Kevin O’Leary Says Pro-Palestinian Student Protesters are ‘Screwed.” Is He Against Freedom of Expression?

Kevin O’Leary said pro-Palestinian student protestors will get “screwed” when they go on a job hunt. A Canadian businessman and Shark Tank host gave the statement during a FOX News TV show, The Five, on Wednesday. As political as it sounds, it can be expected from a businessman with political intentions, as back in 2017, he campaigned to become the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. We are not here to talk politics, but trying to scold student protesters with such statements is depriving them of their basic rights to expression.

Kevin O’Leary on pro-Palestinian student protesters

O’Leary tried to coat his words under the technological advancement of AI, as employers can leverage artificial intelligence to filter out those who have participated in the pro-Plaestinian protests by screening applications and matching the photos taken on camera and identifying them, but the choice of words says a lot. He said,

“There’s plenty of consequences for all those people. Even an image that is far away, AI can generate who they are by the way the body moves. I can’t believe the stuff I find in background checks now. These people are screwed.”

He also added,

“Here’s your resume with a picture of you burning a flag. See that one? That goes in this pile over here, because I can get the same person’s talent in this pile that’s not burning anything.”

Source: Business Insider.

Here, we guess he forgot that AI still struggles to differentiate the bald head of a referee from a football, and he also would not have heard of the accidents that have been reported recently by self-driving cars in the US. So depending on a technology that is still developing and not even near the stage of maturity and then trying to scare people with no future employment just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. 

Freedom of expression

O’Leary is not alone here, as we see many attempts to silence those who try to raise their voices. An article in The Information back when the war started said that there was a time of fear and a culture of fear for Arabs who were working in the tech sector. As it has been seen in recent history, people do take sides when it comes to religion and politics, as standing neutral in the true sense is a difficult position to maintain.

The author, Margaux MacColl, mentioned a tech investor who also happens to be an Arab American. She wrote that the investor sent a letter to a number of people related to his firm in different roles, which started with condemning the Hamas attack of October 7, but said that Israeli airstrikes are a collective punishment of helpless people and asked his contacts to urge for a non-violent resolution with sanctity for human life. In response, some of his contacts were raged; even one went on to say that he would make sure he never succeeded.

But looking at the public opinion, as divided as it could be, a simple search came out showing a Reddit forum on the topic of O’Leary, where a user comment said,

“Isn’t this guy supposed to be all about merit? F… out of here. Idc what ur protesting, ur allowed to protest. He’s just trying to scare people. He knows poor people will be scared over these things.”

Another one said,

“Careful kids, if you protest too hard against the genocide we’re doing, you won’t get to work for the subcontractors killing kids! Better think twice before making such irresponsible decisions as having ethics.”

Source: Reddit.

But despite investors, Silicon Valley influentials, and all the mainstream media taking sides, have not stopped the public opinion on a global level from shifting towards the reality of the helplessness of the people of Gaza and the increasing criticism of Netanyahu in America and South Africa fighting the case in the International Court of Justice, we expect at least a bit of maturity from the figures who are famous and have a following of the younger generation. 

But we feel they are losing their grip on the pulse of what the younger lot is thinking, and their feeling for the suffering humanity may not be suppressed by scaring them of employment.