Would You Like To Volunteer to Get Arrested or Beat Up? Testing Free Speech in the Encampments
Too much of this Gaza stuff happened too fast. I’d hoped to be taking direct action, as an activist, but events have overtaken me. I guess I’m a typical intellectual. First I was going to see if I could get arrested along with the pro-Hamas Tenters, then I was going to see if I could get them to beat me up. But here I am, still working on my To-Do list.
First, I was organizing an effort by several of us professors to get arrested by the Indiana University Administration1 along with the Tenters in defense of free speech and the rule of law. As I’ve written on before, at IU, President Pamela Whitten suddenly changed the rules without telling anyone so she could order the Tenters in Bloomington arrested at 3 PM (the official university policies on the web allowed tents until 11 PM). I had a few volunteer arrestees lined up; I visited the Tenters to see the lay of the land and see what they thought of a conservative Zionist being arrested with them; I thought about calling up my superduper but expensive civil-rights lawyer for the lawsuit I’d bring afterwards (IU would end up paying his $790/hour rate; he’s the most expensive lawyer in Terra Haute, Indiana2); I got some faculty who’d already been arrested to give tips to the group (*very* useful); I thought about what to wear, and what to leave behind (penknife, cell-phone, pepper spray, car keys, belt, wallet except ID, laptop, briefcase, hearing aid) and what to do during the boring hours under arrest (I still need help on that one).
But after much thought I decided that President Whitten had realized after the first two sets of mass arrests that the Tenters could just keep coming back and she was acting foolishly as well as illegally.3 Her best strategy was to surrender and pretend she can’t see any tents when she casts her eyes over Dunn Meadow.4 She’s reverted to what I first thought she’d do, to let the Tenters alone even when they *do* break the rules by tenting overnight and ruining the grass.5 So I abandoned my plan, with relief, and went back to writing up homeworks for my 7th graders, plotting with Python instead of professors.6
My second scheme was to get beat up by the Tenters, also in service to freedom of speech. At MIT, Tenters physically prevented a Jewish student, Alexander Kestenbaum, from entering their encampment. There’s a video of him arguing with them and with the police, who finally agreed to make the Tenters let him in. Kestenbaum, a Harvard Divinity student, already has a lawsuit filed against Harvard for anti-semitic violation of Title VI; perhaps MIT students can bring one too. MIT really should not have a Judenfrei zone in the middle of campus; Zionist students should not have to argue with police before they can walk across the lawn.
The Tenters in Indiana issued a challenge:
The challenge is for someone to come and give a speech against Hamas, a speech which would “make participants in the encampment and participants in our actions uncomfortable.” If you try, their response will be to “remove abusers from our spaces”. I’m not sure if that constitutes the crime of assault— which is a threat of battery, of physical force— in itself, since it is not directed at an individual. Probably not. But it is a threat of battery.
As someone “reactionary tendencies of every sort”, I was anxious to see whether they would really “remain principled in practicing this line.” The last phrase was interesting— how often do you hear serious references to “the party line,” the line in the Communist sense? I was just reading it in a C.P. Snow novel set in 1930’s England, but we tend to think that the Communists have disappeared. Not so— the Party for Socialism and Liberation is still around and still proudly Communist, in the Leninist variety of “democratic centralism”.7 I was too young to be very active in the Cold War,8 but here was my chance to fight Communism!
It was a bit scary. The Tenters were no doubt prepared, and of course thought they would win if anybody took them up on their challenge. But their playbook is pretty well known— if an intruder enters, they surround him with sheets so he’s isolated, and they try to make him “feel uncomfortable”, as they told a Toronto economics professor would happen to him if he didn’t leave. At Harvard, there was also some shoving, since the sheets are pretty good cover for beating someone up, and they actually threatened to suspend a couple of students, though I never heard they actually did it, and a general amnesty was declared this week.9
My plan was to assemble a team of young men for backup and to have someone, probably me, enter the encampment with a microphone like the rude girl used at the Berkeley Law Dean’s dinner party for 3rd year students. I might have my helpers hold big bluetooth speakers. I would have a little soapbox, if it wasn’t too hard to carry, and I’d stand on it, whip out my Israeli flag, and make a speech about Hamas atrocities. I would tip off the press in advance, and would have my helpers filming it too. A drone woudl be good to get a different angle, particularly if the side angle was quickly obscured by the sheets. The drone coudl also keep track of whether I was being beat up.
They would try to drown me out. Probably I should start at low volume and then turn it up as they turn theirs up. If they were using plug power with a long extension cord, one of my helpers might unplug them. My helpers would also be ready to call the police if things became too difficult, or to rescue me if I got stuck. If I did get stuck and they wouldn’t let me leave, I’d sit down with a book till they got tired or lost their alertness. They would try to provoke me to hit someone— either an old woman or a young one, I don’t know which— but I think I hold my cool pretty well. After all, my provost and dean called me reprehensible, sexist, racist, homophobic, intolerant of women, disrespectful to women, intolerant of racial diversity, unchristian, vile, stupid, bigoted, and loathsome, and the twittersphere was considerable less polite, and I fortunately have the ability not to care what inferior people think of me. I might well get jello dumped on me, or less delicious substances, but we’ve had five babies in my house, plus a dog, so I can take that too.
But I decided not to. All that arrest plotting took a lot of energy, as well as worrying my friends, who thought it beneath my dignity to get arrested with a bunch of Communists and undergraduates. Also, last week I was elevated to the dignity of Republican Party Precinct Committeeman, Perry-19 and Indiana State Convention Delegate, District 3, Republican Party.10 So I must rethink.
I’ve decided that my highest-and-best use, my “opportunity cost”, as we call it in economics, is writing, not implementing. I am very good at writing, and I am pretty good at implementing, which includes being superlative as “ideas guy” or “script doctor”, a good choice for “star of the show”, an even better choice for “producer” and “director”, a bad choice for “gaffer” or “best boy”, and a very bad choice for “cameraman” or “romantic lead”.11 So if anyone wants to do it, go ahead. The MIT and Harvard encampments are now cleared, a defeat for the Tenters at MIT and a victory at Harvard. At Indiana, the Tenters are winning, but only in a weak sense. They have successfully defied the President, but their tents are not really inconvenient for anyone except for diminishing the frisbee space, so they aren’t getting any demands granted. In addition, at Indiana I fear that anything that makes the Tenters look bad will make President Whitten look good. The Faculty voted “No Confidence” in her by a margin of 80 or 90% even before she mishandled the Tenters, and then voted to ask the Trustees to fire her by a similar margin, but the Tenters have been her salvation. Her blunders have made her seem like a strong force for order and justice against lawless Tenters and against Hamas, and her faculty opponents, many of whom *are* pro-Hamas, have let the media frame the issue that way, not realizing that being pro-Hamas is only a winning stance in Bloomington, nowhere else in Indiana. If, however, anyone wants advice on getting beat up, I’m happy to provide it.
Footnotes
Technically, the plan would be for me to be arrested not by the Administration herself, who is not a large woman, but by the Indiana State Police riot squad, with snipers, riot shields, body armor, etc. The beleagured Indiana University Administration, teetering on the verge of being fired after the faculty’s No Confidence vote, called in the State Police rather than the campus cops, who would have done fine, as far as arresting me anyway. Young people do like being hog-tied, or even resisting and getting hit, but I’m too old for photo-ops like that. (On the other hand, I’m up for photo-ops generally, depending on their value and pain requirements.)
The tone is perhaps a little more arrogant than I even intended, so I’ll insert a quotation.
I will probably spend several years at the Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat Hospital h aving this attended to. You may expect to receive some rather staggering medical bills each month. My corps of attorneys will contact you in the morning wherever it is that you carry on your questionable activities. I shall warn them beforehand that they may expect to see and hear anything. They are all brilliant attorneys, pillars of the community, aristocratic Creole scholars whose knowledge of the more surreptitious forms of living is quite limited. They may even refuse to see you. A considerably lesser representative may be sent to call upon you, some junior partner whom they’ve take on out of pity.
However, to save you the anxiety of awaiting this phalanx of legal luminaries to arrive at your spider web of an apartment, I shall consent to accepting a settlement now. Five or six dollars should suffice.
I would be in a rather better bargaining position than Ignatius J. Reilly, though (p. 214. A gem of writing!).
I think calling the police to arrest someone for trespassing when they’re not, and you know or should know they are not, must be a crime of some sort. Whether it is or not, you’re civilly liable to repay the police for their wasted time.
Which she never does, actually. Her eyes are never cast over Dunn Meadow, because she’s afraid to go there. I hear that she’s afraid for her life visiting anywhere in Bloomington, actually . I don’t whether the fear is of Hamas terrorists, Communists, or Professors. I am sure she has gotten death threats— those of us in the public eye have to expect that kind of thing, unfortunately, which is one reason it’s too bad women have to step up and serve. But there are truly ominous death threats (whichI myself have never gotten) and death threats which convey that the threatener really hates you and would like to kill you but is a contemptible coward who couldn’t bring himself to do it even if you gave him a machine gun and a free pass out of jail.
I have heard conflicting reports as to whether she even has ever lived in Bloomington, except perhaps overnight for the occasional meeting, or whether she instead lives in Indianapolis in a University or private residence there. Reddit has this and that; rumor from a possibly reliable source told me it’s just Indianapolis. Maybe it’s always been too scary for her.
A friend who’s a professor at Harvard tells me the truly angry, even savage, people at Harvard now, the ones really want to see the color of the protesters’ insides, are the Maintenance Guys. Harvard Yard’s grass has been churned to mud, and they’re mad.
The tenters are not environmentalists. I say this not just because they don’t even seem to notice that their brightly colored tents pollute the spring beauty of Dunn Meadow and kill the grass that’s been under them for ten days. When I visited a week ago, the foot traffic had already made the grass between the tents muddy. But in addition to this evidence by destruction, the Tenters are pro-Hamas in their immediate goal, and Islamists aren’t known for being Green, except, sometimes, in their flags. Gaza’s beaches were known for the immense amounts of untreated sewage pumped into the sea. The Tenters are also Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, an ideology known to value the environment no more than it values human lives.
Quiet surrender was only President Whitten’s second-best strategy, by the way. Silent surrender like that is indeed better than fighting and losing, or than the abject surrender of paying Danegeld to make the Tenters go away as the President of Northwestern did. The best strategy, however, would be that of the pseudonymous President John Habidacus, to enforce the Indiana University rules. That means using campus police to arrest the Tenters every night, at random times so as to interrupt their sleep, or perhaps even just to use firehoses or destroy the tents each night. It could be worked out. That works with graffiti in big cities, and it’s a longterm investment for I.U., a legacy. Quiet surrender encourages the protesters, and if the faculty were clever (which we are not), we’d have publicized it so it wasn’t quiet any more and President Whitten would have lost her “strong defender against pro-Hamas protesters” image.
“Democratic centralism” means that the top leadership committee decides the “line” and everybody else follows it without discussion, or is expelled from the Party. This is one reason American Communist parties splinter so much. In America they don’t execute dissidents, though.
I did have one moment of glory in 1979 in college. The Yale Political Union hosted a TV debate between William F. Buckley and George McGovern (1972 Presidential loser), an episode of Firing Line. Tom Rozinski and Mark Baker were vying to be the Tory student chosen to ask a question, but Peter Keisler, I think, arrange it to be me. I asked something like “Shouldn’t we keep up a nuclear arms race so the Soviet Union’s economy will be so strained that Communism will collapse?” Everybody thought it was crazy to think Communism would ever collapse, and McGovern answered that he thought it would be wonderful if we could all free up spending for more social programs.
It was unclear whether the Harvard President’s amnesty included those threatened with discipline last fall. Probably, though I expect if you were suspended for drinking too much beer or complimenting a girl on her dress you remain in disgrace.
I will leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out what I mean by that sentence. You have permission to use the link, just as Chinese students are allowed to use a dictionary during tests to look up unusual words. If we were at MIT, we wouldn’t need a gaffer. It seems they are provided to illegal protesters, at least to pro-Hamas illegal protesters by the Administration. “Romantic Lead”, I should tell you, actually isn’t a job that needs filling in Political Theater of the kind I’m talking about. I just put that in to be modest about my abilities.