You don’t see this kind of thing happen to, say, Chinese students because of China’s actions in Tibet and against the Uyghurs.
You don’t see Persian students denied rape counseling because of Iran’s brutal treatment of women.
You don’t even really see this happen to Russian kids.
That’s not to say that Persian or Chinese kids don’t get bullied or harassed for their race. It’s just that this comes from the Right, from nativist racist assholes that I’m sure we would all agree are the bad guys.
But you do see Left wing people who supposedly care about things like the treatment of minorities throw all that out the window to come after the Jews.
Oh, and the right wing white supremacists come after us too. Sure is nice getting it from both sides.
Re: Penn, I do know they have a long history of not giving a shit about discrimination on their campus, because I was a student there and was well-aware of ongoing complaints, this would be over a decade ago. It’s hard for me to judge whether they are giving even a less of a shit in the case of Jewish people than they did about Black people or others prior to this whole fiasco. I was surprised at the conservative leanings of even their school of social work, and while I think the conservatives they hired did have valuable things to contribute, including the Dean, they were extremely myopic and resistant to change when it came to issues of diversity. I had personal experience with that. All this being in the news has brought up a lot of old memories. You had in that case a student body with very differing values and ideas than many people in leadership roles, and there was constant conflict.
So my dim view admittedly is, what do you expect? It’s Penn. Not because that excuses it, but because I think it’s hard to make a double-standard argument for that particular institution given their hands-off mentality to the harassment of students of marginalized identities, in general.
I understand the difference between ethnic identity and political beliefs, but the tone of the TA really settles for me the matter of whether she was motivated by political differences or antisemitism.
Heck, even if she was Native American, it might be “ironic”, in the sense that some Native American tribes also oppressed and dispossessed others.
But if nobody who had ever benefited from any past injustice were allowed to call out any current injustice, then that would effectively shut up almost all of us.
A good deal of that “blurring” comes from people who can’t separate their loathing of Israel from anti-Jewish hatred.
“Amongst the tweets from the Teaching Assistant were the following that she posted in April and May 2021:…the word “Kristallnacht” above a picture of a damaged storefront with accompanying Hebrew text from another user”
That might be viewed as beyond the pale, so to speak.
Not my thread but there are already threads discussing the recent bits at the elite institutions. My comment that spurred this thread was that the blind eye to Jew hate is not new and not restricted to the elite programs. I shared my daughter’s experience and her perspective while there. So one, let’s leave the recent bits to their threads and expand this more broadly please.
What bothered my daughter most was first the bit with the program for support of survivors of sexual support which she had worked with. Materials to volunteers were made into promotion of minimally anti-Zionism and it was declared that anyone who would not condemn Israel was not welcome which persisted despite requests that the important service be open to all. And then the gaslighting by the university president who denied events and lambasted those complaining as uninformed and promoting false claims. Explicitly creating an environment in which asking for help got you labeled as the problem.
Investigations demonstrated the claims were not false or uninformed and he ended up leaving.
Indeed these were not Arab students as the instigators. White progressive ones.
Yes, the current narrative paints not only Israel as the oppressor, but American Jews as such within our country as they are stereotyped as the privileged. And Jewish Americans are disproportionately more often upper middle class or higher and well educated. Ergo they are oppressor class and not needing protection. They are the problem.
25% of the age group thinks the Holocaust is a myth and many more just don’t know.
Funny aside for my daughter. Adopted from China so during Covid time I was concerned about her having to deal with anti-Asian hate. That she never had to deal with.
In the case with the TA in the OP’s linked article, it’s difficult to tell whether the TA is antisemitic or not. I’d guess probably, but it could be either way. But it doesn’t matter, because either way, it’s clearly unacceptable: That TA is a villain of the piece.
But that also doesn’t say much about the university. It’s not like there’s some extensive vetting process before someone becomes a TA, so all those incidents prove, in themselves, is that there’s one bigoted jerk at the University of Vermont. That’s not exactly a shocker. What’s more relevant is, how did the school respond to that TA? If the administration did nothing, then that does reflect poorly on the university. If they immediately removed the TA from their position pending an investigation, and after the investigation took further disciplinary action, and had an independent reviewer look over and possibly correct the grades the TA had already given, well, then that’s the system working as it should.
I just want to take a quick moment aside from the main conversation to say, I am very sorry that this was your daughter’s college experience. It is meant to be such an incredible time of growth, and despicable anti-semitism like that marring it for her absolutely sucks.
I completely agree that using the word “Kristallnacht” in the context of expressing anti-Zionist sentiments is indefensible and an antisemitic slur.
However, reading your [ETA: No, Jackmannii’s; sorry, this reply should have been to Jackmannii rather than Babale.] linked cite has also made me a bit more doubtful about the allegedly antisemitic nature of the attack on the Hillel building:
Now, asking somebody in a Hillel building if they are Jewish when that has no relevance whatever to any aspect of the situation is undoubtedly gratuitously rude and intrinsically antisemitic, true.
However, a bunch of rowdy people throwing pebbles at the window of one of their friends in his Hillel residence because they want him to come out and hang with them is a very far cry from a violent antisemitic mob trying to break Hillel’s windows.
I can’t judge from the incident report quotes exactly what it was that happened, but I am not as confident as I was that the window-pelting part was obviously an antisemitic attack.
Oh she still had plenty of fun! She’s an amazingly resilient person.
She spun the experience more that persistent advocacy worked. She was most sad that the sexual assault victim support service was hijacked in that way. The president who painted the complainers as lying troublemakers sowing division lost his position and the university seemed to be taking issues a bit more seriously going forward.
I’m not sure that the TA was using “Zionist” as a code word for “Jewish person.” However, I do still think the remark comes off as antisemitic, and not just anti-Zionist.
Why? It’s hard to articulate exactly. But, basically, the type and level of animosity is clearly that of bigotry, not of political disagreement. That type of gleeful way of speaking is not how people react who are just upset and taking it too far, either.
There’s a clear dehumanization going on in those responses, and that is usually fueled by some level of bigotry. It seems to me that she thinks she has an acceptable target.
Sure, people do get that angry towards certain those with certain political positions. But there’s the key word “bully” that doesn’t fit. You don’t hear, say, progressives talking about how fun it is to bully MAGA people. They’re going to try and justify themselves in some way, not paint themselves as the bad guy.
And, yes, I know I’m making the line quite fuzzy. But I think it has to be to actually catch antisemitism and racism. Sometimes something that is less direct can be a lot worse due to the intensity. And that’s what this is: clearly some racism in here, made worse because of the attitude.
It’s also exacerbated by the power imbalance inherent in the situation between a TA and students. Admittedly, very few university TAs are in anything like what could be considered a position of real power. But ultimately, they are not on a footing of equality with students, so any malicious behavior from the former towards the latter acquires the additional despicability of punching down.
No. There are Jews who are opposed to the modern state of Israel for religious reasons, usually the notion that Israel needed to be founded by the Messiah, who hasn’t shown up yet, rather than mere mortals.
Then there are people who are fine with Jews but object to actions of the people who founded the modern state of Israel and/or the government of that nation.
Don’t really want to write a dissertation on this, it can get pretty complicated.
I think that bullying Zionist students is probably driven by underlying antisemitism, but it’s nonetheless different from bullying Jewish students for being Jewish. American Jews are all over the field in terms of Zionism. Some are proudly Zionist, and some (mostly ultra-orthodox) think Zionism is forbidden until the Messiah comes, and are quite hostile to the Jewish state.
I am appalled that the TA wasn’t reined in and disciplined for that, by the way. I teach a gym class at MIT, and have to do some of the training that employees in teaching roles do, and that violates all sorts of rules for teachers.
Especially when you remember that there are actually lots of types of Jewish people from lots of places.
For example, one of the places Netanyahu draws support from is a backlash against a percieved Ashkenazi elitism by Israelis living in the big cities, while Mizrahi Jews on the “Periphery” are seen as second class. Netanyahu somehow tapped into this energy and is seen by some as a champion of the Mizrahi population.
So was UVM exceptional at its dismissiveness of Jewish student reports, or is this relative blind eye to this specific group fairly widespread in the less elite universities?
I suspect the latter. My fear is that both antisemitism is rising and that many institutions are ignoring it, not thinking that it really counts as a problem.
