RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/send-in-the-clowns

Earlier this week, Minouche Shafik, Columbia University’s president, unexpectedly resigned her post. You would think that the departure of an Ivy League leader less than three weeks before the start of the fall semester would be a cataclysmic event, an indication that the institution and its board are ready to account for the series of unfortunate events that led the august school to this low point, a string of catastrophes that began with a temperate embrace of the anti-Semitic marauders who occupied the campus and harassed their Jewish classmates and ended with the shameful resignation of three deans who were caught exchanging text messages disparaging Jewish students concerned about said harassment. You’d expect something close to soul-searching, something approximating an apology, something approaching a promise to do better when thugs brandish the Hamas flag and threaten Jewish students that they’re next on the terror group’s kill list.

Welcome to American academia: what we got instead this week were two statements, one from Shafik and one from her interim replacement, Katrina Armstrong, that are so dazzling in their moral, intellectual, and emotional vacuity that they deserve to be read closely and carefully. Call these twin missives the ur-texts of our academic Armageddon, proof that from the crooked timber of contemporary American higher education no straight thing may ever be built again.

First, Shafik’s resignation. Here is its first paragraph, in full:

I write with sadness to tell you that I am stepping down as president of Columbia University effective August 14, 2024. I have had the honor and privilege to lead this incredible institution, and I believe that—working together—we have made progress in a number of important areas. However, it has also been a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community. This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community. Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead. I am making this announcement now so that new leadership can be in place before the new term begins.

Sadness? Appropriate. Progress in a number of important areas? No evidence is provided, but let us, in the spirit of human kindness, nod right along. But then we get to the heart of the matter: “a period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/so-unimaginable-and-so-abhorrent-federal-judge-orders-ucla-to-stop-aiding-activists-enforcing-jew-free-zones-on-campus/

““Shame on UCLA for letting antisemitic thugs terrorize Jews on campus,” Rienzi said. “Today’s ruling says that UCLA’s policy of helping antisemitic activists target Jews is not just morally wrong but a gross constitutional violation. UCLA should stop fighting the Constitution and start protecting Jews on campus.”

A Los Angeles federal district court ordered the University of California, Los Angeles, to stop allowing and assisting in self-described pro-Palestinian activists’ creation of what amount to Jew-free zones on campus, holding that the university may not offer classes if Jewish students are prohibited from participating in the programming.

Those who occupied encampments on the university’s property disallowed Jews from passing through the quad unless they would disavow Israel and, by extension, their Jewish faith. UCLA’s position had been that the encampments preventing Jewish students from accessing certain areas of campus were not its responsibility.

Despite that contention, the university erected metal barriers around the encampment and directed Jewish students to leave, according to a lawsuit.

“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Judge Mark C. Scarsi wrote on Tuesday. “This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. UCLA does not dispute this. Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.”

https://www.jns.org/us-jewish-students-transfer-to-friendlier-schools-post-oct-7/

In the wake of the anti-Israel protests that swept across U.S. college campuses following the Hamas invasion on Oct. 7, anecdotal evidence suggests that Jewish students have started voting with their feet and decamping from the worst-offending schools. 

“We’ve seen an unprecedented number of students from top-tier institutions transfer to Yeshiva University, including from Columbia, Cornell and Barnard,” Yeshiva University President Rabbi Ari Berman told JNS.

On April 25, Yeshiva University announced that “in light of ongoing antisemitism and harassment on college campuses,” it would extend its deadline for transfer students until May 31.

Berman said this was the first time the school had received student transfers from Columbia in the middle of the year. There was “no question” in his mind that the students were searching for a safer environment.

Although he wouldn’t share the number of students, he said it was high enough that the school needed to expand its infrastructure to accommodate everyone. “We have more people in our system now than we’ve ever had before,” he said.

Eliana Samuels, 19, grew up in a religious home in New York, graduated high school in 2023 and took a gap year to study in Israel. She’d planned to attend Columbia in the fall. “I applied early decision, which is binding. I didn’t see a problem with that, because I couldn’t really picture myself anywhere else,” she told JNS, noting her mother went to Columbia.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/tonight-we-fight-back-harvard-graduate-slams-campus-antisemitism-in-blistering-rnc-speech/

Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent graduate of Harvard Divinity School who is currently suing the university over its failure to respond to antisemitic harassment and discrimination on campus, took aim at left-wing antisemitism in a Republican National Convention speech that drew raucous cheers from the Milwaukee audience.

“I came to Harvard to study religion, the foundation of Western civilization,” Kestenbaum said. “What I found was not theology but a contempt for it. My problem with Harvard is not its liberalism but its illiberalism. Too often, students at Harvard are taught not how to think but what to think. I found myself immersed in a culture that is anti-Western, that is anti-American, and that is antisemitic.”

Kestenbaum stressed to the convention crowd that antisemitism does not exist in a vacuum. Those who hate the Jewish people and the state of Israel, he argued, abhor the United States and the West as well.

“Students and professors have openly called for new Hamas-style attacks against the United States, and perhaps most damning, when Hamas terrorists butchered 45 American citizens on October 7 — when they took twelve Americans hostage — Harvard refused to immediately and unequivocally condemn this atrocity,” he said.

Formerly a member of the progressive Left, Kestenbaum explained to the audience how he went from being a supporter of Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) in the 2020 Democratic presidential-primary race to understanding what he deemed the deep rot at the core of left-wing radicalism.

“Although I once voted for Bernie Sanders, I now recognize that the far Left has not only abandoned the Jewish people but the American people,” he told the crowd. “The Democratic Party — the party I registered to vote for the day I turned 18 — has become ideologically poisoned. And it is this poison, it is this corruption, that is infecting far too many young American students. Let’s be clear: The far Left’s antisemitic extremism has no virtue, and the radicalism on our campuses and on our streets has no moral legitimacy.”

After describing the threats antisemitism and support for terrorism pose to American society, Kestenbaum turned his attention to the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.

“Tonight, we fight back,” he vowed. “I am proud to support President Trump’s policies to expel foreign students who violate our laws, harass our Jewish classmates, and desecrate our freedoms. Let’s elect a president who will instill patriotism in our schools. Once again, let’s elect a president who will confront terrorism and its supporters.”

Kestenbaum ended his speech by affirming the tight-knit bond between the Jewish tradition and the principles upon which the United States was founded and a reminder not to forget the American citizens still held in Hamas captivity.

“Let’s elect a president who recognizes that although Harvard and the Ivy Leagues have long abandoned the United States of America, the Jewish people never will, because Jewish values are American values, and American values are Jewish values,” he said. “God bless the United States, God bless the land of Israel, God bless, protect, and return the American hostages in Gaza.”