I’m embarrassed that I didn’t hear about this until last night, especially since my husband attends the very campus in question. (In my defense, I was in the mountains for most of last week.) In response to Muslim students’ protest* of Israeli ambassador Michael Oren’s visit to campus, the UC Irvine Muslim Student Union has been suspended for one year.
Whether the students’ choice of direct action was wise is a debate of its own – and one that I’m not interested in having on this thread – but the university needs to realize the deeper ramifications of its decision. It’s almost impossible to imagine a Jewish or Christian group being punished this way for the actions of Jewish or Christian students; I’m assuming that the Muslim protesters were members of the MSU, but it must be noted that they didn’t act on behalf of the organization. The message the university is sending, whether it means to or not, isn’t that some forms of protest are unacceptable. The message it’s sending is that Islam is not as legitimate as other religions at UCI.
The MSU is appealing the decision; check their website for updates.
Via the Debate Link.
ETA: According to the LA Times, the office of student housing claims that the MSU organized the protest with plans to deny it later. At this point the evidence seems shaky, though.
*David Schraub points out the following in the comments:
The MSU was not suspended for “protesting” Ambassador Oren’s appearance. They were suspended for disrupting the appearance — trying to make it impossible for Ambassador Oren to present at all via, in essence, continually shouting him down. Particularly since there are many out there who suspect that any protest or critique against Israelis or Israeli policies will be met with “muzzling”, this is not a trivial distinction, and is extremely important to make it. Students should be absolutely free to protest, but universities have every right to prevent actual disruption of educational events.
What does Islam have to do with it?
If I replace “Islamic” with “vegetarian” in all of those stories, I come up with something noncontroversial. Students act up and violate the school’s rules, school clamps down on those student’s organization(s), students are unhappy. Far from this never happening to a Jewish or Christian group, I am sure it happens to Jewish and Christian groups all the time, if and when their members engage in similar behavior.
Frankly, student groups that disrupt speakers in this fashion are fascist and assholish, and anything in terms of discipline short of being broken on the wheel is perfectly fine. If you want to shut down discussion and use thuggish means to control the political discourse, do it on your own dime, not the university’s.
Since this post used my own as the original source, I feel obliged to point out that I think it is misleading in at least two respects.
1) The MSU was not suspended for “protesting” Ambassador Oren’s appearance. They were suspended for disrupting the appearance — trying to make it impossible for Ambassador Oren to present at all via, in essence, continually shouting him down. Particularly since there are many out there who suspect that any protest or critique against Israelis or Israeli policies will be met with “muzzling”, this is not a trivial distinction, and is extremely important to make it. Students should be absolutely free to protest, but universities have every right to prevent actual disruption of educational events.
2) This is reflected in your update, but it is worth reiterating: the investigatory body specifically found that the MSU did, in fact, plan and coordinate the disruption. Obviously, that factual determination is challengeable, but it was the verdict of the fact-finder and they did present considerable evidence in support of that finding. See the decision letter at pp. 6-7, findings of fact para. 5. I wouldn’t characterize this evidence as ironclad, but it is a fair flight above “shaky”.
This doesn’t mean the UCI decision is immune from criticism. One could critique the gravity of the punishment, for example, or allege that the decisionmaker was biased. One could also critique the adjudicator’s findings of fact, for example, by claiming that evidence cited (e.g., the statement “we all go through with this together insha’Allah ta’alah together as one MSU.”) is fabricated or out of context, or is insufficient to justify the conclusions given. The last tactic is somewhat unpersuasive to me, because even if one thinks that the facts as presented in the decision letter don’t require one to find that the MSU coordinated the disruption, it seems hard to argue that the evidence is insufficient to allow a rational fact-finder to make that inference.
So what I would say is that, assuming the findings of fact (for example, that, e.g., the “as one MSU” statement really was made) are accurate, then the factual conclusion (that the MSU coordinated the disruption) is sufficiently supported by the evidence so as to be a rational conclusion from the presented facts. And insofar as the conclusion that the MSU coordinated a disruption of an official educational event at UCI is warranted, it is likewise warranted that the MSU as an organization should be liable for some punishment. What I can’t say (because I don’t have the relevant comparative facts) is whether or not the punishment imposed was excessive or not. But the decision letter does seem to amply support the notion that the MSU a) was responsible, as an organization for a b) punishable wrongdoing (disruption of an educational event), which is very, very different from being scapegoated because some of its members happened to be “protesting” in the wrong way.
David,
1) That’s a fair point.
2) Thanks for pointing out the details in the decision letter. I was going by the quote in the LA Times, which made me wonder how closely the group’s plans to “send the speaker a message” and “‘develop a game plan’ to disrupt Oren’s speech” resembled what actually happened (after all, “disrupt” can refer to a wide spectrum of actions). I stand by my main point in my post – that other groups probably would not have been punished in this way – but your points are enlightening.
Sigh… how do I put this bluntly but not rudely…
Establishing an authoritarian government and conquering other nations for the heck of it = fascism
Disrupting a speech != facism
This needs to be remembered. Fascism was a real, evil thing, and comparing it to what the students did is just plain wrong.
Incipient fascism, or proto-fascism then, however you like. It’s not full-Nazi or nothing, Ben. There are gradients.
I agree that the disruption called for some form of discipline. My gut reaction is that suspending the organization for a full year is a little extreme, though.
And no, while their behaviour was rude and juvenile, it can’t fairly be called ‘fascist’, which suggests holding a position of power over others, which this group didn’t. A university administration might act somewhat ‘fascistly’, I suppose, but not a student group which is subject to various higher levels of power.
They stopped someone from being able to speak. That’s power.
Proto-fascism is at least a less offensive term, I’ll concede. And yet,…
What are the actual effects of this suspension? None of the links have been helpful in figuring that out? My guess is that it would involve no offical UC funds going to the organization; that sounds like a fair consequence.
The worrisome aspect is that some of the students were actually arrested for what happened, which is going far too far. If anything is proto-fascistic, this fits the description more.
Julie — thank you for your response, and I agree there are important questions about whether other groups would have been treated the same way (that goes into some other context with regard to UCI, which I’ll discuss below). I would appreciate, however, if you update the post proper to clarify that the punishment is based off the disruption, and not the protest, because the distinction is very important, and not everybody reads the comments section :-).
I think the term “fascist” distracts from the issue at hand, and I’d urge that we drop it. There’s no reason to get sidetracked by it — I can’t fathom what it productively adds to the discussion. We agree that the students who disrupted did something wrong and worthy of punishment, and we are unsure how tied in the students are to the MSU qua the MSU. Neither our agreement nor our disagreement is dependent on whether we call the actions “fascist” or not.
So the reason why I can imagine that UCI brought the hammer down relatively hard on the MSU is that UCI has been a flashpoint for some time on this and related issues. It is no accident it got a long section in the United States Commission on Civil Rights; report on campus anti-Semitism, and I believe it is the only campus to be subjected to a specific complaint registered to the USCCR for condoning an anti-Semitic environment whereby at least some Jewish students said they feared for their physical safety on campus. Some of these issues are directly tied to the MSU, and others aren’t, some of it can be grouped as (extremely vitriolic) criticism of Israel and some of it I think clearly crosses the line into anti-Semitism (I think Nazi comparisons are per se anti-Semitic, and that regrettably covers a lot of ground here, though it isn’t the only violation) — but because of this history I can see the administration seeing this instance as being the straw that broke the camel’s back, and that might have influenced them to impose a harsher sanction that one would otherwise expect in the abstract.
David – no problem, I’ll update it momentarily.
I do agree with you that previous anti-Semitic and borderline anti-Semitic incidents at UCI probably influenced this. Of course, UCI has also hosted Ann Coulter and David Horowitz (who made over-the-top racist remarks during his talk, such as purportedly calling all notable figures in Mexican history “thugs”). It seems like the College Republicans can get away with a lot more than the MSU.
I wonder how the school treats fraternities that violate anti-hazing rules? That would be a more interesting comparison to me for how it treats a privilaged group.
Appreciated, Julie.
I was trying to wrap my head around the counterfactual “what if other groups did this”, and was having a lot of trouble. At first, I thought the reason was that I couldn’t imagine a pure counterfactual where there had been this persistent history by another group. But I don’t think that’s it. What actually makes this decision so jarring is that I think it was surprising here too. Just or unjust, the UCI decision was a bold stroke, and university administrators are not known for their boldness. The reason I have trouble imagining UCI doing this to another group is that I’m still pretty shocked they did it to this group, and I’d be more shocked still if the sentence wasn’t mitigated on appeal.
I don’t think it is accurate to say that the “College Republicans can get away with a lot more than the MSU.” Both, it seems, “got away” with bringing avowedly racist speakers onto campus. The MSU crossed a further line by, and were punished for, trying to disrupt another group’s event — I haven’t heard of the CRs doing anything similar. At worst, it seems like the CRs get away with the exact same behavior that the MSU previously “got away” with, but which may have influenced (consciously or no) the punishment given to MSU for a subsequent, more flagrant breach of the rules.
I am interested in the discussion between David and Julie, but I don’t think David’s parsing of the decision based on whether a reasonable fact-finder COULD find certain facts is useful. That is an inquiry that is sometimes necessary and relevant for appellate judges to undertake when reviewing a trial court or jury verdict. But this is a school disciplinary proceeding, and I can’t imagine why the initial fact finder’s decision would or should be given the same deference, especially by people discussing it on a blog. I mean, saying “if this were a jury verdict and if I were an appellate judge, I would uphold it” doesn’t really add anything to the conversation. We’re not appellate judges, and it’s not a jury verdict. We can argue about the facts without getting into a discussion of what a reasonable fact finder could conclude. As a lawyer, I think it makes the discussion overly technical and takes away from the main issue of justice/injustice for a group that espouses a viewpoint usually marginalized in the United States.
I think it makes the discussion overly technical and takes away from the main issue of justice/injustice for a group that espouses a viewpoint usually marginalized in the United States.
Justice or injustice may hinge on the technical question.
Nor has their been the first piece of evidence presented that indicates any type of viewpoint discrimination, so bringing in the supposed marginalization of that viewpoint seems premature.
It has been alleged that a Jewish or Christian (or presumably secular) group at UCI that engaged in the same behavior would not have received the same punishment. Is there any evidence to support this? Are there instances of other student groups disrupting speakers, effectively shutting down an event, and not being similarly punished, at this campus/institution?
If there is no such evidence, then the original post would seem to boil down to “student group does something bad, gets punished like everyone else, earth continues to turn”.
Perhaps I should add that in my experience, invoking legal standards of proof tends to be used to de-focus a discussion of injustices suffered by individuals away from the individual and away from the emtional response elicited in the reader by the injustice suffered. The discussion is turned into to an abstract discussion of legal principle, leading to an easier time defending the action.
Emily @15, that’s not really what David is doing. The issue you seem to be referring to is that there were certain findings of fact. We can argue about whether those were correct, but it’s not as though they were invented or as if UCI just decided that if a bunch of Muslim students were disruptive then QED the campus Muslim organization should be punished.
Vidya, if you’re willing to say, do you identify as female, male, or neither? I’m trying to run down what percentage of our comments are by men, and I know most of the other handles.
I think there are two reasons generally to defer to the original fact-finder, with varying implications for the discussion on this thread.
The first reason, which I’d label “technical”, is simply that someone has to be the final adjudicator of fact, and there are good reasons why we may not want to have factual disputes relitigated over and over again in a legal or (in this case) quasi-legal forum. Avoiding infinite recursion matters. Precisely because the UCI process is quasi-legal, they may choose to organize it differently than a standard legal process to allow more substantive review of factual findings, and that’s fine (I don’t know what their process is), but the point that at some point factual findings have to be accepted as at least presumptively valid is, I think, solid. While I agree that this concern is of limited import in a thread like this, it does have some relevance to our discussion insofar as the subtext to “UCI made an unjust ruling” is “and they should overturn it”, at which point we really can’t duck away from systemic concerns like that.
Beyond that, though, I think there are solid epistemic reasons for providing some deference to a fact-finding body, and that’s very relevant to this thread. Generally, an entity specifically tasked to be a fact-finder is more deeply enmeshed in the factual record than either a reviewing body or the peanut gallery (which is what all of us are); it probably knows the record better than we do, is aware of nuances that we might have missed, conducted interviews which we weren’t present for, etc., all of which should theoretically give it an epistemic advantage over other commentators. Again, this doesn’t mean we should stand in silenced awe before The Facts, but it does counsel some deference amongst outside commentators, and I think that’s valid.
Even if the deference level isn’t “could a rational factfinder conceivable conclude X based on the available evidence”, I think it still should do some work. And the evidence presented in the decision letter is not exactly teetering on the borderline — I agreed earlier that it wasn’t ironclad, but it is considerable and compelling, not something I have to stretch my brain to “conceive” of the conclusion drawn. Indeed, I somewhat meant this observation to point in the opposite direction — not that we should accept a weak but plausible conclusion out of “deference” to the fact-finder, but that we should be hesistant to reject stories alternative to the fact-finder’s conclusion, even if “plausible” unless there is something in the record that renders them considerably more plausible than the conclusion drawn, and that really isn’t the case here.
Finally, I think we need to problematize at least a little the claim that a better stance would be to focus on the “injustice” being suffered. I’m not sure what that means or implies in this context. Particularly since we are dealing not with “the United States” as an undifferentiated mass, but a college campus generally and UCI particularly, I don’t even think we can speak with absolute certainty about who is generally “marginalized” here (Cf. my comments @9). On the one hand, the MSU allegedly suffered an injustice if either (a) it did not, in fact, organize/coordinate the disruption or (b) it was punished more severely than was warranted. On the other hand, the Jewish student groups also have a colorable claim of injustice insofar as their events are being disrupted, as well as an injustice if the governing authorities (the UCI administration) refuses to step in and protect them from the illegitmate predations of other groups, which is creating a hostile and unsustainable environment for them on campus. I worry that when “injustice” is deployed like this, it becomes less a tool for achieving justice amongst disparate and differentiated groups and claims, and more a partisan cudgel for elevating certain types of justice-claims and erasing others, greatly flattening what should be a complicated and multi-faceted question.
That’s true. Again, though, I wonder if another group would be suspended for disrupting a speaker, but obviously any answer to that question would be conjecture (unless someone has an example?).
I should add that I am not entirely unsympathetic to Emily’s point (that the turn to formalism can act to suppress marginalized stories). But at the same time, often formalism is critically important to give marginalized groups any protection at all, particularly when the overarching culture or communal norms cannot be relied upon to provide protection or security on their own. I talked about this in my guest-blog stint in my Rights and Left post, and I think it might be illuminating here as well.
@Madolin17
sorry to be OT but can you do a special breakout for comments made by men named RonF within a 1 hour block in the same thread that all repeat points he’s made many many times before?
heh. No, but Ron–can you try to keep it to no more than three comment sin a row in the same thread? I mean, if you have to make four, you have to make four. But recently, you made _five_ in one thread, and it’s just… it’s kind of like shouting in a crowded room, you know? You end up sort of dominating the conversation rather than participating in it.
ETA: trending toward two or one would be even better.
Agreed. Sorry.
Eh, I think the issue presented in the post was – was this response by the university fair to the MSU? The fact that a fact-finding inquiry was done is relevant, but we all know that fact-finding inquiries can be fair or unfair depending on the circumstances (I seem to recall a lot of arguments on whether the Goldstone report was worthy of reliance (aka “fair”) though it obviously involved lots of in-depth fact-finding). The degree to which fact-finding is persuasive depends entirely on one’s faith in and respect for the fact-finding body. Perhaps those more familiar with UCI can speak to its record in this regard but personally, as a general matter, I have very little faith in or respect for university fact-finding/disciplinary bodies.
I quite agree that questions over whether the fact-finder was (for example) biased, or was given incomplete information, or was applying legal standards that are unfair in the first place, are perfectly relevant and important questions, which can be broken out of the question of deference. In fact, I made this distinction explicitly in my original comment @2: “One could . . . critique the adjudicator’s findings of fact, for example, by claiming that evidence cited . . . is insufficient to justify the conclusions given. The last tactic is somewhat unpersuasive to me” because of the deference argument (emphasis added). I only made the deference point with regards to a claim of evidence insufficiency — I explicitly excluded other angles of attack (e.g., bias, out of context, omitted evidence, etc.). And, not to divert, but in part I made that caveat precisely because the Goldstone Commission taught us some valuable lessons in that respect.
But thus far, there hasn’t been any evidence or even claims that the fact-finder was biased, or incomplete evidence was given, or anything like that. The only argument put out against the finder is a straight-forward “the evidence supporting the conclusion you made is shaky”, and that flies right into the wheelhouse of the pro-deference arguments. If you have arguments supporting a claim of bias, or evidence that the finder didn’t consider, by all means bring them forward, because those are really important things to know and would defeat pro-deference arguments. But I think kicking up dust about the potential</i< prospect of bias or the potential prospect of unpresented evidence is not particularly useful or productive.
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