What would W+M say? How about "with friends like these, who needs enemies?"
 

What is he talking about? He says, "In the past, name-calling has overwhelmed civil debate." Too bad if that's true, but what does it have to do with free speech? He seems to be talking about something more than the First Amendment (in the US, he can't be locked up for what he says) and also something more than academic freedom (as a professor, he can't be fired for what he says). Does he really think that his free speech rights include the right not to be called names? If he is "trembling in fear" that someone is going to shoot him, that's not a matter to be solved by motions in the Harvard faculty. If he is "trembling in fear" that someone is going to say he's a fool, stopping that would be a new concept of free speech protection. I'm all for civility and I wish people treated each other more respectfully. But wishes and preferences are beside the point. The point of free speech rights are to allow you to say things that are going to enrage other people -- not to guarantee that other people aren't going to react to what you say.
 

I actually think it's a fair question: What *is* he talking about? And I don't mean that sarcastically, I'm just wondering if there's some specific incident or trend that has prompted this action on Matory's part.
 

Guess someone's jealous about Columbia drawing all the attention and controversy these days...
 

I now fear for the future of name calling at Harvard and so plan to introduce a sister bill embracing the pejorative.

"Is it not time to reverse this tide of chaos and dysfunction [...]?"
 

What a bunch of bird shit.
 

Exactly. That's the spirit!
 

"The point of free speech rights IS," not "are." Ugh and sorry. - 9:13am
 

The issue of 'rights' is a red herring. No one's free-speech rights are in question and I don't think Prof. Matory would say they are.

What's at issue is the viability of the Faculty as a venue for discourse. And this is not just a matter of policy (of COURSE anyone can say whatever they want, short of pure hate speech), it's also a SOCIAL matter.

Prof Hoxby made one of the best comments about what was wrong with Summers's tenure:

" "Every time you humiliate or silence a faculty member, you break ties in our web," Hoxby said. "When you engage in speech that harms the university's ability to foster scholarship and that is not thoughtful, not deliberate, and not grounded in deep knowledge, you break ties by the hundreds." "

It's this kind of act -- the disrupting of *social* nets, safety and otherwise -- that Prof Matory seems to be protesting. He would like the Faculty to consider protesting it as a body, in what is surely just a symbolic resolution.

Don't be distracted by questions of policy or whatever. This is just someone looking for a majority vote that would encourage people not to fear (semi-)social lambasting if they express certain views.

No one's being oppressed, it's true. But neither is the resolution an attempt to gain any real power: just a request for reassertion of fundamental values.

**
I suppose this is a good place to add (lest anyone think I'm Matory or a shill for him) that it's a little pathetic that anyone should be silent out of intimidation, in the way that Prof. Matory thinks his 'silent majority' is being silent. It's also possible that, rather than being cowed into submission, that majority just doesn't feel that strongly about the importance of criticizing Israel.

I do happen to believe that US foreign policy is FAR too oriented toward Israeli interests, though unlike W&M I don't claim to know why. I don't think it's a basis to criticize Israel -- of course they want a powerful lobby in the US, and their success in getting one doesn't make that desire invalid.

SE
 

I do hope Prof. Matory explains himself as well as SE explains what he thinks Matory means. Do people at Harvard really tremble in fear when their colleagues are rude to them? (Summers, to whom Hoxby was speaking, was a different case -- he was the boss. Those who feared he might retaliate had good cause, as he could freeze their salaries, etc.) But Rich's question remains: what are some examples of instances in which people have said things that caused others on the Harvard faculty to tremble, too fearful to speak up in response? Symbolic votes for politeness will surely be interpreted by some to mean that no one should say things that make others uncomfortable, The road to hell is paved with such good intentions.
What are people afraid of? I actually suspect a lot of people at Harvard are not afraid of speaking up, they just have better things to do with their time than to get into public arguments about international politics with their friends, much less with Dershowitz. That's not fear, just a prioritization of energies.
(A relevant aside: After a skeleton was removed from a grave in New Hampshire on Hallowe'en, a police officer stated that he suspected practitioners of witchcraft. Today he had to issue a public apology to all the local witches whose feelings he had hurt.)
 

All of this would play better if Prof. Matory had the respect of his colleagues on the faculty. A number of them believe he is not too bright.
 

The point isn't that people fear retaliatory action, but that they think the game isn't worth the candle -- the damage that will be done to the social/discursive 'net' by very very ardent Zionists' retorts is too costly for people with countervailing opinions to pipe up on Israel-related issues.

So the responses criticism of Israel might draw are not threats of damaging action; they are THEMSELVES damaging action. They break ties of civility and respect, and that's bad enough in itself for people to deplore it. (Although certainly not bad enough for people to change policies, or whatever. Certain kinds of name-calling should always be allowed.)

I don't think Hoxby was, in the passage I quoted, talking about the fear of retaliatory *action* either. She was focused on the *social* damage involved in someone big throwing around his or her weight, and 'humiliation' isn't always the result of implicit or explicit threats.

As to Matory being dim: No. The perception is that he is too consistently strident and keeps on returning to the same issues. When he got up for the seventh time to talk about the Allston process it was hard not to roll one's eyes internally, regardless of the merits of his complaints. This particular tactical tone-deafness has nothing to do with intelligence. Also, obviously, I don't think tossing around such insults without examples or names appended is a good thing to do. It's pure cattiness, no?

SE
 

I'm in two minds about my esteemed (and I mean esteemed) colleague, Prof. Matory's motion, the wording of which I haven't yet seen -- 9:18, that is a despicable assertion to make without putting your name to it; you're a low seeder of gossip, a Steerforth forsooth.

I don't actually believe we need free speech protective legislation. Rather we need more of us, particularly those of us with tenure, to exercise the rights we already possess and can by virtue of being tenured exercise with impunity.

So why don't we exercise those rights, uniquely protected for those of us who are in tenured positions?

SE gets it right: we fail to do so through fear connected more to social consequences. This is most obvious when it comes to speaking out on Israel-Palestine, but it has in recent years also had to do with speaking out against broader US foreign and domestic policy. Easier to keep one's head down, no? Easier not to have direct charges of anti-semitism made by one's president (Summers), or uneasiness/avoidance by one's colleagues. Easier simply to turn away from such issues and enjoy the easy benefits of tenure without undergoing any of the difficulties of living in the world outside or justifying in our actions the very rationale for the concept of tenure and its strengthening in the wake of McCarthyism.

So I'm not sure faculty legislation adds anything in the absence of a willingness to take chances, but I look forward to seeing the wording of Prof. Matory's motion.

On the other hand, strengthened free speech arrangements in the case of the UNTENURED might help to prepare against our experiencing at Harvard successful (Norman Finkelstein) or near-successful (Nadia Abu El-Haj) outside intrusions in promotion proceedings precisely by anti-free speech vigilantes whose names need not be mentioned here.

In this connection faculty readers of this blog might be interested in looking at a good petition at:

http://defend.university.googlepages.com/home
 

What possibly could be the remedy for our preferring not to speak because of social consequences such as "uneasiness/avoidance by one's colleagues"? Words do cause reactions. No statement about a political matter can fail to do that. Of course one can hope that reactions will be in proportion to the the speech, but offense is in the ear and brain of the hearer. We can't let the sensitivity of the most easily offended in the community set the limit of what should be said.
 

But isn't that what we now do, and all the time, particularly in recent times, anon 11:28?
 

Matory may seem to be speaking for Palestine, but he also has other issues that have more to do with Nigeria.
 

SteerPIKE that should have been.
 

As it turns out, Matory has worded his motion in a very dignified manner.
 

The truth is Harvard has long abandoned basic academic values. All these consultants running around telling deans, provosts and the president how to run the university are part of the problem. Their very young age, narrowmindedness and inexperience being the other part of the problem.

WHO is running the University? This is one of the fundamental questions that faculty and students should ask.
 

Matory may be right about the need to recommit to free speech, but he is using this to advance his anti-Israel agenda.

The faculty council would do well to take him seriously on the free speech issue, and leave the resolution at that.