathetic to Hamas, but not to an actual terrorist who killed people.