Chicago Way w/John Kass: The ‘ideological tug-of-war’ on campus is a threatening reality

Chicago Way w/John Kass (12/11/23): Joining John Kass & Jeff Carlin this week is John’s younger brother Nicholas Kass, a retired American diplomat with over 30-years of experience advising the most powerful leaders in the world on matters pertaining to the Eastern Mediterranean, to discuss why thoughtful foreign policy leadership is so important and how to spot the pretenders. Plus, what happens when reality comes knocking for the Ivy League?

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Comments 2

  1. John: As usual a very thoughtful, and thought provoking analysis by your brother.

    Well in terms of free speech I must say I disagree. First, these three institutions – Penn, Harvard, MIT – are private institutions. So the First does not legally apply. But if one does invoke the First – as the university presidents seemed to do – then I disagree with Nick. And I say this as a Jew. Nick in my opinion is incorrect in what he says about “genocide” not falling under a “protected” category. Under the First, “hate speech” is protected. The problem here of course is that at Harvard, Penn, and MIT, “free speech” is only “free” for one side: those who support the typical Marxist socialist agenda. Speech involving “microaggressions”, “improper” use of pronouns, implications that gender is solely biologically determined, are all punishable offenses under the speech codes at those universities. The height of hypocrisy is the long term legal attacks by Penn itself, on the conservative legal Penn scholar Amy Wax, who faces termination for questioning the typical woke agenda as exists at Penn … typical “free speech for me, but not for thee.” The irony here is that Prof Wax and her hate speech (or so her invited guests have so been accused) are prosecuted by the university, but the hateful speech of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators are not. So the hypocrisy here is the Presidents of these institutions when under attack, wrap themselves in the blanket of the First, but for decades totally ignoring the First. It is clear Nick and I disagree with what is protected and what is not protected speech under the First, despite almost 100 years of supreme court jurisprudence.

    As far as Israel goes, I agree with Nick, this is extraordinarily complex and tragic. The question I have is this: what would Nick have suggested Israel have done after such an horrendous attack on Oct 7 … an attack resulting in more casualties than all prior wars put together? I would like to remind Nick – I am sure he is aware – that not only does Hamas have the overwhelming support of civilians (according to prior polls) in Gaza – and uses a strategy to purposely maximize their own civilian deaths – but Hamas’ ultimate goal as explicitly stated was and is the destruction of Israel. So under those very existential conditions (for Israel), what would have been the appropriate (?rational) response, if not all out war?

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