Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here
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Speaker 4: But enough with that, let's get to the show.
Speaker 1: You are now liable to being accused of a felony
Speaker 1: for the expression of your political views that somehow align
Speaker 1: with the interests of a terrorist group, like hey, we
Speaker 1: should leave the Middle East, or saying we should leave
Speaker 1: Ukraine and that somehow is deemed pro Russian speech.
Speaker 4: I can't think of a graver assault on.
Speaker 1: The rate of pre speed than criminal and criminalizing political
Speaker 1: activism of that sort.
Speaker 5: That's nonsense, And you're being disingenuous and leveling those kinds
Speaker 5: of accusations. There's a difference between giving a speech saying
Speaker 5: Israel is being illegitimate, they're engaged in genocide, this is
Speaker 5: all wrong, this is bad, we shouldn't support them, and
Speaker 5: chanting from the river to the sea Israel should be gone,
Speaker 5: kill all the use any jew you see today, punch
Speaker 5: them in the face.
Speaker 4: No playing those groups were doing that.
Speaker 6: Welcome to Counterpoints. We're glad to be here on a Friday,
Speaker 6: a Thursday night. If you're a premium subscriber breaking Points
Speaker 6: dot com, if you want to subscribe to the premium
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Speaker 7: The rest of you. Happy Friday, Ryan.
Speaker 6: We always enjoy being here on a Friday, especially for
Speaker 6: the subject matter that we're going to tackle today.
Speaker 8: Yes, indeed, and we're going to be joined by two
Speaker 8: people debating, And first of all, we can talk about
Speaker 8: the format first, Like you and I are moderators, but
Speaker 8: we have opinions too, Yes, and I saw that the
Speaker 8: audience was a little bit upset that we also were
Speaker 8: injecting some of our own opinions. You're just gonna have
Speaker 8: to deal with that, you mean you, yeah, yes, me.
Speaker 8: We're moderators, but we have an opinion. So it's okay,
Speaker 8: it's okay. And these are grown ups. They're going to
Speaker 8: be able to handle it. So let's introduce these grown ups.
Speaker 8: We have Glenn Greenwald, who is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist.
Speaker 8: That's right, and also the host of System Update and Glenn,
Speaker 8: where else can people fine and subscribe to your stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do a lot of written original journalism on Locals,
Speaker 1: which is the sort of substack of the Roman platform,
Speaker 1: so people can find us there as well.
Speaker 8: All right, right, and then Ilia Shapiros current title was
Speaker 8: Senior Fellow and Director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute.
Speaker 8: Ilia and Glenn, thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, great to be with you guys.
Speaker 5: And just to be clear, at the outset of this debate,
Speaker 5: I'm taking the pro speech pro law position, So I
Speaker 5: don't know what that makes plain, Well.
Speaker 1: That's the Yeah, I'm the pro censorship, anti law, pro
Speaker 1: crime position.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 3: See, we're going to.
Speaker 6: Assess all of this out, yeah, exactly, because these are
Speaker 6: some genuinely interesting questions. And to begin, we have a
Speaker 6: video of some protests that happen at MIT recently where
Speaker 6: students are overrunning a fence that was erected to keep
Speaker 6: them out of an encampment. Let's roll this type again.
Speaker 6: So if you were just listening to that, you were
Speaker 6: listening to students just get rid of a fence basically
Speaker 6: was keeping them out of an encampment at MIT. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I saw this video because you I think you retweeted
Speaker 6: it and the caption on the retweet was quote expel
Speaker 6: and arrest.
Speaker 7: And I think this is a.
Speaker 6: Good place to start, actually, because it's sort of getting
Speaker 6: into the question of how universities can tackle the question
Speaker 6: of free speech when it comes to these protests. And
Speaker 6: MIT was obviously in the hot seat with this right
Speaker 6: after October seventh, when the president of MIT, Sally Kornboth,
Speaker 6: was in that infamous can rational hearing. So Eliot, let's
Speaker 6: start with you expel and arrest the students who tore
Speaker 6: down that fence, their flesh out that point for us.
Speaker 5: Sure, I'm basically with Ben Sas, the president of the
Speaker 5: Newarky of Florida, the deer Meyer, the president of Vanderbilt,
Speaker 5: who've been putting out op eds and stating that they
Speaker 5: are broadly protective of speech as am.
Speaker 9: I fully agree with that.
Speaker 5: But when you analyze the situation, you have to understand
Speaker 5: that not everything is speech. That is, if you're taking
Speaker 5: actions that break the rules, break the law, whether it's vandalism, assault,
Speaker 5: or anything else, you don't get a pass if you're
Speaker 5: doing it for an expressive purpose, whether that's political, artistic,
Speaker 5: or otherwise. Then there's some speech that's simply not protected
Speaker 5: death threats or incitement of violence. Pretty high bar according
Speaker 5: to Supreme Court jurisprudence. And then there are time, place,
Speaker 5: and manner regulations. And this is central to this debate.
Speaker 5: So in the campus context, you can't block access to
Speaker 5: educational facilities, you can't disrupt classes or organized student meetings
Speaker 5: that have been duly reserved and things like that. You
Speaker 5: can't harass and intimidate. There are rules about these sorts
Speaker 5: of things. In the off campus context, the equivalent is,
Speaker 5: even though we care about political speech, I can't go
Speaker 5: to your neighborhood in the middle of the night and
Speaker 5: with a bullhorn tell you exactly what I think about
Speaker 5: Donald Trump and Joe Biden. That's disturbing the peace. So
Speaker 5: here there are clear rules. You get to speak and
Speaker 5: protest as long as you're not disrupting the event, disrupting classes,
Speaker 5: otherwise preventing the university from achieving its educational mission. And
Speaker 5: so these are clear law breakers. Rule breakers and actions
Speaker 5: have consequences.
Speaker 8: Glenn, I don't think anybody believes that there should be
Speaker 8: no laws, but what's your response to the claim that
Speaker 8: these particular protesters ought to be expelled or arrested, or
Speaker 8: in general, that the protesters need to be thoroughly cracked
Speaker 8: down on because they broke some laws.
Speaker 1: I think the only way to determine the authenticity of
Speaker 1: somebody's beliefs about free speech, defensive free speech, their interpretation
Speaker 1: of free speech, The only way is whether they apply
Speaker 1: standards consistently to the views that they most hate and
Speaker 1: the views that they most like. Now, Ilia is a
Speaker 1: fanatical supporter of Israel and the protesters, who's the crackdown
Speaker 1: on whom he's defending or expressing a view and defending
Speaker 1: a cause that he vehemently dislikes. What I think is
Speaker 1: so important to point out is there's a historical context here.
Speaker 1: It's not as though the crackdown on student groups began
Speaker 1: only with these encampments. Immediately after October seventh, we began
Speaker 1: seeing all sorts of attempts to stifle political speech, the
Speaker 1: most extreme of which was when Ron DeSantis ordered pro
Speaker 1: Palestinian groups to be shut down on all University of
Speaker 1: Florida campuses, a move that the only real non partisan
Speaker 1: free speech organization in the country fire dot org said
Speaker 1: was not only a grave assault on the First Amendment
Speaker 1: for the speed rights of pro Palestinian students, but was
Speaker 1: such an obvious and glaring violation the First Amendment that
Speaker 1: they wrote a letter to university administrators or urging them
Speaker 1: to ignore the order by Governor Desantos. There have been
Speaker 1: a lot of those kinds of attacks well before these
Speaker 1: encampments arose, and of course before October seventh, one of
Speaker 1: the most common forms of censorship on political campuses and
Speaker 1: elsewhere were attempts to silent Jewish students. There have been
Speaker 1: all pro Palestinian students. Rather, there have been professors who
Speaker 1: have been fired for criticizing Israel. There have been student
Speaker 1: groups whose application to exist have been denied because they're
Speaker 1: pro Palestinian. Fire dot org has been defending these people
Speaker 1: for a long time. So a lot of conservatives waive
Speaker 1: the free speech banner when it comes to targeting conservative speech,
Speaker 1: and I do too, I defend that speech, and yet
Speaker 1: suddenly abandon those standards as soon as it comes to
Speaker 1: the cause that they most love or the speech they
Speaker 1: most hate, which is criticism of Israel. The other thing
Speaker 1: I want to point out is, of course it's the
Speaker 1: case that if you engage in violence, you should be arrested.
Speaker 4: The problem is a lot of the violence, I.
Speaker 1: Would even say most recently has come from pro Palestinian
Speaker 1: counter pro israel counter protesters.
Speaker 4: They showed up at a camp.
Speaker 1: At ACLU at the UCLA and began violently hurling objects
Speaker 1: and using tear gas and injured a bunch of pro
Speaker 1: Palestinian protesters at the camp. There's a study that was
Speaker 1: just released by a group that follows public crises and
Speaker 1: safety crises that said that ninety nine percent of the
Speaker 1: protests that have been taking place on campus have been peaceful,
Speaker 1: and the one percent that wasn't was things like the
Speaker 1: UCLA one. And you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: protests that use civil disobedience. One of the protest movements
Speaker 1: that conservatives most revere and most champion in Herald and
Speaker 1: defended was the Trucker's protest in Canada, which was designed
Speaker 1: to protest the Trudeau government's mandates for COVID vaccines as
Speaker 1: a way to keep your job. And yet they use
Speaker 1: civil disobedience state blow streets. They prevented ours from passing
Speaker 1: all the time in Toronto, and yet the crackdown on
Speaker 1: this protest was deemed tyrannical by conservatives because in that
Speaker 1: case they agreed with the cause. So I think the
Speaker 1: context here is important. Of course, of protesters attack Jewish students,
Speaker 1: which has not been happening, I mean using violence, And
Speaker 1: even if the ones who are blocking ingress and egress,
Speaker 1: which I do am not comfortable with to say Okay,
Speaker 1: you cannot do that, I'm fine with that as well.
Speaker 1: But there has been an overall, very potent movement to
Speaker 1: suppress and censor criticism of Israel or propalaestined speech for
Speaker 1: a long time, and a great part of what's happening
Speaker 1: now is a byproduct of that vision.
Speaker 6: So, Ilia, you've been an outspoken critic of a lot
Speaker 6: of the crackdowns on speech on campuses towards the right
Speaker 6: in recent years that Gunn was alluding to there, Why
Speaker 6: are you not.
Speaker 7: A hypocrite in this case?
Speaker 6: Basically, how do you respond to the allegation that you're
Speaker 6: a hypocrite for wanting a crackdown in these cases with
Speaker 6: the Propalestine student protesters.
Speaker 5: Well, Glenn and I are in full agreement that Fire
Speaker 5: is one of the greatest organizations in America I'm a
Speaker 5: big fan the Foundation of Individual Rights and expression. I
Speaker 5: spoke at their big national gala last year, and you know,
Speaker 5: I agree with them ninety nine percent of the time.
Speaker 5: I don't think I agree with myself one hundred percent
Speaker 5: of the time. But fire does fantastic work, and I
Speaker 5: defend speech and expression. But the rubber hits the road
Speaker 5: of what happens when you're indeed violating the rules. And
Speaker 5: Glen is getting at that when he's talking about starts
Speaker 5: talking about civil disobedience. If indeed the anti Israel pro
Speaker 5: Hamas protesters are engaged in civil disobedience, then what is that?
Speaker 5: That's the willingness to suffer consequences, to go to jail,
Speaker 5: to be expelled or disciplined, to highlight to showcase the
Speaker 5: injustice or illegitimacy of the law or policy that they're protesting.
Speaker 5: Think about Mahama Gandhi or Martin Luther King, the prototypical
Speaker 5: examples of civil disobedience. It's not yelling and intimidating and
Speaker 5: harassing and vandalizing. All of these sorts of aggressive actions
Speaker 5: but I think are counterproductive even for their causes. And
Speaker 5: this has nothing to do with whether you're a pro
Speaker 5: Israel or anti Israel, Yeah, UCLA.
Speaker 9: I don't know what exactly went down.
Speaker 5: But to the extent that the pro Israel side was
Speaker 5: engaged in violence, that's not good and that's not protected
Speaker 5: speech either. So you know, I try to be principled
Speaker 5: as much as the next guy. And we can debate
Speaker 5: the DeSantis order about students for Justice in Palestine, which
Speaker 5: is separate issue about organizational structure and material support for terrorism,
Speaker 5: was the Supreme Court has held is not protected by
Speaker 5: the First Amendment. But in terms of individual speech versus
Speaker 5: violating the rules, I try to be very consistent. And
Speaker 5: you know, those on the left who on October sixth
Speaker 5: would have wanted to discipline those who use the wrong
Speaker 5: pronouns or otherwise engage in microaggressions, you know, if they're hypocritical,
Speaker 5: you know, there's no.
Speaker 9: Crime against that. The Americans have the right to do so.
Speaker 5: But again, we have to be clear about what we're
Speaker 5: dealing with these protests, these encampments.
Speaker 9: If you're violating neutral rules, that's a different.
Speaker 5: Situation than engaging in free speech. And again, those university officials,
Speaker 5: whatever they're underlying personal politics or viewpoints that have done
Speaker 5: well in these situations have made clear that these are
Speaker 5: the rules. We protect free speech, and we enforce our
Speaker 5: rules against disruption or violence or blocking access or otherwise
Speaker 5: preventing the educational institution from going about its duties.
Speaker 1: Can I just ask ilio question quickly if you guys
Speaker 1: don't mind so, I mean, certainly what you said described
Speaker 1: to civil disobedience is true. Yet we have a long
Speaker 1: tradition of distinguishing between brave acts of wild breaking that
Speaker 1: involve violence against people, and say, students taking over a
Speaker 1: student building for a couple of days non violently, which
Speaker 1: though technically is a violation of campus rules, we do
Speaker 1: as the sort of crime that narrates a thousand police
Speaker 1: officers being sent in. But if you don't recognize that
Speaker 1: kind of distinction, and I am interested in hearing your
Speaker 1: views of all the other censorship examples I mentioned against
Speaker 1: Propelstinian protests.
Speaker 4: But let me ask you your views.
Speaker 1: On the Canadian protest, which again became a huge cause
Speaker 1: celeb among conservatives, among people on the right who accused
Speaker 1: the Trudeau government of being tyrannical, of being repressive and
Speaker 1: authoritarian because they ended with force those protests. But those
Speaker 1: Trucker protests which I was defending, were actually engaged in
Speaker 1: illegal behavior. They were blocking the ability of motorists to
Speaker 1: drive to work or drive back home. That was the
Speaker 1: whole point of the trucker's protest was they occupied roads
Speaker 1: and didn't let anyone pass. Did you support the Trudeau
Speaker 1: government's crackdown on them on the grounds that while technically
Speaker 1: they're violating the law by blocking traffic and therefore they
Speaker 1: should go to prison.
Speaker 5: Now, even though I'm Canadian, I sort of go both
Speaker 5: ways on the forty nine parallel.
Speaker 9: I'm the dualist citizen.
Speaker 5: I'm not fully up to speed on Canadian laws in
Speaker 5: that circumstance. My understanding is Trudeau was criticized not for
Speaker 5: enforcing simple rules against blocking public highways, but for invoking
Speaker 5: an emergency act and just taking ultra varias beyond power
Speaker 5: actions by the executive, by the Prime minister, whether violating federalism,
Speaker 5: whether violating separation of powers or otherwise, and that was
Speaker 5: where the legal concern happened. But certainly to the extent
Speaker 5: that the truckers were, you know, blocking people's route to
Speaker 5: work during rush hour, what have you, then those neutral
Speaker 5: rules should should have been enforced against them, and even
Speaker 5: though I did agree.
Speaker 9: With the justice of their overall cause.
Speaker 5: But the Trudeau thing was not about regular cops in action.
Speaker 5: It was about the Prime minister cracking down, freezing bank
Speaker 5: accounts against banking law, using emergency laws improperly, that sort
Speaker 5: of thing.
Speaker 8: Elly, I feel like you might be caught in a
Speaker 8: little bit of a contradiction here at I want to
Speaker 8: see if I'm right about that you can, if you
Speaker 8: can sort it out. It seems like you're saying that
Speaker 8: the severity of the crackdown is what matters. That you
Speaker 8: would have supported some type of civil finds or some
Speaker 8: type of and civil in the word of like just
Speaker 8: just gentle crackdown by police, police arrest, police arrests, police
Speaker 8: arrests of the truckers because they did violate a neutral law.
Speaker 8: But it was when he took it to the next
Speaker 8: level and made it this emergency response that you condemn it.
Speaker 3: How does that square with, say, the.
Speaker 8: NYPD sending in this like medieval siege weaponry and like
Speaker 8: a thousand guys to like storm their way into the library,
Speaker 8: and compare that to say, the bastion of libertarian and
Speaker 8: libertarian intellectualism in this country, the University of Chicago, which
Speaker 8: put out a statement saying, look, there's an encampment on
Speaker 8: our campus right now. Many of the people there hold
Speaker 8: odious views that we find noxious. They are technically in
Speaker 8: violation of our campus rules and regulations. However, because of
Speaker 8: our interest in free expression here at the University of Chicago,
Speaker 8: as long as there's no danger to public safety, we're
Speaker 8: going to allow this encampment to continue in the furtherance
Speaker 8: of free expression. So why was University of Chicago wrong there?
Speaker 8: And am I right that you're that you're okay with
Speaker 8: a gentle crackdown on the truckers but a brutal crackdown
Speaker 8: on the Columbia protesters?
Speaker 3: And why why the distinction there?
Speaker 9: No, that that's putting a lot of words in my mouth,
Speaker 9: a lot of adjectives. I try not to use adjectives.
Speaker 5: It's it's uh weak writing, really, But these are apples
Speaker 5: and oranges that the trucker situation and what's going on
Speaker 5: on campus.
Speaker 9: You know, different.
Speaker 5: Countries, different laws in play, different issues. The look, there's
Speaker 5: a difference between a.
Speaker 9: Capital crime and the death penalty, and you know.
Speaker 5: A misdemeaner jay walking, and there are gradations in between Obviously,
Speaker 5: different crimes deserve different punishments, or in the campus context,
Speaker 5: certain things, you know, get you get you a reprimand
Speaker 5: from a dean or simply a cautionary you know, conversation,
Speaker 5: and certain things give you expelled, and everything in between.
Speaker 5: So you have to evaluate what the exact violation is
Speaker 5: and respond appropriately with due process, not just a kangaroo
Speaker 5: court and all of that. University of Chicago, which is
Speaker 5: my law school alma mater and sort of the gold
Speaker 5: standard for both free speech, institutional neutrality viewpoint non discrimination
Speaker 5: in hiring.
Speaker 9: That the Chicago trifecta does great things.
Speaker 5: It let the encamping continue for a few days and
Speaker 5: then ultimately cleared it out as well.
Speaker 9: I think that happened yesterday or the day before.
Speaker 5: So you know a lot of alumni were calling for
Speaker 5: Chicago to enforce their actual rules and enforce their actual
Speaker 5: initial statement that they made sooner, but they let kind
Speaker 5: of a conversation.
Speaker 9: Continue for for a few days. Whatever we can. We
Speaker 9: can Monday morning, quarterback all day.
Speaker 5: But it's not about the gentleness of you know, what
Speaker 5: kind of equipment the police use when they come in,
Speaker 5: or how many of them are there. That's an evaluation
Speaker 5: of police tactics and proportional force and methods and things
Speaker 5: like that. But when you occupy buildings and vandalize and
Speaker 5: break windows and do all sorts of things that do
Speaker 5: disrupt the educational mission, that terrorize the workers, the working
Speaker 5: class workers that are there, as we've seen reported by
Speaker 5: the Free Press with respect to Columbia's takeover of Hamilton Hall,
Speaker 5: that's a problem.
Speaker 9: Certain things are criminal violations.
Speaker 5: Certain things are mere violations of the university Code of Responsibilities,
Speaker 5: which could get you expelled or suspended or some other
Speaker 5: kind of punishment, again commensurate with the type of crime.
Speaker 5: But this is not about gentle crackdowns versus brutal crackdowns.
Speaker 5: It's about dealing with, you know, responding to situations as
Speaker 5: they arise.
Speaker 9: And there's no right to you know.
Speaker 5: Unquote mostly peaceful protest or what have your, mostly peaceful
Speaker 5: occupation of buildings and disruptions.
Speaker 9: Of educational missions. Colombia has now canceled their graduation ceremonies.
Speaker 5: They moved all of their classes online. That's not right
Speaker 5: for all of the students who are not engaged in
Speaker 5: all of this activism. I think Chicago's doing better Princeton,
Speaker 5: my undergraduate alma mater, is doing better and enforcing rules
Speaker 5: against sleeping and camping and things like that, while allowing
Speaker 5: the protesters to actually protest in a non disruptive way.
Speaker 5: So again, Ben Sass, at University of Florida, you don't
Speaker 5: have these massive things. So there are different responses that
Speaker 5: we're seeing in real time, differentiating what real leadership is
Speaker 5: while protecting the freedom of speech.
Speaker 6: So let me kick that to Glenn, actually, because there's
Speaker 6: something interesting in Glenn. You mentioned this earlier, and I
Speaker 6: don't want to gloss over it that when there are violations,
Speaker 6: it's reasonable in certain cases, and that's where I want
Speaker 6: to kind of drill down into specifics for the university
Speaker 6: to respond by enforcing its rules. So while we're talking
Speaker 6: about our alma maters, my alma manter George Washington University,
Speaker 6: there were some there was a leader I actually don't
Speaker 6: know if there were a student or not chanting guillotine.
Speaker 6: There were some students in the audience chanting guillotine in
Speaker 6: reference to different university officials that were being put on
Speaker 6: a sort of mock trial in the middle of the encampment.
Speaker 6: There obviously at Columbia we saw some obvious vandalism, breaking
Speaker 6: into the building, et cetera. So, Glenn, what is your
Speaker 6: sort of where's the line for you as to what's
Speaker 6: protected speech, what's protected civil disobedient not protected civil disobediance,
Speaker 6: but what sort of tolerable civil disobedience? How do you
Speaker 6: kind of categorize different things we've seen at these encampments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it absolutely depends on the impact. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if you have people using violence, and there have been
Speaker 1: so many hate crimes hoaxes about trying to create this
Speaker 1: narrative that American Jews are this new endangered and victimized group.
Speaker 1: They can't even walk outside without being violently attacked. The
Speaker 1: one example that's spread all over the media, and that
Speaker 1: was promoted by Barry Weiss's Free Press, ended up being
Speaker 1: a complete hoax. This Jewish Shudent who has been a
Speaker 1: long time pro iSER activist, who claimed that she was
Speaker 1: stabbed in the eye with a Palestinian flag. And then
Speaker 1: when you watch the video, she was standing near the protesters,
Speaker 1: they were just marching by her waving flags. One of
Speaker 1: the flags just brushed up against her. She went on
Speaker 1: TV there was nothing wrong with her eyes, she said,
Speaker 1: the only symptoms she had was a little bit of
Speaker 1: a headache. And yet Mike Johnson goes to the Holocaust
Speaker 1: Museum yesterday and claims that Jewish students plural are now
Speaker 1: having attacks on them violently by being stabbed in the
Speaker 1: eye with Palestinian flags. It's like a Jesse Smollett level
Speaker 1: of hate crimes hoax, but written large to justify these
Speaker 1: aggressive crackdowns. We just had, you know, two weeks ago
Speaker 1: the House of Representatives that passed a law that wildly
Speaker 1: expanded the definition of anti Semitism for anti discrimination law,
Speaker 1: and it includes a wide range of views that obviously
Speaker 1: are constitutionally protected, such as saying that you think Israeli
Speaker 1: crimes and war are similar to what the Nazis did,
Speaker 1: to suggest that certain people Evangelicals or American Jews who
Speaker 1: are inculcated from birth with worshiping Israel and being devoted
Speaker 1: to it, have a greater allegiance to Israel if it's
Speaker 1: in conflict with the United States, to even criticizing Israel
Speaker 1: in a way that is supposedly a double standard, meaning
Speaker 1: you criticize Israel more harshly than you do. These are
Speaker 1: now rendered illegal under anti discrimination laws. That's a full
Speaker 1: frontal assault on basic free speech rights in addition to
Speaker 1: all the other examples that I cited, And I think
Speaker 1: the most important thing here when we're talking about standards is,
Speaker 1: you know, I think human beings need to be humble.
Speaker 4: We are not consistency machines.
Speaker 1: Of course, we're going to be more inclined to support
Speaker 1: crackdowns on in censorship of the views that we most hate.
Speaker 1: And again, Ilio, who is a free speech champion in
Speaker 1: a lot of contacts, is somebody who is a fanatical
Speaker 1: devotee to Israel. He really believes that Israel has to
Speaker 1: be protacted and defended. And I think he should be
Speaker 1: more humble about asking himself whether or not he's applying
Speaker 1: standards inconsistently. Because the people who's silencing he's supporting happened
Speaker 1: to be people whose views he most hates. I don't
Speaker 1: think there's another cause that offends him more than this one,
Speaker 1: namely criticizing Israel or calling for the end of Zionism.
Speaker 1: And just to point out one example that I mean,
Speaker 1: I know referenced earlier, a study, not social media anecdotes,
Speaker 1: but a study that said ninety nine percent of campus
Speaker 1: encampments and protests have been entirely nonviolent. One of the
Speaker 1: examples of violence bet behind the UCLA one was a
Speaker 1: video that surfaced yesterday where a former IDF soldier and
Speaker 1: a professor at the University of Arizona physically menaced Muslim
Speaker 1: woman by being using a posture of wanting to fight,
Speaker 1: getting an inch away from them, having that body posture
Speaker 1: like you're ready to hit them. The Muslim women were
Speaker 1: covering their faces. It was very difficult to watch. That
Speaker 1: was one of the gravest acts of actual physical intimidation
Speaker 1: and force that I've seen of these incidents. Ilia went
Speaker 1: on to Twitter and said the following quote. A postdoctoral
Speaker 1: researcher at Arizona State lost his temper after being provoked
Speaker 1: at a pro Israel rally over the weekend, so blaming
Speaker 1: these Muslim women who were physically threatened and menaced, he
Speaker 1: said it wasn't a good look, but hardly a capital offense,
Speaker 1: with some similarities to my poorly phrased tweet, and then
Speaker 1: it went on to defend the idea that.
Speaker 4: This professor, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: Utelman, who was really the one who used physical menacing,
Speaker 1: should not even lose his job now if the situation
Speaker 1: were reversed and these were muslimmen physically menacing Jewish women
Speaker 1: in this way, I strongly believe that Ilia and many
Speaker 1: other people would be calling that a terrorist act and
Speaker 1: demanding their imprisonment and deportation. And so I think it is.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a matter of corruption. I just
Speaker 1: think there are a lot of people who are indoctrinated
Speaker 1: from birth and bombarded with propaganda.
Speaker 4: I noticed because I was one of them. I grew
Speaker 4: up in American.
Speaker 1: Jewish culture, who are taught to defend have loyalty to
Speaker 1: an affection for Israel above almost any other cause. And
Speaker 1: the idea that someone's going to be so certain that
Speaker 1: the reason they generally support free speech and yet in
Speaker 1: this case aren't bothered by that congressional law aren't bothered
Speaker 1: by the census is shutting down of pro Palestinian groups
Speaker 1: on the really noxious theory that now material support of
Speaker 1: terrorism doesn't mean raising funds for terrorist groups or are
Speaker 1: arming them, but it just means speech speech that supposedly
Speaker 1: advances their anti Israel, causing great violation of the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: The reason why there's this obvious shifting of standards, even
Speaker 1: of sentiments. Is because the people on the right largely
Speaker 1: revere Israel and have as one of their central causes
Speaker 1: defending Israel from criticism, and that's why they're so offended
Speaker 1: by this protest movement.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Elia, take that question and just to give some
Speaker 8: like data to what or an anecdote to what Glenn
Speaker 8: is talking about here you tweeted recently, universities are now
Speaker 8: well aware of s JP's material support for terrorism added
Speaker 8: to the lawsuits strengthening Title six claims and adding others.
Speaker 8: You commonly do refer to these protesters as giving material
Speaker 8: support to terrorism, which means that you're kind of taking
Speaker 8: it beyond like, Okay, somebody's smashed a window and is
Speaker 8: blocking ingress and egress, so therefore they've broken these laws
Speaker 8: and they need to be arrested. To everyone who holds
Speaker 8: these views is materially supporting terrorism and is somehow backchannel
Speaker 8: financed by terrorism, and therefore needs to be entirely cracked
Speaker 8: down on.
Speaker 3: So how do you square that with your We have
Speaker 3: to we have to.
Speaker 9: Be careful in our use of language.
Speaker 5: I mean, Glen Glenn is throwing lots of stuff on
Speaker 5: the wall, and I'm not here to debate Israel policy
Speaker 5: or Zionism or anything like that.
Speaker 9: And again there's a difference between but can.
Speaker 1: You acknowledge that it's a passionate cause of yours at least?
Speaker 5: Course is as is anti communism, as is the First Amendment,
Speaker 5: as is a proper interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause,
Speaker 5: and the importance and goodness of the US Constitution and
Speaker 5: originalist interpretations of it. I'm, you know, a public intellectual
Speaker 5: quote unquote who advocates for lots of things, and I'm
Speaker 5: passionate about lots of things. But this is not about
Speaker 5: the merits of Israel's cause or the demerits of those
Speaker 5: who oppose it.
Speaker 9: You know, I've.
Speaker 5: Spoken out a lot about DEI, which, of course, you know,
Speaker 5: I think should be ended rather than mended, because it
Speaker 5: foments so much of this illiberalism, including the anti Semitism
Speaker 5: that we've seen grow up on campus. But going back
Speaker 5: to the questions here, this is not about uh uh uh,
Speaker 5: you know, crackdown on on on on the but not
Speaker 5: on me or what have you. If there were massive
Speaker 5: encampments and demonstrations that were blocking access and violating pos
Speaker 5: educational opportunities, in violation of Title six from the pro
Speaker 5: Israeli side or some other side that I support, I
Speaker 5: would be against that as well.
Speaker 9: I criticized you mentioned.
Speaker 5: That the Arizona State Professor Utelman, that was a bad judgment.
Speaker 5: You know, again, he should be reprimanded, he should be criticized.
Speaker 5: I don't think he should lose a job over that's
Speaker 5: a question of gradation. Again, what's a capital offense versus
Speaker 5: jaywalking and all the rest of it. You know, students
Speaker 5: shouldn't be taken out and shot for engaging in these
Speaker 5: this kind of behavior. This is all gaslighting that conflates
Speaker 5: everything together. But to put it to put the conversation
Speaker 5: back to Title six. So there's a difference between individual rights,
Speaker 5: whether students, faculty, or non campus community members, and organizational
Speaker 5: recognition and taxpayer support on public universities. Students for Justice
Speaker 5: and PALIS and the National Organization has been functioning as
Speaker 5: the pr agency for Hamas and other terrorist organizations as
Speaker 5: recognized by the State Department. They are organizing supporting in
Speaker 5: terms of finance, but otherwise organizational support of these protests,
Speaker 5: of these encampments of the tactics. There are playbooks that
Speaker 5: they put out on October eighth, you know, before Israel
Speaker 5: went into Gaza to take advantage of the opportunity to
Speaker 5: attack Israel, because of course they're not pro Palestinian as
Speaker 5: much as they are anti Israeli. The goal is to
Speaker 5: abolish Israel at all costs, even if that hurts all
Speaker 5: the Gozzins, as we're seeing happen now. And so the
Speaker 5: question about material support of terror isn't about the individual
Speaker 5: student rights and to crack down or punish, or criminalize
Speaker 5: or deport those with improper views. It's to disestablish the
Speaker 5: organizations that are part of this greater superstructure, which again,
Speaker 5: as the Supreme Court has said, is not protected by
Speaker 5: the First Amendment. Material support of terrorism includes acting as
Speaker 5: MOS's pr agency, and so throwing SJP chapters off campus
Speaker 5: is a different question than the rights of students.
Speaker 4: Well, can I just interject, I'm sorry really quickly.
Speaker 1: One of the student groups that has been closed on
Speaker 1: many campuses is Jewish Voices for Peace, which is a
Speaker 1: group of Jewish students, a large group who are opposed
Speaker 1: to what they regard as Israeli abuse of human rights
Speaker 1: of Palestinians, that the nile of statehood. They view the
Speaker 1: Israeli attack on Gaza as being war crimes. Do you
Speaker 1: view Jewish Voices for Peace as not just being a
Speaker 1: pr agency for Hamas but also now engaged in material
Speaker 1: support for terrorism? And can material support for terrorism a
Speaker 1: felony that I believe is a capital offense or at
Speaker 1: least provides for fifty years in jail time and like
Speaker 1: very harsh prison conditions. That's something that can be committed
Speaker 1: solely through expressing your views. You don't have to fundraise
Speaker 1: for terrorists, you don't have to provide arms to them.
Speaker 4: You just speak in a.
Speaker 1: Way you say like, oh, I believe that you I
Speaker 1: should leave Afghanistan. And now suddenly you're guilty of aiding
Speaker 1: and embedding the Taliban because you want the asked to
Speaker 1: leave Afghanistan.
Speaker 4: You could be convicted of.
Speaker 1: A felony for aiding and material aiding in a betting
Speaker 1: or prouding materials sport to a designated terrorist gropes. Don't
Speaker 1: you don't you think that's a pretty grave threat to
Speaker 1: free speech. If you can commit felony simply by expressing
Speaker 1: your political views about geopolitical conflicts.
Speaker 5: Nobody, nobody should be punished for their speech.
Speaker 9: And that's not what the relevant statutes are doing.
Speaker 5: You're conflating different usage of the term materials support for
Speaker 5: terror in the law.
Speaker 1: What these groups do beyond speech to be guilty of
Speaker 1: materials and materialism.
Speaker 5: Again, you're gaslighting this is this is there's a difference
Speaker 5: between the rights of the associational rights of organizations and
Speaker 5: the rights and freedoms of individuals and what they can
Speaker 5: be prosecuted for. The question of whether s j P
Speaker 5: should be thrown can legitimately be thrown off campus is
Speaker 5: a different one than whether any individual student or organizers
Speaker 5: should or can.
Speaker 9: Be prosecuted because.
Speaker 5: Taxpayer funding of organizations, which includes student recognition, access to funds,
Speaker 5: access to being able to reserve spaces, all the rights
Speaker 5: and privileges and benefits of a student group, is different
Speaker 5: than what should be done about an individual student who's
Speaker 5: speaking in.
Speaker 9: Some particular way. I am fundamentally against.
Speaker 5: Disciplining, investigating students, faculty members, and others who engage in
Speaker 5: speech unless that rises to the level of a death
Speaker 5: threat or a excitement of violence, which is a very
Speaker 5: high bar under Supreme portraits.
Speaker 9: So speech that's actually not protected by the First Amendment, we.
Speaker 6: Had just a fine point on that question. So if
Speaker 6: a student is at an SJP event or hands out
Speaker 6: an SJP flyer, your take is that is not prosecutable
Speaker 6: material support for terrorism where it shouldn't be under the law.
Speaker 5: I'm not a criminal lawyer, but I don't think I
Speaker 5: can't imagine a prosecution for handing out pamphlets unless that
Speaker 5: pamphlet in some way, you know, incites violence or reaches
Speaker 5: that kind of standard. But from what I've seen, I
Speaker 5: don't think there's anyone who can be prosecuted for their
Speaker 5: speech in.
Speaker 9: That kind of scenario.
Speaker 5: Again, the debate over s JP and the funding sources
Speaker 5: and networks and organizations is about whether they can exist
Speaker 5: as a corporate body on campus. And Glenn asked about
Speaker 5: Jewish Voices for Peace. That's a fact question, as lawyers
Speaker 5: would call it. This is why Attorney General of Virginia,
Speaker 5: Jason Millaris, among others, are investigating the various contacts between
Speaker 5: these organizations.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't bother you that Jewish Voice for Our
Speaker 1: Peace are being criminally investigated. This is righting attorney generals
Speaker 1: who love Israel. Does it bother you?
Speaker 5: Jewish Voices piece seems to me like the Holy Roman Empire,
Speaker 5: and that it's neither Holy, nor Roman nor an empire.
Speaker 9: JBP is neither Jewish nor voices nor for.
Speaker 4: People cares what you think of their opinions.
Speaker 1: They have every right to engage in the American student
Speaker 1: I'm not.
Speaker 9: Saying they should be prosecuted for their speech. I'm saying
Speaker 9: if investigations reveal that they're part of a terrorist financing
Speaker 9: network and organizational structure, then they should be thrown off
Speaker 9: campus as a corporate body. This is not about the
Speaker 9: rights of students or.
Speaker 5: What they're saying, or whether they should be prosecuted for that,
Speaker 5: and stop conflating those kinds of issues.
Speaker 1: But first of all, they have been thrown off many campuses,
Speaker 1: and the argument is the same theory that Rondasantis use.
Speaker 1: If you accuse student student groups that are in favor
Speaker 1: of the propolic ganting cause of being guilty for material
Speaker 1: support of terrorism, which is what you have to claim
Speaker 1: in order to justify banning them from campus. Otherwise it's
Speaker 1: such an obvious violation of the First Amendment free speech
Speaker 1: if you don't have another pretext. And that's why fire
Speaker 1: dot org took such great offense to what DeSantis did
Speaker 1: in other colleges as well. If you claim they're guilty
Speaker 1: of material support for terrorism as it grounds for banning
Speaker 1: them from campus. Obviously you're accusing them of felonies. That's
Speaker 1: what material support. You're not allowed to give material support terrorism.
Speaker 1: But now if you now expand material support for terrorism.
Speaker 1: Ron DeSantis didn't claim these groups are raising money, you're
Speaker 1: providing arms. He simply said their speech is what gives
Speaker 1: support for these terrorist groups. So if you are now
Speaker 1: liable to being accused of a felony for the expression
Speaker 1: of your political views that somehow align with the interests
Speaker 1: of a terrorist group, like hey, we should leave the
Speaker 1: Middle East, or saying we should leave Ukraine and that
Speaker 1: somehow is deemed pro Russian speech. I can't think of
Speaker 1: a graver assault on the rite of free speech than
Speaker 1: criminalizing and criminalizing political activism of that sort.
Speaker 5: That's nonsense, and you're being disingenuous and leveling those kinds
Speaker 5: of accusations. There's a difference between the recognition of certain
Speaker 5: kinds of organizations and whether they can exist on campus.
Speaker 5: Say a chapter of the KKK or other. You know,
Speaker 5: a chapter of Hamas Quahamas. We're the we're the Hamas
Speaker 5: student group, and we promote terrorism. Right, So there are
Speaker 5: rules of analysis and structures for defining what kinds of organizations,
Speaker 5: particularly in public taxpayer funded institution, can or cannot exist
Speaker 5: on campus.
Speaker 9: Which is a separate question that if any.
Speaker 5: Particular individual is doing something that rises to the level
Speaker 5: of incitement of violence and can should be disciplined or punished.
Speaker 5: Another way, stop putting voice words in my mouth and
Speaker 5: trying to make me out to look like I'm trying
Speaker 5: to punish people for speech, which I'm not.
Speaker 9: There is a difference.
Speaker 4: I described described.
Speaker 9: Context, I described.
Speaker 4: Defense.
Speaker 9: You finished.
Speaker 5: There's a difference between uh giving a speech saying Israel
Speaker 5: is being illegitimate, They're engaged in genocide, this is all wrong,
Speaker 5: this is bad. We shouldn't support them, and going to
Speaker 5: a helll or a habbad house or the Center for
Speaker 5: Jewish Life on campus and chanting from the river to
Speaker 5: the sea Israel should be gone. Kill all the Jews,
Speaker 5: any Jew you see today, punch them in the face.
Speaker 5: There are differences between these kinds of scenarios.
Speaker 4: No one claim those groups were doing that. No one
Speaker 4: claimed defantas, didn't claim those groups were doing that.
Speaker 1: They weren't doing that, And yet you defended Ronda san.
Speaker 5: Let's turn on the facts and as if those groups
Speaker 5: do in investigations by whether DeSantis' lawyers or Mires or
Speaker 5: anybody else. If again, these are factual investigations, These aren't
Speaker 5: sham investigations. If the dots are connected such that the
Speaker 5: standard for material support of terror is established, then yes
Speaker 5: they should be okay.
Speaker 8: Job, So, Elliott, you're supportive of a criminal investigation into
Speaker 8: Jewish Voice for piece based on suspicion raised by their speech,
Speaker 8: and so let's turn it around. What if a pro
Speaker 8: Palestine attorney general somewhere in the United States said that,
Speaker 8: you know what, I've discovered some genocidal language from some
Speaker 8: APAC donors. I've also discovered that some donors to a
Speaker 8: PAC also give to violent settlers that the United States
Speaker 8: has even sanctioned recently. So I'm launching a criminal probe
Speaker 8: into a PAC. Would you say, hey, Look, this is
Speaker 8: a fact based investigation. This is not an infringement on
Speaker 8: ape's right to free expression whatsoever. Let's just see what
Speaker 8: the investigation finds.
Speaker 5: Look, Attorney's general needs to meet certain standards to be
Speaker 5: able to launch investigations, and I'm not sure if it's
Speaker 5: a criminal investigation again, to kick an organization off campus.
Speaker 9: I think that's a civil investigation.
Speaker 5: You're not necessarily charging anyone, but regardless, to launch an investigation,
Speaker 5: if you have probable cause to do so, or whatever
Speaker 5: the standard is in understate.
Speaker 9: Law, go ahead and do so. I don't think something
Speaker 9: like that is going to pass the smell test. It
Speaker 9: would seem politically odd.
Speaker 5: But if if an attorney general wants to stick his
Speaker 5: neck out and claim something like.
Speaker 8: That, yeah, I mean you're right that it won't happen.
Speaker 8: That's not the point. It's clear it would never happen.
Speaker 6: So one thing I wanted to get at here. It
Speaker 6: seems like one of the central disagreements is even over definitions,
Speaker 6: and that's one of the central disagreements in American politics period.
Speaker 6: So Ilia mentioned from the River to the Sea is
Speaker 6: a huge point of disagreement, and with the time we
Speaker 6: have left. Glenn mentioned earlier the Anty Semitism Awareness Act,
Speaker 6: which a bunch of Republicans supported in Congress, some dissented
Speaker 6: from it. I'm super curious to get your take on it, Ilia,
Speaker 6: But I also want to ask, you know, when we're
Speaker 6: talking about what material support for terrorism is, what we're
Speaker 6: talking about when we're talking about how to define violent
Speaker 6: language or language that goes against student code of conduct towards.
Speaker 7: Bigotry, we have and Ilia.
Speaker 6: You've seen how that's been wielded against conservative students, how
Speaker 6: that's been wielded against sort of dissenters from wokeism. So
Speaker 6: even just having and Glenn's point about this protecting, you know,
Speaker 6: sort of free speech maximalism is so that we have
Speaker 6: humility about when those definitions are right, when those definitions
Speaker 6: are wrong, and how we kind of come to a
Speaker 6: place of.
Speaker 7: Consensus on this.
Speaker 6: So using the definition and the Anti Semitism Awareness Act
Speaker 6: a lot of Republicans that I think is like twenty
Speaker 6: in the House, not nearly as much as it should
Speaker 6: be flagged that and said, listen, this definition is wildly broad.
Speaker 6: It's way too broad, such as it would implicate even
Speaker 6: potentially Christians the New Testament, I think. Is one thing
Speaker 6: that Tucker Carlson argued in this case. So Ilia is
Speaker 6: the Anti Semitism Awareness Act is Republican support for the
Speaker 6: Anti Semitism Awareness Act hypocritical is the definition of anti
Speaker 6: semitism in that bill too.
Speaker 9: Broad, I don't think. So here's why. On the terms.
Speaker 5: Of the Triple A the Anti Semitism Awareness Act. It
Speaker 5: does not expand the authority of the Secretary of Education.
Speaker 5: It doesn't change the standards of the Department of Education,
Speaker 5: the Office Civil Rights to investigate claims of harassment or
Speaker 5: other actionable discrimination. And it does not change, diminish and
Speaker 5: fringe on the rights protected under any other provisions of law.
Speaker 9: That is, all the Triple A.
Speaker 5: Does is to define anti semitism for purposes of Title
Speaker 5: six of the Civil Rights Act, which already has for
Speaker 5: a long time prohibited discrimination actions not speech based on race, color,
Speaker 5: national origin, which the Department of Education of both parties
Speaker 5: have long understood to include ancestry and ethnicity.
Speaker 9: So for a long.
Speaker 5: Time we haven't had a definition of anti semitism or
Speaker 5: what kinds of actions might be discriminatory for being antisemitic.
Speaker 9: Again, actions not speech.
Speaker 5: And the Triple A doesn't create any new investigative authorities,
Speaker 5: it doesn't expand powers all of that, So there's no
Speaker 5: hypocrisy here. It's it adopts the the kind of gold
Speaker 5: standard definition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Uh and
Speaker 5: you know, the only that that has adherents from scholars
Speaker 5: across the ideological spectrum that you know is against negative
Speaker 5: perceptions of Jews, just like for purposes of racism, we
Speaker 5: have negative perceptions of people of different races and what
Speaker 5: have you. So the Triple A, you know, this is
Speaker 5: a common myth that it's somehow.
Speaker 9: Going after anyone who speaks.
Speaker 5: Out against Jews or criticizes the government of Israel, or
Speaker 5: even as you said, Tucker Carson, Tucker Carlson's absurd plane
Speaker 5: that teaching the New Testament somehow now by violates the laws.
Speaker 9: That's completely wrong.
Speaker 5: What it does is define anti semitism for purposes of
Speaker 5: Title six, which already makes taking actions based.
Speaker 9: On anti Semitism illegal.
Speaker 1: Can I please interject there, because I just cannot abide
Speaker 1: that claim, which is so wildly misleading about what this
Speaker 1: law does.
Speaker 4: Anti Semitism knows all about misleading claims.
Speaker 9: Plan.
Speaker 4: Okay, very good argument.
Speaker 1: I'm about to actually give you a substance of explanation
Speaker 1: as to why.
Speaker 4: You're being misleading, not just call you that.
Speaker 1: The reason this law is so controversial it got seventy
Speaker 1: no votes among Democrats, twenty one no votes among House
Speaker 1: Republicans is because anti Semitism was already part of anti
Speaker 1: discrimination law. What it did was it wildly expanded the
Speaker 1: definition which came from Israel that began pressuring the West
Speaker 1: to adopt this massively expansive view. It incorporated certain examples.
Speaker 1: So let me give you the examples of what is
Speaker 1: now deemed illegal anti discrimination for anti discrimination laws or
Speaker 1: anti Semitism for anti discrimination from lows in places like
Speaker 1: educational institutions. You cannot say that the crimes of the
Speaker 1: Israeli government in war has similarities to what the Nazis did.
Speaker 1: If you're allowed to say that about the United States.
Speaker 1: You can say what the United States did in Iraq
Speaker 1: is similar to what you just can't say it about Israel.
Speaker 1: You are not allowed to say that particular Jewish individuals
Speaker 1: like Ilia have such extreme devotion to Israel that they
Speaker 1: have been instilled with since birth, that they're willing to
Speaker 1: even sacrifice American civil liberties in defense of this foreign
Speaker 1: country that they've been indoctrinated.
Speaker 4: To revere and protect.
Speaker 1: You may not agree with that assessment about someone like
Speaker 1: Ben Shapiro or Barry Wise or Ilia, but you're now
Speaker 1: banned from saying it as anti discrimination. You're not allowed
Speaker 1: to say that your historical understanding of the world is
Speaker 1: that Jews are responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to criticize Israel in a way that
Speaker 1: is considered to be a double standard, meaning you apply
Speaker 1: to Israel's standards you don't apply to other countries. You're
Speaker 1: allowed to criticize the United States in the form of
Speaker 1: double standard. You're allowed to criticize China or Korea, or
Speaker 1: Argentina or Peru or Norway or any other.
Speaker 4: Country in the world.
Speaker 1: You're just not allowed to criticize Israel in a way
Speaker 1: that seemed a double standard. This is a law that
Speaker 1: takes a massive amount of obviously valid and constitutionally protected
Speaker 1: opinions the ones I just went through, and many more
Speaker 1: that are explicitly in the law, and it makes it
Speaker 1: now an offense under anti discrimination law to express those opinions.
Speaker 1: And this has been going on for so long. I mean,
Speaker 1: it is not false. And I've posted many times the
Speaker 1: language of the law that explicitly incorporates the examples under
Speaker 1: this Polocaust from Memorands law, and the examples are incorporated
Speaker 1: into federal law, every single one of them by the
Speaker 1: explicit text of the law that was just passed those
Speaker 1: examples are unbelievably assault of a free speech, limiting free
Speaker 1: speech of the rights of American citizens to protect this
Speaker 1: foreign country in a way that no other country, and
Speaker 1: no other group of people other than Jews enjoys this protection.
Speaker 4: The other thing I.
Speaker 1: Would say is that, as I've said, this has been
Speaker 1: going on for a long time. You know, when there
Speaker 1: was this movement to get you fired from Georgetown, I
Speaker 1: spoke up in your defense. Not because I agreed with
Speaker 1: the views that you had expressed that were so controversial.
Speaker 1: I absolutely did not, but because I thought it was
Speaker 1: so endangering of academic freedom to demand the firing of
Speaker 1: professors at faculties in the United States for opinions they
Speaker 1: expressed because other people found them offensive. Have you ever
Speaker 1: once in your life, Ilia spoke up in defense of
Speaker 1: professors who are fired or denied tenure.
Speaker 4: Because of their criticism of Israel.
Speaker 1: People like Norman Finkelstein, who got blocked from tenure even
Speaker 1: though the tenure committee recommended a tenure based on his
Speaker 1: scholarship because Alan Dershow, which went on a crusade against him.
Speaker 1: Where Steven Salasia, who had tenure at the University of Illinois,
Speaker 1: it was revoked because in twenty fourteen he was harshly
Speaker 1: criticizing the State of Israel for their bombing of Gaza.
Speaker 1: Have you ever once defended a critic of Israel or
Speaker 1: a pro Palestinian speaker for the free speech abridgements that
Speaker 1: they've suffered.
Speaker 5: Faculty should not be punished or disciplined or investigated for
Speaker 5: their extramural speech.
Speaker 9: I'll say that that's not my business. I don't work
Speaker 9: for it.
Speaker 3: Why have you defended any specific.
Speaker 9: I've only been in this business.
Speaker 5: Is kind of elevated into this discourse since I had
Speaker 5: my own incidents with Georgetown in that time. I'm not
Speaker 5: sure what's gone on, but certainly the university professors at
Speaker 5: Cornell and Columbia and whatnot, it have celebrated Hamas. Maybe
Speaker 5: it's bad judgment to have hired them in the first place,
Speaker 5: but they s shouldn't be fired now for giving a
Speaker 5: speech to that effect. But going back to Glenn's misleading
Speaker 5: invocations of the accurate examples that he quotes from the
Speaker 5: IHR A definition of antisemitism, neither the Triple A nor
Speaker 5: Title six, as properly interpreted, regulates, punishes, or criminalizes speech.
Speaker 5: What it says that if you hold those kinds of
Speaker 5: opinions and act on them in the way that discriminates
Speaker 5: against Jews, students, faculty, or otherwise, who you admit, who
Speaker 5: you huire making decisions in the context of an educational institution,
Speaker 5: then you are acting improperly in violation of the law.
Speaker 5: Giving a speech saying that applying a double standard to Israel,
Speaker 5: or criticizing me or calling me fanatical or whatever does
Speaker 5: not by itself violate any sort of law unless you're improperly,
Speaker 5: unless you're one of these dei bureaucrats that wants to
Speaker 5: impose speech codes and use intersectional hierarchies to go after people. Now,
Speaker 5: we can have a debate about whether Title six, either
Speaker 5: as written or as enforced, goes too far, whether the
Speaker 5: Civil Rights Act altogether goes too far in a libertarian way,
Speaker 5: there are valid ways to have that debate. But the
Speaker 5: Triple A, the Antisemitism Awareness Act does not criminalize, punish,
Speaker 5: or otherwise regulate speech, and if it's interpreted to do so,
Speaker 5: I would be happy to take that case because that's
Speaker 5: a slam dunk win for anyone who is being disciplined
Speaker 5: for anti Semitic speak.
Speaker 6: So let's on this note, Glenn, take some time and
Speaker 6: we'll do closings for Yeah.
Speaker 3: I've got one more question.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, Iliah. And I'm sure you know this this
Speaker 8: history pretty well. We could have spent a lot of
Speaker 8: time talking about the world worth sit ins and other
Speaker 8: you know, civil disobedience. But let's go back to the
Speaker 8: nineteen thirties at Harvard. Harvard to it's great shame, as
Speaker 8: you know, had a lot of connections to the Nazi regime.
Speaker 8: A lot of students at Harvard found that absolutely important.
Speaker 8: Nineteen thirty six, students at Harvard enacted, you know, huge
Speaker 8: protests anti Nazi protests at Harvard.
Speaker 3: Those protests were red.
Speaker 8: Baited, as you would expect as today you have people
Speaker 8: like yourself saying that the Jewish Voice for Peace is
Speaker 8: actually a front for AMAS. At the time, it was like, actually,
Speaker 8: these anti Nazi protests are just a front for the
Speaker 8: Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: It's communist part of the US. Say there's communists everywhere.
Speaker 3: Communists have infiltrated our students.
Speaker 2: And.
Speaker 8: You don't have to wonder, you know what structure you said,
Speaker 8: you know, the structures of the organizations were attacked. There
Speaker 8: was a McCarthy's dismantling over the coming decades. So if
Speaker 8: you were back there in nineteen thirties, would you have
Speaker 8: been with those protesters or would you have supported a
Speaker 8: crackdown on those protesters saying that, look, there's a neutral law.
Speaker 8: You can't hold an anti Nazi protest on Harvard's campus,
Speaker 8: and we're going to enforce the law.
Speaker 5: Well, the neutral law wouldn't say an anti Nazi protest.
Speaker 5: It would say that you can't camp, and you can't
Speaker 5: do certain things. You can't use bullhorns to disrupt classes,
Speaker 5: and yeah, those should be applied evenly, whether you're pro.
Speaker 9: Nazi or anti Nazi.
Speaker 5: The Woolworth protest, you're talking about the civil rights era
Speaker 5: in the fifties and sixties. The point of those protests
Speaker 5: was to sit peacefully at lunch counters and get arrested
Speaker 5: and thereby make national news and expose the illegitimacy of
Speaker 5: segregation and other racist laws. The students here at Columbia
Speaker 5: don't want to be arrested. They complain when the police
Speaker 5: are involved with their cause.
Speaker 9: Is so just?
Speaker 5: They should be like, look, arrest me, I want to
Speaker 5: show the world what you know. The the illegitimate authorities
Speaker 5: are here in enforcing their their their unjust racist whatever
Speaker 5: laws against encampment or or what have you.
Speaker 9: So you know these are apples and oranges.
Speaker 6: So Glenn final thoughts, and then we'll go back to
Speaker 6: you Iliot for final.
Speaker 7: Thoughts as well.
Speaker 1: Obviously on these kind of shows, people can make any
Speaker 1: sorts of claims about what the law says or doesn't say.
Speaker 1: And because I regard this law that was just passed
Speaker 1: two weeks ago by the Republican House, and obviously with
Speaker 1: the lot oft part from Democrats, but Republicans have been
Speaker 1: waiving the ban or of free speech and the evils
Speaker 1: of censorship for the last decade when it comes to
Speaker 1: their own speech being targeted. Just want to make clear
Speaker 1: what the law says and want people to go read it,
Speaker 1: because it's a very short law. It expands the definition
Speaker 1: of anti semitism by adopting the ihra A definition, and
Speaker 1: it specifically says this new definition quote includes the contemporary
Speaker 1: examples of anti semitism identified in the ii ihr A definition.
Speaker 1: If you then go look at the examples of the
Speaker 1: ihr A definition of what constitutes anti semitism for anti
Speaker 1: discrimination law, it says you cannot accuse Jewish citizens of
Speaker 1: having more loyalty toward Israel than to their own country.
Speaker 1: You're allowed to say Catholics have more loyalty to the
Speaker 1: Pope than they do the United States.
Speaker 4: You're allowed to say the.
Speaker 1: Irish have more loyalty to their or country of origin,
Speaker 1: or Indian Americans do, or Evangelicals have more loyalty.
Speaker 4: You just can't say it about American Jews.
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to deny the right of the state
Speaker 1: of Israel to exist. You can say America was founded correctly,
Speaker 1: the UK was founded correctly, they shouldn't exist.
Speaker 4: You just can't say that about Israel.
Speaker 1: You're not allowed to criticize Israel in a way that
Speaker 1: applies a double standard or a difference of criteria to
Speaker 1: the way you criticize other countries. You can have all
Speaker 1: a party all day criticizing your own government in the US, Canada, whatever,
Speaker 1: in a way that's a double just not Israel. You're
Speaker 1: not allowed to say that Jews you believe historically either
Speaker 1: killed Jesus or responsible for his death, even though many
Speaker 1: Christians have long believed that and been taught that that
Speaker 1: is now formally anti Semitism under the law and You're
Speaker 1: not allowed to effectuate any comparison between the acts of
Speaker 1: the Israeli government and what the Nazis did, even if
Speaker 1: you believe they're completely similar. And again, you can compare
Speaker 1: Nazis to any other country, including your own, just not
Speaker 1: to Israel. That is what the law explicitly incorporates as
Speaker 1: formally illegal speech for purposes of anti discrimination law, for
Speaker 1: which you can be sued or otherwise punished. That is
Speaker 1: what the law says. I hope people go read it.
Speaker 1: I just read directly from it.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 1: The other point that I want to make is the
Speaker 1: hypocrisy of the American right is that they are very
Speaker 1: vocal when it comes to things like speech codes or
Speaker 1: victimization narratives or safetyism narratives. Every single minority group, black
Speaker 1: people and Latinos and women and immigrants and Muslims and
Speaker 1: trans people who have used these narratives, Oh, we're very
Speaker 1: vulnerable in the United States. We're endangered, we're victimized. Hate
Speaker 1: speech incites violence against us. Therefore we need speed protections.
Speaker 1: Every single conservative I know has viciously mocked that narrative
Speaker 1: for the last ten years. Because these are coming from
Speaker 1: minority groups that they don't really care about now though,
Speaker 1: that exact same narrative. American Jews are this unique victim
Speaker 1: group in the United States. They're being uniquely endangered. They
Speaker 1: don't feel safe on campus because they're passing by slogans
Speaker 1: that they feel threatened by or uncomfortable by. That now
Speaker 1: they need speech codes on campus and to be able
Speaker 1: to prohibit certain slogans like from the River to the
Speaker 1: Sea because it makes Jewish students feel uncomfortable.
Speaker 4: Words are violence.
Speaker 1: All of these narratives that the right has heaped scorn
Speaker 1: on forever are now being enthusiastically embraced in the name
Speaker 1: of protecting the one minority group to whom they feel
Speaker 1: a certain kind of loyalty. The hypocrisy is nauseating. It
Speaker 1: is so suffocating. And the bigger problem is that this
Speaker 1: is a long time effort now in the United States
Speaker 1: to target israel critics and pro Palestinian activists with the
Speaker 1: kind of censorship that when it's directed at the American right.
Speaker 1: As an actual free speech advocate, I object to, I
Speaker 1: object in all cases. The problem is so many conservatives
Speaker 1: exempt the one cause they care about most, which is
Speaker 1: devotion to Israel, not allowing Israel to be subject to
Speaker 1: criticism or have activism against it, and they want to
Speaker 1: use all these narratives and use all this censorship.
Speaker 4: And it's been going on way before since October seven.
Speaker 7: Fun word to you, Elia.
Speaker 5: Glenn's quoting of the Anti Semitism Awareness Act and its
Speaker 5: incorporation of the definition by the IRA.
Speaker 9: Are absolutely accurate.
Speaker 5: Where Glenn is inaccurate is that he says that that
Speaker 5: kind of speech is now being punished.
Speaker 9: The Triple A does not create any new causes of action.
Speaker 5: It does not regulate speech or do anything with those
Speaker 5: new definitions. Again, the gold standard, the widely accepted standard
Speaker 5: of antisemitism, other than apply them to Title six, and
Speaker 5: for purposes of Title six, speech is not regulated or
Speaker 5: criminalized or punished in any way. Again, any university administrators
Speaker 5: that have in the past used invoke Title speech Title
Speaker 5: six to punish speech are acting improperly.
Speaker 9: And I have defended those.
Speaker 5: Who, in all sorts of contexts, are the targets of
Speaker 5: those kinds of which hunts. So again, you can be
Speaker 5: as antisemitic as you want in your speech and expression.
Speaker 5: Where Title six is being violated is where universities take
Speaker 5: negative actions against someone based on antisemitism as defined in
Speaker 5: the ways that Glenn said.
Speaker 9: So if someone doesn't admit a Jewish.
Speaker 5: Student, or punishes a Jewish student, or takes an adverse
Speaker 5: action against faculty because they think Jews kill Jesus, and
Speaker 5: that person is a Jew, that's evidence of antisemity motivation
Speaker 5: for that action, not because that person has said something
Speaker 5: or been part of a rally or anything else.
Speaker 9: That's a fine distinction.
Speaker 5: Perhaps, But again this all goes to Title six, and
Speaker 5: we can debate the Title six as it's laid out
Speaker 5: in theory or in practice, but there's no new causes
Speaker 5: of action, no new regulation or punishment for speech under
Speaker 5: this legislation to the extent that it's going to be used.
Speaker 5: If it takes force in a way to punish speech,
Speaker 5: I would be very much against that because again you
Speaker 5: have to remember there is a difference between speech and action.
Speaker 5: Certain kinds of speech, death threats, incitement of violence is
Speaker 5: not protected, and then time, place, and manner regulation. So look,
Speaker 5: there's a reason why the pro Israeli other than perhaps
Speaker 5: that UCLA incident, which again we don't know what exactly
Speaker 5: went on, but pro Israel demonstrations tend to have American flags,
Speaker 5: it's singing, it's joyous. There's no intimidation, there's no harassment,
Speaker 5: there's no attacks on America and the West. Whereas the
Speaker 5: intersectional pro hamas pro terrorists uh uh uh you know,
Speaker 5: intersectional left uh groups and campments that we've seen are intimidating,
Speaker 5: are harassing, are uh willing to break the rules because
Speaker 5: they don't believe that they're bound by the rules because
Speaker 5: of the righteousness of their cause. And yet they're not
Speaker 5: willing to suffer the slings and arrows of of civil
Speaker 5: disobedience punishment to showcase those rules, because I guess they know.
Speaker 9: That most people are not going to be in their corners.
Speaker 5: So I remain as staunch an advocate of free speech,
Speaker 5: possibly more uh than than Blen and I reject the
Speaker 5: label of I reject the label of of of either hypocrisy,
Speaker 5: which is which is not a crime. Uh but I
Speaker 5: but I do think that the de I structures and
Speaker 5: the University of leaderships need to be fundamentally reformed so
Speaker 5: that we can all go on to enjoy uh you know,
Speaker 5: students can enjoy their their their educations rather than be
Speaker 5: disrupted by these illiberal protesters regardless of the underlying merits
Speaker 5: of their expression, which should be protected.
Speaker 8: All right, But the claim that you're making that the
Speaker 8: it's actually the campus protests that are harassing and violent
Speaker 8: is contradicted by the study that Glenn mentioned and also
Speaker 8: by all, well.
Speaker 5: How do you count something that's mostly peaceful as the
Speaker 5: number of people who we will know?
Speaker 9: I mean, I don't think it's not at all that. No,
Speaker 9: I mean we you know, who are you going to
Speaker 9: believe near your lying eyes? Right?
Speaker 5: It's we all see what's going on at these things,
Speaker 5: and how they're disrupting the educational missions of the universities.
Speaker 5: How Columbia decided to take all their classes online. Several
Speaker 5: schools have now canceled their graduation.
Speaker 9: That's not normal.
Speaker 5: The intimidation and harassment that we're seeing is not normal
Speaker 5: and and and should be investigated and punished.
Speaker 3: You can walk around all these encampments.
Speaker 8: Columbia canceling its graduation because it couldn't handle the encampment.
Speaker 8: It's a different thing than like them being forced to
Speaker 8: And there are huge.
Speaker 4: Numbers of Jews inside these encampments.
Speaker 1: There are anti semitism exhibits about the evils of anti
Speaker 1: semitism right in the encampment in Colombia. They celebrated Passover
Speaker 1: dinner together. There are Jews, huge presence of Jews inside
Speaker 1: these protest movements on almost every campus.
Speaker 5: There are fellow traveler idiots in any organism. There are
Speaker 5: fellow travelers and useful idiots in any organization.
Speaker 8: Well, we'll also link to Glenn's article about the Anti
Speaker 8: Semitism Amendment whatever that act was.
Speaker 3: Called the Triple A.
Speaker 8: So people can decide for themselves if Congress just expanded
Speaker 8: the definition for just no reason and it'll have no effect,
Speaker 8: or whether expanding it had a purpose.
Speaker 7: And we'll see what happens in the Senate.
Speaker 6: Elia Shapiro and Glenn Greenwald, Thank you both really appreciate
Speaker 6: this debate. I know that we're all eager to sort
Speaker 6: this stuff out, so thank you both for being willing
Speaker 6: to have the conversation. Ryan, I loved that debate. Actually,
Speaker 6: it's kind of the debate that we were all waiting for.
Speaker 6: I feel like I haven't seen those two sides represented
Speaker 6: so well.
Speaker 3: Who won?
Speaker 6: Well, it's again, this is gonna be like last week, right,
Speaker 6: like it's not a pylon because I genuinely think there's
Speaker 6: nuance to Ilia's side I was surprised that he supported
Speaker 6: the Triple A bill, you know what I mean, like,
Speaker 6: that's I think that's an incredibly tough sell from a
Speaker 6: free speech proponent.
Speaker 7: I was actually surprised by that.
Speaker 8: Right, it's certainly not free speech absolutism, right, even if
Speaker 8: you take his claim at complete face value that these
Speaker 8: definitions are only being used in furtherance of some type
Speaker 8: of quote unquote prosecution against a student who has also
Speaker 8: done some other things. You know, those other things could
Speaker 8: be protesting at an encampment, and it is an expandon
Speaker 8: It is using speech within the framework of punishing someone
Speaker 8: even if you were even if he even if you
Speaker 8: take him one hundred percent of phase value, and saying
Speaker 8: that it alone is not enough that you need something extra.
Speaker 8: The fact that speech can be that something extra is
Speaker 8: not something that a free speech proponent could support.
Speaker 7: I was looking forward to this.
Speaker 6: So a couple of weeks ago, I was on Megan
Speaker 6: Kelly and Meghan and Ellianna Johnson. We were playing clips
Speaker 6: of I want to say it was Columbia, and it
Speaker 6: was like after the Alcasom's next Target thing had happened,
Speaker 6: and there were some really legitimate examples of obvious bigotry
Speaker 6: and or incitement that was happening around the campus protests.
Speaker 6: And then we interviewed Sofia SOUTHI student just like two
Speaker 6: days later, a student who was practicing just peaceful civil
Speaker 6: disobedience at the Colombian campment, a Jewish student by the way,
Speaker 6: and we asked her about some of the specific exact
Speaker 6: examples that I had been talking about the other day.
Speaker 6: And I think, you know, Glenn is absolutely right, there's
Speaker 6: this weird conflation. It's not weird at all, predictable conflation
Speaker 6: of the actual bigotry and incitement with some of the
Speaker 6: peaceful protests, and that's really dangerous. And we've talked about why,
Speaker 6: and Safia SOUTHI shared some of the same frustrations that, like,
Speaker 6: it's not easy to you were talking about the red baiting.
Speaker 6: That's not easy for people who want to legitimately participate
Speaker 6: in civil disobeyity.
Speaker 8: Were there some student communists who participated in the anti
Speaker 8: Nazi demonstrations on Harvest campus in nineteen thirty six, of
Speaker 8: course that's you.
Speaker 3: There was good for them, of course, yeah.
Speaker 6: And so I actually do think one of the reasons
Speaker 6: I was looking forward to this debate is that the
Speaker 6: nuance here is really really difficult for the legacy press
Speaker 6: to address appropriately. And those two were I think, like
Speaker 6: great representatives of their side. I think, you know, even
Speaker 6: as someone on the right, I think that goes wildly
Speaker 6: too far to support the triple A bill when you
Speaker 6: even have Republicans talking.
Speaker 7: I've heard this just through my own.
Speaker 6: Reporting, pretty mainstream conservative Republicans uncomfortable with the language and
Speaker 6: that bill and working in the background on the Senate
Speaker 6: side right now to tweak it.
Speaker 7: I actually heard that from Soursus yesterday. So there you go.
Speaker 7: I mean, when you have that, I mean that's rough.
Speaker 3: Hopefully hopefully they're not talking to Ilia. It's fine. Just
Speaker 3: just let that, just let that roll.
Speaker 8: But I think you can dumb down the argument to say, look,
Speaker 8: if you commit civil disobedience, you can you break the law.
Speaker 8: You get arrested like that's and in some ways, like
Speaker 8: in the World War example, that is the purpose of
Speaker 8: getting arrested. You're trying to expose the law. But there
Speaker 8: are there are degrees at work here. An intense crackdown
Speaker 8: followed by attempts to kind of expel and imprison students
Speaker 8: is different than say, hey, everybody who wants to get it.
Speaker 8: This is how protests often work. If you're if you're
Speaker 8: committing civil disabedience and you want to get arrested, come here,
Speaker 8: form a line over here.
Speaker 3: If you don't, this is your opportunity to go.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 8: Anybody who doesn't leave, we will assume that you're you
Speaker 8: want to be protested.
Speaker 3: They get, they get they.
Speaker 8: Get jailed, they get a little fine, They in court,
Speaker 8: sometimes they play the pine, sometimes spend the night. That
Speaker 8: is different than some of the more violent crackdowns slamming
Speaker 8: professor's heads into the sidewalk that are intended to suppress
Speaker 8: the content of the expression that you're seeing.
Speaker 3: And I think it's impossible to.
Speaker 8: Divorce people's attitudes about this from the actual content of
Speaker 8: these of these protests.
Speaker 6: It was also very helpful that Glenn said right off
Speaker 6: the bat, people who are engaged in violence. I don't
Speaker 6: want to put words in his mouth because I don't
Speaker 6: remember precisely how he phrased it, but people who are
Speaker 6: engaged in like actual you know, non protected speech and
Speaker 6: speech that we can all you know, say is like
Speaker 6: incitement or whatever, you know, they should be punished. There
Speaker 6: should be consequences. If you're like egregiously violating, you know,
Speaker 6: some of these some of these very obvious examples. I
Speaker 6: thought it was helpful that Glenn established that right off
Speaker 6: the bat, because yeah, nobody here is saying that there
Speaker 6: have been like these protests have been perfect. And on
Speaker 6: the other hand, though, I think I shouldn't say nobody
Speaker 6: has been saying that, because I think there have been
Speaker 6: some people on the left who have acted.
Speaker 7: Like, oh yeah, nothing, like everything is absolutely perfect.
Speaker 6: Any criticism of this is tantamount to.
Speaker 3: Objectively supporting the other side, which I understand.
Speaker 7: Right, right, or like saying yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: Yes, giving sucker to the genocide, right.
Speaker 6: Which is a very heavy accusation too. So I was
Speaker 6: just really pleased with how well I think they both
Speaker 6: represented their respective sides. Obviously, I think both of us
Speaker 6: agree with Glenn Moore at the end of the day.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 6: So it's been friend to do this on Friday. So far,
Speaker 6: we're three weeks in. I hope everybody's enjoying the show.
Speaker 6: Breakingpoints dot com to subscribe. If you're a subscriber, you
Speaker 6: get this on Thursday night, so you get a little early.
Speaker 3: We will see you guys on Wednesday