Bates College Silent as Antisemitism Infects Campus By Roy Mathews
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bates-college-silent-as-antisemitism-infects-student-body/
For the crime of volunteering in Israel earlier this year, Bates College student Phoebe Stern has been subjected to vile antisemitic harassment.
Some students have expressed a wish that Stern, the co-president of Bates’s Jewish Student Union, and her classmates would have perished in the Holocaust. One student remarked on social media, “Big nose mafia going to cancel me but you know should’ve finished the job.” Another agreed, “Hitler should’ve finished the job.”
In addition to the hateful words, multiple swastikas have been drawn around campus over the last six months. The Bates administration has not released any findings as to who was responsible for the swastikas or commented on the harassment that Stern and others have endured, though Bates president Gary Jenkins did promise to install more cameras “across campus to identify vandals.”
The Bates administration has found it necessary to issue public statements regarding George Floyd and multiple Supreme Court cases, but has not issued any statement condemning the rape and murder of Israeli citizens in the October 7 attacks or denouncing Bates students’ praising Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust.
One donor has spoken out. Alumnus Blair Frank (class of ‘89) outlined his concerns with Bates’s culture of illiberalism and antisemitism during an April meeting with President Jenkins but was “politely dismissed,” Frank told NR. Frank, who has endowed scholarships for international students and helped launch Bates’s Digital and Computational Studies department, pointed out that the very students he and fellow donors have supported are now harassing Jewish students on campus and praising the Holocaust, while also cowing professors and administrators for not embracing their beliefs wholesale.
The intolerance displayed by anti-Israel campus activists is reflected in the school’s low position on the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) Free Speech Rankings. Frank noted that student responses to FIRE’s surveys showed a “fear of speaking anything other than conformance to progressive dogma.” However, FIRE’s rankings and documented free-speech issues were “not of concern” to President Jenkins, according to Frank, who wrote a letter outlining why he will end his financial support of Bates.
Students and current and former Bates employees have backed up Frank’s concerns.
“The day-to-day environment is utterly toxic. . . . We have turned professors and staff alarmed by the college’s culture into Orwellian characters reduced to having clandestine conversations, whispering to each other because they’re afraid they’ll be fired if overheard while raising their concerns,” said one longtime Bates administrator who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Recent graduate Anna-Sophia Massaro finds it ironic that Bates could not condemn or discipline students for praising the Holocaust, given the administration’s professed dedication to inclusion. “If Bates wants an inclusive campus they have to take action when something like this happens,” she said. Another recent graduate, Peter Nguyen, remarked, “I think of the students who praise the Holocaust as idiots. To wish for the success of systemic genocide on anyone is reprehensible.”
Multiple current students said they were reluctant to comment on the university’s lack of response to antisemitism because of the risk of social or academic repercussions, with one student texting, “last thing I need is for some prof hurting my grades for something they read I said.”
The previous Bates president, Clayton Spencer, apologized to students at a rally for featuring a photo of a college Republican in a social-media campaign encouraging student voting in the 2020 election. “It was incredibly insensitive of me to speak out about the election without taking that into account,” Spencer said, pointing to the “added harm, fear, and feelings of unsafety inflicted on the Bates community” that the election was apparently causing the students.
The post was deleted and Bates instituted a required critical-race-theory curriculum, called Race, Power, Privilege, and Colonialism, that is now used across all departments at the college in response to student demands. The recent surge in antisemitism has not elicited any similar additions to curricula.
Neither President Jenkins, Dean of Faculty Malcolm Hill, Chairman of the Board Greg Ehret, nor any other member of the board of trustees has commented on the climate of antisemitism reported by Jewish students.
Frank remarked in his letter that he “longer believes in sending kids to what amounts to an ideological boot camp,” adding, “None of us will be any better off if that’s where America’s best and brightest are shaped.”
The Bates College communications department did not respond to a request for comment.
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