“I am Yahweh; that is My Name! I will not give My glory to anyone else, nor share My praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42: 8)
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The Algemeiner—Defending Antisemites, Rutgers President Takes Aim at The Algemeiner:
After weeks of dogged Algemeiner coverage of antisemitism at Rutgers University, we expected that the school’s President, Robert Barchi, would respond. But when he finally did, it left us astounded.
Speaking at a town hall event sponsored by the student government, Barchi dedicated the first part of his remarks to the series of antisemitism scandals plaguing his campus. The first story related to Jasbir Puar, a women’s studies professor who has written a book accusing Israel of injuring Palestinians “in order to control them.” The second concerned Professor Michael Chikindas, who called Judaism “the most racist religion in the world” and accused Jews, and not the Ottoman Turks, of perpetrating the Armenian genocide. The third called attention to the employment at Rutgers of Mazen Adi, an adjunct professor who formerly served as a UN spokesman for the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and who has accused Israeli officials of trafficking children’s organs.
President Barchi rightly noted that the controversies facing the three members of his faculty staff originated with exposés published by The Algemeiner – but his goal wasn’t to offer a vote of thanks to Shiri Moshe, our reputable journalist who brought these vital issues to the public attention. His intention was clearly to disparage, undermine and delegitimize. And on what basis? On the basis that the reports had originated in a Jewish newspaper.
He referred to The Algemeiner, incorrectly, as “a blog out of New York, which is the follow-on to what was a Yiddish-language newspaper that folded 10 years ago.” And then, later in his speech, he advised students to “keep in mind when you hear things and those things get picked up by another newspaper, there is very often a back-story to it.”
“Trace it back to where it’s coming from and ask why is it coming from there and what’s going on,” he claimed, “and you may often get a little different perspective on those happenings.”
In fact – shamefully — Barchi spent more time praising the employees in question than he did explaining to students why their views are deeply problematic. He vociferously defended Puar as “a well-respected scholar.” He lauded Chikindas’ teaching record as “actually very strong,” and he celebrated Adi – who was a spokesman for the Syrian regime’s UN mission in 2014, when Assad first used illegal chemical weapons– as having “not said or done anything in his academic life here that would be actionable.”
Barchi is vociferous in his defense of the free speech rights of those who have offended Jewish sensitivities. One wonders, however, if he would have taken the same approach if another minority group had taken offense. I doubt it.
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SnyderTalk Comment:
Don’t you find it strange that college students in the United States who have earned the nickname “snowflakes” can’t abide hearing opinions and facts that contradict their crackpot ideas?
Isn’t it peculiar that a college president would defend anti-Semitism on his campus even though anti-Semitism is a form of racism?
Doesn’t it strike you as almost otherworldly that a president of a major university in the United States would defend professors who teach racism and justify their position by falling back on academic freedom?
Does academic freedom give professors the right to make up stuff and teach it as fact?
For those of you who don’t know, I am a retired chaired professor. I spent my entire academic career at the University of Virginia, and I know from personal experience that we have serious problems in higher education today.
Politically correct thinking rules the roost at most of our universities. When it’s politically correct to lie about Jewish people and Israel at our institutions of higher learning, we are dangerously close to unleashing on society a generation of “leaders” who believe that anti-Semitism is acceptable. If it continues for a few decades, the politically correct view in the United States will resemble the politically correct view in Germany during the Nazi regime.
If you think that sounds far-fetched, think again. I can happen here, and it will happen here unless we do something about it.
Rutgers is not our only problem. I saw evidence of anti-Semitism at MIT, and MIT is one of the best universities in the world. California colleges are notorious for anti-Semitism. It’s a problem that plagues universities all across the nation.
Switching Gears Slightly
See “Stanford University’s Duplicitous Morality Police”:
It is no surprise that students at Stanford University disrupted best-selling author Robert Spencer’s lecture on November 14. Given the lead-up to his talk — “Jihad and the Dangers of Radical Islam: An Honest Discussion” — the scenario was scripted in advance, with the encouragement and support of the school’s administration.
As soon as the Stanford College Republicans invited Spencer, founder of the website Jihad Watch, to speak on campus — as part of the Fred. R. Allen Freedom Lecture Series, sponsored by the Young America’s Foundation — a concerted campaign was launched to prevent him from being allowed to set foot on the premises. Stanford students, faculty members and administrators published a steady stream of articles in the student publications the Stanford Daily and Stanford Review, claiming not only that Spencer was unqualified to speak to them — despite frequently addressing FBI, Joint Terrorism Task Force, military, and other government groups for years — but also pronounced that his presence threatened Muslim students on campus; that he enabled anti-Semitism; that his message deprived Muslims of “personhood;” and that he was endangering students by replying to their attacks on his website.
When that effort failed, they employed other means to intimidate Spencer and the students who wished to hear what he had to say. Not only did hundreds of protesters cause a disturbance outside the venue, but another 150 entered the auditorium, played Arabic music loudly to drown out what Spencer was saying, and then staged a mass walk-out minutes after the event began.
Two Stanford administrators present — Nanci Howe, associate dean and director of student affairs, and Snehal Naik, assistant dean and associate director of student affairs — not only nodded approvingly at the walk-out, but actively aided it, first by denying entry to many students who actually wanted to attend the event, and then by not allowing them to enter after the walkout, despite the fact that the auditorium was largely empty. They also forbade the hosts from live-streaming the talk on the Internet.
Stanford is a great university, but it’s administrators are guilty of violating basic academic principles chief among them being freedom of thought and expression. When university administrators determine what students are permitted to hear, they are imposing their views on the student population. It’s indoctrination pure and simple.
Evidence of Another Problem
See “Hundreds of academics rip University of Rochester for ‘supporting predator’ professor”:
Hundreds of science professors from around the world are urging their students to not seek further schooling or employment at an upstate New York university amid allegations that a professor there has sexually harassed students and employees for years.
The boycott letter alleges that officials at the University of Rochester have not done enough to protect women working or studying under Dr. Florian Jaeger, a research professor at the university’s brain and cognitive sciences department.
The letter, signed by more than 400 professors, blasts university officials for allegedly “supporting the predator and intimidating the victims and advocates in this case.” It was delivered to the university’s trustee board on Monday.
In this case, we have a professor at the University of Rochester who is known to engage in predatory sexual behavior, and university administrators have done nothing about it. The professor’s victims, students and employees, have been left to fend for themselves while the people in charge at the university shirk their responsibility.
Conclusion
We have serious problems in higher education. Besides being too expensive, our universities have become unapologetic indoctrination centers for “liberal progressive” anti-Semites, places where freedom of speech is prohibited, and environments where sexual perverts congregate to ply their trade.
It’s not an isolated problem. It’s time to do something about it.
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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
See “His Name is Yahweh”.
