Universities are not antisemitic
Rather, they are context-blind
the events involving harvard university that have taken place since the october 7 hamas massacre in Israel are the gift that keeps on giving. just as one thinks the tumult is over, another headline comes along.
as new chapters pile up, it increasingly sounds like the passover song, Chad Gadya (“the shohet [ritual slaughterer] killed the ox that drank the water that put out the fire that burned the stick.”): harvard was criticized by its former president for appointing derek penslar who called Israel ”an apartheid state” as leader of its antisemitism task force. penslar was handed the position by provost alan Garber after Claudine Gay’s departure... larry summers warned against the move. how did this happen?
the evidence that the Gen Z mishmash between Israeli occupation, the massacre, the war in Gaza, gay rights, and antisemitism had officially infiltrated universities became clear with the invocation by university presidents of the word “context.” paradoxically, by the use of the word, these heads of the most respected institutions of higher education revealed they are as context-blind as their students.
human capabilities atrophy when they are taken over by technology. the invention of writing weakened our memory because it was no longer necessary to use it, as information could now be saved outside ourselves. similarly, contextual technologies are making us blind to context. they learn our preferences, monitor our surroundings, and alert us to opportunities in them. by reading context, they release us from the need to do so. Waze impedes engagement with our environment, gradually making us lose our sense of direction and spatial context. twitter polarized us and deteriorated our social skills and manners in the real world.
Context blindness is the disease of Gen Z, and their reaction to the october 7 massacre and the ensuing war became conclusive proof. they chant “from the river to the sea” and when confronted with their ignorance of basic history or geography, they feel triggered. they are acutely aware of micro-aggressions and also happy to macro-aggressively tear down photos of kidnapped children. It is not their fault. they live on social media and like every other issue on tiktok, they experience the Israeli-palestinian conflict in algorithm-controlled bits of video and bot-driven trends and hashtags. that is why they rush to judge and panic.
not long ago tiktok was the place where dumb feuds took place between Gen Z and millennials over fashion choices or use of emojis. now it is the place where they discover osama bin laden was “actually a saint” and they are deeply shaken.
the exceptionally unpleasant mode of conversation on social media – where anything they say is bound to be greeted with nasty responses – has made them fragile.
on university campuses they first asked for protection from books, then words and ideas; then they demanded trigger warnings; and then safe spaces. mechanisms were created to prosecute each other, their professors, and their presidents who, as it turns out, are as scared as they are.
Claudine Gay is not antisemitic. she knows that calls on campus for the genocide of jews would violate harvard’s conduct policy. but she was unable to say it unequivocally. from walking on eggshells in class for fear of racism or homophobia accusations, professors are now terrified of their students. the profound rift between universities and students, between those who seek protection from negative emotions and those who should see their job as fostering the ability to engage in debate and deliberation, effectively and responsibly, has been closed. the students have won. their fragility boosted a culture of victimhood, and in this age, all victimhood needs is a prompt. a tiny hashtag, enough views and exposure, and they are off to the streets.
Context blindness: digital technology and the next stage of human evolution