Once again about antisemitism on university campuses…
Here’s an interview with Jewish American writer Dara Horn. As a Harvard graduate, she was called to serve on the antisemitism advisory group to the former president of Harvard.
She spoke about failure of this committee to make any impact (not surprising as this is the same university president which proved to be uncapable to answer question whether call to genocide of Jews violates Harvard rules of bullying and harassment).
“I feel like the process started with there, there was a sincere desire to address this issue. Like I don't think, you know, that we were being played or something like that. What I did see was that they went into this with a lot of goodwill, but that's because they thought that this was a problem that they could address without pissing anyone off… They thought there was some way that they could kind of went their way through this or something, and it just became blindingly obvious that that was not possible, and it also became blindingly obvious that they were not treating this the way they treated other forms of bigotry on campus.”
But the most important part was when she explained what precisely she learned about situation from Jewish students:
“As soon as my name became public that I was on this committee... It was an avalanche of Jewish students asking for help. And what to me was the most telling about it was that, you know, I think the media depicted this as like, it's all about, you know, these protests, right? And it's this question about, you know, free speech and you know, what are the limits of free speech?
Not a single Jewish student came to me saying that they wanted to shut down free speech. Not a single student came to me saying, you know, oh, I don't like what the slogan they're using at this protest.
The students who were coming to us, you know, what they were saying:
· I don't like people vandalizing my dorm room.
· I don't like people spitting on my face while I'm walking across campus.
· I don't like being chased through the law school.
· I don't like being followed around campus by someone yelling at me with a megaphone.
· I don't like being thrown out of class by my professor for being Israeli.
· I don't eat in the dining halls anymore because there are people waiting for me in the dining hall. They wait outside my dorm room, they're waiting for me in the dining hall.
And then it's like, ‘haven't you reported this?’ And they're like:
The person that I would've reported it to was the person who's waiting for me in the dining hall.
I mean, this is harassment. I mean, this is not unlike criminal harassment in a lot of cases. Title VI violations…
Like it was, you know, oh, is this like a big media bruhaha? And it's like interesting questions about the one, it's a free speech. I'm like, not a single Jewish student care about. It was so framed by, by the media and everyone it feels like. Under the focus was so much put on these demonstrations and not on the. Day-to-day experience of these students”
She also spoke about another taskforce which tried to check what’s taught in Harvard about Jews and Israel:
“I also was involved with this Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance that formed very quickly after October 7th. And there was a group of people in that, uh, in that alumni group that did an audit of everything Harvard has been teaching. About Jews and Israel in recent years, and when you look at that audit, it's like there's a much deeper problem here. This… is not about like, you know, there's some students who are, having fun with their activism or whatever it, they're teaching this stuff. Yeah, yeah. They're teaching it. That's not a problem that I think you can solve through legislation. I think that that's a, a deeper cultural challenge.”
