It's pitiful to watch three female presidents of some of the top universities in the United States fail such a simple test: Is it permissible for your institution to call for genocide against Jews? The whole class was inherently miserable. In a civilized world, such a thing would have to be closed with one clear sentence, which surely has a parallel in American English: "Not in our school." Not at a demonstration, not on the networks, not in the heat of the moment, not in a convoluted theoretical article, and not even in the discussion club.
US universities refuse to define calling for genocide as a violation of the code of ethics
"Does calling for genocide violate your university's code of ethics?" was the question posed in Congress to the presidency of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the MIT Institute of Technology during hearings on antisemitic head-raising on campuses. "It depends on the context," said one, "and also on the practical implications," added another. And because they were unable to clearly and unequivocally ban the deranged hate speech that grows on the lawns of their prestigious campuses, they awkwardly maneuvered between legal evasion and theoretical truths.
The toxic atmosphere on campuses has reached levels that make everyday life impossible. Jews and Israelis blur their identities and attitudes, move joint activities to hidden locations, are bullied and humiliated by students and faculty members, isolated, frightened and threatened.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth, Photo: AP
The great, and sad, irony is that these are the institutions that purport to give, not only freedom of thought and expression, but respect and security for minorities and what is considered the crowning glory of identity politics: disadvantaged populations. A faculty member can lose his job in America and a student will be expelled from school if they do not strictly respect the fluid gender identity of others, or if, God forbid, they comment, even in good faith and without ulterior intent, about a characteristic of his external appearance. Woe betide them to name someone's ethnicity, other than words permitted by the strict rules of political correctness. It's a matter that kills careers. Around campuses, students who feel "vulnerable" — LGBTQ people or blacks, for example — are demanding and being given a "safe space" where they will be protected from an oppressive population, which is usually male and white.
The only ones who are not entitled to a safe space in these academic institutions are Jews, who have long been identified not as a minority group, but as part of the strong, oppressive white majority. Jews in general, and Israel in particular, are part of the evil group – they are at the same time a symbol of capitalism and colonialism. So fighting them is part of the revolutionary toolbox – and as any activist can quote – when you chop wood, chips fly. Zionism and money are the tree; The Jews are such chips.
Patience for hate
This means that on a deep level, it is not only the "right to speak" that enables this moral decay, but intellectual patience for hatred of Jews and hatred of Israel. It is part of the repertoire of the updated radical. And the bad part is that it's written in books and articles, and it's repeated in seminars, and it's actually the official line of entire schools of thought in the humanities and social sciences. To defy this line in Congress is to admit the moral decay of the entire academic establishment.
Here's the thing: These things don't happen in remote student clubs at back-division universities. These are the elite institutions of American academia, to which the eyes of scholars all over the world are drawn. This is the holy grail, the plague, of the world of education, science and thought in our generation. And the sad and sad conclusion that emerges from his leadership's embarrassing show of excuses is that one can no longer expect a clear moral statement from them. This is no longer a bleak stage in the decline of the intellectual as a social conscience, but a new chapter that heralds the collapse of the status of academic ivory towers as a beacon of free thought. And without thinking thought, by the way, there is no science. It feels like an era in the Western world is over.
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