Laura Rosenbury, free speech warrior

This scamming grifter again:

Charlie Kirk was assassinated while speaking on a college campus. This is a grim moment for higher education, for our country and for freedom of speech. Violence is never a legitimate means of disagreeing with a speaker on a college campus. Mr. Kirk was a controversial and polarizing figure, but that doesn’t matter.

A commitment to nonviolent disagreement should be an obvious part of the fabric of our campuses, just as it is obvious that students need oxygen to breathe. Colleges and universities need to reconfirm our commitment to nonviolent forms of disagreement — even when we are confronted with voices that disparage or dismiss identities and worldviews. This is also a time to foster more disagreement, not less.

In an increasingly polarized country, where social media algorithms make it easier than ever to operate in an echo chamber, it’s not surprising that almost 1,000 people signed a petition calling for Utah Valley University to rescind Mr. Kirk’s invitation to speak on campus. The university rightly responded by issuing a statement affirming its “commitment to free speech, intellectual inquiry and constructive dialogue.” . . .

To pave a different path forward, many colleges are now offering courses and programs on civil discourse and dialogue. At Barnard, we have started a new multiyear initiative of workshops and study groups to cultivate curiosity, broaden inquiry and help students engage others holding differing views with empathy and open minds.

But we all must do more. We must have the courage to explore ideas that diverge greatly from our own. That will mean inviting a diverse range of outside speakers to campus. We do not need to create a specific balance of views; we must simply engage with the widest possible spectrum of views respectfully, without disruption or violence.

Really Laura? Let’s check out your commitment to requiring your students to “engage with the widest possible spectrum of views respectfully, without disruption or violence.” After constructing a sophisticated methodology for discovering ancient historical texts, I uncovered this in the archives of an obscure blog:

Andrew Gelman points to what ought to be a disturbing development at Barnard (the all-women’s college that is part of Columbia University).

Briefly, the college has prohibited students from putting any kind of sign, semiotically speaking, on the exterior of their dorm room doors.

The putative reason, per the administration, is that “while many decorations and fixtures on doors serve as a means of helpful communication amongst peers, we are also aware that some may have the unintended effect of isolating those who have different views and beliefs.”

What’s really going on here is that, under the leadership of new president Laura Rosenbury, Barnard is cracking down on student protests aimed at the Israeli government, and the new dorm door signage policy is obviously part of that. (You may remember Rosenbury from such posts as “How To Synergistically Leverage the Law School Dean Space Into a Budget-Busting Springboard to an Ivy League College Presidency.”)

Specifically, the College has brought disciplinary proceedings against students who held a non-violent protest against Israel’s war on Gaza, although some of the students being sanctioned apparently weren’t even part of the protest, but were merely walking by at the time, and made the mistake of stopping for a minute or two to listen to the speakers.

And how were the protestors identified?

Maryam Iqbal, BC ’27, met Rosenbury and Grinage in October at a dinner to which she and other Arab and Muslim students were invited following student outcry over the administrative response to the Israel-Hamas war. At the dinner, Iqbal mentioned to Grinage and Rosenbury that she was a member of SJP. [Students for Justice in Palestine].

“[That] was my first mistake,” Iqbal said. “Because now admin latches on to whoever they can get and makes an example out of them.”

Nice!

The inquiry meeting email sent out to students says that they “may have coordinated or participated” in the Dec. 11 unauthorized protest, but does not clarify which action each student is accused of.

An incident report obtained by Spectator states that “the student(s) of concern were positively identified either by onsite administrative personnel or via social media images.”

Big Sister is watching, kids.

The policy the students are accused of violating is one that was put in place in November, requiring protestors to get authorization 28 days [!] in advance for public protests, which, speaking of Orwell, are now categorized by Barnard as “Events With Resources.”

All this is related to the broader issue of what’s happening at Columbia in regard to the Israel-Palestine issue, which is that the right wing scream machine has decided that any too-vigorous opposition to what the Israeli government is doing in Gaza is anti-Semitism.

I’ve already blogged at length about why arguments that colleges and universities should be dedicated to “engaging with the widest possible spectrum of views” are incredibly idiotic if you think hard about it for ten seconds, which is obviously not going to be a risk when dealing with a contemporary American university president.

. . . A couple of additional points:

The notion that Charlie Kirk’s TPUSA dog and pony show has any relation whatsoever to the academic and pedagogical missions of a university is absurd. Rosenbury, who is not actually an idiot, knows this, but pretends she doesn’t in order to construct an argument whose sole purpose is to help her cling to her sinecure (Barnard’s faculty voted 102-0 for a no confidence resolution regarding her presidency last year).

Charlie Kirk was a grifter who pretended to be a public intellectual for a number of years, before transitioning to pretending to be a public intellectual pretending to be a devout Christian. He did these things for the same reasons that Laura Rosenbury betrays all scholarly values by publishing this drivel in The Newspaper of Record. Those reasons are the desire for money and power, or possibly power and money.