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documents the collapse of a once-demanding disciplinary system, as various penalties for misbehavior were reduced or rescinded wholesale in July 2024.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
| ↑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. |
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| ↑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. |
Racism directed against Asian people in America is old and urgent. The recent murder spree carried out in Asian spas and massage parlors in Atlanta — in which eight people, including six Asian women, were shot and killed — is the latest horrific entry in the history of violence Asian American and Pacific Islanders have been subject to in the United States.