#institutional antisemitism

[obaewankenope]

Yeah I mean... What the fuck. The majority of landlords in my county are white, male, Christian men. Like, literally. And they rent out to people of all nationalities and faiths and families and such but you sure as fuck can tell when they're doing it bc they're getting government money to do it and how they think of their tenants. There's a house on my street, right, that has a number of immigrants in it. Every couple of months, one or two move out and others move in. I've seen them regularly and honestly, they're some of the best neighbours around. Have they blasted music at divvy o'clock and I've had to shout out the window for them to please turn it down? Yeah, sure, but they're also very polite and turned that music off right away because they had a window open and clearly didn't realise how much it echoes around the estate at night.

These lads have a landlord that is... Well, I saw him once. He wasn't the worst I've ever come across in terms of landlords but he still didn't exactly scream not-racist-in-some-way.

The idea that this sort of comment could be antisemitic when there's not a single dogwhistle phrase, no imagery, no hinting symbolism present is... It's making it antisemitic by suggesting it could be. But there's nothing there to suggest or infer anything of the sort, but by doing that, you (general, or specific to OP) are looking at this, taking the idea of "landlord" "money" "own pockets" and equating the financial aspect with Jews. And that, right there, is antisemitic. That's the antisemitism. Not the image, but the reaction, the automatic association or suspicion of antisemitism literally makes you antisemitic in your own reaction.

Like, it's like passive racism in people. Walking down the street, you're alone, you're white, het, whatever, and you see a black person walking toward you. That ingrained, institutional racism that is just... There in western countries (even when we dismantle it, or try to, or try to unlearn it) can and will make you cross to the other side of the street, or tighten your grip on your bag, or maybe take your hands out your pockets in case you need to fight or run. You may not be consciously racist, and you may be horrified by racism, but the society you've grown up in will have given you this instinctive sort of racist reaction that you don't even notice until it gets pointed out to you.

And in the case of OP here, that sort of instinctive, institutional antisemitism is right there. And you don't don't even realise it, in fact you think you're not antisemitic because you're worried about something being antisemitic but, the fact that there's no indicators or dog whistling in the image then means you're using your own ingrained information from exposure to your society to formulate a thought, which becomes a reaction or suspicion and don't realise that the information itself is flawed.

"landlord" =/= Jewish

That's where the issue lies. In conflating the idea of landlords (aka people with money, influence, power over others lives who live in their properties) with Jews. And, that in itself, is really insidious because it ties into the rhetoric of "Jews secretly run the world and all the banks and money" by the implicit association you've made between landlords and Jews. You literally make yourself an antisemitic dog whistle without even realising it.

[eretzyisrael]

by Seth Mandel

Durbin’s seething resentment at being asked to talk about the threat of anti-Semitism was on display from one of his party’s two witnesses as well: Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute. She was made to look like a fool because she did exactly what Democrats asked her to do and said what they asked her to say. Her performance was atrocious from a moral standpoint but perfect from an “understood the assignment” perspective. Her main point was that focusing on any one group undermines the fight against all hate, a demonstrably false and frankly ridiculous belief.

But the key moment came during the witnesses’ questioning by Republican ranking member Lindsey Graham. Quoting the director of national intelligence regarding the pro-Hamas protests, Graham said: “We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protest, and even providing financial support to protesters.” He asked if any of the three witnesses doubted the veracity of that report, and no one did. Graham then asked each witness the following: “Is it Hamas’s goal to destroy the Jewish state? Is it Hezbollah’s goal to destroy the Jewish state? Is it Iran’s goal to destroy the Jewish state?”

Two of the three witnesses—Kenneth Stern and Rabbi Mark Goldfeder—answered in the affirmative. All three entities mentioned in Graham’s question, after all, have said they want to destroy the Jewish state without shame or ambiguity. Which is what made Berry’s response so odd. “I think these are complicated questions,” she said—immediately earning a shake of the head from Graham and conjuring memories of the catastrophic answer given by several college presidents when asked before Congress if genocidal anti-Semitism counts as harassment: It depends on the context.

“If you think it’s complicated to figure out that Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran want to kill all the Jews,” Graham responded, “I should not listen to anything else you’ve got to say. And I won’t.” And with that, Graham moved on to the next witness.

Berry was rattled. Though Graham left the hearing soon after, Berry referenced that exchange at least twice more with other senators, signaling that she’d realized how poorly her comments made her look and desperately trying to claw back some credibility.

The bad news for Berry was that she could not undo the damage. The good news was that she would eventually provide another quote that might make people forget about the first quote, if only because it was potentially even worse. Asked by Sen. Josh Hawley about the inherently violent implications of the phrase “Long live the intifada,” Berry argued for the slogan’s ambiguity. “‘Long live the intifada’ can mean different” things, she said, catching herself before she got to the word “things” but far too late to avoid the rest of the ridiculous comment, which was tailor-made for the sound-bite politics of congressional hearings.

She also defended “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a call for all Jews to be cleansed from the land.

[hanna-lulu]

i’ve been comparing the usa now to germany circa the late 1930s and it is not a favorable comparison.

let’s see what we’ve got:

increasing antisemitism

increasing transphobia

increasing ableism

continued oppression of indigenous peoples

laws being introduced to ban gender-affirming care and remove children from their homes if they are allowed to live as they wish

books being banned for having honest and age-appropriate portrayals of race/racism and queerness/homophobia

pushing maid (medical assistance in dying) on people with disabilities and even people who are just poor (this is more in canada but i’m including it here anyway)

a right wing that is seen as ridiculous and absurd, yet is somehow still managing to hold onto power while liberals/leftists laugh it off as if they’ll run out of steam

it’s important to note that in the 1930s, when hitler came to power, the international community thought he was a joke. his overblown rhetoric was silly, his history was laughable, and nobody took him seriously. they thought it would all blow over. also, he wasn’t saying anything that a lot of people didn’t secretly agree with. antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and racism were widespread throughout europe and the usa, and a lot of people had less of a problem with what he was saying and more with how he was saying it. (think kanye west’s antisemitic comments, which joe rogan did attempt to stop him from making so blatantly, but didn’t actually disagree with.)

the first medical and educational facility for gender affirming care was in berlin. did you know that? the institut für sexualwissenschaft (known variably in english as institute of sex research, institute of/for sexology, or institute for the science of sexuality) was founded in 1919 and headed by magnus hirschfeld, who was both gay and jewish. he helped build a library in the institute that was dedicated to the topics of gender, eroticism, and same-sex love. the research undertaken there regarded sexual health of all people, gay, transgender, and intersex, as well as counseling and treatment for alcoholism, gynecological issues, venereal diseases, contraceptives, and more. sexual reassignment surgeries were performed successfully there. the goal was to help those who were suffering because they could not live as who they truly were and to educate the common people, because people fear what they see as different, what they cannot understand.

you won’t find the books in that library today. they were burned as part of the nazis’ campaign of terror and censorship. in 1933, 6 years before world war 2 officially broke out, the institut was broken into and looted by the deutsche studentenschaft (aka the german student union). young adults who had spent their formative years surrounded by hateful rhetoric were accompanied by a brass band as they destroyed this oasis of understanding and knowledge. hirschfeld himself had fled germany years before, as he had been targeted numerous times by nationalists/far right “activists”.

berlin once had a thriving queer community. germany was a home to many jews, my own great-grandparents included. my great-grandmother’s younger brother had a learning disability. their home turned on them out of fear and ignorance, the people told by their leaders that other human beings were not really human, but degenerate filth. my great-grandparents escaped with their lives. many– my great-grandma’s brother included– did not.

the concentration camps that imprisoned and killed so many jewish, queer, and/or disabled people (as well as romani and political prisoners, and japanese-americans IN THE USA) are not consigned to the past. our prison system disenfranchises those who are placed in it and uses them for unpaid labor. refugees are caged for daring to hope that our country– the so-called “land of the free”– would take them in when their homes turned on them. indigenous people are ridiculed and attacked for wanting to help our planet heal and for asking to conserve the land that was stolen from their ancestors. almost a hundred years since the holocaust, and we still haven’t learned.

don’t look away from this. it’s not going to blow over. those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and we are already experiencing a resurgence of fascist beliefs and rhetoric.

write to your representatives. VOTE. protest if and when you can. show them that we are HERE and we refuse to be written out of the history books, banned or burned away. we are human beings. we live and love and deserve to do so with dignity.

and if appealing to your humanity isn’t enough, remember this poetic version of a quote by german lutheran pastor martin niemöller, an early nazi collaborator and antisemite who later changed his views and opposed hitler’s oppressive regime:

“first they came for the socialists, and i did not speak out–

because i was not a socialist.

then they came for the trade unionists, and i did not speak out–

because i was not a trade unionist.

then they came for the jews, and i did not speak out–

because i was not a jew.

then they came for me– and there was no one left to speak for me.”

there is always another enemy in fascism. anyone who is different will eventually be a target. white supremacy is poison, and fitting the mold of a “perfect citizen” cannot keep you safe. queer infighting and pushing down people who you find “too weird” will not stop the people who hate all of us. to the far right, we are all wrong to our very cores. solidarity in the face of oppression is the only way to survive, live, and thrive.

[spot-the-antisemitism]

this reads like the nobel prize committee is hijacked by tankies

"Just slap all the gazan grifters that lied about Israel and give them a prize for journalism and peace when they promote neither" - nobel committee

"She's from myanmar and was a union leader so she likely survived the genocide and is a good revolutionary don't bother with a reason just give her a prize" - the sexist tankies that edit wikipedia

Now this look like the nobel commitee was hijacked by alt-rigthers

Elon Musk has never promoted peace only capitalism, cars and violence both physical and verbal

Gustavo Petro was a former guerilla fighter and is accused of selling out to America

The implication that an Israeli and a Palestinian org would have to share a prize would both look good, piss off all the right people AND either lead to touching collaboration or the most tense joint ceremony since the nobel prize in chemistry went to both American and Soviet chemists at once.

"After all, a Peabody award winner turned out to have ties to Gazan terrorism and she ended up stealing lots of money from trusting foreigners" i can't believe this is happening, I read this post: https://www.tumblr.com/jewishlivesmatter/757566779325349888/can-someone-please-inform-the-television-academy?source=share and want to scream in rage forever. how is the world so blind?

Nonnie, thank you for this link you've sent me. I've pointed to the same things, but that post is an excellent summary of the issue with Bisan. I will never understand the cult-like status she got online. But as to your question, "how is the world so blind?" I can only offer this: I don't think anyone is as blind as those who willfully keep their eyes shut. People want to believe in the anti-Israel lies. Different people for different reasons, but a big part of the overall reason this narrative exists based on lies and manipulations is (and you might have guessed this) antisemitism.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[thatrandombystander]

Are you fucking kidding me. With all this pinkwashing propaganda the Israeli state puts out about how they will protect and cherish LGBT+ rights unlike those evil homophobic Palestinians which is why you should let us genocide them

SAME-SEX MARRIAGE ISN'T EVEN LEGAL IN ISRAEL??????

[determinate-negation]

im not even kidding but i think the red scare was the last significant nationwide institutional discrimination against jews in the united states. like an overwhelming majority of the teachers who were blacklisted because of certain mccarthy era laws were jewish

[tyranno-solei-rex]

moots who post religious hate? put simply, no longer moots

[cree-n-jewish-thoughts]

It's sad when colleges and universities all over the world are bending for antisemites...

Councillor of Toronto questions post secondary school teachings.

Hmm, let me see you give these professors with literally no life experience, tenier and a nice paycheque, have entirely lived through a text book (most part), and then the class has the same bias as them... Huh... Wonder why?

I'm pretty sure post secondary schools are also bound to a core curriculum, correct?

Also, if you don't feel safe at your school, feel free to check your school charter about violence and harassment.

You wanna mess with the big boys? Sound educated, sound professional, only use facts, take images as evidence.

I know one professor from a uni, and I 100% guarantee she is an antisemite. I dated her daughter and I did not tell any of them I was Jewish it felt unsafe) and teaches political science. I took her class, she couldn't teach. And yes to the nasty woman who is scowling at me during dinner, you are not a real doctor, so why don't you check yourself MP????????

Your uni is one of the worst lulz byeeee

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Lee Fang and Jack Poulson at The Guardian:

Last November, just weeks into the war in Gaza, Amichai Chikli, a brash, 42-year-old Likud minister in the Israeli government, was called into the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, to brief lawmakers on what could be done about rising anti-war protests from young people across the United States, especially at elite universities. “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again now, that I think we should, especially in the United States, be on the offensive,” argued Chikli. Chikli has since led a targeted push to counter critics of Israel. The Guardian has uncovered evidence showing how Israel has relaunched a controversial entity as part of a broader public relations campaign to target US college campuses and redefine antisemitism in US law. Seconds after a smoke alarm subsided during the hearing, Chikli assured the lawmakers that there was new money in the budget for a pushback campaign, which was separate from more traditional public relations and paid advertising content produced by the government. It included 80 programs already under way for advocacy efforts “to be done in the ‘Concert’ way”, he said.

The “Concert” remark referred to a sprawling relaunch of a controversial Israeli government program initially known as Kela Shlomo, designed to carry out what Israel called “mass consciousness activities” targeted largely at the US and Europe. Concert, now known as Voices of Israel, previously worked with groups spearheading a campaign to pass so-called “anti-BDS” state laws that penalize Americans for engaging in boycotts or other non-violent protests of Israel. Its latest incarnation is part of a hardline and sometimes covert operation by the Israeli government to strike back at student protests, human rights organizations and other voices of dissent.

Voices’ latest activities were conducted through non-profits and other entities that often do not disclose donor information. From October through May, Chikli has overseen at least 32m shekels, or about $8.6m, spent on government advocacy to reframe the public debate. It didn’t take long for one of the American advocacy groups closely coordinating with Chikli’s ministry, the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, or ISGAP, to score a powerful victory. In a widely viewed December congressional hearing on alleged antisemitism among student anti-war protesters, several House GOP lawmakers explicitly cited ISGAP research in their interrogations of university presidents. The hearing concluded with Representative Elise Stefanik’s viral confrontation with the then president of Harvard University, Claudine Gay, who later retired from her role after a wave of negative news coverage.

[...] Other American groups tied to Voices have pursued a range of initiatives to bolster support for the state of Israel. One such group listed publicly as a partner, the National Black Empowerment Council (NBEC), published an open letter from Black Democratic politicians pledging solidarity with Israel. Another group, CyberWell, a pro-Israel anti-disinformation group led by former Israeli military intelligence and Voices officials, has established itself as an official “trusted partner” to TikTok and Meta, helping both social platforms screen and edit content. A recent CyberWell report called for Meta to suppress the popular slogan “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”.

[...] Haaretz and the New York Times recently revealed that Chikli’s ministry had tapped a public relations firm to secretly pressure American lawmakers. The firm used hundreds of fake accounts posting pro-Israel or anti-Muslim content on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and Instagram. (The diaspora affairs ministry denied involvement in the campaign, which reportedly provided about $2m to an Israeli firm for the social media posts.) But that effort is only one of many such campaigns coordinated by the ministry, which has received limited news coverage. The ministry of diaspora affairs and its partners compile weekly reports based on tips from pro-Israel US student groups, some of which receive funding from Israeli government sources. For example, Hillel International, a co-founder of the Israel on Campus Coalition network and one of the largest Jewish campus groups in the world, has reported financial and strategic support from Mosaic United, a public benefit corporation backed by Chikli’s ministry. The longstanding partnership is now being utilized to shape the political debate over Israel’s war. In February, Hillel’s chief executive, Adam Lehman, appeared before the Knesset to discuss the strategic partnership with Mosaic and the ministry of diaspora affairs, which he said had already produced results. “We are changing administrations. Just last week, MIT, the same president who was lambasted in front of Congress, took the step of fully suspending her Students for Justice in Palestine chapter for crossing lines, and for creating an unwelcoming environment for Jewish students,” said Lehmann, referencing the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sally Kornbluth. Hillel International, CyberWell, the NBEC, the Israeli ministry of diaspora affairs and Voices of Israel/Concert did not respond to a request for comment.

This investigative report reviewed recent government hearings, Israeli corporate filings, procurement documents and other public records. While private individuals and foundations primarily fund many of the organizations devoted to pro-Israel advocacy, most likely without foreign direction, the records point to substantial Israeli government involvement in American politics about the Gaza war, free speech on college campuses and Israel-Palestine policy.

The Guardian reports that Israel Apartheid State has documents detailing efforts to shape US opinion on the Gaza genocide in favor of the pro-Israel position.

Read the full story at The Guardian.

[galtzagorri-marrazki]

[gay-jewish-bucky]

while we're talking about antisemitism in medicine in canada, i feel like it's important to mention that there's an exposé from 2022 on virulant antisemitism in canada's top medical school from both students and faculty

even before october 7th students were fighting against learning about how antisemitism hurts and kills jewish patients because jews are "privileged" akshually ☝️🤓 and make up antisemitism to shut down "criticism" of israel/zionism

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

An Imam speaking in Dearborn, Michigan, this month claimed that Zionists, people who support the Jewish state of Israel, are “savages” and are “barbaric.”

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) translated the speech from Dr. Baqir Berry that was broadcast by the Islamic Institute of Knowledge.

“Zionism is the ISIS of today,” he claimed. “As there was an ISIS for the Muslims, there is also an ISIS for the Jews. The [Jewish] ISIS is a million times worse than the ISIS of the Muslims. We should know this. A million times [worse]. The members of ISIS did not commit the kind of crimes perpetrated by the Zionists.”

“Just wait a bit for the war to subside, and you will hear again the voices of all the idiots and fools in our world,” he continued. “What peace do you want to have with those [Israelis]? Us in America – what peace? Those Zionists everywhere, even here in America, are savages. They are barbaric everywhere. They feel no pangs of conscience over what is happening there. There is a group of Jews rebelled against this, but Zionist jews are criminals.”

The clip concluded with Berry saying: “This is the great and imminent danger that [threatens] all of humanity. Israel is a great imminent danger. Just like Nazism posed an imminent danger to all the surrounding countries, and just like the ISIS caliphate posed a great danger, everybody wanted to end the existence of the ISIS entity and the Nazi entity – you cannot remove this great [Israeli] danger unless you remove [the entity]. If you want a real democratic country, you need to reeducate the Jews … the Zionists, with a new culture of being open, seeing others as human beings, a culture of real peace and tolerance, rather than racism.”

[eretzyisrael]

by Jessica Costescu

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty member went on an anti-Semitic tirade after the House Committee on Education and the Workforce pressed the school to provide internal documents about its response to the outbreak of anti-Semitism on campus.

A postdoctoral associate working in MIT's Tonegawa neuroscience lab, Afif Aqrabawi, derided the committee chairwoman, Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), as "a treasonous Zionist tool, a genocide enabler, and a disgusting shit stain of a human," and described other members of the House as "Israeli bootlickers."

Aqrabawi also referred to American politicians as "loyal prostitutes of Netanyahu," lamented the influence of Jewish political groups, and referred to Israelis as "parasites."

"I make it clear your representatives are eager cucks for defense contractors and AIPAC," he wrote. "My words are dangerous because they may alert a distracted American public to the parasites using their country as a host species."

Aqrabawi’s tirade came in the wake of a letter from Foxx to MIT president Sally Kornbluth that panned Kornbluth’s response to several anti-Semitic incidents on campus and pressed the school to provide internal documents shedding light on its policies and code of conduct.

The committee’s letter cited several tweets Aqrabawi sent, including one in which he said Israel "has no future in this world." In other posts highlighted by the committee, the MIT faculty member accused Israelis of "harvesting" the organs of dead Palestinians and called Zionists "Jewish fundamentalists who want to enslave the world in a global Apartheid system."

As a postdoctoral associate in MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory, Aqrabawi earns a minimum salary of $66,950 and works under a "faculty mentor," according to MIT’s website. The head of Aqrabawi's lab is Susumu Tonegawa, a professor of biology and neuroscience.

[keefechambers]

every time someone's hot take on conspiracy theorists is "people cling to conspiracy theories because of a legitimate instinct towards institutional mistrust" and assert that some mystical access to greater transparency and gentle attempts at education would lessen people's tendencies towards conspiratorial thinking, i want to take them by the face and paraphrase dan olson to them

conspiracy theorists are not blank slates of humans who believe one or two wacky things, they believe in conspiracy theories because they validate their pre-existing worldviews.

[afrenomes]

Nooo not an organization that I strongly supported going full bothsidesism on what happened in Amesterdam 😬😬😬

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Bret Stephens

Published: Jun 25, 2024

The notable fact about the anti-Israel campus demonstrations is that they are predominantly an elite phenomenon. Yes, there have been protests at big state schools like the University of Nebraska, but they have generally been small, tame and — thanks to administrators prepared to enforce the rules — short-lived. It’s Stanford, Berkeley, Yale, Penn, Harvard, Columbia and many of their peers that have descended to open bigotry, institutional paralysis and mayhem.

Two questions: Why the top universities? And what should those on the other side of the demonstrations — Jewish students and alumni most of all — do about it?

Regarding the first question, some argue that the furor over the campus protests is much ado about not much. The demonstrators, they say, represent only a small fraction of students. The ugliest antisemitic expressions occasionally seen at these events are mainly the work of outside provocateurs. And the student protesters (some of whom are Jewish) are acting out of youthful idealism, not age-old antisemitism. As they see it, they aim only to save Palestinian lives and oppose the involvement of their universities in the abuses of a racist Israeli state.

There’s something to these points. With notable exceptions, campus life at these schools is somewhat less roiled by protest than the media makes it seem. Outside groups, as more than one university president has told me, have played an outsize role in setting up encampments and radicalizing students. And few student demonstrators, I’d wager, consciously think they harbor an anti-Jewish prejudice.

But this lets the kids off the hook too easily.

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 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.

They also got them from university administrators whose private sympathies often lie with the demonstrators, who imagine the anti-Israel protests as the moral heirs to the anti-apartheid protests and who struggle to grasp (if they even care) why so many Jewish students feel betrayed and besieged by the campus culture.

That’s the significance of the leaked images of four Columbia University deans exchanging dismissive and sophomoric text messages during a panel discussion in May on Jewish life on campus, including the suggestion that a panelist was “taking full advantage of this moment” for the sake of the “fundraising potential.”

Columbia placed three of the deans on leave. Other universities, like Penn, have belatedly moved to ban encampments. But those steps have a grudging and reactive feel — more a response to Title VI investigations of discrimination and congressional hearings than a genuine acknowledgment that something is deeply amiss with the values of a university. At Harvard, two successive members of the task force on antisemitism resigned in frustration. “We are at a moment when the toxicity of intellectual slovenliness has been laid bare for all to see,” wrote Rabbi David Wolpe in his resignation announcement.

That’s the key point. More dismaying than the fact that student protesters are fellow traveling with Hamas is that with their rhyming chants and identical talking points, they sound more like Maoist cadres than critical thinkers. As the sociologist Ilana Redstone, author of the smart and timely book “The Certainty Trap,” told me on Monday, “higher education traded humility and curiosity for conviction and advocacy — all in the name of being inclusive. Certainty yields students who are contemptuous of disagreement.”

And so the second question: What are Jewish students and alumni to do?

It’s telling that the 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?

Not even the most determined university president is going to clean out the rot — at least not without getting rid of the entrenched academic departments and tenured faculty members who support it. That could take decades. In the meantime, Jews have a history of parting company with institutions that mistreated them, like white-shoe law firms and commercial banks. In so many cases, they went on to create better institutions that operated on principles of intellectual merit and fair play — including many of the universities that have since stumbled.

If you are an Ivy League megadonor wondering how to better spend the money you no longer want to give a Penn or a Columbia — or just a rising high school senior wondering where to apply — maybe it’s time to forgo the fading prestige of the old elite for the sake of something else, something new. That’s a subject for a future column.

==

Intersectionality is a "luxury belief"; that is, it signals a form of elite status. It's a form of academic masturbation which has no alignment with reality.

Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the upper class, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes. – Rob Henderson