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**DECEMBER 8, 2023**
On the Prospect website
Israel's Strategic Calamity
Its brutal war on Gaza is turning it into a pariah state and risking
regional war. BY RYAN COOPER
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Are the Democrats Sleepwalking to Disaster?
Joe Biden has been an excellent president, but is also, I fear, the
candidate least able to defeat Donald Trump. Other Democrats need to
enter the race. BY HAROLD MEYERSON
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Southwest Virginia Residents Question Nuclear Shift
Gov. Glenn Youngkin wants to build next-generation nuclear plants and
data centers. But he won't tell Virginia residents what he's doing.
BY GABRIELLE GURLEY
The Farce of Big-Time College Sports
One more face of the creeping commercialism of higher education BY
ROBERT KUTTNER
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Time to Call BS
The Trumpian Right discovered antisemitism only when it needed a cudgel
to bash the Ivies.
Do you recall Rep. Elise Stefanik's passionate statement of outrage
when a gunman massacred worshippers at the Tree of Life Synagogue in
Pittsburgh? Me neither, because there wasn't one. Or how about her
eloquent speech attacking the "Jews will not replace us" marchers at
Charlottesville? Nope.
Stefanik is late to the party. The far right is philosemitic only when
it serves their purposes. The extreme right defends Jews as a way of
both bashing universities and defending Netanyahu, who conflates
criticism of Israel's actions with antisemitism. It is a cynical
alliance of cynics.
Beleaguered university presidents now face a three-front battle. First,
they need the right balance of defending free speech while not condoning
hate speech, much less incitement. Second, they need to stand up and
resist the new McCarthyism. And third, university trustees need to
prevent billionaire donors from deciding university policy.
The first challenge is tricky but far from impossible, though the three
presidents who were ambushed by Stefanik by blew it. But there is a
viable path.
Here is a pitch-perfect extract from the November 10 statement of the
University of California President and the chancellors
of its ten major campuses:
There is no place for hate, bigotry, or intimidation at the University
of California. Period.
Antisemitism is antithetical to our values and our campus codes of
conduct and is unacceptable under our principles of community. It will
not be tolerated.
Similarly, Islamophobia is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. We
will work to ensure that those who advocate on behalf of Palestinians
can also be confident of their physical safety on our campuses.
We take our obligation to uphold the First Amendment seriously, even
when the viewpoints expressed are hateful or repugnant. We cannot censor
voices or ban groups we disagree with, so long as those voices and
groups comply with state and federal laws and with university policy.
But free speech is not absolute, and violations of policy or law will
have consequences.
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Granted, it's harder to get that balance right when you are entrapped at
a House inquisition. But if the university presidents had kept those
core distinctions in mind, they would have done a lot better. The next
time a university president is called to testify, she needs to say
something like this:
"Congresswoman, I am not going to play your game of yes or no answers,
and I am not going to be harangued by people whose hands are far from
clean. Yours is a party that has destroyed civil rights, undermined
necessary affirmative action, invaded academic freedom at universities
and even libraries, and gotten into bed with haters. We will resist your
fishing expeditions by every legal means at our disposal."
On the third point, the fiasco at the Stefanik hearing has further
emboldened donors, some of whom represent the worst in American
capitalism. Donor influence cost Penn president Liz Magill her job.
Donor Ross Stevens had threatened to withdraw his $100 million that
bankrolled the Stevens Center for Innovative Finance at the Wharton
School
.
Stevens runs a hedge fund that specializes in crypto. Wharton never
should have taken the money.
Another unsavory hedge fund manipulator, William Ackman, has been a
prime player in the pressure to oust all three presidents. Ackman, like
Stevens, is Jewish. Has anyone pointed out that it is incautious, and
stereotype-reinforcing, for Jewish donors to throw their weight around
by trying to define who or what is antisemitic? If more serious
antisemitism ever infects the American body politic, people like Ackman
will be more to blame than students protesting events in Gaza.
At MIT, two days after the hearing, the trustees issued a statement of
"full and unreserved support"
for president Sally Kornbluth. Well done. Meanwhile, the eleven members
of the Harvard Corporation have been meeting to decide whether to
support or oust President Claudine Gay. More than 650 faculty members
have signed a letter of support.
Universities have homework to do. In some respects, they have made
themselves sitting ducks with exaggerated DEI regimes and attempts to
police correct language. When students and faculty are acculturated to
be hyper-sensitive to micro-aggressions and the wind shifts to grotesque
macro-aggressions, it's time for a new script. But MAGA apologists and
billionaire donors are the last people to dictate that script.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter
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