Posted on 12/22/2023 5:32:39 AM PST by MtnClimber
Many Jewish students, parents, and donors are rethinking their allegiance to America’s elite universities. They think that Jewish students are not welcome there.
That message is being sent in two ways. First, these schools aren’t admitting Jewish students at the rates they once did. Harvard used to be about 20 percent Jewish; today, it’s below 9 percent. At the University of Pennsylvania, long considered one of the friendliest campuses to Jewish students, the number of observant Jews admitted has dropped by about two-thirds, from 200 in the early 2000s to about 70 today, according to Inside Higher Ed. Jewish enrollment is down across much of the Ivy League.
Second, the Jewish kids who are admitted increasingly feel uncomfortable on campus. In a now-infamous congressional hearing, the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT struggled to say definitively whether calls for genocide violated their campus codes of conduct. Schools committed to “safe spaces” are strangely silent about anti-Semitism, and in some cases seem implicitly supportive of acts of intimidation and violent protest.
In response, some top Jewish students are forswearing their dreams of Columbia or Yale and applying elsewhere. Some prominent Jewish donors have publicly condemned the schools’ double standards and begun pulling funding, or they have threatened to do so. The Jewish community had previously been downright devoted to America’s elite educational institutions. These slow, even belated, steps show that the long-honed Jewish knack for sensing danger finally has kicked in.
The current situation facing some Jewish students on college campuses, and the Jewish reaction to these trends, evokes a disturbing historical parallel. Nations that have antagonized Jews, and have seen Jews flee in response, often were experiencing a deeper rot and corruption. History is littered with nations, from Imperial Spain to Czarist and then Soviet Russia to Nazi Germany, whose underlying problems were worsened by government-sponsored scapegoating and driving away of Jews. Persecution of the Jews did not always cause those nations’ decline, but it was a signal that it was coming.
A diseased society and the loss of Jews are twin tragedies. Closed societies lose Jews’ economic vitality and other contributions. In Canada’s Quebec Province, for example, internal strife in the 1970s and 1980s accompanied the rise of nationalistic and anti-Semitic political movements. This led to a large migration of Jews from Montreal to the friendlier and more Anglophilic Toronto. The result: Montreal lost its status as Canada’s largest and most important city, and was supplanted by Toronto, which has a thriving Jewish community quadruple the size of Montreal’s.
We may be seeing something similar at elite American universities. Their monolithic ideological climate is anathema to the Jewish approach to things. Jews bring with them an intellectual diversity and dynamism born of a perennially outsider perspective that recognizes and welcomes new ideas and challenges groupthink. In this way, they exemplify an essential part of the Judeo-Christian tradition: the encouragement of inquiry, respectful dialogue, and learning.
For America especially, this Jewish tradition of open inquiry is in keeping with the traditions of pluralism and free association that have enabled us to look past ancient grudges and blood feuds and form new attachments. As Bari Weiss has written, in Europe, Protestants and Catholics killed each other. In America, they have brunch.
Ironically, it is this very concept of pluralism that is under attack at universities—especially at those considered the most prestigious. This anti-pluralism aims to close off debate. And this same anti-intellectualism is behind the effort to block Jewish admissions and trying to mute and intimidate those who do make it.
It’s no coincidence that colleges and universities are rejecting their liberal foundations at the same time that hostility to Jews rises. By questioning everything and accepting that not all questions have answers, Judaism offers a bracing contrast—even a dangerous counter—to today’s cancel culture. Those who have no questions, and purport to have all the answers, are the ones targeting Jews and seeking to drive them away.
The most valuable asset of America’s most renowned universities is their reputation. As long as they have that, students will scramble to get in. At some point, though, their stultifying climates will endanger their futures. If Jewish students desert the universities because of increasingly hostile campus atmospheres, it would just be another indication that elite universities are acting as parties to their own destruction.
I would argue that the culture at universities and even large corporations is more hostile to conservatives than to Jews.
The stated goal of the culture war is the destruction of western civilization.
The revolutionaries have largely won.
In the interest of equity, progressive universities should limit the number of Jewish professors to their percentage of the general population. That’s such a good idea that it should be applied to all branches of the federal government, including the DOJ and the Judicial Branch. Are they committed to equity or not?
“today, it’s below 9 percent”
Shocking. As they’re only 2% of the US population, it’s hardly concerning that they went from 20% of Hah-Vahd down to 9%. They’re still “over-represented” by a factor of 4. Recall that the very concept of “under representation” was concocted by the Jewish overseer of the first iteration of the EEOC, one Al Blumrosen. He basically invented and implemented racial and ethnic quotas after being explicitly told that it wasn’t Constitutional.
In two, Obama and Ayers.
Ridiculous 80% of my fellow jews are liberals!
When the people running the universities are radicals committed to an ideologic pyramid of lies, the search for truth gives way to the enforcement of a party line. And the party line is a lie. At some level, the elites at such universities know this. They cannot tolerate open inquiry and free discussion because they know the lies cannot survive the truth tellers. What has to be explained — and relentlessly critiqued — are the reasons for the commitment to the lies. And the answer to that is simple. The lies are a mask for the will to power, and the contempt for dissenting views is rooted in deep insecurity. Contemporary leftist radicalism is rooted in hatred, resentment, and the projection of a sublimated inferiority complex.
Leftist academics, of course, will claim to disagree with all of this. But they will not tolerate dissent and open debate.
Jews are about 2% of the population so being 9% of Harvard is pretty good. If they are concerned about unqualified minorities getting into the school that’s more the fault of liberal Anti-White policies which a large percentage of Jews support.
“Shocking. As they’re only 2% of the US population,”
That is why they are grouped together with the whites. The non-white Jews are really discriminated against. If we would classify Jews as black, we would be a lot more balanced from a DEI perspective.
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The communists that now control the uninversities used the Jews as useful idiots. They are no longer needed, so now they will be purged. Same thing happened when the reds took over Russia.
For America especially, this Jewish tradition of open inquiry is in keeping with the traditions of pluralism and free association that have enabled us to look past ancient grudges and blood feuds and form new attachments. As Bari Weiss has written, in Europe, Protestants and Catholics killed each other. In America, they have brunch.
While this is THE received wisdom about Jewish identity, it is 100% wrong.
There was no such thing as a liberal, "free-thinking" Jew prior to Spinoza (unless one counts heretics). Exile, powerlessness, and a dependency on absolute secularism have absolutely nothing to do with core Jewish identity. The quintessential norm of Judaism remains the ancient Jewish Theocratic state, which had no "bill of rights" or "freedom of religion." In fact, it was every bit as intolerant as islam.
The Torah isn't primitive nonsense. It was written in its entirety by G-d. Moses was a mere stenographer who took the dictation letter by letter. It is a foundational belief of actual Judaism not only that this state will be restored (this time permanently), but that the entire world will reject their false "gxds" and acknowledge HaShem alone.
It is unfortunate that in the western world Jewishness has been reduced to opposition to chrstian "theocracy" and to "free thought." Most Charedim would no more attend a secular university than they would watch television.
I urge FReepers to familiarize themselves with such people as Rabbi Yosef Mizrachi and Rabbi Yaron Re'uven. They're on Youtube, and maybe enough people following them will finally enable them to understand actual Judaism for the first time.
They are Communist indoctrination centers where you are ruled by the iron Marxist fist.
All of them should be investigated and the Communists removed before they are aloud to reopen
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