There are people and organizations who can credibly take an absolutist position on free speech. Modern colleges where wearing a sombrero on Halloween or being a Republican is a hate crime are not among them.
Any normal student who defended a racist group’s murder of minorities would be off campus in three seconds flat. A KKK chapter would never be allowed to exist on any college campus. And yet Students for Justice in Palestine and its chapters can openly support Hamas and the murder of Jews. And college administrators make excuses for them.
Swarthmore Students for Justice in Palestine’s statement declared that it “enshrines the right of the Palestinian people to resist the Zionist regime by any means necessary and honors the martyrs who have sacrificed their lives for liberation.” The “martyrs” are the Hamas terrorists.
It added that “every settler is an aggressive occupier even as they sit comfortably in their stolen homes” and that “there exists only a colonizer and a colonized, an oppressed and an oppressor” meaning that all Jews and non-Muslims in Israel were legitimate targets for mass murder.
Swarthmore’s President Val Smith condemned Hamas, but claimed that as a “liberal arts institution, we embrace the free exchange of diverse ideas and perspectives. That means sometimes engaging with views we may find, if not abhorrent. But let me be clear: Hateful rhetoric and calls for violence have no place at Swarthmore.”
Clarity would have been addressing the SJP defense of Hamas and clarifying whether he thinks it’s an exchange of diverse ideas or hateful rhetoric and violence. Instead, Smith laid out a general view with no specific relevance to what’s going on at his college.
In 2019, Swarthmore banned fraternities and sororities. It won’t however ban an organization of Hamas supporters.
Tufts University’s SJP was even more blatant about celebrating the Hamas killings of Jews.
“Since Friday, Palestinians have been launching a historic attack on the colonizers,” the SJP chapter at Tufts University crowed. “Footage of liberation fighters from Gaza paragliding into occupied territory has especially shown the creativity necessary to take back stolen land. It has not been without cost as hundreds of Palestinians have been martyred.”
Tufts, unlike Swarthmore, actually did condemn the SJP chapter’s comments, but made no mention of decertifying them.
A Tufts spokesperson, Patrick Collins, also decried the group’s comments. “We condemn the terrorism and atrocities that Hamas has carried out against Israel,” Collins said in a statement. “We strongly disagree with and denounce SJP’s statement and want to make clear that no student group speaks for the university.”
The question is does Tufts tolerate support for Hamas atrocities by officially recognized student groups?
University of Virginia’s SJP chapter described the “events that took place yesterday are a step toward a free Palestine” and asserted. “We stand in solidarity with Palestinian resistance fighters.”
The support for Hamas was condemned by Gov. Youngkin and AG Miyares.
UVA President Jim Ryan, like Swarthmore’s Val Smith, failed to directly address the SJP support for Hamas and then detoured into civil discourse.
“There can be no justification for, and we must condemn, the actions of Hamas and the horrific violence that has taken place against civilians, including children,” he wrote, but then argued, “I trust that we as a community can and will adhere to UVA’s longstanding tradition of not just allowing free speech, but promoting civil discourse, even when – perhaps especially when – we strongly disagree.”
I’m not sure what civil discourse looks like when celebrating rape and murder.