Anti-semitism thread: onwards from 2023

or not even just students, people

I'll note that the University of Missouri decided this wasn't a Title VI violation :

https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/mizzou-will-not-to-punish-student-over-viral-racist-comment-39258907

Ok yeah - injecting "what about Israel" - aren't you conflating things in just the way just discussed?

(xpost) or rather, under the first amendment. I'm not sure why there wasn't a Title VI complaint

table, I was responding to Josh's question about other countries.

Why the need to whatabout and "both ways" every single time - this is the antisemitism thread.

I thought we agreed that forcing Jewish people to discuss Israel every time they want to discuss other topics of antisemitism is kind of offensive.

https://aaup-penn.org/statement-of-the-aaup-penn-executive-committee-on-the-resignation-of-president-magill/

In recent months, trustees, donors, lobbying organizations, and members of Congress have repeatedly misrepresented the words and deeds of Penn faculty and students who have expressed concern for Palestinian civilians and criticized the war in Gaza, going so far as to suggest that faculty who have publicly condemned Hamas were Hamas supporters and that groups protesting genocide were calling for genocide. These distortions and attacks on our colleagues have not addressed the scourge of antisemitism—a real and grave problem. Instead, they have threatened the ability of faculty and students to research, teach, study, and publicly discuss the history, politics, and cultures of Israel and Palestine. These attacks strike at the heart of the mission of an educational institution: to foster open, critical, and rigorous research and teaching that can produce knowledge for the public good in a democratic society.

The ability of donors, lobbying groups, and members of Congress to destabilize the University of Pennsylvania reveals the need to restore a strong faculty voice in the governance of the institution. The next president must defend the principles of shared governance and academic freedom, which protect the educational mission of the university. And they must correct what has become a dangerous myth suggesting that the defense of academic freedom and open expression is in any way contradictory to the fight against antisemitism. We intend to see that Penn’s next president lives up to this responsibility.

Previous statements:

https://aaup-penn.org/statement-on-threats-to-academic-freedom-university-governance-and-safety-at-the-university-of-pennsylvania/ (10/28)

https://aaup-penn.org/aaup-penn-letter-on-targeted-harassment/ (11/20)

https://aaup-penn.org/urgent-message-mec-11-28-film-screening-and-further-threats-to-academic-freedom/ (11/28)

https://aaup-penn.org/aaup-penn-statement-on-dec-5-congressional-hearing/ (12/6)

felicity, I am merely responding to things mentioned in the thread around free speech, hateful rhetoric, and symbols.

I could have used a better example— there are plenty of people who live in the US who consider our flag a hate symbol, myself among them.

What I am trying to get at is that banning or bringing into the legal spectrum certain words, symbols, and bits of language that specific communities rightly find offensive and hateful is an ultimately difficult thing to do without privileging certain populations over others, which can lead to negative consequences for all involved.

Your own links say the AAUP agrees that Penn has not secured a safe campus for Palestinian, Arab, Jewish, or Muslim faculty or students.

In fact, as AAUP-Penn has documented, university policies have exhibited a pattern of discrimination against faculty and students—including Jewish members of our community—who have articulated criticisms of Israeli government policies or of the current war. While offering free, enhanced security to some Jewish institutions, faculty, and students on campus, the university administration has failed to defend the safety and academic freedom of faculty and students who have voiced concern for Palestinian civilians. These include Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim members of our community, Jewish students in Penn Chavurah, and faculty from other religious, national, and ethnic backgrounds.

I could have used a better example— there are plenty of people who live in the US who consider our flag a hate symbol, myself among them.

Sure, why don't you try that. The US national anthem is literally about bombs and rockets.

The more I've dug into UPenn, the more aghast I am, but about things that don't seem to have been a major issue this time. this Amy Wax person, for instance, who is in the law school who an outright white supremicist, who also invites Neo Nazi Jared Taylor to give guest lectures. She has not been fired. I'd rather Magill get shitcanned for allowing Wax to be on faculty though I guess she's provided some kind of union protection? Why isn't there a Title VI complaint about her?

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/4/18/kiros-amy-wax/

Students saying 'intifada' seems like small potatoes compared to a law professor who keeps bringing a Nazi in to teach her classes.

Amy Wax seems abhorrent. Just can we not create these false either/or dichotomies.

There are a lot of lurid details on these campus probes - I think they are up to 15. Of course I am suspicious because they seem to be covered primarily by right wing media like NY Post and Fox. So I refrain from bringing them all up.

I'm not aware there aren't complaints about Wax. Someone would have to file it. The complainant might want to be anonymous because of retaliation.

I think that what some people are trying to say, felicity— and I mean this with respect— is that *we* aren't the ones who are creating these dichotomies. The institutions are, and these injustices are all linked, so bringing in other instances isn't meant as diminishment, I don't think, but rather trying to hold institutions accountable across the board. Whether this is the thread for that is up for debate, but again, that isn't for me to decide.

I think people might be confused about Magill's administrative role versus academic tenure. Removal as President does not mean she is "shitcanned." Mcgill still has tenure at the law school.

It sounds like there are complaints about Wax but response is slow. Some of the Title VI turnaround time from the federal government was 4+ years. Maybe they are moving faster now.

*we* aren't the ones who are creating these dichotomies.

That's fine if you mean a we= everyone.

Rather than a "we versus Jewish people," which is how it feels when you repeatedly shove "Israel slaughter" in the middle of other topics being discussed by Jewish posters.

If you could stop that, at least on the antisemitism thread, that would be great. If you want to start another thread or even board about the wider topic that would be great.

What's annoying too is people coming along and creating dichotomies or hierarchies of privilege and being like "who did this??!!" Super annoying especially to get lectures on privilege from white men. I thought you felt it was infantilizing to assign virtue based on identity, anyway.

yes I agree with table. I think university administrations should be held accountable for harassment that happens on their campuses if it crosses the threshold of acceptable behavior. I don't love administrators in education; I think they get paid too much to the detriment of professors and adjuncts. At the same time I don't envy their roles that much, given the accountability they have to face. I'm not crying over Magill losing this role specifically; I didn't go to UPenn, my kid isn't going there, and I only know one person who teaches there, but I am concerned that she's having to step down over a situation that seems less dire than the Amy Wax situation, frankly (though admittedly I also don't know how Wax's tenure and contract protects her).

I think it's important to differentiate clear offenses (someone telling a jewish student 'this is all your fault' or telling them they should be gassed) versus nebulous ones (the Palestine Writes festival, students and teachers saying "from the river to the sea"). If there is a preponderance of the former that went unaddressed, then she absolutely should have resigned, and the university better get specific about what violates the code of conduct or not. If they adopt the NY standard that Hochul wants--that calling for genocide violates Title VI--they'd better be clear what 'calling for genocide' means. If it means saying "from the river to the sea" then I think we are in dangerous waters (forgive the sea pun).

I personally don't feel I know enough about the facts to draw any ultimate conclusions. What I saw indicates a duty to investigate under the law.

The Wapo opinion piece from the person in UPenn's Open Expression Committee is clear that words like "intifada" and "from the river to the sea" are antisemitic calls for genocide, and need to be restricted. It makes me wonder if there are any pro-palestinian statements that can be made that would not be defined as antisemitic under these rules. The irony is that there is an actual genocide underway, which is why these statements are being made in the first place.

Notwithstanding my feeling about the term "intifada," I in no way support the witch hunt against these U. presidents

Prof. Finklestein's WaPo piece didnt refer to to any rules. It's her opinion.

I'd say your paraphrase misreads it a bit.

With or without the First Amendment, calls for genocide against Jews — or even proxies for such sentiments, such as calling for intifada against Jews or the elimination of Israel by chanting “from the river to the sea” — are, in the present context, calls for violence against a discrete ethnic or religious group. Such speech arguably incites violence, frequently inspires harassment of Jewish students and, without question, creates a hostile environment that can impair the equal educational opportunities of Jewish students.

While it sounds unreasonable to you reading about it online, I would give some deference to Prof. Finklestein being on Penn campus. She seems to have some insight into the coding of words and how they are taken as threatening or not, and to whom.

Man alive explained how this in understood with knowledge of the conflict. Do you feel the need to center your own perception over those who are arguably closer to the facts or more affected?

With another racial minority or sex would you say, well I'm not threatened by X, therefore X is not harassing?

We don't have to agree. I dont see it as a witch hunt against presidents. I have worked on civil rights cases. I want to see if there is harassment or discrimination.

xp to akm

Btw The Amy Wax situation has been going on since 2017. Magill became President in July 2022.

That's atrociously slow.

With another racial minority or sex would you say, well I'm not threatened by X, therefore X is not harassing?

I think it would depend on what X was. By this criteria, anyone could make up any situation, say it's threatening, and you'd have to take their word for it, which I don't think is a good thing to do.

I'm struggling to think of another real scenario where a statement is being interpreted as a proxy for a genocidal or even racist/bigoted belief and is making people uncomfortable enough that they they feel unsafe (i'm sure there are a million, but I can't think of any right now). The closest thing I can think of is the display of confederate flags. If a black student said they were made uncomfortable by this, obviously I wouldn't question it, because it's been thoroughly debated in culture, and confederate advocates have lost their argument that the flag stands primarily as a 'symbol of heritage' and not a proxy for a racist system.

For this particular issue, the reason I have a hard time believing that the statement 'from the river to the sea' MUST be accepted as a proxy for advocating genocide is that the Likud party uses essentially the same phrase.

such as calling for intifada against Jews or the elimination of Israel by chanting “from the river to the sea”

This is an abuse of language in incredibly bad faith.

it's also rich to argue that pro-palestinian student activists in the US are advocating for genocide with a phrase when Israel is actively perpetuating a genocide.

and to clarify: there are obviously many, many, many jewish people who do not to agree that 'from the river to the sea' is inherently antisemitic or genocidal. The only person I know who believes this is an elderly Finnish American woman who converted to judaism two years ago and who also tells me that Israel isn't an apartheid state, arabs are just 'lesser citizens' and that's ok.

Masha Gessen wrote this astonishing piece that covers territory as broad as Germany’s memory of the Holocaust, the notion of singular evil, the remembrance of ex-Soviet Jews, Ukraine and Russia and Poland, and how the past isn’t past. I went through after reading looking for a particular paragraph to share and maybe the conclusion is most fitting. It covers a lot of what we have discussed over these various threads. Maybe this thread isn’t the best place for it but it seemed to be to me.

The day I arrived in Kyiv, someone handed me a thick book. It was the first academic study of Stepan Bandera to be published in Ukraine. Bandera is a Ukrainian hero: he fought against the Soviet regime; dozens of monuments to him have appeared since the collapse of the U.S.S.R. He ended up in Germany after the Second World War, led a partisan movement from exile, and died after being poisoned by a K.G.B. agent, in 1959. Bandera was also a committed fascist, an ideologue who wanted to build a totalitarian regime. These facts are detailed in the book, which has sold about twelve hundred copies. (Many bookstores have refused to carry it.) Russia makes gleeful use of Ukraine’s Bandera cult as evidence that Ukraine is a Nazi state. Ukrainians mostly respond by whitewashing Bandera’s legacy. It is ever so hard for people to wrap their minds around the idea that someone could have been the enemy of your enemy and yet not a benevolent force. A victim and also a perpetrator. Or vice versa.

Yeah that is a great piece of writing and reporting. Clear-eyed and tragic.

I'm not finished reading this yet, so I'm just dropping the link:

How Bad Is Anti-Semitism In America, Really?

The author (Eric Levitz) offers seven points:

1. Antisemitism is a genuine social problem in the U.S. But the U.S. is nevertheless an exceptionally safe country for Jews.
2. Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.
3. Antisemitism is much more prevalent on the American right than on the American left.
4. That said, some of the more doctrinaire variants of social-justice ideology are problematic from a Jewish point of view.
5. Some strains of pro-Palestine activism in the U.S. betray anti-Jewish animus.
6. The existence of antisemitism within the pro-Palestine movement tells us nothing about the merits of the Palestinian cause.
7. Anti-Palestinian sentiment is a much bigger problem in America today than antisemitism.

That piece is kind of a mess.

That Gessen essay ends with three mighty paragraphs.

Like the New Yorker's recent hit piece on Hasan Minhaj I didn't think much of it.

Really? What did you object to? Not looking to argue, just curious. I thought it was pretty powerful.

That Gessen essay ends with three mighty paragraphs.

hard agreement.

Naomi Klein's Doppelganger ends with a very good examination of Palestine/Israel that much of the instant opinion/thinkpiece space doesn't have the room for. Big recommendation for the book - make room for it if you can.

Going to put a hold on that at the library asap.

felicity, I appreciate what you've said and I get you, my wife has been hurt and troubled by so much from both sides of the conflict, and a lot of that comes from the discourse and the dog whistles (both unintentional or clearly intentional) appearing within it. I suspect it's something she thinks about more than when she was younger, both bc of recent upticks in anti-semitism and due to us having a young kid.

Found a swastika on a desk in my classroom today. No way of knowing if it's a random swastika or one specifically directed at me.

Ugh. I often wish it wasn't so easy to be so hurtful.

Naomi Klein's Doppelganger

Started this the other day and have already recommended it to several people.

she sold me on it with her appearance on the Jewish Currents podcast - I'm telling everyone I know about it and hoping someone will buy it for me this year since I have no money atm

I'm really sorry to Lily and everyone else who is going through this shit right now. I don't think it has been this bad within my lifetime before. I hope saying that isn't contributing to a climate of fear but I doubt it's news to anyone

so sorry Lily :(

"random swastika" ugh. I'm sorry Lily

So sorry Lily.

Lily, that sucks. I’m so sorry.

Sorry Lily, that is terrible.

Horrific.

awful

I was mulling this more and I really, really do not want to see language that is meaningful to people taken away from them. I understand that "intifada" has a long history and many contexts. I even think it is kind of a beautiful word. I don't want to tell people never to use it. I care more about whether people are actually justifying murder of civilians than what word they use. If people want to say that, they can say it. I just hope that people really think through what they are ok with, what kind of carnage is acceptable to them to achieve their goals, which goes every bit as much if not more for supporters of Israel.

So very sorry, Lily

Absolute crap Lily; is this a higher ed institution or HS or lower? Any investigation or announcement from the administration?