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American Thinker
American Thinker
20 Jan 2024
Andrea Widburg


NextImg:Harvard University’s antisemitism taskforce appointee is (wait for it) an antisemite

Ever since October 7, the antisemitism that’s long been festering beneath the surface at Harvard University has been on plain view. Whether it was the anti-Jewish genocidal chants from pro-Hamas protestors or Claudine Gay’s insistence that the “context” behind those chants was insufficient to trigger Harvard’s speech codes, Harvard was exposed as a hotbed of virulent antisemitism. In the latest news out of Harvard, it turns out that an appointee to Harvard’s antisemitism task force is…yes, an antisemite.

Just yesterday, Harvard’s interim president proudly announced the formation of a “Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism.” Just to keep things equitable, though, he also created one dedicated to “combating Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias.”

I can help just a little bit with the latter issue. Islamophobia arises because at least 10% of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims actively subscribe to Sharia law, which explicitly calls for the forced conversion or execution of non-Muslims. For those who resist but are not executed, slavery (sexual or otherwise) and a complete lack of rights (property, financial, tax, etc.) are their mandated fates. Anti-Arab bias arises because Arab-majority countries are overwhelmingly Muslim, so much so that other faiths are banned or deeply oppressed.

Revised Harvard shield by Andrea Widburg

According to the FBI, in 2022, long before October 7 caused the festering pustule of antisemitism in America to explode, Jews were far and away the most likely religious group to be the victims of religiously motivated hate crimes, with 3,424 reported instances. In the same year, there were 181 anti-Muslim hate crimes and 97 anti-Arab crimes reported.

I hope that this information helps.

But back to Harvard’s brave new task force. According to Garber, both groups have as their tasks:

  • examining recent history and current manifestations of bias;
  • identifying the root causes of and contributing factors to bias-based behaviors on campus;
  • evaluating evidence regarding the characteristics and frequency of these behaviors; and
  • recommending approaches to combat bias and to mitigate its impact on campus.

I anticipate a report coming down the pipeline sometime in the next decade or so.

The co-chair of the task force on antisemitism is Derek Penslar, William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. As a Professor of Jewish History, you might think that Penslar has an affinity for all things Jewish. You’d think wrong, though. You see, first and foremost, before being Jewish, Penslar is a leftist—and leftists, whether Jewish or not, hate Israel.

Leftist hatred for Israel has a lot of sources, with the following being my top seven:

Knowing that Penslar is a leftist before he is a Jew explains what the Free Beacon discovered when it took a little dive into Penslar’s past:

Harvard University’s newest appointee to its anti-Semitism task force has called Israel an “apartheid regime” and defended disgraced former Harvard president Claudine Gay amid calls that she be fired for her failure to condemn anti-Semitic protesters at the school.

[snip]

Penslar, who organized other Harvard faculty members to defend Gay, may not be the best fit for the task force. While he has criticized anti-Israel initiatives like the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, Penslar has made other claims about the Jewish state that anti-Semites have used to call for the annihilation of Israel.

In August, he signed an open letter alongside hundreds of academics that called Israel “a regime of apartheid.”

“There cannot be democracy for Jews in Israel as long as Palestinians live under a regime of apartheid,” the letter states.

The letter asserts that American Jews “have paid insufficient attention to the elephant in the room: Israel’s long-standing occupation that, we repeat, has yielded a regime of apartheid.”

The signatories asserted that Israel has in recent years “grown more right-wing and come under the spell of the current government’s messianic, homophobic, and misogynistic agenda.” The letter calls on American leaders to “restrict American military aid” from being used in “the Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

Here is more about Penslar:

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Interestingly, exactly 56 years and 20 days before the October 7 attack on Israel, Martin Luther King was in Boston, where he had dinner with Harvard students. Because leftists have always hated Zionism, those present at the dinner criticized Israel’s fight in the Six-Day War. King responded vehemently. “Don’t talk like that,” he said. “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism.”

Penslar can study Jewish history as much as he likes, and I'll bet that he fasts on Yom Kippur and has a politically correct Passover seder. Nevertheless, if he’s going to castigate Israel for being evil, an attack he does not level at any other similarly situated nations, Martin Luther King was correct: Penslar is an antisemite, and it’s disgraceful that he occupies a place of prominence on a task force ostensibly intended to address Harvard’s putrid antisemitism.