Claudine Gay and the other Ivy League super-elites

by philg

To show the world’s Jew-haters just how wrong they are about rich Wall Street Jewish speculators controlling everything from behind the scenes, some rich Wall Street Jewish speculators have forced out the president of University of Pennsylvania. “UPenn President Liz Magill has resigned, but antisemitism remains a problem on college campuses” (CNN):

Last week, Magill and her counterparts from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were called to testify in a hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

Magill, along with Claudine Gay of Harvard University and Sally Kornbluth of MIT, gave widely criticized testimony, in which they failed to condemn calls for the genocide of Jews as explicitly against campus harassment and bullying codes.

Unable to imagine a job more secure than university bureaucrat, I was stunned by this development. I’m also dismayed because I don’t think that this will change anyone’s mind and, I guess, I’m a free-speech absolutist. If Liz Magill had straight-up told the politicians “I hate Jews, hope that more of them are killed, and hope that the Islamic Resistance Movement (‘Hamas’) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad achieve their long-sought river to the sea liberation even if they have to kill every Jew in Israel” I wouldn’t call for her resignation.

[Note that in the consequence-free world of non-profit orgs, “resigned” means “will collect a paycheck for rest of life”. Magill will be a tenured professor at the Penn Law school until she decides that she would rather get a pension check than a paycheck. She could be older than Joe Biden by the time she finally stops working at the university from which she reportedly “resigned”.]

Speaking of changing minds, here’s a November 9, 2023 email from President Claudine Gay (the African-American Studies expert elevated in 2022 to the top job so that she can direct Harvard’s crucial efforts to save humanity from climate change, SARS-CoV-2, and other scientific/tech-related hazards) to everyone even slightly affiliated with Harvard:

The subject line was “Combating Antisemitism”, but the body of the letter reminds us that “Islamophobia” is the real problem. That’s not the best part, however:

We will implement a robust program of education and training for students, faculty, and staff on antisemitism broadly and at Harvard specifically. As part of this program, we will provide education about the roots of certain rhetoric that has been heard on our campus in recent weeks, and its impact on Jewish members of our community, to help us all better recognize antisemitism in daily life and interrupt its harmful influence.

What I wrote to a Harvard professor friend at the time:

Imagine thinking that a Muslim student or staff member, outraged over what Britain and the UN did in 1947 and over what Israel has done every year from 1948 onward will be persuaded to see the Jew-loving light by some pabulum that Harvard spoons out. Egos big enough to assert that Israel doesn’t need nuclear weapons for its security because as soon as someone from Harvard with a giant brain speaks, all of the previously hostile Arabs and Iranians will say “Oh, the Nakba was actually a good thing.”

I have more respect for this Palestinian woman who says she is willing to sacrifice her 17 kids and 65 grandchildren to achieve Hamas’s goals.

(I disagree with the Palestinian grandmother’s goal, but at least she is not deluded about what is achievable as President Gay is.)

Is it unfair to hold college bureaucrats responsible for what students and staff say on campus? Elite American universities have controlled speech so tightly since 2016 that any statement heard on campus can be considered officially approved speech. Bureaucrats suppressed criticism of BLM, mask orders and school closures, forced vaccination. rainbow flag worship, etc. If they don’t suppress criticism of Jews and/or Israel then they actually are effectively endorsing it despite their born-again conversion to the Church of the First Amendment. Despite swimming in tax dollars and tax subsidies, private universities aren’t bound by the Bill of Rights. State universities, on the other hand, are subject to limits on what their DEI squads can suppress. You might hear something upsetting on the campus of University of Texas, but you don’t have to suffer with the knowledge that the upsetting idea was officially approved by the administration.

Loosely, related, “One Law Firm Prepared Both Penn and Harvard for Hearing on Antisemitism” (NYT) shows how out of touch American elites are with the peasantry:

Two of the school presidents, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of Penn, prepared separately for the congressional testimony with teams from WilmerHale, according to two people familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified because the preparation process is confidential.

WilmerHale also had a meeting with M.I.T.’s president, Sally Kornbluth, one of the people said.

Lawyers for WilmerHale sat in the front row at the hearing on Tuesday. They included Alyssa DaCunha, who leads the firm’s congressional investigations and crisis management practices, and Felicia Ellsworth, the vice chair of the firm’s litigation and controversy department.

If these administrators had $100,000 of prep from an elite law firm, how could one (so far) have lost her job?

Let’s look at the WilmerHale web site:

We’re proud of how these efforts were reflected in our 2022 summer associate class: 60% women, 37% students of color and 14% LGBTQ. Our new hires are invited to join our affinity groups as soon as they arrive. We have five active affinity groups: Asian American Affinity Group, Black/African American Affinity Group, Latino Affinity Group, LGBTQ Affinity Group and Middle Eastern Affinity Group.

We support Practice Pro’s 1L Diversity Scholar Program, which provides coaching, training and recruiting opportunities for law students from underrepresented backgrounds.

They proudly trumpet their sorting of Americans by skin color, gender ID, 2SLGBTQQIA+ lifestyle, etc. They disclose their practice of discriminating against white males (they have “recruiting opportunities for law students from underrepresented backgrounds”; i.e., white males cannot apply to these opportunities). Harvard, Penn, MIT, and WilmerHale are all so isolated from the peasants that they are unaware that anyone might oppose this kind of sorting. The same web page also proudly describes the firm’s suppression of thoughtcrime:

We support professional development and inclusion through… internal workshops that educate lawyers and staff about implicit bias, allyship and other topics, giving attendees the tools to interrogate their own assumptions and behavior

In other words, they teach employees that it is unacceptable to say anything critical of DEI.

Should we blame the university presidents and fire them? I blame the rich Jews instead! If they love Israel so much that they don’t want daily “river to the sea” demonstrations on campus, they should have been donating to universities in Israel where the money would actually make a difference (Israeli schools don’t have $50 billion in the bank, as Harvard does). If they don’t like officially approved hate speech they should have been donating to state universities here that are bound by the First Amendment and can’t approve any speech (a donation to a state university would also make a bigger difference than if given to an Ivy League school). On a broader basis, progressive Jews can also be considered responsible for the current political and social situation in the U.S. These folks worked hard starting in 1965 to fill the U.S. with Muslim immigrants, to increase the voting participation rates of young Americans and Americans of color, and to get Muslim women and women of color into Congress. Now it seems that these are precisely the groups that support the Palestinians against Israel. “Half of adults in new poll support Israel’s action in Gaza, 45 percent disapprove” (The Hill, November 30, 2023):

White adults were also more likely to back Israel’s moves compared to Americans of color, the poll found; 61 percent of white adults said they supported Israel’s response, while just 30 percent of people of color said the same.

Men were also more likely to voice their support for Israel than women, with 59 percent of men backing Israel in the war, compared to 44 percent of women. Thirty-seven percent of men and 52 percent of women said they disapproved of Israel’s military actions.

Sixty-four percent of adults aged 18-34 said they disapproved of Israel’s decisions in Gaza. Half of those aged 35-54, and 63 percent of those 55 and older, said they approved.

Progressive Jews who want to see Israel survive as a nation are hoist with their own petard. They’ve successfully transformed American society via immigration and American politics and now they want to suppress the manifestations of these transformations. I don’t see the point, though. A Jew-hater who has been temporarily silenced will still be a Jew-hater and, if present immigration and political trends continue, will be able to speak and act on that Jew-hatred soon enough.

The current progressive Jewish theory seems to be that Harvard, et al., are molding a Jew-hating society. What if it is progressives who created a Jew-hating younger generation and Harvard merely reflects a transformation that has already occurred (see the poll results above for the 18-34-year-olds). Universities cater to their audience and today’s audience is very different than the 1970s and 1980s audiences of which the angry donors were a part. (See, for example, “Majority of Americans 18-24 think Israel should ‘be ended and given to Hamas’” (New York Post, December 16, 2023): “Just 4% of Americans 65 and over said they felt Israel should be ended.”)

Related:

  • “The Vanishing: The erasure of Jews from American life” (Tablet, February 2023): just 4% of elite American academics under 30 are Jewish (compared to 21% of boomers). … Jews now number just 7% of Ivy League students, compared to 10% during the height of the antisemitic quotas … “The university has decided that DEI is the overarching principle of admissions,” one Hillel director told me. “There’s a general consensus that it’s more difficult for Jewish students to get into top tier schools.” … In New York—the seat of American Jewish political power—there are almost no Jews left in power. A decade ago the city had five Jewish congressmen, a Jewish mayor, two Jewish borough presidents, and 14 Jewish City Council members. Today just two congressmen and a single borough president remain.
  • White men correctly perceive American Jews as their enemies? (2019, noting the efforts that Jewish Democrats had made to transform society)

32 thoughts on “Claudine Gay and the other Ivy League super-elites”

  1. Well, “18-34% olds” are not those who are kicking out Jews from elite academia. Those who graduated in “1970s and 1980s” are. Harvard President did not resign because she has more money to spend on establishing Jew – hatred in the USA. Harvard endowment is more than twice of UPenn endowment which is backed by noted deep-pocketed Jeffrey Epstein’s friend Bill Gates

  3. I am no lefty or regressive “progressive”, but I think that this blog propagates antisemitic canard that Jews “erased themselves”, blaming entire ethnic group for some political preferences, asserting that they purposefully replacing someone, while ignoring and minimizing 8 consecutive Democrat and Republican administrations policies with at most several Jews between al of them at upper echelons of the administrations, fewer at the beginning when it mattered. Thus Philip and many of the commenters here cover – up and promote anti-Jewish actions by blaming them on the victims. Until mid – 1990th Jewish politicians were blue collar Democrats echoing anti-immigration preferences of their inner city working class, for example now Sen. then congressmen Schumer, unlike actively pro-immigration non-Jewish politicians, such as late Sen Ted Kennedy. The only missing peace is that Philip does not touch is sad low birth rate for multi-generational Americans. I am sure that Philip will fault Jews there too.
    Personally I think that Philip is afraid of God moral laws and thus subconsciously faulting those who are credited with bringing God moral law into this world, not that much different from fears of regressive “progressives”.

    • It is a confused piece of rhetoric that would require more effort than justified to disaggregate the tangled ideas. Here and elsewhere, Phil does not seem capable of constructing a tight argument, offering a thesis, presenting persuasive evidence supporting the thesis, and then a conclusion. As usual, you have unfocused lengthy quotations, irrelevant digressions, unpersuasive hyperbole. He is better with numerical concepts than words.

    • Here’s a Jewish newspaper saying that violating the U.S. Constitution in order to discriminate by skin color is something Jews are required to do:

      https://forward.com/culture/552637/why-supreme-court-decision-on-affirmative-action-matters-to-jews/

      It links to

      https://rac.org/jewish-values-and-affirmative-action

      So these Jews worked to ensure that people who are statistically hostile to Jews would be advanced into positions of power far beyond where a meritocracy would have gotten them.

    • Philip, you are referring to re-branded Yiddish – language Socialist newspaper “forverts”, now in English, because socialists are traditionally not good with languages. Socialist. It could potentially shape USA policy, if Bernie Sanders spoke Yiddish and were not married to what looks a WASP college president and if he could be elected to US presidency. As usually, you report from alternative reality. Or are all American Jews guilty that there is socialist Jewish newspaper? Are all non-Jewish Americans guilty because there is anti-Semitic Communist Party USA, which presumably has newspapers too?

    • Separately, I hope that I didn’t say that Jews are solely responsible for the massive changes in U.S. population, laws, and sentiment compared to 1960. The biggest changes were made by Lyndon Johnson, the author of our modern immigration regime and also of our modern welfare state. The majority of American Jews have been reliable Democrats and often progressive Democrats and, therefore, have accelerated these transformations that were obviously harmful to white working class men and that seem to be on track to prove catastrophic for Jews in Israel (maybe Israel can hang on after AOC and Rashida Tlaib enter the White House, but they’ll have to do it without any US assistance).

    • perplexed: The purported “socialists” at Forward use https://rac.org/jewish-values-and-affirmative-action as their source. This is some big group of Reform temples, no? So I think that they represent the mainstream for Jewish Democrats (who either don’t go to synagogue at all or go to a Reform synagogue occasionally). The idea that Judaism requires discrimination by skin color is not a “socialist” belief, therefore, but at least a Reform belief.

    • Philip, and what did you find controversial at https://rac.org/jewish-values-and-affirmative-action ? How פֿאָרווערטס [Forverts for socialists and those without google translate access] can base racial discrimination on this? I, mostly conservative or classical liberal with libertarian tendencies, agree with it. From Reform link that you submitted as guilty evidence:
      “the Reform Movement is dedicated to those policies that will create justice for all people”, “all of God’s children are “created in the image of God” (Genesis 1:27)”
      “For just as each person’s face is different from another, so is each person’s mind different from any other mind.”
      All of those objectionable? I see not even mention of “social” “justice”, just real justice. As original perplexed to whom Maimonides wrote, let me give me directly from Hebrew Bible that Reform PC folks omit: “If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand them over to their master. Let them live among you wherever they like and in whatever town they choose. Do not oppress them.” Deuteronomy 23:15-16 Judaeo-Christian tradition, sorry not sorry for that.

      Maybe you will like this version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuZ6cVRTKdQ

    • There’s nothing controversial on the Reform Jews’ web page. It is just that they support affirmative action, a form of race discrimination that is very popular among Democrats and that has been held mostly unconstitutional by the current Supreme Court. Aside from being bad if you don’t like race discrimination, affirmative action as applied in the U.S. is bad for Jews because the people advanced via affirmative action are the ones most likely to have anti-Jewish/anti-Israel attitudes.

    • Not particularly supporter of affirmative action when defined as forever entrenched racial preferences in college admission, is this is the one you referring to? Did not realize what header meant from the content. But somehow in its first 50 years affirmative action did not mean rabid antisemitism between 1960th and 2010th, unlike now. And there were no lowering education standards, in my experience. But I always was in STEM.

    • “Affirmative action” itself does not require Jew-hatred (though, as implemented, does result in Jews being discriminated against (since Jews aren’t classified as “of color”)). Affirmation action, however, results in people from groups with anti-Jewish/anti-Israel attitudes getting advanced far beyond where they would otherwise have been and thus having far more power to translate their anti-Jewish/anti-Israel attitudes into practical results.

    • Philip, this is a nice hypothesis, that, after 50 years, in the last 10 years, affirmative active became antisemitic, but how it squares with Reform Judaism exceptional influence causing this.
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_affiliations_of_presidents_of_the_United_States

      After Eisenhower we had 2 Catholic and 10 Protestant US presidents, including one Methodist, first pro-affirmative action link above, (G.W. Bush).
      In my first google served Catholic link, the writer states that affirmative action is not prohibited by Catholicism but should be applied carefully to see whether it does not hurt minorities that are being helped, taking no account of its affect on Jews.

      So tell me how Jewish socialists’ or Reform Jew’s mind control caused all of this, your original preamble and developed line of arguments. Especially given that Reform page talks about general support of justice and to untrained mind like mine it tells nothing about approving “affirmative” action as defined to be long – term racial discrimination in college admissions only.

    • perplexed: As noted above, it was not my intention to suggest that “affirmative action became antisemitic”. Nor I did mean to suggest that Jews were the sole supporters of affirmative action (only that the majority of American Jews have supported this transformation of our society). But now that you mention it, 50 years is about the right time scale for transformation. The people who began their careers in the old society are now retired or dead. The people currently in leadership positions have never known any system except the current one of race-/gender-based selection and top-down social justice.

      We can see the same thing with health care. Medicare and Medicaid were introduced by Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s. It took quite a few decades before the idea of government-paid health care for all became commonly accepted.

      I don’t think it is outrageous to say that it takes 50 years to see the full impact of a policy. Consider a migrant who comes across the border today. He/she/ze/they will be in the asylum hearing system for about 10 years, then perhaps an undocumented resident for a while, then a Green Card holder after his/her/zir/their US-born kids turn 18 and have the right to bring in parents as chain migrants. Then finally a citizen a few years later. So the migrant who comes across the border today may not cast his/her/zir/their first vote before 2045 and the US-born children of the migrant won’t cast their first votes until at least 2042 (will they still be able to vote for Joe Biden then?).

    • Philip, those who benefited from original affirmative action in 1960th -1970th are retired, and some of them dead. Somehow, out of all other influences, you credit affirmative action, and as a consequence retired beneficiaries of it, with current Jew hatred, and absolve Harvard, whose primary unstated mission is to mold apparatchiks for US government, from Jew hatred which they green-light on their agenda-controlled managed-speech campus, where only Jew hating activists and their allies are allowed to speak up, with majority of students remaining silent.
      Really strange.

    • perplexed: I think that the original post is clear that any speech on the Harvard campus since about 2016 is officially approved speech, which means that Harvard administrators (all of whom were selected in a DEI/affirmative action process (sometimes a white heterosexual male still slips through!)) approved of calls to eliminate Israel.

    • Philip, why then you question whether Harvard administration could do anything different? They could do everything different And why ill affects of affirmative action show only in non-STEM political and so-called “social” “science” fields, where success criteria were always biased, even before “affirmative” action.

    • Philip, I am all for meritocracy in college administration and will likely, if Republicans will not try to out-woke Biden, vote Republican, but which colleges are being run differently by white mail Republicans?
      Is Emory university, which seem not to tolerate Jew hate, per your example below, is run by white male Republicans? Wikipedia says that Emory U president “Fenves’ family is Jewish, and multiple members of his father’s side are Holocaust survivors, including his father, aunt, some cousins, and his grandfather.[23]” His action do not support your thesis that Jews caused themselves being prosecuted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_L._Fenves
      Is former UPenn Board of Trustees director, Mr Bok, Republican? He for sure is a white male.

      Seems that Harvard President Gay plagiarized her way to the top, even in “social” “sciences” field, where there are no wrong statements. https://www.city-journal.org/article/is-claudine-gay-a-plagiarist
      Some scientists she quoted but did not cite are Black males.. Other seem to be White women, and some no longer in academia, judging by missing recent references.

    • perplexed: I’m not sure what we’re arguing about! You reference “your thesis that Jews caused themselves being prosecuted”, but that was never my position.

      To the new points that you’ve raised… Other than some state universities in Republican-majority states, I’m not sure which schools might have old white Republican guys at the helm. I don’t know anything about this Bok guy. I’m not sure if he’s related to Derek Bok, former president of Harvard and grandson of the guy who founded https://boktowergardens.org/ (awesome!).

    • perplexed: As noted in the original post, “Universities cater to their audience and today’s audience is very different than the 1970s and 1980s audiences”. One doesn’t need a board member who is 18-34 to transform an institution, only a board member who seeks to appeal to 18-34-year-olds.

    • Philip, only select coastal universities carter to their audiences? Gave report from universities in Southern states, they seem not to have anti-Jewish actions right now.

    • Philip, there are well known private universities in the South, and they too do not experience wave of anti-Jewish hate displays. They to participate in affirmative action.

    • The South is more politically conservative than the North. When I looked at non-state schools in the South in https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2023/11/08/are-there-good-four-year-liberal-arts-colleges-that-arent-liberal/ I quickly found a “Teach-in on Gaza”: Open to faculty, staff, students and the public. Mini Sessions on: A Visual Representation of Israeli Occupation, A Brief History of Anti-Zionist Solidarities, Western Responses to the Crisis, Palestinian Resistance as Abolitionist Struggle and Navigating Social Media Algorithms on Israel/Patestine [sic].

      (“River to the sea” liberation is “abolitionist”, which means that the Jews are the slaveholders.)

      Emory is in Atlanta and they’ve had weeks of on-campus protests, it looks like. https://www.instagram.com/emory.sjp/ (the Studies for Justice in Palestine group that was banned at Florida state-run universities; we can infer that Ron DeSantis hates “justice”)

      The Emory administration does seem to have discouraged the noble protesters more than counterparts up north. https://www.foxnews.com/media/professor-praised-hamas-resistance-fighters-gliders-no-longer-employed-emory-university

      Dr. Abeer AbouYabis, an Emory School of Medicine assistant professor and employee at its Winship Cancer Institute, was placed on administrative leave last month when she posted that she wished “Glory to all resistance fighters,” after joining students from colleges in Atlanta in protest at the Israeli embassy. It is not clear if AbouYabis was fired or if she resigned, according to the Emory Wheel, which first reported the news.

      In her post, AbouYabis thanked Emory Students for Justice in Palestine for helping her “hang onto the last thread of [her] faith in humanity and hope for justice.” SJP has been at the forefront of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses across the country, where they often chant the controversial phrase “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

  5. What shocks me is the usage “hoisted by your own petard”. A petard is a box of explosives used on others. So while it is unfortunately common to be “hoisted on your own petard”, it is exceedingly rare that a petard decides to do the hoisting.

    And every time I hear the word “antisemite” I want to ask “What’s a Semite?” Do you mean the Semetic language group which includes Hebrew and Arabic (we know where that would lead) or do you mean that quaint Germainic division of the white race into Hamites (the sons of ham), Semites and… Aryans?

    • Most cases Semitic means descendants of Shem, oldest son of Noah from Bible. Often it means spiritual descendants of righteous Shem, and thus antisemitic is a nearly perfect synonym of anti-Jewish. This is how it was used since it was resurrected in 19th century Europe, anti-Semitic meant anti-Jewish, but now it had racial undertones. Shem had two brothers – Japheth and Ham. Not sure how Aryan category is related to this at all. Ari / Aryeh is common Hebrew / Jewish Ashkenazim name meaning lion on Hebrew, not sure if there is any relationship to Aryan category, derived from Indian pre-history. Again, association of Indian Aryans with European people is 19th century European development.

    • “Hoist with his own petard” is a quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoist_with_his_own_petard

      You don’t need to pull apart the word “antisemitism” to understand its meaning. It was put into widespread use by German Jew-haters as a replacement for the more literal term “Jew-hatred”, which was unappealing to middle class Germans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism#Etymology gives kind of a laborious history. “From the outset the term “anti-Semitism” bore special racial connotations and meant specifically prejudice against Jews”.

      I personally avoid the term “antisemitism” because of this history.

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