The presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn were in the news last week, trying to answer a question. Would a student calling for the genocide of Jews violate their university's code of conduct?
My favorite presidential answer was the announcement that the decision to ban student calls for genocide would be "context dependent" at MIT. In other words, the meaning of a slogan like "Palestine must be free/ from the river to the sea" depends on its context.
The university president was right.
The meaning of any sentence (including this one) is context dependent. By claiming that administrative decisions were context-dependent, the president of MIT managed to say an impressive nothing at all.
Unfortunately people noticed.
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