“I call on Chancellor Javier Reyes and the University of Massachusetts administration to denounce the Canary Mission and publicly state its defense of student activists who are doxxed on the website,” writes Owen Ray.
Speech is being discouraged and student’s futures threatened
Doesn’t matter if it’s a student or otherwise. If you sign a public document, then you should not be afraid to be associated with the document. Otherwise what is the point of signing it?
And again, student or not if they didn’t sign it then they should be left alone (even if they are indirectly related to someone who did sign it).
I don’t think so. To summarize, a bunch of students signed a letter on their own behalf or on behalf of the student organizations they lead. Their names were collected and published on a website. I don’t see any problem in that. If you sign a letter, you should own it.
The website further denounces the letter as well as organizations like al-Jazeera as anti-semitic. That’s fine too. Public debate naturally involves people in the debate accusing each other of all sorts of things: anti-semitic, fascist, racist, sexist, whatever. If you don’t like that kind of negative feedback, don’t make public statements - such as signing letters.
The website further drags individuals who had nothing to do with the letter into the debate. That’s inappropriate.
This started as a response to the letter (as far as I can tell). But Hillel groups at universities (mine included) were regularly harassed by groups supporting a free Palestine. After the response to the letter, they realized “hey maybe we can do something about shit like that, too” (not a direct quote by them).
I mean we were just trying to hang out, pray, and eat food together. And my gut feeling is all of those people should be shamed. But my slower brain reaction is that I hope some of those people that I regularly talked with started to better understand what they were saying.
Ah so I got it backwards. They started with noting abuses, but the letter gained them some notoriety(or infamy depending on who you ask). Good to know.
Again, I have mixed (at best) feelings about it. They do these things in public so don’t necessarily have a reason to expect privacy. I have experienced harassment on campus, myself. But I’m unsure that it will have the desired long term impact.
McCarthyism targeted people for possibly (and often not actually) supporting a legal political movement. Supporting terrorist organizations and that being made public isn’t the same thing. And an individual or group using a website announcing someone’s public actions isn’t the same thing. McCarthy abused his authority as a member of the federal government to harass and and punish. Canary mission has no such authority. It just turns out a lot of people don’t like people who side with terrorists.
That being said, I am not really a fan of canary mission. I think more work needs to be done on education and understanding of the entire situation instead of a few of the most recent events. If I were still in the US, I would probably try to organize such groups. But it is definitely a much harder goal to accomplish.
It’s not just students. It’s individuals, professionals, organizations. Check out their website. It’s digital McCarthyism.
Doesn’t matter if it’s a student or otherwise. If you sign a public document, then you should not be afraid to be associated with the document. Otherwise what is the point of signing it?
And again, student or not if they didn’t sign it then they should be left alone (even if they are indirectly related to someone who did sign it).
I think you may have missed the message of the article.
I don’t think so. To summarize, a bunch of students signed a letter on their own behalf or on behalf of the student organizations they lead. Their names were collected and published on a website. I don’t see any problem in that. If you sign a letter, you should own it.
The website further denounces the letter as well as organizations like al-Jazeera as anti-semitic. That’s fine too. Public debate naturally involves people in the debate accusing each other of all sorts of things: anti-semitic, fascist, racist, sexist, whatever. If you don’t like that kind of negative feedback, don’t make public statements - such as signing letters.
The website further drags individuals who had nothing to do with the letter into the debate. That’s inappropriate.
This started as a response to the letter (as far as I can tell). But Hillel groups at universities (mine included) were regularly harassed by groups supporting a free Palestine. After the response to the letter, they realized “hey maybe we can do something about shit like that, too” (not a direct quote by them).
I mean we were just trying to hang out, pray, and eat food together. And my gut feeling is all of those people should be shamed. But my slower brain reaction is that I hope some of those people that I regularly talked with started to better understand what they were saying.
It started in 2014. Source.
Ah so I got it backwards. They started with noting abuses, but the letter gained them some notoriety(or infamy depending on who you ask). Good to know.
Again, I have mixed (at best) feelings about it. They do these things in public so don’t necessarily have a reason to expect privacy. I have experienced harassment on campus, myself. But I’m unsure that it will have the desired long term impact.
McCarthyism was orchestrated by the federal government - that’s a big difference.
McCarthyism targeted people for possibly (and often not actually) supporting a legal political movement. Supporting terrorist organizations and that being made public isn’t the same thing. And an individual or group using a website announcing someone’s public actions isn’t the same thing. McCarthy abused his authority as a member of the federal government to harass and and punish. Canary mission has no such authority. It just turns out a lot of people don’t like people who side with terrorists.
That being said, I am not really a fan of canary mission. I think more work needs to be done on education and understanding of the entire situation instead of a few of the most recent events. If I were still in the US, I would probably try to organize such groups. But it is definitely a much harder goal to accomplish.
That’s why I said “digital.”