In the Emerald, here, focusing on carbon divestment. This is pretty much as I remember the history, although Dreiling was kind enough to omit the nastygrams UO Foundation CIO Jay Namyet sent the students.
In the Emerald, here, focusing on carbon divestment. This is pretty much as I remember the history, although Dreiling was kind enough to omit the nastygrams UO Foundation CIO Jay Namyet sent the students.
Some faculty may think that it is part of UO’s mission to support Hamas. Perhaps this is a “UO value.” I don’t think so, and I hope not. But I have been wrong at times. Perhaps the public will decide that a good mission is to divest from UO and other universities.
Please name a U of O faculty member who thinks it is the “U O’s mission to support Hamas”. This is like saying, “Some administrators may think that Israeli genocide of Palestinian women and children is long overdue.” Irresponsible nonsense.
I’m sure you could actually find some if you look and ask around.
Brilliant response.
To borrow a famous line, perhaps “It depends on the context.”
There is a public statement from 100 UO faculty and staff. Anyone can find it, among various places, at
https://wholecommunity.news/2024/05/04/faculty-and-staff-to-uo-refrain-from-escalation/
The statement mentions supposed “genocide” by Israel 11 times.
It mentions the “university’s complicity in genocide” twice. Presumably this refers in part to administrators who are complicit. Whether the writers would think that these administrators regard this “genocide” as “long overdue” I couldn’t say for sure.
The list of signatories is very revealing.
I’m sorry–anonymous “Uncle Bernie”–wherever you are hiding. I don’t see any reference in the statement you reference to “supporting Hamas”, unless you think that condemning Israel’s war crimes means supporting Hamas’s crimes; you probably thought condemning America’s crimes in Abu Ghraib meant “supporting” Saddam Hussein, or that condemning the My Lai massacre meant “supporting” Ho Chi Minh.
I do find the list of signatories “revealing” –if only because I happen to be one of them. I am not a supporter of Hamas, or terrorism in any form; I have written numerous articles over the years about this, and on the immorality of violent resistance generally . Since I took early retirement from Oregon, I have been a distinguished senior research fellow in public international law at Oxford University – – the leading institution on matters like the crimes of war. The first thing we tell people is that, with the crimes of war, as with all crime, one crime (Hamas’s) does not justify another crime (Netanyahu’s).
“Context”, indeed.
I was responding of course to your hypothetical about the Administration and complicity in “genocide” (an absurd charge against Israel).
The protest is clearly against something. Now, there are two sides in the current war, Israel and Hamas. (More if you count the U.S., Iran, Hezbollah but that is a distraction …) The protest is clearly against Israel. By default, one suspects that it is pro-something. That being Hamas and its war. Unless there is an explicit condemnation of Hamas. I haven’t see that at UO. Please point me to something, I want to believe it. Everything I see is slander about “genocide”; ” free Palestine from the river to the sear” — I know very well what that means from long familiarity. “Invest in Climate not Genocide” is a good one. Do the protesters condemn Hamas and think the Israeli response is excessive? Let them say so, that is a reasonable position, though not one that I readily agree with.
Do the protesters support a Two State Solution? Please let them say so; I might even join them on a good day. Do you? Maybe they wamt to bring back the Clinton parameters? Are there professors at UO who support Hamas? I don’t know for sure — I hope not — but I do know that there are quite a few at other universities who have managed to disgrace themselves with public statements. Maybe UO has escaped this scourge.
It’s nice that you have been a “distinguished senior research fellow” at Oxford. But I don’t find your output here terribly lucid — including your suppositions about what I “probably thought” in various situations. You regard violent resistance as immoral generally? Well, it’s nice that you have that luxury.
Really, pretending that the campus protests are not pro-Hamas is not helping anyone — not Hamas, not Gazans, not Israelis, not poor Joe Biden. Maybe Donald Trump.
Divesting from an industry seems theoretically possible because there are industry codes, etc. Divesting form country? Uhhh…how exactly?