Tag Archives: #AntiSemitism

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Harvard admits to anti-Semitism on campus The real question: what will the University do about it?

When I don’t have a good photo for an article, perhaps just a picture of my morning coffee being made will suffice!

We noted, just three weeks ago, how Harvard University, the oldest and most prestigious institution of higher learning in our great nation, rather than at least negotiate with the Trump Administration over policies to end blatant anti-Semitism on campus, was choosing to double-down on discrimination instead.

Harvard is, of course, a private school, so the government cannot order it to comply, but as a private institution the government is not obligated to fund it, either. But that doesn’t mean that the university doesn’t have to address its problems. From The Atlantic:

Harvard Begins to Confront Its Anti-Semitism Problem

A 300-page report makes for dismal reading.

By Eliot A. Cohen | Monday, May 5, 2025 | 12:45 PM EDT

Harvard’s anti-Semitism report has landed: elaborately footnoted, abundant in statistics as well as anecdotes, earnest and troubled in tone. It was composed entirely by current insiders at the university—no alumni or, heaven forfend, faculty or deans from other universities. And it offers more than 300 pages of dismal reading.

The report spends time — an inordinate amount of time, according to some Harvard critics — parsing the definition of anti-Semitism and its relationship to exterminationist hatred of Israel. By its very length and carefully modulated tone, it sometimes seems to reflect an academic wringing of hands rather than shocked wonder and volcanic fury at the Jew hatred that has infected this great university.

Naturally, The Atlantic has a paywall, and if you are like us, you can’t afford to subscribe to everything! The article can also be found here, without a paywall.

The report nonetheless carefully documents a series of appalling incidents, and the failure of university leadership to address chronic and worsening Jew-baiting. It notes that the university leaders remained mute when a commencement speaker resorted to anti-Jewish tropes. It describes the silencing of Jewish students by their classmates, egregious faculty support of anti-Israel protests at the expense of classroom neutrality or even attendance, and sheer thuggishness aimed at Jewish students. It also documents the collapse of a once-demanding disciplinary system, as various penalties for misbehavior were reduced or rescinded wholesale in July 2024. It has a long list of recommendations, including special training for students involved in DEI efforts, more courses on Judaism and the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and setting clearer expectations about civil discourse for new students.

So, Harvard is, perhaps, going to institute courses and seminars and training to try to educate the students at one of our great and adult institutions of Western civilization how to act like civilized adults? Shouldn’t one of our most selective colleges only be admitting students who are already civilized adults?

The fundamental problem, however, is that the roots of Harvard’s Jew-baiting problem go far deeper than either the earnest recommendations of the task force or the more robust actions of Harvard’s president can address.

The widespread harassment of Jews reported at Harvard reflects the attitudes of hundreds if not thousands of students, faculty, and staff — that last group is an often underappreciated element in indulging or even encouraging this behavior. It reflects the development of identity-driven politics, for which responsibility lies outside the university as well as within it. It has been fed by witch-hunting for “white privilege” (no matter that there are plenty of Jews of color, as a walk down the streets of Tel Aviv will show you). It flourishes in the bogus specializations that have hived off from more traditional and all-embracing disciplines such as history, literature, and anthropology. It has been nurtured in research centers whose very existence is premised not on the quest for truth but on the pursuit of a political or ideological agenda.

This is an important point. Author Eliot Cohen noted that staff are “an often underappreciated element in indulging or even encouraging this behavior,” and it is the staff who are taking most of the admissions decisions. I would guess that the higher-up among the staff are the ones who take the decisions on whom to admit, but, with annual applications in the mid 50,000 range, and acceptances in the mid 1,900s, most of the rejections are undoubtedly handled by the lower level staff.

I admit to being somewhat less than impressed with how Harvard is educating its students these days. The Editorial Board of the Harvard Crimson seemed to think that Dylan Roof, the South Carolina mass murderer, was coddled due to his white privilege because the police brought him food after his arrest, when he said he was hungry. Not feeding Mr Roof, who told the police he hadn’t eaten for a couple of days, would have been a civil rights violation which could have tainted his arrest, and the case against him.[1]Dylann Roof was tried, convicted and sentenced to death in federal court in early 2017. He later pleaded guilty to South Carolina state charges, in exchange for life without parole sentences, which … Continue reading It took me, with my baccalaureate degree from the not-so-selective University of Kentucky[2]Actually, when I matriculated at UK in the Fall of 197, any graduate from an accredited Kentucky high school was guaranteed admission, something that the University handled with a high flunk-out rate., about three seconds to find that information. You’d think that the best and the brightest that Harvard is supposedly educating would have thought about that, but if the attitude is more about fighting against “white privilege” than actually looking at the facts, it’s unsurprising that it didn’t.

Harvard already lost the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” battle when the Supreme Court declared Affirmative Action programs which discriminate against non-favored racial and ethnic — read: white and Asian — groups to be illegal in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, declaring what we all knew, that the equal protection clause in the 14th Amendment prohibited Affirmative Action using racial preferences in collegiate admissions, so ‘DEI’ programs were always legally suspect, but the Classes of 2025, 2026, and 2027 had already been selected and admitted when that was handed down. Whether the university has actually complied with the ruling in the admissions decisions for the Classes of 2028 and 2029, classes which are already on campus, is unknown.

There is an element of absolute insanity in all of this. Let’s tell the truth here: the left’s fight against “white privilege” and “white supremacy” are actually code words for a fight against Western civilization, yet it is Western civilization which gives us our freedom of speech and of the press, our freedom of religion, and our institutions of higher learning. Every female Harvard student campaigning against that ought to realize what her life would be like in Afghanistan, where it is illegal to educate girls beyond the sixth grade, an many girls never get even that far, as it has effectively become a waste of time and effort for them. Every female Harvard student campaigning for the victory of the ‘Palestinians’ against the hated Jewish oppression should realize that, were the Islamists to gain power, they’d basically be sentenced to housewifery, and to second-class — if even that high1 — citizenship. Every male Harvard student campaigning against white privilege and white supremacy and Western civilization ought to realize that they are campaigning for dictatorial rule by men determined to impose Islam as a religion, and Islam as the basis for all laws and freedoms. Every Harvard student who isn’t sexually normal should realize that being anti-Semitic and campaigning against Western civilization has to know, if he has an IQ above room temperature, that he’s campaigning to be imprisoned, to be beaten, to be tortured, or just plain hanged by the neck until dead.

References

References
↑1 Dylann Roof was tried, convicted and sentenced to death in federal court in early 2017. He later pleaded guilty to South Carolina state charges, in exchange for life without parole sentences, which was accepted in case the federal conviction was overturned, as an insurance policy to keep him locked up for the rest of his miserable life. When outgoing President Joe Biden commuted the death sentences for 37 out of 40 inmates on the federal death row, to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Mr Roof was one of the three whose capital sentences were not commuted.
↑2 Actually, when I matriculated at UK in the Fall of 197, any graduate from an accredited Kentucky high school was guaranteed admission, something that the University handled with a high flunk-out rate.
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Once again, Hahvahd is producing The Best and The Brightest!

Harvard University, our nation’s oldest and most prestigious institution of higher learning — though any college which accepted David Hogg and granted him a degree has to be suspect when the term “higher learning” is applied to it — is suing the Trump Administration over federal spending cuts to the school due to Hahvahd’s refusal to go along with measures to protect Jewish students and personnel from the anti-Semitism which has been running rampant through our (supposedly) top universities.

So, naturally the Usual Suspects decide to demonstrate their anti-Semitism! Continue reading →

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You in a heap o’ trouble, boy! Bad causes attract crazy people

Robert Stacy McCain warned us about jumping to conclusions before all of the facts were in about Cody Balmer, the man charged with setting fire to the Pennsylvania Governor’s Mansion.

As soon as Pennsylvania State Police announced that Cody Balmer had been charged with setting the fire at the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion in Harrisburg, someone found Balmer’s Facebook page and a deep dive found little evidence to point to a motive. Like most other people — including Gov. Josh Shapiro himself — I immediately assumed the motive must be antisemitism. Like, you attack the residence of the Jewish governor on the first night of Passover, what else could it be?

So when I plunged into Balmer’s Facebook page, I expected to find evidence that the suspect was either (a) a neo-Nazi Jew-hater or (b) a “progressive” pro-Palestinian Jew-hater. But there was no evidence of either inclination. In fact, there was very little hint of political inclinations at all. The guy was a welder and mechanic, with a black wife and four mixed-race kids, which obviously seemed to rule out any neo-Nazi tendencies, but there weren’t any “free Palestine” messages, either, He had a couple of sarcastic posts indicating he wasn’t a big fan of Joe Biden, but there weren’t any MAGA pro-Trump messages, either. Thomas Stevenson of The Post Millennial dug even deeper than I did and discovered that Balmer described himself as a “registered socialist,” so it’s a fair surmise he was a Bernie Bro back in the day, which might explain his disdain of Biden as an “establishment” Democrat. Continue reading →

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Waging war against Israel, from the safety of Morningside Heights

That our oh-so-noble leftists will lie through their scummy teeth whenever they think it to their advantage is of no surprise to anyone who pays attention. That The New York Times would report on it actually is at least slightly surprising.

Pro-Palestinian Group at Columbia Now Backs ‘Armed Resistance’ by Hamas

Columbia University Apartheid Divest has withdrawn an apology it made last spring for a member who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”

by Sharon Otterman | Wednesday, October 9, 2024

The pro-Palestinian group that sparked the student encampment movement at Columbia University in response to the Israel-Hamas war is becoming more hard-line in its rhetoric, openly supporting militant groups fighting Israel and rescinding an apology it made after one of its members said the school was lucky he wasn’t out killing Zionists.

The ‘student’ in question is Khymani James, who, according to NBC News “uses he/she/they pronouns,” thus proving that he’s mentally ill and an idiot, was barred from Columbia’s campus on Friday, April 26th, and is now suing Columbia over his dismissal. Apparently Mr James open support of “militant groups fighting Israel” means fighting Israel in Morningside Heights, and not actually picking up a rifle and heading to Gaza to face the Israel Defense Force in real life.

“We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” the group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, said in its statement revoking the apology.

The group marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for it: “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. And the group posted an essay calling the attack a “moral, military and political victory” and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.

“The Palestinian resistance is moving their struggle to a new phase of escalation and it is our duty to meet them there,” the group wrote on Oct. 7 on Telegram. “It is our duty to fight for our freedom!”

Also see: William Teach, “Unhinged Jew Hating Group At Columbia U Rescinds Apology For Anti-Semite Comrade

“Apparently, to judge by their support of Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and their statement that they “support liberation by any means necessary” means that they support the rapes, murders, and kidnappings perpetrated by the attackers.

Reporter Sharon Otterman’s article noted the problems the university’s leadership have with statements made under our First Amendment protections, but which can also create a “hostile environment for Jewish students.”

Laughably, Mr James, in his lawsuit against Columbia, as reported by the Columbia Spectator, is claiming that he is the one being victimized by a ‘hostile environment’:

“The environment at Columbia, which has been rendered hostile for James, is sufficiently severe, pervasive, persistent, and offensive such that it deprives James of equal access to the opportunities and benefits that Columbia provides to other students,” the lawsuit reads.

The lawsuit states that after James began sharing “anti-war and anti-genocide political beliefs” on their personal Instagram account, they (sic) became the target of “racist, homophobic, and physically threatening messages,” including ones that called James slurs. These messages distracted James from their (sic) schoolwork and caused them (sic) to feel “uncomfortable, anxious, and unsafe,” according to the lawsuit.

Laughing out loud! At least the Times wasn’t silly enough to use Mr James’ preferred pronouns, but the Spectator, produced by the foremost School of Journalism in the country, was. 🙂

I have to ask, are Mr James and his attorney claiming that he has “anti-war . . . political beliefs” at the same time he and his supporters are calling for war against Israel, and are actively supporting the war Hamas started against Israel? But, I can answer my own question: for the anti-Semitic left, violence in advance of their cause is perfectly acceptable; they are simply “anti-war” when it comes to other people and other people’s defense.

There have been several stories about Americans, primarily combat veterans, who have left the United States and gone to Ukraine, to fight against the Russians, and at least a few of them have been killed in action. Hey, they were vets, knew the dangers, and chose to brave them anyway!

And there have been many stories about Americans and Europeans, primarily Jews, who have gone to Israel to fight with the Israel Defense Force. Some are dual citizens, and the anti-Semitic left have been calling for them not to be allowed to return to their European countries, saying that they are “war criminals.”

But pro-‘Palestinian’ Europeans and Americans? I can’t say that none have gone to Gaza to join the fight, but if any have, there haven’t been enough of them to have merited any story that I have seen in the credentialed media about it.

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Midnight oil blogging There was a tremendous amount of anti-Semitic propaganda on Twitter while my electricity was out

Burning the midnight oil

I suppose it’s my own fault, because I sometimes can’t resist opening up tweets in which the anti-Semites tell us how the Jooooos really rule the world, that I keep getting more of their bovine feces. The United States is controlled by the Jews, the United Kingdom is controlled by the Jews, all of the Western world is controlled by Jews.

With the 3¼ day power outage, I wound up rereading Herman Wouk’s The Winds of War on my Kindle reader. With its internal light, it was about the only thing I could read in a dark house, unless it was by my single oil lamp.

The Winds of War is a historical fiction novel, with Navy Captain Victor “Pug” Henry serving in various roles, at the time of the subsequent page, from Chapter 22, American Naval attaché to Nazi Germany:

“There’s the live nerve,” (Wolf) Stöller said. “And that’s what I’ve found difficult to convey even to the air marshal, who’s usually so hardheaded. Germans who haven’t been across the water are impossibly provincial about America. I’m sorry to say this goes for the Führer himself. I don’t believe he yet truly grasps the vast power of the American Jews. It’s a vital factor in the war picture.”

“Don’t exaggerate that factor,” (Victor) Henry said. “You fellows tend to, and it’s a form of kidding yourselves.”

“My dear Victor, I’ve been in the United States nine times and I lived for a year in San Francisco. Who’s your Minister of the Treasury? The Jew Morgenthau. Who sits on your highest court, wielding the most influence? The Jew Frankfurter.”

He proceeded to reel off a list of Jewish officials in Washington, stale and boring to Pug from endless repetition in Nazi propaganda; and he made the usual assertion that the Jews had American finance, communications, justice, and even the Presidency in their pockets. Stöller delivered all this calmly and pleasantly. He kept repeating “der Jude, der Jude” without a sneer. There was no glare in his eye, such as Pug had now and then observed when Thoda challenged some vocal anti-Semite. The banker presented his statements as though they were the day’s stock market report.

“To begin with,” Pug replied, a bit wearily, “the Treasury post in our country has little power. It’s a minor political reward. Christians hold all the other cabinet posts. Financial power lies with the banks, the insurance companies, the oil, rail, lumber, shipping, steel, and auto industries, and such. They’re wholly in Christian hands. Always have been.

“Lehman is a banker,” said Dr Knopfmann.

“Yes \, he is. The famous exception.” Pug went on eith his stock answers to anti-Semitism: the all but solid Christian ownership of newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses, the Christian composition of Congress, the cabinet, and the executive branch, the eight Christian judges out of nine on the Supreme Court, the paramount White House influence of a Christian, Harry Hopkins, and all the rest. On the faces of his hearers appeared the curious universal smirk of Germans when discussing Jews: condescending, facetious, and cold, with superior awareness of a very private inside joke.

Stöller said in a kindly tone, “That’s always the Jewish line, you know, how unimportant they are.”

That’s a rather long quote, but I think it important. After six years — at the time set in the novel — of Nazi propaganda, overlaid on Europe’s traditional anti-Semitism. Mr Wouk’s characters very believably accepted what they were being told.

And that’s what I’m seeing from today’s anti-Semitic social media postings. Like Alice, they can believe six impossible things before breakfast.

There’s an old trope that somehow, some way, Jews control everything in the world. If you follow that link, you’ll see plenty of sources on that silliness, and, interestingly enough, many of them predate the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. The Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who is not Jewish, reported how that myth at least partially motivated an attack on Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas.

My copy of Mein Kampf. I don’t own it because I support it, but because I read it.

Adolf Hitler wrote dictated in Mein Kampf:

To what extent the whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by The Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, so infinitely hated by the Jews. They are based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeitung[1]The Frankfurter Zeitung was a Jewish-owned newspaper founded in 1856. It survived until 1943, as Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels found it useful, after the Jewish writers, editors, and … Continue reading moans and screams once every week: the best proof that they are authentic. What many Jews may do unconsciously is here consciously exposed. And that is what matters. It is completely indifferent from what Jewish brains these disclosures originate; the important thing is that with positively terrifying certainty they reveal the nature and activity of the Jewish people and expose their inner contexts as well as their ultimate final aims.[2]Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 307–308.

While even the Nazis did not believe that the Protocols were anything but a fake, they used them extensively in their propaganda.

But now we’ve come full circle. The apologists for Hamas and Hezbollah, and the supporters of the ‘Palestinians’, have once again been spewing the line that the evil Jews control everything, manipulating President Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and pretty much all of the world’s leaders who are not attacking Israel.

How much of this is being swallowed by the pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah, pro-‘Palestinian’ supporters? I honestly don’t know, but I see this stuff all the time by accused groomer Richard Medhurst, a Syrian-British pro-Palestinian propagandist, and several Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — accounts, many of which are probably bots — and though some try to differentiate between Zionists and Jews in general, a lot of the protesters just use the word Jew instead.

One final point, paraphrased from The Winds of War, and I cannot remember where in the book I saw it, but it’s in there: while the Nazis and other anti-Semites[3]The Nazis had tremendous help from ordinary Europeans, not just Germans, but the public in all of the lands they conquered, in finding and rounding up the Jews for shipment to the concentration … Continue reading claimed that the Jews secretly ruled the world, when it came to the Holocaust, the Jews didn’t have enough power to even save themselves.

References

References
↑1 The Frankfurter Zeitung was a Jewish-owned newspaper founded in 1856. It survived until 1943, as Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels found it useful, after the Jewish writers, editors, and publisher were forced out.
↑2 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), 307–308.
↑3 The Nazis had tremendous help from ordinary Europeans, not just Germans, but the public in all of the lands they conquered, in finding and rounding up the Jews for shipment to the concentration camps. The Nazis could do it al by themselves.
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In the end, hiding from your enemies just doesn’t work The way to fight anti-Semitism is not to let the anti-Semites win!

In February of 1896, long before the Nazis, just a couple of months before Adolf Hitler’s 7th birthday, Theoror Herzl’s Der Judenstaat, The Jewish State, was published in Leipzig and Vienna by M. Breitenstein’s Verlags-Buchhandlung. Mr Herzl saw the persecution Jews were facing in Europe, where they had lived ever since their expulsion from the Holy Land by the Romans beginning in 70 AD. Jews, he believed, needed to live apart from the mostly Christian populations of Europe.

But even living apart, while in Europe, didn’t prove particularly safe. While the Jüdischer Wohnbezirk in Warschau, the Warsaw ghetto, was not formally established until November of 1940 by the Nazi occupation authorities, it contained those heavily Jewish neighborhoods which existed before the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

Now there’s this, from The Wall Street Journal:

Maybe It’s Time for Jewish Self-Segregation

The self-protective impulse is a healthy response to a wave of antisemitism.

By Joseph Epstein | Thursday, September 19, 2024 | 5:33 PM EDT

The recent and rampant rise in antisemitism is, to put it gently, disheartening. One finds it everywhere, much of it passing under the flag of anti-Zionism, criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and presumably sympathy for the Palestinians. Saddest of all is that antisemitism has cropped up so exuberantly among students in our elite universities. Apart from decrying it, calling it out for what it is, what are Jews to do to protect themselves from this recurring nightmare? Perhaps a jaunt down memory lane will help.

For those who don’t have my too-expensive subscription to the Journal, the OpEd can be accessed for free here.

I was 5 when I was first aware not only that I was Jewish but that being Jewish had consequences. My father asked me what I had learned in school one day, and I told him the poem “Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe,” which I began to recite. When I came to the n-word—before “tiger” had been substituted as a more appropriate alternative—my father angrily stopped me and told me I was never to use the word again, especially since our people, like the Negroes (as they were called then), had been long persecuted and called all sorts of terrible names.

A few years later, returning with my father from a Bing Crosby movie, “Going My Way,” I asked if we might have a Christmas tree. “No,” he said. Why not? “Because you are Jewish.” Case closed. Not long after that, my mother pointed out various Chicago neighborhoods and suburbs—Sauganash, Kenilworth—that were “restricted,” which meant no Jews allowed. Not only did being Jewish carry responsibilities; it also apparently meant being despised, at least in certain quarters.

After several more paragraphs, in which Joseph Epstein, the author, describes his life growing up, and in college, in mostly Jewish enclaves, we get to the meat of the column:

No one saw the current wave of antisemitism coming. Who thought Hamas would find supporters at Harvard, Columbia, the University of California, Los Angeles, and elsewhere? The country had known of this virus before, but it came not from crowds of thousands but from prominent people. Henry Ford was openly antisemitic. No Jew in those days drove his cars. Father Charles Coughlin, on his radio show in the 1930s, attacked what he termed “international bankers.” But those were largely isolated, the present strain more widespread.

Is self-chosen segregation among Jews a good thing? In one sense, it feels like taking a step backward toward a less open society. Yet when the politics of a country swing too far in either direction, antisemitism is almost certain to come in its train. The swing today is unmistakably and strongly leftist, and self-segregation strikes me as the first step in combating the attacks on Jews that attend it.

I am not Jewish, and I live in an area with very few, if any Jews, so perhaps I just don’t understand, but this seems to me to be an advocacy of surrender, and not even an effective one. If American Jews self-segregate, into small, mostly Jewish communities, are they not simply gathering in a smaller and more confined target area for any violently antiSemitic ‘mostly peaceful protests’? We have already seen ‘protests’ at synagogues and Hillel Centers on campuses. Self-segregation, self-isolation doesn’t work when those who hate you still know where you congregate and live.

Israel is, of course, Mr Herzl’s dream, even if he never saw it; he died in 1904, at a very young 44 years of age, though he is now buried in Mt Herzl, on the west side of Jerusalem. But look at the situation today. Israel is the self-segregation of millions of Jews in the modern world, yet we see not just the Arabs — who can always be counted on for hate — but millions of people reared in Western civilization nations who don’t want the Jews to have even that small nation.

Self-segregation counts on the tolerance of others to allow your segregated communities, and we aren’t seeing much of that tolerance by the supporters of Hamas and the ‘Palestinians.’

In the end, hiding from your enemies just doesn’t work.

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Hit the road, Jack! Three anti-Semitic Columbia deans 'were resigned'

The First Street Journal previously reported on three anti-Semitic deans at Columbia University being permanently removed and placed on indefinite leave from their administrative jobs over offensive texts during an alumni weekend event about Jewish life on campus. An audience member, who was seated behind one of the deans took photos of the administrators’ texts and first shared them last month with the Washington Free Beacon.

Well, the indefinite suspension is now over. From The New York Times:

3 Columbia University Deans Who Sent Insulting Texts Have Resigned

The deans were put on leave earlier in the summer after sending messages that disparaged Jewish panelists. A fourth dean, who is tenured, will remain at the university.

by Sharon Otterman | Thursday, August 8, 2024

Three Columbia University deans who exchanged disparaging text messages that the university president said “touched on ancient antisemitic tropes” during a forum about Jewish issues in May are resigning, a spokeswoman said Thursday.

The deans, who had responsibility for undergraduate student affairs, sent the biting and sarcastic messages as they reacted in real time to Jewish speakers expressing concern about antisemitism on campus during the two-hour event.

In June, Nemat Shafik, the university president, placed the three deans on indefinite leave as an investigation proceeded.

In the texts, one dean suggested that a Jewish speaker was playing up concerns for fund-raising purposes. Another sent vomit emojis in reaction to the mention of a college newspaper opinion piece written by one of the school’s rabbis.

So, they’ve ‘resigned.’ The Times subtitle tells the reader everything that he needs to know: a fourth dean, who has academic tenure, did not resign, which means that the three who did leave resigned ahead of being fired. Firing a tenured person is much more difficult, so professor Josef Sorett, a scholar on religion and race, who did not participate to the same extent as Susan Chang-Kim, vice dean and chief administrative officer, Cristen Kromm, dean of undergraduate student life, and Matthew Patashnick, associate dean for student and family support, gets to keep his job. Dr Sorett, who publicly apologized, stays while the other three are wailing at the song “Hit the Road, Jack“.

If it took over a month to force the three to resign, one thing is obvious: there were lawyers involved. The only question not answered by the Times is: how much of a golden parachute were the three given?

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Democrisy: the leftists who loved outside money in their campaigns hate it when Other People use it to defeat Democrats

When she first moved to the Bluegrass State, my younger daughter was employed by the United States Postal Service, working out of the Post Office in Versailles. One thing about which she complained was the huge volume of mail sent out by Amy McGrath Henderson[1]Even though she did not respect her husband, Erik Henderson, enough to have taken his last name, I shall not show similar disrespect to him. during her campaign, first for the Democratic nomination and then the general election in 2018 for the Sixth Congressional District seat held by Representative Andy Barr (R-KY). Overall, Mrs Henderson wound up spending $8,274,396 to Mr Barr’s $5,580,477, but she still lost, 51.0% to 47.8%. Much of Mrs Henderson’s money came from outside of the Sixth District, and outside of Kentucky altogether.

Amusingly enough, Mr Barr’s campaign found a video of Mrs Henderson fund raising . . . in Massachusetts! It was there in which she uttered those unforgettable words, “I am further left, I am more progressive, than anyone in the state of Kentucky.” Perhaps, just perhaps, that didn’t help her much in the Bluegrass State. Including mostly liberal Lexington, the Sixth District is less solidly Republican and conservative than the rest of Kentucky, but she still couldn’t win here. And yes, I live in the Sixth District.

Undeterred by her defeat, Mrs Henderson decided to challenge Senator Mitch McConnell in 2020. In her Senate campaign, Mrs Henderson raised $94,120,557 and spent $90,775,744 compared to Mr McConnell’s $71,351,350 and $64,787,889, only to lose 38.2% to 57.8%. As it happens, Mrs Henderson had the lowest percentage total against Mr McConnell of any of his opponents save sacrificial lamb candidate Lois Combs Weinberg in 2002.

$90+ million is a huge amount to spend in a conservative state like Kentucky:

An analysis of the money raised in the Kentucky race shows much of it is coming from people who live outside the state.

The Metro areas that have contributed the most to both campaigns are from New York City, Washington DC and Los Angeles California, according to the non-partisan website Open Secrets.

I thought of that as I read with amusement how Representative Cori Bush Merritts[2]Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Cortney Merritts, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect. (Hamas-MO) and her supporters whined about outside money following her primary loss. This is from the far left magazine, Mother Jones:

One of the Most Vocal Proponents of a Ceasefire in Gaza Just Lost

First, it was Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York. Now, it is Rep. Cori Bush in Missouri. In a race with a lot of AIPAC money, another member of the Squad is defeated.

by Sophie Hurwitz | Tuesday, August 6, 2024

In one of the most watched primaries this year, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) — among the first members of Congress to call for a ceasefire — lost to St. Louis Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who jumped into the race late, and with the backing of millions of dollars from pro-Israel groups. The Associated Press called the race for Bell around 10:00 PM local time.

“Organized people beat organized money,” Bush’s campaigners have repeated. This race, however, has tested whether that’s true: as of election day, it is the second-most expensive Congressional primary in American history — and the money has, indeed, made a difference.

Bell dropped out of his bid to dethrone Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and chose to challenge Bush soon after the war began in Gaza. Bell has benefited from an incredibly well-funded advertising campaign since then.

Over half of all the outside money spent on the race came from the United Democracy Project (UDP), the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)’s electoral arm. The money UDP spent here is second only to that which they spent on a successful campaign to defeat Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York. In total, UDP spent nearly 9 million dollars in MO-01, bolstered by $1.5 million from the crypto PAC Fairshake. Bush and her backers also attracted some outside spending: Justice Democrats, a progressive PAC founded by former campaigners for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), sent $2 million her way.

Then comes the author’s major complaint:

Bell’s choice to take that money has been divisive. Mike Jones, a 75-year-old former alderman and Board of Education member with a long career in St. Louis politics put it this way: “I think everybody knows that the race is not about the issues that have surfaced. It’s about the issue nobody’s talking about.” On most issues, Bell and Bush’s stances are near-identical. “So, literally, the only reason for this campaign, at a political level, is AIPAC money,” Jones said.

It doesn’t take much perusing of Sophie Hurwitz’s Mother Jones author page to see that she’s totally in the bag for the ‘Palestinian’ cause. Her article on the defeat of Mrs Merritts’ fellow squadristi,[3]I use the term ‘squadristi,’ the singular of which is ‘squadrista,’ to mock the so-called ‘squad.’ ‘Squadristi‘ was the Italian nickname for Benito … Continue reading Jamaal Bowman (Hamas-NY) noted that he “did not back away from pro-Palestine rhetoric” and that he lost to “a lot of AIPAC money”. Of course, the editorial slant of the entire magazine is pro-‘Palestinian’.

Shockingly enough, American Jews mostly support Israel, the officially Jewish state. Is it any surprise that, when Israel is locked in an existential struggle against Hamas terrorists, that American Jews would support Israel? American Jews are mostly politically liberal, and normally give about ¾ of their votes to Democrats, but I have heard it said before that while support for Israel and Zionism is far from universal among them, there is a bare minimum requirement that candidates support the survival of Israel. Squadristi like Mr Bowman, Mrs Merritt, and the rest have threatened that bare minimum of support. Add to that the anti-Semitic demonstrations on so many college campuses, on which this site has frequently reported, and it’s no wonder that so many American Jews are concerned.

The truly laughable part is how the same Democrats who used outside money in 2018 and 2020 are so very upset about other people marshaling outside money to defeat certain candidates. Perhaps Mrs Merritts and Mr Bowman would not have lost their elections without outside money, but it’s just as probable that the Democrats wouldn’t have seized control of the House of Representatives in the 2018 elections without it.

References

References
↑1 Even though she did not respect her husband, Erik Henderson, enough to have taken his last name, I shall not show similar disrespect to him.
↑2 Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Cortney Merritts, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect.
↑3 I use the term ‘squadristi,’ the singular of which is ‘squadrista,’ to mock the so-called ‘squad.’ ‘Squadristi‘ was the Italian nickname for Benito Mussolini’s fascist paramilitary Black Shirts, and today’s American far-left are nothing if not fascist themselves. As I have said many times before, they are pro-choice on exactly one thing, prenatal infanticide, and support government control over every other choice Americans have.
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Cori Bush Merritts continually trashed Israel, but she thinks it’s wholly unfair that she gets called to account for it She lost, and she is royally pissed!

Paul Szypula tweeted out the outraged rant of Representative Cori Bush Merritts[1]Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Cortney Merritts, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect. (Hamas-MO) after she realized that she had been defeated in the Democratic primary for renomination to Missouri’s 1st congressional district. Perhaps she realized that, serving four full years in that seat does not make her eligible for a congressional pension. 🙂

So, who needs to be afraid? Why, the Joooos, of course!

Squad Member Bush Vows to Fight Pro-Israel Group After Loss

by Christian Hall and Bill Allison | Wednesday, August 7, 2024 | 3:06 PM EDT

(Bloomberg) — US Representative Cori Bush said that she will go after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee after she lost a bitter and expensive primary battle driven by Democratic divisions over the war in Gaza.

“AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down,” the Missouri Democrat said in a fiery speech following her defeat to local prosecutor Wesley Bell.

Wesley Bell is hardly a great guy, himself a ‘progressive’ prosecutor, but he apparently isn’t an anti-Semite like Mrs Merritts, and he’s not completely insane. In 2020, he decided that he would not press charges against Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police officer who justifiably shot and killed Michael Brown Jr, the oversized thug who roughed up a bodega owner half his size in a robbery. He didn’t say that such exonerated Mr Wilson, but said he could not prove murder or manslaughter beyond a reasonable doubt. Nevertheless, he is a liberal, and will almost certainly win the general election in the one-sided first district.

The loss is the second for a member of the “squad” — an informal group of progressives in the US House. Just weeks earlier, Representative Jamaal Bowman, another Israel critic, lost a primary in the New York suburbs to George Latimer, who was also backed by AIPAC.

I refer to them as the squadristi, the Italian nickname for Benito Mussolini’s Black Shirts. Today’s far left are every bit as fascist as the Italian dictator. I’ve said it many times before: today’s left are pro-choice on exactly one thing.

Bell, who benefited from $9.5 million in ad spending from pro-Israel groups, according to AdImpact, had implored voters to “stand with Israel,” drawing a sharp contrast with the two-term Democrat who has accused Israel of committing war crimes in its response to the Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas. The US and European Union deem Hamas a terrorist organization.

Mrs Merritts refused to call Hamas a terrorist organization.

Next up is squadrista Representative Ilhan Omar Mynett[2]Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Tim Mynett, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect. (Hamas-MN), who is facing a primary election next week.

Progressives argued that the massive amounts raised by Israel supporters are intrusive in local races.

“This would not be a race without AIPAC lifting up this man,“ said Usamah Andrabi, the communications director of Justice Democrats, a PAC that supports Bush and other squad members.

How odd. I can’t seem to recall “progressives” complaining when they spent multiple millions of dollars of ‘outside’ money propping up Democratic candidates in the 2018 and 2020 congressional elections. In Kentucky, my home state, they helped make the 2018 sixth congressional district race extremely expensive, propping up Amy McGrath Henderson[3]Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Erik Henderson, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect. in her nevertheless losing general election campaign against Representative Andy Barr (R-KY), or the same Mrs Henderson in her nevertheless losing general election campaign against Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a race into which the left pumped $100 million.

Sauce for the goose, Mrs Merritts.

References

References
↑1 Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Cortney Merritts, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect.
↑2 Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Tim Mynett, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect.
↑3 Just because she didn’t respect her husband, Erik Henderson, enough to have taken his last name does not mean I shall show him similar disrespect.