JACK ENGELHARD: COLUMBUS DISCOVERED AMERICA IN 1942?
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15822#.VEI3rxauRIZ
We worry what people are being taught in madrassas and mosques. We should also be worried what people are being taught at Harvard and Yale.
On TV, Joe College was stopped on some campus. He was asked what year was it when Columbus discovered America. This took some thinking. Hmmm.
“1942?” he guessed.
“Right,” shrugged the what-the-heck interviewer.
We laugh. But this is not funny. On the Harvard campus students were asked their views on America. They responded that the United States is responsible for more terrorism than ISIS. This type of spiteful ignorance may not be typical. But it is not unusual, either. These are voters, or soon to be voters.
Their older brothers and sisters likely voted already…which is why we have Obama…and why soon we will have Hillary…and why we are doomed.
We send our kids off to college filling them with wholesomeness and they come back with tee-shirts emblazoned with Che Guevara.
They don’t know America. They don’t know their blessings. There is no gratitude for being born into the land of plenty.
We send our kids off to college filling them with wholesomeness and they come back with tee-shirts emblazoned with Che Guevara.
This too may not be typical, but it is widespread enough to be worrisome. Who teaches this generation? Well, we know about Brandeis and what those academics did to Ayaan Hirsi Ali when she tried to offer her take on Islam. They shunned her. Now we also know about Fordham.
Fordham professor Doron Ben Atar, as quoted in the Algemeiner publication, says, “People take history at Fordham and they get only varieties of liberal and leftist and far-leftist opinions. Now we’re in a situation where these people have power, and some of them succumb to the temptation of using it to bully others.”
Multiply Fordham and Brandies by about 100 and you get a picture of the American Campus, and it is not a pretty picture.
Ben Atar ignited the wrath of academics and administrators at Fordham when he had the chutzpah to pick a fight against the American Studies Association. According to my understanding, Ben Atar objected to ASA’s discriminatory action in joining up with the Boycott Israel movement.
In turn – can’t make this up — Ben Atar is himself now being accused of discrimination! Hence, only anti-Israel voices are permitted to speak freely.
For some reason, anti-Israel agitation comes with the territory when we speak of life on campus. The influx of Muslim “students” has been no help.
Ben Atar says, “I’m fighting anti-Semitism.”
As for me, as an occasional guest lecturer here and there, I find that anti-Semitism is a default position among members of this generation. Pick the topic and it comes back to the same thing…the “occupation”…the “apartheid”…the poor “Palestinians”… and refuting all these charges fact by fact still does no good. The brainwashing cannot be rinsed out.
Strange, in my case, because I was speaking before a literary group and the topic was creative writing and after I spoke happily about Tolstoy and Hemingway, and then mentioned that all creative writing begins with Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy – the room erupted. I had opened the door to some awful nonsense and bigotry, and even knowing what I know, still, I was unprepared for the venom.
I fought back, to no avail. I was shouted down, and I was in danger. A professor, who was sitting in, quieted them down.
“I am Jewish myself,” he said, “and I assure you that most us don’t buy Israel’s point of view as presented by this right-wing Zionist. We are not like that.”
Well thanks a bunch.
One of the students, a young woman, asked me if I wanted Security to escort me to my car. I declined. But she saw the situation.
I wish that I had an answer for what is obviously a crisis. I don’t. But awareness ought to be a first step.
King Solomon put it plainly: “A generation goes and a generation comes.” It gets complicated when we try to figure what it is that’s coming.
Jack Engelhard writes a regular column for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the int’l bestseller Indecent Proposal that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. New from the novelist, the anti-BDS thriller Compulsive. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
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