An essay on the activism over the Israeli-Gaza war and our struggles with freedom of speech

Update 05/06/2024:  I spent the morning with a good friend who is a professor and associate dean at a major public university in the U.S.  I had wanted to ask him about his thoughts on the Palestinian/Israeli campus protests.  He was trapped in my car for an hour while we drove home from our morning destination and it was a good opportunity.  I commented that I had read the essay posted below and he responded that he, too, had read it.  For some reason I was surprised.  I shouldn't have been; he and his wife are the most well-read people I know, by far.  He did not like the essay, thought is was one-sided and biased and further stated that he does not know why the Atlantic published this college sophomore's essay.  Overall, my friend feels that the reporting on campus protests has been distorted and falsified with the agendas of the reporting sources being given priority.  He supported his claim with much more than I will be able to write accurately here, so I will not try.  His discussion points this morning were well-articulated and gave me new insight to the college campus protests. 

The gift link to read this essay has expired.  No longer an Atlantic subscriber, even I cannot access it.  I was going to remove the whole entry from this blog, but will keep it here for a while longer in the event that someone can access this essay by other means and needs the title and author's name to do so.  

My friend and I also discussed use of chatbots by university students and he confirmed that they are easy to use and also agreed that they are used widely by college student writers.  Maybe Theo Baker did use chatbot assistance when writing his essay, maybe he didn't.  Even though the Atlantic might disagree, all of my gushing about this Stanford sophomore's essay was probably premature.

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32.  I have been distraught by the Gaza-Israeli war now in its seventh month.  I know there are many Americans who feel similarly.  This last sentence is a gargantuan understatement.  I read reliable journalism and listen to highly-regarded podcasts and interviews with highly-regarded journalists and writers of both sides.  I've tried to come up with my own way of expressing my thoughts and feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian-Hamas war (to describe it as a conflict does not seems reasonable or honest).  Unfortunately, I am just not that articulate and I feel that I always fail - such that, I no longer engage in any discussion, feeling it is safer to change the subject or just walk away.  It also happens that I live in an area of the US that is a huge Hamas stronghold.

This morning, Easter Sunday, I opened my email to find my usual The Best of Journalism compiled by Conor Friedersdorf.  I may not always read the essays Friedersdorf has selected, but I always check them out.  This morning I found an essay that gripped me from the moment I opened it.

The War At Stanford: I didn't know that college could be a factory of unreason by Theo Baker and published by The Atlantic on March 26th, 2024.

Coincidentally, my subscription for The Atlantic has just expired.  I had been a subscriber for only two years, first to both the print and on-line editions and, in the second year, only to the on-line edition.  I thought about it and decided not to re-subscribe.  I know I'll miss aspects of the on-line edition, but I just did not read it enough.  I subscribe to a couple of other journalistic magazines that I also don't read enough, and I read The Atlantic even less.  I'm a slow reader and want to focus on reading more books.  Conor Friedersdorf is also a writer for The Atlantic.

More about this essay:  Theo Baker is a sophomore at Stanford University.  Yes, you read that correctly - a sophomore.  My god!  He is also the winner of a 2022 George Polk Award in Journalism.  I've heard of this award, but otherwise know nothing about it.  It must be good.

You may be thinking; well, the author is writing about Stanford.  That's on the other side of the country and has nothing to do with me.  My kids or grandkids or relatives' or neighbors' kids will never go there.  My response is: read this essay!  It is important to understand, that you will not read an essay about the war itself, although Theo Baker writes about aspects of it.  It is, rather, about how we think and talk about the war here in the US and about the activism this war has engendered.  

I have never read anything like what this college sophomore has written.  He writes so unselfconsciously and with so much clarity.  I have not read anything by far more seasoned journalists, historians and, of course, politicians that even begins to approach this.

I don't know how long the link will be active.  Maybe ten days?  The Atlantic is very strict about non-subscriber access to its pages.  I visited my local bookstore to purchase the March print edition and The Atlantic was not in the otherwise very large periodical selection.  

I hope you are able to access this excellent, and admirable, piece of writing.  Read it!  You can also listen; will take approximately 35 minutes.  

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Afterward 04/02/2024:  A couple of days after posting this piece, I listened to How Should I Be Using A.I. Right Now? on the Ezra Klein [podcast] Show on April 2, 2024.  Ezra Klein interviewed Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who's spent countless hours experimenting with different chatbots.  The interview was excellent and I learned things about chatbots that I had never given any thought to.  I've always thought that I'm too old to have my life much affected by A.I.  (After all, I barely know how to use my laptop or smartphone!).  But, if the interview is an accurate measure of how quickly things are moving forward, this may not be the case.

At first, and at various points in the interview, it seemed like Ezra Klein wanted to figure out how to use chatbots to assist with his own research and writing.  That may have been the case, but even if so, this was an important interview for listeners to hear.  Later in the evening I Googled ChatGPT 4 Free.  There was a lot to select from, but what I clicked on looked like an app and I didn't have time to explore further.

College students are uniquely positioned in their education, age and need to use chatbots for their writing and research.  As I was listening to the interview, I began to think about Theo Baker's essay.  Had he used chatbot assistance to write his essay?  I have no idea; only that the interview made this question pop into my head.  A couple of years ago the discussion seemed to center on how universities and colleges were going to manage student use of A.I. tools for their writing.  Yesterday's Ezra Klein interview with Ethan Mollick made it seem like this may now be a done deal.  To use my favorite cliche' the cat is out of the bag.