The extreme anti-Semitism that has become the cultural norm at elite American universities has somehow caught many on the left by surprise. It shouldn’t have.
Following the murder and kidnapping spree by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel, normal people felt revulsion and anger. But on elite college campuses, there was euphoria about Hamas’ brutality and open support for anti-Jewish terror. Jews on campus even became targets for harassment, with a general acquiescence from campus administrators who consider a mob calling for the murder of Jews to be just a youthful form of self-expression.
If universities had pretended to be colorblind places that were intolerant of ethnic hatred and racial discrimination, the Jew-hatred would be shocking. But elite universities actively promote racial discrimination and ethnic hatred, and have for quite a while. So once it was established that hatred and discrimination that targets certain ethnic groups is morally appropriate, there cannot be shock that any ethnicity might become the target.
It’s not my intent to pick on Megan McArdle, but she is representative of the establishment political/media culture that has a close relationship with prestige universities. When talking to a leftie friend who was shocked to find out how radical universities had become with their celebration of Hamas’ terror, Ms. McArdle responded, “I’ve spent the better part of my career complaining about academia’s leftward drift, and I was also shocked!”
When the Supreme Court ruled this past summer that race-conscious admissions were unconstitutional, and that schools could no longer refuse admittance to qualified Asian and white applicants simply because of their race, Columbia University’s President spoke for much of academia when he said, “It feels tragic.”
Those who feel it is “tragic” that they cannot proudly and openly discriminate against Asians cannot be expected to offer much intellectual opposition to Jew-hatred on their campuses.
But are colleges really promoting hatred of whites? Yes they are. Enthusiastically. From coast to coast. There are numerous examples, but here is just one, “The Problem of Whiteness,” which has been taught at many elite universities for years, including the University of Chicago and Wisconsin-Madison. (“University stands by ‘Problem of Whiteness’ course” [CNN – 12/23/2016])
The course is as nasty and hateful as it sounds.
“The Problem of Whiteness is as natural as breathing air, some say” [Digital Journal – 7/03/2023]
By 2004, according to The Washington Post, at least 30 institutions in the United States, including Princeton University and the University of California at Los Angeles, among others, offered courses in whiteness studies.
You probably won’t be shocked to learn that “White studies” don’t exactly celebrate the subject in the way that “Black studies” or “Women’s studies” do.
So what is so different about White studies, you may ask? Social critic David Horowitz told The Washington Post in 2013, “Black studies celebrates blackness, Chicano studies celebrates Chicanos, women’s studies celebrates women and white studies attacks white people as evil.”
And of course, the simple act of being white makes one a white supremacist. That is being taught on our campuses.
Lee Bebout of Arizona State University, says, “White supremacy makes it so that white people can’t see the world they have created. It’s a culture so pervasive that living in it, subscribing to it, and upholding it feel as natural to most Americans as breathing air.”
Racial hatred has been legitimized on campus for quite some time, but once legitimized, it’s hard to keep it isolated and contained against the intended target.
Color-Blindness Perpetuates Structural Racism [Forbes – 9/28/2022]
Researchers of the study pointed to the fact that color-blind approaches are also harmful. Furthermore, the willful avoidance of appreciating diversity and not looking at racial disparities only reinforces white comfort, power, and privilege…
I’ll close with some thoughts from Bobby Burack at Outkick, who points out that as abhorrent as the hatred is on American college campuses, it is good that it is out in the open for all to see.
“Ivy League Is Paving The Road to Hell” [Bobby Burack – Outkick – 10/19/2023]
Economist Thomas Sowell once said, “The road to hell is paved with Ivy League degrees.” I believe him. I’ve always believed that. Now, the rest of the country might believe him too.
A sense of evil has disseminated across elite campuses since October 7, the day Hamas organized a coordinated offensive on southern Israel by massacring 260 civilians at a music festival.
Hamas presented us with the worst of humanity — the slaughtering of the innocent, the abduction of women, and the beheading of babies. Yet various student bodies responded to the acts of terrorism by supporting them.
Though abhorrent to see elite students back Hamas, there’s a profound silver lining in their pro-terrorist activism: they’ve unwittingly unmasked themselves.
Indeed, the institutional racial hatred at elite universities has been fully unmasked, but it is an evil that has been there for a long time.
[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]