Harvard’s embattled president Claudine Gay, attended a campus Chanukah candle lighting event this past week. She may have wished she had stayed in her office. The rabbi gave her a what for about antisemitism at her university.
Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi spoke about the frightening Jew hatred at Harvard, especially, but not only, since 10/7.
He told of several incidents of Jew hatred at Harvard, even being warned by campus police to hire private security to protect his family because he invited Israel’s UN ambassador, called a war criminal by the haters, to screen the film showing the horrors of the Hamas terror attacks.
The rabbi emotionally said to President Gay, that in the 26 years of serving the Harvard Jewish community, he’s “never felt more alone.”
Gay didn’t say anything. She lit a candle, posed for a picture, and left.
That rabbi at Harvard revealed something else, and to me, far more unsettling.
Each night he removes the menorah in Harvard Yard, fearing it will be vandalized by some of the cream of the American college crop. It didn’t just start after 10/7. Rabbi Zarchi said it’s been going on for years.
If you go to Harvard’s diversity, equity and inclusion website it proclaims, We all belong here.
I guess Jews are not we all.
It’s not just true at Harvard. It’s also true for Jews at universities, graduate schools, medical schools, all across the nation. It’s true in America’s cultural institutions. It’s true in corporate America, where DEI departments wield enormous influence.
Jews weren’t inside the DEI circle from the get go. Instead, they are lumped inside the groups that are anti-DEI, accused of stifling and impeding the advancement and progress of people of color.
So why are Jews not DEI-able? Simple. Jews are considered white by the race raters, therefore they are part of the problem.
For Jews, this white people vs people of color ideology, ignores the fact that Jews have been the most oppressed and persecuted people, ever.
Can you tell me when six million men, women and children of another religion or ethnic group were exterminated in four years? How’s that for genocide?
I can go on and on about the exclusions, the exiles, the persecutions and the pogroms, Jews have suffered over the centuries.
But now, in 21st century America, Jews are part of the privileged oppressor class, ripe for another Jewish genocide.
The DEI dilettantes deliberately hide behind context and let’s not forget about-isms where Jews are concerned. Oh, they’ll throw a bone to Jews once in a while with a course about the Holocaust or they’ll give lip service to their opposition to hatred in all its forms, but Jew hatred isn’t really in their wheelhouse, so to speak.
Microagressions that DEI seminars fulminate against for other minorities, are overlooked when the long live the intifada, yada, yada, yada chants are flung at Jews. We should view them in a political context, we’re told. Hate words don’t really matter when they’re shouted at Jews unless they result in action. We have to balance free speech vs hate speech. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Hey, have you ever seen a TV network celebrate Jewish heritage month? Is that too political? Might someone be offended? Should it be put in context?
Universities, cultural institutions and corporations have spent millions of dollars and lots and lots of institutional energy on DEI departments and programming.
Now, post 10/7, with antisemitism being as rampant as it is, with a minority group feeling threatened, persecuted and alone, don’t you think those queens and kings of inclusivity, who’ve told us we’re all on a shared journey, would be leading the assault on antisemitism?
Nah. Clearly, those who can, do and those who can’t, form task forces.
I just got an email from Columbia University about its newly created task force on antisemitism. Clearly, Jew hatred at Columbia has become a high-risk political and public relations problem, so the solution is to form a task force.
https://news.columbia.edu/news/university-announces-members-task-force-antisemitism
Columbia says it was created to address the harmful impact of rising antisemitism on Jewish members of the Columbia community and to ensure that protection, respect, and belonging extends to all members of the University community.
I’m not impugning the integrity and sincerity of the distinguished women and men who are serving, but don’t you think that the protection, respect and belonging of Jewish Columbians is kinda basic? Why is a special task force needed?
At Columbia, they unabashedly say in their DEI mission statement, their critical task is dedicated to finding solutions that address systemic injustice and inequity in our society.
Apparently the society they’re speaking about doesn’t include Jews.
That task force is a convenient smokescreen for the new president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik. She wants to appear she’s taking action against antisemitism on her campus, when she really isn’t. She also dodged the congressional hearing where her colleagues at MIT, UPenn and Harvard, self-immolated.
It’s real simple. The raison d’être for the entire DEI industrial complex, is to perpetuate their oppressor vs oppressed ideology and Jews, in their minds, are clearly the former.
So all you presidents, CEO’s and chairmen, keep on creating your task forces. Keep on vetting your employees through your DEI departments, asking them to write statements of fealty to diversity, equity and inclusion. Keep on asking them if they have friends of color and if so, how many?
One day things will change. As Harvard Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi said, we’ll know when change is really happening when he doesn’t have to pack up his menorah and hide it from the vandals in Harvard Yard.
I hope that day comes soon because I fear it will take another Chanukah miracle.
One last thing about Harvard…
I am very familiar with the issue of plagiarism, given my long career in journalism. I once had to fire a reporter for plagiarism. Next to making stuff up, it’s the worst thing you can do.
So, with apologies to Lloyd Bentsen in his 1988 vice-presidential debate with Dan Quayle…Harvard President Claudine Gay, I know plagiarism, I fired a plagiarist, you ARE a plagiarist.