Quotes from Robert Boyers

The characterization of entire groups as victims has underwritten the conviction that such groups may never be subjected to criticism of any kind.

The rage for 'identity' too often bespeaks a preference for simplicity rather than for complexity.

We don't always get to decide what others see when they sum us up or reduce us to a caricature of the rich and various selves we think we have fashioned.

Assertion, even self-assertion, does not invariably bespeak an urge to annihilate the opposition or to wield coercive power.

The will to insist upon a definite, unimpeachable reading of an incident - which might well have been read in other, more generous ways - was a mark of a bewildering denial: a denial of the imagination that, liberated to do its proper work, can lead us in alternative directions.

In academic circles influences by Said, any reference to acts of 'terrorism' was soon regarded as off-limits, a reflection of Zionist efforts to discredit the legitimate aspirations of a subject population by casting aspersions on their so-called freedom fighters. In this way, 'blaming the victim' was deployed as an ideological weapon that might constrain debate.

I have long been moved by Rosa Luxemburg's assertion that 'freedom is always the freedom to think otherwise,' and thus I've been attracted to contrarians, to people whose instinct is to go against the grain of officially accredited views - especially those accredited within their own circle of progressive thinkers. This has its dangers, to be sure.

Interesting, I said - using a word I often use when students come out with an earnest banality - and left it at that.