Genocide is different.

When the police came to clear the students from the Columbia campus back in 1968, it was because students had occupied a number of buildings, including the President’s office and a few classroom buildings, and so thwarted the ability of a university to do business. The cause of the protest, which was the Vietnam War, was not the reason to send in the police. This month, pro-Palestinian students encamped on the lawn in front of Butler Library, and the police cleared them from the campus. The same action would not have been taken if the squatters were encamped to protest world hunger. Ralph Abernathy had gotten all the permits on the WashingtonMall so as to create a March on Poverty but that encampment, reminiscent  of Hoovervilles, just fizzled, not having the fizzle, I think, that MLK. Jr. did have and so was sorely missed. So what happened? We are undergoing a profound difference in the idea of free speech, where the principles and facts, the content of what is said, is becoming the criteria to use about whether free speech is accessible rather than thinking, in line with John Stuart Mill, that government is just a referee which allows the contestants to argue a contention out by themselves, let the better idea win.