Georgetown

American Antisemitism Sunday on Ethics Alarms Kicks Off With This Ethics Quiz: Georgetown’s Qatar Conference

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

The Jerusalem Post reports in part:

[Georgetown University] is hosting a Hamas-affiliated media personality as a keynote speaker at a conference, in addition to other officials from designated terror organizations…..titled “Reimagining Palestine,” [concluding today] in Qatar. One of the main speakers was Wadah Khanfar, a former official at Qatar’s mouthpiece Al Jazeera whose relationship with Hamas has been well-documented throughout the years. Khanfar was named as an early leader of Hamas’s office in Sudan by multiple Arabic-speaking outlets, including the Palestinian Raya Media Network, the Yemen-based Mareb Press, and the British Al-Arab website. Likewise, according to Mohamed Fahmy, a former Al Jazeera English Egypt bureau chief, the Muslim Brotherhood described Khanfar in 2007 as “one of the most prominent leaders in the Hamas office in Sudan.” Khanfar was also reportedly connected to the al-Aqsa Foundation in South Africa, which the US Treasury Department designated “a critical part of Hamas terrorist support infrastructure.” ….Other speakers at the conference included Shawan Jabarin, who is closely affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, another designated terror organization, and Issam Younis, who in the past supported Hamas’s oppressive rule in Gaza…

The Washington Free Beacon, the conservative publication, adds (because the mainstream news media doesn’t think this is newsworthy]:

The speakers at the “Reimagining Palestine” event will discuss the “ideological shifts” of Zionism, “art as resistance,” and “anti-colonial struggles,” and will engage in “dialogue that challenges the status quo,” according to the Doha event’s website.

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is….

Is it ethical for an American institution of higher learning to do this in the midst of the Israel-Hamas War?

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Monday Ethics Warm-Up, 10/19/2020: Wherein My Head Explodes At Least Once

/ Jack Marshall / 36 Comments

head-explode Calvin

1. KABOOM! Just when I thought 1) Georgetown could not embarrass this alum more thoroughly and 2) my head had been immunized from exploding comes the astounding news that Georgetown University has hired former FBI agent Peter Strzok as an adjunct professor. Strzok is now listed on the university’s staff page and he mentioned the Walsh School of Foreign Service on his Twitter profile. An alumnus, he will be teaching a “Counterintelligence and National Security” in the fall semester.

While engaged in an adulterous affair with then FBI lawyer Lisa Page in 2016, Strzok exchanged suspicious anti- Trump messages that called into question the legitimacy and fairness of the Mueller investigation. The FBI fired Strzok  in 2018 for  undermining public confidence in the non-partisanship of the bureau and federal law enforcement.

Stay classy, Georgetown! I already have my law school diploma facing the wall; I guess I can coat it with some kind of noxious substance…

2. The villain here is the professor. This is no time to be a weenie. Actually, there is never a good time to be a weenie. A professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law used “nigger” (referred to in infantile fashion by the law school’s announcement as “the n-word,” since “poopy badspeak” hasn’t caught on yet) in the context of discussing an offensive language case. But of course a student or six reported him, because they could, and it is an easy way for young progressive cowards to justify puffing up their pigeon chests because they get to cause trouble for someone who did absolutely nothing wrong.

The adjunct professor has not been identified, but in an email from law school administrators, including Law Dean Amy Wildermuth, it was announced that the professor has resigned.

“The instructor apologized and expressed his deep regret to the class, and informed the class at 1 p.m. today that he was resigning immediately from teaching at Pitt Law,” the announcement said in part.  “We condemn the use of this word, and we believe that saying this word and words like it, even in an academic context, is deeply hurtful,” the note concluded.

Words are not hurtful. Meanings are hurtful, when they are intentional. This is virtue-signaling and language policing of the most indefensible sort. The professor, whoever he is, had an obligation to the school, the culture, his profession, common sense and himself to fight, not surrender.

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Sunday Ethics Warm-Up, 10/7/18, Part II: Fake Satire, Fake Racism, Fake Harvard

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Good Morning AGAIN!

My OTHER favorite hymn when I’m feeling blue..

3. If I were the producer of Saturday Night Live…I would strongly push the show to do what satirical shows are supposed to do: make fun of everyone. It is just good business, as well as comedic integrity: make everyone watch to see who gets skewered.  But no: despite the over-abundance of potential and indeed near mandatory targets of parody and mockery, SNL took sides—the same one it has been taking now, virtually exclusively, for years. There was no Spartacus sketch, despite the preening of the absurd Cory Booker, and a skit that virtually writes itself. Lindsay Graham was cruelly mocked, but not Kirsten Gillibrand, nor Diane Feinstein. Ah, but Senator Susan Collins, who made a brave, clear, invaluable speech about her choice–women get choices, I hear—to buck the #MeToo bullies and lynch mobs and confirm Brett Kavanaugh, was mocked for THAT last night, aan portrayed as weak dupe. Yet despite the mannered, baby-talking, confused presentation by Blasey-Ford, whom I would deem a satirist’s dream, the show’s writers didn’t have the guts to touch her.

4. Speaking of jokes…Georgetown prof C. Christine Fair, who the college thinks can be trusted to be neutral and fair to white men in her classroom despite her racist and violent tweets, had an explanation after her Twitter account was suspended. She had written, you will recall,

“Look at [this] chorus of entitled white men. All of them deserve miserable deaths while feminists laugh as they take their last gasps. Bonus: we castrate their corpses and feed them to swine? Yes.”

Come on! Don’t you get the joke? She was kidding! Fair told the Washington Post, whose reporter didn’t have the integrity to respond, “How stupid do you think I am?”…

“Maybe this was not my most eloquent attempt,” Fair said. “And I will certainly concede I was attempting to make people feel uncomfortable,” but  “this idea I’m somehow calling for actual violence is preposterous.”

Gee, why can’t white supremacists and racists excuse their “jokes” the same way?

The Post’s writer, however, completely accepts Fair’s alibi, and impugns anyone who took offense at it as “extreme right wing.”  Read the article.

Nah, there’s no mainstream media bias! Continue reading →