Today’s musing minute. We live in anxious times.
What starts in academia does not stay isolated in academia.
As many who read this feed have noted, and some even written books about, American higher education is in a state of crisis. It has lost its way. It has abandoned the basic precepts upon which Western civilization depends – that scholarly discourse should relentlessly pursue truth through unbiased investigation and dialogue.
Many, most, of us have known this for decades, and worried about the future. Would America and the civilized world come to its senses? What would it take?
The answers are not yet in. But the unfolding of the terrible events of October 7, and, particularly, the perverse reactions to them, have penetrated the consciousness of some of the so-called “liberals” who thought the moral high ground was with the progressive camp of left-wing fascists. Time will tell how things will be when the dust settles.
In the meantime, I will share with you a personal experience.
I just got out of a Faculty Senate meeting, the second in two weeks, in which a central focus was the recent police action that broke up an SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) encampment on campus . The senate was outraged, or at least some vocal members were. As might be predicted, the conversation soon broadened to a discussion of the Israel-Gaza conflict.
I, and those of like mind, do not know where our faculty at large stand on the issue. The senate is a very small body. Our faculty is over 1,000. We (the likemindeds) really wanted to push back against the condemnation of the police action and some of the self-righteous gratuitous comments of the faculty from last meeting. I was really content to observe in silence.
But, then, one young (self-righteous) faculty member got it into her head to assure the members of the faculty present that even though she was Jewish, “plenty” of our Jewish faculty sympathize with the suffering of the people of Gaza.
That could not stand without a response. I made two points.
1. It should be clear that those who criticize the proclamations and behavior of SJP, particularly for anti-Israel vitriol that is hardly distinguishable from antisemitism, sympathize every bit as much with the people of Gaza as do the members of SJP. If people really sympathize with the Palestinians in Gaza and elsewhere, they should be agitating loudly for the release of the hostages and the surrender of the barbarians who lead Hamas (after all they are criminals), which would bring about an end to Israel’s defensive war. The absence of enthusiasm for such agitation and the presence of enthusiasm for anti-Israel bashing, speaks volumes. (That anyone should feel the need to make such a statement, as she did, is a really perverse manifestation of Jewish guilt.)
2. No one should be under any illusion that the presence of Jews among the members of SJP obscures or negates the clearly anti-semitic nature of their proclamations and behaviors.
I could have said more, but I think it sufficed to get a few people’s attention.
