Pun Salad

Let me be clear to any corporation that hasn’t brought their prices back down even as inflation has come down: It’s time to stop the price gouging.

Give American consumers a break.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) November 30, 2023

I especially like the "Readers added context" feature. Here's my "added context": Joe Biden is an idiot.

Or perhaps even more accurately: Whoever writes these tweets for him is an idiot.

Or perhaps still more accurately: The people who write and (undoubtedly) review and approve these tweets are idiots.

But my final take: the people who write, review, and approve these tweets think you are an idiot.

And they could have a point there, I suppose. He got a lot of votes, after all.

Also of note:

• Not the first time I spoke too soon. And it probably won't be the last. Just a couple days ago, I wrote that the fuss over Hamas cheerleading at the University Near Here seemed to have died down. But NHJournal reports on yesterday's outbreak: More Anti-Israel Chants of 'From the River to the Sea' on UNH Campus.

  Just hours after New Hampshire’s attorney general announced an expansion of his office’s Civil Rights Unit in response to an increase in antisemitism, anti-Israel protesters gathered on the UNH campus to repeat the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

  The phrase is viewed as an antisemitic call for the destruction of Israel by the Anti-Defamation League and many members of New Hampshire’s Jewish community.

  No foolin'. Here's the poster used to advertise the event:

  

  Note the map of river-to-sea "Palestine". Appropriately in red. Governor Sununu has called the rhetoric "nothing short of requesting another Holocaust.” And he's right.

• Well, at least we're not Brown. Zach Kessel notes the doin's down in Providence: Brown University President Omits Reference to Jewish Students after Heckling from Pro-Palestinian Activists. Christina Paxson addressed a vigil in support of Brown student Hisham Awartani, who was wounded in a Vermont shooting:

  “We can’t disentangle what happened to Hisham from the broader events in Israel and Palestine that sadly we’ve been dealing with for decades,” Paxson said before being confronted by demonstrators. “Sadly, we can’t control what happens across the world and country. We are powerless to do everything we’d like to do.”

  The next line in the version of the speech Brown published on its website was the following: “At a faculty meeting last month, I said that ‘Every student, faculty and staff member should be able to proudly wear a Star of David or don a keffiyeh on the Brown campus, or to cover their head with a hijab or yarmulke.'”

  However, when Paxson gave the address, and after pro-Palestinian protesters began heckling her, that line changed to “every student, faculty and staff member should be able to proudly don a keffiyeh on the Brown campus, or to cover their head with a hijab,” with no mention of a Star of David or yarmulke.

  Maybe decent Brown alumni—there must be some—should think about diverting their donations to organizations that have some administrative backbone.

• And at least we're not MIT. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. And, down in Cambridge: Misgendering is violence, but violent protests are no big deal.

  The Massachusetts Institute of Technology won’t suspend students who violently disrupted classes in pro-Hamas protests, because that might affect their immigration status.

  But it apparently will take action against students who refer to transgender people by their birth name. A professor who calls a person by their birth name and not their new chosen name commits a “violent act,” according to an LGBT training administered by MIT.

  Some previous Pun Salad mentions of MIT follies here, here, and here.

• Given the previous items… John O. McGinnis's article should be on the reading list of every college administrator and trustee: Addressing the Rot in Our Universities.

  The naïve might wonder why universities need to set up special task forces on antisemitism, when they all have established Offices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, supposedly dedicated to protecting minorities. Do these offices not have ample personnel to take on new issues of the moment? The answer is that most DEI offices cannot be trusted to focus on antisemitism, particularly when it is connected in any way to Israel.

  Many DEI offices prioritize a particular ideology—that of intersectionality—which analyzes how various identities contribute to the construction of the oppressed and oppressor. Through that prism, Jews do not fit into the oppressed class, but rather are placed in the oppressor class of privilege. Indeed, Jews are seen (correctly) as one of the groups that built Western Civilization. And from the identitarian perspective, Western Civilization is at best complicit in the harms that have been visited on various groups—women, Blacks, and gays, among others.

  That an event in Israel furnishes the context for the rise of antisemitism makes it that much harder for DEI offices to become the locus of a response. Part of the DEI outlook is anti-colonialist, and Israel is seen by the left as a colonial power with the Jews taking the lands of the Palestinians.

  Step one:

  Thus, the inability of these offices to address antisemitism should prompt a renewed effort to end their role in college life. Indeed, any trustee who has been appalled by the reaction to the Hamas massacres should take a cue from Roman history. Just as the elder Cato ended every speech with the conclusion that Carthage must be destroyed to safeguard the republic, so should the trustee end every speech with the conclusion that DEI must be administratively dissolved to safeguard the modern university.

  Again, looking at the University Near Here: you can get a hint of the massive (and expensive) DEI sub-bureaucracy on UNH's Diversity, Equity, Access & Inclusion page.

  They got your "Aulbani J. Beauregard Center for Equity, Justice, and Freedom".

  They got your "Civil Rights & Equity Office".

  They got your "Office of Community, Equity & Diversity"

  To be fair, one of those (but only one) is responsible for making sure UNH is adhering to civil rights laws and other regulations. The other two could go away tomorrow and nobody would notice.

• Inescapable conundrums are the best conundrums. Finally, a non-university item. Jeff Jacoby writes on The inescapable conundrum of anonymous speech. Spurred by Nikki Haley's recent demand (and eventual back-down) of anonymity bans on social media sites:

  To a nation that cherishes and upholds free speech, anonymity poses an insoluble conundrum. The harms it makes possible are all too real. From behind the mask of a pseudonym (or no name at all), bad actors are emboldened to spew hatred and abuse, to disseminate lies and disinformation, to whip up bigotry against minorities and incite animosity against those they resent. People lacking the courage to identify themselves will spread ugly rumors, trash reputations, and promote conspiracy theories surreptitiously. And while that has always been the case, the digital revolution has compounded it by orders of magnitude. The nastiness of social media, the vitriol of online comment sections, the viciousness of trolls — they are familiar to just about anyone with a computer and an internet connection.

  But if anonymity can be toxic, it can also be invaluable. It can shield dissidents, reformers, or truth-tellers from the retaliation of the powerful. It allows thoughtful individuals to candidly express views on contentious issues without worrying that their words will maliciously be used to cancel them. It helps counteract the chilling effect caused by our culture's merciless thought police, who have deemed certain opinions unsayable and persecute anyone who deviates.

  But if anonymity can be toxic, it can also be invaluable. It can shield dissidents, reformers, or truth-tellers from the retaliation of the powerful. It allows thoughtful individuals to candidly express views on contentious issues without worrying that their words will maliciously be used to cancel them. It helps counteract the chilling effect caused by our culture's merciless thought police, who have deemed certain opinions unsayable and persecute anyone who deviates.

  After a few dabbles with semi-anonymity on BIX and Usenet decades ago, I made the personal decision to be non-anonymous. I get the arguments that might lead people the other way, though.