^^ University ca,puses become battlefields of Jew hate. How did we as a nation allow this blasphemy to happen ?

The vicious pogrom unleashed on October 7th by Islamic terrorists on the citizens of southern Israel unleashed an equally barbaric wave of Jew hate at some of America’s elite universities. We all saw it: the hate shouts, the torchy marches, the sit-downs, the mob violence, the vandalism. Much of it recalled, painfully, similar mob criminality seen at summer 2020’s BLM riots. Yet this was different. The BLM riots arose in response to a grave injustice. These Jew hate riots arose in support of a grave injustice.

What happened, one may well ask ? How could the campuses of prized universities — sites of learning, of education, of the search for wisdom — incubate riots of hate celebrating a pogrom ?

I wish I did not have an answer to this question. I wish it were inexplicable.

But it isn’t.

A brief look back at how it came to be will suffice before I post suggestions for reforming our tainted universities:

The Jew hate riots at universities — later to include many less than elite institutions as well — grew out of what appears to be decades of conscious decisions by those universities to hire and promote purveyors of unhinged anti-semitic theories about Israel, and by extension, about all Jews. It was said that because millions of European Jews fled to Israel after World war 2, that Israel was a “colonial” state, and, worse in the view of the anti-semitic theorists, a white persons’ colonial state. To these theorists, many of them marxist, all the evil in the political world is the fault of white European people, who, in the theorists’ minds, “colonized’ black and brown people, exploited them, made them second class citizens, stole their resources, etc. European Jews, however persecuted they had been, were white and now were colonizers and exploiters of brown people : the Palestinians, who, according to the theorists, were the rightful inhabitants of the Holy land and were dark skinned and thus very much a part of the populations and lands overtaken and brutalized by white Europeans.

That every assertion in this theory could be easily shown false — the Arabic Conquest, which continues, was the actual colonization; most Israeli immigrants come from North Africa and the Middle East and are decidedly not “white” — did not dissuade the universities from hiring its spokespeople and giving them room to propagate and mis-educate students. At the same time, universities made special effort to recruit and admit Palestinian students, who were, of course, happy to be cadres for the Palestinian-as-victim theory. Eventually, two organizations were established, first at one university, later spreading to very many, advocating the Palestinains-as-marxist-heroes theory : Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and American Muslim for Palestine.

Of these, the SJP seems by far the most lethal. Based in the universities’ Palestinian students, but eventually attracting many non-Palestinian students persuaded by its speakers and by faculty promoting the “white colonizer” marxist theory embedded in university curricula, the SJP appears to be the main campus organizer of current Jew hate.

I suppose that the SJP’s campus battles would be of interest chiefly to alumni of the affected universities, were it not injecting itself into street thuggery, vandalism, and bullying. Indeed, many alumni have reacted against the present campus Jew hate by cancelling donations, calling for university deans to resign, and by themselves resigning from university oversight boards. Some have even filed civil rights lawsuits against universities that have not acted to protect, much less defend, their Jewish students and faculty. Yet the SJP”s campus anti-semitism is not the chiefest Jew hate afoot. Its anti-Jew protests have been picked up by organized socialist politicals (such as the Democratic Socalist Alliance, or DSA, here in the US). It is these actors who have raised campus Jew hate from a college thing to a public threat.

That’s a story for another day, however. Today’s story is the reformation of our universities. Alumni and donors have already made their disgust plain, their severance of ties a fact. Negation, though, cannot be the last word. So here are my suggestions for active eform :

( 1 ) expel from campus all organizations promoting hatred of Jews and/or the abolition of Israel and all students or faculty advocating the same in any manner beyond mere speech.

( 2 ) condemn calls for the genocide of Jews., and expel any student or faculty who speaks thus. There is no First Amendment protection for incitement to mass murder.

( 3 ) tie in to community police forces and the FBI for reporting acts of anti-Semitism and requesting, if advisable, their immediate response including arrests and prosecution; and where the subject is not a citizen, revocation of their student visa.

( 4 ) cancellation of all university offices based on, or promoting any sort of identity rules, prohibitions, or institutions or any other devices which would classify students and faculty in any other way than competence (one sole exception : geographic diversity).

( 5 ) irrevocable commitment to the values, ethics, and ideals of the Enlightenment and Western civilisation. Said commitment to encompass admissions — any student seeking admission must pledge, in writing, to embrace and promote the values, ethics, and ideals of Western civilisation — and faculty and administrative hires. No one has a personal right to attend our universities, which are quite free to make the commitments I call for.

( 6 ) curriculum requirements to include courses in Western civilisation philosophy, American and European history, American civics, and the American Constitution.

( 7 ) cancellation of all foreign money donations tied to nations or individuals that espouse and/or facilitate Jew hate or terrorism.

Students or faculty not wishing to embrace these commitments and these values are free to apply tio otherr universities elsewhere.

I am sure that many of you will have other reformative suggestions to make. Nor do I cnsider my own list written in stone, although its basic principles are inviolable for me.

Let us educate, not falsify; encourage ideals, not undermine them;, and let us pursue character and principle, because facts are not enough and theories are ephemeral.

— Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere

^^ Erin Murphy and Ed Flynn : two of the Council’s remaining common sense members. More isolated than ever on a Council hell bent on deconstructing a City that used to get along well on its own citizen customs.

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It seems peevish of me, I suppose, to suggest that the incoming City Council elected on Tuesday will be worse than the one we now have. After all, the present Council has been seriously disfigured by all sorts of no-no: unlicensed driving, back room election scheming, racist accusation, name calling, a ton of avoidance of major City services. How can the incoming Council possibly be worse ?

It will be worse because Michael Flaherty and Frank Baker will not be part of the incoming. Instead we get these guys :

( 1 ) John Fitzgerald, who will probably vote for common sense but is no way the fighter that Baker has been. By his pssion and intransigence — his street fight nose — Baker, by himself rescued the latest redistricting map from a racist gerrymander attempt by the present Council’s majority. For that alone the City owes Baker as much thanks as it has it in its heart to give. Do I think that John Fitzgerald — the son of revered, late Mission Hill State Representative Kevin Fitzgerald — will confront the Council’s majority alone, in their faces, when it attempts one of its wish list absurdities ? Don’t bet on it.

( 2 ) we get Henry Santana, a veteran of Mayor Wu’s office, who will almost certaibly be a yes vote for anything Mayor Wu wants. Whereas Mike Flaherty, with his superb knowledge of the City budget and practices, and his voting strength city-wide, could stand up to the Council’s bike lane frenzies and race-based view of everything, Santana will surely be a guaranteed “yes” vote for all of that.

The current Council has four stalwarts : Mike Flaherty, Frank Baker, Erin Murphy, Ed Flynn. Now it will have only three : Erin Murphy, Ed Flynn, John Fitzgerald (maybe).

Whereas the current Council’s four were enough to occasionally persuade a fifth vote (District One’s Gigi Coletta) to vote against the majority’s anti-police views — to the left even of Mayor Wu — the incoming Council’s mere three will be ever more isolated. I doubt that three will be able to force anything that the majority doesn’t agree to.

Boston has governmental problems up the ying-yang. To name only the most talked-about : streets that never get repaired; school system scandalously mismanaged with tons of unnecessary money in its shaky hands; an unsolved drug addiction crisis; crime sprees through South Bay mall and sometimes Downtown; gang wars; an understaffed police force; development and zoning plans that make no sense at all and are grounded in economic conditions no longer the case; and a 1974 Federal Court school busing order no longer relevant but that costs us $ 130 milion a year to comply with.

Families continue to leave the City because they have no confidence in a school system that cowers to students — seems to allow students to assault teachers with scanty consquence — instead of imposing its requirements on them. (Not to mention the diminution of Boston Latin school’s admissions into zip code quotas.) Meanwhile, the City approves housing proposals for one and two bedroom units far too small to house new families. Yes, Boston is now a city for high-paid singles who can expensively cavort, shop, and dine, and work 70 hour weeks in those wonderful biotech labs that have replaced manufacturing as the City’s economic base.. But what if the biotech boom fizzles, as it now appears to ? Office space in Downtown is emptying out faster than an arena after a hockey game. (City tax revenues are hurting, we’re told.) Can all the crap housing being approved by a Zoning Board drunk with illusion ever be rented or sold ? I doubt it.

Yet none of the above — much less the City’s insistence on imposing bike lanes on major roadways, abolishing parking spaces, and development “corridors” on otherwise well-accustomed neighborhoods — eludes the new Council’s majority. The media calls them “progressive.” They call themsleves that too. Never was an adjective worse abused. The Council’s policies absurdly misperceive the actual life of Boston residents. They are a kind of home invasion, a breaking and entering, if you will, as well as a carjacking — disrupting how we live our lives according to how we think best to live it.

Talk to ordinary neighbors someday. Most say they don’t vote — because “no one listens.” Or because “the politicians only care about themselves.”

These neighbors aren’t wrong. It’s why the turnout on Tuesday was barely 14 percent of all voters in my own neighborhood (East Boston) and scarcely 18 percent city-wide. 50 years ago a Counci;l election would see 35 percent turnout — and 20 to 30 Council candidates. This year, in the city-wide race, there were barely eight, and only five candidates with a serious base of support. Not only have the voters stopped voting, they’ve also stopped running for office.

Two of our nine Districts’ voters actually had options. In Districts 5 and 6, candidates of common sense did run. The common sense choice in District 5 (Roslindale, Mattapan and Hyde Park) actually mounted a strong effort. As a retired Boston policeman, Jose Ruiz would have been a crucial voice on the Council for reviving the City’s crime-stopper force (badly neutered since William Gross retired as Commissioner). But Ruiz lost — 52 to 48, a close race — to a candidate supported aggressively by Mayor Wu, who lives in District Five and thus gave her candidate a neighbor’s endorsement as well as a Mayor’s..

To sum up ; all of the above is why the Council grows ever more out of touch, ever more devoured by sharks with crazy policy meals in their mouths, and why we accommodate a Mayor who cares more about creationg a “21st Century City” =– whatever that means — rather than attending to basic municipal services and letting housing markets take care of themselves.

No wonder that 80-plus percent of our voters didn’t vote. I can’t blame them at all.

—-Mike Freedberg / Here and Sphere