Demanding Peace and Justice for Tutu Whistleblower

The hypocracy runs much deeper at UST I couldn’t agree more with the observations above.  If anyone should have lost their job on this incident, it certainly should have been Dease.  But what upsets me even more is the vain quest of trying to find some moral or religious basis for any of these university decisions.

To me, the starkest hypocrisy of all is in the decision to hire and retain Robert Delahunty as professor in their law school.

Delahunty, along with Berkeley’s John Yoo, was the author of the infamous “torture memo” that totally altered American actions toward those captured during the war on terror.  Fundamentally, what the memo did was to create massive loopholes in the prohibition against torture, with the goal of shielding the president and others against future trials for war crimes.  It did this by creating a new category of “illegal combatant” with the hope that those persons might be denied the protections of the Geneva Conventions.  And it did this by redefining torture itself, saying that it involved only the level of pain equal to that of major organ failure proceeding death.

In other words, we changed the rules so they don’t apply to those we capture.  Then we changed the very definition of torture so that it doesn’t exist any more.

Does St. Thomas reflect its Christian values when it hires such a person to teach constitutional law?  Aren’t the actions which Robert Delahunty would allow also “hurtful” to those subjected to them?  Does this teaching conform to the Golden Rule?

There have been more than 100 investigations into deaths under U.S. interrogation.  Abu Ghraib photos are known around the world, icons representing an arrogant empire that has lost its moral compass.  In years to come, I believe that the use of torture will be held up as the single most important reason why the United States lost the wider war on terror.  By torturing, we became the terrorists.

Why does St. Thomas then continue to punish Chris Toffolo, while it supports the torture memo guy?

To consider this episode as one that justifies the word “whistleblower”

Here’s the short version. Tutu’s 2002 speech that gets a lot of focus contains this passage:

“People are scared in this country [the U.S.] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? This is God’s world. For goodness sake, this is God’s world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.”

What’d disgusting? Those words, for one thing, for a variety of reasons. 

And the fact that most libersals believe it’s some kind of intellectual crime to be sufficiently offended by those words, whether one is Jewish or not, that reconsidering an invitation to speak seems a legitimate option for any private institution.

Even more, the fact that the left evidently sees heroism in the words.

It’s a version of a constant: the left does not accept that any of its utterances can ever be considered that offensive. It’s not a conceptual possibility.

Democracy and administrative blunder In a democracy, the essence of freedom is tolerance. In a nutshell, tolerance means that I don’t have to be you, and you don’t have to be me.  If you don’t want to hear what someone has to say, don’t go to their lecture.  If you don’t like what’s on your t.v. channel, turn it.  This has nothing to do with the “left.”  It is basic to the Constitution.  It is as American as apple pie.  To demote a faculty member who defended that freedom on her campus may be legal, given the ambiguous status of universities–i.e. they’re not businesses, but they’re also not exactly the “public square.”  It is stupid politically, and it demonstrates “mission creep” on university campuses, where administrators overreach into areas that aren’t their province.  As a result, they end up making fools of themselves and turning their campuses into political circuses.  The irony is that they injure their relationships with faculty and in this case an internationally reknown winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (!) in the hopes of appeasing political activists who will not be appeased.  This is because the politicos are bullies, and like all bullies, rather than be happy when they get a hearing, their tantrum only gets louder. 

The way to handle political bullies who wish to use universities as a means to their own unacademic ends is to stand up to them.  Administrators don’t have to be nasty; they just have to be firm and clear that they will not permit their campuses to be turned into a tool, and a rather crude one at that, for any whipped up organization or person who is “offended” by someone’s expression. 

The administrator at St. Thomas would do themselves, more than anyone else, a favor by reinstating the faculty member as Director of the Peace and Justice Program.  Administrators get paid six digit figures to have the kind of ego strength to admit when they’ve made a mistake and be done with it. 

Platitudes lacking substance and unrelated to my point “In a democracy, the essence of freedom is tolerance. In a nutshell, tolerance means that I don’t have to be you, and you don’t have to be me.  If you don’t want to hear what someone has to say, don’t go to their lecture.”

It’s a fine-sounding principle, and yet: No private institutioon should ever consider making a moral statement by not inviting someone to speak, or disinviting someone, because of objectionable views? Ever?  That’s an inherently anti-free-speech act?

Nonsense. You can defend St. Thomas’s original disinviting decision, and on free speech grounds, just as easily as attack it.

And the left never, ever objects vociferously when instiutions invite speakers they consider objectionable? Never happens?

As for which side consitutes the intellectual bullies in this situation – we disagree. There are no bullies more dangerous than bullies who misapprehend that they have all goodness on their side. Like, say, you.

I take by your scare quotes that you see it as ridiculous for anyone to be offended by Tutu’s passage above. If that’s the case, you’re not even close to considering reality.

Moral statements It’s not ridiculous for someone to be offended by what Tutu said. But his words are far tamer than Ann Coulter’s, and while Rev. Dease said her words go “against everything the University of Saint Thomas stands for,” she was still given the chance to speak on campus through an organization that, like Cris Toffolo’s department, receives university funds. (Michele Malkin and David Horowitz also spoke at College Republicans events at UST.)

So: Why is it that when Coulter comes, lefties protest and the university president makes a statement, but the invitation stands, but when a world-renowned religious leader and peace advocate — even one who said something people have a right to be outraged about — is invited, the powers that be clamp down?

Look I agree it was probably a stupid decision But it cannot be called “clamping down” when the first hint of outrage (of the sort the left can generate in its sleep) results in a reversal, with absolutely no muscular public explanation of why the decision might be justified.

And believe me, all you would need is that paragraph I quote, accompanied by a line by line analysis of its myriad shortcomings – that is, if the awesome powers you describe weren’t somehow frightened of something on their own. 

In fact that’s been one of the aspects of the episode most frustrating for me – no one stood up to say in public, “Hey, I believe kindly old Tutu is an idiot on this topic, or worse, and here’s why.” Leaving unchallenged the left’s description of this smiling grandfatherly man as an “arbiter of morality.”
I don’t know exactly how this decision came to be. My understanding is that St. Thomas called the JCRC’s communications person and she said yeah, we think he goes beyond the pale on Israel, as long as you ask.

Was St. Thomas worried about donations? I have no idea; it’s possible. And there’s nothing wrong with that if you accept that he’s an idiot and more on the question of Israel, as I do. 

However, I am not totally sure St. Thomas gets a whole lot of donations form the Jewish community. And given the quickness of the reversal, I suspect the decision was careless more than anything, based on a president who thought it was a nice gesture to another religion and evidently unaware if the left’s moral confusion on the whole question.

It would take an entire essay to compare the offensiveness of Coulter and the offensiveness of Tutu’s statement here. Suffice it to say I see it differently than you, based largely on the idea that they’re (usually) simply different kinds of offensiveness.

A thing to read An acquaintance just sent an essay from Dissent to me; I haven’t even read it yet but a glance says it delves into the question of the left and Israel in a useful way for someone with an open mind. 

http://dissentmagazi…

His early reference to a sustained assault on the very legitimacy of Israel is a gigantic point: I basically believe that more and more of the left’s internet-energized, Daily-Kos-style base is concluding that Israel doesn’t have a right to exist, but doesn’t want to say that either because they know it’s not palatable publicly or because they also simultaneously know at some level that it’s a problematic notion morally.

But it leads to the maddening basic dishonesty, which you see everywhere and is reflected in Tutu’s speech: in whatever specific event being discussed, absolutely no acknowledgement of how Israel sees the situation. That is, in the permanent context of being surrounded by truly Nazi-like regimes (at least when it comes to talking about Jews) with political legitimacy built on the need to destroy Israel.

So I see the left de facto supporting regimes that produce, and always have produced, at least since 1948, the vilest sort of propaganda about Jews. And I go – oh man. Spare me the morality.

Oh, absolutely. Tutu Whistleblower (and I think it’s kinda cool if Cris Toffolo changes her name as you suggest) should immediately be given back her authority without so much as making the slightest attempt to go through standard university procedures first.

Desmond Tutu should get to make staffing decisions at St. Thomas, too.  After all, he got a Nobel Peace Prize, like Yasser Arafat. 

And she should get a pony, too.

Well, no The distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants didn’t originate with the Bush Administration or with Delahunty.  It didn’t even originate with the Roosevelt administration, although it was a key argument in the SCOTUS decision in Quirin. 

I don’t believe that Delahunty was even born when the SCOTUS determined that the protections of the GC that are afforded to “protected persons” are not afforded to unlawful combatants.

Careful on the pony suggestion Depending on the nature of the recipient it could constitute cruelty to circus animals.

The hypocracy runs much deeper at UST I couldn't agree more with the observations above.  If anyone should have lost their job on this incident, it certainly should have been Dease.  But what upsets me even more is the vain quest of trying to find some moral or religious basis for any of these university decisions.

To me, the starkest hypocrisy of all is in the decision to hire and retain Robert Delahunty as professor in their law school.

Delahunty, along with Berkeley's John Yoo, was the author of the infamous “torture memo” that totally altered American actions toward those captured during the war on terror.  Fundamentally, what the memo did was to create massive loopholes in the prohibition against torture, with the goal of shielding the president and others against future trials for war crimes.  It did this by creating a new category of “illegal combatant” with the hope that those persons might be denied the protections of the Geneva Conventions.  And it did this by redefining torture itself, saying that it involved only the level of pain equal to that of major organ failure proceeding death.

In other words, we changed the rules so they don't apply to those we capture.  Then we changed the very definition of torture so that it doesn't exist any more.

Does St. Thomas reflect its Christian values when it hires such a person to teach constitutional law?  Aren't the actions which Robert Delahunty would allow also “hurtful” to those subjected to them?  Does this teaching conform to the Golden Rule?

There have been more than 100 investigations into deaths under U.S. interrogation.  Abu Ghraib photos are known around the world, icons representing an arrogant empire that has lost its moral compass.  In years to come, I believe that the use of torture will be held up as the single most important reason why the United States lost the wider war on terror.  By torturing, we became the terrorists.

Why does St. Thomas then continue to punish Chris Toffolo, while it supports the torture memo guy?

To consider this episode as one that justifies the word “whistleblower”

Here's the short version. Tutu's 2002 speech that gets a lot of focus contains this passage:

“People are scared in this country [the U.S.] to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful – very powerful. Well, so what? This is God's world. For goodness sake, this is God's world! We live in a moral universe. The apartheid government was very powerful, but today it no longer exists. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pinochet, Milosovic, and Idi Amin were all powerful, but in the end they bit the dust.”

What'd disgusting? Those words, for one thing, for a variety of reasons. 

And the fact that most libersals believe it's some kind of intellectual crime to be sufficiently offended by those words, whether one is Jewish or not, that reconsidering an invitation to speak seems a legitimate option for any private institution.

Even more, the fact that the left evidently sees heroism in the words.

It's a version of a constant: the left does not accept that any of its utterances can ever be considered that offensive. It's not a conceptual possibility.

Democracy and administrative blunder In a democracy, the essence of freedom is tolerance. In a nutshell, tolerance means that I don't have to be you, and you don't have to be me.  If you don't want to hear what someone has to say, don't go to their lecture.  If you don't like what's on your t.v. channel, turn it.  This has nothing to do with the “left.”  It is basic to the Constitution.  It is as American as apple pie.  To demote a faculty member who defended that freedom on her campus may be legal, given the ambiguous status of universities–i.e. they're not businesses, but they're also not exactly the “public square.”  It is stupid politically, and it demonstrates “mission creep” on university campuses, where administrators overreach into areas that aren't their province.  As a result, they end up making fools of themselves and turning their campuses into political circuses.  The irony is that they injure their relationships with faculty and in this case an internationally reknown winner of the Nobel Peace Prize (!) in the hopes of appeasing political activists who will not be appeased.  This is because the politicos are bullies, and like all bullies, rather than be happy when they get a hearing, their tantrum only gets louder. 

The way to handle political bullies who wish to use universities as a means to their own unacademic ends is to stand up to them.  Administrators don't have to be nasty; they just have to be firm and clear that they will not permit their campuses to be turned into a tool, and a rather crude one at that, for any whipped up organization or person who is “offended” by someone's expression. 

The administrator at St. Thomas would do themselves, more than anyone else, a favor by reinstating the faculty member as Director of the Peace and Justice Program.  Administrators get paid six digit figures to have the kind of ego strength to admit when they've made a mistake and be done with it. 

Platitudes lacking substance and unrelated to my point “In a democracy, the essence of freedom is tolerance. In a nutshell, tolerance means that I don't have to be you, and you don't have to be me.  If you don't want to hear what someone has to say, don't go to their lecture.”

It's a fine-sounding principle, and yet: No private institutioon should ever consider making a moral statement by not inviting someone to speak, or disinviting someone, because of objectionable views? Ever?  That's an inherently anti-free-speech act?

Nonsense. You can defend St. Thomas's original disinviting decision, and on free speech grounds, just as easily as attack it.

And the left never, ever objects vociferously when instiutions invite speakers they consider objectionable? Never happens?

As for which side consitutes the intellectual bullies in this situation – we disagree. There are no bullies more dangerous than bullies who misapprehend that they have all goodness on their side. Like, say, you.

I take by your scare quotes that you see it as ridiculous for anyone to be offended by Tutu's passage above. If that's the case, you're not even close to considering reality.

Moral statements It's not ridiculous for someone to be offended by what Tutu said. But his words are far tamer than Ann Coulter's, and while Rev. Dease said her words go “against everything the University of Saint Thomas stands for,” she was still given the chance to speak on campus through an organization that, like Cris Toffolo's department, receives university funds. (Michele Malkin and David Horowitz also spoke at College Republicans events at UST.)

So: Why is it that when Coulter comes, lefties protest and the university president makes a statement, but the invitation stands, but when a world-renowned religious leader and peace advocate — even one who said something people have a right to be outraged about — is invited, the powers that be clamp down?

Look I agree it was probably a stupid decision But it cannot be called “clamping down” when the first hint of outrage (of the sort the left can generate in its sleep) results in a reversal, with absolutely no muscular public explanation of why the decision might be justified.

And believe me, all you would need is that paragraph I quote, accompanied by a line by line analysis of its myriad shortcomings – that is, if the awesome powers you describe weren't somehow frightened of something on their own. 

In fact that's been one of the aspects of the episode most frustrating for me – no one stood up to say in public, “Hey, I believe kindly old Tutu is an idiot on this topic, or worse, and here's why.” Leaving unchallenged the left's description of this smiling grandfatherly man as an “arbiter of morality.”

I don't know exactly how this decision came to be. My understanding is that St. Thomas called the JCRC's communications person and she said yeah, we think he goes beyond the pale on Israel, as long as you ask.

Was St. Thomas worried about donations? I have no idea; it's possible. And there's nothing wrong with that if you accept that he's an idiot and more on the question of Israel, as I do. 

However, I am not totally sure St. Thomas gets a whole lot of donations form the Jewish community. And given the quickness of the reversal, I suspect the decision was careless more than anything, based on a president who thought it was a nice gesture to another religion and evidently unaware if the left's moral confusion on the whole question.

It would take an entire essay to compare the offensiveness of Coulter and the offensiveness of Tutu's statement here. Suffice it to say I see it differently than you, based largely on the idea that they're (usually) simply different kinds of offensiveness.

A thing to read An acquaintance just sent an essay from Dissent to me; I haven't even read it yet but a glance says it delves into the question of the left and Israel in a useful way for someone with an open mind. 

http://dissentmagazi…

His early reference to a sustained assault on the very legitimacy of Israel is a gigantic point: I basically believe that more and more of the left's internet-energized, Daily-Kos-style base is concluding that Israel doesn't have a right to exist, but doesn't want to say that either because they know it's not palatable publicly or because they also simultaneously know at some level that it's a problematic notion morally.

But it leads to the maddening basic dishonesty, which you see everywhere and is reflected in Tutu's speech: in whatever specific event being discussed, absolutely no acknowledgement of how Israel sees the situation. That is, in the permanent context of being surrounded by truly Nazi-like regimes (at least when it comes to talking about Jews) with political legitimacy built on the need to destroy Israel.

So I see the left de facto supporting regimes that produce, and always have produced, at least since 1948, the vilest sort of propaganda about Jews. And I go – oh man. Spare me the morality.

Oh, absolutely. Tutu Whistleblower (and I think it's kinda cool if Cris Toffolo changes her name as you suggest) should immediately be given back her authority without so much as making the slightest attempt to go through standard university procedures first.

Desmond Tutu should get to make staffing decisions at St. Thomas, too.  After all, he got a Nobel Peace Prize, like Yasser Arafat. 

And she should get a pony, too.

Well, no The distinction between lawful and unlawful combatants didn't originate with the Bush Administration or with Delahunty.  It didn't even originate with the Roosevelt administration, although it was a key argument in the SCOTUS decision in Quirin. 

I don't believe that Delahunty was even born when the SCOTUS determined that the protections of the GC that are afforded to “protected persons” are not afforded to unlawful combatants.

Careful on the pony suggestion Depending on the nature of the recipient it could constitute cruelty to circus animals.