On cancel culture and antisemitism in academia: part II
by Ilya Reviakine, @socialimpurity
After my piece On Cancel Culture and Antisemitism in Academia was published on the GDCh website (https://gdch.app/article/on-cancel-culture-and-antisemitism-in-academia), I received requests to provide examples of antisemitism associated with woke illiberalism. Given that these examples can be easily found in major newspapers, official communications issued by universities, blogs, and personal twitter feeds of academics, I contemplated an ironic reply: since in certain woke quarters, asking for evidence of racism is considered evidence of racism, asking for evidence of antisemitism constitutes antisemitism. However, a compilation might prove useful, so here it goes.
Remember that I wrote the original piece in response to the ludicrous accusations of antisemitism and trivialization of the Holocaust levied against the authors of Scientists Must Resist Cancel Culture, and that my original thesis was that “the need to address censorship and free speech issues, the need to stand against woke identity politics, is very much aligned with a stand that needs to be taken against antisemitism and other forms or racial hatred.”
Let us begin with Bret Stephens’ New York Times piece What an Antisemite’s Fantasy Says About Jewish Reality https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/opinion/texas-synagogue-antisemitism.html?s=03: "A moral conviction of our time, especially prevalent on the cultural left, is that the powerful are presumptively bad while the powerless are presumptively good. These categories aren’t just political. They are also social, economic, ethnic and racial. It’s why so many conversations today revolve around the concept of “privilege” — a striking redefinition of success that removes the presumption of merit from those who have it and the stigma of failure from those who don’t." He goes on to discuss the silence around the TX synagogue hostage crisis, and he does a good overview of the historical roots of antisemitism and its connection to the notion of Jewish power and privilege: a myth also discussed here: https://unherd.com/2021/02/jewish-privilege-is-a-myth/, for those who wish to better inform themselves on what we are dealing with.
Closer to home (academia), "The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating a complaint alleging that Jewish students enrolled in Brooklyn College’s graduate mental health counseling program have been subjected to anti-Semitic harassment from professors and peers." Statements that were described in the complaint include “In sum and substance, that Ashkenazi Jews who immigrated to America have become part of the oppressors in this country"; “one student in the program expressed a desire to strangle a Jewish student with whom they disagreed". The list goes on. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/02/07/ocr-opens-inquiry-brooklyn-college-anti-semitism-charges
Stanford, a university which apparently had anti-Jewish quotas all the way into 1950s: "Two Jewish mental health counselors ... have experienced severe and persistent anti-Jewish harassment in Stanford University’s Counseling & Psychological Services’(CAPS) Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) program." - they filed a legal complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. "According to the complaint, the CAPS DEI program has promulgated invidious notions of Jewish power, conspiracy and control, relying on “racial and ethnic stereotyping and scapegoating by describing all Jews as white or white-passing and therefore complicit in anti-Black racism." Information, including a link to the text of the complaint, can be found here: https://forward.com/opinion/471824/this-new-social-justice-theory-is-making-academia-dangerous-for-jews/, where it is also described how “a virtual town hall at Stanford was “zoom bombed” with racist messages, swastikas and uses of the n-word” in May 2020, and participants “accused Dr. Albucher of derailing the program’s focus on anti-Black racism merely by raising the issue of antisemitism.”
More recently, a lecture at the University of Houston by an Israeli Chemistry professor Sason Shaik from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem “was disrupted by an antisemitic Zoom-bombing, with trolls joining the call and playing “Heil Hitler” sounds in the background”. https://forward.com/fast-forward/482579/antisemitism-zoom-bombing-college-israeli-scientist/; https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/02/15/university-lecture-by-israeli-chemist-latest-target-of-antisemitic-zoombombing-at-campus-events/
At the University of South California (USC), "Yasmeen Mashayekh, a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Student Senator" for Engineering school posted multiple statements on Twitter and other social media outlets including:
"I want to kill every motherf**cking Zionist,"
"Death to Israel and its b**tch the U.S.,"
"Israel has no history just a criminal record,"
"yel3an el yahood [curse the Jews]."
USC DEI office said nothing on the subject matter.
Link:
Note also: "In August 2020, several [USC faculty] signed an Open Letter concerning personal attacks against Rose Ritch, a USC undergraduate. She resigned as vice president of USC’s undergraduate student government because of intense abuse she endured due to her Jewish-Zionist identity."
UCLA: "UC Regents Members Call UCLA Asian American Studies Dept. Statement Accusing Israel of “Yellow-Washing” “Inappropriate”” So far, the statement remains online and the campus has not taken action to remove it.
A university spokesperson said in a statement to the Journal, “We acknowledge and respect the views of our university community, including those expressed at last week’s meeting. As an institution that values equity, diversity and inclusion, UCLA is committed to academic freedom as well as the proper use of university resources." Inclusion stops as the Jews, apparently...
On the other hand, "University of California Merced Sticks by Professor Behind Antisemitic ‘IsraHell’ Twitter Account" https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/12/23/university-of-california-merced-sticks-by-professor-behind-antisemitic-israhell-twitter-account/; Abbas Ghassemi was a PI on a DEI grant at UC Merced: "UC Merced Receives Collaborative Grant to Improve Equity in STEM Education" https://news.ucmerced.edu/news/2019/uc-merced-receives-collaborative-grant-improve-equity-stem-education
McGill university students called for Emeritus Professor Philip Carl Salzman to be stripped of his Emeritus title for the articles he posted "on public forums".
What does he write? See for yourself: https://www.meforum.org/articles/?author=Philip%20Carl%20Salzman: Anti-Semitism is Fashionable Again; The New Anthropology Seeks 'Justice' and Inclusion, not Knowledge; Redefining Words to Attack Israel; McGill University Rejects Calls to Ban Zionism (some of these have been written after the cancellation attempt).
But look at the content of some of the open letters:
"We believe in and fight for the rights of students to feel safe and condemn the McGill administration for not intervening in the spread of hate speech relating to the expansion of the Israeli settler-colonial project, the expulsion of Palestinians, and the violence against innocent civilians. We demand that McGill fulfill their mandate of ensuring a safe, non-racist, non-discriminatory environment by condemning Zionist speech on campus."; The letter further demands that McGill define "Zionism ideologies and speech as racism," McGill stood up both to the cancellation attempt and to the antisemitic "open letters".
DEI offices at McGill said nothing of the campaign, but the open letter denouncing Carl Salzman talks about tensions between academic freedom and inclusivity, and "of academic freedom over the safety and well-being of its students."
In the meantime, a "Jewish student gov’t member at McGill U told to cancel Israel trip or resign" https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-student-govt-member-at-mcgill-u-told-to-cancel-israel-trip-or-resign/; McGill again stood up to the denunciation: https://www.timesofisrael.com/mcgill-board-rejects-motion-for-jewish-student-to-cancel-israel-trip-or-resign/
University of Toronto, Canada: "University of Toronto Jewish students claim anti-Semitic harassment, intimidation," "the school’s social justice, anti-oppression and advocacy theme lead, Ritika Goel, is a BDS supporter and has called support for Israel a “barbaric cultural practice.”" https://www.jns.org/university-of-toronto-jewish-students-claim-anti-semitic-harassment-intimidation/
Finally, Rutgers, published a letter “Speaking out against acts of antisemitism”, then removed it and apologized because "[the] message failed to communicate support for our Palestinian community members. We sincerely apologize for the hurt that this message has caused", de-facto admitting the antisemitic nature of the so-called pro-Palestinian sentiment. I took screenshots back in May of 2021, if I try to follow the links now, they return an error. Maybe the info is wiped from the servers.
As the case of April Powers, who was the first Chief Equity and Inclusion Officer at the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Editors shows, speaking out against antisemitism may very well be incompatible with holding a DEI job.
For a deeper insight at the antisemitism among the DEI staff, take a look at the Inclusion Delusion: The Antisemitism of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Staff at Universities https://www.heritage.org/education/report/inclusion-delusion-the-antisemitism-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-staff
These were official sources. Here is a short personal note to show how pervasive this stuff is: A colleague on Twitter contended that immigrants don't have to pay rent (and therefore have an unfair advantage is what they meant, I think). Both Hudlicky and myself were called "privileged" immigrants by a prominent Canadian academic, even though both of us were in situations where we had limited chances to get into higher education institutions in our home countries. Another colleague contended that "immigrants who came here with nothing is a "great story" that glosses over advantages of these immigrants and their socioeconomic status.
I will end this with a quote from Ibrahim X Kendi, an anti-racist “scholar”, author of several books and winner of multiple awards on the acceptability of discrimination “… if discrimination is creating equity”: “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination.” (https://highlights.sawyerh.com/highlights/Wc3cIP436n60JRoYYTVe) Since this approach targets anyone who is deemed “overrepresented”, it “single[s] out Jews for being over-represented in many fields” (https://forward.com/opinion/471824/this-new-social-justice-theory-is-making-academia-dangerous-for-jews/), fueling centuries-old antisemitic tropes about Jewish power and Jewish privilege.
This is an excellent albeit depressing piece documenting Woke antisemitism. Antisemitism and other forms of hatred directed towards identity groups are integral part of identity-based ideologies that depart from the humanistic ideal (treating people as individuals) and engender the Critical Theory view on people as representative of a certain group or class and, by mere fact of their existence, contributing to their class' collective agenda. One could write books about this. I fact, books have already been written (see, for example, Cynical Theories by Lindsay and Pluckrose).
People of my background can easily see parallels with Marxism-Leninism, which treated people as representatives of their class and analyzed everything through the lens of class struggle (proletariat versus bourgeoisie). Once such "Critical" view is adopted, the rest follows. I invite those who claim that the parallels between the Woke take-over and the past totalitarian regimes are exaggerated to compare the following quote from Latsis (senior security officer from Cheka -- google to learn about his role in Red Terror) with the above mentioned quotes from Kendi. Here is how Latsis describes how "Red Justice" was administered by Cheka:
"First you must ask him to what class he belongs, what his social origin is, his education and profession. These are the questions that must determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning of the Red Terror." -- Martin Latsis.
Here is another exhibit supporting the thesis:
https://spme.org/campus-news-climate/university-of-marylands-anti-semitism-task-force-chief-has-history-of-anti-semitic-statements/27176/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=join-us-for-bds-monitor-live-on-tuesday-march-24-at-12-00-pm-est_21