Author’s Note: This excerpt is from my weekly “Top of Mind” email, sent to subscribers every Thursday. For more content like this and to receive the full newsletter each week, sign up on Minding the Campus’s homepage. Simply go to the right side of the page, look for “SIGN UP FOR OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER, ‘TOP OF MIND,’” and […]
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Just two months after the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) voted in favor of a ceasefire resolution labeling Israel’s defensive war against Hamas as “a genocidal war on the Palestinian people,” the union has once again engaged in the demonization and delegitimization of Israel. On March 21st, the MTA hosted a two-hour webinar titled “Context and […]
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The antidote to bad ideas is good ideas, I’ve often said and sometimes written. I’ve railed against censorship and “cancellation” and defended very free, very unfettered speech. Even odious speech, detestably bad ideas spoken aloud. It’s good that it all be spoken aloud, where its moral bankruptcy is obvious in the marketplace of ideas—when rebutted […]
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The ramifications of MIT President Sally Kornbluth’s failure to quell the outbreak of anti-Semitism on campus, frustrated by the active opposition of her own senior administrators, Deans, DEI officers, and radical faculty that blossomed under the appeasement policies of past president Rafael Reif, now threaten MIT’s federal funding. As well it should. The House Committee […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Real Clear Wire on January 19, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. At the dawn of 2024, the United States is embroiled in a heated discussion over what constitutes antisemitism. In the wake of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks launched by Hamas against targets in Israel, and the […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by The Epoch Times on December 22, 2023 and is crossposted here with permission. Commentary In a recent Free Press article, “We Were Taught to Hate Jews,” five individuals from Muslim families report on the anti-Semitism that was integral to their upbringing. One said: “It’s like asking me how often I […]
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“Oh horrible, horrible, most horrible,” as a Chorus in Greek Tragedy might chant: midst a “storm of multitudinous tears.” Rockets raining on civilians, maidens and mothers raped, tortured, beheaded, babies too, others kidnapped, and the dead desecrated, one corpse so mutilated turned out to be two … pieta! … and all the while the terrorists brandish the flesh […]
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The moral bankruptcy of the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) were finally on full display during their Congressional testimony on Tuesday, Dec 5th. The three Presidents are hardly alone: leadership at many other universities has proved equally offensive, if not worse. When asked whether a […]
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Ethnic Studies activists promoting a version of Marxism and hyper-divisive racial categorizing are seeking to overturn American society. They are teaching America’s young to scorn its central idea of common humanity and its Western civilization achievements. A unifying theme in the agendas of these activists is their shared hostility towards the Jewish people, evinced by […]
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Author’s Note: The above photo of Guenther Thaer appeared in the Ithaca College Yearbook. Thaer was hired by both Cornell and Ithaca to teach German language and literature, even though both of these German faculties probably were aware of his extensive Nazi past through his publications. A copy of his application to teach says nothing about the books […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by PJ Media on December 9, 2023 and is cross-posted here with permission. All of our institutions—government, education, media, professions, and industry—are formally and fully committed to “social justice,” the explicit specifics of which are diversity, equity, and inclusion, with the quiet part being the elimination of Jews. The […]
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How much do the diversity—equity—inclusion (DEI) movement and anti-Semitism feed on one another? There was a time when DEI advocates thought it was part of their remit to fight anti-Semitism too. In fall 2017, the University of Washington’s Department of Epidemiology issued a glossary of DEI terms that along with “ableism,” “birth assigned sex,” and […]
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In the Gospel of Matthew, the risen Christ gives his followers a specific directive—usually called the Great Commission. He said: “Go and make disciples of all nations.” By spreading the good news of his atonement and resurrection, Jesus hoped his followers would win the salvation of many. But throughout the Gospels, he also made clear […]
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The reputation of American universities, already precariously low, hit a nadir with the testimony of the presidents of three iconic American universities, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and University of Pennsylvania (Penn) before the Committee on Education and Labor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Borrowing from Victor Davis Hanson, to these schools, the […]
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Amidst a wave of anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses, many have asked themselves “why has it happened?” Potential answers abound, but among the top contenders are the hypotheses that these students—harassing their Jewish classmates and parroting genocidal chants—have simply been indoctrinated by the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) regime or are shielded from contrary points […]
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This is an open letter by the author addressed to the administrators of McGill, York, and the University of Toronto. As you are certainly aware, in recent weeks a series of troubling incidents has occurred on your respective campuses. While the events in question were distinct, they all shared a common impulse by a groups […]
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Which is it? Do universities these days want to be zones where no one will ever get offended, or do they want to promote free speech and academic freedom with all their attendant risks and discomforts? The University of Massachusetts Amherst is just one place that can’t make up its mind. For years now it […]
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The anti-Semitic Boycott-Divest-Sanction (BDS) movement against Israel keeps reaching for—and finding—new depths of indecency. Among the deepest descenders into this abyss is Jasbir Puar, an associate professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers. Professor Puar recently garnered national attention for her address at Vassar, February 3, “Inhumanist Biopolitics: How Palestine Matters.” The talk has […]
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Southern Connecticut State University, where I teach, has gone to great lengths to accommodate Muslims — and reject the slightest manifestations of Islamophobia — while acting complacently toward egregious anti-Semitism and hate crimes. Concurrently, widely publicized events at Vassar and Oberlin Colleges reveal that displays of anti-Semitism typically cause uproar within the Jewish community but […]
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On September 17 a committee of the Regents of the University of California discussed at their regular meeting a proposed “Statement of Principles against Intolerance” that had been drafted and offered for their approval by President Janet Napolitano and her staff. The Regents resoundingly rejected the draft, by implication questioning Napolitano’s judgment that it was […]
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Did the shuttering last year of a Yale institute created to study anti-Semitism have anything to do with campus politics? The university denied it. But the Yale Interdisciplinary Initiative for the Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA) was eliminated amid attacks from Palestinian representatives and anti-Israel faculty.
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At long last an attempt is bring made to curtail blatant anti-Semitic commentary on American campuses. The Israel Law Center warns that colleges and universities “may be liable for massive damage” if they fail to prevent anti-Semitism. The center sent hundreds of letters to university presidents drawing a line in the sand. This Israel civil […]
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A few weeks ago, Yale announced that it had terminated the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-semitism (YIISA). The official version of events, according to university spokespersons, cited two reasons: (1) an alleged failure by Yale professors affiliated with the institute to produce a sufficient level of scholarship; and (2) an alleged lack […]
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Decisions about academic programs rarely appear as the subject of op-eds in major newspapers. But In today’s Washington Post, Walter Reich, a George Washington University professor and a member of the international academic board of advisors of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA), denounced Yale’s controversial decision to terminate the initiative. […]
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The Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA) was established nearly five years ago, the fourth university center in the world devoted to the subject ( after the Technical University of Berlin, and Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University ) and the first in the United States. Now, in a surprise announcement, Yale is eliminating the center because […]
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Over the past year, it seems as if faculty at the City University of New York have done everything they can to make it seem as if hostility to Israel is the institution‘s official policy. First came Brooklyn College‘s decision to assign as the one and only required book for all incoming students a book […]
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One day last March Jessica Felber, then 20, a Jewish undergraduate at the University of California at Berkeley, was standing on her campus, holding a placard bearing the words: “Israel Wants Peace.” At that moment, Husam Zakaria, a Berkeley student leader of Students for Justice in Palestine, reportedly rammed Felber from behind so hard with […]
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At the Student Free Press Association, we’ve partnered with the Institute for Jewish & Community Research to establish $1000 awards for excellence in student reporting on anti-Semitism. To learn how to enter, go here. From the press release: Campuses have become staging grounds for campaigns demonizing Israel, intimidating Jewish students and threatening the foundation of […]
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Growing Anti-Semitism On The Campus The sad evidence that American campuses have been the site of rising anti-Semitism is truly an alarming phenomenon. Anti-Semitism has come from various sources: African-American student organizations; the Muslim Student Association at various colleges and universities, and the widespread movement on behalf of disinvestment in Israel, whose sponsors regularly compares […]
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