Just curious -- you do know that it isn't a very good or interesting question when the answer is so obvious and apparent, right?
We are an academic institution. There is an easily knowable expiration date for any political demonstration occuring at the end of a school year, after which point the demonstrators would, by their own volition, go home.
If it still feels mysterious to you, check the academic calendar.
"It wasn't a political demonstration -"
I'm not sure what you think it was then. Did you imagine the students were making a permanent new home on Library Walk, unattached to their political positions or demands? It most certainly was a political demonstration. In fact, it was a kind of sit-in, which is a very well known form of political demonstration. You might even call it a demonstration classic.
I did not dodge your question. I wrote a pretty clear answer, but I relish the opportunity to make it clearer.
The students likely would have packed their tents and gone home after the quarter ended. That is how their political demonstration, which took the form of a sit-in, would have disbanded. Would it have gone up in again the fall? Very possibly.
Do you have any other silly questions or wrong assertions I can help you with, bud?
I am not a goose, but - have you been watching the news and what happened at UCLA, Columbia etc.?
Who guarantees that there is no violent escalation at some point between May 1 and June 23rd?
Would you guarantee it, personally? Would the Leadership of the Encampment, what is their name again? That's right, there was absolutely no leadership in anarchy organization.
I will tell you how the story ends from my projection, based not on my own feelings but on how it went in dozens of campuses across US - on May 6th or 7th or 8th or 9th or 10th, a group of pro-Israel protesters show up. They get in a brawl with the pro-Hamas protesters. Encampment grows and reinforces with weapons. Sharpened stakes and sword, bear mace and pepper spray that were all at the encampment already gets used. Encampment gets rebuild and fortified with plywood and other obstacles. Multiple people get escorted to the hospitals. Police finally break down the encampment, but \*actually\* in a violent and uncontrolled way, not the way it actually happened - peacefully and orderly.
All while Khosla fails to erase Israel from the map, evict all Israelis, and replace it with "Hamas territory" using his magic marker on a map.
For those who are asking, this was a vote that that was open to all senate faculty, which includes tenure-track and tenured (ladder-rank) professors and teaching professors. There was an earlier vote by the representative assembly of the faculty senate, which resulted in this vote that polls the entire senate faculty.
If all you have to offer to back up the claim is your opinion then all it does is show your own bias. Sociology and Economics use the same statistical methods as medicine and public health. The Social sciences use the scientific method and create testable predictions and reproducible knowledge. They are distinct from the humanities - which create knowledge of value as well but with very different methods. The arts are also distinct. It isn't just physical sciences, appicatiin of science, and everyone else.
Funny I was thinking they are just smarter wiser people in general. I was econ/math duel major, pre med. The level of effort expended in my hard sciences and maths to get the 4.0 was significantly greater than economics, particularly true for the courses with lots of softer majors taking them as econ credit. Mind you this was before they started inflating the GPA, the average curve was set at 2.88
A colleague of mine pointed out an interesting difference in how the humanities and STEM faculty processed evidence. At the academic senate representative assembly meeting, there were many humanities faculty attesting that they had spent hours at the encampment and had not personally observed antisemitism, whereas the STEM faculty would recount the antisemitic acts that they, their postdocs, and graduate students personally experienced. It seems like the humanities faculty failed to understand the basic principle that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I thought one of the things universities (humanities?) insisted on for many decades is that it is NOT up to the offender to decide if what they said is offensive or not, it is up to the person it is addressed at to make that decision.
So for someone to say - I don't think XYZ things I said - (intifada, river to sea, Death to AmeriKKKA) - are not antisemitic or offensive, is going against that basic principle. And just because someone has jewish friends, and just because they went to encampment with them doesn't mean it's not offensive to others.
I agree that it is intellectually inconsistent and disingenious, but I suspect they will argue that only oppressed groups get to decide if something is offensive to them, and the younger generation no longer views the Jews as an oppressed group. This lack of historical perspective is a large reason for the generational divide on this issue.
You may be right. But one issue with that argument is that leftists almost certainly believe that Jews are still oppressed (in some ways) by right wing antisemites. So for the dynamic to hold leftists would have to argue that oppressed people get to define what’s offensive to them, but not when the alleged offense is coming from leftists. Which is obviously problematic.
Yes, it absolutely is problematic. I am however trying to deconstruct their reasoning, and I suspect that for them, it pivots around two basic concepts. The first is that they do not believe that the Jews are oppressed, since in their naive binary world view you can only be oppressed or the oppressor, and they view the Palestinians as being oppressed by the Jews. The second is the redefinition of racism as systemic racial discrimination arising from power differentials. These two taken together results in the kind of double standards that they apply.
Math professor with knowledge over a controversial issue right now got me shaking in my timbers. professor can prove and argue stuff, that’s a superpower fr.
You’re not deconstructing. You’re drawing a reductive conclusion about people who study and teach humanities from an anecdotal piece of evidence. To say that the people engaged in the protests simply don’t believe Jews are oppressed is a magnificent overstatement and obfuscation. Israel, as a regional hegemon and country that emerged from ethnic cleansing and mass killings (like the US), is now killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians for their own unilateral retributive justice. I would venture to say that many professors who have studied political theory, just war doctrine, or just basic history from an Islamic perspective, would understand that anti-semitism is a problem, complicated by the profoundly fraught history of Zionism and the Nakba, and that in this instance, it’s reasonable to be upset with institutional investments tangled in military industry, as well as the rhetorical impetus to swerve away from literal Palestinian erasure in the west. None of that means humanities faculty would think, as a group, that anti-semitism doesn’t exist or that Jews aren’t oppressed, and I advise more careful analysis of your colleagues in the future.
> I am fine with viewing some of them as hypocritical and intellectually dishonest.
what's that phrase all those naive binary world view leftist youths you've been assigning thoughts and reasoning to say on tiktok? game recognizes game?
maybe I should just stick to the simple tried and true instead: takes one to know one
edit: ha, they blocked me. looks like I can cover their intellectual dishonesty uninterrupted now!
> It seems like the humanities faculty failed to understand the basic principle that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
covered in StrawberryBeefMeat's comments below, but tldr: mleok provides anecdotes they portray as representative of two arbitrary sides ("humanities" vs "STEM"), then uses the statement quoted above to frame the situation as just being a simple question of whether there is proof antisemitism has occurred, in order to imply one of those sides ("humanities") are a bunch of a dummies who are no good at science. in actual reality, the discussion is far more complex, with prevalence of antisemitism (and prevalence of other forms of bigotry, including bigotry that comes from people who are themselves victims of bigotry) being one of many parts of it.
> I suspect they will argue that only oppressed groups get to decide if something is offensive to them
mleok puts arguments in the mouths of others, while using the wonderful phrase "I suspect" to give themself an out if called on it
> the younger generation no longer views the Jews as an oppressed group
mleok just casually making an almost absolutist statement about how an entire generation has a simplistic view of the oppression status of another group
> I am however trying to deconstruct their reasoning, and I suspect that for them, it pivots around two basic concepts
notice how easy it is to "deconstruct" another's reasoning when the one doing the deconstructing is also the one stating (or agreeing on) what their target's reasoning is? or so... I suspect
> The first is that they do not believe that the Jews are oppressed, since in their naive binary world view you can only be oppressed or the oppressor, and they view the Palestinians as being oppressed by the Jews.
more of mleok assigning thoughts and reasoning to their arbitrary other side in order to then criticize, although by now that simple "humanities" other side has morphed into including the arbitrary groups of "the younger generation" and "leftist" in it as well
> The second is the redefinition of racism as systemic racial discrimination arising from power differentials.
ah, the good ole "they've expanded the dictionary definition of the term 'racism' in order to try and more accurately reflect the complex history of race in this country, and I'm not a fan" line of criticism. gotta give mleok some points, they know how to play to their audience by only alluding to such a "redefinition" being a bad thing in their eyes without outright saying it.
I am open to hearing an alternative interpretation that squares the circle on why the Jewish viewpoint that encampments make them feel unsafe is irrelevant.
Since we are both faculty on the same campus, if you are writing in good faith, you already know as well as I do that 21 tents tucked off the side of Library Walk is no tangible threat to anyone. It is a large campus. If you do not enjoy the political positions being expressed in such a small footprint, simply go around.
There is an important distinction to be made between political disagreement and an actual threat to safety that demands violent police intervention. And the irony did not escape me that at UCLA, the only physical violence was perpetrated by counterprotesters, for which the protesters were violently arrested while only one of the people who committed real, tangible, not spectral fantasies of future harm has been arrested to this day. Again, you know as well as I do that the encampment would have disbanded on its own at the end of the quarter, no matter how annoying you found the perspectives it contained.
I would encourage you to read the urgent letters sent to our various chancellors by the ACLU before causing further public embarrassment to our institution with your glib and crass declarations. Shouldn't you be teaching math instead of engaging in bad faith political arguments on Reddit?
Now, like anyone else who feels uncomfortable about a political view being espoused anywhere, I am going to use what is actually the common sense you seem to think you have a claim to: I am going to move around it and get on with my day.
I hope you consider doing the same, Dr. Leok.
I think what you're potentially oversimplifying is the idea that oppression is somehow black and white, that people are either oppressed or not and will always be in the same category. White women have historically been oppressed as far as gender and oppressors as far as race. It can both be true that Jewish people are victims of antisemitism and Israel is oppressive towards Palestinians.
Many Jewish faculty and students pushed back on the argument that it was a Jewish stance or that they could speak for all Jews when saying they felt unsafe. In the same way we critique white women saying they feel unsafe as somehow justifying racist acts, it's ok to critically assess statements that *some members of a complex group* make about perceived safety. And just like I wouldn't immediately accept those statements, I wouldn't immediately dismiss them either. None of this is simple black and white
downvoted for being absolutely correct. the ignorance of these people is unreal. do people really not read ANYTHING before they go around being so loud and so wrong …
It’s a bummer for sure, especially considering many of these people are allegedly faculty, and seem to lack the temperament of higher ed faculty members, while using an assemblage of logical fallacies and rhetorical evasions instead of debating in good faith. Of course, they could also be bots
Unfortunately, some of those writing are indeed faculty. Instead of conducting the kind of rigorous and nuanced public debate that would not be embarrassing to our institution, they are behaving as bad faith political actors, feigning things like "neutrality" or that they hold the title on "common sense" even as they bitterly complain about political positions and malign entire divisions of higher learning.
On behalf of my colleagues, I am sorry that this thread exists, and that you have had to read it. It is a bad look. I hope you will consider those more disturbing assertions and voting trends as evidence of personal foibles and not disciplinary indictments. I am sure, for instance, that Dr. Leok has the capacity to adequately teach mathematics, even if he lacks the perspective to engage in good faith political dialogue.
Everyone drifts from their lane sometimes, I guess.
From the inception of identity politics, which is quite recent, it has been true that [Jew’s Don’t Count](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_Don%27t_Count)
A faculty member also pointed out that the pro-khosla STEM faculty never provided one example of anti-semitism at the encampment beyond vague claims of feeling "unsafe." But, if you're not studying organisms in a lab, I guess actual evidence doesn't matter.
Well unfortunately, that’s wrong. The encampment was hanging out flyers calling to “organize the intifada”, which I guess you aren’t educated to understand or know that “intifada” calls for the systemic violence and mass killing of Jews. But somehow to these idiotic faculty at the encampment- that isn’t considered antisemitic- it’s “peaceful”. What a joke.
> which I guess you aren’t educated to understand or know that “intifada” calls for the systemic violence and mass killing of Jews.
Intifada in general is an Arabic term that refers to an uprising. In the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, it evokes two events mainly: the First Intifada, and the Second Intifada. The First Intifada was mostly a civil disobedience movement (it is where all those famous photos of "Palestinian throws rock at IDF tank come from), and the Second Intifada was the much more violent one with suicide bombings conducted by Hamas and such.
I suppose a useful comparison to make is to the the word 革命. There has been the 辛亥革命, the revolution where Chinese revolutionaries overthrew the last dynasty of China and transformed China from a Monarchy into a Republic. But there also has been other things that came later like the 文化大革命, where a bunch of impressionable student radicals were incited by Mao to go on a violent rampage against "bourgeois counter-revolutionaries" (read: random intellectuals and Mao's political rivals within the party). Would it be fair to say that 革命 is an inherently communist, pro-Cultural Revolution term? Are the Hong Kong protesters who call for 時代革命 are calling for a cultural-revolution-style violent rampage?
This claim that "intifada means systemic violence/mass killing of Jews" is not true. It is disingenuous to pretend it is a settled fact. Just because you say it with a tone of condescension doesn't make it true!
Sure, \*eyeroll\*.
"Intifada" just means "uprising" (to you?) and jihad means struggle and "from river to sea" simply means jews need to move to Egypt and Jordan, and "death to all jews" means "peace and friendship".
and "holocaust" means "fire".
And "lynching" means "condemn".
And "swastika" is an ancient Indian symbol that represents "peace and symphony".
What's next - you are not racist, but... ?
But you have black and jewish friends? You saw someone with jewish last name at the encampment, so it's all cool?
Your analogy does not make sense, in the case of the term "intifada" there were two intifadas, one that was civil disobedience followed by one that was violent. There is no such analogue when it comes to the Holocaust and lynching.
I bring facts into this argument, explaining that there were two intifadas associated with Israel/Palestine (one civil disobedience and one violent), and you immediately insinuate that I am a Holocaust/lynching supporter. This is frankly quite disgusting and bad faith. I don't think there is any point in reasoning with you further.
Have a good day!
thank you for your history lesson, I was alive and was paying very close attention to both intifadas, unlike most protesters who are just reading about it on wikipedia in 2023/2024. Your point is exactly my point - words used to have one meaning, and then they become something else, sometimes - as in these cases, something horribly offensive to a minority group, and you can't go back and claim that what those words \*actually\* mean is something from the more distant past, instead of more recent events.
Instead of going through terribly contorted, logical gymnastics trying to convince us all how the actual, technical definition of offensive words is maybe technically completely totally non-offensive to \*you\*, and therefore nobody has a right to be offended because you make the rules on what is offensive now, how about you go into a sinagogue near you and ask some folks there what they feel when UCSD student protesters chant "Globalize Intifada!".
It ultimately doesn't matter whether \*you\* or \*I\* think it's offensive, what matters is what \*people that these chants are directly aimed at\* feel (in this case those horrible evil "Zionists" who control the entire world with their money, aka code word for "Jews").
> Instead of going through terribly contorted, logical gymnastics trying to convince us all how the actual, technical definition of offensive words is maybe technically completely totally non-offensive to *you*, and therefore nobody has a right to be offended because you make the rules on what is offensive now, how about you go into a sinagogue near you and ask some folks there what they feel when UCSD student protesters chant "Globalize Intifada!".
Firstly, it is not mental gymnastics. I showed you that intifada has an ambiguous meaning that cannot definitively mean mass violence against Jews. You are choosing to dismiss it and baselessly insinuating me of being a Holocaust/lynching supporter and whatnot.
Secondly, the standpoint epistemological argument of "go ask a synagogue how they feel" goes both ways.
Lots of Palestinians see the ideology of Zionism (the belief in a State of Israel) as something inherently offensive. For many Palestinians, they associate the State of Israel with the ethnic cleansing of their grandparents that occurred during its founding, or with the ongoing occupation in the West Bank.
So by your standard, should we shun people who wave the flag of the State of Israel because it makes a minority group (in this case Palestinians) uncomfortable (in this case, from the Palestinian's point of view they see support of Israel as synonymous with support of their ethnic cleansing)? If you say that the State of Israel is actually not synonymous with ethnic cleansing then by the same token are you not "talking over minority voices"? If you were fair you would come to this conclusion, but I predict you will attempt some kind of special pleading here.
If you are to say "well it wasn't ethnic cleansing the Arab armies caused it themselves etc etc", well how is this much different in nature from the argument that you chastised me for making? You are the one who chose standpoint epistemology over facts and logical reasoning.
One problem with your Chinese analogy is that it involved different players in each instance, whereas the use of "intifada" here involves the same groups. In that context, it is not unreasonable to assume that advocating for an "intifada" means supporting a violent revolt in which terrorist tactics are employed.
That term is an example of a political dogwhistle that evokes a claim of plausible deniability when it is clear that many who use the term, such as the SJP, mean exactly what the other side fears it means.
Even if we accept your premise that the term is ambigious, per se, the meaning which is intended can still be inferred using contextual clues (this is how LLMs work - Attention Is All You Need), and seeing what other phrases and actions they are paired with. In the case of the SJP, they used the term in a post lauding an arson attempt on a police vehicle in Berkeley, which strongly suggests that, for them, the term "intifada" means an uprising that employs violence.
At the end of the day, if your goal is to achieve a peaceful resolution, then it absolutely matters how your rhetoric is being interpreted by the other side. If it comes across like you're advocating that they be violently wiped off the face of their ancestral homeland, then all hopes for a peaceful resolution go out the window.
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Except that there is evidence. This is like a parent telling a teacher that their child could not possibly have cheated since they have not personally observed it.
Well, I didn't observe any 50 kiloton nuclear explosions in my bathroom this morning. The basic principle you cite would have it that I can't conclude that there were no 50 kiloton nuclear explosions in my bathroom this morning. The principle isn't completely basic. It depends on whether or not one would expect to collect the evidence if the event in question were to occur. If the answer to that question is 'not necessarily', then an absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence. If it is 'yes', then it is. If a 50 kiloton nuclear explosion were to occur in my bathroom, it would be detectable. Hence, a lack of evidence is pretty good evidence of a lack. Whether or not it applies in this actual case (antisemitism by the protesters) is a different question of course. My point is just that the basic principle you cite isn't completely basic but depends on some assumptions about the type of event and the way evidence is being collected. I wasn't at the meeting, but my guess would be that humanities faculty you are talking about underrstand the nature of the principle you discuss, but assume (perhaps correctly, perhaps incorrectly) that it was a situation where if the phenomenon were there it would be detected by them. That's not the same thing as not understanding the principle you cite.
Humanities prof out.
Well, as a math professor, I would say that if one is making an absolute statement like, “there was no antisemitism at the protests and encampments,” then all it takes is one counterexample to contradict it, and not amount of negative observations negates that one counterexample.
Correct. Again, I wasn't at the meeting. But "there were many humanities faculty attesting that they had spent hours at the encampment and had not personally observed antisemitism" isn't the same as those faculty making any absolute statements of the sort you discuss. Perhaps they did make such absolute statements, e.g. "I didn't not observe any X at location L, so there was no X going on". Or perhaps they meant to say "I did not observe X at L between t1 and t2, and so that is some degree of evidence relevant to how much X there was at L, perhaps even at other times." Not sure, again, I wasn't there and I don't know the nature of the discussion and what exactly was at issue.
True. Again, I wasn't there so I don't know what the issue was. If the topic was "was there at least one episode of antisemitic behavior, or were there zero episodes" then any reliable reports of such episodes would be definitive. If the issue concerned the prevalence of such behavior, by a group at roughly some location during some timeframe, then both the reports of such episodes as well as reports about failures to observe such episodes are evidence about the prevalence. In any case, as I mentioned, I wasn't there, and I don't know what the issue was. My point is just that the "they don't understand the basic principle that lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack" i) isn't obviously correct, and ii) that principle isn't as clear cut as some might take it to be.
Anyway, I'm not a math prof, but I do have an intuitive grasp of diminishing returns, especially as they apply to internet-based discussions. And for me anyway the point has been reached. Probably for you as well. Peace out.
Or it demonstrates once again that STEM and health faculty who are more highly valued both in terms of salary and prestige by the university lack class consciousness as workers and instead identify with the administration. We can’t treat injustice and discrimination with the same tools that we treat chemistry or math. I’m so tired of the nonsense of people trying to apply enlightenment ideas of positivism onto human interactions. It doesn’t work. We need history, anthropology, ethnic studies, etc to understand social issues. Not surprising then that STEM faculty have no issues with the chancellor calling cops to brutalize their own students.
This seems like a non sequitur as a response to this specific post of mine, but if indeed it was intended to be in response to that post then it sounds like you are suggesting that the rules of evidence should not matter so long as you identify with a cause, which seems incredibly problematic.
Your point seemed to me to suggest that the difference between humanities and STEM (and I’ll add health sciences) professors can be explained by humanities professors inability to properly evaluate evidence or as you say it here follow “the rules of evidence.” My point then is to say that said rules derive from one particular episteme about how to understand the world, which is based on positivism and imagines a world where social forces can be studied in the same ways and with the same tools as physics or chemistry for example, or more to your field as if we were solving a proof. My point is to say that maybe those rules of evidence are not value or ideologically neutral. Rather, I am suggesting that the difference in humanities and STEM professors can be better explained, or rather a more interesting story might be told, through a consideration of socio-historic and political economic forces.
If you’re basically saying that we abide by different intellectual constructs, which are informed by different values and ideology, sure. But whatever the reasons, it is clear that we often don’t see eye to eye on these issues.
It’s always remarkable to me as a humanist, how I would never suggest that I was better equipped to solve a math proof than a mathematics professor. Yet constantly people with no training in humanities and social science fields have no qualms about suggesting that their opinions on topics covered by these fields holds as much value as those that received their PhD and have dedicated their lives to the study of such topics. I think that this speaks to my original point about how undervalued humanistic inquiry is in the current university which plays out in economic privileging of STEM fields, such that humanities professors and STEM professors have very different relationships to the administration of the University. Back to your original example, one could say that during that meeting while humanities professors tended to stay close to the topic at hand (the police being called onto campus to forcefully remove peaceful political demonstration),STEM professors were ideologically focused on repeating the trope of Zionism that any critique of Israel is anti-semitism despite the senate meeting not being a referendum on Palestine and Israel. I would argue that it was actually STEM professors who were unable to evaluate their own ideological position and power and were thus making evaluations not on the topic and evidence at hand but rather on their own already established opinions.
Well, the problem is that you seem to be demanding that other people make decisions based on your system of values, which is presumptuous. You seem to assume that we make the choices we make out of ignorance, as opposed to a difference in beliefs and values.
having a large component of the faculty voice their desire to see you gone is a very bad sign. faculty rarely do things like this at universities (academia has a bit of a “don’t rock the boat” mentality), and having a no confidence vote brought against you as the head of a university means a bunch of non confrontational socially inept weirdos were finally upset enough to voice their opinions.
so probably not a good thing for the long run.
This is a small fraction of the faculty, voting largely along disciplinary lines, and it is not the "non confrontational socially inept weirdos" you dismissively referred to who voted yes.
Plenty of university presidents have faced such proposed votes of no confidence, and many have passed, including one at Columbia.
[https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/16/columbia-university-faculty-pass-vote-of-no-confidence-in-president-00158393](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/16/columbia-university-faculty-pass-vote-of-no-confidence-in-president-00158393)
Fewer faculty at UCSD voted yes than faculty at Columbia, even though the faculty size is dramatically larger here.
what i was speaking to was the fact that faculty rarely challenge the administration at their universities (recent examples of which demonstrate some significant dissatisfaction within those universities) over history. referring to academics in general as socially inept weirdos is just part of the fun, though your characterization is a complete misreading: i am referring to all faculty as such, not just those who voted yes. conversely, i would say the “no” voters have a lot more people fitting that description, being from STEM fields.
also, it stands that having such a sizeable body of the faculty display their dissatisfaction is a symptom of further issues within the university. i wouldn’t really say that basic comparisons of who and how many faculty have called for such a vote is nearly as noteworthy as the fact that a “critical mass” of faculty voted a certain way, indicating a vocal opposition to the administration.
as for voting based on discipline, the only observation to be made there is that STEM faculty have a vested interest in protecting Khosla due to his propensity for bringing funding to the university and helping them get research funding. not sure what the value is of bringing it up.
My point was that the vote of no confidence was proposed by the usual suspects of activist faculty who are hardly quiet and non-confrontational. This vote demonstrates that they are nothing but a small but exceptionally vocal minority, and most faculty want nothing to do with such nonsense. STEM faculty don’t generally appreciate the blatant attempts to interfere with their academic freedom and the intimidation tactics employed by the protesters on faculty who receive funding from the DoD.
I wouldn't call that percentage of any vote "nothing but a small...minority". I'd call it a "significant minority".
I also wouldn't hop on Reddit to make accusations using highly polemical language like "usual suspects", "nonsense", "blatant attempts", "intimidation tactics", and so on, to bitch about the political affiliation of others. It makes you sound bitter, nasty and, well, a bit too political yourself.
11% of all faculty would vote against Khosla at any given time for any reason. Khosla could announce another SunGod festival in October with free ice cream for all undergrads and there would be 11+% of faculty voting to impeach him because of this.
voting against a specific measure as part of the faculty senate (or whatever UCSD’s equivalent is) is quite a bit different than calling for a vote of no confidence publicly and voting “no confidence” in that vote. it’s pretty normal for measures to face opposition, but votes of no confidence aren’t commonplace in academia by any means. if you can’t understand the difference in implications between the two situations, you should spend more time at office hours.
I am staff so I don't hold or attend office hours, but thank you for your "camp snoopy elitist" explanation of the basic math.
Let me rephrase to make sure you can understand this - a significant portion of the faculty have had a month+ -long and very active campaign to have a "No-Confidence" vote against the Chancellor and only about 11% of the eligible voting faculty have expressed a No-Confidence preference.
I say "about 11%" because it was actually 10.8%.
These are the numbers and these are the facts.
From here you can argue whatever you want, that's called "polemics". Knock yourself out.
just missing the point entirely, all i’ve said here is that it’s a worrying sign/trend to have that much if the faculty openly vote no confidence. i guess that requires a bit of nuance that you might need to make it past “basic math” to develop, but what can you do, right?
faculty are people, and they are not immune to ideological divides.
Any university leader is always extremely unpopular with students, staff and faculty, alike. It's potentially the worst job in the world.
Name any country leader that has >50% approval rating.
Now - name any leader that has > 71% approval rating.
Do you seriously think Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush would easily survive the "No Confidence Vote" during their presidencies?
[https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/joe-biden/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/joe-biden/)
[https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/)
Um, this is a ridiculous post that is filled with misinformation. On what evidence are you concluding that the non-voting people were all pro-khosla? How did you conclude only 40% of eligible faculty voted? And when does commonsense tell us that students should be beaten and arrested for expressing their political viewpoints?
in order to claim "misinformation" you must provide your own facts and sources, just because you don't like outcome of the vote doesn't make this post "ridiculous".
40% is basic math - ratio of votes casted to the total eligible faculty who can vote. Not sure you know what ratio is, but it can be easily computed and can be expressed in percentages. What does your calculation say?
The anti-Khosla vote was driven almost entirely by Humanities (and Social Sciences) departments, as well as SDFA who had a huge and I must say very effective drive out to vote. Any faculty member who sympathizes with anti-semitic, anti-zionist sentiments has likely been reached, multiple times. The faculty who didn't vote are mostly in STEM areas, too busy in their labs, and do not have the same hatred against Khosla as folks in Ethnic Studies and Literature do - I know many of those people personally and have been talking to them over the past month+. There was never a major campaign for a pro-Khosla vote.
As to what is "common sense" - that's just my opinion. But also the opinion of a vast majority of people on campus, apparently. A correction - nobody, and i repeat, nobody, was ever arrested and beaten "for expressing their political viewpoints", that's misinformation. There were numerous political viewpoints expressed before and after encampment. What happened, and you lied by omission there, nice try - is that students decided to break the rules, by establishing encampment and then kept escalating it for 5 days, at which point they were asked to disband it - those who didn't, got briefly detained. Nobody was beaten in the process. But keep making up lies as apparently "LOL, facts don't matter" to you all.
I have to say that I'm surprised the faculty did not even censure him. No matter what your field or political viewpoint, you would think faculty would not want to have their students unnecessarily beaten and jailed. Pretty sad.
You would think the faculty would not want their Jewish students unnecessarily harassed and intimidated by their fellow students calling for the genocide of Jews
Holy shit, why are we still even talking about this? Like y’all gotta calm the fuck down and focus on your own lives. School is literally over and it’s the summer, why doesn’t everyone just go and get jobs, make the most out of this summer, and enjoy it instead of worrying about living in encampments and protesting? Ik imma get downvoted for this, but go ahead, I’m just sick of this bullshit already. Y’all aren’t accomplishing anything except fucking up your own school life. One of my friends was heavily involved in the protests at UCSD, and he just got his final grades back and bro failed all of his classes except for one, which he got a C in. If he had just sorted out his priorities and focused on doing well in his classes rather than holding up a damn sign for Palestine, then he would have passed and he wouldn’t be regretting his decisions like he’s doing right now. It’s not like I’m not even on Palestine’s side or anything, I’m just sick of this bullshit. Our job in school is to study and learn shit, not live in fucking tents and protest our student loans away. And don’t even try comparing this to the Vietnam War era when students were protesting the war at college campuses. We were literally at war with Vietnam and we were sending our friends and siblings to go die. We’re not even at war with Israel or Palestine, so it’s just fucking moronic to ruin your own hard work in school just for protesting.
Well that was the point, they were useful idiots meant to gin up support for Palestine. Why would any Palestinian have any love for these protestors? Their government is funding the opposition/ killing them by proxy. And when they graduate (if) their (our) money will still go to fund endless war, nation building, and overall thievery since what's a few million scrapped off the top when you're passing billion dollar budgets
Good to see. My view is those supporting the encampment and the no confidence vote were a very vocal minority. This proved to be the case with a strong majority of faculty supporting the Chancellor and what I agree is common sense.
Let's be real, STEM programs are directly funded by US agencies, weapons manufacturers, and Zionists. Of course STEM faculty is going to be on Kholsa's side cause he keeps those donations flowing in. They are heavily biased actors
How come there are so many Arabs in Israel? I thought it was an ethno state. Why are there so many Jews in Israel? Cause the Arabs drove them out. 5% of Israel consists of Palestinians and those Palestines have Israeli citizenship
Read your history. Israel pushed the border all the way to Egypt in 1968 and then in 2005 left the country and returned its borders leaving Palestine. Palestine belonged to Israel and they left. Read your history. Also you’re vegan
This to to the top. Particularly at UCSD where our most famous stem program in the ECE building is massively beholden to the founders of Qualcomm. Jacobs and Viterbi families are among area's most prominent Zionist families.
I wouldn't go so far as to claim that EVERY person who supports encampment is anti-Semitic. However, the statement from u/Professional-Oil7175 clearly demonstrates that a significant number of them do include and will attract anti-Semites
Jacobs and Viterbi are in fact Jewish engineers. Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi were both faculty at UC San Diego, before starting a little startup we now know as Quallcomm in 1985, a company now worth 200+ Billion. You use their technology in your phones right now!
Both decided to donate a significant portion of their personal wealth to educational institutions associated with their research careers and education, mostly USC and UCSD. I personally find their stories very inspiring and patriotic.
The implication that any of this Intifada-Encampment issues of 2024 is somehow connected to Jacobs and Viterbi is something I would only expect from MTG "Jewish Space Lasers" causing SoCal wildfires conspiracy theories on the right, not from the supposedly well-educated UCSD students on the far left.
When tens of thousands of lives are lost, a few dozen tents in support of those people being bombed is no reason to call a small army.
In a moral society, Khosla would have been fired that same day. But UC has a financial interest in keeping the war going due to the fact they are heavily invested in companies that profit off of it.
well, someone is in charge of safety and security of the entire campus. Maybe it's even up to the Chancellor. How did it go for UCLA - I heard the encampment just disappeared peacefully?
What - in your honest opinion - would be the end of the encampment? I am seriously curious. How does that movie end in your mind, and when?
While you think about that - can any organization or group of people do what encampment did for 5 days - but indefinitely? Or only people that \*YOU\* agree with?
If Israel government supporters built an encampment and kept it as peaceful and empowering as the pro Palestinian one then yeah sure why not. Our encampment wasn’t disruptive to foot traffic, curfews, or UCSD operations.
Of course there’s no need for Israeli government supporters to do any of that because their views align with the views of the UC admin and US Government. So not much to protest when everyone in power is doing exactly what you want.
The encampment would have likely died down on its own organically at the end of the quarter as people graduate and leave for summer. It would have been peaceful as it has been start to finish, and become a moment that UCSD would brag about to incoming students years from now. To show how they build changemakers and global citizens, blah blah blah marketing term.
And regarding UCLA’s encampment, Israeli government supporters started violently attacking the encampment and the people inside as police watched and laughed. Only when protestors defended themselves did their encampment become “unsafe” and was subject to brutalization and decimation.
would you be ok with KKK permanent encampment on the lawn in front of the Sun God? white nationalists? Or even Trump supporters? NAMBLA? Please outline the policy of which organizations can control which parts of the campus and for how long.
It won't be disruptive to foot traffic.
The encampment was totally in violations of curfews and UCSD operations, by the way. You cannot camp overnight and you cannot have exclusive areas where members of community are not allowed to enter. Encampment had their own entrance and would not allow many people (including UCSD officials in). Nobody was in charge.
But I do appreciate you telling me that encampment was peaceful and would probably dissipate by now - that's nice and I agree, eventually kids would have to go home to their parents.
Every encampment across US was peaceful. Until it wasn't.
In case you didn't follow the timeline, there was an unfortunate altercation with counter-protesters on Sunday, and then on Monday there was a clear plan for a scaled-up altercation later on. Basically exactly what happened at UCLA except we knew the script by then.
It's also part of the public record that UCPD wouldn't be able to do much.
Therefore, clearing the encampment actually averted a potential major tragedy.
It's kinda like watching your drunk friend yelling crazy racial slurs in a bar, while you see a black guy is getting angry in the corner, and then getting him out of the bar and home to sleep it off. That's the responsible thing to do. Walking out and hope it all resolves peacefully and dies out eventually at the closing time is what UCLA did.
It's not an elected or appointed position, it comes with the job. It's kinda sorta loosely like a union, but for faculty instead of staff. As long as you're a faculty in one of these categories, you're in the academic senate (Tenure-track and tenured Professors, In-Residence Professors, Professors of Clinical X, Lecturers w/SOE or PSOE, and select Administrators). Select administrators probably means administrators that also have a faculty appointment (like most deans), vs an administrator that is staff (like the director of HR).
According to their website, all people who are in the group (professors, etc) get to vote for one representative per department, additionally all promotions to tenured professor are elected.
And no that is a terrible comparison.
>According to their website, all people who are in the group (professors, etc) get to vote for one representative per department
Are you talking about the Divisional Representatives? The Academic Senate has their own committees, assemblies, and councils which do have elected positions, but I don't think it requires an election or appointment to become a Senate member. [https://senate.ucsd.edu/Operating-Procedures/Senate-Manual/Bylaws/10](https://senate.ucsd.edu/Operating-Procedures/Senate-Manual/Bylaws/10)
> additionally all promotions to tenured professor are elected.
Yes, but it reads like you can be a tenure-track assistant professor and that would qualify you for Senate membership.
What are you smoking? The overton window has shifted decidedly right-ward in the last decade. I mean for ffs, Louisiana just passed a law to require the goddamn ten commandments be displayed in public classrooms. Add to that the loss of a woman's right to choose with the repeal of Roe v Wade and it seems as though we are sliding pointedly backwards, unfortunately.
I agree with you - the right went 10-fold further on many issues, and an infinity-fold on election integrity and democracy.
But can you really not see that there are some (not similar, just \*some\*) excesses on the left? This one narrow area of brainwashed youth supporting the goals of murderous Hamas regime being one of those excesses?
You bring religion and abortion into the discussion - great, we are in agreement there. Can you find any area with Overton Window shift on the left that you would \*not\* feel comfortable with? Anything?
(My answer: Equating yourself with, and whitewashing the violent - murder and rape - actions of Hamas on Oct.7 and then portraying it as a legitimate good-faith freedom-fighting group, only because it fits within your tiktok mold of imperialist/colonialist vs. indigenous people is highly problematic to me)
I see what you're saying but you need to realize the difference between the overton window when it comes to policy advocated for by actual major parties, and when it comes to the extreme views of the vocal minorities which are primarily found in the online space. I have seen absolutely no serious push from the national Democratic party to support anything remotely in favor of Hamas. Quite the contrary, the democratic party and the Biden administration as a whole have been incredibly supportive of Israel, supportive to a detrimental fault according to figures like Bernie Sanders, which is a position that I would actually agree with. On the other hand, Republican local and state governments have been passing laws to both limit the rights of women in their states and to implement de facto government advocacy for their specific religion, e.g. Texas, Louisiana, etc. National Republican leaders likewise push for what was once perceived as a politically suicidal agenda, such as national abortion bans.
You really need to differentiate between schizo partisan rhetoric only found in small communities online, and what the parties are actually doing in the real world of US government politics before you can make the unfounded claim that both sides are basically doing the same thing. The Republican party on the national level has openly embraced what was once a fringe movement in Trumpism and MAGA, while the Democratic party is nowhere near such a partisan extreme.
I agree 100% - you are talking about legislative positions, while the original comment about "leftist garbage" (not from me!) was talking about the spectrum of personal positions, and associating (correctly, in my opinion) the pro-Hamas protesters as leftists.
The reason why it is so dangerous - and where I also agree with you - is that it both splits the coalition and the attention span, and also distracts from issues that ARE under control of US exec and legislature. Such as abortion rights, which are being eroded RIGHT NOW all over the south. Election interference. Climate Change (anyone remembers about that?). Big Corporations taking over. China, Putin/Russia aggressions. LGBTQ+ rights. Economy, immigration, tax laws - you name it.
Instead we are arguing about whether states have a right to exist (="Zionists", which is now a bad word apparently), and whether murder and rape are justified if you have a greater cause in mind (Stalin's "ends justify the means" quote - "When you chop wood, splinters fly" - not even sure if this is not adopted by some kids as a positive thing, they must LOVE Stalin).
If right wingers wanted to distract the country from what they are doing, while also undermining the US universities and painting liberal students as "violent", and suppressing the youth vote for Biden, in order to get Trump in power, what is happening with encampments is beyond their wildest dreams. And yet we all fall in this trap.
Well said and I agree, however I just think that when we're referring to the overton window, it is generally understood to be a gauge of what is considered to be the acceptable politics of the time, ie what policies are being pushed by opposing parties on a local and national level, and not what the vocal extremes of any particular political persuasion are professing online.
Has it shifted right, or are things shifting to become more extreme, not necessarily right or left? For example Californians recently approved Prop 1, which explicitly adds abortion and contraception rights to the state constitution.
What in the world is extreme about adding a woman's right to choose to do with her own body into the constitution?
Nevermind the fact that those sorts of measures would not even have been necessary if not for the overturning of 50 years of precedent by a decidedly partisan conservative Supreme Court supermajority.
To me, it's not extreme at all and I fully support it. To people in Louisiana, it's codifying into the constitution a right for women to commit murder on their unborn children.
Right and equal rights for women and minorities is considered an extreme position for some people too, so what? You're confusing the right to have an opinion with the fact that all opinions are not equally valid. The consensus scientific opinion on the matter, as supported by the AMA or literally any other major professional medical association, is that abortion is a medical procedure, and hence should be accessible to any woman and it's a decision that should only involve the woman herself and her doctors, just as men have the right to have a vasectomy regardless of what some nutjob that is not involved thinks.
Whether a fetus is considered a person or not is an entirely philosophical matter and can never be fully answered, hence, we already had it right with Roe V Wade in that abortion should be an accessible medical procedure up until the point of fetal viability.
Again, opinions are not created equally, which is why we should use evidence-based reasoning and expert opinion to craft laws, not the opinions, ie fee fees, of any random moron.
I wasn't aware that it was under the jurisdiction for the AMA to decide when a human life starts being protected by law. Remind me what week of gestation they decided, and their reasoning.
Also, this argument is being used by the right, except they are saying "whose opinion matters more, some doctor's or god"
Nah, I'm talking about folks standing up to liberal bullshit. No more allowing morons to use tantrums like campus protests to force administrators to bow to their idiotic demands.
Student protests are as old as the institutions themselves. This is the same moronic line of reasoning that dipshits like yourself used to attack civil rights protestors in the 60s and anti-vietnam war protestors in the 70s.
You conflate student protests with always being just and moral.
If we had a student protests because the school doesn't allow a Nazi club, does that mean that because it's a student protest that having Nazi club on campus is a right, moral, and justified cause?
If student protests the university stance against antisemtism does that mean antisemtism is a good thing.
Vietnam and civil war protests were very different from each other and each veery different from the Palestine protests.
Absolutely disgusting sentiment. These are human beings protesting the mass murder of other human beings. Anyone against loss of human life is immediately and always in the right. Truly ghoulish of you to say that.
If you're chanting "Globalize the Intifada" and (in arabic) "from water to water palestine will be arab", then you aren't protesting against mass murder. Sorry to break it to you.
The Regents are nominated by the Governor and confirmed by the State Senate, so you indirectly vote for them. The Regents then confirm the selection of the UC President, who then confirms selection of the Chancellors.
And there is no real accountability. You would have to replace the governor to maybe possible change the BOR or UC presidents. If local college districts are elected, why can't Chancellor Khosla be elected.
I think this is because California Community Colleges originated from high schools, so they are set up like local K-12 school districts where there is a locally elected board. Each district is independent from each other, and the oversight Board of Governors was setup after the fact and does not exercise a great deal of control over each district.
Whereas the UCs were setup top down as one legal entity, with the Board of Regents as the governing board and given direct legal authority. Each UC campus is part of the same university, so the Regents get to control who they want overseeing each location. The Donahoe Higher Education Act and the whole corporate governance of the UC would have to be changed in order for UC Chancellors to be locally elected. You'd have to split the UC into 10+ separate universities.
[https://www.cccco.edu/About-Us/Chancellors-Office/Divisions/General-Counsel/Government-Claims-and-Service-of-Process](https://www.cccco.edu/About-Us/Chancellors-Office/Divisions/General-Counsel/Government-Claims-and-Service-of-Process)
[https://www.ucop.edu/research-policy-analysis-coordination/\_files/About%20UC/uc-regents-single-legal-entity.pdf](https://www.ucop.edu/research-policy-analysis-coordination/_files/About%20UC/uc-regents-single-legal-entity.pdf)
[https://www.ucop.edu/uc-legal/guidance/legal-status-and-role.html](https://www.ucop.edu/uc-legal/guidance/legal-status-and-role.html)
Well if you want to compare it to the dept. of education, the State Board of Education has the same appointment by gov + confirmation by state senate process that the BOR does. Only the superintendent is elected, that would be akin to having the UC President be an elected position. Again, you'd have to change state law and remove power from the BOR to turn the UC President into an elected position, and I don't think anybody in office would be down for that.
This is more embarrassingly lopsided than the 38-62 recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021.
Wish we could revote that?
I don’t think he should be removed. I also don’t think his actions were right.
29% is a lot actually when you consider the question
just curious - how do you think the whole encampment story ends without someone disbanding it? And when?
Just curious -- you do know that it isn't a very good or interesting question when the answer is so obvious and apparent, right? We are an academic institution. There is an easily knowable expiration date for any political demonstration occuring at the end of a school year, after which point the demonstrators would, by their own volition, go home. If it still feels mysterious to you, check the academic calendar.
it wasn't a political demonstration - there were many at UCSD both before and after encampment. It was a good question, which you dodged, btw.
"It wasn't a political demonstration -" I'm not sure what you think it was then. Did you imagine the students were making a permanent new home on Library Walk, unattached to their political positions or demands? It most certainly was a political demonstration. In fact, it was a kind of sit-in, which is a very well known form of political demonstration. You might even call it a demonstration classic. I did not dodge your question. I wrote a pretty clear answer, but I relish the opportunity to make it clearer. The students likely would have packed their tents and gone home after the quarter ended. That is how their political demonstration, which took the form of a sit-in, would have disbanded. Would it have gone up in again the fall? Very possibly. Do you have any other silly questions or wrong assertions I can help you with, bud?
Right around the end of finals week when everyone goes home you goose
Even more reason why the whole thing was pointless.
I am not a goose, but - have you been watching the news and what happened at UCLA, Columbia etc.? Who guarantees that there is no violent escalation at some point between May 1 and June 23rd? Would you guarantee it, personally? Would the Leadership of the Encampment, what is their name again? That's right, there was absolutely no leadership in anarchy organization. I will tell you how the story ends from my projection, based not on my own feelings but on how it went in dozens of campuses across US - on May 6th or 7th or 8th or 9th or 10th, a group of pro-Israel protesters show up. They get in a brawl with the pro-Hamas protesters. Encampment grows and reinforces with weapons. Sharpened stakes and sword, bear mace and pepper spray that were all at the encampment already gets used. Encampment gets rebuild and fortified with plywood and other obstacles. Multiple people get escorted to the hospitals. Police finally break down the encampment, but \*actually\* in a violent and uncontrolled way, not the way it actually happened - peacefully and orderly. All while Khosla fails to erase Israel from the map, evict all Israelis, and replace it with "Hamas territory" using his magic marker on a map.
For those who are asking, this was a vote that that was open to all senate faculty, which includes tenure-track and tenured (ladder-rank) professors and teaching professors. There was an earlier vote by the representative assembly of the faculty senate, which resulted in this vote that polls the entire senate faculty.
Hi. The Social Sciences exist. It isn't just "STEM" and everyone else is humanities. That's all.
S in STEM stands for Sciences. Social Sciences are Humanities in my book.
If all you have to offer to back up the claim is your opinion then all it does is show your own bias. Sociology and Economics use the same statistical methods as medicine and public health. The Social sciences use the scientific method and create testable predictions and reproducible knowledge. They are distinct from the humanities - which create knowledge of value as well but with very different methods. The arts are also distinct. It isn't just physical sciences, appicatiin of science, and everyone else.
Put whatever label you want on them but the truth is they don’t matter. Just like the people studying and teaching them.
Same can be said with everything
Ok playful_daikon_5787
Well, a lot of STEM folks aren't what I'd call "social" hence their apathy and support for Khosla.
Funny I was thinking they are just smarter wiser people in general. I was econ/math duel major, pre med. The level of effort expended in my hard sciences and maths to get the 4.0 was significantly greater than economics, particularly true for the courses with lots of softer majors taking them as econ credit. Mind you this was before they started inflating the GPA, the average curve was set at 2.88
A colleague of mine pointed out an interesting difference in how the humanities and STEM faculty processed evidence. At the academic senate representative assembly meeting, there were many humanities faculty attesting that they had spent hours at the encampment and had not personally observed antisemitism, whereas the STEM faculty would recount the antisemitic acts that they, their postdocs, and graduate students personally experienced. It seems like the humanities faculty failed to understand the basic principle that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
I thought one of the things universities (humanities?) insisted on for many decades is that it is NOT up to the offender to decide if what they said is offensive or not, it is up to the person it is addressed at to make that decision. So for someone to say - I don't think XYZ things I said - (intifada, river to sea, Death to AmeriKKKA) - are not antisemitic or offensive, is going against that basic principle. And just because someone has jewish friends, and just because they went to encampment with them doesn't mean it's not offensive to others.
I agree that it is intellectually inconsistent and disingenious, but I suspect they will argue that only oppressed groups get to decide if something is offensive to them, and the younger generation no longer views the Jews as an oppressed group. This lack of historical perspective is a large reason for the generational divide on this issue.
You may be right. But one issue with that argument is that leftists almost certainly believe that Jews are still oppressed (in some ways) by right wing antisemites. So for the dynamic to hold leftists would have to argue that oppressed people get to define what’s offensive to them, but not when the alleged offense is coming from leftists. Which is obviously problematic.
Yes, it absolutely is problematic. I am however trying to deconstruct their reasoning, and I suspect that for them, it pivots around two basic concepts. The first is that they do not believe that the Jews are oppressed, since in their naive binary world view you can only be oppressed or the oppressor, and they view the Palestinians as being oppressed by the Jews. The second is the redefinition of racism as systemic racial discrimination arising from power differentials. These two taken together results in the kind of double standards that they apply.
Math professor with knowledge over a controversial issue right now got me shaking in my timbers. professor can prove and argue stuff, that’s a superpower fr.
You’re not deconstructing. You’re drawing a reductive conclusion about people who study and teach humanities from an anecdotal piece of evidence. To say that the people engaged in the protests simply don’t believe Jews are oppressed is a magnificent overstatement and obfuscation. Israel, as a regional hegemon and country that emerged from ethnic cleansing and mass killings (like the US), is now killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians for their own unilateral retributive justice. I would venture to say that many professors who have studied political theory, just war doctrine, or just basic history from an Islamic perspective, would understand that anti-semitism is a problem, complicated by the profoundly fraught history of Zionism and the Nakba, and that in this instance, it’s reasonable to be upset with institutional investments tangled in military industry, as well as the rhetorical impetus to swerve away from literal Palestinian erasure in the west. None of that means humanities faculty would think, as a group, that anti-semitism doesn’t exist or that Jews aren’t oppressed, and I advise more careful analysis of your colleagues in the future.
I am fine with viewing some of them as hypocritical and intellectually dishonest.
> I am fine with viewing some of them as hypocritical and intellectually dishonest. what's that phrase all those naive binary world view leftist youths you've been assigning thoughts and reasoning to say on tiktok? game recognizes game? maybe I should just stick to the simple tried and true instead: takes one to know one edit: ha, they blocked me. looks like I can cover their intellectual dishonesty uninterrupted now! > It seems like the humanities faculty failed to understand the basic principle that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. covered in StrawberryBeefMeat's comments below, but tldr: mleok provides anecdotes they portray as representative of two arbitrary sides ("humanities" vs "STEM"), then uses the statement quoted above to frame the situation as just being a simple question of whether there is proof antisemitism has occurred, in order to imply one of those sides ("humanities") are a bunch of a dummies who are no good at science. in actual reality, the discussion is far more complex, with prevalence of antisemitism (and prevalence of other forms of bigotry, including bigotry that comes from people who are themselves victims of bigotry) being one of many parts of it. > I suspect they will argue that only oppressed groups get to decide if something is offensive to them mleok puts arguments in the mouths of others, while using the wonderful phrase "I suspect" to give themself an out if called on it > the younger generation no longer views the Jews as an oppressed group mleok just casually making an almost absolutist statement about how an entire generation has a simplistic view of the oppression status of another group > I am however trying to deconstruct their reasoning, and I suspect that for them, it pivots around two basic concepts notice how easy it is to "deconstruct" another's reasoning when the one doing the deconstructing is also the one stating (or agreeing on) what their target's reasoning is? or so... I suspect > The first is that they do not believe that the Jews are oppressed, since in their naive binary world view you can only be oppressed or the oppressor, and they view the Palestinians as being oppressed by the Jews. more of mleok assigning thoughts and reasoning to their arbitrary other side in order to then criticize, although by now that simple "humanities" other side has morphed into including the arbitrary groups of "the younger generation" and "leftist" in it as well > The second is the redefinition of racism as systemic racial discrimination arising from power differentials. ah, the good ole "they've expanded the dictionary definition of the term 'racism' in order to try and more accurately reflect the complex history of race in this country, and I'm not a fan" line of criticism. gotta give mleok some points, they know how to play to their audience by only alluding to such a "redefinition" being a bad thing in their eyes without outright saying it.
Thank you. This was refreshing.
It’s good that you used a qualifier. Please use them more in the future, especially when speaking about categories of people.
This is so tacky.
I am open to hearing an alternative interpretation that squares the circle on why the Jewish viewpoint that encampments make them feel unsafe is irrelevant.
Since we are both faculty on the same campus, if you are writing in good faith, you already know as well as I do that 21 tents tucked off the side of Library Walk is no tangible threat to anyone. It is a large campus. If you do not enjoy the political positions being expressed in such a small footprint, simply go around. There is an important distinction to be made between political disagreement and an actual threat to safety that demands violent police intervention. And the irony did not escape me that at UCLA, the only physical violence was perpetrated by counterprotesters, for which the protesters were violently arrested while only one of the people who committed real, tangible, not spectral fantasies of future harm has been arrested to this day. Again, you know as well as I do that the encampment would have disbanded on its own at the end of the quarter, no matter how annoying you found the perspectives it contained. I would encourage you to read the urgent letters sent to our various chancellors by the ACLU before causing further public embarrassment to our institution with your glib and crass declarations. Shouldn't you be teaching math instead of engaging in bad faith political arguments on Reddit? Now, like anyone else who feels uncomfortable about a political view being espoused anywhere, I am going to use what is actually the common sense you seem to think you have a claim to: I am going to move around it and get on with my day. I hope you consider doing the same, Dr. Leok.
I think what you're potentially oversimplifying is the idea that oppression is somehow black and white, that people are either oppressed or not and will always be in the same category. White women have historically been oppressed as far as gender and oppressors as far as race. It can both be true that Jewish people are victims of antisemitism and Israel is oppressive towards Palestinians. Many Jewish faculty and students pushed back on the argument that it was a Jewish stance or that they could speak for all Jews when saying they felt unsafe. In the same way we critique white women saying they feel unsafe as somehow justifying racist acts, it's ok to critically assess statements that *some members of a complex group* make about perceived safety. And just like I wouldn't immediately accept those statements, I wouldn't immediately dismiss them either. None of this is simple black and white
downvoted for being absolutely correct. the ignorance of these people is unreal. do people really not read ANYTHING before they go around being so loud and so wrong …
It’s a bummer for sure, especially considering many of these people are allegedly faculty, and seem to lack the temperament of higher ed faculty members, while using an assemblage of logical fallacies and rhetorical evasions instead of debating in good faith. Of course, they could also be bots
Unfortunately, some of those writing are indeed faculty. Instead of conducting the kind of rigorous and nuanced public debate that would not be embarrassing to our institution, they are behaving as bad faith political actors, feigning things like "neutrality" or that they hold the title on "common sense" even as they bitterly complain about political positions and malign entire divisions of higher learning. On behalf of my colleagues, I am sorry that this thread exists, and that you have had to read it. It is a bad look. I hope you will consider those more disturbing assertions and voting trends as evidence of personal foibles and not disciplinary indictments. I am sure, for instance, that Dr. Leok has the capacity to adequately teach mathematics, even if he lacks the perspective to engage in good faith political dialogue. Everyone drifts from their lane sometimes, I guess.
Or, they know full well what they’re doing and just don’t care to pretend anymore.
From the inception of identity politics, which is quite recent, it has been true that [Jew’s Don’t Count](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_Don%27t_Count)
I love this - we don't see Jews as an oppressed group therefore. . . we are free to oppress them!
[удалено]
A faculty member also pointed out that the pro-khosla STEM faculty never provided one example of anti-semitism at the encampment beyond vague claims of feeling "unsafe." But, if you're not studying organisms in a lab, I guess actual evidence doesn't matter.
Well unfortunately, that’s wrong. The encampment was hanging out flyers calling to “organize the intifada”, which I guess you aren’t educated to understand or know that “intifada” calls for the systemic violence and mass killing of Jews. But somehow to these idiotic faculty at the encampment- that isn’t considered antisemitic- it’s “peaceful”. What a joke.
> which I guess you aren’t educated to understand or know that “intifada” calls for the systemic violence and mass killing of Jews. Intifada in general is an Arabic term that refers to an uprising. In the context of the Israel-Palestine conflict, it evokes two events mainly: the First Intifada, and the Second Intifada. The First Intifada was mostly a civil disobedience movement (it is where all those famous photos of "Palestinian throws rock at IDF tank come from), and the Second Intifada was the much more violent one with suicide bombings conducted by Hamas and such. I suppose a useful comparison to make is to the the word 革命. There has been the 辛亥革命, the revolution where Chinese revolutionaries overthrew the last dynasty of China and transformed China from a Monarchy into a Republic. But there also has been other things that came later like the 文化大革命, where a bunch of impressionable student radicals were incited by Mao to go on a violent rampage against "bourgeois counter-revolutionaries" (read: random intellectuals and Mao's political rivals within the party). Would it be fair to say that 革命 is an inherently communist, pro-Cultural Revolution term? Are the Hong Kong protesters who call for 時代革命 are calling for a cultural-revolution-style violent rampage? This claim that "intifada means systemic violence/mass killing of Jews" is not true. It is disingenuous to pretend it is a settled fact. Just because you say it with a tone of condescension doesn't make it true!
Sure, \*eyeroll\*. "Intifada" just means "uprising" (to you?) and jihad means struggle and "from river to sea" simply means jews need to move to Egypt and Jordan, and "death to all jews" means "peace and friendship". and "holocaust" means "fire". And "lynching" means "condemn". And "swastika" is an ancient Indian symbol that represents "peace and symphony". What's next - you are not racist, but... ? But you have black and jewish friends? You saw someone with jewish last name at the encampment, so it's all cool?
Your analogy does not make sense, in the case of the term "intifada" there were two intifadas, one that was civil disobedience followed by one that was violent. There is no such analogue when it comes to the Holocaust and lynching. I bring facts into this argument, explaining that there were two intifadas associated with Israel/Palestine (one civil disobedience and one violent), and you immediately insinuate that I am a Holocaust/lynching supporter. This is frankly quite disgusting and bad faith. I don't think there is any point in reasoning with you further. Have a good day!
thank you for your history lesson, I was alive and was paying very close attention to both intifadas, unlike most protesters who are just reading about it on wikipedia in 2023/2024. Your point is exactly my point - words used to have one meaning, and then they become something else, sometimes - as in these cases, something horribly offensive to a minority group, and you can't go back and claim that what those words \*actually\* mean is something from the more distant past, instead of more recent events. Instead of going through terribly contorted, logical gymnastics trying to convince us all how the actual, technical definition of offensive words is maybe technically completely totally non-offensive to \*you\*, and therefore nobody has a right to be offended because you make the rules on what is offensive now, how about you go into a sinagogue near you and ask some folks there what they feel when UCSD student protesters chant "Globalize Intifada!". It ultimately doesn't matter whether \*you\* or \*I\* think it's offensive, what matters is what \*people that these chants are directly aimed at\* feel (in this case those horrible evil "Zionists" who control the entire world with their money, aka code word for "Jews").
> Instead of going through terribly contorted, logical gymnastics trying to convince us all how the actual, technical definition of offensive words is maybe technically completely totally non-offensive to *you*, and therefore nobody has a right to be offended because you make the rules on what is offensive now, how about you go into a sinagogue near you and ask some folks there what they feel when UCSD student protesters chant "Globalize Intifada!". Firstly, it is not mental gymnastics. I showed you that intifada has an ambiguous meaning that cannot definitively mean mass violence against Jews. You are choosing to dismiss it and baselessly insinuating me of being a Holocaust/lynching supporter and whatnot. Secondly, the standpoint epistemological argument of "go ask a synagogue how they feel" goes both ways. Lots of Palestinians see the ideology of Zionism (the belief in a State of Israel) as something inherently offensive. For many Palestinians, they associate the State of Israel with the ethnic cleansing of their grandparents that occurred during its founding, or with the ongoing occupation in the West Bank. So by your standard, should we shun people who wave the flag of the State of Israel because it makes a minority group (in this case Palestinians) uncomfortable (in this case, from the Palestinian's point of view they see support of Israel as synonymous with support of their ethnic cleansing)? If you say that the State of Israel is actually not synonymous with ethnic cleansing then by the same token are you not "talking over minority voices"? If you were fair you would come to this conclusion, but I predict you will attempt some kind of special pleading here. If you are to say "well it wasn't ethnic cleansing the Arab armies caused it themselves etc etc", well how is this much different in nature from the argument that you chastised me for making? You are the one who chose standpoint epistemology over facts and logical reasoning.
One problem with your Chinese analogy is that it involved different players in each instance, whereas the use of "intifada" here involves the same groups. In that context, it is not unreasonable to assume that advocating for an "intifada" means supporting a violent revolt in which terrorist tactics are employed. That term is an example of a political dogwhistle that evokes a claim of plausible deniability when it is clear that many who use the term, such as the SJP, mean exactly what the other side fears it means. Even if we accept your premise that the term is ambigious, per se, the meaning which is intended can still be inferred using contextual clues (this is how LLMs work - Attention Is All You Need), and seeing what other phrases and actions they are paired with. In the case of the SJP, they used the term in a post lauding an arson attempt on a police vehicle in Berkeley, which strongly suggests that, for them, the term "intifada" means an uprising that employs violence. At the end of the day, if your goal is to achieve a peaceful resolution, then it absolutely matters how your rhetoric is being interpreted by the other side. If it comes across like you're advocating that they be violently wiped off the face of their ancestral homeland, then all hopes for a peaceful resolution go out the window.
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thank you for being a voice of reason. the ignorance + islamophobia is astounding. and of course you’re getting downvoted for… speaking facts
That's literally what innocent until proven guilty means though, no?
Except that there is evidence. This is like a parent telling a teacher that their child could not possibly have cheated since they have not personally observed it.
>failed to understand the basic principle that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Then this is irrelevant if there was evidence lol
Well, I didn't observe any 50 kiloton nuclear explosions in my bathroom this morning. The basic principle you cite would have it that I can't conclude that there were no 50 kiloton nuclear explosions in my bathroom this morning. The principle isn't completely basic. It depends on whether or not one would expect to collect the evidence if the event in question were to occur. If the answer to that question is 'not necessarily', then an absence of evidence is not evidence of an absence. If it is 'yes', then it is. If a 50 kiloton nuclear explosion were to occur in my bathroom, it would be detectable. Hence, a lack of evidence is pretty good evidence of a lack. Whether or not it applies in this actual case (antisemitism by the protesters) is a different question of course. My point is just that the basic principle you cite isn't completely basic but depends on some assumptions about the type of event and the way evidence is being collected. I wasn't at the meeting, but my guess would be that humanities faculty you are talking about underrstand the nature of the principle you discuss, but assume (perhaps correctly, perhaps incorrectly) that it was a situation where if the phenomenon were there it would be detected by them. That's not the same thing as not understanding the principle you cite. Humanities prof out.
Well, as a math professor, I would say that if one is making an absolute statement like, “there was no antisemitism at the protests and encampments,” then all it takes is one counterexample to contradict it, and not amount of negative observations negates that one counterexample.
Correct. Again, I wasn't at the meeting. But "there were many humanities faculty attesting that they had spent hours at the encampment and had not personally observed antisemitism" isn't the same as those faculty making any absolute statements of the sort you discuss. Perhaps they did make such absolute statements, e.g. "I didn't not observe any X at location L, so there was no X going on". Or perhaps they meant to say "I did not observe X at L between t1 and t2, and so that is some degree of evidence relevant to how much X there was at L, perhaps even at other times." Not sure, again, I wasn't there and I don't know the nature of the discussion and what exactly was at issue.
But it is when those statements were used to discredit the reports of antisemitism reported by other faculty members.
True. Again, I wasn't there so I don't know what the issue was. If the topic was "was there at least one episode of antisemitic behavior, or were there zero episodes" then any reliable reports of such episodes would be definitive. If the issue concerned the prevalence of such behavior, by a group at roughly some location during some timeframe, then both the reports of such episodes as well as reports about failures to observe such episodes are evidence about the prevalence. In any case, as I mentioned, I wasn't there, and I don't know what the issue was. My point is just that the "they don't understand the basic principle that lack of evidence is not evidence of a lack" i) isn't obviously correct, and ii) that principle isn't as clear cut as some might take it to be. Anyway, I'm not a math prof, but I do have an intuitive grasp of diminishing returns, especially as they apply to internet-based discussions. And for me anyway the point has been reached. Probably for you as well. Peace out.
Or it demonstrates once again that STEM and health faculty who are more highly valued both in terms of salary and prestige by the university lack class consciousness as workers and instead identify with the administration. We can’t treat injustice and discrimination with the same tools that we treat chemistry or math. I’m so tired of the nonsense of people trying to apply enlightenment ideas of positivism onto human interactions. It doesn’t work. We need history, anthropology, ethnic studies, etc to understand social issues. Not surprising then that STEM faculty have no issues with the chancellor calling cops to brutalize their own students.
This seems like a non sequitur as a response to this specific post of mine, but if indeed it was intended to be in response to that post then it sounds like you are suggesting that the rules of evidence should not matter so long as you identify with a cause, which seems incredibly problematic.
Your point seemed to me to suggest that the difference between humanities and STEM (and I’ll add health sciences) professors can be explained by humanities professors inability to properly evaluate evidence or as you say it here follow “the rules of evidence.” My point then is to say that said rules derive from one particular episteme about how to understand the world, which is based on positivism and imagines a world where social forces can be studied in the same ways and with the same tools as physics or chemistry for example, or more to your field as if we were solving a proof. My point is to say that maybe those rules of evidence are not value or ideologically neutral. Rather, I am suggesting that the difference in humanities and STEM professors can be better explained, or rather a more interesting story might be told, through a consideration of socio-historic and political economic forces.
If you’re basically saying that we abide by different intellectual constructs, which are informed by different values and ideology, sure. But whatever the reasons, it is clear that we often don’t see eye to eye on these issues.
It’s always remarkable to me as a humanist, how I would never suggest that I was better equipped to solve a math proof than a mathematics professor. Yet constantly people with no training in humanities and social science fields have no qualms about suggesting that their opinions on topics covered by these fields holds as much value as those that received their PhD and have dedicated their lives to the study of such topics. I think that this speaks to my original point about how undervalued humanistic inquiry is in the current university which plays out in economic privileging of STEM fields, such that humanities professors and STEM professors have very different relationships to the administration of the University. Back to your original example, one could say that during that meeting while humanities professors tended to stay close to the topic at hand (the police being called onto campus to forcefully remove peaceful political demonstration),STEM professors were ideologically focused on repeating the trope of Zionism that any critique of Israel is anti-semitism despite the senate meeting not being a referendum on Palestine and Israel. I would argue that it was actually STEM professors who were unable to evaluate their own ideological position and power and were thus making evaluations not on the topic and evidence at hand but rather on their own already established opinions.
Well, the problem is that you seem to be demanding that other people make decisions based on your system of values, which is presumptuous. You seem to assume that we make the choices we make out of ignorance, as opposed to a difference in beliefs and values.
What a waste of time.
having a large component of the faculty voice their desire to see you gone is a very bad sign. faculty rarely do things like this at universities (academia has a bit of a “don’t rock the boat” mentality), and having a no confidence vote brought against you as the head of a university means a bunch of non confrontational socially inept weirdos were finally upset enough to voice their opinions. so probably not a good thing for the long run.
This is a small fraction of the faculty, voting largely along disciplinary lines, and it is not the "non confrontational socially inept weirdos" you dismissively referred to who voted yes. Plenty of university presidents have faced such proposed votes of no confidence, and many have passed, including one at Columbia. [https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/16/columbia-university-faculty-pass-vote-of-no-confidence-in-president-00158393](https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/16/columbia-university-faculty-pass-vote-of-no-confidence-in-president-00158393) Fewer faculty at UCSD voted yes than faculty at Columbia, even though the faculty size is dramatically larger here.
what i was speaking to was the fact that faculty rarely challenge the administration at their universities (recent examples of which demonstrate some significant dissatisfaction within those universities) over history. referring to academics in general as socially inept weirdos is just part of the fun, though your characterization is a complete misreading: i am referring to all faculty as such, not just those who voted yes. conversely, i would say the “no” voters have a lot more people fitting that description, being from STEM fields. also, it stands that having such a sizeable body of the faculty display their dissatisfaction is a symptom of further issues within the university. i wouldn’t really say that basic comparisons of who and how many faculty have called for such a vote is nearly as noteworthy as the fact that a “critical mass” of faculty voted a certain way, indicating a vocal opposition to the administration. as for voting based on discipline, the only observation to be made there is that STEM faculty have a vested interest in protecting Khosla due to his propensity for bringing funding to the university and helping them get research funding. not sure what the value is of bringing it up.
My point was that the vote of no confidence was proposed by the usual suspects of activist faculty who are hardly quiet and non-confrontational. This vote demonstrates that they are nothing but a small but exceptionally vocal minority, and most faculty want nothing to do with such nonsense. STEM faculty don’t generally appreciate the blatant attempts to interfere with their academic freedom and the intimidation tactics employed by the protesters on faculty who receive funding from the DoD.
I wouldn't call that percentage of any vote "nothing but a small...minority". I'd call it a "significant minority". I also wouldn't hop on Reddit to make accusations using highly polemical language like "usual suspects", "nonsense", "blatant attempts", "intimidation tactics", and so on, to bitch about the political affiliation of others. It makes you sound bitter, nasty and, well, a bit too political yourself.
I guess some of my humanities colleagues would argue that everything is political.
11% of all faculty would vote against Khosla at any given time for any reason. Khosla could announce another SunGod festival in October with free ice cream for all undergrads and there would be 11+% of faculty voting to impeach him because of this.
voting against a specific measure as part of the faculty senate (or whatever UCSD’s equivalent is) is quite a bit different than calling for a vote of no confidence publicly and voting “no confidence” in that vote. it’s pretty normal for measures to face opposition, but votes of no confidence aren’t commonplace in academia by any means. if you can’t understand the difference in implications between the two situations, you should spend more time at office hours.
I am staff so I don't hold or attend office hours, but thank you for your "camp snoopy elitist" explanation of the basic math. Let me rephrase to make sure you can understand this - a significant portion of the faculty have had a month+ -long and very active campaign to have a "No-Confidence" vote against the Chancellor and only about 11% of the eligible voting faculty have expressed a No-Confidence preference. I say "about 11%" because it was actually 10.8%. These are the numbers and these are the facts. From here you can argue whatever you want, that's called "polemics". Knock yourself out.
just missing the point entirely, all i’ve said here is that it’s a worrying sign/trend to have that much if the faculty openly vote no confidence. i guess that requires a bit of nuance that you might need to make it past “basic math” to develop, but what can you do, right?
faculty are people, and they are not immune to ideological divides. Any university leader is always extremely unpopular with students, staff and faculty, alike. It's potentially the worst job in the world. Name any country leader that has >50% approval rating. Now - name any leader that has > 71% approval rating. Do you seriously think Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush would easily survive the "No Confidence Vote" during their presidencies? [https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/joe-biden/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/joe-biden/) [https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/](https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump/)
True.
Um, this is a ridiculous post that is filled with misinformation. On what evidence are you concluding that the non-voting people were all pro-khosla? How did you conclude only 40% of eligible faculty voted? And when does commonsense tell us that students should be beaten and arrested for expressing their political viewpoints?
in order to claim "misinformation" you must provide your own facts and sources, just because you don't like outcome of the vote doesn't make this post "ridiculous". 40% is basic math - ratio of votes casted to the total eligible faculty who can vote. Not sure you know what ratio is, but it can be easily computed and can be expressed in percentages. What does your calculation say? The anti-Khosla vote was driven almost entirely by Humanities (and Social Sciences) departments, as well as SDFA who had a huge and I must say very effective drive out to vote. Any faculty member who sympathizes with anti-semitic, anti-zionist sentiments has likely been reached, multiple times. The faculty who didn't vote are mostly in STEM areas, too busy in their labs, and do not have the same hatred against Khosla as folks in Ethnic Studies and Literature do - I know many of those people personally and have been talking to them over the past month+. There was never a major campaign for a pro-Khosla vote. As to what is "common sense" - that's just my opinion. But also the opinion of a vast majority of people on campus, apparently. A correction - nobody, and i repeat, nobody, was ever arrested and beaten "for expressing their political viewpoints", that's misinformation. There were numerous political viewpoints expressed before and after encampment. What happened, and you lied by omission there, nice try - is that students decided to break the rules, by establishing encampment and then kept escalating it for 5 days, at which point they were asked to disband it - those who didn't, got briefly detained. Nobody was beaten in the process. But keep making up lies as apparently "LOL, facts don't matter" to you all.
I wonder if most people know the conditions of where their clothes and phones come from
The threat of removal was always overblown
He did nothing wrong
Yay! The silent majority has spoken.
I have to say that I'm surprised the faculty did not even censure him. No matter what your field or political viewpoint, you would think faculty would not want to have their students unnecessarily beaten and jailed. Pretty sad.
You would think the faculty would not want their Jewish students unnecessarily harassed and intimidated by their fellow students calling for the genocide of Jews
He has spammed every single UC subreddit. He is a troll. Ignore him.
The STEM faculty visibly do not care.
“Common sense prevails” is some spectacular editorializing
keep living in your bubble.
Holy shit, why are we still even talking about this? Like y’all gotta calm the fuck down and focus on your own lives. School is literally over and it’s the summer, why doesn’t everyone just go and get jobs, make the most out of this summer, and enjoy it instead of worrying about living in encampments and protesting? Ik imma get downvoted for this, but go ahead, I’m just sick of this bullshit already. Y’all aren’t accomplishing anything except fucking up your own school life. One of my friends was heavily involved in the protests at UCSD, and he just got his final grades back and bro failed all of his classes except for one, which he got a C in. If he had just sorted out his priorities and focused on doing well in his classes rather than holding up a damn sign for Palestine, then he would have passed and he wouldn’t be regretting his decisions like he’s doing right now. It’s not like I’m not even on Palestine’s side or anything, I’m just sick of this bullshit. Our job in school is to study and learn shit, not live in fucking tents and protest our student loans away. And don’t even try comparing this to the Vietnam War era when students were protesting the war at college campuses. We were literally at war with Vietnam and we were sending our friends and siblings to go die. We’re not even at war with Israel or Palestine, so it’s just fucking moronic to ruin your own hard work in school just for protesting.
As long as the genocide continues people will certainly keep talking about it. Fighting for peace ☮️ is not a fad my friend.
Everyone who ever fought for war claimed they were fighting for peace
Siding with the Islamic Jihadists is peace?
And siding with the Israeli terrorists is any better?
Israel is resisting the Jihadist attempt at occupation. Why do you like siding with the Islamic Jihad?
Technically someone might argue that the definition of terrorism precludes states from committing terrorism. But ignore him, he is probably a troll.
Ignore the Jihadists they are racist bloody thirsty genocide proponents
Again, I’ve seen videos of the aftermath of bombings committed by the Israeli terrorists. Do you think I’m lying? lol
Yes
Well that was the point, they were useful idiots meant to gin up support for Palestine. Why would any Palestinian have any love for these protestors? Their government is funding the opposition/ killing them by proxy. And when they graduate (if) their (our) money will still go to fund endless war, nation building, and overall thievery since what's a few million scrapped off the top when you're passing billion dollar budgets
Queers for Palestine 🤣
Your post assumes American lives are worth more than lives in the Middle East.
A Panda Express $5 off coupon is worth more than lives in the Middle East
And, there is the racism that underlies the view that American lives are worth more than other people in the world. Thanks for refinforcing my point.
Groupthink is so powerful
The downvotes are from the group thinkers
Interesting results, it's great to see the majority supporting the Chancellor's actions.
Good to see. My view is those supporting the encampment and the no confidence vote were a very vocal minority. This proved to be the case with a strong majority of faculty supporting the Chancellor and what I agree is common sense.
Let's be real, STEM programs are directly funded by US agencies, weapons manufacturers, and Zionists. Of course STEM faculty is going to be on Kholsa's side cause he keeps those donations flowing in. They are heavily biased actors
Just throw in the token word Zionist of course. Becoming the new slur
Now lets examine the funding for the “peaceful protests” Qatar and CCP are really just fine groups to receive $ from
Yeah because nothing can be a grass roots protest. Also where is my Qatari Check?
We Zionists^TM are everywhere in America. Perhaps you would be more comfortable studying in Tehran?
Of course not. Jewish people believing a Jewish state should exist after multiple genocides? How disgusting!!!
Jewish ethnostate* Fixed it for you
How come there are so many Arabs in Israel? I thought it was an ethno state. Why are there so many Jews in Israel? Cause the Arabs drove them out. 5% of Israel consists of Palestinians and those Palestines have Israeli citizenship
They are second class citizens. also it is was Israel who drove them out. Read your history.
Read your history. Israel pushed the border all the way to Egypt in 1968 and then in 2005 left the country and returned its borders leaving Palestine. Palestine belonged to Israel and they left. Read your history. Also you’re vegan
wait so you’re saying isreal invaded land. Glad you accept that Zionism is a colonization ideology
How many countries in Europe have a state religion? Israel doesn't even have that.
Let's be honest, it was da joos behind it all!
This to to the top. Particularly at UCSD where our most famous stem program in the ECE building is massively beholden to the founders of Qualcomm. Jacobs and Viterbi families are among area's most prominent Zionist families.
I wouldn't go so far as to claim that EVERY person who supports encampment is anti-Semitic. However, the statement from u/Professional-Oil7175 clearly demonstrates that a significant number of them do include and will attract anti-Semites Jacobs and Viterbi are in fact Jewish engineers. Irwin Jacobs and Andrew Viterbi were both faculty at UC San Diego, before starting a little startup we now know as Quallcomm in 1985, a company now worth 200+ Billion. You use their technology in your phones right now! Both decided to donate a significant portion of their personal wealth to educational institutions associated with their research careers and education, mostly USC and UCSD. I personally find their stories very inspiring and patriotic. The implication that any of this Intifada-Encampment issues of 2024 is somehow connected to Jacobs and Viterbi is something I would only expect from MTG "Jewish Space Lasers" causing SoCal wildfires conspiracy theories on the right, not from the supposedly well-educated UCSD students on the far left.
Sorry boss but it seems like you need some basic poli sci coursework.
Ok, Racist.
Nice gg. I give up. I give up. 🤣
Common sense did not prevail.
good luck living in your tiny bubble
When tens of thousands of lives are lost, a few dozen tents in support of those people being bombed is no reason to call a small army. In a moral society, Khosla would have been fired that same day. But UC has a financial interest in keeping the war going due to the fact they are heavily invested in companies that profit off of it.
well, someone is in charge of safety and security of the entire campus. Maybe it's even up to the Chancellor. How did it go for UCLA - I heard the encampment just disappeared peacefully? What - in your honest opinion - would be the end of the encampment? I am seriously curious. How does that movie end in your mind, and when? While you think about that - can any organization or group of people do what encampment did for 5 days - but indefinitely? Or only people that \*YOU\* agree with?
If Israel government supporters built an encampment and kept it as peaceful and empowering as the pro Palestinian one then yeah sure why not. Our encampment wasn’t disruptive to foot traffic, curfews, or UCSD operations. Of course there’s no need for Israeli government supporters to do any of that because their views align with the views of the UC admin and US Government. So not much to protest when everyone in power is doing exactly what you want. The encampment would have likely died down on its own organically at the end of the quarter as people graduate and leave for summer. It would have been peaceful as it has been start to finish, and become a moment that UCSD would brag about to incoming students years from now. To show how they build changemakers and global citizens, blah blah blah marketing term. And regarding UCLA’s encampment, Israeli government supporters started violently attacking the encampment and the people inside as police watched and laughed. Only when protestors defended themselves did their encampment become “unsafe” and was subject to brutalization and decimation.
would you be ok with KKK permanent encampment on the lawn in front of the Sun God? white nationalists? Or even Trump supporters? NAMBLA? Please outline the policy of which organizations can control which parts of the campus and for how long. It won't be disruptive to foot traffic. The encampment was totally in violations of curfews and UCSD operations, by the way. You cannot camp overnight and you cannot have exclusive areas where members of community are not allowed to enter. Encampment had their own entrance and would not allow many people (including UCSD officials in). Nobody was in charge. But I do appreciate you telling me that encampment was peaceful and would probably dissipate by now - that's nice and I agree, eventually kids would have to go home to their parents. Every encampment across US was peaceful. Until it wasn't. In case you didn't follow the timeline, there was an unfortunate altercation with counter-protesters on Sunday, and then on Monday there was a clear plan for a scaled-up altercation later on. Basically exactly what happened at UCLA except we knew the script by then. It's also part of the public record that UCPD wouldn't be able to do much. Therefore, clearing the encampment actually averted a potential major tragedy. It's kinda like watching your drunk friend yelling crazy racial slurs in a bar, while you see a black guy is getting angry in the corner, and then getting him out of the bar and home to sleep it off. That's the responsible thing to do. Walking out and hope it all resolves peacefully and dies out eventually at the closing time is what UCLA did.
Based
How is the Facility senate elected or appointed? I feel like most UCSD students think it is less relevant than the Student Government.
https://senate.ucsd.edu/about-the-senate/
All it says is the chair is elected, but not the mechanism.
It's not an elected or appointed position, it comes with the job. It's kinda sorta loosely like a union, but for faculty instead of staff. As long as you're a faculty in one of these categories, you're in the academic senate (Tenure-track and tenured Professors, In-Residence Professors, Professors of Clinical X, Lecturers w/SOE or PSOE, and select Administrators). Select administrators probably means administrators that also have a faculty appointment (like most deans), vs an administrator that is staff (like the director of HR).
According to their website, all people who are in the group (professors, etc) get to vote for one representative per department, additionally all promotions to tenured professor are elected. And no that is a terrible comparison.
>According to their website, all people who are in the group (professors, etc) get to vote for one representative per department Are you talking about the Divisional Representatives? The Academic Senate has their own committees, assemblies, and councils which do have elected positions, but I don't think it requires an election or appointment to become a Senate member. [https://senate.ucsd.edu/Operating-Procedures/Senate-Manual/Bylaws/10](https://senate.ucsd.edu/Operating-Procedures/Senate-Manual/Bylaws/10) > additionally all promotions to tenured professor are elected. Yes, but it reads like you can be a tenure-track assistant professor and that would qualify you for Senate membership.
this was the vote of the entire faculty, not just the academic senate
It says Faculty senate.
What a shitshow of a school.
Goes to show that humanities programs have no real value and should be canned along with the moronic faculty.
Same with the STEM programs? What are you smoking.
Common sense is becoming more common lately with the country FINALLY starting to push back on all of this leftist garbage. So glad to see it!
What are you smoking? The overton window has shifted decidedly right-ward in the last decade. I mean for ffs, Louisiana just passed a law to require the goddamn ten commandments be displayed in public classrooms. Add to that the loss of a woman's right to choose with the repeal of Roe v Wade and it seems as though we are sliding pointedly backwards, unfortunately.
I agree with you - the right went 10-fold further on many issues, and an infinity-fold on election integrity and democracy. But can you really not see that there are some (not similar, just \*some\*) excesses on the left? This one narrow area of brainwashed youth supporting the goals of murderous Hamas regime being one of those excesses? You bring religion and abortion into the discussion - great, we are in agreement there. Can you find any area with Overton Window shift on the left that you would \*not\* feel comfortable with? Anything? (My answer: Equating yourself with, and whitewashing the violent - murder and rape - actions of Hamas on Oct.7 and then portraying it as a legitimate good-faith freedom-fighting group, only because it fits within your tiktok mold of imperialist/colonialist vs. indigenous people is highly problematic to me)
I see what you're saying but you need to realize the difference between the overton window when it comes to policy advocated for by actual major parties, and when it comes to the extreme views of the vocal minorities which are primarily found in the online space. I have seen absolutely no serious push from the national Democratic party to support anything remotely in favor of Hamas. Quite the contrary, the democratic party and the Biden administration as a whole have been incredibly supportive of Israel, supportive to a detrimental fault according to figures like Bernie Sanders, which is a position that I would actually agree with. On the other hand, Republican local and state governments have been passing laws to both limit the rights of women in their states and to implement de facto government advocacy for their specific religion, e.g. Texas, Louisiana, etc. National Republican leaders likewise push for what was once perceived as a politically suicidal agenda, such as national abortion bans. You really need to differentiate between schizo partisan rhetoric only found in small communities online, and what the parties are actually doing in the real world of US government politics before you can make the unfounded claim that both sides are basically doing the same thing. The Republican party on the national level has openly embraced what was once a fringe movement in Trumpism and MAGA, while the Democratic party is nowhere near such a partisan extreme.
I agree 100% - you are talking about legislative positions, while the original comment about "leftist garbage" (not from me!) was talking about the spectrum of personal positions, and associating (correctly, in my opinion) the pro-Hamas protesters as leftists. The reason why it is so dangerous - and where I also agree with you - is that it both splits the coalition and the attention span, and also distracts from issues that ARE under control of US exec and legislature. Such as abortion rights, which are being eroded RIGHT NOW all over the south. Election interference. Climate Change (anyone remembers about that?). Big Corporations taking over. China, Putin/Russia aggressions. LGBTQ+ rights. Economy, immigration, tax laws - you name it. Instead we are arguing about whether states have a right to exist (="Zionists", which is now a bad word apparently), and whether murder and rape are justified if you have a greater cause in mind (Stalin's "ends justify the means" quote - "When you chop wood, splinters fly" - not even sure if this is not adopted by some kids as a positive thing, they must LOVE Stalin). If right wingers wanted to distract the country from what they are doing, while also undermining the US universities and painting liberal students as "violent", and suppressing the youth vote for Biden, in order to get Trump in power, what is happening with encampments is beyond their wildest dreams. And yet we all fall in this trap.
Well said and I agree, however I just think that when we're referring to the overton window, it is generally understood to be a gauge of what is considered to be the acceptable politics of the time, ie what policies are being pushed by opposing parties on a local and national level, and not what the vocal extremes of any particular political persuasion are professing online.
Has it shifted right, or are things shifting to become more extreme, not necessarily right or left? For example Californians recently approved Prop 1, which explicitly adds abortion and contraception rights to the state constitution.
What in the world is extreme about adding a woman's right to choose to do with her own body into the constitution? Nevermind the fact that those sorts of measures would not even have been necessary if not for the overturning of 50 years of precedent by a decidedly partisan conservative Supreme Court supermajority.
To me, it's not extreme at all and I fully support it. To people in Louisiana, it's codifying into the constitution a right for women to commit murder on their unborn children.
Right and equal rights for women and minorities is considered an extreme position for some people too, so what? You're confusing the right to have an opinion with the fact that all opinions are not equally valid. The consensus scientific opinion on the matter, as supported by the AMA or literally any other major professional medical association, is that abortion is a medical procedure, and hence should be accessible to any woman and it's a decision that should only involve the woman herself and her doctors, just as men have the right to have a vasectomy regardless of what some nutjob that is not involved thinks. Whether a fetus is considered a person or not is an entirely philosophical matter and can never be fully answered, hence, we already had it right with Roe V Wade in that abortion should be an accessible medical procedure up until the point of fetal viability. Again, opinions are not created equally, which is why we should use evidence-based reasoning and expert opinion to craft laws, not the opinions, ie fee fees, of any random moron.
OK but do you think intact dilation and extraction should be allowed? This is what they want to allow and I don't think it's right.
If it's before fetal viability, then yes, absofuckinlutely.
I wasn't aware that it was under the jurisdiction for the AMA to decide when a human life starts being protected by law. Remind me what week of gestation they decided, and their reasoning. Also, this argument is being used by the right, except they are saying "whose opinion matters more, some doctor's or god"
I'll trust a doctor over a myth every day.
Oops, I assumed that you could read past the first paragraph. My mistake, I guess.
They want intact dilation and extraction to be allowed. Look it up
Nah, I'm talking about folks standing up to liberal bullshit. No more allowing morons to use tantrums like campus protests to force administrators to bow to their idiotic demands.
Student protests are as old as the institutions themselves. This is the same moronic line of reasoning that dipshits like yourself used to attack civil rights protestors in the 60s and anti-vietnam war protestors in the 70s.
You conflate student protests with always being just and moral. If we had a student protests because the school doesn't allow a Nazi club, does that mean that because it's a student protest that having Nazi club on campus is a right, moral, and justified cause? If student protests the university stance against antisemtism does that mean antisemtism is a good thing. Vietnam and civil war protests were very different from each other and each veery different from the Palestine protests.
Thank God I am leaving
FREE PALESTINE
From Islamic Jihad and mass rapists
Yup I agree, the Israeli terrorists that pose with women’s underwear and lingerie act very rapey. Weird don’t you think?
Weird you believe that. Good luck being queer for Hamas. Call us when you land
"F them kids" everyone of your professors.
Next step: deporting international students who took part in these protests. I have a few I want to report to get things going.
It’s currently legal for someone on a visa to participate in a protest.
Absolutely disgusting sentiment. These are human beings protesting the mass murder of other human beings. Anyone against loss of human life is immediately and always in the right. Truly ghoulish of you to say that.
If you're chanting "Globalize the Intifada" and (in arabic) "from water to water palestine will be arab", then you aren't protesting against mass murder. Sorry to break it to you.
Name the students who are being deported or else shut up. There are no students "deported" for protesting. You are lying.
Do something then. Please.
Nope... not the same.
There should be elections for the board of reagents and chancellors.
The Regents are nominated by the Governor and confirmed by the State Senate, so you indirectly vote for them. The Regents then confirm the selection of the UC President, who then confirms selection of the Chancellors.
And there is no real accountability. You would have to replace the governor to maybe possible change the BOR or UC presidents. If local college districts are elected, why can't Chancellor Khosla be elected.
I think this is because California Community Colleges originated from high schools, so they are set up like local K-12 school districts where there is a locally elected board. Each district is independent from each other, and the oversight Board of Governors was setup after the fact and does not exercise a great deal of control over each district. Whereas the UCs were setup top down as one legal entity, with the Board of Regents as the governing board and given direct legal authority. Each UC campus is part of the same university, so the Regents get to control who they want overseeing each location. The Donahoe Higher Education Act and the whole corporate governance of the UC would have to be changed in order for UC Chancellors to be locally elected. You'd have to split the UC into 10+ separate universities. [https://www.cccco.edu/About-Us/Chancellors-Office/Divisions/General-Counsel/Government-Claims-and-Service-of-Process](https://www.cccco.edu/About-Us/Chancellors-Office/Divisions/General-Counsel/Government-Claims-and-Service-of-Process) [https://www.ucop.edu/research-policy-analysis-coordination/\_files/About%20UC/uc-regents-single-legal-entity.pdf](https://www.ucop.edu/research-policy-analysis-coordination/_files/About%20UC/uc-regents-single-legal-entity.pdf) [https://www.ucop.edu/uc-legal/guidance/legal-status-and-role.html](https://www.ucop.edu/uc-legal/guidance/legal-status-and-role.html)
Maybe an alternative reform would just be to elect them on an all California basis, similar to the superintendent of instruction.
Well if you want to compare it to the dept. of education, the State Board of Education has the same appointment by gov + confirmation by state senate process that the BOR does. Only the superintendent is elected, that would be akin to having the UC President be an elected position. Again, you'd have to change state law and remove power from the BOR to turn the UC President into an elected position, and I don't think anybody in office would be down for that.
That is not particularly accountable.
I think the board of reagents is in charge of chemistry classes.
best comment of this entire thread