On Sunday, the Emory Students for Justice in Palestine (ESJP) erected a wall that stated “Israel is an Apartheid State” in order to raise awareness of the oppression of Palestinian citizens in conjunction with Israel Apartheid Week, an international awareness week. Hours after the wall went up, at least one perpetrator tore it down on Sunday night and, after it was reconstructed on Monday morning, it was torn down again, according to ESJP members.
Campus Life gave ESJP permission to construct the wall, and the group did not violate any University rules. The papers stapled to the wall contained information about ESJP’s stance on Israel and the organization’s mission, and the group used a nonviolent form of expression to share opinions about a controversial topic.
When the wall was torn down twice, Senior Vice President and Dean of Campus Life Ajay Nair sent an all-Emory email on Tuesday afternoon that emphasized the right to freedom of expression for the Emory community.
“Emory University is committed to an environment where the open expression of ideas and open, vigorous debate and speech are valued, promoted, and encouraged,” Nair wrote, deeming the wall’s destruction as “counter to our community’s commitment to debate and dialogue.”
We at the Wheel condemn the perpetrators of the wall’s destruction who found it appropriate to silence a group’s right to expression and who also verbally assaulted members of ESJP. Our University values discourse and dialogue, and to silence nonviolent expression opposes the nature of a university like ours.
While it is positive for the University to respond to this with a student-wide email and to employ the Bias Incident Response Team, we take serious issue with part of Nair’s email.
While Nair’s point is very truthful — our community should respect the diverse members that comprise it and should not target individuals or groups unnecessarily — it does not have a place in this context.
“At the same time, we understand that — while the demonstration wall is an expression of free speech — it may be painful for some members of the Emory community,” the email states. “We ask all members of our community to weigh these responsibilities carefully when exercising their right to open expression. Let us deliberate ideas, ideologies and policies with which we disagree, rather than target individuals or groups with whom we disagree.”
Nair has been a strong advocate for students, but this part of his email has an implicit chilling effect — the discouragement of exercising a legal right, such as free speech in this case, by threat of potential sanction — on free expression. Because ESJP did not violate any University rules, used nonviolent methods of expression and engaged in academic discussion, this section of Nair’s email had no place in affirming the group’s right to open expression. As a representative of the University administration, Nair’s words come from a place of power, and when he asks student groups such as ESJP to “weigh these responsibilities carefully” after those groups have just been silenced, the effect could deter future actions of free speech by student groups who may already feel out of place at our University.
While Nair’s point is very truthful — our community should respect the diverse members that comprise it and should not target individuals or groups unnecessarily — it does not have a place in this context. Instead, the lasting message of Nair’s email should have been an explicit condemnation of vandalism and a commitment to Emory’s promise to freedom of speech.
The University should always protect and advocate for students’ freedom of expression and speech on campus, regardless of the ideology being expressed, with the exception of hate speech. We are sincerely disappointed in those who felt that it was acceptable to violate ESJP’s freedom of speech and disrespect the people who invested time, money and effort in the display.
Additionally, the Wheel does not take a stance on the enormously complex conflict between Israel and Palestine, but, regardless of anyone’s opinion on this conflict, we should all feel that the values of our community were violated this week. Open expression is integral to productive dialogue at Emory and is necessary to promote intellectual curiosity and debate on campus. The vandalism runs directly counter to this idea and promotes a hateful environment that propagates the bifurcation of students on campus.
Emory Hillel, a Jewish cultural organization, erected a Truth Wall on Wednesday in response to ESJP’s Apartheid Wall, and we feel this was an equally appropriate form of open expression. This response is productive and sparks the kind of dialogue our campus should facilitate. It’s important to discuss sensitive issues, which are often emotional. In order to learn and develop our own viewpoints, we need productive, challenging dialogue, and we need for that dialogue to not be silenced. We hope that bias incidents in our community and acts to suppress speech will be few and far between in the future.
The above staff editorial represents the majority opinion of the Wheel’s editorial board.
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
The Wheel is financially and editorially independent from the University. All of its content is generated by the Wheel’s more than 100 student staff members and contributing writers, and its printing costs are covered by profits from self-generated advertising sales.
I find this all so curious. While Muslims have killed artist and journalists and cartoonists for exercising their right to free speech, on the other hand there are no limits placed on themselves concerning what lies and hatred and venom aimed at Israel.
Am I missing something or is this what is known as a double standard?
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One of Islam’s core tenets if the belief that Muslims are superior to all non-Muslims and that it is Muslim’s duty to subjugate the infidel. Peace will come when all infidels are subjugated and Islam rules the entire world. Maybe this double standard is reflective of this core belief.
??? . Not a Muslim, but most of the “major” monotheistic religions actually are like this and believe something like it, they just, in general, currently are not in the phase of widespread extremism as the others (a lot of this can be fueled by economics and things of that nature). In addition, there are some legitimate concerns on both sides of the conflict. This idea that only one side gets to play victim at a time is unproductive and flat out false. I don’t really care what one thinks about the way one side currently chooses to practice its religion. Some of it comes down to a human rights issue (on both sides). To deflect in such a manner by just saying “It’s lies!” makes one sound sort of like the propaganda that spread when slaves were freed in the south where caricatures were created that generalized about a whole ethnic group and created undue hostility toward them, so be very careful. Language you are using is not conducive to any sort of dialogue and is almost a personal attack on those possessing a certain faith. And also, while the people killing journalists were Muslims, are the students at Emory Muslim extremists. I doubt that. Do not dare compare them and generalize them in that same category. “Us vs. Them” is unacceptable in this case and that is exactly what you are doing by saying “since Muslim extremists at other places attempted to suppress free speech elsewhere, you as a Muslim had it coming”. That is kind of dangerous language in the context of America or in general.
The Muslim Game:
Bringing other religions down to the level of Islam is one of the most popular strategies of Muslim apologists when confronted with the spectacle of Islamic violence. Remember Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber? How about Anders Breivik, the Norwegian killer? Why pick on Islam if other religions have the same problems?
The Truth:
Because they don’t.
Regardless of what his birth certificate may or may not have said, Timothy McVeigh was not a religious man (in fact, he stated explicitly that he was agnostic and that “science” was his religion). At no time did he credit his deeds to religion, quote Bible verses, or claim that he killed for Jesus. His motives are very well documented through interviews and research. God is never mentioned.
The so-called “members of other faiths” alluded to by Muslims are nearly always just nominal members who have no active involvement. They are neither inspired by, nor do they credit religion as Muslim terrorists do – and this is what makes it a very different matter.
Islam is associated with Islamic terrorism because that is the association that the terrorists themselves choose to make.
Muslims who compare crime committed by people who happen to be nominal members of other religions to religious terror committed explicitly in the name of Islam are comparing apples to oranges.
Yes, some of the abortion clinic bombers were religious (as Muslims enjoy pointing out), but consider the scope of the problem. There have been six deadly attacks over a 36 year period in the U.S. Eight people died. This is an average of one death every 4.5 years.
By contrast, Islamic terrorists staged nearly ten thousand deadly attacks in just the six years following September 11th, 2001. If one goes back to 1971, when Muslim armies in Bangladesh began the mass slaughter of Hindus, through the years of Jihad in the Sudan, Kashmir and Algeria, and the present-day Sunni-Shia violence in Iraq, the number of innocents killed in the name of Islam probably exceeds five million over this same period.
Anders Breivik, who murdered 77 innocents in a lone rampage on July 22nd, 2011, was originally misidentified as a “Christian fundamentalist” by the police. In fact, the killings were later determined to be politically motivated. He also left behind a detailed 1500 page manifesto in which he stated that he is not religious, does not know if God exists, and prefers a secular state to a theocracy. Needless to say, he does not quote any Bible verses in support of his killing spree, nor did he shout “praise the Lord” as he picked people off.
In the last ten years, there have been perhaps a dozen or so religiously-inspired killings by people of all other faiths combined. No other religion produces the killing sprees that Islam does nearly every day of the year. Neither do they have verses in their holy texts that arguably support it. Nor do they have large groups across the globe dedicated to the mass murder of people who worship a different god, as the broader community of believers struggles with ambivalence and tolerance for a radical clergy that supports the terror.
Muslims may like to pretend that other religions are just as subject to “misinterpretation” as is their “perfect” one, but the reality speaks of something far worse.
You’re killing me dude……The other religions do not have that right now….which is what I said (I personally am more on the agnostic side after growing up Christian). I am merely giving historical perspective. Muslims do not have to play such a “game”, history books can back this up. Also, I would honestly expect this behavior from ethnic or religious groups that have been very negatively effected by foreign policy measures of other actors. It is often why 3rd World countries remain 3rd World, not necessarily because of religion. I expect terrorism and various forms of political/religious extremism to be spawned from these sorts of places. And again, do not link your disdain for a religious belief to suppression of free speech and issues of human rights. Wrong is wrong no matter what you think about a certain belief. Also, it is almost racist to suggest that Muslims at EMORY are the same as those around the world and thus deserve revocation of their rights to state their opinions or some facts on how they view a situation that is effecting human beings who share their faith. Again, this is kind of like: “Less people should have the right to vote because no one can trusted after the whole ACORN incident” (needless to say, such ideas inadvertently have disproportionate effects on minorities). Either way, I don’t know many Muslim extremists at Emory. Unless you are trying to suggest that anyone who believes that Israel has done some wrong is an extremist. Good luck with that argument…..
anon,
You are a typical relativist. For you all religions are more or less the same and their adherents also more or less the same. When confronted with facts like Buddhism being very different than Christianity you ignore the information and stick to your simplified premise.
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Sorry to bother you with facts but every religion is unique and their adherents are GENERALLY socialized by their religion’s tenets. I bold text the word “generally” because not all adherents to all religions are sheep to their religion. Take as an example Ayaan Ali Hirsi, a Muslim woman of such great intelligence and courage that she was able to break the shackles Islam had over her.
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Now you can pretend Islam is like Christianity of that makes you feel better, but it does not make it true. Mohammed was the polar opposite of Jesus. Islam’s core tenets are vastly different than those of The Golden Rule. And these profound differences do impact and sculpt their followers.
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This is not to suggest all, or even many Christians, follow the Golden Rule to a “T” but only implies that the Golden Rule has some impact on most Christians. And the same is true of Muslims and Islam – but even more so because Islam is such a suffocating religion. One that controls all aspects of a person’s life.
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So you can live in your simplistic, make-believe world if that is your wont. It is no skin off of my back. But you are wrong. Muslims are not going through a phase. What we are seeing Muslims do, be it in Thailand, Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, China or France is what Muslims have done for 1,400 years because their religion encourages them to do so.
These are pretty peaceful passages:
“Anyone arrogant enough to reject the verdict of the judge or of the priest who represents the LORD your God must be put to death.” Deuteronomy 17
“[If you find disbelievers] you must certainly put to the sword all who live in that town. You must destroy it completely, both its people and its livestock. You are to gather all the plunder of the town into the middle of the public square and completely burn the town and all its plunder as a whole burnt offering to the Lord your God. That town is to remain a ruin forever, never to be rebuilt” Deuteronomy 13
“Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” Matthew 10
Yup. No violent passages here.
For a preview of what will follow:
1) Arafat will insult those who refute his narrative by invoking that they are “tards”, “liberals”, “apologists” and the like
2) Arafat will state his narrative as “fact” and all others as “opinion”
3) Arafat will randomly toss in derogatory remarks, quotes and snippits about Islam that show his level of understanding and interpretation is the same as extremists, which is to say, simply ignorant and invalid
4) Arafat will quote random historical figures who malign Muslims and Islam, as a “proof”, while failing to recognize many figures have said hateful things about people throughout history, including Jews, blacks, gays, Hispanics, Catholics, etc, etc
5) Arafat will dodge every discussion point by posting tangential responses
6) Arafat fails to adhere to honest dialogue and is an ideologue promoting a hateful narrative
7) Arafat will employ false equivalency and retreat after having sufficiently warped a Disqus threat to allow him to post his hate
8) Arafat will accuse opponents of the tactics he demonstrates repeatedly
9) Arafat will accuse opponents of being “apologists” of the minority groups he targets, such as Muslims
10) Arafat will fail to recognize the premise that all lives matter equally and generalizing hateful narratives about whole groups of people is bigoted and wrong
You have a right to spout your bigotry. We have a right to call you out on it.
GopherPatriot: Why are you quoting passages from the Hebrew Bible, much of which is regarded as historical context for the modern religion, and not actually to be followed? Furthermore, the meaning of “sword” throughout the entire book of Matthew as well as Ephesians and Hebrews is a sapiential one.
Your arguments remind me of someone attacking Al Gore for his Tennessee home’s energy output. If you wish to attack Arafat’s argument, perhaps you ought to attempt to discredit his statistics or defend Islam on its own virtue instead of bringing up Christianity or any other religion. Your attempted rebuttal is precisely what he is taking about in his second post.
Thank you Longinus.
But you assume GP is interested in truth and fair play two things that mean nothing to him.
The Muslim Game:
Muslims love talking about the Crusades… and Christians love apologizing for them. To hear both parties tell the story, one would believe that Muslims were just peacefully minding their own business in lands that were legitimately Muslim, when Christian armies decided to wage holy war and “kill millions.”
The Truth:
Every part of this myth is a lie. By the rules that Muslims claim for themselves, the Crusades were justified, and the excesses (though beneath Christian standards) pale in comparison with the historical treatment of conquered populations at the hands of Muslims.
Here are some quick facts…
The first Crusade began in 1095… 460 years after the first Christian city was overrun by Muslim armies, 457 years after Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies, 453 years after Egypt was taken by Muslim armies, 443 after Muslims first plundered Italy, 427 years after Muslim armies first laid siege to the Christian capital of Constantinople, 380 years after Spain was conquered by Muslim armies, 363 years after France was first attacked by Muslim armies, 249 years after the capital of the Christian world, Rome itself, was sacked by a Muslim army, and only after centuries of church burnings, killings, enslavement and forced conversions of Christians.
By the time the Crusades finally began, Muslim armies had conquered two-thirds of the Christian world.
Europe had been harassed by Muslims since the first few years following Muhammad’s death. As early as 652, Muhammad’s followers launched raids on the island of Sicily, waging a full-scale occupation 200 years later that lasted almost a century and was punctuated by massacres, such as that at the town of Castrogiovanni, in which 8,000 Christians were put to death. In 1084, ten years before the first crusade, Muslims staged another devastating Sicilian raid, burning churches in Reggio, enslaving monks and raping an abbey of nuns before carrying them into captivity.
In 1095, Byzantine Emperor, Alexius I Comneus began begging the pope in Rome for help in turning back the Muslim armies which were overrunning what is now Turkey, grabbing property as they went and turning churches into mosques. Several hundred thousand Christians had been killed in Anatolia alone in the decades following 1050 by Seljuk invaders interested in ‘converting’ the survivors to Islam.
Not only were Christians losing their lives in their own lands to the Muslim advance but pilgrims to the Holy Land from other parts of Europe were being harassed, kidnapped, molested, forcibly converted to Islam and occasionally murdered. (Compare this to Islam’s justification for slaughter on the basis of Muslims being denied access to the Meccan pilgrimage in Muhammad’s time).
Renowned scholar Bernard Lewis points out that the Crusades, though “often compared with the Muslim jihad, was a delayed and limited response to the jihad and in part also an imitation…. Forgiveness for sins to those who fought in defence of the holy Church of God and the Christian religion and polity, and eternal life for those fighting the infidel: these ideas… clearly reflect the Muslim notion of jihad.”
Lewis goes on to state that, “unlike the jihad, it [the Crusade] was concerned primarily with the defense or reconquest of threatened or lost Christian territory… The Muslim jihad, in contrast, was perceived as unlimited, as a religious obligation that would continue until all the world had either adopted the Muslim faith or submitted to Muslim rule… The object of jihad is to bring the whole world under Islamic law.”
The Crusaders only invaded lands that were Christian. They did not attack Saudi Arabia (other than a half-hearted expedition by a minor figure) or sack Mecca, as the Muslims had done (and continued doing) to Italy and Constantinople. Their primary goal was the recapture of Jerusalem and the security of safe passage for pilgrims. The toppling of the Muslim empire was not on the agenda.
The period of Crusader “occupation” (of its own former land) was stretched tenuously over about 170 years, which is less than the Muslim occupation of Sicily and southern Italy alone – to say nothing of Spain and other lands that had never been Islamic before falling victim to Jihad. In fact, the Arab occupation of North Africa and Middle Eastern lands outside of Arabia is almost 1400 years old.
Despite popular depiction, the Crusades were not a titanic battle between Christianity and Islam. Although originally dispatched by papal decree, the “occupiers” quickly became part of the political and economic fabric of the Middle East without much regard for religious differences. Their arrival was largely accepted by the local population as simply another change in authority. Muslim radicals even lamented the fact that many of their co-religionists preferred to live under Frankish (Christian) rule than migrate to Muslim lands.
The Islamic world was split into warring factions, many of which allied themselves with the Frankish princes against each other at one time or another. This even included Saladin, the Kurdish warrior who is credited with eventually ousting the “Crusaders.” Contrary to recent propaganda, however, Saladin had little interest in holy war until a rogue Frankish prince began disrupting his trade routes. Both before and after the taking of Jerusalem, his armies spent far more time and resources battling fellow Muslims.
For its part, the Byzantine (Eastern Christian) Empire preferred to have little to do with the Crusader kingdoms and went so far as to sign treaties with their Muslim rivals on occasion.
Another misconception is that the Crusader era was a time of constant war. In fact, very little of this overall period included significant hostilities. In response to Muslim expansion or aggression, there were only about 20 years of actual military campaigning, much of which was spent on organization and travel. (They were from 1098-1099, 1146-1148, 1188-1192, 1201-1204, 1218-1221, 1228-1229, and 1248-1250). By comparison, the Muslim Jihad against the island of Sicily alone lasted 75 grinding years.
Ironically, the Crusades are justified by the Quran itself, which encourages Holy War in order to “drive them out of the places from whence they drove you out” (2:191), even though the aim wasn’t to expel Muslims from the Middle East, but more to bring an end to the molestation of pilgrims. Holy war is not justified by New Testament teachings, which is why the Crusades are an anomaly, the brief interruption of centuries of relentless Jihad against Christianity that began long before and continued well after.
The greatest crime of the Crusaders was the sacking of Jerusalem, in which at least 3,000 people were said to have been massacred. This number is dwarfed by the number of Jihad victims, from India to Constantinople, Africa and Narbonne, but Muslims have never apologized for their crimes and never will.
What is called ‘sin and excess’ by other religions, is what Islam refers to as duty willed by Allah.
Your Editor-in-Chief, Executive Editor, and News Editor are all members of ESJP. Some hold leadership positions in the group. That you didn’t mention that in any form is a flagrant violation of journalism ethics.
Sure, the editorial section is the space for this kind of piece. But you are misguiding your audience by suggesting that there was anything objective about it–that the board was making an unbiased judgement for the sake of journalistic good. I’m really disappointed in The Wheel.
I’d hope those members would have recused themselves from the ed-board discussion on this. But I assume they didn’t. In that case, it is necessary for you to publish the names and positions of people who are involved in both organizations. Please do that: update the piece to reflect which voting members of your editorial board are also members of ESJP. That’s not a matter of content. It’s a question of integrity.
Please publish that list as soon as possible.
Really?
Journalism is increasingly making the legal profession look noble.
No member from the Editorial Board has any position in ESJP. While the members you listed are in the ESJP Facebook group, which has more than 200 people, we hardly think that being in a Facebook group means active involvement in the organization, especially as only a few were involved in making this wall. Journalists often join different Facebook groups as part of reporting, in order to learn about a group and its leadership.
We take journalism ethics very seriously. Please email us at emorywheelexec@gmail.com if you have any further questions.
Even if they don’t have a position, you should still list the people involved. If you list non-writer members of DPhiE in your ANAD article, Sonam, Rupsha, and Priyanka should be listed here.
Disclosure is important as that maintains transparency.
Do you agree that people like NY Times columnist David Brooks should have disclosed his son is in the Israeli army before commenting on the conflict? How about others who are affiliates to AIPAC or groups that promote one side of the narrative? Should people disclose if they are Jewish, Christian, or Muslim? Israeli or Arab?
Are you as keen to promote open dialogue or only when it serves to silence one side?
hamas and fatah, both of which are Pentagon-propped quisling movements, are direct offshoot of the Hajj Amin al Husseini-Adolf Eichmann genocide movement of WWII.
The SJP lapdogs-of-the-elites are fully aware of this, and only have the objective of loyally serving their US/EU elitist masters by attributing to Jews the vile bigotry that is the *policy* of fatah and hamas.
There’s zero evidence that anyone other than the oppressive kleptocrats and clerical fascists of fatah and hamas are ‘oppressing’ palestinian Arabs.
The SJP propaganda has a sole purpose of inciting a hatred of Jewish sovereignty and civil rights. Tearing up such incitement is what any decent person would do.
Wondering if Campus Life would give permission to create a wall for a student group committed to genocide of African Americans to peacefully state their reasons for supporting lynchings