RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://wokecapital.org/ivy-league-antisemitism-who-didnt-know/

Over the past couple of days, we have read a great deal about the presidents of the Ivy League schools who went to Washington and embarrassed themselves and their universities.  Much of what we’ve read has reflected justified incredulity, understandable anger and frustration that the presidents of these highly respected universities would believe that the appropriateness of calls for genocide depends on the “context” in which those calls are made.  Some of the commentary has taken the opposite tack, suggesting that the Ivy presidents were justified in defending free speech while lamenting that they did not do so more consistently.  In both cases – theoretically diametrically opposed – the common denominator is callousness and apathy in the face of antisemitism.  Either the universities in question are tolerating antisemitism when they shouldn’t, or they are tolerating antisemitism when they do not tolerate any other discrimination.  In both cases, the antisemites win.

For our money, the most interesting aspect of the entire episode is how completely unsurprising any of it is.  The presidents of Ivy League schools – Harvard and UPenn, in particular – are unconcerned about antisemitism?  Indeed, they clearly and palpably treat Jews and hatred of them differently and less seriously than they do other people and other hatreds?

Honestly, who didn’t know?

The simple fact of the matter is that much of the Ivy League – and again, Harvard and Penn, in particular – are both historical practitioners of traditional antisemitism and the incubators of the newer, ideologically identitarian antisemitism. That their presidents couldn’t or wouldn’t take a stand one way or another against Jew-hatred should come as a surprise to no one.  To do so would be to disavow their institutional heritage and, more to the point, the ideology around which they’ve built their institutional present and future.

Consider, for example, the following passages from a 2006 review of the book The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton by Jerome Karabel.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-bans-cisheterosexism-but-shrugs-at-antisemitism-95a2c5d7?mod=opinion_trendingnow_article_pos3

What constitutes bullying and harassment at Harvard? A mandatory Title IX training last year warned all undergraduate students that “cisheterosexism,” “fatphobia” and “using the wrong pronouns” qualified as “abuse” and perpetuated “violence” on campus.

But when I asked Harvard President Claudine Gay at a congressional hearing whether calls for the genocide of Jews violated the university’s rules on bullying and harassment, she answered: “It depends on the context.” Pressed further, she said it would qualify “when it crosses into conduct.” I received similar answers from the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania.

This lack of moral clarity is shocking. If only it were surprising. In the months since Oct. 7, the mainstreaming of anti-Jewish hate has been on full display at the poisoned Ivy League and other so-called elite schools, as has the gutless lack of response from university leaders. When 34 Harvard student groups signed a statement that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” Ms. Gay and other Harvard leaders were silent for days.

Since then, we have heard reports of Jewish students being spat on, verbally accosted and, in a widely circulated video, physically assaulted. We’ve seen students march chanting “There is only one solution: Intifada revolution,” a call for violence against Israel. They follow that with a chant of “Globalize the Intifada,” implying that the hatred of Israel is a hatred of Jews everywhere, including on campus.

The Penn, Harvard and MIT presidents’ refusal to identify these calls for violence as policy violations is revealing, and their attempt to justify it with feigned concern for free speech is insulting. Just this year, Harvard placed dead last among 248 universities on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s College Free Speech Rankings, receiving the only score of zero out of 100.

Where was Harvard’s concern for free speech when it disinvited feminist philosopher Devin Buckley from a colloquium on campus last year because of her views on transgender issues? Where was its concern for free speech in 2020 when it revoked conservative activist Kyle Kashuv’s acceptance because of social media posts he made as a 16-year-old, or in 2017 when it revoked admission for 10 incoming freshmen who shared offensive memes on Facebook?

Apparently the same outrage doesn’t apply to students sharing antisemitic memes on Slack today, as Bill Ackman noted in his letter to Harvard last month.

While this hypocrisy is being exposed now, it has been festering for years. The failure to call out and punish those demanding the genocide of Jewish people is the consequence of decades of appeasement of radicalism and watering down of principle at our most hallowed institutions of higher education, which were founded as bastions of moral clarity and the pursuit of truth.