{"id":12051,"date":"2023-10-16T17:56:19","date_gmt":"2023-10-16T14:56:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/?p=12051"},"modified":"2024-01-14T12:04:59","modified_gmt":"2024-01-14T10:04:59","slug":"silence-of-the-tenured-lambs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jppi.org.il\/en\/silence-of-the-tenured-lambs\/","title":{"rendered":"Silence of the tenured lambs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Decadence met the devil, and Hamas won.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

Academic decadence confronted Hamas\u2019s depravity last week, and the devil won. Following Hamas\u2019s rampage through Israel\u2019s Gaza Corridor\u2014behind Israel\u2019s pre-1967 borders with no \u201csettlements\u201d\u2014many have criticized pro-Palestinian students for blaming the victims and \u201cholding the Israeli regime entirely responsible.\u201d Far more dangerous are most administrators\u2019 mealy-mouthed bleating and most professors\u2019 silence. Student politics change with the winds; this perversion dressed up in academic gowns runs deeper.<\/p>\n

Admittedly, many student antics crossed civilizational red lines. \u201cJihad Day\u201d became \u201cIntimidate Jewish Students Day.\u201d Suddenly, paragliders became symbols of \u201cresistance.\u201d\u00a0Terrorists on paragliders swarmed the Supernova Festival, slaughtering 260 young people dancing and camping outside. Many victims were the same age as these grade-grubbing radicals, brandishing Daddy\u2019s Black Amex card, masquerading as revolutionaries but really covering their faces because they fear losing job offers.<\/p>\n

Toasting those recreational vehicles as homicidal tools is as offensive as brandishing nooses after a mass shooting of blacks or marching around with ovens on Holocaust Remembrance Day.<\/p>\n

Still, universities shouldn\u2019t ban posters with paragliders or similarly hateful speech. By supporting such savagery, these students show everyone just who they are. Let the court of public opinion judge them. And, yes, let them lose precious post-graduate jobs. Would you trust a colleague who supports barbarians?<\/p>\n

The best cure to bad speech is good speech. When students celebrate brutality, universities should remember their defining mission: education. Make their malice a teachable moment. But first, administrators must stand tall, clearly denouncing the massacre and its cheerleaders.<\/p>\n

Instead, when students at California State University, Long Beach, circulated a Palestinian \u201cresistance\u201d poster sporting a para-glider, CSULB\u2019s president Jane Close Conoley shilly-shallied about \u201cthe conflict engulfing the region\u201d and its \u201ccomplexity,\u201d as if Hamas didn\u2019t launch a planned assault against Israel.<\/p>\n

Harvard University president Claudine Gay, along with 17 Harvard administrators, first called themselves \u201cheartbroken by the death and destruction.\u201d Perpetrated by whom? Even The New York Times found the statement \u201ctepid.\u201d Infuriated alumni triggered a second try, condemning \u201cthe terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gay added: \u201cSuch inhumanity is abhorrent, whatever one\u2019s individual views of the origins of longstanding conflicts in the region.\u201d Why add the last wiggly clause?<\/p>\n

By contrast, Gay\u2019s predecessor, Lawrence Bacow, called Russia\u2019s Ukraine invasion \u201cdeplorable,\u201d thundering: \u201cHarvard University stands with the people of Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even worse, McGill University\u2019s first response illustrated how the therapeutic culture has conquered academia, dulling minds, blurring consciences and glooping up writing. \u201cYesterday\u2019s news of violent conflict in Israel and Gaza has caused many of us to feel shaken,\u201d it began, a flabby sentence I wouldn\u2019t accept from my students, obscuring Hamas\u2019s guilt and evil.<\/p>\n

Affectless, offering nothing to learn, the statement yammered: \u201cWe care deeply about your wellness and recognize that the tumultuous times in which we live can at times feel overwhelming. Below, you will find resources available to you for support.\u201d Clearly, this massacre traumatized many. But when did universities become therapy referral centers?<\/p>\n

As administrators dithered, most professors dodged. Two years ago, 120 gender studies departments denounced Israel\u2019s actions in defending itself against Hamas. Last Saturday, Hamas pillagers targeted women brutally, raping women to death, parading at least one woman naked in public, mutilating women\u2019s bodies\u2014let alone beheading babies, sometimes in front of their mothers. Isn\u2019t sadistically targeting women a feminist issue, even if they\u2019re Jewish? Shouldn\u2019t feminists mobilize against Hamas for enslaving women sexually? Nothing was heard from professors of peace studies, ethics or humanities, either.<\/p>\n

The decades-long demonization of the Jewish state caused this Silence of the Tenured Lambs. Many intellectuals proved that they could never sympathize with Israelis, no matter what abominations Israelis, in addition to and citizens from 40 other countries, endure.<\/p>\n

Decadence means \u201cmoral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury.\u201d The university\u2019s slide into decadence began when identity politics \u201cprivileged\u201d who you were over what you did, while adopting the Marxist division between those deemed \u201coppressed\u201d who could do no wrong and those deemed \u201coppressors\u201d who could do no right. Postmodernism intensified moral relativism with a long-standing fanatic love for humanity theoretically, no matter the cost to individual humans. A consumer-oriented and performative therapy culture centered academia around students\u2019 feelings rather than pursuing knowledge or respecting truth, let alone seeking genuine justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial-justice warriors\u201d then launched a culture war, using anti-colonial theory, intersectionality and cancel culture to turn too many classrooms and academic associations into propagandistic re-education centers that would make Chinese Communists proud.<\/p>\n

All this, catalyzed by Jew-hatred Zionophobia, dehumanized Jews and neutralized normal ethical responses to Palestinian barbarism.<\/p>\n

The illiberal liberals\u2019 totalitarian grip on academia will only loosen if parents, donors and students pressure universities to return to their original missions as educational centers teaching how to think critically.<\/p>\n

Last Sunday, Bono, who never attended college, upstaged these overly educated relativists. Empathizing, unlike many academics, he said: \u201cOur hearts and our anger, you know where that\u2019s pointed. \u2026 We sing for those. Our people, our kind of people, music people. Playful, experimental people. Our kind of people \u2026 .\u201d<\/p>\n

That Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden shamed the university leaders, despite his non-Ivy University of Delaware education. After embracing the Israelis targeted by \u201cthis act of sheer evil,\u201d Biden saw the issue as right versus wrong, not left versus right, repudiating \u201cthe terrorist organization Hamas\u2014a group whose stated purpose for being is to kill Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps Bono and Biden should become professors. But I\u2019d worry about modern academics\u2019 perpetual propagandizing dulling their moral sensibilities, too.<\/p>\n

Professor Gil Troy is an American presidential historian and, most recently, the editor of the three-volume set,\u00a0Theodor\u00a0Herzl: Zionist Writings,\u00a0the inaugural publication of\u00a0The\u00a0Library of the Jewish People<\/a>.<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

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