Democratic politicians and university officials think antisemitism is nothing more than a partisan political matter to which they can pay lip service while standing by and doing nothing to address it.
A report from the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which includes emails and texts from university leaders, exposed exactly this. The committee was able to acquire text messages from former Columbia University President Minouche Shafik, who stepped down in August after Columbia was roiled with antisemitic “pro-Palestinian” protests, as well as board of trustees co-chairs David Greenwald and Claire Shipman.
In the texts, these university “leaders” showed that they viewed antisemitic harassment of Jewish students on campus as nothing more than a public relations problem rather than bigotry that needed to be stamped out on campus. Greenwald said, “If we are keeping our head down, maybe we shouldn’t meet with Republicans,” as it was congressional Republicans holding weak university leaders accountable for the outpouring of antisemitic bigotry on campus. Jonathan Levine, who preceded Greenwald, said, “Let’s hope the Dems win the house back” to stifle further investigation into these failing universities.
Shafik’s contributions are the most notable for more than one reason. Shafik said she spoke with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and “He also said universities’ political problems are really only among Republicans,” and that “His staffer was of the view that best strategy is to keep heads down!”
That is the same Schumer who has slow-walked a bipartisan bill that would have the Education Department adopt the same definition of antisemitism used by the State Department in order to better enforce antidiscrimination law against antisemitic student activists on college campuses. That bill was being discussed and passed by the House in May, but Schumer punted it after the election, making it unclear if he has any desire to pass it at all.
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Instead, Schumer has been focused on his new book about antisemitism, which will undoubtedly politicize it to fit his own partisan positions. That includes devoting a chunk of the book to the Jan. 6 riots, which have nothing to do with the antisemitic student protests and harassment on college campuses and in Democratic cities.
This is all a political game and a public relations stunt for the Democratic Party and the leaders of “elite” universities, both of whom have fomented antisemitism with their disingenuous framing of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and their identity-politics philosophy of division that paints Jews as the most privileged group of people outside of white men. They are only interested in eliminating the harm to their reputations from these antisemitic outbursts, not in combatting the antisemitism they helped create with their toxic political worldviews.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
