She was never anything but this. She only wants free speech for those who agree with her. She tried to get a professor fired for supporting Palestinian human rights while she was in college, and then has the nerve to say that individuals voluntarily refusing to associate with people who express views they find repugnant are really the ones who are doing illiberal censorship.
I don't understand why she's such a polarizing figure. In particular, the criticisms I've heard from her and other free-speech advocates amount to "anyone who supports free speech but also exercises their own free speech rights to criticize others is a hypocrite". I understand that it's confusing to distinguish between "criticism" and "suppression of speech" (e.g., campaigning to get someone fired from their job), but the distinction is real and thus there is no hypocrisy.
In Bari's case, she can be simultaneously in favor of free speech but not want to work someplace where she is incessantly criticized or where she lends her credibility to an institution that is ultimately morally corrupt. There's no contradiction here. Specifically, I don't see anything that supports "she wants her detractors silenced by the law". She asks for company policy with respect to social media harassment to apply to those who harass her as it applies to other cases in which she's not the subject of the harassment. This seems like a pretty reasonable policy and one which isn't especially at odds with free speech ideals. I grant that there's a fine line between "harassing" and "criticizing with appropriate respect", and while I think axe emojis and consistent references to her Jewish identity make this pretty clearly a case of harassment, my opinion doesn't matter--what matters is whether the NYT's own standard for harassment. For example, would the NYT consider it harassment if the target were a black progressive instead of a Jewish liberal?
It always amazes me when the people who champion "the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to a democratic society" will also turn around and say something like their political beliefs being mocking by coworkers is "unlawful discrimination". She doesn't want free speech. She wants consequence free speech. She wants her detractors silenced by the law. What a hypocrite.
A pretty repulsive person judging by her own words... By her own admission she Peter-principles her way into Harvard, and then starts to agitate because her political football team (the Israeli Government) is being attacked by faculty and students who don't like its invasion of Palestinian territories and various atrocities and deny the "natural right of the Jews" to whatever they lay claim to...
Replete with the usual tropes and fallacies that US Israeli advocates love to retread -- conflating dislike of the Israeli government or military policies, or dislike of Zionism with anti-semitism; alleging that any issue that involves a Jewish subject (like Larry Summers' resignation) is about antisemitism; and trying to evoke sympathy from the neocon evangelicals in the audience by crying about wokeness and leftist takeovers while herself being an affirmative action driven political/social climber.
Again, Wix is not the state of Israel. She did not get paid to align her political views with Wix, she got paid to deliver specific work for Wix. She has a very basic right to express her opinion.
In the US, you're entitled to free speech. You're not entitled to respect, or even an audience. If you don't accept that reality, you're going to have a problem.
> She covers a gambit of topics.
I have read her. She's a boring and repetitive replacement-level whiner whose built a brand appealing to people with certain kinds of insecurities.
When she finally seems like she's about to reach some clarity in her accusations she reaches for a cheap shot regarding some joke that made a nazi reference on a private server.
I'm having a hard time having sympathy for either side here. The only thing that seems clear here is that the real winners here are a yo who stays out of academia
That might've had something to do with it. But no I think you're right that evil Elon Musk and the ultra-MAGA twitter overlords are the ones who caused her to be kicked out. Not to mention the racism as she said "threats fueled by racial animus." it wasn't her fault she plagiarized it was the evil white patriarchial system that forced her to.
You appear to be arguing that her identity protects her ideas from criticism – are we to believe someone can’t be Jewish or gay while also being right-wing or an activist? Or that a degree from a good school somehow prevents you from being ideologically committed?
I used that label based on her writing. If you look at the positions she’s taken over the last half decade or so, they’re consistently on-message for what American conservatives are opposing: attacking #MeToo, railing against imaginary antifa (it’s been a while but that’s why she stopped writing NYT op-eds[1]), pushing COVID denialism, attack transgender people, and, most especially, being a committed member of the “cancel culture” marketing campaign. Whether that was hyping up IDW figures, defending a right-winger who is currently being criticized, or minimizing right-wing book banning or calls for people to be fired, she’ll be right there next to the rest of the crew.
Bear in mind that I’m not saying any of those are (or should be) illegal, only that on this topic she’s notably biased and quite literally makes a living from advancing this position. Her move out of journalism was based on building an audience with a pronounced bias and she’s not going to say anything which upsets them until she has another job lined up. Reading her blog posts on a culture war issue is like going to HuffPost expecting trenchant analysis of the Republican Party.
She can't maintain employment because she can't be taken seriously anymore. She is not a victim, she ruined her own reputation through her own actions and words. This literally has nothing to do with free speech which is why she isn't making the claim.
it's too late. saying in public that calling for killing of jews because they are jews not being a problem (after the holocaust) is unnacceptable. they got killed by millions using gas and you have your students calling for a second extermination and you see no problem there ? second, she's a fraud. if you check her "intellectual production" she barely published 10 papers in YEARS while the norm at the university is about 10 papers or so PER YEAR. if you study her own work, it's a fraud based on stealing other's people work and copy paste.
seriously : if ANY student currently at harvard did the same as she did in plagiarism, that student would get, AT MINIMUM a 3 years suspension. if not getting expelled forever from getting a diploma from harvard.
why did she get that job ? her skin color, and her leftist politics. nothing else. her university and intellectual production is worth nothing, and she's clearly not the brighest lamp at harvard, by a very long shot.
it's too late. where i work, anyone from harvard gets ejected to the nearest trash bin if they try to get in. bosses told us they will never, ever, get someone from harvard as long they will be around, which is at least 10 years at minimum. and those big CEOs they all know one another, and talk with one another.
harvard students, good luck finding a job with your crap diploma.
This is disgusting and a real honest-to-god violation of de Blanc’s free speech rights. Calling for her arrest is downright fascist. Her open letter is not cyberbullying and RMS is a major public figure who should reasonably expect public criticism. Public criticism of public figures is not cyberbullying. If the author really thinks it’s defamation then that’s a civil case. Instead the author is using the threat of state violence to try to silence a critic. This is Taliban-level stuff.
It does take a certain amount of gumption to defend RMS’s “free speech rights” by trying to arrest someone you disagree with. I wish I could say these people are hypocrites, but they know exactly what they are doing. Speaking personally: it’s a lot worse to be arrested than it is to be kicked off the board of a nonprofit!
I think it's objectively clear that she violated that policy, I don't think even she would deny that she engages in discriminatory behavior, bullying and harassment, and disturbing communities. It's not just about speech, she has for example been arrested in Italy for attempting to block migrant rescue operations in the Mediterranean, which directly put lives at risk.
She did harm and admitted as much. She’s being petty because she got let go. She has said that she made no anti Semitic comments against Muslims and that’s what the case is about.
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