University leaders didn’t realize no group should be targeted — not even Jews
How is it that under the most obvious of questioning, three presumably extremely smart people channeled their best Charlie Brown and kept letting Lucy snatch the football away? Is it possible that the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT harbor hate for Jews? Or was it simply the result of a blinding “wokism?” Either way, it seemed impossible for otherwise well-intended academics to properly balance the rights and sensibilities of their students with deeply offensive speech?
No, this wasn’t about embracing “woke” too much, it was about respecting Jews too little. It was unquestionably about antisemitism.
Clearly, it was not the overt hate speech that we heard from the marchers in Charlottesville in 2017. It was the softer, subtler, more elusive kind of antisemitism.
But for Jews who have wrestled with this kind of enduring hate for centuries, it is as painful as finding a swastika on a synagogue wall, because it originates from reputable, mainstream people and institutions.
Each president seemed intent to put “context’ around the question of when does hate speech promoting genocide of Jews violate university policies.
They were balancing the hate speech directed at Jews against the freedoms of speech that properly exist in an academic environment.
I understand that balancing. But what the three presidents lost sight of was the unseen other context they were applying, namely, that Jews apparently don’t generate the same outrage as other groups when it comes to hate and persecution.
That hate against the Jews is somehow just not as weighty as the hate directed at other groups.
That Jews, somehow, are just not as entitled to be victims.
Had the calls for genocide been directed at Blacks or members of the LGBTQ community, there is no question the university leaders would have answered with instantaneous clarity. And with good reason. But somehow, substitute Jews into the balancing act, and things became less clear to them.
The scales more level.
Why are Jews, who comprise .2% of the world’s population, not entitled to the same protections and outrage as every other minority?
We have watched antisemitism, again, become fully normalized, so much so that even bastions of egalitarianism don’t see it when they literally are partaking in it. But it is everywhere. From Kanye and Kyrie to Elon, and far too many tend to treat the overt disrespect toward Jews as either acceptable behavior or an excusable infraction.
Many on the political right have tried to point to the three presidents’ performance as an example of “wokism gone wild,” proof that political correctness on university campuses has overwhelmed moral clarity. Of course, to them, the blame lays with the diversity, equity and inclusion movement that they claim has fully obscured our ability to simply separate right from wrong.
These voices badly miss the point. Their argument conflates the battle against antisemitism with their objections to diversity efforts on campuses and elsewhere. This, however, is not about affirmative action, pronouns or indigenous land acknowledgment. It’s not about these three college leaders being too sensitive. It’s about them not being sensitive enough to their clear obligation to call out hate even when directed at Jews.
This teachable moment must be about how and why they found calls for genocide against Jews less offensive than the proposed killing of other groups. Let’s use the moment to expose that this subtle form of prejudice exists in many, even those we thought most unlikely to harbor such bias.
And, yes, deliver severe repercussions because outrageous behavior merits commensurate consequences. The University of Pennsylvania seems to have figured that out and already dismissed its president. Harvard and MIT, ironically, seem less educable. But however this plays out, let’s not hijack the outrage to which Jews are entitled to advance a quarrel and objective that is truly not the issue.
As a Jew, I don’t want these university presidents to be less upset about hate speech directed against Blacks, gays and others. I want them to be equally upset about offensive speech directed at Jews.