Israel At War—'Decolonize' Academia

Americans who have not been following the rapidly growing drift of American Universities to the hard left may have been surprised to see what amounted to demonstrations that celebrated (or at least excused) the Hamas atrocities. It's interesting to note that those demonstrations began immediately after the atrocities were committed, with pre-printed pro-palestinian placards and hand-printed anti-Semitic signs. More important, they began BEFORE Israel responded in any way within Gaza—BEFORE!

This did not start three weeks ago, or 3 months ago, or 3 years ago. It has been on-going for decades, but has accelerated as our country has embraced and normalized much of the insanity espoused by the Left. Recall that it was academia that barred unvaccinated students from stepping foot on campus during COVID [1]. It was academia that invented everything from an apocalyptic version of Climate Change to Critical Race Theory to 'micro-agressions' to "words are violence". This is what young adults are now being taught on college campuses across the land.

Once insanity is introduced as a viable option, bad things begin to happen. Nellie Bowles provides a quick summary for the insanity that now makes anti-Semitism okay on college campuses:

Nearly 2,000 sociologists signed a letter that Israel was committing “genocide” and anything Hamas does is justified by the “context.” The University of California, Berkeley Ethnic Studies Faculty Council released a statement condemning anyone who describes what Hamas did as “terrorism,” which is offensive. The student leader of a Wellesley residential house wrote to the entire dorm she oversees: “We firmly believe that there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community.” Harvard launched a task force to help ensure the pro-Hamas protesters feel safe and can get jobs while also berating any Jews they might find. At George Washington University, students projected onto the side of the school library: GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS and FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA. At Stanford, students are asking the school to pay for round-trip tickets for Muslim students to visit home: “Full round trip covered by University upon the signing of a ceasefire for students to visit their family and friends and grieve properly.” (Okay, fine, that one’s funny; just think of the Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine president calmly trying to explain preferred pronouns to a jihadi upon arrival. On second thought: TGIF will personally sponsor any queer activist who wants to fly to Iran. Honestly, I’m curious what would happen.)

A post on X provides some background on a pro-Palestinian/Hamas demonstration at Cooper Union:

As one commenter noted (paraphrasing): "I can recall another time when Jews tried to 'hide in the attic.' I didn't work out well for them."

American Universities have spent billions hiring appropriately intersectional DEI administrators who have, ironically, worked tirelessly to: (1) reduce the diversity of faculty ideological point-of-view, favoring only those Leftists who fit the approved mold; (2) eliminate any equity with regard to student admissions or "safety," favoring approved "oppressed" groups, while turning a blind eye to others (think: Asians and Jews), and (3) fight the inclusion of views that might conflict with leftist orthodoxy (think: banning outside conservative speakers).

But it's not just DEI administrators. The thousands of hard-left professors who teach undergraduates, propagandize them with intellectually dishonest ideas like "decolonization." Worse, they reward pro-Islamist views and punish any student who dissents. When they let their masks slip and go full anti-Semitic, their true selves are exposed. As an example, here's Cornell University Professor Russell Rickford:

In his speech to the crowd on October 15, Rickford said that “Hamas has shifted the balance of power.”

Rickford added that he abhors the targeting of children and civilians, yet added “but we are able to breathe — for the first time in years.”

“It was exhilarating,” he said. “It was exhilarating, it was energizing.”

The professor’s comments were met with cheers of “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea!”

That's a anti-Semitic chant suggesting the annihilation of the Jews. When called out by the University's president and members of the Board of trustees, this smarmy anti-Semite decided he didn't meant it:

“I recognize that some of the language I used was reprehensible and did not reflect my values,” he wrote. “As I said in the speech, I abhor violence and the violent targeting of civilians.”

“I want to make it clear that I unequivocally oppose and denounce racism, anti-semitism, Islamophobia, militarism, fundamentalism and all systems that dehumanize, divide and oppress people,” he continued.

Yeah ... all in the heat of passion and all that. This miserable excuse for an academic thinker should be fired ... full stop. And let tenure, if he has it, be damned.

Given all of this, it's time for a major academic overhaul. One way is to reduce the flow of big money donations to elite schools. That's happening, but I don't think it will mean much. [2] Another approach has been suggested by Ed Morrissey. I think it might have some merit:

Rather than launch destructive campaigns that will undermine the rights of all Americans, we need to address the issue at its core. The issue isn’t the [National Students for Justice in Palestine] NSJP, or the current flock of moral idiots on American campuses at the moment. The problem is the firehose of federal tax dollars propping up the Higher Ed Industry, and the way it gets manipulated to transform education into the kind of indoctrination that produced this anti-Semitic Hitler Youth Movement.

In other words, we need to end the student loan programs. We need to end Pell grants, and every scholarship from the federal government, even the ones for left-handed Laplanders with Lyme Disease. We need to end the transmission of every federal dollar into the bloated, corrupt Academia as it exists now and has existed over the last several decades. Its main product has become a blizzard of non-performing administrators and crops of moral idiots, the latter of whom emerge with crippling lifetime debt and nihilist fantasies that many of them will never outgrow.

To put it another way that might appeal to our progressive partners: We need to Defund the Fleece.

Gosh, even Joe Biden might like this. After all, it would solve the college loan problem once and for all. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1]  Covid vaccines did not stop the spread of the virus or protect individuals from infection, but did have serious side effects (e.g., myocarditis, blood clots) for a small percentage of those between 18 and 25, you know, college age.

[2]  It may come as a surprise, but Qatar, the Arab Muslim country that is home to Hamas leadership, is a major donor to American Universities. Eli Lake reports (while the propaganda media remains silent):

The numbers are staggering. According to a 2022 study from the National Association of Scholars, Qatar today is the largest foreign donor to American universities. [emphasis mine] The study found that between 2001 and 2021, the petrostate donated a whopping $4.7 billion to U.S. colleges. The largest recipients are some of America’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning. These schools have partnered with the regime to build campuses in Doha’s “education city,” a special district of the capital that hosts satellite colleges for American universities.

Hmmm. Maybe they're the one who pre-printed pro-palestinian signs that instantly appeared at college demonstrations after the Hamas atrocities. The "anti-Semitic Hitler Youth Movement" on college campuses has donors with deeeep pockets.

UPDATE-1:

This justifiably angry comment from Jim Treacher depicts yet another college "protest." This one at George Washington University in the nation's capital:

There’s no such country as “Palestine.” There never has been, and there isn’t one now. Maybe there will be one day, once they finally achieve their dream of killing all the Jews.

Of course, this hasn’t kept “Palestinians” from insisting we all share their delusions. And in the 17 days since Hamas slaughtered 1,400+ Jews and recorded every moment of it, there has been an explosion of support for their butchery.

Look at what’s happening right now in the capital city of the United States of America:

“GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS”
“DIVESTMENT FROM ZIONIST GENOCIDE NOW”
“FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA”

These are all just other ways of saying:

“KILL ALL THE JEWS”

That filth was projected onto the Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library at GWU. Estelle and Melvin were Jews. This is like pissing on their graves, but a lot more public.

I hope you’ll excuse my bluntness, dear reader, but that is some Nazi sh*t right there. Those fascists might as well have projected a swastika onto the wall of that library.

You can dress it up however you want, you can put on your “Palestinian” scarves and wave your fake flags, but calling for the extinction of the Jews makes you a goddamn Nazi.

I wonder if university administrators and faculty would be as sanguine, or if the media would look the other way, or if the DoJ wouldn't begin a full blown investigation of domestic funding and foreign backing, if a large demonstration of 'white supremacist' students held up signs critiquing any one of the Left's many approved oppressed groups, and those signs implied that all members of those groups be annihilated? Just sayin'.

 

UPDATE-2:

Here's the truth that our vaunted elite universities refuse to teach:

UPDATE-3:

And finally, here is a portrait of Hamas that the gentle college students who have become de facto members of the "anti-Semitic Hitler Youth Movement" have aligned themselves with. Victor Davis Hansen does his thing:

Here are three critical considerations that must be understood about the current Israel-Hamas conflict. It is a sort of half-war. It consists of a military trying to defeat an organized clique of passive-aggressive, media-obsessed tribal murderers ... 

During peace and on a holiday, they entered Israel in a long-planned [with Iran] hit operation to murder civilians and take captives, focusing specifically on butchering the most vulnerable—the elderly, women, children, and infants—and in the most grotesque fashion imaginable. 

Their desire was to be as savagely pre-civilizational as possible—the more macabre the manner of murder, the more fertile their sophistry that they were reduced to such repulsive blood lust by their worse “oppressors”. 

It would be as though gruesome Mafia hitmen had claimed they were forced to become animal-like due to even worse systemic anti-Italian bias. Even the Mexican cartels do not claim they are led to behead because of the injustice of the Mexican government. 

By preplanned design, women were raped, and children and infants were burned alive, bound and executed, and (yes) beheaded. The dead were often mutilated. Some 1,400 Israelis were butchered, the vast majority civilians. Some 3,500-4,500 were wounded. 

Hamas never planned to stage a preemptive war against the Israeli military. Its only agenda was to send killers to unprotected villages to murder the unarmed as they slept—in the manner of Nazi Einsatzgruppen and other mobile death squads on the Eastern Front. Almost immediately they counted on using hostages, human shields, and the media to avoid any accounting from the IDF.

But yeah, the "anti-Semitic Hitler Youth Movement" and their many, many adult supporters on the Left demand a "cease-fire" so that the Hamas Nazis can escape retribution, re-arm, and kill more Jews.