Five critical problems that make this article worthless.
1) No one thinks that "symbolic acclaim" will make merit appear. We think that popular ideas of merit, how to assess it and how to create it are wrong. We think, based on the universally available evidence, that forces like racism, colonialism, and other ideologies and biases distort actual merit. Your article being an exemplar of that.
2) An instructor's authority is based on their expertise. If their expertise is lacking or if they are not properly applying it, they no longer have any authority. They no longer have epistemic authority and they actually no longer have normative authority. This is why the university, despite your irrational biases, works. (And, yes, the British didn't need calculators to conquer the world... but they did need Newton and industrial development. You know, what the academy creates).
3) A student's speech rights is not based on whether they are right, and especially not on whether or not you are right. Students learn by expressing themselves and being mistaken. In fact, even teachers do so. This is how science happens.
4) The universe is not determined by Michael David Cobb Bowen's opinion. Your lack of belief in the merit of Khalil's opinion is as irrelevant as my firm lack that your opinion here is indeed worthless, both fallacious and tyrannical. It is true that free speech is intended to advance a public agenda, but that is not determined ahead of time by an assessment of a lack of value of a particular opinion. Even quite obviously wrong opinions are part of the public discourse. Even if one accepts the idea that some speech is so poisonous as to need to be removed from the marketplace of ideas, Khalil's does not, by any criterion, rise to that threshold, not least because he is right.
Moreover, Khalil is not Edward Said because Edward Said took decades to become Edward Said. Not all speakers need to have the breadth of knowledge and insight that Said had, not even for a healthy public debate. Michael, *you are not Edward Said, so do you not have the right to speak*? You have taken your antipathy to Khalil, without even having the intellectual honesty to quote him and demonstrate that he is not the equal of Said, and worked backwards to a position that would deny the freedom of speech of essentially the entire planet. But the First Amendment did not leave the right of freedom of conscience to geniuses, philosophers and sages. And yet, like most ideological conservatives, democracy and all of its prerequisites are to be binned when you don't like it anymore.
Honestly, how would anyone express their opinion that they dislike a policy under your maxim here? If they could not write at the level of a scholar, they would then not be able to dissent? There is a fascist devil on your shoulder, Michael. Exorcise it.
5) It is not only Khalil's freedom of speech that is being punished, but his right against unreasonable search and seizure, his right to fair trial, and all of his other rights. And it is also the rights of everyone else who agrees with him who are being threatened by extension, with the literal threat of imprisonment. You are almost certainly wrong about Palestine, but that's hardly material.
What happened to the idea that we may disagree with each other but will fight to the death for the right to disagree? Right, it died when a fascist takeover occurred. Shameful.
I will love to see you present the actual verifyable speech of Mahmoud Khalil. Put it here in the comment section as you will remain free to do. As I said, Khalil's speech becomes more irrelevant as the value of his symbolism rises. If you want to use the symbolism of his particular defense to bash me, you are free to do so. But you are not free to organize a protest in my yard or start some kind of march. Marching isn't speaking. It is belligerence.
I welcome your best distillation of the merit of his particular speech. Cite it. Show us the goods.
Now, let's get the utter dishonesty here out of the way. It doesn't matter if you don't happen to like his speech. You didn't cite it. You did not demonstrate that his speech is worthy of being censored, which, of course, is the entire discussion being had here. If you concluded your article by saying that, of course, Khalil should still be able to speak, and you were just considering relative merit and the importance of free speech, I wouldn't be taking this tack. But you didn't. You failed to fight for American rights.
Now. What does he say of merit?
"With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom."
This is a powerful image, Michael. You're free to disagree with his assessment, but this is a powerful way of thinking about this topic.
"I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention"
This too is a beautiful sentiment, a powerful one, and one he expresses by criticizing both sides of the aisle, showing himself to be capable of seeing past partisan merit.
"Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats."
This is true, and your shameful article is apologia for it, making irrelevant points to paper over the revocation of rights you take for granted.
One can go on and on. You did not take him seriously because of your biases. You did not let him speak as you were blithely excusing his silencing. This is not how free speech works, Michael. Disagree with Khalil all you want. But disagree. Don't imprison.
"Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation —
to go unchecked."
First of all, Mahmoud Khalil's defense from jail is not what 'free speech' I am referring to. Such appeals are often more heartrendingly admirable than the actions that preceded the detention. Murderers often write children's books from death row. What concerns me are the actions of MK and the organization for which he was the lead negotiator, CUAD. In other words, the dynamics of power behind words. If Mahmoud Khalil were an effective and responsible diplomat, then his words and those documents crafted by his organization would have been sufficient, especially in a university setting, to warrant respect and admiration. But I think his aims to be a revolutionary are simply juvenile.
I have spent an hour or so pulling relevant contexts, but will probably get more over time.
1. CUAD is trying to boil an international ocean of complaint.
2. CUAD enabled rabble by asserting 'genocide'.
3. CUAD disregarded, disturbed and disrupted the peace at Columbia.
It is a bit ironic, isn't it, that CUADs calls for divestment has resulted in a potential divestment of federal funds for Columbia.
Khalil seems to have the courage of his convictions. Unfortunately these convictions are unrealistic and foolish. In the end, if he is not *of* HAMAS then he cannot speak *for* HAMAS. It is unclear to me at the moment whether or not CUAD and Khalil are more Fatah than HAMAS, but it is obvious to me that there is a significant difference between the two and as such Fatah has the moral upperhand, as they were not behind the massacre that started this war. Considering that the majority of Palestinians *are* in the West Bank and not Gaza it is clear that those in support of HAMAS are indeed more disrespectful of peaceable accommodation.
For the immediate moment the following eight documents are in the archive I have established. My bottom line is as it has been. Marching is belligerent. It has no art and is not persuasive but coercive. Columbia U is not a normally functioning university and CUAD is responsible for the upheaval. It is not for the 'free speech' that this has occurred but for the revolutionary action described above.
- Columbia University Apartheid Divest Who we are.pdf
- Columbia University President Dr. Minouche Shafik resigns months after campus protests.pdf
- Columbia removes three deans from power for ‘very troubling’ antisemitic text messages CNN Business.pdf
- Columbia student group retracts apology of member who said ‘Zionists deserve to die’.pdf
- Essay Columbia University President What I Plan to Tell Congress Tomorrow.pdf
- I Was a Columbia Student Journalist. Here’s What to Know About Mahmoud Khalil. 1.pdf
- I am a Palestinian political prisoner in Louisiana. I am being targeted for my activism Mahmoud Khalil.pdf
- Responding to Federal Action Office of the President.pdf
Sometimes you are the pure distillation of wry. Another round over here!
Five critical problems that make this article worthless.
1) No one thinks that "symbolic acclaim" will make merit appear. We think that popular ideas of merit, how to assess it and how to create it are wrong. We think, based on the universally available evidence, that forces like racism, colonialism, and other ideologies and biases distort actual merit. Your article being an exemplar of that.
2) An instructor's authority is based on their expertise. If their expertise is lacking or if they are not properly applying it, they no longer have any authority. They no longer have epistemic authority and they actually no longer have normative authority. This is why the university, despite your irrational biases, works. (And, yes, the British didn't need calculators to conquer the world... but they did need Newton and industrial development. You know, what the academy creates).
3) A student's speech rights is not based on whether they are right, and especially not on whether or not you are right. Students learn by expressing themselves and being mistaken. In fact, even teachers do so. This is how science happens.
4) The universe is not determined by Michael David Cobb Bowen's opinion. Your lack of belief in the merit of Khalil's opinion is as irrelevant as my firm lack that your opinion here is indeed worthless, both fallacious and tyrannical. It is true that free speech is intended to advance a public agenda, but that is not determined ahead of time by an assessment of a lack of value of a particular opinion. Even quite obviously wrong opinions are part of the public discourse. Even if one accepts the idea that some speech is so poisonous as to need to be removed from the marketplace of ideas, Khalil's does not, by any criterion, rise to that threshold, not least because he is right.
Moreover, Khalil is not Edward Said because Edward Said took decades to become Edward Said. Not all speakers need to have the breadth of knowledge and insight that Said had, not even for a healthy public debate. Michael, *you are not Edward Said, so do you not have the right to speak*? You have taken your antipathy to Khalil, without even having the intellectual honesty to quote him and demonstrate that he is not the equal of Said, and worked backwards to a position that would deny the freedom of speech of essentially the entire planet. But the First Amendment did not leave the right of freedom of conscience to geniuses, philosophers and sages. And yet, like most ideological conservatives, democracy and all of its prerequisites are to be binned when you don't like it anymore.
Honestly, how would anyone express their opinion that they dislike a policy under your maxim here? If they could not write at the level of a scholar, they would then not be able to dissent? There is a fascist devil on your shoulder, Michael. Exorcise it.
5) It is not only Khalil's freedom of speech that is being punished, but his right against unreasonable search and seizure, his right to fair trial, and all of his other rights. And it is also the rights of everyone else who agrees with him who are being threatened by extension, with the literal threat of imprisonment. You are almost certainly wrong about Palestine, but that's hardly material.
What happened to the idea that we may disagree with each other but will fight to the death for the right to disagree? Right, it died when a fascist takeover occurred. Shameful.
I will love to see you present the actual verifyable speech of Mahmoud Khalil. Put it here in the comment section as you will remain free to do. As I said, Khalil's speech becomes more irrelevant as the value of his symbolism rises. If you want to use the symbolism of his particular defense to bash me, you are free to do so. But you are not free to organize a protest in my yard or start some kind of march. Marching isn't speaking. It is belligerence.
I welcome your best distillation of the merit of his particular speech. Cite it. Show us the goods.
Five seconds of Google searching, Michael. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/19/mahmoud-khalil-statement . He has an entire Guardian article.
Now, let's get the utter dishonesty here out of the way. It doesn't matter if you don't happen to like his speech. You didn't cite it. You did not demonstrate that his speech is worthy of being censored, which, of course, is the entire discussion being had here. If you concluded your article by saying that, of course, Khalil should still be able to speak, and you were just considering relative merit and the importance of free speech, I wouldn't be taking this tack. But you didn't. You failed to fight for American rights.
Now. What does he say of merit?
"With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom."
This is a powerful image, Michael. You're free to disagree with his assessment, but this is a powerful way of thinking about this topic.
"I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the US has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention"
This too is a beautiful sentiment, a powerful one, and one he expresses by criticizing both sides of the aisle, showing himself to be capable of seeing past partisan merit.
"Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats."
This is true, and your shameful article is apologia for it, making irrelevant points to paper over the revocation of rights you take for granted.
One can go on and on. You did not take him seriously because of your biases. You did not let him speak as you were blithely excusing his silencing. This is not how free speech works, Michael. Disagree with Khalil all you want. But disagree. Don't imprison.
"Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation —
to go unchecked."
First of all, Mahmoud Khalil's defense from jail is not what 'free speech' I am referring to. Such appeals are often more heartrendingly admirable than the actions that preceded the detention. Murderers often write children's books from death row. What concerns me are the actions of MK and the organization for which he was the lead negotiator, CUAD. In other words, the dynamics of power behind words. If Mahmoud Khalil were an effective and responsible diplomat, then his words and those documents crafted by his organization would have been sufficient, especially in a university setting, to warrant respect and admiration. But I think his aims to be a revolutionary are simply juvenile.
I have spent an hour or so pulling relevant contexts, but will probably get more over time.
1. CUAD is trying to boil an international ocean of complaint.
2. CUAD enabled rabble by asserting 'genocide'.
3. CUAD disregarded, disturbed and disrupted the peace at Columbia.
It is a bit ironic, isn't it, that CUADs calls for divestment has resulted in a potential divestment of federal funds for Columbia.
Khalil seems to have the courage of his convictions. Unfortunately these convictions are unrealistic and foolish. In the end, if he is not *of* HAMAS then he cannot speak *for* HAMAS. It is unclear to me at the moment whether or not CUAD and Khalil are more Fatah than HAMAS, but it is obvious to me that there is a significant difference between the two and as such Fatah has the moral upperhand, as they were not behind the massacre that started this war. Considering that the majority of Palestinians *are* in the West Bank and not Gaza it is clear that those in support of HAMAS are indeed more disrespectful of peaceable accommodation.
For the immediate moment the following eight documents are in the archive I have established. My bottom line is as it has been. Marching is belligerent. It has no art and is not persuasive but coercive. Columbia U is not a normally functioning university and CUAD is responsible for the upheaval. It is not for the 'free speech' that this has occurred but for the revolutionary action described above.
- Columbia University Apartheid Divest Who we are.pdf
- Columbia University President Dr. Minouche Shafik resigns months after campus protests.pdf
- Columbia removes three deans from power for ‘very troubling’ antisemitic text messages CNN Business.pdf
- Columbia student group retracts apology of member who said ‘Zionists deserve to die’.pdf
- Essay Columbia University President What I Plan to Tell Congress Tomorrow.pdf
- I Was a Columbia Student Journalist. Here’s What to Know About Mahmoud Khalil. 1.pdf
- I am a Palestinian political prisoner in Louisiana. I am being targeted for my activism Mahmoud Khalil.pdf
- Responding to Federal Action Office of the President.pdf
I will start an Annex.
Nailed it... over, and over, and over.