USC’s handling of this is an unmitigated, unprincipled train wreck. Given how many people they have working in disaster mitigation and crisis management these days, it’s amazing that they are handing this so badly. /1 www.npr.org/2024/04/16/1...
Asna Tabassum received some backlash about her social media content on the conflict between Israel and Hamas. Tabassum said she questions the university's reasoning for canceling the speech.
I’m sure Bari Weiss, free speech warrior, is on it!
Really ... USC having leadership issues? They had to fire the Dean of the medical school when they could no longer ignore the meth binges & criminal cohorts. Then they had to fire his successor as well when it came out they had covered up his sexual harassment history. lamag.com/news-and-pol...
IT's spring, 2024. There *will* be dozens or more highly disruptive Pro-Palestinian protests at commencements across the country. Many will be frankly anti-Semitic. At least one will be escalate into some kind of danger. It's not all this talented young woman's fault.
It's not ideal. But they picked an anti-Semitic bozo as a valedictorian and had to wriggle out of it somehow. Understand there were other options. Unconvinced there are clear-cut better options.
It's all optics. That's what worried them more than anything else.
EXACTLY: "Given how many people they have working in disaster mitigation and crisis management these days, it’s amazing that they are handing this so badly."
Can anyone explain how she was chosen, beyond the fact that it's done by the provost?
Having done some research into how universities handled various kinds of rights cases with students and faculty for cases I worked on when I practiced law, I'm not the least surprised. Rapacious corporations handled things better.
/2 First: let’s assume arguendo they are telling the truth, that they think the security and disruption risks are too high to let the chosen valedictorian speak. That’s the exact definition of a heckler’s veto. It’s also incredibly alarming, far more than their brush-off suggests.
I genuinely thought this was about University of South Carolina until this article. More surprised now that I know it's SoCal.