In a display of military solidarity with the Jewish state, a group of Harvard University professors traveled to Israel this month. However, it appeared as though the readers needed assistance just as much as their hosts.
In a series of sessions at Tel Aviv University on Tuesday, members of the more- than- 50- people delegation—which even included instructors from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Dartmouth, and Yale Universities, and elsewhere—described feeling abandoned and frightened on their campuses up home. Gabriel Kreiman, a teacher at Harvard Medical School who organized the unity mission, said the instructors are liberals who widely believe in “diversity, capital, and inclusion”. Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 evil attack on Israel, though, some have had their eye opened to the anti- Jewish implications of the school’s duplicated philosophy.
” I do n’t believe that many people here believe DEI is going well. They’re pretty upset”, Kreiman told the Washington Free Beacon. I do n’t believe they are ideologically opposed to the system. Only the latest version of DEI is full of dual requirements and is frequently almost openly anti-Semitic.
” It seems that if a woman is raped, it’s terrible—unless she’s Jewish”, Kreiman added, alluding to the subdued global response to the horrors of Oct. 7, which sparked the Israel- Hamas conflict in Gaza. ” Over the past few years, Jewish people have been very active in efforts to defend another minorities, and now it’s our change, and some of these various minorities are also attacking Israeli people,” said one Jew.
Miri Bar- Halpern Hobin, an Jewish- National clinical psychologist who works with Harvard faculty, said she has felt” totally isolated and only” in the aftermath of Oct. 7 and was in Israel” to go back to my roots, to feel the community”.
” Part of it was, I guess, completely selfish”, she told the Free Beacon. ” I’m a big believer in post- traumatic growth. I think there’s something about being helped and helping others. When you give, you get, I really do believe in that”.
Bar- Halpern Hobin said she was” caught by surprise” by” the level of anti- Semitism that is now legit” in the Boston area.
” Everyone is awake right now,” she said, “especially because there are so many universities there.” ” It’s OK to hate us. It’s actually kind of cool”.
Bar- Halpern Hobin, who has provided free therapy for university students and faculty upset by Oct. 7, said she was disappointed by how Jews have been excluded by institutions that preach DEI,” trauma- informed” care,” safety for all”.
” Why do we need to justify our pain”? she said. ” When, ever, has a traumatized person needed to justify one’s suffering or been blamed for it? It’s unheard of”.
The solidarity mission, which wrapped on Thursday, came amid backlash against elite U. S. universities for their roles in an eruption of anti- Semitism following Oct. 7. A congressional investigation, a lawsuit brought by Jewish students, and an alumni revolt over the administration’s ambiguous response to the attack and the subsequent campus/harvard-grad-student-who-accosted-israeli-classmate-and-supervised-undergraduate-students-glorified-convicted-palestinian-terrorist/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>anti-Israel campus/harvard-law-student-behind-infamous-oct-7-statement-speaks-out-refuses-to-condemn-hamas/” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>activism on campus are the subjects of a Harvard investigation. Claudine Gay, the former head of Harvard, was forced to leave in January after testifying before Congress that,” calling for the genocide of Jews” may violate the university’s anti-bullying and harassment laws “depending on the context.”
Kreiman—who is Jewish and helped organize an Oct. 12 open letter criticizing Gay’s leadership—said:” I think this is almost an existential crisis for Israel and a pivotal moment for the Jewish people worldwide”.
According to Kreiman, many of his colleagues support Israel but were hesitant to join the solidarity mission, in part for fear of “being harassed or attacked or losing opportunities” in their fields. Most signers, even those who did, did not want to be identified in the general public. The delegation has agreed that no member’s name or image will be made public without prior authorization.
” I am also concerned”, Kreiman said. ” I’m not so concerned that I wo n’t be here, but I’m concerned”.
Yair Jablinowitz, a manager at Israel Destination, a tour group that has run nearly a dozen post- Oct. 7 solidarity visits to Israel for university faculty, including the Harvard- led delegation, said many feel they must “put their jobs on the line” to come, “especially those who do n’t have tenure”.
Jablinowitz told the Free Beacon,” Many of these people are more to the left.” It’s a pretty big deal that we were able to bring these representatives from these universities to Israel to denounce anti-Semitism and join our Israeli brothers and sisters.
Susan Hess, a professor of social work at the University of Southern California and a self-described progressive activist, has also lost faith in DEI since Oct. 7. In recent years, Hess successfully lobbied her administration to add “antiracism” to its DEI training, making it” ADEI”. However, it has become clear to her that Jews like her are excluded from the racialized system of justice that she has long championed.
” Now, Oct. 7, and I’m like,’ Wait, what is happening?'” Hess told the Free Beacon. ” This does n’t make sense. Just because the majority of Jews in America have white skin, are Ashkenazi, it does n’t mean that we should n’t be part of this, because we’re experiencing oppression”.
Hess claimed it took her two months of “pushing and pushing and pushing” to get approval for a faculty anti-Semitism course at the USC school of social work, but only with the condition that Israel not be brought up.
” It’s interesting because I did n’t even have to have approval for having anyone come in and talk about anti- blackness”, she said. ” The vibe is definitely that Jews do n’t count”.
Hess added:” I thought,’ OK, I’m probably going to feel safer in Israel during the war than I feel right now in the States.'”
Faculty at Tel Aviv University told the delegation that Tel Aviv University’s campus ideology, which supports Israel, has also had an impact, with needed funding and partnerships suddenly disappearing.
” We feel very lonely right now”, Maureen Adiri Meyer, the director of Tel Aviv University’s international program, said in an appeal to the U. S. faculty. We’re also concerned about how our young researchers ‘ chances of advancing in their careers will turn out over the coming months or years. Any chance that we have here to contribute to helping us advance as a leading institution in Israel, the largest in Israel, and stay where we are is extremely important.
The Free Beacon was cited by Harvard and USC for their prior statements that demonized anti-Semitism.
