I can certainly see why that would alienate people, and I agree that endorsing anti-semitic conspiracy theories rightly undermines the credibility of any organization. That said, and I hate to play the BSDI card, but I do think there is a quickness from the establishment and pro-Israeli colonization/annexation crowd (do not read this as Jews, I just mean mainstream politicians and media regardless of religion or ethnicity) to treat any questions about American policy towards Israel as anti-semitism which I think is similarly unhelpful. Of course its the latter who hold the cards in the media and mainstream political discourse and shape the debate for most citizens who, again, don't care that much, and therefore accept the status quo. Meanwhile we continue to provide military, economic, and political support to another Middle-Eastern country whose policies (like Saudi Arabia's and Egypt's) create instability and resentment that periodically manifests in blowback towards the United States.

I think it's less culture war and more establishment versus various left wing and libertarian groups who are largely outside of normal partisan allegiances. The vast majority of Americans I'd imagine don't know and/or care enough about the issue. That's really the only way I could see this backfiring on Cuomo, is if it makes more people take notice and realize how (trying to chose my words carefully) unhealthy our relationship is with Israel. More likely though I think it will just reinforce the self imposed restrictions our media and polity have on discussing the issue.

I think you're probably right that doing nothing may have been politically impossible but I think that point dodges the issue. I mean, where did bin Laden come from? Oh yea, that other civil war in the 80s where we fed weapons to a bunch of fanatics because they were the enemy of our enemy's friend (and ultimately our enemy himself). That intervention laid the seeds for our current intervention which with mission creep has become a 15 year long nation building project that the supposed beneficiaries of probably don't even want and is certainly going to fail.

At some point we have to break the chain and stop going in. Maybe that won't work out either or will come with other tough moral quandaries but let's not pretend that we've actually tried it and that such a position has any real establishment political support. Even Obama who was advertised as smarter than this has given God knows how many weapons to God knows who in Syria. When one of those people uses those weapons and training against Americans in some capacity will it be cause for another intervention? As always, it will be politically impossible not to intervene. And do it again and again and again.

I call BS on the equivocation of a preference for intervention with a preference for non intervention. Maybe that would make sense if we lived in a country that had largely stayed out of other people's business but it isn't. The history of post-war American foreign policy is messy interventions in simmering civil wars and messy ethnic disputes in the developing world. The morality of a given intervention may vary somewhat but the result has always been to set the stage for reprisals and mass killing by the victorious side. More often than not one intervention lays the seeds for the next crisis which naturally will require yet another intervention.

The Rwanda situation is an outlier only because we did not intervene. However, given the results in places like Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan there is no reason to think that American military force would have resulted in a better long term outcome. Instead of this type of hand-wringing we should try to be more humble and grapple with the limitations of what military force can achieve, not stage a make-believe debate in the establishment press before sending in the war machines.

If people are really going to give up the value of a degree from Yale over something like this then I'd say they've lost perspective but that's of course their right. My answer to their argument is if you want to study, say, black literature, then take a black literature course. Maybe even major in African American Studies. If this was 30 or 40 years ago and that wasn't an option I would see your point but we now live in a world where programs focused on women and various minority groups are widely available. Overall I think that's a good thing.

What I don't think is a good thing is demanding that a traditional program be repurposed, not for pedagogical reasons, but to validate currently prevailing political views on campus. Like I said to Alan above, I don't think they're asking to be challenged or to expand the canon. If that were the case then I would be agreeing with them. What they're asking is for someone to tell them that everything they already know is true and that all information is presented through the lense of intersectionality, regardless of relevance. I mean, are we really at a point where we expect a class about literature written in a European language by Europeans in Europe to focus on non-European perspectives? I'm not saying there should never be a class on that subject but that's a different course than the one being discussed.

I've never said there aren't value judgments made, though I'm guessing most professors would come up with something a bit more convincing than 'it makes my white ass happy' if asked to justify the content of their courses.

Regarding quantifying harm, I don't believe the professors are the ones saying they're being harmed. If they were it would make sense to ask if that harm can be quantified but that's not what's going on here.

If someone is truly being harmed in some manner by taking a poetry class there are an abundance of ways to deal with that, starting with finding a different major more suited to them and their interests.

If that's the case then they should make that argument, not an argument about people suffering some intangible harm that can't be quantified.

I think we're largely in agreement. I guess I have trouble believing that there aren't plenty of classes with diverse viewpoints available for students. I was never anywhere close to ivy league material but when I was in college there were diversity credit requirements for graduation. Even students in more technical fields were required to take them.

I think it's always been a rhetorical tactic and my point is that it's one we should be skeptical of especially when it results in extra protection for some. Every group can come up with some reason they deserve extra protection under the law, merited or not, and that's the reason I oppose hate crime laws generally. They make the types of laws that are the subject of this post inevitable.

Regarding your examples I don't think victimization is the rationale behind most of the changes, even if people were victimized by previous public policy. The rationale is equality before the law, individual autonomy, and keeping the state from invading people's personal lives. Those are ideas I can get behind.

Well I defer to your expertise on the politics of math class (even typing that makes me shudder). It isn't something I have any kind of experience with or expertise on.

I agree that college should be challenging and force people to confront new ideas. Maybe I'm wrong but my contention here is that the students at Yale seem to be demanding exactly the opposite. They are demanding perspectives that reinforce ideas they already have about race, gender, and sexuality arising from a very particular political viewpoint. It isn't included in this instance but a regular refrain from movements of this sort isn't that they want a challenge, it's that they want validation.

Now my view is that all types of ideas should have a place at the university but I can't help but find the idea that minorities and women are being 'harmed' (the students' term) by starting off with the standard Western canon to be absurd. Even if its true, it is a contention that I think requires a lot of proving before being accepted.

What if the professors say 'look, we will get to numerous critiques of the traditional Western perspective but first students need to have a basic foundation of what that perspective is that they usually don't get here with.' My suspicion is that the students would not accept that answer, and while I'm rarely one to defer to authority, I bet the professors on the whole tend to know better about how to approach these topics than a bunch of people right out of high school.

I agree that it always has been. And that is precisely why we need to be circumspect about it when we set public policy.

Better off? Who knows. That analysis probably depends a lot on how precisely we want to define the powerless.

Continuing to keep a nice safe distance from any type of accountability though? Absolutely.

That's a substantial part if it and it's also what we get for couching so many political debates in the language of victim-hood instead of rationality. When being able to characterize oneself as a victim is a shortcut to power we shouldn't be surprised when the powerful start using it.

I appreciate the insight (no sarcasm intended) and i didn't mean to imply that there shouldn't be any engagement. That said I think it's very telling that you used math in your hypothetical as opposed to the liberal arts. As noted in the rest of the thread, math at the level the vast majority of people will ever learn it isn't subjective and certainly isn't political. It's learning processes and equations and how to apply them to different problems.

The way I read these sorts of demands isn't 'we don't want to read and discuss x dead white poet because we already understand it and want to work harder on what we don't understand.' The demand is 'x dead white poet does not reinforce my political opinions and therefore we should replace the reading with something that does.'

I think you're right that there are always value judgments being made when setting a curriculum. What I don't understand is why the students feel they're entitled to any say in that process. I majored in history for undergrad and I remember there was a particular class on modern Japanese history which I (unfortunately) had to drop for reasons related to my job.

That particular professor required a far heavier and more diverse array of reading assignments than any other upper level history course I took and would test on what, in my mind, were obscure points of the most peripheral material. To me this was a poor way to teach the subject but it never would have dawned on me to challenge her pedagogy or ask her to cater to my opinions about the content.

Though the complaints discussed in the article are painted as far left I think there is an even stronger element of narcissistic consumerism at play. If there is a pedagogical reason to alter the content of the specific courses then by all means the professors ought to have the ability to do it. But are changes related to fleeting political trends among a certain subset of the student body really consistent with successfully educating people? I'm just not so sure about that.

That would be considered a microaggression. Possibly a macroaggression depending on the size of the dictionary.

One that comes up often in my line of work are criminal statutes related to bribery and other kickbacks. In some jurisdictions wiretapping and similar interception of communication type activities can also be crimes regardless of intent. We can of course all debate the merits of those examples from a public policy perspective but it does happen.

I dunno. The type of gun laws and changes in laws related to sex crimes favored by large segments of the left would require putting a lot of people in jail. See also my point below regarding criminal penalties for regulatory violations.

The practical difference between mainstream right and left I think is more about who should be in jail and how hard it should be to put them there.

This is a stong point especially given how many regulations now include criminal penalties. Most don't even have a mens rea.

In most respects I think gun control is a cultural indicator masquerading as a political issue.

I think we need to have a greater appreciation of how blunt a tool criminalization is and do a better job of understanding concepts like diminishing returns when we craft policy. Reforming the police is a noble project but also a very long one.

I think you're dead on. The type of blue blood (maybe at this point 'blue state' would be better) Republicans these proposals would appeal to haven't left the party. The party is in the process of leaving them. It probably has been for at least a decade. Trump has just made it impossible to ignore.

The Republicans are often on the wrong side of this and would never be so subtle to argue this point* but liberal cigarette taxes (if they get to the point where illegal resales are profitable) are the types of policies that enable police violence. There are a lot of nuisance and quality of life type regulations that progressives support which in a vacuum sound reasonable. However when they meet the realities of how law enforcement works in this country they become another reason for the police to detain poor people and/or minorities.

*I understand what I'm saying here is more of a libertarian argument and not what Republicans were saying when this incident was in the press.

Just to further clarify, I think they're wrong but I don't think they're monsters.

I see your point but I'm still not in love with public shaming of anyone who says or does something inconsistent with currently trending progressive values as a model of social change. This is especially true when what incident goes viral seems to be completely random (those people in Indiana with the pizza shop come to mind). I also don't know that this particular school and it's administrators deserve to bear the cross for the fact that Catholic schools aren't (and probably never will be) where mainstream blue state America is on sexuality and gender.

Note Burt's comment below. Not that long ago the idea of an open teenage lesbian would have been very unusual in most high schools in most places and probably not even allowed in a Catholic school. I prefer the trajectory America is on when it comes to gay rights and equality but I'm skeptical of how useful this particular fight is.