Cary Nelson: Israel on Campus, Post-Truth
In the post-truth world, Hamas apparently no longer exists. Thousands of rockets and incendiary balloons no longer fall on Israeli towns and cities, killing people in their apartments, obliterating vehicles, and setting fields ablaze.
According to numerous academic departments here and abroad, Israel is no longer under assault. In the post-truth world, Israel and its military have instead become irrational opponents of all that is just and good, carrying out raids on Hamas strongholds in Gaza without cause or justification.
No wonder those academic departments have substituted self-congratulatory virtue signaling for academic freedom and open debate.
In May of this year, immediately after the most recent war between Hamas and Israel ended, over 100 academic departments representing their colleges and universities, for the first time in history broke with the established academic principle of departmental and university political neutrality, issued statements condemning Israel, and, in effect, joined the BDS movement.
Many women’s studies programs started the campaign, but some ethnic studies, history, and other departments joined it. Even during the Vietnam War, when by the 1970s most professors opposed the war, their departments stayed out of politics. By the mid-1970s, some voluntary professional associations took an anti-war stand — but not, as far as I can determine, university departments. Most departmental and academic statements this spring did not even mention Hamas.
The most influential guiding principle is clear: individual faculty, students, and staff are free to express and promote their political views. They can create voluntary groups to do so collectively. But official university units must not do so. Otherwise, all those affiliated with a department would suffer the coercive effect of anti-Zionist or other political groupthink.
Bari Weiss: NYT Passed on Column About 2019 Antisemitic Killings Because Attackers ‘Weren’t White Supremacists Carrying Tiki Torches’
In an interview Sunday, journalist and former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss charged the paper with having once turned down a column about a series of antisemitic attacks because the perpetrators “weren’t white supremacists.”The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special: Bari Weiss
Weiss, who resigned from the Times in July 2020, told conservative commentator Ben Shapiro that she had drafted a column in the wake of two deadly attacks on Jews in late 2019, including a mass shooting at a Jersey City, NJ kosher grocery store and a stabbing at the home of a Monsey, NY rabbi during Hanukkah.
“I wrote a piece at the time … called ‘America’s Bloody Hanukkah,’ or ‘America’s Bloody Pogrom,'” she told Shapiro. “I thought it was really good column, it was really my subject. I’d written a book called “How to Fight Antisemitism;” I was Bat Mitzvah’d at the synagogue in Pittsburgh, Tree of Life, where the most lethal attack against American Jews in all of American history was carried out. I have some skin in the game, and I know a lot about this subject.”
“And I was basically called into my editor’s office and was told, ‘we can’t really run this.’ And the reason, at the end of the day why we couldn’t really run it, is that the people that were carrying out the attacks weren’t white supremacists carrying tiki torches,” Weiss continued, referring to the notorious 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville.
The former opinion section editor, who now runs a newsletter on the Substack platform, resigned from the Times in July 2020, publishing an open letter critical of the paper.
After working years in the legacy media, Bari Weiss is now stepping away from the biggest news outlets in the country, and is in the midst of crafting her own media property. She is producing with the freedom to investigate and pursue stories she simply didn’t have before and features unique conversations and stories that reflect the most fundamental issues in the country.
Bari wrote about and popularized the Intellectual Dark Web at the New York Times back in 2018 and finally joins us in this episode to discuss why she’s been avoiding joining my show these past 3 years. Plus, we will talk about her experience being attacked across the internet and media, as well as some ideas that may help preserve the country’s political middle.
1) NHJ fell for a completely fake quote. @bariweiss said no such thing. Not that NHJ is known for caring about facts or the truth.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) October 19, 2021
2) Incredible projection. pic.twitter.com/StEwr2gbHJ
Israel Advocacy Movement: The truth about 'No Tech For Apartheid' - #NoTechForApartheid
How Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change tried to convince Amazon and Google to boycott Israel with the #NoTechForApartheid campaign
Here’s the timeline of events for the pre-meditated “No Tech For Apartheid” campaign against Project Nimbus organized by BDS groups Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower, who tried to portray it as “concerned employees” of Google and Amazon. pic.twitter.com/NxSJcFzofV
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 18, 2021