DCrockerMay 17, 2024
Dan Gillmor

Such moral cowards running New York University -- ordering student protestors to write phony apologies.

This is right out of the authoritarian playbook -- and it craps on every notion of freedom of expression.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/17/nyregion/nyu-protests-apology-letters.html

You don't have to agree with the protestors' politics. But you should damn well understand that America is in wave of McCarthyism right now.

Why Is N.Y.U. Forcing Protesters to Write Apology Letters?

The university calls it a “restorative practice”; the students call it a coerced confession.

The New York Times
May 17, 2024 at 4:44pmWeb
Show threadpinkdrunkenelephantsMay 17, 2024
@dangillmor "Dear NYU, I am so sorry I wasted my lifetime Pell grant allotment and undergraduate student loans on your diploma mill of a facility. I won't ever do anything that dumb again. Sincerely, A Now Former Student"
Show threadPyperkubMay 17, 2024
@dangillmor I apologize to the Authoritarians for being opposed to authoritarianism.
Show threadToot Ωncommon - SHUT 🇺🇸 DOWNMay 17, 2024
@dangillmor I’d have more sympathy if they had justly advocated for freedom of the Palestinian people instead of shilling for an internationally recognized terrorist organization, lovingly branding these equal oppressors of Gazans as the “Resistance” and whitewashing their genocidal slogans calling for the eradication all non-Muslims from Palestine. Too bad their fancy degrees didn’t teach them that there are more than 2 sides of this story and Tiktok isnt the best place to learn foreign affairs
Show threadlocalzukMay 17, 2024
@opethminded @dangillmor yet you have decided to side with one of those 2 sides... hypocrite.
Show threadToot Ωncommon - SHUT 🇺🇸 DOWNMay 17, 2024
@localzuk @dangillmor
Show threadHelgi CrookehorneMay 17, 2024
@opethminded @dangillmor just a year ago Hamas cheered for Syrian islamist rebels who are also considered resistance by Erdogan, but for Iran only Hamas would be resistance, and Syrian islamists would be "terrorists". And if Hamas or Syrian islamists are asked about ISIS, Iraqi islamists, they say the same as Iran, that ISIS are "terrorists", because brands of alqaeda islamists sometimes hate each other
Show threadToot Ωncommon - SHUT 🇺🇸 DOWNMay 17, 2024
@Helgi @dangillmor Iran is the true enemy of peace across the Middle East. More need to focus on that.
Show threadHelgi CrookehorneMay 18, 2024
@opethminded @dangillmor I even wonder if any peace is possible. When I look into that Lebanese civil war. The stories kinda "the pro-Assad faction of the PLO massacred women and kids in Damour" then later "Assad troops massacred the PLO". Nobody still can't explain why Assad massacred his own supporters for the sake of "fascist LF"
Show threadHelgi CrookehorneMay 18, 2024
@opethminded @dangillmor and Iran seems to support only Shia radical islamists, and they do exception of the likes of Islamist Jihad or Hamas. That doesn't mean Iran wouldn't order Hezbollah to kill their former "allies", as soon as they win. After calling them terrorists. Most likely, unleash their Assad buddies from the SAA. They have experience, on massacring "Palestine refugee camps". I'm sure IRGC view Assad regime as "our fellow Shia, Alawite regime"
Show threadwb x64May 17, 2024

@opethminded @dangillmor it's only an internationally recognized terrorist organization because America and Israel call it so. It's also the democratically elected government of Gaza, in an election America and Israel orchestrated, and an organization that Netanyahu personally cultivated by refusing to work with anyone more moderate.

I'm not shilling for a government or organization, I'm saying "stop bombing civilian tents and starving them."

https://m.jpost.com/Middle-East/Report-Recording-released-of-Clinton-suggesting-rigging-2006-Palestinian-election-471129

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

Report: Recording released of Clinton suggesting rigging 2006 Palestinian election

Chomsky was "taken aback" that “anyone could support the idea—offered by a national political leader, no less—that the US should be in the business of fixing foreign elections.”

The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com
Show threadToot Ωncommon - SHUT 🇺🇸 DOWNMay 17, 2024

@wilbr @dangillmor

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/fight-against-terrorism/sanctions-against-terrorism/#:~:text=The%20EU%20has%20imposed%20sanctions,and%20the%20Palestinian%20Islamic%20Jihad.

#Oops

Show threadCanon LMay 17, 2024
@dangillmor As an alumna I'm not surprised. NYU was always very corporate.
Show threadAdlangxMay 17, 2024
@dangillmor I mean, honesty it's time the university system goes away. It no longer serves students, it just another sink hole of debt.
Show threadAdlangxMay 17, 2024

@dangillmor You can see it as they desperately cling to money.

I got far better instruction for my dollar in community college.

Show threadSeán FenianMay 17, 2024
@dangillmor SHAME!!!
Show threadPatrick Morris MillerMay 17, 2024

@dangillmor

"I apologize. I'm... sorry.

"I'm sorry we had to defend ourselves against an unwarranted attack. I'm sorry that your crew was stupid enough to fire on a station filled with a quarter million civilians, including your own people. And I'm sorry I waited as long as I did before I blew them all straight to Hell!"

Show threadDr. DrangMay 17, 2024
@dangillmor McCarthyism, yes, but also reminiscent of the forced conversion of Jews during [pick a period of history]. Once upon a time, university administrators would have enough attachment to scholarship to recognize irony when they saw it.
Show threadFionas_FatherMay 17, 2024

@dangillmor There is something murky here.

Quite a lot of overlap between those who think it is fine for students and professors to shout down and dis-invite speakers they disagree with (Seinfeld being a recent minor example). Yet find it an outrage that people who have been expressing themselves very clearly are given some limit in how long this can go on.

Seems to me that people of all stripes are pretty inconsistent as to when and to what extent freedom of speech ought to be sacrosanct.

Show threadJo - pièce de résistanceMay 17, 2024
@dangillmor reminds me of the church forcing Joan of Arc to recant her testimony, and lie, to be saved from burning.
She did, then repented of having given false testimony then was burned.
To make someone confess, apologize, pretend as though what they did was wrong, when what they did was right, is an assault on a persons integrity and freedoms.
It is coercive and not justice. It doesn’t want truth. It wants submission.
Show threadHelgi CrookehorneMay 17, 2024
@dangillmor the text was "I apologize for confusing Palestine for islamist insurgents from Hamas who fight Palestine Authority for the purpose installing Islamic State and sharia laws" then note Hamas is designated FTO and war criminals who rape and murder civillians
Show threadwb x64May 17, 2024
@dangillmor or fascism
Show threadGina Intheburg 🇺🇦 🌻 🥥🌴May 17, 2024

@dangillmor

This doesn't sound like "restorative justice" - or any kind of #justice.

It sounds like #NYU is seeking to humiliate & disempower its student body by treating them as if they were naughty 6-year-olds caught playing doctor behind the wood shed.

Shades of Orwell's "1984."

Show threadVenitaMay 17, 2024
@dangillmor They should all give the university AI generated letters.