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      Debates Over Words Amid War: ‘Antisemitism,’ ‘Anti-Zionism,’ ‘Apartheid’

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      More from our inbox:Expanding Advanced Placement Classes: Harmful or More Equitable?Election LessonsAmericans’ Love of Outlaws Stefani Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “The Question of Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism,” by Charles M. Blow (column, Nov. 16):The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, adopted by dozens of countries around the world, indeed does define anti-Zionism as antisemitism. It cites as an example of antisemitism: “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”That the Jewish people deserve the right of self-determination, after the Holocaust and the persecution throughout Arab lands for centuries, was resolved in 1948. To debate Zionism is precisely the problem facing the Jews today and most especially Israelis who live in an absurd world in which the nature of their birthright is called into question, as every single Israeli is born of Zionism.How ironic that in this day and age in the United States, where every minority is protected and words matter more than ever, it is somehow acceptable to define oneself as anti-Zionist, even if Jewish. It is offensive, absurd and deeply antisemitic.As an American Israeli, I cannot stress enough how toxic this concept is to Israelis and how it does nothing to help the cause of peace today.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Overturning Roe Changed Everything. Overturning Affirmative Action Did Not.

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      What do the strikingly different public responses to two recent Supreme Court rulings, one on abortion, the other on affirmative action, suggest about the future prospects for the liberal agenda?Last year’s Dobbs decision — overturning the longstanding precedent set by Roe v. Wade in 1973 — angered both moderate and liberal voters, providing crucial momentum for Democratic candidates in the 2022 midterm elections, as well as in elections earlier this month. The hostile reaction to Dobbs appears certain to be a key factor in 2024.Since Dobbs, there have been seven abortion referendums, including in red states like Ohio, Kansas, Kentucky and Montana. Abortion rights won every time.In contrast, the Supreme Court decision in June that ended race-based affirmative action in college admissions provoked a more modest outcry, and it played little, if any, role on Election Day 2023. As public interest fades, so too do the headlines and media attention generally.There have been no referendums on affirmative action since the June decision, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College. Six states held referendums on affirmative action before that ruling was issued, and five voted to prohibit it, including Michigan, Washington and California (twice). Colorado, the lone exception, voted in favor of affirmative action in 2008.Do the dissimilar responses to the court decisions ending two key components of the liberal agenda, as it was originally conceived in the 1960s and 1970s, suggest that one of them — the granting of preferences to minorities in order to level differences in admissions outcomes — has run its course?On the surface, the answer to that question is straightforward: Majorities of American voters support racial equality as a goal, but they oppose targets or quotas that grant preferential treatment to any specific group.In an email, Neil Malhotra, a political economist at Stanford — one of the scholars who, on an ongoing basis, oversees polling on Supreme Court decisions for The New York Times — pointed out that “race-based affirmative action is extremely unpopular. Sixty-nine percent of the public agreed with the court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, including 58 percent of Democrats.”On the other hand, Malhotra noted, “the majority of Americans did not want Roe overturned.”The July 1-5 Economist/YouGov poll posed questions that go directly to the question of affirmative action in higher education.“Do you think colleges should or should not be allowed to consider an applicant’s race, among other factors, when making decisions on admissions?”The answer: 25 percent said they should allow racial preferences; 64 percent said they should not.“Do you approve or disapprove of the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action, which ruled that colleges are not allowed to consider an applicant’s race when making decisions on admissions?”Fifty-nine percent approved of the decision, including 46 percent who strongly approved. Twenty-seven percent disapproved, including 18 percent who strongly disapproved.I asked William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings, about the significance of the differing reactions to the abortion and affirmative action decisions, and he referred me to his July 2023 essay, “A Surprisingly Muted Reaction to the Supreme Court’s Decision on Affirmative Action”:In a marked contrast to last year’s Dobbs decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the response to its recent decision prohibiting the use of race as a factor in college admissions has been remarkably muted. The overall reason is clear: while voters wanted to preserve access to abortion by a margin of roughly 20 percentage points, they were willing by the same margin to accept the end of affirmative action.“To the surprise of many observers,” Galston writes, citing poll data, Black Americans “supported the court by 44 percent to 36 percent.”Key groups of swing voters also backed the court’s decision by wide margins, Galston goes on to say: “Moderates by 56 percent to 23 percent, independents by 57 percent to 24 percent, and suburban voters, a key battleground in contemporary elections, by 59 percent to 30 percent.”Sanford V. Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas-Austin, wrote me by email thatThere has always been a certain ambivalence on the part of many liberals regarding the actual implementation of affirmative action. I thought that it would ultimately be done in by the sheer collapse of the categories such as “white” or “Black,” and the impossibility of clearly defining who counts as “Hispanic” or “Asian.”In contrast, Levinson continued,Abortion has become more truly polarized as an issue, especially as the “pro-life” contingent has revealed its strong desire to ban all abortions. Moreover, it’s become immediately and obviously clear that the consequences of Dobbs are absolutely horrendous for many women in Texas, say, and that the “pro-life” contingent simply doesn’t seem to care about these consequences for actual people.I asked Richard Pildes, a professor of constitutional law at N.Y.U., about the divergent responses to the two decisions, and he emailed his reply:There are two reasons the public and political reaction differs so dramatically between the two decisions. The first is that in public opinion polling, affirmative action has always had significantly less than majority support.Pildes pointed out thatin perhaps the most liberal state in the country, California, 57 percent of voters in 2020 voted to keep in place the state’s ban on affirmative action, even as Biden won the state overwhelmingly. Popular opinion on abortion runs the other way: a majority of the country supports the basic right of access to abortion, and we see strong majorities even in red states voting to support that right, as in recent votes in Ohio and Kansas.Pildes’s second reason involves the advance preparation of the public for the decisions. In the case of affirmative action in college admissions,It was widely expected the Supreme Court was going to ban it. That outcome did not come as a surprise; it had long been discounted into the assumptions of those who follow these issues closely.In the case of the Dobbs, according to Pildes, “there was far more uncertainty in advance, even though the expectation was that the court would uphold Mississippi’s ban on most abortions after 15 weeks.”While the court majority might have decided the case “on narrow grounds, without overruling Roe,” Pildes wrote, it took “the far more extreme path of overruling Roe altogether. That came as a stunning shock to many people and it was the first time the court had taken away a personal constitutional right.”Nicholas Wu reported last month in Politico (in “Why Dems Aren’t Campaigning on Affirmative Action”) that some of the strongest proponents of affirmative action in the House do not see campaigning against the court decision as an effective strategy.Representative Mark Takano, a California Democrat who believes affirmative action helped get him into Harvard, told Wu, “I don’t see it as a rallying point for Democrats.”Representative Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat and the ranking Democrat on the Committee on Education and Workforce, told Wu, “This is going to cause some heartburn, but we need to campaign on the fact that we are opening opportunities to everybody, and we’ll do everything we can to maintain opportunities.”“It’s difficult,” Scott added, “to bring back a strategy that the Supreme Court has directly ruled as unconstitutional.”Nicholas Dias, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Pennsylvania, responded by email to my inquiry by noting that his “read of the existing data is that Americans care more about equality of opportunity than equality of outcome.”Dias conducted a study asking Americans how they prioritize three social goals in setting policies concerning wealth: “ensuring wealth is determined by effort (i.e., deservingness); providing for basic needs (sufficiency); and ensuring wealth equality.”He found that Republicans overwhelmingly give top priority to ensuring that wealth is determined by effort, at 70.5 percent, while Democrats give top priority, at 51.2 percent, to ensuring that everyone’s basic needs are met.Dias noted that very few Democrats, Republicans or independents gave wealth equality top priority.Dias sent me a 2021 paper, “Desert and Redistribution: Justice as a Remedy for, and Cause of, Economic Inequality,” in which Jacob S. Bower-Bir, a political scientist affiliated with Indiana University, makes the case that:People tolerate grave inequalities if they think those inequalities are deserved. Indeed, if outcomes appear deserved, altering them constitutes an unjust act. Moreover, people who assign a significant role to personal responsibility in their definitions of economic desert oppose large-scale redistribution policies because government intervention makes it harder for people to (by their definition) deserve their economic station.In short, Bower-Bir argues, “people must perceive inequality as undeserved to motivate a policy response, and the means of combating inequality must not undermine desert.”In that context, Dias wrote in his email, it would be inaccurate to say thatpolicies designed to benefit minority constituencies have run their course. There’s plenty of evidence that members of these constituencies lack economic opportunities or cannot meet their needs. However, I think many Americans need to be convinced of that.In a further elaboration of the affirmative action debate, three sociologists, Leslie McCall, Derek Burk and Marie Laperrière, and Jennifer Richeson, a psychologist at Yale, discuss public perceptions of inequality in their 2017 paper “Exposure to Rising Inequality Shapes Americans’ Opportunity Beliefs and Policy Support”:Research across the social sciences repeatedly concludes that Americans are largely unconcerned about it. Considerable research has documented, for instance, the important role of psychological processes, such as system justification and American dream ideology, in engendering Americans’ relative insensitivity to economic inequality.Challenging that research, the four scholars contend that when “American adults were exposed to information about rising economic inequality in the United States,” they demonstrated increased “skepticism regarding the opportunity structure in society. Exposure to rising economic inequality reliably increased beliefs about the importance of structural factors in getting ahead.” Receiving information on inequality “also increased support for government redistribution, as well as for business actors (i.e., major companies) to enhance economic opportunities in the labor market.”The intricacies don’t end there.In their April 2017 paper, “Why People Prefer Unequal Societies,” three professors of psychology, Christina Starmans, Mark Sheskin and Paul Bloom, write thatThere is immense concern about economic inequality, both among the scholarly community and in the general public, and many insist that equality is an important social goal. However, when people are asked about the ideal distribution of wealth in their country, they actually prefer unequal societies.How can these two seemingly contradictory findings be resolved?The authors’ answer:These two phenomena can be reconciled by noticing that, despite appearances to the contrary, there is no evidence that people are bothered by economic inequality itself. Rather, they are bothered by something that is often confounded with inequality: economic unfairness.Human beings, Starmans, Sheskin and Bloom write, “naturally favor fair distributions, not equal ones, and that when fairness and equality clash, people prefer fair inequality over unfair equality.”My interest in the subdued political response to the court’s affirmative action decision was prompted by a 2021 book, “The Dynamics of Public Opinion,” by four political scientists, Mary Layton Atkinson, James A. Stimson and Frank R. Baumgartner, all of the University of North Carolina, and K. Elizabeth Coggins of Colorado College.The four scholars argue that there are three types of issues. The first two types are partisan issues (safety net spending, taxation, gun rights etc.) and nonpartisan issues, like the space program. Public opinion does not change much over time on these two types of issues, they write: “Aggregate opinion moves up and down (or, left and right) but fifty years later remains roughly where it started.”Such stability is not the case with the third category:These are social transformations affecting society in powerful ways, literally shifting the norms of cultural acceptability of a given issue position. These can be so powerful that they overwhelm the influence of any short-term partisan differences, driving substantial shifts in public opinion over time, all in the same direction.Two factors drive these transformations:Large swaths of the American public progressively adopting new, pro-equality positions on the issue, and the generational replacement of individuals with once-widespread but no-longer-majority anti-equality opinions — with younger individuals coming-of-age during a different time, and reflecting more progressive positions on these cultural shift issues.Opinion on these mega issues, Atkinson and her co-authors argue, has been moving steadily leftward. “The overall trend is unmistakable,” they write: “The public becomes more liberal on these rights issues over time,” in what Atkinson and her co-authors describe as the shifting “equality mood.”While trends like these would seem to lead to support for affirmative action, that is not the case. “We cannot treat belief in equality as a normative value as interchangeable with a pro-equality policy preference,” Atkinson and her co-authors write:This is particularly true because many pro-equality policies emphasize equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity. And while equality of opportunity is the touchstone of a liberal society (i.e., all Americans are entitled to the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness), the right to equality of outcomes has not been equally embraced by Americans. Once equality of opportunity is significantly advanced, or de jure equality is established, public support for further government action focused on equalizing outcomes may not exist, or at least wanes significantly.In other words, there has been a steady leftward movement on issues of equality when they are described as abstract principles, but much less so when the equality agenda is translated into specific policies, like busing or affirmative action.Atkinson and her co-authors point specifically to growing support for women’s equality in both theory and in practice, reporting on an analysis of four questions posed by the General Social Survey from the mid-1970s to 2004:When asked whether women should let men run the country and whether wives should put their husbands’ careers first, the policy responses look nearly identical to women’s ‘equality mood.’ The series trend in the liberal direction over time and reach a level of approximately 80 percent liberal responses by 2004.But when asked whether it is better for women to tend the home and for men to work, and whether preschool children suffer if their mothers work, the responses are far less liberal and the slopes of the lines are less steep. While responses to these questions trend in the liberal direction during the 1970s and 1980s, by the mid-1990s the series flattens out with liberalism holding between 50 and 60 percent.I asked Stimson to elaborate on this, and he emailed in reply:We have long known that the mass public does not connect problem and solution in the way that policy analysts do. Thus, for example, most people would sincerely like to see a higher level of racial integration in schools, but the idea of putting their kids on a bus to achieve that objective is flatly rejected. I used to see that as hypocrisy. But I no longer do. I think the real issue is that they just do not make the connection between problem and solution. That is why affirmative action has such a troubled history. People are quite capable of supporting policy goals (e.g., racial balance in higher education) and rejecting the means.Where does that leave the nation? Galston, in his Brooking essay, provided an answer:In sum, the country’s half-century experiment with affirmative action failed to persuade a majority of Americans — or even a majority of those whom the policy was intended to benefit — that it was effective and appropriate. University employers — indeed the entire country — must now decide what to do next to advance the cause of equal opportunity for all, one of the nation’s most honored but never achieved principles.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Speech and Antisemitism on Campus

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      More from our inbox:If Joe Manchin Runs for President …Jill Stein’s CandidacyPrivate Art CollectionsPro-Israel demonstrators at Columbia University in New York in mid-October.Jeenah Moon/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “How Are Students Expected to Live Like This on Campuses?,” by Jesse Wegman (Opinion, nytimes.com, Nov. 8):Mr. Wegman is correct that universities cannot live up to their ideals as havens for unfettered debate when their Jewish students feel physically threatened. And he rightly suggests necessary limits on a culture of free speech, including prohibitions on harassment and targeting based on ethnic or religious identity.But it is time for a broader interrogation of the vaunted Chicago Principles he cites, which hold that the only appropriate role for a university is to stay silent on matters of public controversy so that its constituents may fully debate it.I believe that a more important principle for a university — arguably its fundamental principle — is to seek and articulate truth. And in this case, the truth is clear: Hamas is a terrorist organization, dedicated to the destruction of the state of Israel, that is not representative of the Palestinian people as a whole.To the extent the Chicago Principles prevent universities from stating that truth, they make honest debate more difficult, stain all pro-Palestinian students with the repugnant reputation of Hamas, and undermine university administrators’ ability to isolate and combat real antisemitism on campuses.There is no doubt that free expression is a paramount value in universities. But we can aspire higher. We can build our bastions of free speech on the foundational layers of moral clarity and intellectual integrity.(Rabbi) Ari BermanNew YorkThe writer is president of Yeshiva University.To the Editor:Re “What Is Happening on College Campuses Is Not Free Speech,” by Gabriel Diamond, Talia Dror and Jillian Lederman (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 11):Protecting free speech on campus requires bravery and intellectual honesty, not partisan definitions. As Jewish students, we share in the real fear surrounding the rise of violent threats against our communities. Yet, this fear cannot be addressed with definitions that marginalize legitimate Palestinian advocacy.The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism that the authors cite, which refers to “rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism,” is opposed even by several progressive, pro-Israel and Jewish organizations. Such critiques correctly cite the definition’s potential to “suppress legitimate free speech, criticism of Israeli government actions, and advocacy for Palestinian rights.”Institutions of higher education should, of course, address antisemitism; yet, adopting this broad definition would come at the expense of students’ and professors’ fundamental rights to free expression. Regardless of how uncomfortable certain phrases may make us, disagreements surrounding terminology and definitions must not be equated with the very real dangers of death threats, hate speech and physical violence.Upholding free speech requires empathy and consistency, and we must understand that intimidation and fear on campuses are real, and they are not felt only or even primarily by Jewish students.Eliana BlumbergRita FederMichael Farrell-RosenProvidence, R.I.The writers are students at Brown University.To the Editor:Re “At College, Debating When Speech Goes Too Far” (front page, Nov. 11):A key role of higher education is to nurture students intellectually and emotionally as they develop their ethical and moral compasses. Just as alumni have threatened to pull financial support of schools that do not call out terror and take a stance on antisemitism, members of university boards must require similar action.As a member of a university board of trustees whose president has publicly spoken up for morality and truth, and as an American who is shocked to see scenes unfolding that are reminiscent of 1930s Europe, I challenge all the university boards in the country to raise their voices and make their leadership accountable for what is happening on their campuses.There is zero tolerance for racism and zero tolerance for harassment of any kind on today’s campuses, and we should not rest until there is zero tolerance for antisemitism. Colleges should be places where truth is sought and where everyone feels safe. University leaders must step up and lead by example by first speaking up and then creating an action plan to combat hate and antisemitism.Lawrence D. PlattLos AngelesThe writer is a member of the board of trustees of Touro University.To the Editor:If college students directed this sort of hate speech against Black or Asian or L.G.B.T.Q. people, they would most likely be expelled or at least suspended. The fact that they aren’t speaks to the moral cowardice of university administrators.Joshua RosenbaumBrooklynIf Joe Manchin Runs for President …“I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life,” Mr. Manchin said.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “In Blow to Senate Democrats, Manchin Will Not Run Again” (front page, Nov. 10):The concern spreading among “alarmed” Democrats that the prospective third-party presidential campaign of Senator Joe Manchin would draw more votes away from President Biden may be misplaced.Although he is a Democrat and caucuses and usually votes with the Democrats, many of Mr. Manchin’s positions are inconsistent with those in the base of the party, and he is not particularly liked by other segments of the party or left-leaning independents either.If he runs, rather than siphoning votes from the Biden-Harris ticket, he might draw as many, or more, anti-Democratic independents and disenchanted G.O.P. voters. That is especially the case if the Republican Party’s candidate is former President Donald Trump, as seems increasingly likely, and Mr. Manchin’s fusion running mate is a respectable Republican like Liz Cheney or even Nikki Haley.So, Democrats should take a page from the quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who, when a mainstay of the Green Bay Packers, periodically soothed uneasy fans with one word: “Relax.”Marshall H. TanickMinneapolisJill Stein’s CandidacyJill Stein will be running to the left of President Biden and is joining a group of third-party candidates who are making some Democrats fearful that they could siphon support from his re-election bid.Kim Raff for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Stein Plans to Seek Green Party’s Nomination for President” (news article, Nov. 11):There are two questions that all third-party candidates should ask themselves: First, do they really think they can win the presidency? If they are honest, I think they would respond, “Of course not.”Second question: Do they want Donald Trump to be president? Again, I think the answer for all of them would be, “Of course not.”Which then would reveal that ego is driving them and the desire for a larger, more public forum for their ideas. But the price of that drive could very well be catastrophic damage to our country and our democracy if Mr. Trump wins. And each third-party candidate dangerously increases the chances that could happen.Sally JorgensenSanta Cruz, Calif.Private Art CollectionsTo the Editor:Re “Will the Art World Need to Slash Its Prices?” (Arts, Nov. 4):It is auction season and masterpieces by Picasso, Monet and others will be sold, often by the descendants of dead billionaires to living billionaires for their very private collections.True lovers of art would donate these gems to museums, so the public can see them. Just another example of the greed of the wealthiest 1 percent, completely unconcerned about the rest of us.Jim DouglasOcean Grove, N.J. More

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      Why Is the Democratic Base Eroding?

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      More from our inbox:Income Inequality and Test ScoresHelping Kids Thrive With Full WIC Funding Illustration by Sam Whitney/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Democrats Are Their Own Worst Enemies,” by Pamela Paul (column, Nov. 3), about why polls are showing a loss of support for the party among minorities and the working class:Ms. Paul writes that “the Democratic Party cannot win and America cannot flourish if it doesn’t prioritize the economic well-being of the American majority over the financial interests and cultural fixations of an elite minority.”That, she says, is the reason that “the Democratic Party’s reliable base — the working class, middle-class families, even Black and Latino Americans and other ethnic minorities — have veered toward the G.O.P.”Is she talking about the same G.O.P. that, under the former president, passed legislation that gave enormous tax breaks to the wealthiest in the country? Is she referring to G.O.P. legislators who now want to reduce funding for the I.R.S., an agency that serves as a watchdog against unfair tax manipulation that leaves the middle class with a proportionately greater tax burden than the richest?If so, it is hard to imagine that the G.O.P., as opposed to the Democratic Party, is prioritizing the economic well-being of the American majority.Sheila Terman CohenMadison, Wis.To the Editor:OMG! I had no idea how crazy the Democrats really are! As Pamela Paul reminds us, they are out of touch with the “broadly shared beliefs within the electorate.”Democrats support legal immigration and care for refugees. They think Social Security is a good idea. They think everyone is entitled to equal protection under the law regardless of race, gender or ethnicity. They think that people who want to impose their religion on this country are just wrong. They think that people are entitled to autonomy over their own bodies and health care. They recognize the rule of law.And the worst part is they are right up front about it. Thank you, Pamela, for helping me feel better about how I plan to vote.Richard W. PoetonLenox, Mass.To the Editor:Pamela Paul is correct that there is room for robust debate about what policies the Democrats should adopt to better help most Americans, but she misses the bigger problem. The Republican Party is full of one-issue voters who will vote to promote racist policies, misogyny or guns regardless of whether most Republican policies are good for America or not.Many Democratic voters have been quick to say they won’t vote for a Democratic candidate since that candidate promises to do only seven of the 10 things they want. Especially with the Electoral College and gerrymandering favoring minority rule, everyone who recognizes the danger that the current Republican Party poses to our freedoms must vote for the Democratic candidate, even if they want some different policies.Until the current Republican Party is out of power, any debate within the Democratic Party must take a back seat to saving our country from election deniers.Richard DineSilver Spring, Md.Income Inequality and Test ScoresNew SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American EducationThe differences in how rich and poor children are educated start very early.To the Editor:Re “‘18 Years Too Late’ to Solve SAT Gap” (The Upshot, Oct. 30):It is unsurprising that SAT scores correlate strongly to family income. A huge portion of top scorers come from the richest families. Only 0.6 percent of all students from the bottom 20 percent of family income score above 1300 out of 1600.This data dispels the myth that the SAT boosts access to higher education by identifying “diamonds in the rough” from historically underrepresented populations. They are far outnumbered by students from wealthy families taking full socioeconomic advantage to achieve higher scores. The “rough” — in the form of under-resourced public education and family poverty — completely obscures the diamonds.Furthermore, the SAT is a very weak predictor of undergraduate performance. Grades work better. The test is a strong measure of accumulated opportunity rather than college readiness. Relying on SAT results to prejudge future educational performance locks in inequity.That is one reason that nearly 90 percent of U.S. four-year colleges and universities now have SAT/ACT-optional or test-blind policies.Of course, such policies alone will not solve the college access problem. Admissions offices need to scrutinize other determinative factors. A fair process should not provide the greatest opportunities to teenagers who have already had the most advantages in life.Harry FederBrooklynThe writer is the executive director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest).To the Editor:Again and again, research has shown that poverty and income inequality are the most powerful influence on school performance. How could it be otherwise in a country without a real safety net, with parents working two gig jobs and juggling which bills to pay, with no secure access to health care, rampant evictions and parking lots for employed people who have to live in their cars? Yet the public refuses to believe this, and at best seeks to bolster schools in the hopes that they will make up for fundamental deprivation.It is deeply distressing to see how many reader comments declare that wealth reflects genetic superiority and other “virtues.” In an era of barely taxed billionaires building self-perpetuating stock market fortunes on the labor of warehouse workers and A.I., that view is not only undemocratic and ahistorical. It’s also dangerously complacent.Nina BernsteinNew YorkThe writer is a former New York Times reporter.Helping Kids Thrive With Full WIC FundingTo the Editor:Re “Infant Mortality Up for 1st Time in Two Decades” (front page, Nov. 2):The increase in America’s infant mortality rate is a deeply alarming sign that policymakers do not adequately prioritize children’s health and well-being.Sadly, it is not the only sign.The child poverty rate more than doubled last year. Nearly 9 percent of households with children were food insecure in 2022, up from 6.2 percent the year before. Children’s reading and math scores have plummeted since the pandemic.No single program can fix all of this. But the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which serves about half of all infants born in the United States, should be considered our first line of defense.A 2019 study found that WIC participation is directly attributable to a 16 percent reduction in the risk of infant mortality. WIC participation also lowers the risk of poverty, reduces food insecurity, improves nutritional intake and strengthens kids’ cognitive development.Yet new data from the Department of Agriculture finds a significant gap between WIC eligibility and coverage. For instance, only 25 percent of 4-year-olds eligible for WIC are actually enrolled.All children deserve to grow up healthy and thrive. Full funding for WIC is an essential step toward that goal.Georgia MachellWashingtonThe writer is interim president and C.E.O. of the National WIC Association. More

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      Man Who Stormed Capitol as Princeton Student Gets 2-Month Prison Term

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      Larry Giberson was a sophomore studying political science when he joined the riot in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.A 22-year-old New Jersey man was sentenced to two months in prison on Wednesday for taking part, as a Princeton University student, in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a mob loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.The man, Larry F. Giberson Jr., pleaded guilty in July to civil disorder, a felony, after federal prosecutors charged him with that crime and several misdemeanors, according to court records. At the riot, according to a federal agent’s affidavit, Mr. Giberson cheered on others as they used weapons and pepper spray to attack the police officers guarding a tunnel and tried, unsuccessfully, to start a chant of “Drag them out!” among other actions.The misdemeanors were dismissed as part of Mr. Giberson’s plea agreement, court records show. He was also sentenced to six months of supervised release under home detention.Larry Gibersonvia FBIBefore being sentenced, Mr. Giberson, of Manahawkin, N.J., expressed remorse in court for what he called his “careless and thoughtless actions,” The Associated Press reported.“I don’t believe my defining moment was there on the Lower West Terrace,” he said, referring to the section of the Capitol he had entered, according to The A.P. “Instead, I believe my defining moment is now, standing before you.”He was sentenced by Judge Carl J. Nichols of U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., who was appointed to the federal bench by Mr. Trump. Judge Nichols called Mr. Giberson’s actions “reprehensible” and said the two-month sentence was “something of a break,” The A.P. reported.“I do believe that his expressions of remorse, generally and then again today, are candid and truthful,” the judge said. “That’s important to me.”The maximum sentence for civil disorder is five years. Prosecutors had argued in court filings for a prison term of 11 months to be followed by three years of supervised release. The office declined to comment on Mr. Giberson’s sentence.Charles Burnham, Mr. Giberson’s lawyer, had sought a sentence that did not include prison time or supervised release. Mr. Burnham did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mr. Giberson graduated from Princeton in May, Mr. Burnham wrote in a court filing. The Daily Princetonian, a student newspaper, reported in July that Mr. Giberson had earned a bachelor’s degree in politics and certificates in values and public life and French.It is unclear whether Princeton took any action against Mr. Giberson as a result of his arrest. A university spokesman did not respond to an email inquiry on Wednesday.Mr. Giberson is one of more than 1,100 people who have been charged with crimes stemming from the Capitol riot amid an investigation that is continuing, according to the Justice Department. More than 400 have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement authorities.He was among a group of rioters who pushed against a phalanx of officers defending the Capitol at a tunnel entrance on the Lower West Terrace, according to an affidavit filed by a federal agent. With Mr. Giberson at the front of the crowd, one officer was briefly crushed between the rioters and the tunnel doors, the affidavit says.Mr. Giberson had traveled to Washington with his mother for the “Stop the Steal” rally that day after seeing Mr. Trump’s social media post urging his supporters to descend on the city to protest Congress’s imminent certification of President Biden as the winner of the 2020 election, court records show.Mr. Burnham, Mr. Giberson’s lawyer, wrote in a court filing that his client had not been motivated to come to Washington because of “membership in radical groups” or a belief in “online conspiracy theories.”Rather, Mr. Burnham wrote, Mr. Giberson had “studied the issues surrounding the 2020 election and concluded that state actors had interfered with the electoral process in unconstitutional ways.”Mr. Giberson and his mother became separated after making their way to the Capitol from the rally, court records show. After entering the tunnel and joining the push against the officers, he waved other rioters in and joined a second round of shoving against the officers, the federal agent’s affidavit says.Mr. Giberson could be seen in publicly available video footage wearing a blue “Make America Great Again” cap on his head and a Trump flag around his neck and climbing toward the tunnel entrance, the affidavit says.Federal investigators matched a photo of Mr. Giberson from the day of the riot with images posted on social media and the Princeton website, as well as with photos from his high school, the affidavit says. He was arrested in March.There is no record of his mother’s having been charged in connection with the Capitol riot. More

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      Trump and GOP Candidates Call for Campus Crackdowns Against Anti-Israel Speech

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      The G.O.P. field, including former President Trump, has been wading into the emotional debate among students playing out over the deadly war between Hamas and Israel.As tensions mount on U.S. college campuses over the war in Gaza, several Republican presidential candidates are proposing a crackdown on students and schools that express opposition to Israel, appear to express support for the deadly Hamas attacks or fail to address antisemitism.Former President Donald J. Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina have called for the federal government to revoke international students’ visas, while others have suggested that universities should lose public funding.After students at George Washington University projected messages on Tuesday onto the side of a campus building — including “Glory to our martyrs,” “Divestment from Zionist genocide now” and “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a phrase that encompasses all of Israel as well as Gaza and the West Bank — two candidates argued almost immediately that the students or the universities, or both, should be punished.“If this was done by a foreign national, deport them,” Mr. Scott wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday morning. “If the college coddles them, revoke their taxpayer funding. We must stand up against this evil anti-Semitism everywhere we see it — especially on elite college campuses.”Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota wrote: “Antisemitism cannot be tolerated. Period. The students responsible should be held accountable and if the university fails to do so it should lose any federal funding.” He indicated in another post that he would “fully enforce” a Trump-era executive order to use Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to revoke federal funding for any university that “enables” antisemitism.They and other Republicans are wading into an emotional debate on college campuses over Hamas’s attack on Israel, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict — turning the opinions of individual students and student groups, starting at Harvard and New York University, into national flash points. Days of simultaneous pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have exposed painful divisions, including significant and potentially consequential ideological rifts between donors, students and faculty members.The suggestion of punishing anti-Israel views is part of a broader campaign against liberal-leaning campus environments, which many Republicans claim indoctrinate students. But it is also in tension with other parts of that campaign: In many cases, the same candidates have previously condemned what they described as censorship of students who expressed conservative opinions.Mr. Scott was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution in 2021 that called on colleges and universities to “facilitate and recommit themselves to protecting the free and open exchange of ideas” and argued that “restrictive speech codes are inherently at odds with the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.”Mr. Burgum signed legislation in North Dakota, also in 2021, that forbade universities in the state to discriminate against student organizations or speakers based on their viewpoint.When asked where Mr. Scott drew the line between protected and unprotected speech, his campaign did not comment on the record but cited a previous statement in which he called it a “fine line.” Mr. Burgum’s campaign pointed to the Trump executive order as requiring action.Separately, on Tuesday, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida wrote in a letter to university presidents that he had determined — “in consultation with” Mr. DeSantis — that two campus chapters of the group Students for Justice in Palestine “must be deactivated.”The national Students for Justice in Palestine organization released guidance to campus chapters earlier this month calling for demonstrations “in support of our resistance in Palestine.” The guidance called Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people, “a surprise operation against the Zionist enemy” and “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”It added, “This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.”The letter from the chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, said the chapters had violated a Florida law against providing “material support” to “a designated foreign terrorist organization.”“The State University System will continue working with the Executive Office of the Governor and S.U.S.’s Board of Governors to ensure we are all using all tools at our disposal to crack down on campus demonstrations that delve beyond protected First Amendment speech into harmful support for terrorist groups,” it said. “These measures could include necessary adverse employment actions and suspensions for school officials.”The national Students for Justice in Palestine organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The letter came a few days after Mr. DeSantis declared at a campaign event in Iowa that, if elected president, he would revoke the visas of students who supported Hamas. He did not say how he would determine who fell into that category; some public commentary has applied the label “pro-Hamas” to demonstrators expressing broader support for Palestinians or opposition to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which have killed more than 6,500 people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. (Its figures could not be independently verified.)Mr. Trump made the same proposal at his own recent event in Iowa, also not providing details. “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home,” he said.Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, joined Mr. Scott and Mr. Burgum in saying she would cut federal funding to colleges that did not condemn students who supported Hamas.“No more federal money for colleges and universities that allow antisemitism to flourish on campus,” Ms. Haley wrote on X, arguing that the promotion of certain opinions in relation to the Hamas attack constituted “threatening someone’s life” and was “not freedom of speech.”Only one candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, publicly rejected efforts to punish schools or individual students for anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian statements.“Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas & sometimes kids join clubs that endorse boneheadedly wrong ideas,” he wrote on X this month in response to an uproar over a letter from student groups at Harvard that held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”He added: “It wasn’t great when people wearing Trump hats were fired from work. It wasn’t great when college graduates couldn’t get hired unless they signed oppressive ‘DEI’ pledges. And it’s not great now if companies refuse to hire kids who were part of student groups that once adopted the wrong view on Israel.” More

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      Turmoil Over Student Support for Hamas

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      More from our inbox:A Harder Slap on the Wrist for Sidney Powell?A billboard truck displayed the names and faces of Harvard students who were linked to an anti-Israel letter.Sophie Park for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Student Letter Hits Fault Line in Free Speech” (front page, Oct. 19):The unequivocal support for Hamas by some students at elite colleges is irksome and puzzling. These bright young students claim to value tolerance and inclusion while objecting to capital punishment.The savage murders of Israeli babies and senior citizens in their homes and the rape of young Israeli women do not seem to perturb Hamas’s many followers at Harvard and Columbia, but don’t they realize that Hamas brutally persecutes the L.G.B.T.Q. community in Gaza, subjugates women, and tortures and summarily executes dissidents?Ironically, Israel has a much better record on these core human rights issues that progressives insist are key.Adam M. ShawBaltimoreTo the Editor:While the article accurately portrays some of the fears invoked by these dangerous attempts at doxxing at Harvard, the damage has extended even further than described. As a member of the class of 2021, I’ve heard from several classmates who were included in the doxxing list yet have not been associated for years with the student groups that signed onto this statement holding the “Israeli regime” responsible for “all unfolding violence.” Others who appear on the doxxing list are indeed active members of one of the groups, yet had nothing to do with their leadership’s signing onto the statement.This is the logical consequence of such McCarthyite tactics: They provide no opportunity for the accused to respond.Bill Ackman, the hedge fund billionaire who urged that the names of students be circulated to avoid hiring them, and others should be ashamed of themselves for allowing a recent Stanford undergraduate to determine the fates of students partly through “tips sent to an email address.”Such unverified, crowdsourced allegations are misguided in any circumstances, but especially so when they are directed at individuals from marginalized backgrounds.Jonah S. BergerPittsburghTo the Editor:Students who support the liberation and self-determination of Palestine are being targeted for being “antisemitic.” The harassment of these students demonstrates that there is no recognition of the free speech rights of those who critique the Israeli government’s brutal military occupation.We in the U.S. must end the silencing of dissent about Israel’s actions. The nonviolent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement to force changes in policies of forced removal of Palestinians must be honored as a legitimate tactic instead of being labeled antisemitic.We must learn to listen to the legitimate opinions that the U.S. should not be complicit in Israel’s colonial-settler policies, just as we must listen to the demands for a cease-fire, an end to military aid and a space where Palestinians can represent themselves in diplomatic avenues.Carla S. SchickOakland, Calif.To the Editor:It strikes me that the students at Harvard who complain about being “doxxed” misunderstand the concept of free speech. Free speech means that you are free to say whatever is on your mind “free” of government restrictions. It does not mean that your speech is free of consequences.If you open your mouth and say something stupid, people will naturally think you’re stupid. If you say mean things, they likely will think you mean. And if you act as an apologist for terrorists, people will understand you to be an apologist for terrorists.Words have consequences. I, for one, have little sympathy for these individuals.Sanford H. MargolinPiedmont, Calif.A Harder Slap on the Wrist for Sidney Powell?Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani in 2020. It remains unclear what Ms. Powell might say about former President Donald J. Trump if called upon to testify against him.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Trump Insider Agrees to Testify in Georgia Case” (front page, Oct. 20), about Sidney Powell’s plea deal:A letter of apology and a minor fine?That is an appropriate punishment when you throw a rock through the neighbor’s window, or steal bubble gum from the local candy store. It is a decidedly less than adequate response when you have deliberately and repeatedly taken part in an effort to undo the results of a presidential election with the clear purpose of throwing this nation into chaos.I understand that plea bargains are just that, an accord intended to recognize that a wrong was done but minimize the punishment inflicted. But telling Sidney Powell to go sit in a corner for five minutes, I mean, really?I understand the big prize is the former president, but I think Ms. Powell may have been convinced to testify even if her wrist had been slapped a bit harder.Maybe what should have been required was a letter of apology not just to the citizens of Georgia but also to a larger audience — like our entire country.Robert S. NussbaumFort Lee, N.J. More

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      Behold the Free Speech Chutzpah of the Republican Party

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      A solid majority of Republicans continues to believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election — evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Virtually all Democrats believe that Trump did, in fact, lose the 2020 election and that Biden won fair and square.Now in an extraordinary display of chutzpah, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, and fellow Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have accused Democrats of violating the First Amendment rights of election deniers.In a June 26, 2023, interim staff report, Jordan and his colleagues charged that the Biden administration “colluded with big tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor” those who claimed that Trump won in 2020.The report, “The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded With Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans,” makes the argument thatThe First Amendment recognizes that no person or entity has a monopoly on the truth, and that the “truth” of today can quickly become the “misinformation” of tomorrow. Labeling speech “misinformation” or “disinformation” does not strip it of its First Amendment protection. As such, under the Constitution, the federal government is strictly prohibited from censoring Americans’ political speech.These civil libertarian claims of unconstitutional suppression of speech come from the same Republican Party that is leading the charge to censor the teaching of what it calls “divisive concepts” about race; the same party that expelled two Democratic members of the Tennessee state legislature who loudly called for more gun control after a school shooting; the same party that threatens to impeach a liberal judge in North Carolina for speaking out about racial bias; the same party that has aided and abetted book banning in red states across the country.In other words, it is Republicans who have become the driving force in deploying censorship to silence the opposition, simultaneously claiming that their own First Amendment rights are threatened by Democrats.One of the most egregious examples of Republican censorship is taking place in North Carolina, where a state judicial commission has initiated an investigation of Anita Earls, a Black State Supreme Court justice, because she publicly called for increased diversity in the court system.A June 2 Law360 piece examined the racial and gender composition of the North Carolina judiciary and found “that out of 22 appellate jurists — seven state Supreme Court justices and 15 Court of Appeals judges — 64 percent are male and 86 percent are white.”The article then quoted Earls: “It has been shown by social scientists that diverse decision-making bodies do a better job. … I really feel like everyone’s voice needs to be heard, and if you don’t have a diverse judicial system, perspectives and views are not being heard, you’re not making decisions that are in the interests of the entire society. And I feel like that’s wrong.”On Aug. 15, the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission notified Earls that it was opening an investigation “based on an interview you since gave to the media in which you appear to allege that your Supreme Court colleagues are acting out of racial, gender, and/or political bias in some of their decision-making.”Earls’s interview, the notification letter continued, “potentially violates Canon 2A of the Code of Judicial Conduct which requires a judge to conduct herself ‘at all times in a manner which promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.’”On Aug. 29, Earls filed suit in federal court charging that there is “an ongoing campaign on the part of the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission to stifle” her First Amendment free-speech rights “and expose her to punishment that ranges from a letter of caution that becomes part of a permanent file available to any entity conducting a background check to removal from the bench.”At the center of Republican efforts to censor ideological adversaries is an extensive drive to regulate what is taught in public schools and colleges.In an Education Week article published last year, “Here’s the Long List of Topics Republicans Want Banned From the Classroom,” Sarah Schwartz and Eesha Pendharkar provided a laundry list of Republican state laws regulating education:Since January 2021, 14 states have passed into law what’s popularly referred to as “anti-critical race theory” legislation. These laws and orders, combined with local actions to restrict certain types of instruction, now impact more than one out of every three children in the country, according to a recent study from UCLA.Schwartz and Pendharkar also noted that “many of these new bills propose withholding funding from school districts that don’t comply with these regulations. Some, though, would allow parents to sue individual educators who provide banned material to students, potentially collecting thousands of dollars.”What’s more, “Most prohibited teaching a list of ‘divisive concepts,’ which originally appeared in an executive order signed by then-President Donald Trump in fall 2020.”The Trump order, “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” included prohibitions on the following “divisive concepts”:That an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex; that any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or that meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race.The censorship effort has been quite successful.In a February 2022 article, “New Critical Race Theory Laws Have Teachers Scared, Confused and Self-censoring,” The Washington Post reported that “in 13 states, new laws or directives govern how race can be taught in schools, in some cases creating reporting systems for complaints. The result, teachers and principals say, is a climate of fear around how to comply with rules they often do not understand.”Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard who is a professor of economics there, argued in an email that issues of free speech are not easily resolved.The problem, Summers wrote, “comes from both sides. Ron DeSantis’s efforts to limit what he regards as critical race theory is deplorable as are efforts on Ivy League campuses to discredit and devalue those with unfashionable beliefs about diversity or the role of genes or things military.”But, Summers continued,It’s sometimes a bit harder than the good guys make out. What about cultures of intolerance where those who, for example, believe in genetic determinism are shunned, and graduate students all exhibit their academic freedom rights to not be the teaching fellows of faculty with those beliefs. Does ideological diversity mean philosophy departments need to treat Ayn Rand with dignity or biology departments need to hear out creationism?“What about professional schools where professional ethics are part of what is being instilled?” Summers asked:Could a law school consider hiring a lawyer who, while in government, defended coercive interrogation practices? Under what circumstances should one accept, perhaps insist on university leaders criticizing speech? I have been fond of saying academic freedom does not include freedom from criticism but when should leaders speak out? Was I right to condemn calls for divesting in Israel as antisemitic in effect, if not intent? When should speech be attacked?There is, at this moment, a nascent mobilization on many campuses of organizations determined to defend free speech rights, to reject the sanctioning of professors and students, and to ensure the safety of controversial speakers.Graduates of 22 colleges and universities have formed branches of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance “to support free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity.”At Harvard, 133 members of the faculty have joined the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, dedicated to upholding the free speech guidelines adopted by the university in 1990:Free speech is uniquely important to the university because we are a community committed to reason and rational discourse. Free interchange of ideas is vital for our primary function of discovering and disseminating ideas through research, teaching, and learning.Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at the school and a founder of the group, wrote in an email that achieving this goal is much tougher than generally believed:To understand the recent assaults on free speech, we need to flip the question: Not why diverse opinions are being suppressed, but why they are tolerated. Freedom of speech is an exotic, counterintuitive concept. What’s intuitive is that the people who disagree with me are spreading dangerous falsehoods and must be stifled for the greater good. The realization that everyone feels this way, that all humans are fallible, that however confident I am in my beliefs, I may be wrong, and that the only way we can collectively approach the truth is to allow opinions to be expressed and then evaluate them, requires feats of abstraction and self-control.The example I cited at the beginning of this column — the charge that the Biden administration “colluded with big tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor” the claims of election deniers — has proved to be a case study of a successful Republican tactic on several fronts.Republicans claimed the moral high ground as the victims of censorship, throwing their adversaries on the defensive and quieting their opponents.On June 6, The Washington Post reported, in “These Academics Studied Falsehoods Spread by Trump. Now the G.O.P. Wants Answers,” thatThe pressure has forced some researchers to change their approach or step back, even as disinformation is rising ahead of the 2024 election. As artificial intelligence makes deception easier and platforms relax their rules on political hoaxes, industry veterans say they fear that young scholars will avoid studying disinformation.One of the underlying issues in the free speech debate is the unequal distribution of power. Paul Frymer, a political scientist at Princeton, raised a question in reply to my email: “I wonder if the century-long standard for why we defend free speech — that we need a fairly absolute marketplace of ideas to allow all ideas to be heard (with a few exceptions), deliberated upon, and that the truth will ultimately win out — is a bit dated in this modern era of social media, algorithms and most importantly profound corporate power.”While there has always been a corporate skew to speech, Frymer argued,in the modern era, technology enables such an overwhelming drowning out of different ideas. How long are we hanging on to the protection of a hypothetical — that someone will find the truth on the 40th page of a Google search or a podcast with no corporate backing? How long do we defend a hypothetical when the reality is so strongly skewed toward the suppression of the meaningful exercise of free speech?Frymer contended thatWe do seem to need regulation of speech, in some form, more than ever. I’m not convinced we can’t find a way to do it that would enable our society to be more just and informed. The stakes — the fragility of democracy, the increasing hatred and violence on the basis of demographic categories, and the health of our planet — are extremely high to defend a single idea with no compromise.Frymer suggested that ultimatelyWe can’t consider free speech without at least some understanding of power. We can’t assume in all contexts that the truth will ever come out; unregulated speech does not mean free speech.From a different vantage point, Robert C. Post, a law professor at Yale, argued in an email that the censorship/free speech debate has run amok:It certainly has gone haywire. The way I understand it is that freedom of speech has not been a principled commitment, but has been used instrumentally to attain other political ends. The very folks who were so active in demanding freedom of speech in universities have turned around and imposed unconscionable censorship on schools and libraries. The very folks who have demanded a freedom of speech for minority groups have sought to suppress offensive and racist speech.The framing in the current debate over free speech and the First Amendment, Post contends, is dangerously off-kilter. He sent me an article he wrote that will be published shortly by the scholarly journal Daedalus, “The Unfortunate Consequences of a Misguided Free Speech Principle.” In it, he notes that the issues are not just more complex than generally recognized, but in fact distorted by false assumptions.Post makes the case that there is “a widespread tendency to conceptualize the problem as one of free speech. We imagine that the crisis would be resolved if only we could speak more freely.” In fact, he writes, “the difficulty we face is not one of free speech, but of politics. Our capacity to speak has been disrupted because our politics has become diseased.”He specifically faults a widely read March 2022 Times editorial, “America Has a Free Speech Problem,” that warnedAmericans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.Post observes thatNo such right exists in any well-ordered society. If I walk into a room shouting outrageous slurs, I should expect to be shamed and shunned. Only a demoralized community would passively accept irresponsibly hurtful speech.People constantly “balance self-restraint against the need for candor.”Arguments that the protection of free speech is crucial to the preservation of democracy, Post maintains, “encourage us to forget that the fundamental point of public discourse is the political legitimation of the state. Our public discourse is successful when it produces a healthy public opinion capable of making state power answerable to politics.”In Post’s view, polarization “is not a simple question of speech. It is the corrosive dissolution of the political commitments by which Americans have forged themselves into a single nation. If we conceptualize public discourse as a social practice, we can see that its failures stem from this fundamental problem.”In this context, Post concludes,Politics is possible only when diverse persons agree to be bound by a common fate. Lacking that fundamental commitment, politics can easily slide into an existential struggle for survival that is the equivalent of war. We can too easily come to imagine our opponents as enemies, whose victory would mean the collapse of the nation.In such circumstances, Post continues,Political debate can no longer produce a healthy and legitimate democratic will. However inclusive we may make our public discourse, however tolerant of the infinite realms of potential diversity we may become, the social practice of public discourse will fail to achieve its purpose so long as we no longer experience ourselves as tied to a common destiny.“We cannot now speak to each other because something has already gone violently wrong with our political community,” Post writes. “The underlying issue is not our speech, but our politics. So long as we insist on allegiance to a mythical free speech principle that exists immaculately distinct from the concrete social practices, we shall look for solutions in all the wrong places.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More