The Ivy League and American Academia: DEI as a new lesson in Jew-Hate
Please tune in this evening at 7:00 PM — we have returned from Egypt just as the Israelites in this week’s Torah portion have arrived. Pharoah has helped us to understand a bit of what is happening as the pages of the Torah have continued to turn and we with them. Although there is much to say — we will remain at one hour in duration for the sake of both brevity and clarity. — Please ‘click in’ even if you cannot listen in . . .
What was Pharaoh up to? Haven’t we seen this game before?
WSJ OP-ED Headline: (see link immediately after the Torah excerpt)
Demonizing people in racial terms because they’re successful turns out to have consequences.
Here below, from this Week’s Parsha in Exodus:
Exodus 1:8
A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.
וַיֹּ֖אמֶר אֶל־עַמּ֑וֹ הִנֵּ֗ה עַ֚ם בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל רַ֥ב וְעָצ֖וּם מִמֶּֽנּוּ׃
And he said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us.
הָ֥בָה נִֽתְחַכְּמָ֖ה ל֑וֹ פֶּן־יִרְבֶּ֗ה וְהָיָ֞ה כִּֽי־תִקְרֶ֤אנָה מִלְחָמָה֙ וְנוֹסַ֤ף גַּם־הוּא֙ עַל־שֹׂ֣נְאֵ֔ינוּ וְנִלְחַם־בָּ֖נוּ וְעָלָ֥ה מִן־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase; otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.”
וַיָּשִׂ֤ימוּ עָלָיו֙ שָׂרֵ֣י מִסִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן עַנֹּת֖וֹ בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם וַיִּ֜בֶן עָרֵ֤י מִסְכְּנוֹת֙ לְפַרְעֹ֔ה אֶת־פִּתֹ֖ם וְאֶת־רַעַמְסֵֽס׃
So they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor; and they built garrison cities for Pharaoh: Pithom and Raamses.
וְכַאֲשֶׁר֙ יְעַנּ֣וּ אֹת֔וֹ כֵּ֥ן יִרְבֶּ֖ה וְכֵ֣ן יִפְרֹ֑ץ וַיָּקֻ֕צוּ מִפְּנֵ֖י בְּנֵ֥י יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
But the more they were oppressed, the more they increased and spread out, so that the [Egyptians] came to dread the Israelites.
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Here is the article to read: yes, although long — well worth the time . . . .
Demonizing people in racial terms because they’re successful turns out to have consequences.
Op Ed WSJ — How Antiracism Became Antisemitism
December 29th
This ^ Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal (no firewall here) is a critical analysis of what has happened to (or on) American College campuses in the years since Bakke.
It is a long and extensive, but painfully truthful analysis of how affirmative action, DEI, and inclusivity programs have brought new evils not only into academia — but have helped to foster new forms of Jewhate and simultaneously cast doubt on the entire system of meritocracy originally hoped for in DEI programs and in institutions across this country. The article was written before Gay’s resignation yesterday — but there is little doubt as to how she was promoted to the highest level of American Academia, to one of the flagships of our nation’s Ivy League. Her credentials were and remain suspect and her arrogance as to what constitutes hate speech reveals much more than simple plagiarism, the calls of which have seemed to increase exponentially as the days ticked by.
I am intrigued by Pharoah’s statement in this week’s reading (Parsha) re the worryful anxieties of the Jews taking over — of course, the best way to rid themselves of the Jewish threat is to rid themselves of the Jews.
Excerpt:
Yet here we are. Over the past 2½ months, Jew-hatred has rocked elite college campuses. Tony neighborhoods in blue cities have witnessed marches calling for the elimination of the Jewish state and protests outside Jewish-owned businesses—this in response not to the accidental killing of a Palestinian by an Israeli soldier, but to the systematic butchering and kidnapping of Israeli Jews by terrorists.
To these expressions of bigotry, high-ranking public officials and university administrators have issued bland disavowals of “violence” and “hatred in all its forms.” The heads of three top universities, testifying before a congressional committee, couldn’t explain why their institutions prosecute every perceived offense against other minorities but can’t condemn calls for genocide against Jews. The Biden administration itself, though so far pursuing a broadly pro-Israel policy in the Middle East, responded to the rash of antisemitic marches and assaults on Jews by announcing a “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia.”
Past eruptions of antisemitism usually arose from the need to blame someone—anyone—for the cataclysmic failures of a ruling political class. In Russia in the 1880s and ’90s, malcontents equated Jews with Marxists and communists and blamed them for political instability. “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the 1903 forgery purporting to reveal a Jewish conspiracy to rule the globe, was a gift to any people wishing to account for its ruin without self-criticism. Germans after World War I sought a reason for their military humiliation and economic immiseration.
Palestinian Arabs themselves were carrying out vicious pogroms long before the founding of the Jewish state in 1948—see for example the attack on Hebron in 1929, in which more than 67 Jews, many of them women and children, were murdered. And why? Because the Jews were an easy group to blame: few in number, racially and culturally distinct, highly industrious and successful, and apparently committed to an unsanctioned God. An easy and obvious target.
So far there have been no pogroms in the U.S., only venomous semiviolent protests, individual assaults, libelous social-media onslaughts and willfully misleading news coverage. But the motivation driving today’s Jew-hatred bears some resemblance to those earlier episodes of antisemitic violence. Elite American society has failed in the one aim that gave it definition for more than a half-century: the realization of racial equality.
