Tag Archives: morality

Some Bigotry is Acceptable, Apparently

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Here is Harvard President Claudine Gay when she was Harvard’s Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on the matter of the then-contemporaneous George Floyd murder [emphasis added]:

I have watched in pain and horror the events unfolding across the nation this week, triggered by the callous and depraved actions of a white police officer in Minneapolis.
…
I write this knowing that for some in our community, and I count myself among them, the events in Minneapolis, Brunswick, Louisville and beyond, feel anything but abstract; to the contrary, the headlines stir an acute sense of vulnerability. We are reminded, again, how even our most mundane activities, like running, which is something I am passionate about, can carry inordinate risk. … It shouldn’t be this way. Our presence and our voices make these experiences visible—and that, too, is part of the change. Together with the many who know these fears only vicariously, we must actively work to build a more just society, where no one is above the law and where each of us is treated with the dignity that is our birthright.

Here is now-Harvard President Claudine Gay, in her testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce over a week ago (Tuesday, 5 December), answering the question of whether calling for genocide of the Jews is a violation of Harvard’s codes of conduct:

It can be, depending on the context.

Apparently, bigotry against some is bad, and each of us should be treated with dignity, except when Jews are involved. Antisemitic bigotry is fine, and Jews don’t need? deserve to be? mustn’t be? treated with dignity.

That Harvard’s governing body, Harvard Corporation, hasn’t yet—nine days later!—fired Gay for cause over her overt antisemitism and her selective bigotry is clear demonstration of the rank bigotry of the members of the Harvard Corporation, as their studied inaction condones Gay’s bigotry.

H/t Niall Ferguson writing for The Free Press.

Occurring after I wrote the above: in the event, the Harvard Corporation, which is the governing body for this school, has decided to retain–enthusiastically–Gay as President.

“Our extensive deliberations affirm our confidence that President Gay is the right leader to help our community heal and to address the very serious societal issues we are facing,” the board said in a message to the Harvard community Tuesday morning.

With judgment like that–affirming Gay’s testimony that genocide against Jews sometimes is a permissible threat–it’s clear that the Federal government must cut off all Federal funding to the school unless and until Gay is fired for cause and the Harvard Corporation’s own governing body–the President and Fellows of Harvard College–undergoes a 100% replacement.

Taxpayer money should not be going to institutions that so overtly support selective bigotry, or any bigotry at all.

“Invisible Americans”

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Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D, MI) thinks she has the support of “invisible” Americans, her constituents. It’s…unfortunate…that she does, but it’s especially saddening given what she thinks her constituents believe, which they seem to demonstrate by repeatedly electing her. Her antisemitic bigotry is blatant.

Here’s her claim regarding her openly supported slogan From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. It’s

an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.

This is a lie. The region encompassed by the slogan she so enthusiastically supports includes the region in which is situated the nation of Israel. Even were Tlaib’s associated claim that her one-nation solution wherein Jews and Arabs live “side-by-side” with “equal rights” were true, it would only be a supposedly peaceful driving out of Jews from their homeland since they would be dramatically outnumbered in population and in voting. Her own interpretation calls for the removal of Jews from the Middle East.

The more accurate interpretation of her slogan is the one that’s been the case since the First Intifada, a four-year period of overt terrorism against Israel perpetrated by Hamas. It’s a slogan of hatred of Jews and a call for their extermination, as noted by Congressman Max Miller (R, OH) on the House floor during the debate regarding House censure of Tlaib:

To be clear, “from the river to the sea,” as someone who’s Jewish, means to exterminate my people. I understand she thinks it’s some kind of aspirational message. I do think it’s aspirational—an aspiration to the genocide of Jews.

In response to the censure debate, Tlaib was careful to carry through her antisemitic bigotry: when she spoke during her part of the debate, she wore a Hamas keffiyeh over her blazer.

UN Secretary-General

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António Guterres is missing a good opportunity to keep quiet. He wrote a letter to the UN Security Council President, distributed to all of the Security Council members, a letter that is not really responsible behavior.

The worst part of his letter is his demand for a ceasefire at all cost. He knows full will the meaning of that phrase in the present context—all cost includes the destruction of Israel as a polity, as a society, as a people. Guterres doesn’t care.

Underneath that, he bleats about “reportedly” 15,000 Gazans have been killed in this war, and adds his “reportedly” claim of 40% of those 15,000 being children. Undoubtedly, several thousand Gazans, including children, have been killed. But he chooses not to cite credible sources for those figures, he ignores who has the responsibility for those deaths, and he ignores the inalienable right of the Israelis to defend themselves, to defend their very existence.

Guterres also bleated about hospitals become battle zones and the decreasing supplies of hospital and Gazan necessities.

Guterres has chosen to ignore where the responsibility for this disaster lies. Hamas has repeatedly stated that its goal is the extermination of Israel, and at least one of its leaders has promised repeated October 7s until the goal is achieved—no matter how many Gazans die in the effort.

Guterres has chosen to ignore the basic fact that the vast majority of Gazan casualties—of whatever number—are the direct result of Hamas’ use of Gazans as human shields and Hamas’ use of Gazan residential apartment buildings, schools, those hospitals about which Guterres pretends to worry as rocket launch sites, weapons and ammunition storage sites, and command centers.

Guterres has chosen to ignore that it was Hamas that chose to ignite this war, and that it is Hamas that is creating the humanitarian disaster about which he pretends to care so much with its refusal to let Gazans evacuate combat zones—zones which the Israeli government and the IDF are constantly at pains to announce before hand, at great risk to their own soldiers and at great risk of letting terrorists leave the combat zone along with Gazans.

Guterres’ performance is not well brought-up behavior.

“Silence is Violence”

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That’s been the mantra of the Left for some years. It’s an extreme rendition of the obligation of folks—especially those with public influence—to speak and act against bad behavior, especially atrocities. It’s a mantra that was born in objections to the rise of, and increasing publicity surrounding, violence against women and children, increases (in publicity, at least) roughly coinciding with the time of the Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein exposures.

That brings me to 7 October 2023 and the terrorist Hamas attacks, of which rape of Israeli women and children, torture during and by rape of Israeli women and children, butchering of Israeli children were not byproducts of the heat of the moment but were deliberately used and specific tactics of the Hamas terrorists. There has been some outcry against those atrocities by major “women’s groups” that concern themselves with protecting women and children.

There also has been an ear-shattering silence from other organizations that make the same claims of concern for women and children. The Silent Ones include these:

  • Planned Parenthood
  • Women’s March
  • EMILY’s List
  • Democrat Women’s Caucus
  • National Organization for Women
  • Equality Now
  • Time’s Up
  • SOS Children’s Villages
  • World Health Organization
  • United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and Women Empowerment
  • N. Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women
  • International MeToo

The list goes on and is disgustingly long.

On 30 November, NOW did, badly belatedly, say that NOW condemns the use of rape as a weapon of war, but even with that, its statement was insultingly generic, with no mention of Hamas or Israel specifically. Coming as it does nearly two months after the atrocities, and only after mounting opprobrium, it’s not possible (for me, anyway) to believe NOW is uttering anything other than empty rhetoric in an attempt to cover its collective political behind.

Silence is violence is, by itself, an unprovable accusation. Silence, though, is a powerful indication of the antisemitic bigotry of these allegedly supportive but carefully silent organizations, and it is illustrative of the hypocrisy of these organizations that speak so loudly and zealously against crimes against women—or what they perceive as crimes against women—but are just as loudly and zealously silent when it comes to crimes against Jewish women and children.

“Context”

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Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R, NY) asked a question of three university presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard, Elizabeth Magill of Penn, and Sally Kornbluth of MIT, a simple, straightforward question at last week’s House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing regarding campus antisemitism:

Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct, yes or no?

Magill’s answer, smirk on her face:

It is a context-dependent decision, Congresswoman.

Gay repeated the claim:

It can be, depending on the context.

Kornbluth tried to dodge the question altogether:

I have not heard calling for the genocide of Jews on our campus.

Stefanik called her on that…misinformation:

But you’ve heard chants for intifada.

Kornbluth’s response:

I’ve heard chants which can be antisemitic depending on the context when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people.

Wednesday after the hearing, Magill attempted to clarify:

In that moment, I was focused on our university’s longstanding policies aligned with the US Constitution, which say that speech alone is not punishable. I was not focused on, but I should have been, the irrefutable fact that a call for genocide of Jewish people is a call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetrate. It’s evil—plain and simple.

A couple of things about that. At the hearing, Magill spoke from what was in her heart. Further, as a talented academic and a university president, words are her stock in trade. She knew exactly what she was saying, she knew exactly what she was focused on in real time—and she focused and said those words deliberately and consciously. This statement, coming as it does later, after the outpouring of opprobrium, can hardly be taken as sincere. All Magill is doing now is covering her academic and political behind.

The other thing is that, in that statement’s second half (not quoted above, but it’s a two-minute video) Magill made the sotto voce admission that calls for Jewish genocide are not against Penn’s current rules. With that tacit admission, she “promised” to work with the Provost to adjust Penn’s rules. Sometime. She was careful to not offer a timeline for this effort, not even a general one, nor did she commit to what those “adjustments” would look like.

One more thing about Stefanik’s question and those presidents’ answers. An obvious follow-up question is “In what context would such calls for the genocide of Jews be acceptable in any legal way?”

Stefanik did put that question to Gay:

What’s the context?

Gay’s answer:

Targeted at an individual[.]

Stefanik followed up on that “individual” evasion, and Gay then refused to answer beyond repeating her claim if targeting an individual. Apparently, at Harvard, calling for the destruction of groups of Jews is acceptable.  One or two at a time, maybe not.

These are three school presidents who need to be fired for cause—not passively allowed to resign—and these are three schools that need to have all Federal funds headed their way canceled until those schools show, over a suitable number years, that they have corrected their behavior.