Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Harvard

Showing posts with label Harvard. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 19, 2023

Open Hillel is dead. Its successor doesn't know why it exists.

Remember Open Hillel?

About ten years ago, a group of students at Harvard became incensed that their Jewish campus Hillel canceled an anti-Israel event when it was revealed that a BDS group was sponsoring it, violating Hillel's guidelines.

Of course they could hold their event anywhere, but they decided to start a movement called Open Hillel to get other Hillels to drop their affiliation with Hillel. Like so many "progressive" organizations past and future, they are more interested in creating a split within the Jewish community than in building their own. Open Hillel had a conference at Harvard in 2014 and based on the media attention, it looked like it could rupture Hillel International.

It failed.

In the end, only four campuses nationwide defected to "Open Hillel" - Guilford College, Swarthmore College, Vassar College, and Wesleyan University.

By 2020, none of them were still associated with Open Hillel - and two of them are now affiliated with Hillel International again.

In short, Open Hillel made a lot of noise but in the end could not attract students who are both interested in Judaism and anti-Zionism. There is a strong negative correlation between the two positions, which pretty much dooms any attempt to fuse them, no matter how many anti-Israel Haggadahs are printed.

So Open Hillel is in a deep coma, and has been for a while, just as the American Council for Judaism - a prominent and equally tiny anti-Zionist group in the 1940s-1960s - also sunk into irrelevance. Both organizations have a couple of people still doing paperwork to maintain their tax exempt status but they have faded away after a lot of publicity early on.

But Open Hillel has one last gambit to stay alive: "Judaism On Our Own Terms," or JOOOT.

They wrote an introductory piece in Mondoweiss on Friday: "Judaism On Our Own Terms is creating a space where young Jews do not have to choose between their Judaism and their sense of justice."

JOOOT is an offshoot, and seemingly successor, of Open Hillel. Since 2020, Open Hillel's Form 990 has included a position for Rakhel Silverman as a "Judaism on our own Terms organizer." getting paid $4600 in 2020 and $2492 in 2021. Silverman describes themself as a "a proud fat trans Disabled Jew."

But JOOOT really doesn't know what to do next. On their website they say they are in the midst of a "restructuring process" where they are asking anyone and everyone to please give them some ideas of what they should be doing. To restructure means they had a structure to begin with, which is not at all clear.

This mirrors the self-destruction of IfNotNow, but at least IfNotNow managed to grab some headlines before its inevitable collapse.

In the end, even children know that "Judaism On Our Own Terms" is an oxymoron. People don't look at religion or community to do whatever they want - they want to be part of a whole where everyone shares basic beliefs and standards. If anyone can do whatever they want and call it Judaism, then Judaism has no meaning. The anti-Zionists only have one belief - hating Israel - and that is not enough to keep a core group of enthusiastic members nor is it enough to attract more.

There will still be plenty of anti-Zionist Jews. But their interest in identifying as Jews is ephemeral. Which is why these groups are all doomed, but also why there will always be new ones who think they came up with the idea.

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Harvard partners with Palestinian university that rewards and supports terrorism

From Harvard University's FXB Center:

The Institute of Community and Public Health (ICPH) at Birzeit University, the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights, and the World Health Organization in the occupied Palestinian territory have launched the Palestine Social Medicine course. This intensive course is part of the activities of the Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights, a partnership between ICPH at Birzeit University and the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University, United States. The course is supported through Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation funding to WHO occupied Palestinian territory Right to Health programme.

Birzeit University is a center of antisemitic, pro-Jihadist terror.

Last December, it hosted a PFLP march where they exhorted students to "blow up the settler's head!"

Also last year, Birzeit's Hamas group hosted a reception for new students where they celebrated a famous Hamas bombmaker, Yahya Ayyash, who was a graduate of Birzeit U:

This display of Nazi-style salutes, a model of a rocket and of a suicide belt was not in Gaza, but in Birzeit University:

Does it sound like Birzeit is a center of "health and human rights?" Is it appropriate for Harvard to partner with a university that is a center for incitement of violence against Jews?

Actually, maybe it is. Because Harvard's own recent record is one of sacrificing academic integrity for "social justice" causes such as hating Israel.

The entire Palestine Program for Health and Human Rights appears to be far more concerned with bashing Israel than in actually helping promote Palestinian health.

The FXB Center's Health and Human Rights Journal recently dedicated an issue to Palestinian health. The entire thrust of the journal was to call Israel "racist" and "apartheid" and "settler colonialist":

Its studies pre-suppose that Israeli policies are fatally hurting Palestinian health and work. And when biased people look for evidence of their thesis, they can invariably find it - as long as they ignore any counter-evidence.

Similarly, Harvard's School of Public Health offers a course that looks at Palestinian health through the lens of Israeli "settler colonialism" making the initial assumption that health services are drastically impacted by Israeli policies.

Yes, a Harvard University course actually highlights "The Map that Lies" that has been thoroughly debunked and retracted by numerous organizations.

Yet in real life, Palestinian healthcare - and indeed, Palestinians' general quality of life - is better than that of neighboring Jordan which does not suffer from "settler colonialism" or "Israeli apartheid:"

In fact, it is difficult to find studies that look at and evaluate Palestinian healthcare on its own merits, or that compares it with the rest of the Arab Middle East - something that is basic in studying the healthcare of every nation on the planet. One rare example that does is this obscure paper, "Experiences of Palestinian patients with hospital services: a mixed-methods study" which employs a standardized survey used throughout the world to evaluate patient experiences in Palestinian hospitals. They aren't great, they aren't terrible, and the study makes recommendations on how to improve them.

Palestinians themselves blame their governments, not Israel, for healthcare shortfalls. A recent survey says that one third of Palestinians say they do not have enough hospitals, 24% complained of scarcity of supplies, 20% said the lack of skilled medical professionals was the biggest problem, and 10% said it

was the high costs of care or the lack of medical insurance.

But looking at the real issues is not how Palestinian health is studied in the West. Instead of caring about how to improve Palestinian healthcare, these seminars and courses and studies are all designed to sacrifice Palestinian healthcare on the much more important altar of using every possible social means to demonize Israel. By viewing everything Palestinian through a "settler colonialist apartheid structural racist" lens, actual daily Palestinian healthcare is neglected and ignored.

Demonizing Israel is a higher "human rights" imperative than improving the lives of Palestinians.

So perhaps it is appropriate that Harvard, which has already hijacked Palestinian healthcare as ammunition to be used against Israel, partners with Birzeit University, which glorifies those who use actual ammunition against Israel.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Academic freedom? Harvard Crimson op-ed calls to reject Israelis from positions at the university

An op-ed at the Harvard Crimson attempts to turn the Ken Roth episode into an excuse to block Israelis from teaching there.

Because of academic freedom, of course.

Josh Wilcox, organizer for Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee, writes:

It seems a couple points were absent from Dean Elmendorf’s announcement. At no point did he address the elephant in the room: what scholars like Cornel R. West ’74 have alleged as Harvard’s complicity in silencing voices that call for Palestinian freedom.

Similarly, HKS’s track record of offering positions should make us skeptical of the sincerity of its mission statement.

HKS has proudly lended [sic] its name to Amos Yadlin, a former general in the Israeli Air Force who participated in the brutal war on Lebanon in 1982. ...
Yadlin is only one of several questionable characters. As Harvard students, we cannot continue to let our University welcome agents of colonial violence while denying those who reject U.S.-backed Israeli apartheid.

Who, exactly, has Harvard denied a position to because of their pro-Israel positions? The article mentions this as a fact three times - and the links show us that there is exactly one episode that they can point to.

And that episode is a lie.

In 2021, Cornel West went on a campaign much like Ken Roth's in 2023. He went on multiple interviews claiming claimed that Harvard denied him tenure, and that the only reason he could think of was his anti-Israel position.

He had no proof.

But he lied about the entire episode. His position was not a tenure track position to begin with!

During his normal 5-year review, the faculty committee offered him a raise and a 10 year contract, which for a 67-year old man is as good as tenure. But he refused, insisting that they change his position itself into a tenured position - something that this review board couldn't do. As the Boston Globe reported, "The faculty committee was only in charge of reviewing his reappointment and does not have authority to conduct a review for tenure, [Harvard's] spokesman said."

Now, it is obvious why he wasn't granted tenure - he did not have a tenure-eligible job and one cannot make that change at the drop of a hat. West asked for the job to be changed, which is quite a different matter than being denied tenure!

West was the proto-Roth - making baseless accusations about a Zionist cabal at Harvard, blaming powerful Jews (see update to my post linked above) that were mindlessly repeated by people who share his antisemitism.

But now, Harvard's Israel haters are pretending that the Cornel West case proves that Harvard has a history of mistreating anti-Israel academics. And their proposed solution?

Deny any Israelis becoming Harvard fellows!

The people falsely claiming that Harvard denies academic freedom are the first ones to publicly call for Harvard to deny academic freedom.

Why would we expect anything else?

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

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Amazing how "pro-Palestinian" voices are being silenced on campus

On Monday, Human Rights Watch's Omar Shakir - a BDS advocate who was hired by that organization not in spite of but because of his rabid hate for Israel - spoke at Yale University about Israel's "apartheid."

During the course of his speech, he predictably engaged in the usual anti-Israel lies, based on the slanderous idea that Israel's non-equal treatment of non-citizen Palestinians is meant to be a system of Jewish supremacy over Arabs.

But then, while actually speaking at Yale, Shakir said the most self-contradictory thing possible:

Shakir then transitioned into a discussion addressing the issue of the academic freedom and space to speak about Palestine on American campuses, with specific reference to Harvard Kennedy School’s fellowship offer, retraction and reoffer to leading human rights advocate Kenneth Roth.

“What happened to Ken has been happening to academics who are critical of Israel and speak out for Palestinian rights, and young academics and Palestinians are facing the worst,” Shakir said. “Things are changing [and] the conversation is changing and the arc of history is bending, [but] this is happening at the very same time that the situation on the ground is getting worse and worse everyday, so we live in this dichotomy”

If the Zionists have such a stranglehold over academic freedom, how did Shakir manage to speak at Yale?

OK, maybe it is only on some campuses - like Harvard - that the Zionist overlords ensure that the campus only allows pro-Israel, anti-Arab messages to get to the students.

Oops, nope:

Join us for this coming year’s Arab Conference at Harvard, to be hosted between March 3-5, 2023 at Harvard University.

Previously known as the Harvard Arab Weekend, the Arab Conference at Harvard (ACH) is the largest pan-Arab conference in North America, bringing together over 1300 students and professionals as well as a 20,000-strong livestream audience from across the U.S. and globally to learn from leaders in a diverse array of sectors.

Strange "silencing" of pro-Palestinian voices at Harvard.

But perhaps these events are not academic events - and professors are silenced on campus as to what they are allowed to teach; that anti-Israel academics are severely limited in their "criticism of Israel."

Nope again.

The very same Omar Shakir who is telling roomfuls of students that academics who are critical of Israel are being silenced and their careers jeopardized tweeted this the very same day:

Yes, an entire course at Bard College by a well-known anti-Israel professor dedicated to spreading a message of racist Jewish evil towards Palestinians.

That instructor, Nathan Thrall, is so silenced for his views that he wrote a huge anti-Israel article for the New York Times Magazine filled with anti-Israel and pro-BDS lies.

The idea that anti-Israel opinions are silenced is a clear falsehood. But in the milieu of the "progressive" Left, victimhood is the coin of the realm, so the Israel haters and modern antisemites have to claim that they are being oppressed while at the same time bullying and shouting down any Zionist voices on campus.

The entire anti-Israel movement is predicated on lies, and they know that no lie is too absurd to be believed if it is repeated and amplified enough.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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The new insane meme that academia is anti-Palestinian

In the wake of the Ken Roth Harvard fellowship episode, the anti-Israel crowd - led by Roth himself - has been pushing the meme that academia is anti-Palestinian and that pro-Palestinian academics must worry that their viewpoints will harm their careers.

And if anything that absurd lie has accelerated since Harvard caved!

Roth doubled down on the lie that Harvard originally caved to evil Zionist forces:

Omar Shakir, the former BDS activist who is now a Human Rights Watch researcher, tweeted:

Palestine Legal said:

Is there even a shred of evidence that "pro-Palestinian" academics are being silenced?

The Middle East Scholar Barometer has serious methodological problems, but it is a decent measure of self-selecting academics who have strong opinions on the Middle East - and it shows that they are overwhelmingly anti-Israel. They support efforts to boycott Israel. 90% describe Israel even within the Green Line as "a democratic state with deep structural inequality (61%)" or "A state akin to apartheid (29%)."

Far more of them support holding academic workshops in Qatar (80%) than in Israel (48%), and the reason they opposed holding workshops in Israel was overwhelmingly "principled or ethical concerns." Meaning far more consider Israel illegitimate but hardly any say that about terrorist-supporting Qatar.

Middle East academia is strongly anti-Israel. And academia, at least in the social sciences, in general tends to share the same political opinions as the rabid anti-Israel crowd.

What Roth and Shakir and Palestine Legal are really saying is that the <1% of Middle East academics who answered the question saying that Arab citizens in Israel have the same rights as Jews is still too many for them. To them, a single pro-Israel academic is too many, and evidence of anti-Palestinian bias because a university hired them.

Here's a question that I'd love to see answered in a future survey: Ask how many academics oppose a Palestinian state that defines itself as Arab, and how many oppose an Israel that defines itself as Jewish. That will tell you everything you need to know about this fictional "Palestine exception to academic freedom."

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

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Cartoon of the Day: Academic Freedom

Based on the Ken Roth debacle, where Harvard reversed course after complaints about "academic freedom,"....

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

Former Human Rights Watch director Ken Roth was interviewed on NPR and continued his jihad of falsely accusing Harvard University of denying him a fellowship because of rich donors objecting to his "criticism of Israel."

ROTH: ...the Carr Center called me up and sheepishly had to admit that the dean had vetoed my fellowship because of my criticism of Israel....Apparently, what they objected to in my case was that I'm not partial. I'm an impartial critic of Israeli repression. And that seems to have been the stigma that the Israeli government didn't like, that its supporters didn't like. And that was why my fellowship was vetoed.

FADEL: What does this say about freedom of academic expression on campus? This is an Ivy League campus in the United States.

ROTH: This would suggest that Harvard is allowing donors to compromise intellectual independence at the university.

The original Michael Massing article in The Nation - which was itself biased and filled with baseless allegations - did not say that the Carr Center told Roth he was rejected for "criticism of Israel" but because Roth had an "'anti-Israel bias'; Roth’s tweets on Israel were of particular concern." There is a world of difference between "bias" and "criticism," bias means Roth is not impartial, as he claims he is.

But there has been not a single thread of evidence that Harvard's decision was based on donor pressure. That was completely made up in The Nation article. Roth - who clearly coordinated his anti-Harvard campaign with the writer of that article - has deliberately been pushing that narrative even though the entire theory is based on antisemitic tropes of rich Jews controlling how people could think.

At the very end of the NPR piece comes a piece of information that we had not seen before:

Kennedy School media relations director James Smith said the decision not to offer Roth a fellowship was based on an evaluation of his potential contributions to the school. Smith also said “[It is Harvard Kennedy School’s explicit and consistent policy that] we do not engage with donors or funders in our deliberations or decisions related to fellowship appointments."

(Bracketed quote fragment from this Daily Beast article.]

So Harvard's Kennedy School forcefully denies that donors are part of any decision-making. They have refuted The Nation and Roth's entire accusation - and yet this refutation is only mentioned as an afterthought, after allowing Roth to freely spread his antisemitic conspiracy theories of rich Jewish donors controlling HKS' academics.

But it turns out that even if the Kennedy School was not pro-active in getting this message out while Roth has been spouting his lies, the information about Harvard's policy has been on its website for years.

Any reporter could have looked at Harvard Kennedy School's statement on transparent engagement and funding, written in 2020. HKS explicitly says that funders do not and cannot have any influence over academic matters, including hiring:

It bears emphasis that HKS’s funders do not control the way we carry out our work. For all of our activities conducted using external funding, we protect our academic integrity and independence by maintaining full intellectual control: HKS faculty and staff make the decisions about research methodologies and policy findings, about the content of our courses, and about whom we accept into our community as students, faculty, staff, and visitors. No funder is allowed to interfere with those decisions, and all of our funders are aware of that point. We work to ensure that public communications about gifts and grants are clear that HKS is the intellectual driver of the activities.

Written policies have the force of law. The institutions that do not follow their own policies can be sued. Any major corporation or institution takes them very seriously, and Harvard clearly does based on how extensive these and other policies are.

The idea that donors pressured Harvard is complete fiction - that has been spread by media that also happens to share Roth's anti-Israel bias.

If donor pressure wasn't the reason for Harvard's decision not to hire Roth, then what was? Well, NPR quoted the reason: they did not think that he would provide a positive contribution to the school.

It is also notable that Dean Doug Elmendorf who vetoed Roth's proposed fellowship has spoken about this exact topic, about the potential downsides of inviting someone who can tarnish HKS' reputation, in a 2018 speech:

One key reason to invite visitors with a wide range of views is that a vigorous discussion of their actions and words can illuminate crucial issues in public policy and leadership, and thereby improve policy and leadership over time. Another key reason to invite visitors with a wide range of views is that the values of our community, and assessments of who is living up those values or not, are often matters of debate themselves.

At the same time, inviting visitors inevitably conveys, to at least some people, positive recognition by Harvard Kennedy School, whether we intend it or not. That positive recognition is greater for visitors who receive a particular title or honor, such as giving a named lecture or becoming a “Fellow.” We should not ignore the effects of such recognition in inviting visitors or choosing visitors to give named lectures or become Fellows. I learned this lesson the hard way. As a consequence of my learning, we are now adopting a set of standards and processes for naming Fellows, including the ideas that people proposing the appointment of a Fellow should affirm that the candidate has a professional record consistent with the values of public service to which the Kennedy School aspires, and that the dean may ask an ad hoc faculty committee to evaluate a proposed Fellow.

As part of HKS' stated policies, because of the potential of Roth to embarrass Harvard Kennedy School, Dean Elmendorf almost certainly created an ad hoc faculty committee to discuss the pros and cons of allowing Roth to become a fellow. They decided that the cons of hiring someone with a track record of lies and bias outweigh the pros.

And one does not need to prove Roth's anti-Israel bias to see that he would not have provided a positive contribution to the school. His constant lies about this Harvard episode and his baseless accusations themselves prove that Roth has no regard for the truth or fairness.

No decent school would want a vindictive liar on their staff.

Unless, of course, that person is only hired to attract rich donors to begin with.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!