OF HUMAN DISCERNMENT: Major journalists seemed to be shocked...

MONDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2023

...by the lack of human discernment: Long ago, in war-torn Casablanca, Captain Renault was shocked to learn that gambling had been going on inside Rick's cafe.

Renault gave voice to his astonishment twice; he said he was "shocked, shocked." This produced one of the most famous comic lines in a century of Tinseltown film-making.

In the wake of last weekend's murderous attacks on more than a thousand Israeli citizens, many pundits seemed to be shocked by a well-known fact of life. To appearances, they were shocked to learn that young people, even including college students, don't always display the highest imaginable degree of human moral discernment.

There's a background to this story:

Kids say the darndest things, Art Linkletter initially discovered. As it turns out, this can also be true of college freshmen. It can be true of juniors and seniors, even of graduate students!

It can even be true of young college instructors! Consider the case of the suspended lecturer from the oddly named Stanford course, College 101.

Yes, that seems to be the actual name of a mandated freshman year course! In a column in the New York Times, Pamela Paul described what one instructor did in the wake of last weekend's murderous conduct:

PAUL (10/14/23): Stanford is in the throes of a teachable moment right now, and it’s not a good one.

In an opinion column in The Stanford Daily on Tuesday, the Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine called Hamas’s butchery “part of the ongoing, decades-long struggle against Israeli oppression” and said Palestinians have “the legitimate right to resist occupation, apartheid and systemic injustice.”

A lecturer in one class that day asked Jewish students to raise their hands, then took one of the Jewish student’s belongings and told him to stand apart from everyone else, saying that was what the Israelis did to the Palestinians, a student who was in the class told me. In a later section, another student in the class told me, he turned to an Israeli student and asked how many Jews died in the Holocaust. When that student said six million, the teacher replied, many more millions died in colonization, which is what he said Israel was doing to the Palestinians. He then asked all of the students to say where they were from and depending on the answer, he told them whether they were colonized or colonizer. When a student said, “Israeli,” he called the student a colonizer. (The lecturer did not respond to an email request for comment.)

Just for the record, Palestinians do have “the legitimate right to resist occupation, apartheid and systemic injustice,” just like everyone else.

At any rate, that was Paul's description of the events at Stanford. In this report, CNN offered a somewhat more detailed account:

ROMINE ET AL (10/13/23): An instructor at Stanford University has been removed from teaching duties as the school investigates reports that during a discussion on the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the instructor downplayed the Holocaust and singled out students “based on their backgrounds and identities.”

[...]

Rabbi Dov Greenberg, executive director of Rohr Chabad House, Stanford’s Jewish community center, told CNN the students were “shaken up.”

Greenberg, who said he spoke with the students involved in the incident, said they are “not doing well” and are afraid to face backlash or bullying on campus.

According to Greenberg, the students said the instructor tried to justify the actions of Hamas and asked the students how many Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

After one student answered “6 million,” the instructor then said more people have been killed by colonizers and said, “Israel is a colonizer.”

The instructor then illustrated his point by asking some students to physically go to the back of class. “That’s what Israel does to Palestinians,” the teacher said, according to Greenberg.

[...]

The Stanford instructor’s alleged comments came during two classes Tuesday, with a total of 18 students, during which the instructor announced the day’s lesson would focus on colonialism, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. The outlet cited Jewish student leaders who spoke with students in the course called College 101, a required class for first-year students.

Based upon these reports, it sounds to us like this instructor was displaying limited judgment—faulty moral discernment. Indeed: 

Assuming these accounts are accurate, it sounds to us like he may have said some very dumb things. (He also may have made some statements which were reasonable and accurate.)

In fairness, no videotape of these events has surfaced. Beyond that, it's a well-known fact:

We humans display limited discernment pretty much all the time! We humans do so "from the right," and we do so "from the left."

Sometimes, we humans also display limited discernment within the mainstream press. That doesn't necessarily mean that we're bad people. It may simply mean that we're people people, behaving as humans frequently do, especially at highly fraught times.

Way back in 1915, Somerset Maugham (no relation) published his best-known novel, Of Human Bondage. The leading authority on the novel thumbnails its theme in this way:

Of Human Bondage is a 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. The novel is generally agreed to be Maugham's masterpiece and to be strongly autobiographical in nature...Maugham, who had originally planned to call his novel Beauty from Ashes, finally settled on a title taken from a section of Spinoza's Ethics. The Modern Library ranked Of Human Bondage No. 66 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

[...]

Maugham's initial title was Beauty from Ashes, borrowed from Isaiah 61:3, "... to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair"; however, it had already been used. He took the new title from Spinoza. Part IV of his Ethics is titled "Of Human Bondage, or the Strength of the Emotions" (Latin: De servitute humana seu de affectuum viribus). A free person, says Spinoza, is able to think rationally: but when one is dominated by emotion, rational thought is impossible, and one becomes a slave to the (unthinking) passions. 

Maugham's novel isn't "political." But at a heavily fraught time like this, we humans often react in emotional ways. Attempts at rational thought may become quite difficult, making it harder for us to find the best way forward.

It seems to us that at least one young Stanford instructor displayed limited human discernment last week. His emotional investments may have led him to put his thumb on the scale as he discussed the events which are now unfolding in Israel and in Gaza.

That said, it seemed to us that many journalists, not necessarily excluding Paul, may have displayed imperfect discernment too. Imperfect judgment may keep us from seeing the best way forward at such times as this.

Some major journalists may be displaying imperfect human discernment! Last week, some of them were shocked, just shocked, by the imperfect discernment some other people displayed. 

Often, these observers were shocked at the limited discernment displayed by people who are young.

Some major journalists seemed to be shocked. This doesn't mean that they're bad people.

It may mean that they're people people. We'll explore this theme this week.

Tomorrow: Columnist Paul's formulation