Michael,
How about shutting down this two person emptiness?
Gene Coyle
On Sep 17, 2007, at 5:49 PM, David B. Shemano wrote:
Michael Perelman writes:
The curious position proposed here is that it is no violation of
free speech to have
people lose their jobs because they take a position that is not
sympathetic to the
policies of Israel.
I doubt that anybody has ever lost a job in this country for
taking the position in
favor of what is commonly called "free enterprise." If, however,
the country should
take a turn to the left, but that position be justified?
Please be concrete. Please give me an example where somebody lost
their job because they criticized Israel.
To be fair, we have discussed previously whether conservatives have
a difficult time in academia and the argument goes nowhere because
the only concrete examples are the very few cause celebres, which
are almost always complicated, and we can't speak concretely about
the unseen graduate student who decides not to apply to a program
because he knows it would be futile. I assume a similar result
will occur here.
I stand by my original argument made at the beginning of this
exchange -- almost all examples used by anti-Israel critics of
repression of views turn out on examination to be nothing more than
harsh criticism. Because there are so few conservatives in
academia, the only time Lefties experience harsh criticism in
academia is on a topic that is emotional for liberal Jews, who are
numerous in academia. Because Lefties rarely experience harsh
criticism in academia, they confuse it with real repression when it
occurs.
David Shemano
