Political Conventions and Presidents of elite universities — Nero fiddles while Rome burns . . .
the times, (and the presidents), they are a-changin’ —
and we are changing too.
This week’s haftara: Isaiah 49:14
וַתֹּ֥אמֶר צִיּ֖וֹן עֲזָבַ֣נִי יְהֹוָ֑ה וַאדֹנָ֖י שְׁכֵחָֽנִי׃
Zion says,
“ GOD has forsaken me,
My Sovereign has forgotten me.”
הֲתִשְׁכַּ֤ח אִשָּׁה֙ עוּלָ֔הּ מֵרַחֵ֖ם בֶּן־בִּטְנָ֑הּ גַּם־אֵ֣לֶּה תִשְׁכַּ֔חְנָה וְאָנֹכִ֖י לֹ֥א אֶשְׁכָּחֵֽךְ׃
Can a woman forget her baby,
Or disown the child of her womb?
Though she might forget,
I never could forget you.
הֵ֥ן עַל־כַּפַּ֖יִם חַקֹּתִ֑יךְ חוֹמֹתַ֥יִךְ נֶגְדִּ֖י תָּמִֽיד׃
See, I have engraved you
On the palms of My hands,
Your walls are ever before Me.
מִהֲר֖וּ בָּנָ֑יִךְ מְהָֽרְסַ֥יִךְ וּמַחֲרִיבַ֖יִךְ מִמֵּ֥ךְ יֵצֵֽאוּ׃
Swiftly your children are coming;
Those who ravaged and ruined you — shall leave you — (in time, they will be ‘gone’)
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Nero fiddles while Rome burns . . .
For those who are glued to their television screens watching the 2nd political convention of the season and noting the varying way in which American Jews and Judaism are surfacing — it might be wise to remind ourselves that the American Whitehouse is not the only place where the course of (and expressions of) Jewish Identity are undergoing serious transformation . . .
While political parties and their champions battle out the future landscape of American political culture — American academic institutions have now become somewhat akin to the killing fields of access and achievement for the Jewish community — and lamentingly, dangerous for our Jewish students and the Jewish future. It becomes even more significant when “others” are given the right to interpret Jewish identity and just as insidious, seek to decide for us, what we can think or say about our hopes, our dreams, and desires. This is now expressed in where we can go on campus and access to classrooms, to the Quad, and even the dormitory lounges. It is even more exasperating when we learn that demands to shut down places of worship such as Hillel and Chabad, available for Jewish worship and cultural expression, are now on the table and routinely experienced even at the leading academic institutions of our country.
As a reminder: In particular, the American version of Judaism has long regarded Academic Higher Education as an integral component of Jewish achievement, which has often translated as a building block and even as a doorway of entrance into the Jewish community writ large. Just as often, for Jewish families, having a child achieve a college education has been strongly expressed as an integral step in becoming an adult member, not only of the Jewish Community but of American society as a whole. For the record, a College Education is a paramount achievement, and while political parties battle out who will be the next president of the United States of America, the Jewish community remains equally concerned over who will become the next presidents of our academic programs and the path they will chart in guaranteeing the health and safety of our Jewish young people at the very flagships of American society. For the record, this cornerstone of American society, which is written large, is under threat, especially as deans and college presidents are falling like flies, either because they have fallen asleep at the wheel or deliberately driven our universities off the road and into the ground. For our consideration, the stakes for America’s Jews are quite high and under real threat.
Here perhaps a note from this week’s parsha: לֹ֥א תַעֲרֹ֖ץ מִפְּנֵיהֶ֑ם כִּֽי־יְהֹוָ֤ה אֱלֹהֶ֙יךָ֙ בְּקִרְבֶּ֔ךָ אֵ֥ל גָּד֖וֹל וְנוֹרָֽא׃
Do not stand in dread of them, for your God יהוה is in your midst, a great and awesome God (Ekev, Deuteronomyy 7:21)
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First, there was this . . . .
Should American Jews Abandon Elite Universities / Brett Stevens NYT Op-Ed / June 25, 2024
Excerpts 1, 2, & 3
- Students who police words like “blacklist” or “whitewash” and see “microaggressions” in everyday life ignore the entreaties of their Jewish peers to avoid chants like “globalize the intifada” or “from the river to the sea.” Students who claim they’re horribly pained by scenes of Palestinian suffering were largely silent on Oct. 7 — when they weren’t openly cheering the attacks. And students who team up with outside groups that are in overt sympathy with Islamist terrorists aren’t innocents. They’re collaborators.
- How (where) did the protesters at elite universities get their ideas of what to think and how to behave?
They got them, I suspect, from the incessant valorization of victimhood that has been a theme of their upbringing, and which many of the most privileged kids feel they lack — hence the zeal to prove themselves as allies of the perceived oppressed. They got them from the crude schematics of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training seminars, which divide the world into “white” and “of color,” powerful and “marginalized,” with no regard for real-world complexities — including the complexity of Jewish identity. They got them from professors who think academic freedom amounts to a license for political posturing, sometimes of a nakedly antisemitic sort. They got them from a cheap and easy revision of history that imagines Zionism is a form of colonialism (it’s decidedly the opposite), that colonialism is something only white people do, and that as students at American universities, they can cheaply atone for their sins as guilty beneficiaries of the settler-colonialism they claim to despise. - It’s telling that Columbia deans were caught chortling during exactly the kind of earnest panel discussion that the university convened presumably to show alumni they are tackling campus antisemitism. They were paying more lip service than attention. My guess is that they, along with many of their colleagues, struggle to see the problem because they think it lies with a handful of extremist professors and obnoxious students.
But the real problem lies with some of the main convictions and currents of today’s academia: intersectionality, critical theory, post-colonialism, ethnic studies and other concepts that may not seem antisemitic on their face but tend to politicize classrooms and cast Jews as privileged and oppressive. If, as critical theorists argue, the world’s injustices stem from the shadowy agendas of the powerful and manipulative few against the virtuous masses, just which group is most likely to find itself villainized?
Unlocked: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/opinion/jews-ivy-league-antisemitism.html?unlocked_article_code=1.Ek4.6M6D.JtIKWLOAm9Is&smid=url-share
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Now today, this . . .
What I want a University Administrator to say about Campus Protests / Brett Stevens NYT Op-Ed / August 21st
And if we permit protests that inhibit the speech of others, or set up no-go zones for Jewish students, or make it difficult to study in the library or pay attention in class, we may have upheld the right to speak in the abstract while stripping it of its underlying purpose. The point of free speech is to open discussion, not to shut it down. It’s to engage with our opponents, not to shut them out. It’s to introduce fresh perspectives, not to declare every perspective but our own to be beyond the moral pale.
I’d like to add a personal note as a Jew. Many people objected to last year’s protests, with their chants of “from the river to the sea,” as antisemitic. I find that calling for the elimination of Israel — indeed, of any state — is inherently repugnant, since it would almost inevitably entail an almost unimaginable level of violence, dispossession, and destruction.
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And all of that ^ weighed against a background of this . . .
Colleges can’t say that they weren’t warned / David French NYT OIp-Ed August 18th, 2024
1. “In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the U.C.L.A. campus because they refused to denounce their faith.” Those are the first words of an angry court opinion by Mark Scarsi, a Federal District Court judge in California.
2. On Aug. 13, he issued an injunction that requires U.C.L.A. to keep its campus fully and equally open to Jewish students, including Jewish students who believe “they have a religious obligation to support the Jewish state of Israel.”
3. Scarsi’s decision (which U.C.L.A. is appealing) was one of three court opinions rendered in the past three weeks that collectively send a message to American universities: This year, there cannot be a repeat of the antisemitic harassment we saw on all too many college campuses over the last year. The cases are still in their early stages. Many facts are still contested, and we may face years of litigation before the cases are finally resolved, but the decisions so far teach an important lesson nonetheless.
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Here’s a little something for all who have been watching “the Joshua Shapiro Jewish show” please note: “equivocated”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro equivocated when asked whether anti-Israel protesters in Chicago “have a point” — an argument that President Joe Biden made in his convention address that drew widespread applause from the Democratic convention crowd, Jewish Insider’s Josh Kraushaar reports. “Look, I, I haven’t heard specifically what they’ve said. I’m not trying to duck your question. I’ll address it. I think protesters absolutely have a right to have their voices be heard. Whatever the rules of the road are,” Shapiro told JI on Tuesday morning.
On the other hand: Shapiro’s carefully crafted remarks contrasted with another leading Jewish Democrat — Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), who spoke on a panel at the American Jewish Committee breakfast Tuesday morning. Asked about the growing acceptance of anti-Israel radicalism within the Democratic party, Schneider wasted no time characterizing the protesters as part of a radical fringe.
Shapiro’s carefully crafted remarks contrasted with another leading Jewish Democrat —
Contrast: Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), who spoke on a panel at the American Jewish Committee breakfast Tuesday morning. Asked about the growing acceptance of anti-Israel radicalism within the Democratic party, Schneider wasted no time characterizing the protesters as part of a radical fringe. “What they’re really calling is for the elimination of Israel and the extermination of the Jewish people. In the American body politic, they are a minority, they are wrong, and we have to call them out as such.” Those in attendance applauded loudly.
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To equivocate is a form of acceptance, and the contrast here is crucial for us and the life of the Jewish people. For those who have risen to power and prominence, perhaps it is time to take note and remember who you are and whence you’ve come.
