Thirteen Harvard University students who participated in the pro-Palestinian protest encampment on campus will not receive degrees at commencement Thursday.
So why was it socially unacceptable this time, but not when students were protesting South African Apartheid? Or Climate change? Or any number of the other divestments that have been successful without us even ever hearing about it?
I know it seems weird to think about this now, but back when Mandela was being released, the conservative establishment was calling him a terrorist and insisting that we still needed to support the apartheid government In South Africa against terrorist communists like Mandela.
Reagan and Thatcher were both quite explicit about it.
So this really is nothing new. The Right is always going to back the powerful against the powerless, and will always come down hard on any person or group that challenges the “natural order”.
Here, here. Won’t somebody think of the moderates, and their refined sensibilities? After all, they certainly didn’t personally blow up aid trucks and hospitals in Gaza.
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
-two excerpts from MLK Jr’s letter from Birmingham jail.
It’s not about participation, but rather the socially unacceptable ways to express it. Come on, please be decent, others are here too.
So why was it socially unacceptable this time, but not when students were protesting South African Apartheid? Or Climate change? Or any number of the other divestments that have been successful without us even ever hearing about it?
“Because the Palestinians aren’t worth saving” - what other message are we to take away from this decision by Harvard?
I know it seems weird to think about this now, but back when Mandela was being released, the conservative establishment was calling him a terrorist and insisting that we still needed to support the apartheid government In South Africa against terrorist communists like Mandela.
Reagan and Thatcher were both quite explicit about it.
So this really is nothing new. The Right is always going to back the powerful against the powerless, and will always come down hard on any person or group that challenges the “natural order”.
Here, here. Won’t somebody think of the moderates, and their refined sensibilities? After all, they certainly didn’t personally blow up aid trucks and hospitals in Gaza.
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.” I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
-two excerpts from MLK Jr’s letter from Birmingham jail.
What does that even mean?
I am the high king of Skyrim, you have questioned my decency by making such a statement, woe unto you.