The video posted on the Canary Mission website makes it crystal clear that their goal is to prevent "radicals" from getting jobs once they have graduated from college or graduate school. After showing a few clips of people at anti-Israel demonstrations shouting horrible antisemitic slogans (e.g., one young woman is shouting "Go back to the ovens"), the narrator says:
A few years later these individuals are applying for jobs within your company. There's no record of their membership of radical organizations. No one remembers their yelling profanities on campus or attending Jew-hating conferences and anti-American rallies.All evidence has been eradicated and soon they will be part of your team.This campaign assumes that if an employer does not like someone's politics, he or she is perfectly justified in not hiring that person. This may be legal (I don't know if discriminating against people on the basis of their political beliefs or activism is covered by anti-discrimination laws anywhere), but unless it can be proven that a person's politics would prevent him or her from doing a good job, it seems blatantly anti-democratic to me.
This organization looks more than a bit shady. But I don't think we can say "doing a good job" is the only criteria. Let's say our "back to the ovens" friend is eminently qualified for a given position. She's still a harassment suit waiting to happen. Obviously it is perfectly reasonable for a company not to hire her, even though she'd be "good at her job".
ReplyDeleteSo ultimately, it seems the relevant question is when expressed political behavior gives rise to a reasonable worry that someone is employment discrimination time-bomb. It's a tough question, to be sure, but I think you're giving it the short-shrift by simply dismissing the entire thing as political discrimination.
Thanks so much for calling attention to this insidiousness. It's telling that the site gives no indication of who is behind this McCarthyite smear campaign. Very shady.
ReplyDeleteI believe in Freedom of Speech no matter how hateful or odious.Some of the most horrible,racist statements that I have ever read have come from people in high positions in Israeli government(Sharon,Meier,Begun,Shakelet,Lieberman)And their actions have matched their speech..And just who gets to define what constitutes a radical?Hate speech is hate speech.
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