Educating Black Lives Matter: The Not-So-Delicate Moment of the Campus Protests of N.Y.U., As Revealed by John Huntsman
The current campus protests reflect the limits of the more bonded relationship that students and universities have forged. Presidents beholden to wealthy donors have in many instances been urged by them to stand unequivocally for Israel. This week, John Huntsman Jr., the former governor of Utah and a major donor to the University of Pennsylvania, announced that he and his family would cut their funding because, in his view, the school had not done that. In many instances, students have sought something different. They want their ideas and passions validated. They’ve never experienced the alternative.
In almost every case the university has stood as a co-conspirator of injustice through its morally compromised research or financial investments.
He showed me a video of students tearing down fliers like the one he had handed me, which had been posted around campus. He was angry that letters to the administrators asking for action weren’t acknowledged. He imagined an entirely different and urgent reaction, he said, if the child in the picture had been African American.
The campus protests of the late 1960s sought in part to dismantle the in loco parentis role that colleges and universities had held in American life. The reversal of that has shaped this role in the past two decades, as colleges and universities try to recreate it in response to what students and parents want from their education. The National Center for Education Statistics says that private four-year colleges spent 40 percent of their budgets on student support during the 2020-21 fiscal year. Over the past two decades the dollar amount has more than tripled.
The letter from N.Y.U.’s president, in fact, made reference to some of these services, pointing out that the university’s division of student affairs had reached out “to all students from the affected areas with offers of support and help,” and that students had available to them “24/7” help “through the Wellness Exchange,” a counseling service. That seemed not to be enough in this challenging moment.
Students, administrators and faculty, at least at places like N.Y.U. and Columbia, shared an antagonism to the Trump presidency and to the police abuses at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. Ten years ago, when the former New York City police commissioner, Ray Kelly, was invited to speak at Brown University, students objected. When the administration had him come anyway, protesters interrupted his talk so formidably that the event was shut down.
Los Angeles, the New Israel Fund: The Democrat Socialists of America isn’t the Hate Group of Israeli Civil Liberties
Interviews with more than 40 liberal Jewish leaders and voters, review of social media posts, private emails and text chains of liberal Jewish groups, reveals a politically engaged swath of American Jewry who are reaching a breaking point. They have long opposed the Israeli government’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, supported a two-state solution and protested the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.
In Los Angeles, Rabbi Sharon Brous described her horror and feelings of loneliness as she spoke from the pulpit. It’s clear that the Israeli victims deserve this terrible fate, as the clear message from many in the world is.
As Hamas launched attacks in Israel, the leaders of the New Israel Fund were pressured by their American supporters to label Israel anapartheid state, even if they hadn’t heard of any colleagues hiding in Israeli bombs.
Many of the most inflammatory comments came on social media, from progressive groups that responded to the immediate aftermath of the massacre of Israeli civilians by skipping even a moment of mourning and instead moving immediately to try to justify the attack.
chants of “Palestine will be free” left no place for the state of Israel to exist in its own land.
Nickmel was a member of the Los Angeles Unified School Board and is running for Congress in a state of despair. That is how it happens when you dehumanize the group. They hit us with a ton of bricks for being warned about this.
On college campuses, the most rattling episodes have occurred, where small organizations have been amplified across the globe. But during a worldwide conflict, those statements have taken on totemic status, heightening fears that they are a precursor to a more treacherous and lasting shift in the standing of Jews in America.
Eric Spiegelman, a lawyer and producer in Los Angeles who is a member of the board of directors for the city, was angry with the protest in New York City promoted by the Democratic Socialists of America. He sent hundreds of letters to Los Angeles city officials urging them to denounce the organization and label it a “hate group.” The D.S.A. has since backed away from the protest and apologized “for not making our values explicit.”
As he denounced local leaders who areaffiliated with the group, Mr. Spiegelman said he belonged to a political organization that believes in affordable housing, raising the minimum wage and the wholesale murder of Jews. “Two out of three ain’t bad!”
Eva Borgwardt, political director of IfNotNow said in an interview that anyone dehumanizing Israelis has no representation in the United States government and that federal officials have been dehumanizing Palestinians for decades.