Even though you made me look up the meaning of "Overton window," I think this is the best writing I have seen from the Salient so far.
It was a complete embarrassment to watch President Gay choke and sputter over any words that might actually commit Harvard to condemning antisemitism. She needs to resign.
This is lovely and sincere, but somehow I feel like it falls short. It’s as though there has been an outbreak of bubonic plague on campus, and all we can manage to say is that we need to wash our hands more. This type of antisemitism is a medieval scourge. Harvard has given birth to a fully grown monstrosity. We need to ask and answer some very difficult questions: how could this happen here, at Harvard of all places? And are these young students morally lost forever? We already know that their professors are.
I sympathize with your spirited statement. However, I do think this article zeroes in on the heart of the matter, via Rabbi Wolpe's comments in this paragraph:
"Separately, Rabbi David Wolpe announced his resignation from the president’s Antisemitism Advisory Council yesterday, writing that despite his respect for Gay, “Both events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped… The system at Harvard along with the ideology that grips far too many of the students and faculty, the ideology that works only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil.”
In other words, the ideology referred to here is the ideology relentlessly fostered and enforced via the DEI bureaucratic cancer. It is the ideology of critical theory with, specifically, its ham-fisted and laughable intersectional hierarchy that divides the nation into oppressed and oppressor groups based solely on skin color or ethnic group characteristics and entirely divorced from actual actions and thoughts of the individual. I say this is a cancer, in that it has spread from an administrative unit or units into the entire system of thinking allowed at Harvard. It MUST BE UPROOTED.
Perhaps all of the rather spineless college administrators right up to the Presidents' should consider adopting the policy so eloquently espoused by the late President of Notre Dame in response to similar events in the turbulent 1960's : to wit, actions which substitute force for rational persuasion will be told to cease and desist, and failure to do so or to repeat will be met with suspension and if needed expulsion from the university.
A leader should be clear, moreover when students are subject to a very realistic threat. Gay was ambiguous which is not acceptable. She should resign, and Salient should call for her resignation.
The lack of moral leadership is at the root of the problems at Harvard and universities, there should be no complacency. Any opportunity lost to revert the problem could make things worse...
“Being nice” to Jews is a good start, but it will do nothing to stop the Marxism, running rampant through the schools. This onslaught is worse than the religious intolerance, evident on college campuses. The woke assume that they can design a benign oligarchy, a gay socialism, that puts them on top. They undermine the safeguards of a liberal society, to get there. The new leaders of the global socialism will not be them however. They will be dictators who speak a different language and look nothing like us. The joke is on the West.
After the great recession, Harvard struggled to remain relevant. Parents were broke and wanted a practical STEM education for their children, one that would lead to a high paying job. Harvard could not compete on this ground. The liberal arts seemed destined for the dustbin of time and Christianity seemed like child’s play, so they pivoted to the East for easy money. In that process, they corrupted the curriculum, to make it amenable to students from the authoritarian regimes. The schools pleased these people by whitewashing history lessons and abandoning the religious traditions of the West. The money flowed in one direction, while influence flowed in the other. Some people got rich in the process. The country got poor. Of course these regimes were wolves in sheep’s clothing, transforming a free nation into a hollow shell, that lacked a moral backbone. Now the country is being assaulted by (cultural) Marxists and our leaders are unwilling to address it. The safeguards of the society (Christianity, the liberal arts) are not being supported in the youth. Still Harvard refuses to see the error of their ways. We need you to protect us from tyranny, but all we are hear is DEI / crickets. You should remember that man doesn't live by bread alone. More is needed.
Harvard is not producing well educated students....about a dozen years ago, my Harvard-educated daughter roomed over a summer with a recently graduated, black Harvard senior who had majored in Theology major. My daughter, who is Jewish, enjoyed getting to know her but was astounded hear that this woman had never met a Jew at Harvard and how little she knew about Judaism even though the new graduate was a Theology major; She asked my daughter the most basic questions about the religion. It made us wonder, what does one learn as a Harvard Theology major and why did she know little to nothing about one of the world's greatest religions? What is going on at Harvard?
They clearly are not telling them the truth... that Christianity is a descendent of Judaism. Christians are not allowed to break out of the dogma box. This has become a stranglehold over the population. That stranglehold is allowing another religion to sneak into the country... Marxism. (Marxism needs hatred to empower the "weak." Christianity discourages hatred.)
President Gay and all the Harvard faculty have an obligation to educate, not just observe their students' behavior. If President Gay had finished that sentence about the cure for ignorance being knowledge with, "...and I've engaged with the student leaders of the Pro-Palestine protests to begin a dialogue with the Antisemitism Advisory Council to begin a dialogue that could lead to a better understanding of the odious and offensive nature of the protestors' position...", she'd have some credibility. As is stands, this is just a predictable attempt to walk back the obvious harm her testimony caused to the institution. Pretty sure the Harvard donors will see through that and respond accordingly by voting with their feet.
Even though you made me look up the meaning of "Overton window," I think this is the best writing I have seen from the Salient so far.
It was a complete embarrassment to watch President Gay choke and sputter over any words that might actually commit Harvard to condemning antisemitism. She needs to resign.
This is lovely and sincere, but somehow I feel like it falls short. It’s as though there has been an outbreak of bubonic plague on campus, and all we can manage to say is that we need to wash our hands more. This type of antisemitism is a medieval scourge. Harvard has given birth to a fully grown monstrosity. We need to ask and answer some very difficult questions: how could this happen here, at Harvard of all places? And are these young students morally lost forever? We already know that their professors are.
I sympathize with your spirited statement. However, I do think this article zeroes in on the heart of the matter, via Rabbi Wolpe's comments in this paragraph:
"Separately, Rabbi David Wolpe announced his resignation from the president’s Antisemitism Advisory Council yesterday, writing that despite his respect for Gay, “Both events on campus and the painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped… The system at Harvard along with the ideology that grips far too many of the students and faculty, the ideology that works only along axes of oppression and places Jews as oppressors and therefore intrinsically evil, is itself evil.”
In other words, the ideology referred to here is the ideology relentlessly fostered and enforced via the DEI bureaucratic cancer. It is the ideology of critical theory with, specifically, its ham-fisted and laughable intersectional hierarchy that divides the nation into oppressed and oppressor groups based solely on skin color or ethnic group characteristics and entirely divorced from actual actions and thoughts of the individual. I say this is a cancer, in that it has spread from an administrative unit or units into the entire system of thinking allowed at Harvard. It MUST BE UPROOTED.
Boot President Gay for starters!
Perhaps all of the rather spineless college administrators right up to the Presidents' should consider adopting the policy so eloquently espoused by the late President of Notre Dame in response to similar events in the turbulent 1960's : to wit, actions which substitute force for rational persuasion will be told to cease and desist, and failure to do so or to repeat will be met with suspension and if needed expulsion from the university.
https://hesburgh.nd.edu/fr-teds-life/the-notre-dame-president/the-60s-and-student-activism/hesburgh-letter-the-new-york-times/
A leader should be clear, moreover when students are subject to a very realistic threat. Gay was ambiguous which is not acceptable. She should resign, and Salient should call for her resignation.
The lack of moral leadership is at the root of the problems at Harvard and universities, there should be no complacency. Any opportunity lost to revert the problem could make things worse...
“Being nice” to Jews is a good start, but it will do nothing to stop the Marxism, running rampant through the schools. This onslaught is worse than the religious intolerance, evident on college campuses. The woke assume that they can design a benign oligarchy, a gay socialism, that puts them on top. They undermine the safeguards of a liberal society, to get there. The new leaders of the global socialism will not be them however. They will be dictators who speak a different language and look nothing like us. The joke is on the West.
After the great recession, Harvard struggled to remain relevant. Parents were broke and wanted a practical STEM education for their children, one that would lead to a high paying job. Harvard could not compete on this ground. The liberal arts seemed destined for the dustbin of time and Christianity seemed like child’s play, so they pivoted to the East for easy money. In that process, they corrupted the curriculum, to make it amenable to students from the authoritarian regimes. The schools pleased these people by whitewashing history lessons and abandoning the religious traditions of the West. The money flowed in one direction, while influence flowed in the other. Some people got rich in the process. The country got poor. Of course these regimes were wolves in sheep’s clothing, transforming a free nation into a hollow shell, that lacked a moral backbone. Now the country is being assaulted by (cultural) Marxists and our leaders are unwilling to address it. The safeguards of the society (Christianity, the liberal arts) are not being supported in the youth. Still Harvard refuses to see the error of their ways. We need you to protect us from tyranny, but all we are hear is DEI / crickets. You should remember that man doesn't live by bread alone. More is needed.
Harvard is not producing well educated students....about a dozen years ago, my Harvard-educated daughter roomed over a summer with a recently graduated, black Harvard senior who had majored in Theology major. My daughter, who is Jewish, enjoyed getting to know her but was astounded hear that this woman had never met a Jew at Harvard and how little she knew about Judaism even though the new graduate was a Theology major; She asked my daughter the most basic questions about the religion. It made us wonder, what does one learn as a Harvard Theology major and why did she know little to nothing about one of the world's greatest religions? What is going on at Harvard?
They clearly are not telling them the truth... that Christianity is a descendent of Judaism. Christians are not allowed to break out of the dogma box. This has become a stranglehold over the population. That stranglehold is allowing another religion to sneak into the country... Marxism. (Marxism needs hatred to empower the "weak." Christianity discourages hatred.)
President Gay and all the Harvard faculty have an obligation to educate, not just observe their students' behavior. If President Gay had finished that sentence about the cure for ignorance being knowledge with, "...and I've engaged with the student leaders of the Pro-Palestine protests to begin a dialogue with the Antisemitism Advisory Council to begin a dialogue that could lead to a better understanding of the odious and offensive nature of the protestors' position...", she'd have some credibility. As is stands, this is just a predictable attempt to walk back the obvious harm her testimony caused to the institution. Pretty sure the Harvard donors will see through that and respond accordingly by voting with their feet.