More criticism of Israel's increasingly radical right-wing rule can be found in Israel itself than in the US. The right-wing campaign has already led to the resignation of the rectors of three prestigious American universities and is also beginning to spread in the media.
In June 2023, former President Donald Trump announced that he would challenge Marxists and Communists — among those who supposedly “grow up” America's best universities. Trump has yet to win a second term, but the right-wing House of Representatives has already begun his crusade.
December 5 Congress Committee on Education and Employment he asked The chancellors of three universities in connection with anti-Semitism, which the right says is widespread at the most prestigious American universities, include Harvard University (Chancellor Claudine Gay), the University of Pennsylvania (Elizabeth Magill) and the legendary Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sally). Kornblut). The president of Columbia University, Nemet Shafik, was also called, who wisely replied that he was busy that day.
Magill and Gay have already flown out and announced their forced resignations. Kornbluth is still holding his own (he's Jewish himself, so accusations of anti-Semitism won't bring him down so quickly), but I'm afraid this is just the beginning. The Education Committee of the House of Representatives decided to expand the area of interest to other universities.
Gaza's cry for mercy is anti-Semitism, or the US war narrative.
The right sees American universities as a breeding ground for leftism and a place for political protest. In 1970, when President Richard Nixon invaded Cambodia, more than 900 universities participated in protests. After Hamas's two-day attack on Israel in October 2023 (1,140 dead, including 766 civilians and 34 children) and the bloody counter-offensive that continues to this day (27,000 dead, mostly civilians, including 10,000 children), the world has been gripped. A wave of protests against Israeli-sponsored policies against Palestinians who have lived in ghettos on their land for more than 70 years.
Of course, there were more violent protests abroad than in the US, the land of “free speech” where you really have to watch what you say. The issue of free Palestine is not subject to any discussion at the UN forum, but the voice of the world is blocked by the US-Israel-Great Britain axis, whose position dominates the world media. Protests took place in 38 cities in Spain (where leftist and anarchist traditions are not bad), Mexico, the Netherlands and Morocco. There were protests in the United States, not only on campuses, but in many institutions, even government ones. On January 3, 2034, protesters blocked the first legislative day at the California Capitol in Sacramento. The protests are being led by organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, ifNotNowMovement, the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Code Pink (radical left) and the Association of American Women of Palestinian Origin.
As teenagers and non-law-breaking citizens couldn't care less, the right-wing has focused on universities, which they have long attacked for researching critical race theory, which argues that racism is inscribed in history and innate. Part of the United States system.
The right is afraid of critical thinking. The war for European higher education
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After the universities did not take a clear and appropriate position, according to the right, and treated pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian student protests equally, wealthy Jewish alumni circles began to seriously pressure management. The leader of the campaign against Harvard is a billionaire, donor and university graduate – Bill Ackman.
After a December 5th congressional hearing, Liz Magill was almost immediately intimidated by her university – because in response to Rep. Elise Stefanik's question, “Is it permissible to call for genocide in Israel at the University of Pennsylvania?” He responded (in the context of campus protests) that it all depends on whether the right to free speech turns into persecution.
Interrogation alone was not enough to move Harvard President Claudine Gay. Thanks to the use of artificial intelligence and Ackman's efforts, his publications were found and 50 cases of suspected plagiarism were identified. In fact, these are under-marked citations in which the Harvard Board has not found any violations of the rules, and neither the publisher nor the Harvard doctoral committee that awarded Gay for this publication has found any flaws or potential problems in the future. Chancellor's Ph.D.
Also, the person Gay allegedly stole his intellectual property from says he doesn't see academic plagiarism here. Despite this – under pressure from the university's “well-wishers” – Gay was forced to resign. She was the first black woman to hold the position, which she held just six months ago. Meanwhile, the Business Insider website found similar instances of “plagiarism” in another doctoral dissertation at Harvard by Neri Oxman, wife of Bill Ackman.
Unlike Gay, Sally Kornbluth had and still has the support of MIT, which certainly helps keep her alive. Columbia rector Nemet Shafik suspended the activities of pro-Palestinian organizations at the university as a precaution.
It should be emphasized that the function of the rector of the American university is, first of all, to liquidate “well-wishers” – private sponsors, in many cases, alumni meals. The billions in their “bequests” and gifts are viewed by university administrators as capital to be traded on the stock market and used for campus expansion (in Columbia's case, the university is increasingly determined to move black Harlem north of campus). Therefore, the best academics and intellectuals who doubt capitalism rarely become rectors. Baroness Nemet Shafik has experience running the Bank of England, the International Monetary Fund and the London School of Economics, so she is probably not a Marxist.
That is why there is a deep gap between the student community and the university authorities. As I recently heard from a Columbia lecturer: “I don't understand why they think we're a far-left factory. Our students consider us as boring enemies of any kind of radicalism.”
Historically, universities as institutions are more conservative than the left and the right think. Harvard did not admit blacks until 1847, women until 1945, and Jews until 1960. Despite pressure from the Liberals for women, even black women, to be appointed chancellors, they are the first to be downgraded.
The situation is different with the previously excluded third group. American universities began accepting Jewish students around 1920. When the percentage of Jewish students at the so-called good universities reached 30 percent, and in the case of Columbia 40 percent, the prestigious universities began to fear that they would lose the children of the Protestant elite – and until the 1960s access to study was restricted to Jewish applicants. Today, the University of Pennsylvania laments that it has only 16 percent. Students of Jewish origin.
However, there are a large number of Jewish alumni in the American community who have made fortunes after graduation and support their alma mater on one condition: unequivocal support for Israel's policies, whatever that may be. However, American Jews do not really know the history of modern Israeli politics. There is more skepticism toward Israel's increasingly radical right-wing government in the local media than in the American media, where the mere mention of the Holocaust is enough to end and win any discussion.
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To complete the picture, we must add that only Republicans in Congress could not carry out their Grand Inquisition. They are followed by right-wing newspapers that cover the topic – online portals like the Washington Free Beacon or newspaper clippings like the New York Post. Christopher Ruffo, once a documentary filmmaker and now a right-wing activist, is also a prominent figure in the crusade against the left.
Ruffo has spent a lot of time photographing the poverty and destruction of America's towns and cities where opioids rule. Americans are becoming slaves, he said in his documentary America lost (2019), whose main message is: government and bureaucracy cannot solve America's problems. Socialist intellectuals, various initiatives, and the “big homeless industry” don't help, and Trump's presidency has challenged the establishment anyway.
Ruffo doesn't dwell too much on where such “problems” come from in America, and he doesn't seem to know that in the past the US has solved domestic crises by robbing the world. It wasn't until 2006 that it became clear that good times are woefully short in the world of empires, and American capitalism will sooner or later start hunting its citizens. Let me also point out that Ruffo was appointed by the governor of Florida (and possibly a presidential candidate). Ron DeSantis A Florida college administrator and with him fights “gayism” and transgenderism in schools.
A vengeful, intelligent, terrifying bastard. “Florida man” worthy of the American presidency.
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The problem may seem trivial – only internal disagreements in universities. However, in reality, the current “purges” in universities may herald the return of something like the American version of Stalinism. I am referring to McCarthyism (1950–54), the years of interrogation, persecution, and exclusion from the public sphere of those interested in communism or socialism, including those in government, the media, and the Hollywood entertainment industry.
On Sunday, January 7, the liberal television network MSNBC announced that its popular Palestinian journalist Mehdi Hassan was released. His show was taken off the air. Hassan was thus punished for discussing the deaths of children in Gaza with an Israeli government official. “We don't know who killed these children,” the official said, and Hassan let out a small “wow.” One “wow” too many.
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