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I know it’s confusing, so let me spell it out for you: This is the fruit of the hard-left indoctrination that passes for university education today.
“Columbia University student demonstrator taken away on stretcher as anti-Israel protests rage on,” by Steven Vago and Patrick Reilly, New York Post, April 20, 2024:
…Two days after more than 100 students were arrested when the NYPD raided a tent encampment on the Ivy League campus, roughly 200 demonstrators were still going strong on Saturday, chanting, holding signs and waving Palestinian flags.
At least three people were arrested, the NYPD confirmed. Two were cuffed for disorderly conduct and a third was slapped with summonses for a sound reproduction device.
“Up, up with liberation." Down, down with occupation,” they yelled through the locked campus gate on W. 115th and Broadway….
“We want justice, you say how?" "Stop arming Israel now!” another group chanted.
The students are demanding the university divest from Israel.
“We demand that Columbia sever academic ties with Israeli universities and we demand that Columbia stop censoring and intimidating students who are standing up and advocating for Palestinian liberation,” one student yelled through the gate to the crowd that had gathered on the other side outside of campus. Over 100 students were arrested at Columbia University on Thursday night.
A line of police officers in riot helmets watched on. A handful of Israeli supporters stood across Broadway — including one who was doused with fake blood for engaging with pro-Palestinian students.
Avi Lichtschein, 37, of Manhattan was walking his dog when the group surrounded him and shouted, “We don’t want no Zionists here!”…
Another pro-Israel bystander, Ross Glick, 50, told The Post his grandparents were Holocaust survivors. The Upper East Side resident grew up in the Midwest during the first intifada but said “this is more concerning.”
“There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of innocent people dying in Gaza but to call it a genocide….What about the 6,000 Muslims that were gassed by Assad?” Glick said.
“If you don’t like it go to Gaza,” he said about the protesters.
The protesters, he said, don’t want a peaceful solution. Students continued to occupy the lawn area at the Ivy League school on Saturday..
“You don’t hear them talk about peace or co-existence. [It’s] death to Israel,” he said….
Columbia University and Barnard College faculty slammed Thursday’s arrests and demanded that their records be expunged.
The American Association of University Professors at the sister schools issued a statement following a “mass emergency meeting” of faculty on Friday.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Administration’s suspension of students engaged in peaceful protest and their arrest by the New York City Police Department,” according to a statement provided to The Post.
They said Columbia has an “absolute obligation” to protect students’ freedom of speech….
Yeah, except the freedom of speech of those with whom they disagree. If these were Trump supporters or foes of jihad violence who were demonstrating, the American Association of University Professors would be silent, or cheering on their incarceration. (a) Terrorism is an ideology. (b) They are openly supporting terror. (c) They are terrorists.
Terrorists have taken over Columbia University. The government needs to take… pic.twitter.com/yvVI9JEmn7
“Columbia University student demonstrator taken away on stretcher as anti-Israel protests rage on,” by Steven Vago and Patrick Reilly, New York Post, April 20, 2024:
…Two days after more than 100 students were arrested when the NYPD raided a tent encampment on the Ivy League campus, roughly 200 demonstrators were still going strong on Saturday, chanting, holding signs and waving Palestinian flags.
At least three people were arrested, the NYPD confirmed. Two were cuffed for disorderly conduct and a third was slapped with a summonses for a sound reproduction device.
“Up, up with liberation." Down, down with occupation,” they yelled through the locked campus gate on W. 115th and Broadway….
“We want justice, you say how?" "Stop arming Israel now!” another group chanted.
“We demand that Columbia sever academic ties with Israeli universities and we demand that Columbia stop censoring and intimidating students who are standing up and advocating for Palestinian liberation,” one student yelled through the gate to the crowd that had gathered on the other side outside of campus.
Over 100 students were arrested at Columbia University on Thursday night.
A line of police officers in riot helmets watched on. A handful of Israeli supporters stood across Broadway — including one who was doused with fake blood for engaging with pro-Palestinian students.
Avi Lichtschein, 37, of Manhattan was walking his dog when the group surrounded him and shouted, “We don’t want no Zionists here!”…
Another pro-Israel bystander, Ross Glick, 50, told The Post his grandparents were Holocaust survivors. The Upper East Side resident grew up in the Midwest during the first intifada but said “this is more concerning.”
“There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of innocent people dying in Gaza but to call it a genocide….What about the 6,000 Muslims that were gassed by Assad?” Glick said.
“If you don’t like it go to Gaza,” he said about the protesters.
The protesters, he said, don’t want a peaceful solution.
Students continued to occupy the lawn area at the Ivy League school on Saturday..
“You don’t hear them talk about peace or co-existence. [It’s] death to Israel,” he said….
Columbia University and Barnard College faculty slammed Thursday’s arrests and demanded that their records be expunged.
The American Association of University Professors at the sister schools issued a statement following a “mass emergency meeting” of faculty on Friday.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Administration’s suspension of students engaged in peaceful protest and their arrest by the New York City Police Department,” according to a statement provided to The Post.
They said Columbia has an “absolute obligation” to protect students’ freedom of speech….
Yeah, except the freedom of speech of those with whom they disagree. If these were Trump supporters or foes of jihad violence who were demonstrating, the American Association of University Professors would be silent, or cheering on their incarceration.
Here's another one of their leaders, praising the October 7th massacre ("the Al-Aqsa Flood") and lauding Hamas terrorists who raped, tortured, murdered, and kidnapped thousdans of civlians as "the sacrificial spirit of the Palestinian Freedom Fighters that will guide every… pic.twitter.com/OznpFA5YZQ
“Columbia University student demonstrator taken away on stretcher as anti-Israel protests rage on,” by Steven Vago and Patrick Reilly, New York Post, April 20, 2024:
…Two days after more than 100 students were arrested when the NYPD raided a tent encampment on the Ivy League campus, roughly 200 demonstrators were still going strong on Saturday, chanting, holding signs and waving Palestinian flags.
At least three people were arrested, the NYPD confirmed. Two were cuffed for disorderly conduct and a third was slapped with summonses for a sound reproduction device.
“Up, up with liberation." Down, down with occupation,” they yelled through the locked campus gate on W. 115th and Broadway….
“We want justice, you say how?" "Stop arming Israel now!” another group chanted.
“We demand that Columbia sever academic ties with Israeli universities and we demand that Columbia stop censoring and intimidating students who are standing up and advocating for Palestinian liberation,” one student yelled through the gate to the crowd that had gathered on the other side outside of campus.
Over 100 students were arrested at Columbia University on Thursday night.
A line of police officers in riot helmets watched on. A handful of Israeli supporters stood across Broadway — including one who was doused with fake blood for engaging with pro-Palestinian students.
Avi Lichtschein, 37, of Manhattan was walking his dog when the group surrounded him and shouted, “We don’t want no Zionists here!”…
Another pro-Israel bystander, Ross Glick, 50, told The Post his grandparents were Holocaust survivors. The Upper East Side resident grew up in the Midwest during the first intifada but said “this is more concerning.”
“There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of innocent people dying in Gaza but to call it a genocide….What about the 6,000 Muslims that were gassed by Assad?” Glick said.
“If you don’t like it go to Gaza,” he said about the protesters.
The protesters, he said, don’t want a peaceful solution.
Students continued to occupy the lawn area at the Ivy League school on Saturday..
“You don’t hear them talk about peace or co-existence. [It’s] death to Israel,” he said….
Columbia University and Barnard College faculty slammed Thursday’s arrests and demanded that their records be expunged.
The American Association of University Professors at the sister schools issued a statement following a “mass emergency meeting” of faculty on Friday.
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the Administration’s suspension of students engaged in peaceful protest and their arrest by the New York City Police Department,” according to a statement provided to The Post.
They said Columbia has an “absolute obligation” to protect students’ freedom of speech….
Yeah, except the freedom of speech of those with whom they disagree. If these were Trump supporters or foes of jihad violence who were demonstrating, the American Association of University Professors would be silent, or cheering on their incarceration.
Biden Cancels $6B in Student Debt For 78,000 Public Service Workers
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 12: Student loan borrowers gather near the White House to tell President Biden to cancel student debt on May 12, 2020 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Paul Morigi/Getty Images for We, The 45 Million)
OAN’s James Meyers 11:10 AM -Thursday, March 21, 2024
President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that the White House had approved the cancellation of $6 billion in federal student debt for “thousands of public service workers.”
The 78,000 eligible public service workers include nurses, teachers, and firefighters, according to the White House.
“These public service workers have dedicated their careers to serving their communities, but because of past administrative failures, they never got the relief they were entitled to under the law,” Biden said in a statement touting the move.
“From day one of my Administration, I promised to fix broken student loan programs and make sure higher education is a ticket to the middle class, not a barrier to opportunity,” Biden continued. “I won’t back down from using every tool at my disposal to deliver student debt relief to more Americans, and build an economy from the middle out and bottom up.”
Meanwhile, as of June 2023, almost 43.4 million U.S. student loan recipients had $1.63 trillion in outstanding loans, according to the Federal Student Aid website.
This comes after the Biden administration canceled almost $5 billion in debt for 74,000 public-sector borrowers.
Overall, the White House has approved $144 billion in federal loan forgiveness for about 4 million borrowers in total, according to the Biden administration.
Meanwhile, the White House will reportedly email close to 380,000 student loan borrowers to let them know they are on track to have their student debt canceled within two years.
However, other former college students have expressed frustration regarding how their loans have not paid off while others have, accusing Biden of being choosy and unfair.
“So… what? Biden’s just gonna cancel some people’s debt and not everyone’s? How is that fair? "It should be everyone or no one,” said one X (Twitter) user.
Stay informed! Receive breaking news blasts directly to your inbox for free. Subscribe here. https://www.oann.com/alerts
At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a handful of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas faculty members gathered to celebrate the acts of “resistance” by Hamas on October 7. A report on the anti-Israel meeting by one of those who attended can be found here: “The Anti-Israel Hate and Moral Bankruptcy at UNC Is Stunning,” by Peter Reitzes, Algemeiner, March 12, 2024:
Five days after the event, UNC Provost Christopher Clemens wrote a blistering letter of concern to UNC faculty that included Claudia Yaghoobi, Director of the UNC Center for Middle East & Islamic Studies, and Conghe Song, chair of the Department of Geography and Environment. They have been included since the two departments sponsored the Nov. 28 event.
Clemens wrote:
I will admit that I struggle to understand what the rhetoric in this event was supposed to accomplish….
One thing is clear: from the outside, the academy appears to be fostering a banal kind of evil.
In preparation for the meeting with Provost Clemens, Purifoy sent an email to Conghe and Sara Smith. Smith is a UNC professor of Geography who introduced the Nov. 28 panel:
I hope that today’s meeting will go as well as possible. I’ve attached a screenshot of Mark Davidson’s comments about the panel last Tuesday which might be helpful. He and Rania [Masri] approved of me sharing it with you.
Purifoy is hoping that the comments by the pastor, Mark Davidson, in which he praised the pro-Hamas event, will be enough to assuage Provost Clemens’ fury. But it won’t. Davidson is just as morally obtuse as the others who were in attendance, or even more so, because while many of them remained silent, Davidson was positively glowing over the event.
In the comments that Purifoy attached, Davidson wrote, “The inmate prison-break from the concentration camp [Gaza] in the early morning hours of October 7 was, from a Palestinian perspective … something to celebrate.” In this single sentence, Davidson compared Israel to the Nazis and celebrated Hamas….
So Gaza, according to Davidson, was akin to a “concentration camp.” The Israelis are the new Nazis. And the Palestinians are the new Jews, being tormented by the SS-men of the IDF. Or if Gaza is not a concentration camp, then it is at the very least a prison. And the 3,000 Hamas operatives who raped, tortured, and murdered Israelis on October 7 were engaged in a “prison break.” But was Gaza a prison? In the last few years, 150,000 Gazans have left the Strip and moved to other Arab countries or to Europe. Israel didn’t stop them. And Israel has even given work to 19,000 Gazans who entered the Jewish state every day to work — or did, until October 7. While working in Israel, those Gazans earned wages that were from three to ten times more than what they could earn in Gaza. concentration camp. What kind of a prison lets thousands of inmates out every day?
Cometh the hour, cometh the man. The UNC Provost, Christopher Clemens, is not about to let such insidious praisers of mass rape, torture, and murder as Rania Masri be sponsored by teachers at his school, and heaped with praise for what she said, on his campus, with her grotesque comments about what a “beautiful day” October 7 had been. And no one in the audience took issue with her, none there deplored her sentiments. Clemens is clearly not about to let this matter drop. Danielle Purifoy, Ajamu Dillahunt, Claudia Yaqhoobi, Conghe Song, fasten your seatbelts. For all of you, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
The campus justification of Hamas’ atrocities is a big problem. It’s all over the place. But at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and on every other campus where analogous incidents are unfolding, some faculty members, and some members of the administration, and some trustees and alumni, and even some students, have got to grab hold of this problem, and not let go.
American Jews enjoy and suffer from, respectively, “white privileging and white fragility,” stated Sahar Aziz, director of Rutgers University Center for Security, Race, and Rights (CSRR), during its February 21 webinar. While Jews in America and beyond face a global surge in antisemitism following Hamas’ brutal October 7, 2023, attack upon Israel, CSRR and its factually-challenged director have once again displayed anti-Jewish, jihadist apologetics.
Aziz spoke with her likeminded colleague, Noura Erakat, Rutgers University associate professor of Africana studies, in a webinar titled after her 2019 book, Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. She concurred with Aziz, stating that Jews have effectively “become white in the United States,” like groups such as Irish Americans, who have entered mainstream society following past prejudice. American Jews should recognize that they “are privileged vis-à-vis their Muslim, their Palestinian, their Arab counterparts and colleagues,” Aziz said of groups increasingly notable for their hatred of Jews and Israel.
“With privilege comes responsibility and not the abuse of that privilege to oppress other people,” Aziz lectured supposedly powerful, oppressive Jews while Muslims worldwide have celebrated jihadists such as Hamas. She contrasted in America “how easily vilified and dehumanized the Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab communities” are while Jewish “voices are centered, their experiences are centered.” “White fragility is all about feelings of the white privileged group and to hell with the bodily autonomy, the liberty, the life, the dignity, and the physical safety of black bodies,” she said without showing concern for Jewish bodies.
Given Aziz’s denial of Islamic and leftist antisemitism centered around hatred of Israel, she considered Jew-hatred largely a matter of history. Many people “are speaking in anachronistic terms and in contexts that are not even in the United States and also happened in the past,” she said. She seems to think antisemitism died with Adolf Hitler in 1945 and has no relation to Iran’s modern Islamic Republic.
Such denialism prompted Aziz laughably to assert that Jews should join her Israel-hating coalition to win allies against what she saw as the main antisemitic threat. This intersectionality was a precondition if Jews “want people to pay attention and to care about the various ways in which your community may be oppressed” from “traditional Eurocentric, white nationalist antisemitic” threats. Erakat similarly wanted “to imagine our struggle as a united struggle against white supremacy” alongside “Jews who face antisemitism…stemming from white supremacy.”
Few Jews would see Erakat as an ally, given her venom against Israel, slandered by her as an “exclusively Jewish state that necessitates the ongoing removal of Palestinians, their dispossession, and containment.” Israel lacks “meaningful equality for the Palestinian citizens of the state” under “apartheid,” she said, even as Israel’s Arabs increasingly identify with Israel and volunteer to perform both military and nonmilitary national service. This undermines her assertation that in Israel to “discriminate, you don’t have to say no Arabs welcome or no Palestinians welcome, you can say other things like military service required, which becomes a smoke screen.”
Correspondingly, Israeli self-defense, a responsibility that any state must fulfill in response to aggression, held little appeal for Erakat. Currently protesting Israeli actions to destroy Hamas, “anti-war activists are being accused of antisemitism for being anti-war activists for calling for an end to genocide,” she said. Yet the extraordinarily low levels of civilian casualties during Israel’s Gaza offensive refute her absurd genocide charges while Hamas theft of humanitarian aid is the reason that Gaza Arabs are “starving”.
While Erakat demanded that Israel cease its military actions, hostile moves towards Israel did not bother her. “This is a moment to rescind from the Abraham Accords,” she said, citing the peace agreements negotiated between Israel and various Arab states in 2020. “Egypt has threatened to rescind from Camp David, which is good,” she added in praise of indications that Egypt might abandon its 1979 peace treaty with Israel.
While Erakat made the debunked claim that the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) recognized Israel in 1988, she undermined any such recognition by demanding a Palestinian “right of return.” Under this concept, millions of descendants of some 600,000 Arabs who fled what became Israel during its 1948 independence war could demand a “return” to Israel as so-called “refugees,” resulting in a demographic destruction of Israel’s Jewish state. Numerous legal arguments rebut her contention that Palestinians “are denied the right of return as established by customary law, human rights law as well as [United Nations] General Assembly Resolution 194.”
Even as Erakat advocated destroying Israel, it remained unalterably an aggressor in her mind. Since October 7, 2023, Israel has attacked Lebanese targets “in an effort to draw Lebanon into the war,” she said, ignoring the attacks upon Israel by Hamas’ fellow jihadists in Lebanon from the Iranian-backed Hezbollah. It “would be in Israel’s interest to expand the war to have the U.S. become involved to be able to finish the job under the cover of a massive war,” she said, as if Israel had some nefarious objective other than to live in peace.
Yet Zionist Jews fighting to survive in Israel, and not their Palestinian and other jihadist tormenters, appeared to Erakat as selfish. “The way that we have thought about Palestine all this time is to center Zionist settler sovereignty as the ultimate priority around which people can get the crumbs once that’s taken care of,” she said. Given Arab rejection of Zionist offers to accept an Arab state alongside a Jewish state in the territory of what was the post-World War I League of Nations Palestine Mandate going back to 1937, her statement is ludicrous.
Perhaps the only thing more shocking than the topsy-turvy views of academics such as Erakat and Aziz is the fact that they are so prominent throughout publicly and privately funded higher education. Jews and others with the slightest pro-Israel inclinations will never receive fair treatment from this duo inside or outside of the classroom, a mockery of the university as a free exchange of ideas. Tax and tuition payers in New Jersey and beyond must find ways to end this intellectual farce.
Yeah, this is like posting that water is wet. Mohamed Abdou will fit right in at Columbia, and won’t meet any professors there who don’t share his point of view, or who dare to say so if they really do dissent. What would be news would be if Columbia or any other university hired an opponent of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. But that would never happen in a million years.
“He Endorsed Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Then He Landed a Professorship at Columbia University.” By Jessica Costescu, Washington Free Beacon, February 27, 2024:
During a Jan. 5 interview with socialist podcast Revolutionary Left Radio, Islamic scholar Mohamed Abdou declared his support for Hamas and “the resistance.” The terror group’s “dedicated few,” he said admiringly, worked in “stealth mode” on Oct. 7 to defeat a “larger enemy” in Israel.
Just days later, on Jan. 16, Columbia University’s Middle East Institute extended a “warm welcome” to Abdou, the Ivy League school’s latest visiting professor in modern Arab studies.
As part of that role, Abdou teaches a weekly class on “Decolonial-Queerness & Abolition,” where his students discuss “transnational feminist discourses” and “queer of color critiques.” The self-described “Muslim anarchist” has also emerged as a friend to Columbia’s anti-Israel community. In a Feb. 11 social media post, Abdou revealed that he organized a protest in which Columbia students interrupted a panel featuring Hillary Clinton. One demonstrator called the former secretary of state a “war criminal” who “will burn” before chanting, “Free, free Palestine.”…
Abdou offered a more explicit endorsement of Hamas four days after the terrorist group’s attack on Israel. “Yes, I’m with the muqawamah (the resistance) be it Hamas and Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad,” he wrote in an Oct. 11 Facebook post, which also lamented “false reports accusing Arabs and Muslims of decapitating the heads of children and being rapists.” Months later, Abdou’s assessment remained the same.
“I might be with Hamas and support the resistance, absolutely,” the Columbia professor toldRevolutionary Left Radio in January. “Look what 1,500 did … they were organized and they worked in stealth mode and they divested.”
“And nobody expected that this was the direction that Hamas and the Hamas leadership, or at least the political leadership, was going to take,” Abdou continued. “But look what the dedicated few [did] … how much a small group have defeated a larger enemy.”
Neither Columbia nor Abdou responded to requests for comment. Abdou’s role as a visiting professor will keep the Islamic scholar on Columbia’s campus through the spring 2024 semester. Abdou on his website acknowledges that the campus sits “on the ancestral and traditional homelands of the Lenni-Lenape and Wappinger peoples.”
While Abdou has already worked to organize anti-Israel protests at Columbia, he encourages those who oppose the Jewish state to go further.
“DON’T just go to Pro-Palestinian rallies DON’T just post on social media,” he wrote in November. “ORGANIZE revolutionary alternatives to capitalism & the state ON THE LAND you live alongside BIPOC kin who share similar anti-imperialist & anti-settler-colonial ETHICAL-POLITICAL commitments as YOU.”
There was Claudine Gay, the onetime Harvard President, who was a serial plagiarist, beginning with her dissertation and extending through seven of her eleven brief papers (she has no book), only one of which was peer-reviewed, that make up her scandalously small list of publications. Her extensive plagiarism was the main reason she was forced to resign her position. For reasons that remain unknown, she continues to be paid her her former presidential salary of $900,000; possibly those now in charge at Harvard wanted to keep her from accusing the university of “racism,” and letting her keep that preposterous salary was the best way to keep her quiet. More on Gay’s plagiarism can be found here, here and here.
There was Sherri Ann Charleston, the chief diversity officer at Harvard, who was discovered to have plagiarized extensively in her dissertation and handful of academic papers. So far she has managed to hold onto her job. I suspect Harvard administrators do not want to force the resignation of a second black woman found to be a serial plagiarist so soon after Gay’s demotion. More on Charleston’s plagiarism can be found here.
And now a third serial plagiarist in the Harvard administration has just been found. She is Shirley Greene, a Title IX coordinator affiliated with the Office for Gender Equity. According to the indefatigable Christopher Rufo, Greene claims to have worked to advance “Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” without any evidence of how she has been doing this, and once led a panel on “The Past, Present, and Future of Juneteenth” with the DEI department. Hmm. There doesn’t seem to be much there there. She has just been found to have plagiarized at least 40 passages in her dissertation. More on Shirley Greene, the latest — but almost certainly not the last — serial plagiarist to be uncovered at Harvard, can be found here: “Harvard’s Plagiarism Problem Multiplies,” by Christopher F. Rufo, City Journal, February 22, 2024:
…Now allegations have emerged that another Harvard DEI [Diversity, Equity, Inclusion] administrator, Shirley Greene, of Harvard Extension School, plagiarized more than 40 passages of her 2008 dissertation, “Converging Frameworks: Examining the Impact of Diversity-Related College Experiences on Racial/Ethnic Identity Development.” According to the Harvard directory, Greene is a Title IX coordinator affiliated with the Office for Gender Equity. She has worked to advance “Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” and hosted a panel on “The Past, Present, and Future of Juneteenth” in conjunction with the DEI department. (Harvard did not respond to an emailed request for comment.)…
In the most serious instance, Greene lifts directly from Janelle Lee Woo’s 2004 dissertation, “Chinese American Female Identity.” In two significant sections, Greene copied words, phrases, passages, and almost entire paragraphs verbatim, without proper attribution or quotation. She also copies most of an entire table on “Racial/Ethnic Identity Development Models,” a foundational concept in the paper, without acknowledging the source.
We can examine one representative paragraph that illustrates the brazen nature of this adaptation. In her paper, Woo writes:
Stage 2, White Identification (WI), is a direct consequence of the increase in significant contact between the individual and white society. This stage entails the sense of being different from other people and not belonging anywhere. The individual’s self-perception changes from neutral/positive to negative, and she begins to internalize the belief systems of white society. Consequently, the individual does not question what it means to be Asian American. The individual alienates herself from other Asian Americans, while simultaneously experiencing social alienation from her white peers. Only when the individual seeks to “acquire a political understanding of [her] social status” (Kim 1981: 138) does she enter into the next stage.
Here is Greene’s version, with the duplicated portions of Woo and Woo’s citations italicized:
White Identification (WI), is a direct consequence of the increase in significant contact between the individual and white society. Individuals in this stage have the sense of being different from other people and not belonging anywhere. Their self-perception changes from neutral/positive to negative and they begin to internalize the belief systems of white society. Consequently, the individual fails to question what it means to be Asian American and alienates themselves from other Asian Americans, while simultaneously experiencing social alienation from their white peers. In order to move to the next stage, the individual must acquire a political understanding of social status.
The complaint, which has been sent to Harvard’s research-integrity officials, features more than three dozen other examples of Greene allegedly lifting language from other scholars, without proper attribution or quotations….
What will Harvard do? Does it want to uphold its own rules on plagiarism or ignore them?
No Harvard student who was found to be guilty of as much plagiarism as Gay, Charleston, and Greene have been would be allowed to remain at the university. More than a month after her plagiarism was laid bare, why hasn’t Charleston been fired? And what will happen to Shirley Greene? Anything? Nothing?
Former Harvard president Claudine Gay was recently pressured to resign after she failed to clearly state before a congressional committee that calling for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s code of conduct, stating that it would “depend on the context.” Even more devastating to her continued tenure, she was found to be a serial plagiarist, with dozens of examples of unattributed quotes, beginning with lifted paragraphs in her doctoral dissertation and continuing in most of the ten thin papers — no books — that constitute her entirely scholarly output.
Now a congressional committee is looking into whether Harvard has done enough to protect Jewish students on campus. And several Jewish students have sued Harvard, claiming that it has not provided a “safe environment” for them and other Jewish students.
As if that were not enough, now a professor of Middle Eastern studies has invited an extreme anti-Zionist and open supporter of Hamas and its October 7 attack to speak at the Kennedy School. Robert Spencer wrote about this briefly here, and more on this unwise and offensive decision can be found here: “Harvard University Faces New Antisemitism Controversy with Invitation of Pro-Hamas Speaker,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, February 7, 2024:
Harvard University is enmeshed in another antisemitism controversy following reports that a Middle Eastern studies professor has invited Dalal Saeb Iriqat, an extreme anti-Zionist and alleged advocate of terrorism, to the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS).
Ms. Iriqat is not an “alleged advocate of terrorism.” She has openly declared her support for Hamas, which many countries, including the United States, have designated as a terror group. There is no “alleged” about it.
According to The Harvard Crimson, Tarek E. Masoud, director of Harvard’s Middle East Initiative (MEI), invited Dalal Saeb Iriqat as a speaker for MEI’s “Middle East Dialogue Series,” a slate of interviews that will also include former government officials such as presidential adviser Jared Kushner and former Palestinian Authority (PA) prime minister Salam Fayyad.
There will be invited speakers from both sides — such as Jared Kushner, advocating for Israel, and Salam Fayyad, the former PA prime minister, speaking for the Palestinians. That was never the problem. The gravament of the charge against inviting Iriqat is this: some speakers are beyond the pale, and should not be given a forum to spread their extreme views. In the case of Dalal Saab Iriqat, she is not merely an “advocate for the Palestinians,” but someone who praises Hamas’ atrocities on October 7 — that is, she does not find fault with, does not deplore but proudly lauds, those who beheaded babies, burned children alive, sliced off the breasts of women, gouged out the eyes and cut off the genitalia of men, murdered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children.
Iriqat, a Palestinian instructor employed by the Arab American University, located in the West Bank city of Jenin, is best known for defending Hamas’ murdering and raping of civilians during its massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, an act she described on social media as “just a normal human struggle.”
In other posts, she said, “We will never forgive the Israeli right wing extreme government for making us take their children and elderly as hostages” and “The Israeli public needs to realize that their own government had caused all this bloodshed and they remain the ones responsible for this [escalation] and losses of civilian lives.”
No, the Israelis did not “make” the Palestinians seize 240 hostages — at least 50 of whom have so far died in Hamas captivity, almost certainly murdered by their captors. Nor did the Israelis cause “all this bloodshed” on October 7; it was the Hamas operatives who swooped down like wolves on the fold, to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder the helpless men, women, and children at the Re’im dance party and in the kibbutzim.
Masoud told The Harvard Crimson that he disagrees with Iriqat’s opinions but that nothing about him bringing her to campus was inappropriate.
“If you are going to engage with Palestinians, you’re going to have to engage with these ideas,” he told the paper. “My view is that we have to subject these ideas — and all the ideas that we encounter — to polite but rigorous inquiry.”
What exactly is the “idea” for which this invited speaker stands? Is the approval of genocide worthy of being called an “idea”? What kind of “polite inquiry” can there be with someone who approves of the atrocities on October 7, and claims that they are an understandable reaction to Israel’s longstanding “aggression”? What is Iriqat’s “idea” other than the desire for the complete destruction of the Jewish state, and the expulsion, or killing, of all of its Jewish inhabitants? Would Masoud be willing to invite an Israeli speaker who called for all of the Palestinians in Gaza to be pushed permanently into Egypt, and those in Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank) similarly to be moved to Jordan? Would that be a speaker he would consider inviting? No, I didn’t think so.
This has not just turned America’s universities into bastions of Jew-hatred and support for Hamas and other jihad groups. It has also made them blind to the threat of jihad in general, and legitimized the spurious concept of “Islamophobia,” to the degree that young people are today far more concerned about “Islamophobia,” which is a manipulative propaganda fiction, than about jihad, which is all too real.
“Hamas Patron Qatar Has Spent $6 Billion Lobbying the U.S. Government and Funding Universities,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, February 9, 2024:
Qatar, the oil-rich Middle Eastern nation that provides shelter and cash to the Hamas terror group’s top leaders, has spent nearly $6 billion since 2007 lobbying the American government and funneling cash to the United States’ top universities, funding that is generating scrutiny in Congress.
With Qatar emerging as a central mediator in the United States’ attempts to reach a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, Doha’s decades-long influence peddling operation in America is raising concerns about the country’s ties to the Iran-backed terror group.
Qatar has given or contracted more than $5.6 billion to 61 American schools since 2007, including Ivy Leagues such as Harvard University, Yale University, Cornell University, and Stanford University, according to funding records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. The country has also doled out more than $243 million on lobbying efforts in the United States since 2015, with more than $16 million spent in 2023 alone.
The money, experts and lawmakers say, has enabled Qatar to have outsized influence in American politics and academia, efforts they say have mainstreamed anti-Israel propaganda and silenced criticism about Doha’s longstanding ties to Hamas, the Iranian regime, and other terror groups. Hamas’s “three top leaders alone are worth a staggering total of $11 billion and enjoy a life of luxury in the sanctuary of the emirate of Qatar,” according to the New York Post.
The vast funding operation has generated congressional interest in the past and is fueling calls for an investigation by members of the Republican Study Committee (RSC), Congress’s largest GOP caucus, according to lawmakers and senior GOP aides who spoke to the Free Beacon. The RSC, one senior staffer said, is currently pressuring the relevant House oversight committees to investigate Qatar’s lobbying efforts and funding to schools….
From November 2007 to October 2023, Qatar made 1,116 donations to American universities totaling $5,673,091,815, records show. This has led to accusations that Doha is using its influence with the country’s top schools to mainstream propaganda that portrays Israel in a negative light.
Through the Qatar Foundation, a state-controlled entity tasked with promoting the country’s interests, the nation has prioritized educational initiatives that employ anti-Israel materials, according to watchdog groups….
First, Harvard’s former president refused to say that calls for a new genocide of the Jews would violate campus rules. And now this. Clearly, Jew-hatred has become the norm at Harvard, and among the leftist intelligentsia in general.
“Harvard to host Palestinian prof who blamed Israel for Oct. 7, called attacks ‘normal human struggle,'” by Chris Pandolfo, Fox News, February 3, 2024:
Harvard University has invited a controversial Palestinian professor to speak who justified the October 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel as a “normal human struggle for freedom.”
Dr. Dalal Saeb Iriqat, a columnist and associate professor at the Arab American University Palestine, is scheduled to speak at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs on March 7 for a seminar series called “Middle East Dialogues.”
The Belfer Center website describes the “Middle East Dialogues” seminars as “a series of frank, open, and probing encounters with vital and varied perspectives on the current conflict, its causes, and the prospects for peace and progress in the region.”
Iriqat is a controversial figure who has made statements downplaying the Hamas attack on Israel and blaming the Israeli government for the bloodshed on October 7, when 1,200 people were killed after Hamas terrorists infiltrated the country.
“Today is just a normal struggle 4 #Freedom,” Iriqat posted on X on Oct. 7, as Israelis near the border with Gaza cowered in their homes while terrorists went door-to-door butchering people.
In the face of criticism for her post, Iriqat doubled down and blamed Israel for the attacks the next day.
“We will never forgive the Israeli right wing extreme government for making us take their children and elderly as hostages,” she posted on "X."
“The Israeli public need to realize that their own government had caused all this bloodshed and they remain the ones responsible for this escalation and losses of civilian lives.”…
Did Sherri Ann Charleston really think she would get away with it? After the plagiarism scandal brought down her friend and protector Claudine Gay, she must have wondered if anyone would start to look into her own “scholarship.” And now the Washington Free Beacon, that samaritan organization, has done exactly that. Sherri Ann Charleston turns out to be even more of a plagiarist than Claudine Gay. Will Harvard do the right thing, and fire her for her violation of the most basic of academic norms, or brazen it out, and hope that eventually people will lose interest? What the academic world most needs now is a a dozen Journals of Plagiarism Research, that will investigate complaints made by those who claim their work has been plagiarized, and publish its findings, a sure way to terrify into silence would-be plagiarists incapable of doing their own work.
More on Sherri Ann Charleston, the Head of Diversity and Inclusion at Harvard, can be found here: “Not Just Claudine Gay. Harvard’s Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized and Claimed Credit for Husband’s Work, Complaint Alleges,” by Aaron Sibarium, Washington Free Beacon, January 30, 2024:
It’s not just Claudine Gay. Harvard University’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar—her own husband—according to a complaint filed with the university on Monday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis.
The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston’s thin publication record. In her 2009 dissertation, submitted to the University of Michigan, Charleston quotes or paraphrases nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution, the complaint alleges. And in her sole peer-reviewed journal article—coauthored with her husband, LaVar Charleston, in 2014—the couple recycle much of a 2012 study published by LaVar Charleston, the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, framing the old material as new research.
Through that sleight of hand, Sherri Ann Charleston effectively took credit for her husband’s work. The 2014 paper, which was also coauthored with Jerlando Jackson, now the dean of Michigan State University’s College of Education, and appeared in the Journal of Negro Education, has the same methods, findings, and description of survey subjects as the 2012 study, which involved interviews with black computer science students and was first published by the Journal of Diversity in Higher Education….
The school is also facing an ongoing congressional probe over its handling of antisemitism and its response to the plagiarism allegations against Gay, which Harvard initially sought to suppress with legal saber-rattling. Half of Gay’s published work contained plagiarized material, ranging from single sentences to entire paragraphs, with some of the most severe lifts coming in her dissertation. Though Gay stepped down as president on January 2, she remains a tenured faculty member drawing a $900,000 annual salary….
It is enraging that Gay continues to receive that huge presidential salary. No one has offered an explanation as to why that was done. Was it a bribe, to keep Gay from claiming some kind of “racism” was involved in her forced resignation? And how long will she continue to be paid such a grotesque and unmerited sum?
Charleston also lifted language from Louis Pérez, an historian at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Alejandro de la Fuente, an historian at Harvard; and Ada Ferrer, an historian at New York University, among other scholars.
Charleston cites each source in a footnote but omits quotation marks around language copied verbatim. The omissions violate Harvard’s Guide to Using Sources, a document produced for incoming students, which states that quotation marks are required when “you copy language word for word.”…
The main difference between the papers is a long section in the 2014 article about “culturally responsive pedagogy theory,” which the authors say their findings support. Both articles are littered with the tropes of progressive scholarship, including a disclaimer about “positionality”—the authors assure readers that they reflected on their own “racial, gender, and socioeconomic status”—and a lament that computer science is a “White male-dominated field.”
Both also criticize the idea that “computing sciences is for nerds, only for White people, [and] only for geniuses.”
Such language is typical of the diversity initiatives Charleston oversees. Since 2020, her office has pumped out a stream of materials that bemoan the “weaponization of whiteness,” discuss the ins and outs of “white fragility,” and urge students to “call out” their peers for “harmful words.” One message, signed by Charleston herself, was titled “A Call to Dismantle Intersecting Oppressions.”
“We must continue to work against systematic oppression in all its forms—racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, and more,” she wrote….
How appropriately diverse and inclusive this Head of Diversity and Inclusivity turns out to be, save for whites, of course, whose mere being creates “systematic oppression in all its forms.”
But let’s not lose sight of the main problem: will Sherri Ann Charleston get away with her many examples of plagiarism? Will her recycling of her husband’s paper of 2012, presenting it as new research — which goes beyond plagiarism but, as Peter Wood says, constitutes academic fraud — be enough to sink her career at Harvard, or will Harvard itself insist on keeping her on, and becoming, even more than it has already, the laughingstock of the academic world?
An all-female Catholic college backed down on a new and very un-Catholic policy to allow biologically male “transgenders” in after taking a lot of heat for the decision.
The Daily Signal obtained an email from President Katie Conboy of St. Mary’s College in Indiana. While the report in November was that the college was going to allow men who pretend to be women to enroll in fall 2024, the understandable anger the policy change garnered made the administration rethink its woke strategy. Unsurprisingly, women were a little concerned about having to share dorms, bathrooms, etc., with dudes in dresses.
“This has weighed heavily on our minds and in our hearts,” Conboy said in the Thursday email. “There have been many voices responding to us from many places and perspectives. We have listened closely, and we have heard each of you.” Despite the fact that the Catholic Church doctrinally condemns transgenderism as gravely evil, the college president made the puzzling claim that the proposed policy change was a “reflection of our College’s commitment to live our Catholic values as a loving and just community.” I guess she missed the part of Genesis where God created humans as male and female—from the moment of their existence, based on biology. Conboy did admit that “the position we took is not shared by all members of our community.”
In fact, she added, “Some worried that this was much more than a policy decision: they felt it was a dilution of our mission or even a threat to our Catholic identity.” No kidding. “Moreover, we clearly underestimated our community’s genuine desire to be engaged in the process of shaping a policy of such significance. As this last month unfolded, we lost people’s trust and unintentionally created division where we had hoped for unity. For this, we are deeply sorry,” she continued.
“Taking all these factors into consideration, the Board has decided that we will return to our previous admission policy,” she said. “Although this has been a challenging time for our community, we believe that the College should continually grapple with the complexity of living our Catholic values in a changing world.”
Alumnae and students were excited about the victory against wokeness, as were several Catholic leaders. As Bishop Kevin Rhoades, in whose diocese the college is located, previously said, “The desire of Saint Mary’s College to show hospitality to people who identify as transgender is not the problem. The problem is a Catholic woman’s college embracing a definition of woman that is not Catholic.”
While some university presidents have been unable to answer “Yes”” to the question “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate your institution’s code of conduct?,” President Paula Johnson of Wellesley is made of sterner stuff. And she has just stood up to — denounced, in fact — the faculty bullies who want to make sure that the Wellesley campus remains safe for expressions of antisemitism. The story of this Daniel come to judgment can be found here: “Wellesley College President Denounces Extreme Anti-Zionist Rhetoric, Rebuffing School Faculty,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, December 18, 2023:
Wellesley College President Paula Johnson has pushed back on faculty pressuring her to condone certain anti-Israel rhetoric on campus, stating in an open letter that the Massachusetts school interprets “some” anti-Zionist speech as harmful to Jewish students.”
Johnson, who has served as college president since July 2016, made the declaration on Saturday in response to a faculty letter demanding that she go on record saying that no criticism of Israel or Zionism should be described as antisemitic.
The faculty “demands”? It sounds like the Soviet purge trials of the 1930s. Andrey Vyshinsky, Chief Prosecutor, “demanding” that the Old Bolsheviks such as Bukharin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev admit to their crimes before their inevitable execution. “Paula Johnson, we the faculty of Wellesley College, DEMAND that you declare that ‘no criticism of Israel or Zionism should be described as antisemitic.'”Really? What about those who chant “from the river to the sea/Palestine will be free,” which everyone understands to be a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab state? Is denying the Jewish people, uniquely, the right to have a state of their own not antisemitic? What about the call for “Jews to the gas,” which has been heard at pro-Palestinian rallies in Europe? Gosh, sounds antisemitic to me. What about those who after October 7 have been telling us at rallies that they “stand with Hamas” and, keffiyeh-scarved, wave the flag of Palestine? Remember, they are expressing solidarity with, and support for, the terror group that sent 3,000 of its operatives surging into Israel on October 7, where they proceeded to behead babies, burned children alive, gang-raped, tortured, and murdered young girls, sliced off the breasts of women, gouged out the eyes and cut off the genitalia of men, murdered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children? Surely praise of Hamas, after what it did on October 7, must count as antisemitism. What do you say to that, faculty members of Wellesley, by Zoom or in solemn conclave assembled?
“I want to be clear that Wellesley will not make such a statement,” Johnson said. “Some anti-Israel and anti-Zionist speech can, in fact, create a hostile environment for many of our students.”
Thank god for the no-nonsense reply coming from President Paula Johnson, a Daniel come to judgment by the shores of Lake Waban. She said what all sensible people know: of course anti-Israel speech can be so hideous in its endorsement of Hamas killers, or in its call for the destruction of the tiny Jewish state, as to create a “hostile environment” for Jewish students and, come to think of it, for all students who have retained their moral sense.
Johnson added that the faculty members’ own statements in their letter, which accused Israel of committing a “genocidal assault on Gaza,” are part of the problem….
When those faculty members accuse Israel of a “genocidal assault,” they are doing two intolerable things. First, they are saying something that is idiotic. It was Hamas that committed the “genocidal assault,” wanting to murder Jews, any Jews of any age or condition, whom they came across in their rampage on October 7. Although the faculty members won’t admit it, the IDF goes out of its way to minimize civilian casualties by warning those in or near buildings that are soon to be hit to get out, get away. The IDF does this through leafletting, messaging, telephoning, and the “knock on the roof” technique. When it wanted to warn Gazans to leave the north of the Strip because it would soon become a battlefield, the IDF dropped 1.5 million leaflets telling them to move south. It’s no wonder that Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded the British forces in Afghanistan, has described the IDF as “the most moral army in the world.” Furthermore, the UN has said that since World War II, the average civilian-to-combatant ratio has been 9 to 1. The American and British armies have recently done better: in Iraq the ratio was 3 to 1, in Afghanistan between 3 and 5 to 1. But in Gaza, Israel has managed to keep the ratio down to an unheard-of civilian to combatant ratio of 10 to 7. This testifies to Israel’s success in minimizing civilian while Hamas tries always to maximize them. And as for the charge that Israel supports “genocide,” let’s remind the Wellesley faculty that in 1967, when Israel won Gaza by force of arms in the Six-Day war, the Strip’s population was 410,000. In 2005, when every last Israeli was removed from Gaza, the population of the Strip was 1.3 million. Does that sound like “genocide” to you?
The Wellesley faculty — that is, that portion of it that, filled with anti-Israel animus, that demanded that President Johnson declare that “no criticism of Israel is antisemitic” — has met a immovable and immutable object: Paula Johnson’s moral sense. They have been foiled by her clear-eyed answer, and In their ranks, confusion worse confounded reigns. That’s the consummation that was devoutly to be wished. May other university presidents go and do likewise.
President Sally Kornbluth of MIT, just like President Liz Magill of UPenn and President Claudine Gay of Harvard, fudged in her Congressional testimony, not clearly stating that calls for genocide were unacceptable on the MIT campus. All three claimed that “it would depend on the context,” whether such calls could be considered “bullying or harassment” and as such, punishable under their institution’s code of conduct. Both Gay and Magill later tried to mollify their critics by modifying their remarks. It did not work for Magill; she felt compelled to resign; Gay, despite a second, even deeper scandal, involving her newly-revealed extensive record of plagiarism, has been supported by the Harvard Corporation; no one wanted to fire “the first black president of Harvard.” Whether her quite visible protective shield will prevent her scandalous plagiarizing from sinking her in the end will be instructive to watch.
Meanwhile, President Kornbluth of MIT, the only one of the three who did not attempt subsequently to “clarify” her remarks before Congress in an attempt to mollify critics, has been similarly supported by the MIT Corporation. And judging by the alumni letter just made public, she has apparently done little on the MIT campus to deal with the rise in antisemitic rhetoric and harassment of Jewish students.
More than 800 people — most of them alumni, but also including faculty, staff, and parents of students — have signed the following letter, showing that many people — Jews and non-Jews — are most unhappy with how Kornbluth has dealt with antisemitism on the campus, and believe the MIT Corporation, in its vote of confidence, has chosen to overlook that record, treating her with kid gloves. More on this open letter, to which new signatories are being added every hour, can be found here: “An Open Letter From MIT Jewish Alumni and Allies on Campus Antisemitism,” MIT Jewish Alumni and MIT Allies, December 12, 2023:
Dear President Kornbluth, Provost Barnhart, Chancellor Nobles, and members of the MIT Corporation:
We are a growing group of MIT Jewish alumni and MIT allies writing to express our alarm over the Congressional testimony of President Kornbluth of December 5, 2023; the subsequent public relations fallout; and the continued failure of the MIT administration to address the growing antisemitism on MIT’s campus.
Calls for genocide of any group of people, including Jews, constitute bullying and harassment. Such calls originating from MIT’s campus should never be tolerated by the MIT administration and should instead be met with swift disciplinary consequences.
Yet, during the Congressional testimony of December 5, 2023, President Kornbluth implied that calls for genocide of Jews may not constitute bullying and harassment under MIT’s code of conduct, depending on context. Protecting violent antisemitic rhetoric on MIT’s campus, rather than Jewish victims of such rhetoric, sends a strong signal to the rest of the world that violent words of hate are acceptable, at least as they relate to the Jewish people. Understandably, President Kornbluth’s testimony was met with a public uproar….
Will Kornbluth listen to this most modest and reasonable request of so many alumni? Or will she, buoyed by the Corporation’s vote of confidence in her, see no need to change her ways? Let us hope for the first, and fear for the second.
The scandal of certain foreign governments funding programs at American universities that further the interests of their often unsavory regimes is at long last being addressed by Congress. The House has just passed a bill — which will soon be voted on in the Senate — to tighten the reporting requirements for major foreign gifts (above $250,000) and to require greater oversight by universities of the programs being funded. More on this legislation, which is sure to become law, can be found here: “U.S. House Approves Reporting on Foreign Funds to Universities; Includes Key MEF Priorities,” Middle East Forum, December 8, 2023:
American universities will no longer be able to count on a complacent federal bureaucracy and weak legislation to avoid disclosing foreign gifts and contracts, if a House vote two days ago becomes law.
The Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act – the DETERRENT Act (H.R. 5933) – passed the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday in a bipartisan vote of 246 to 170. Introduced by Rep. Michelle Steel (R-CA) and co-sponsored by Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC) and 25 other members, the bill significantly strengthens key provision of Section 117 of the Higher Education Act.
For decades, many universities have ignored requirements to report foreign gifts or contracts of over $250,000. Legislation lacked the teeth to hold academe accountable, allowing parts of the education bureaucracy to ignore violations of the law. Even if universities complied, they did not need to disclose the purposes for which the funds would be used – a loophole that allowed foreign states such as Qatar and China quietly to fund potentially disreputable projects or individuals….
Particularly worrisome are the large sums provided by rich Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, to fund a vast expansion of Middle Eastern Studies, and Islamic Studies Departments, providing for greater numbers of faculty with endowed chairs; these faculty members not surprisingly turn out to share the world views of the states that fund them, including their anti-Israel animus and deep sympathy for the “Palestinians.” Saudi Arabia, and individual Saudis, provide large sums not just to endow individual chairs, but also to set up entire centers for Islamic studies, whose members are not unbiased scholars, but promoters and defenders of Islam. One example is the infamous apologist for Islam, John Esposito, who was the founding director of the Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown, which got its start with a $20 million gift from Prince Alwaleed himself. Qatar, which has supported Hamas for decades, including providing refuge for the leaders of its political wing, has funded chairs in Islamic law, as has Saudi Arabia. The amounts provided by Arab states to American universities has been staggering. Qatar has given American universities $4.3 billion over 35 years, between 1986 and 2021, according to a 2021 report by the Executive Director of the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise, Dr. Mitchell Bard. By December 2023, that amount has risen above $4.5 billion. That buys a lot of goodwill in American universities, and a desire on the part of both faculty members and administrators to please such a funder, in the hope that such sums will continue to roll in from deep-pocketed Doha.
Overall, between 1986 and 2021, American colleges and universities received nearly $8.5 billion from all Arab sources.” That buys the Arabs many friends on campuses, which may help explain why universities have been so lax in policing the antisemitic and anti-Israel student groups that have convulsed so many schools in the last year, and especially after October 7, when the IDF entered Gaza to ensure that Hamas never again poses a military threat to Israel.
The public, the media, and the political class will now see just where all that Arab money is going to in our universities, and for what purposes. How much influence have the Arab states bought, in supporting programs on Middle Eastern Studies and on Islam, that furthers pro-Arab and anti-Israel views? How have faculty members been chosen for these programs? Is there a politically correct test that is being quietly imposed so that, for example, no one sympathetic to Israel will be hired by a Middle East Studies department? Are students taking courses in departments subsidized by Arab money being instructed, or indoctrinated? Thanks to the new requirements for universities to report all foreign money received, and how it will be spent, it will be much harder to hide from the government, and the public, what these vast sums from Arab governments and individuals are meant, and largely have managed until now, to accomplish.
