Years of racially divisive university rules and rhetoric helped create campuses friendly to vile antisemitism.
Ying Ma, president of Defend American Ideals, penned the following column for Fox News.
Outrage among university donors, corporate leaders and the public has been building since faculty and students across U.S. college campuses openly and even gleefully supported the Hamas October 7 atrocities against Israeli civilians.
The outcry reached a deafening roar after Tuesday, Dec. 5, testimony from the presidents of three of America’s top universities offered equivocation and double standards in response to congressional questioning about antisemitism on campus. Before the weekend was over, one of them, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, was forced to resign.
Yet, many of those expressing indignation, including self-proclaimed liberals and progressives, are merely seeing years of racially divisive rules and rhetoric now fully bearing fruit.
It is important to remember that the Jew hatred we have seen on full display was preceded — and facilitated — by the racist and hateful Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and riots of 2020; the systemically racist “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) bureaucracy; and political, business, academic and religious leaders who condone violence when committed by the so-called oppressed.
Wealthy donors are now threatening to end their support for universities that do not forcefully combat antisemitism among the student body or faculty, with some promising never to hire the students who signed repulsive open letters condemning Israel after the Hamas attack.
Even New York’s liberal Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer is condemning the leftist protestors supporting Hamas.
But — where were these same people as tolerance and decency progressively went down the drain at universities and in American society in years and decades past?
Many remained silent before egregious but common practices on college campuses, including renewed racial segregation, such as the establishment of race-based dormitories or residential centers as demanded by racial minorities, sometimes violently; shouting down of conservative speakers who dared to challenge the prevailing mindset; and antisemitic Islamic student groups, such as Students for Justice in Palestine.
Earlier in 2023, students at Stanford Law School heckled and insulted a federal judge who was invited to speak by a conservative student group, preventing him from delivering his remarks.
University administrators present took no action, except for one who stood up to berate the judge. Ultimately, the speaker had to be whisked away by campus police. None of the offending students faced disciplinary action. No fancy law firm demanded that they be barred from the recruitment roster.
Meanwhile, no wealthy donor publicly chastised elite universities for cowering before BLM rioters in 2020.
Schumer and his Democratic colleagues were eagerly supporting lawbreakers fighting so-called systemic racism. Flip-flopping former Republican presidential candidate and Utah Sen. Mitt Romney even marched with the BLM crowd.
If the vile antisemitism at universities demonstrated how racist universities really are, it also showed that far too many who fund them have tolerated, or even encouraged, the phony DEI and grievance politics that have led to the perversity of proud Jew hatred in the 21st Century.
When corporations bent the knee to BLM in 2020, they played a part in bringing about the current situation.
When law firms and corporations eagerly practiced and promoted the DEI scam, which included denouncing America as a racist country while overlooking the shameful behavior of self-proclaimed social justice warriors, they played a part.
When the Democratic Party gave prominent billing to unabashed antisemites like Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar (whose reported ties to the Muslim Brotherhood are simply ignored), it played a part.
This complicity helped to radicalize an entire generation of young people who think that violence in pursuit of “social justice” is perfectly fine. If an “oppressed” group (Blacks) and their White, leftist allies burning down Wendy’s and ravaging American cities to end “systemic racism” is justifiable, why isn’t it justifiable for another “oppressed” group (Palestinians) to commit acts of terror and kill innocent Israelis? In fact, young Americans chanting Palestinian slogans are arguing exactly that.
Wall Street financiers, law firms, and others who have recently condemned those who espouse antisemitism may be late to the party, but their involvement is much needed.
Returning America to the right course requires renouncing all grievance and identity politics forcefully, and there are no better people to do so than those who donate money and provide jobs.
Decent Americans can only hope that the current awakening will lead to lasting resistance to all forms of hate — including that which has been justified and perpetuated in the name of social justice.
This column was originally published by Fox News.
Image: Harvard University Widener Library, by Joseph Williams, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.