Posted on 07/28/2025 8:53:13 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
NEW YORK — For years, Marianne Hirsch, a prominent genocide scholar at Columbia University, has used Hannah Arendt’s book about the trial of a Nazi war criminal, “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil,” to spark discussion among her students about the Holocaust and its lingering traumas.
But after Columbia’s recent adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, which casts certain criticism of Israel as hate speech, Hirsch fears she may face official sanction for even mentioning the landmark text by Arendt, a philosopher who criticized Israel’s founding.
For the first time since she started teaching five decades ago, Hirsch, the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, is now thinking of leaving the classroom altogether.
“A university that treats criticism of Israel as antisemitic and threatens sanctions for those who disobey is no longer a place of open inquiry,” she told the Associated Press. “I just don’t see how I can teach about genocide in that environment.”
Hirsch is not alone. At universities across the country, academics have raised alarm about growing efforts to define antisemitism on terms pushed by the Trump administration, often under the threat of federal funding cuts.
Promoted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the definition lists 11 examples of antisemitic conduct, including applying “double standards” to Israel, comparing the country’s policies to Nazism or describing its existence as “a racist endeavor.”
Ahead of a $220-million settlement with the Trump administration announced Wednesday, Columbia agreed to incorporate the IHRA definition and its examples into its disciplinary process. It has been endorsed in some form by Harvard, Yale and dozens of other universities.
While supporters say the semantic shift is necessary to combat evolving forms of Jewish hate, civil liberties groups warn it will further suppress pro-Palestinian speech already under attack by President Trump and...
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I do not like the term “anti-semites”, as Arabs and Abyssinians are also semite. Not all Jews are semites.
Why not use the term anti-Jew? It is more accurate.
It doesn't sound as sinister as "anti-semite."
Gee Wally, everybody knows you shouldn’t say anything about Israel no matter what they do. Run a spy brothel with 14 year old girls, spy on their friend/benefactor, treat visiting Christians like crap, shoot up the USS liberty etc.
If you don’t think they are our greatest ally of all time, you’re clearly a Jew hater.
How about people stop engaging in lying by exaggeration?
No one is being told they cannot critize Israel. However engaging in violent terroristic fashion on campus toward Jewish students IS no longer going to be tolerated
So as usual the Alt Left is attempting to deflect from real issues by making up a fake reality
This article is such garbage. If she wants to leave Columbia, she should do so. I could not care less. But I bet she won’t . She might have to get a real job then.
Yes. And some of them are here.
Jew hater should cover it. After all, that is at the heart of antisemitism.
How does one become a “genocide scholar”?
“How does one become a “genocide scholar”?”
and more importantly, what is the degree MAJOR taught by a “genocide scholar”, and what does said degree cost to obtain over a period of four years, AND what kind of job does such a degree holder qualify for?
What business is it of an American university to try to run foreign policy by sponsoring terrorism against individuals enrolled there?
Martin Luther wrote diatribes against Jews when they didn’t get swayed by his preaching and all get converted to Protestantism.
But he used the same words against Catholics, against Zwingli and against peasants.
And he liked the people of Jewish origin who followed him.
That was a different kind of anti semitism compared to the Nutzis which was neo darwinian, racial
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