I mean this "analysis" which is more of an emotional call out fails to investigate the premise that perhaps people should not use shell institutions to link themselves to wider causes. I think doxxing is bad. I don't really have an opinion on Bill's broader premise which is also, as you've noted, tainted by emotion. However, many of your fellow peers were also implicated in statements that they didn't necessarily embody. Individual signatories would have the added benefit of confirming true ideological parity; maybe that's good, maybe that's bad for the chilling effect related reasons etc. That's sort of the true debate. People do indeed hire on ideological grounds all the time across the service sector. I can understand why a Palestinian manager would not necessarily feel comfortable hiring a militant Zionist especially in smaller institutions. I don't have a stance here (still working it out) but I guess my point is to assert that the "moral weakness?" approach isn't entirely compelling.
Also, what in the world does the 2018 Ingraham thing have to do with anything else? If anything, they are kind of taking opposite approaches. Laura - incorrectly I should emphasize - asserted that athletes lack the competence to be activists. Bill doesn't think activists lack capacity; he wants to effectively black list people that he sees as competent from his firm. Different premises. Strange pile on that for the aforementioned reason I do not think makes sense.
I appreciate you taking the time to engage with the writing. Your criticisms of my style are not unfounded, but I'm not a political analyst (nor have I ever branded myself as one). I write commentary to provoke thought, and if making people feel through my essays is provocative in that way, I'll wear it proudly. More than anything, I'm a social critic who writes think pieces.
To your point on my failure to investigate the whole 'shell institutions' premise, I would pose a failure on your part to acknowledge the centralist nature of these groups. Undoubtedly, there are members of the student organizations that did not agree with said organizations' decision to sign on to the open letter. That certainly doesn't mean that the majority of those members disagreed; I would posit quite the opposite (if you examine the previous/ideological revealed preferences of many of those groups, or if you examine that their elected/representative boards were the ones who decided to). In fact, the vast supermajority of these groups did not ultimately pull their signatures, and the ones who did were by and large pre-professional groups who wanted to protect their members' material prospects. It is disingenuous to portray my peers as wrongfully implicated.
On the contrary, I think Bill Ackman's actions prove exactly why people need these 'shell institutions'. There is power in an unidentifiable-yet-critical mass of people advocating for a cause. Especially in the context of such a power imbalance (where the Ackmans of the world can ruin students' lives and employment, c.f. Ryna Workman), the negative cost of activism is unfairly raised. Chilling effect aside, it's just not ethically intuitive to force young people to pick between activism and employment (many would pick either/or). But all of that is beside the point, because I reject the idea that this is somehow the 'true debate'. Whether or not petition signatures should be individual or collective seems extremely minor when issues like billionaires stifling activism on college campuses is at stake, at least in orders of magnitude. Perhaps you could enlighten me on why that really matters at all.
To your point on hiring on ideological grounds being commonplace — this is tautological. The piece implicitly argues why hiring on overly-ideological grounds is bad. Explicitly, it argues that within the context of privilege, rich members of a dominant culture ought not blacklist marginalized people from employment for oppositional political views. If you really believed in what you just argued (and were principally consistent), you'd have to justify a rich Afrikaner blacklisting Zulu protestors from the labor market. Seems like a pretty shitty thing when you examine the underlying premise.
To your criticism of the Ingraham bit, I concede that it's not 1:1. But your counterargument seems rather pedantic. The analogy is just two extremely privileged people policing the ability of marginalized groups to protest and organize. But I am willing to admit that it was a rhetorical device. Again, I am a commentator and columnist, not an analyst (I unfortunately do not have the temperament of an academic). Perhaps an analogy to Texans owner Bob McNair — who famously said that athletes who protested might be out of a job — would be more appropriate?
Anyway, I again appreciate your engagement. I'm always down for a good back-and-forth.
1. You can't actually assess the level of true homogenous thought insofar as there are no individual signatories. I never claimed that a majority or any discernible proportion of students were implicated. It's not disingenuous to portray some ( emphasize on some which is what I claimed) of your peers as wrongfully implicated because that indeed happened (see Danielle Mikaelian).
2. "Whether or not petition signatures should be individual or collective seems extremely minor when issues like billionaires stifling activism on college campuses is at stake" These are directly interlinked issues; that's kind of the whole point. If there were individual signatories, there logically wouldn't be an impetus for the tweet. Like I've stated before, I have no opinion besides doxxing is weird and terrible.
3. ... "dominant culture"... what "dominant culture" are you referring to? Ackman isn't Israeli. So what's the dominant culture you're referring to???
And I didn't argue anything. My exact words were "I can understand." I can understand because it's a super emotional issue of global significance and I can discern why it may be difficult to compartmentalize the issue within the workplace. No argument there, just empathy.
5. Definitely Bob. If your goal is to be an astute "social critic" you should choose the analogies with precision.
On 1. Lacking 100% certainty != lacking certainty. Again, the vast supermajority of organizations remained signatories despite threats. Of the few that withdrew (Amnesty, AOD, etc.), knowing their past positions, I think it's a safe assumption that it was not because they no longer stood with Palestine. At that point, you are nitpicking not only at the vast minority of groups, but at the vast minority of people within those minority of groups (and thus nitpicking at a non-issue). Re: Danielle Mikaelian, I find her statement extremely disingenuous and don't think it's a coincidence she reneged the day after the Winston & Strawn announcement. To blindly accept that a Harvard J.D. candidate didn't read a statement she'd be a signatory to is willfully ignorant. We adjudicate social-ethical issues on the majority case and not the outlier.
On 2. It's really not the whole point. Just because one thing is temporally prior to another doesn't assign it significance. Your response also has major internal tension. You say that 'if there were individual signatories, there logically wouldn't be an impetus for the tweet'. Yeah, because you'd just be handing Bill Ackman what he asks for in the tweet, and you remove the need for him to ask. Also, those students would all get doxxed, just like the board members of the groups that signed did on four different websites. You can't then say in the next breath that you think doxxing is terrible. Clearly, individual signatures aren't an option, and thus not a very large part of this discourse.
On 3. I'm referring to Zionism — a group Ackman belongs to (I know he's not Israeli dude, I'm not a conspiracy theorist). Culturally, Zionist narratives are hugely dominant. There's a reason Joe Biden, as the most powerful person in the free world, is 'unequivocally backing Israel'. Even I, as a Korean American with no ethnic stake in the conflict, believe in Zionism to a substantial degree. Before you go off implying sinister motives, take a deep breath.
Hello, I'm responding personally here. The statement was never shown to me so I could never read it. It's clearly documented. I'd appreciate you removing my name from this thread. My actions have been misconstrued for months and I frankly do not deserve it considering I was out of town and there was no vote/meeting/formal discussion over this.
It's not fair to me that higher up board members pushed a statement through without consulting me and it's leading to individuals doubting my character. Thanks in advance.
this is so incredibly well-written while also acknowledge the nuance of both sides on the issue. i feel that a lot of articles (especially prevalent on social media) miss that these days.
i wonder how common it is for bigcorpa to blackball people based on their beliefs like this, double the abhorrence when the targets are young college students trying to create lives for themselves. how can we improve our country when the people in power focus on eliminating free discourse instead of improving it?
thank you for writing this! it was a real pleasure to read 👏 so excited for more.
Fantastic analysis. We've been dealing with almost the exact same issue here on Penn's campus and it's so disheartening to see the moment the money disappears, the already-close-to-nonexistent backbones of our admin do too. Solidarity w/ Palestine always!!
I mean this "analysis" which is more of an emotional call out fails to investigate the premise that perhaps people should not use shell institutions to link themselves to wider causes. I think doxxing is bad. I don't really have an opinion on Bill's broader premise which is also, as you've noted, tainted by emotion. However, many of your fellow peers were also implicated in statements that they didn't necessarily embody. Individual signatories would have the added benefit of confirming true ideological parity; maybe that's good, maybe that's bad for the chilling effect related reasons etc. That's sort of the true debate. People do indeed hire on ideological grounds all the time across the service sector. I can understand why a Palestinian manager would not necessarily feel comfortable hiring a militant Zionist especially in smaller institutions. I don't have a stance here (still working it out) but I guess my point is to assert that the "moral weakness?" approach isn't entirely compelling.
Also, what in the world does the 2018 Ingraham thing have to do with anything else? If anything, they are kind of taking opposite approaches. Laura - incorrectly I should emphasize - asserted that athletes lack the competence to be activists. Bill doesn't think activists lack capacity; he wants to effectively black list people that he sees as competent from his firm. Different premises. Strange pile on that for the aforementioned reason I do not think makes sense.
I appreciate you taking the time to engage with the writing. Your criticisms of my style are not unfounded, but I'm not a political analyst (nor have I ever branded myself as one). I write commentary to provoke thought, and if making people feel through my essays is provocative in that way, I'll wear it proudly. More than anything, I'm a social critic who writes think pieces.
To your point on my failure to investigate the whole 'shell institutions' premise, I would pose a failure on your part to acknowledge the centralist nature of these groups. Undoubtedly, there are members of the student organizations that did not agree with said organizations' decision to sign on to the open letter. That certainly doesn't mean that the majority of those members disagreed; I would posit quite the opposite (if you examine the previous/ideological revealed preferences of many of those groups, or if you examine that their elected/representative boards were the ones who decided to). In fact, the vast supermajority of these groups did not ultimately pull their signatures, and the ones who did were by and large pre-professional groups who wanted to protect their members' material prospects. It is disingenuous to portray my peers as wrongfully implicated.
On the contrary, I think Bill Ackman's actions prove exactly why people need these 'shell institutions'. There is power in an unidentifiable-yet-critical mass of people advocating for a cause. Especially in the context of such a power imbalance (where the Ackmans of the world can ruin students' lives and employment, c.f. Ryna Workman), the negative cost of activism is unfairly raised. Chilling effect aside, it's just not ethically intuitive to force young people to pick between activism and employment (many would pick either/or). But all of that is beside the point, because I reject the idea that this is somehow the 'true debate'. Whether or not petition signatures should be individual or collective seems extremely minor when issues like billionaires stifling activism on college campuses is at stake, at least in orders of magnitude. Perhaps you could enlighten me on why that really matters at all.
To your point on hiring on ideological grounds being commonplace — this is tautological. The piece implicitly argues why hiring on overly-ideological grounds is bad. Explicitly, it argues that within the context of privilege, rich members of a dominant culture ought not blacklist marginalized people from employment for oppositional political views. If you really believed in what you just argued (and were principally consistent), you'd have to justify a rich Afrikaner blacklisting Zulu protestors from the labor market. Seems like a pretty shitty thing when you examine the underlying premise.
To your criticism of the Ingraham bit, I concede that it's not 1:1. But your counterargument seems rather pedantic. The analogy is just two extremely privileged people policing the ability of marginalized groups to protest and organize. But I am willing to admit that it was a rhetorical device. Again, I am a commentator and columnist, not an analyst (I unfortunately do not have the temperament of an academic). Perhaps an analogy to Texans owner Bob McNair — who famously said that athletes who protested might be out of a job — would be more appropriate?
Anyway, I again appreciate your engagement. I'm always down for a good back-and-forth.
Quick thoughts:
1. You can't actually assess the level of true homogenous thought insofar as there are no individual signatories. I never claimed that a majority or any discernible proportion of students were implicated. It's not disingenuous to portray some ( emphasize on some which is what I claimed) of your peers as wrongfully implicated because that indeed happened (see Danielle Mikaelian).
2. "Whether or not petition signatures should be individual or collective seems extremely minor when issues like billionaires stifling activism on college campuses is at stake" These are directly interlinked issues; that's kind of the whole point. If there were individual signatories, there logically wouldn't be an impetus for the tweet. Like I've stated before, I have no opinion besides doxxing is weird and terrible.
3. ... "dominant culture"... what "dominant culture" are you referring to? Ackman isn't Israeli. So what's the dominant culture you're referring to???
And I didn't argue anything. My exact words were "I can understand." I can understand because it's a super emotional issue of global significance and I can discern why it may be difficult to compartmentalize the issue within the workplace. No argument there, just empathy.
5. Definitely Bob. If your goal is to be an astute "social critic" you should choose the analogies with precision.
But really... what's the "dominant culture"...?
More quick thoughts:
On 1. Lacking 100% certainty != lacking certainty. Again, the vast supermajority of organizations remained signatories despite threats. Of the few that withdrew (Amnesty, AOD, etc.), knowing their past positions, I think it's a safe assumption that it was not because they no longer stood with Palestine. At that point, you are nitpicking not only at the vast minority of groups, but at the vast minority of people within those minority of groups (and thus nitpicking at a non-issue). Re: Danielle Mikaelian, I find her statement extremely disingenuous and don't think it's a coincidence she reneged the day after the Winston & Strawn announcement. To blindly accept that a Harvard J.D. candidate didn't read a statement she'd be a signatory to is willfully ignorant. We adjudicate social-ethical issues on the majority case and not the outlier.
On 2. It's really not the whole point. Just because one thing is temporally prior to another doesn't assign it significance. Your response also has major internal tension. You say that 'if there were individual signatories, there logically wouldn't be an impetus for the tweet'. Yeah, because you'd just be handing Bill Ackman what he asks for in the tweet, and you remove the need for him to ask. Also, those students would all get doxxed, just like the board members of the groups that signed did on four different websites. You can't then say in the next breath that you think doxxing is terrible. Clearly, individual signatures aren't an option, and thus not a very large part of this discourse.
On 3. I'm referring to Zionism — a group Ackman belongs to (I know he's not Israeli dude, I'm not a conspiracy theorist). Culturally, Zionist narratives are hugely dominant. There's a reason Joe Biden, as the most powerful person in the free world, is 'unequivocally backing Israel'. Even I, as a Korean American with no ethnic stake in the conflict, believe in Zionism to a substantial degree. Before you go off implying sinister motives, take a deep breath.
The rest of the stuff I'll take in stride.
Hello, I'm responding personally here. The statement was never shown to me so I could never read it. It's clearly documented. I'd appreciate you removing my name from this thread. My actions have been misconstrued for months and I frankly do not deserve it considering I was out of town and there was no vote/meeting/formal discussion over this.
It's not fair to me that higher up board members pushed a statement through without consulting me and it's leading to individuals doubting my character. Thanks in advance.
this is so incredibly well-written while also acknowledge the nuance of both sides on the issue. i feel that a lot of articles (especially prevalent on social media) miss that these days.
i wonder how common it is for bigcorpa to blackball people based on their beliefs like this, double the abhorrence when the targets are young college students trying to create lives for themselves. how can we improve our country when the people in power focus on eliminating free discourse instead of improving it?
thank you for writing this! it was a real pleasure to read 👏 so excited for more.
Berkeley would eat this up
Fantastic analysis. We've been dealing with almost the exact same issue here on Penn's campus and it's so disheartening to see the moment the money disappears, the already-close-to-nonexistent backbones of our admin do too. Solidarity w/ Palestine always!!
Based