On the unintended (?) consequences of Trump's actions:
It was a nice fairytale for Republicans and staunchly pro-Israel Democrats to tell themselves while Joe Biden was still president that Trump would swoop in and obliterate antisemitism from college campuses: But it took re-electing him for many to discover their personal boundaries on regulating speech. And at this point for many of the victims, it’s too late. Now students are being violently arrested and disappeared in the name of fighting antisemitism—and American Jews are left holding a gun a majority of us never asked for.
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As I wrote for Rolling Stone back in 2021, being an American Jew is a mindfuck. And now we’re in more peril than ever because this destruction of this country’s university life and the lives of university students is being done in our name.
On the rule of never bending the knee/capitulating in advance/pre-emptively:
As promising as Harvard’s opposition may seem, in many ways it’s too little too late. They fell prey to bad actors like Chris Rufo, Rep. Elise Stefanik and billionaire Bill Ackman’s relentless and erroneous attacks on their community in the wake of October 7th. And a report from student newspaper The Harvard Crimson detailed how the school had already partially capitulated in advance.
“In the lead-up to the funding review, Garber had tried to quietly walk a middle road between federal pressure and resistance on campus,” the Crimson wrote. “In March, Harvard ousted personnel at its Center for Middle Eastern Studies, suspended programming focused on Israel and Palestine at the Harvard Divinity School, and terminated its partnership with the oldest university in the West Bank — seemingly a preemptive measure to fend off scrutiny from Washington.”
But Harvard’s preemptive efforts were to no avail, because the truth remains that no capitulation will ever be enough to meet an ever-rising waterline.
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