Human Rights in America

When it comes to human rights, Jimmy Carter is likely to be disappointed that America upholds them in words only. As his fellow US president, George H W Bush, once infamously said: "read my lips."

When the going gets tough, the US commitment to human rights is there is really NO commitment to human rights.

The US response to the 9/11 attacks clearly settled this old question.

America is happy to preach to others about human rights. Especially the Chinese and the Russians and the Iranians. But, when the Americans themselves came under attack, they would do just about anything to wipe out the threat.

Before human rights became an advocacy for America under Jimmy Carter, we violated many of them during the tumultuous years of the Vietnam War and Civil Rights movement.

After Carter, we did it again post-9/11 when we intimidated our fellow Americans in the academia to silence them.

Then we did it again to them since October last year when the Gaza War started.

Presidents of multiple universities have been questioned by the Republican-majority House, inquisition-style, over reported rise in antisemitism on college campuses, never mind the simultaneous rise of Islamophobia as well. Both presidents of Harvard and University of Pennsylvania later resigned.

Recently, the president of Columbia University in New York capitulated to the demands of the same lawmakers in Washington, DC and started cracking down on protesting students, arresting a hundred of them.

At Yale University in Connecticut, police also arrested 50 protesting students.

The same thing happened to University of Southern California when it decided to cancel the valedictorian speech of Asna Tabassum, a Muslim student known to support the Palestinians in Gaza.

What freedom of speech? What human rights? What a shame. 😪