The Cornell Review reported two weeks ago on the Students for Justice in Palestine’s display of 50 signs on the Arts Quad communicating the usual anti-Israel talking points. Last week the Cornell Daily Sun reported that on the last day of the display’s run–Friday, Oct. 31–a number of the displays had been tampered with, vandalized, and some destroyed.
According to the Sun article, there were actually two instances of tampering, the first of which resulted from a misunderstanding over whether the display was permissible. SJP had university sanctioning to keep the posters up on the quad from Wednesday morning through Friday evening, so the display was allowed. However, it still unknown who returned Thursday night and/or Friday early morning to dislodge and disperse most of the display.
The Sun’s investigative work was thorough, and I thank them for impartially gathering and reporting the facts, along with opinionated quotes from both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli students. But the praise ends here.
On Nov. 10, the Sun ran its staff editorial, entitled “Restricting and Preserving Free on Speech on Campus,” about this situation. In it, the editors strongly and rightfully condemn the display’s vandals: “We at The Sun condemn the destruction of the display, and urge respect for ideas within the University community that are unpopular and contentious.” (Note: Emphasis is mine. See below.)
Once again, good move on the part of the Sun. However, do readers recall the deafening silence of the Sun when it failed to defend one of its own, conservative columnist Julius Kairey, when he was subjected to a smear campaign in the form of anonymously distributed flyers on campus earlier this semester? The Sun produced a staff editorial that made a paltry, oblique reference to the situation and failed to use the word “condemn.” Anyone who had not read a Review article about the entire situation would have no idea why the Sun ran that pithy editorial.
Clearly, the Sun is exclusively interested in defending the free speech rights of select groups and individuals on campus, and only when it knows the general readership will join with its stance. Standing up for everyone—including those you personally disagree with but have a moral duty to defend—is simply too much for the Sun editors to risk or to swallow.
As with the Daily Sun, I am also no fan of SJP at Cornell or anywhere else.
The organization’s members purport to stand for the Palestinian people, but all they really do is hold sparsely-attended rallies that amount to little more than Two Minutes of Hate aimed at Israel and Jews. At these rallies, they often defend Hamas, a terrorist organization whose sole purpose is to eradicate Israel and the Jewish people. They vainly try to draw similarities between bona fide strife faced by those living within Palestinian territories with their own so-called tortured existences here on the Hill. One day last year they took over the Student Assembly in an act of political theater so bizarre and pointless it was like something out of a Samuel Beckett play.
Worse, at New York University earlier this year, SJP students slipped fake “eviction notices” to Jewish students living in dorm rooms. In August, Temple University SJP-ers assaulted a pro-Israel Jewish student.
Despite all of this, I subscribe to the wisdom of Voltaire: “I may not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.” (Caveat: except when you go from speech to assaulting people, in which case you should be criminally prosecuted.)
The students who vandalized the SJP display, if caught, deserve swift and exacting punishment. Free speech is one of the fundamental cornerstones of American free society, and no matter who is the perpetrator and who is the victim, justice should be blind and justice should be dealt.
