Rutgers-New Brunswick Chancellor Apologizes for Condemning Anti-Semitism (Update: University President Responds)
“In hindsight, it is clear to us that the message failed to communicate support for our Palestinian community members. We sincerely apologize for the hurt that this message has caused,” Chancellor Christopher J. Molloy wrote a day after condemning the rise of anti-Semitism in America.
(See this post for an important update)
Once upon a time, one could issue a blanket condemnation of anti-Semitism without the slightest concern that a strong message unequivocally condemning acts of harassment and violence against Jewish people would offend anyone.
Sadly, we are no longer living in such times, as both the chancellor and provost of Rutgers-New Brunswick found out this week.
Christopher J. Molloy, who is the Rutgers-NB chancellor, penned a letter Wednesday in which he and the university’s provost Francine Conway spoke out against the rise of anti-Semitism in America.
“Recent incidents of hate directed toward Jewish members of our community again remind us of what history has to teach us,” they wrote. “Tragically, in the last century alone, acts of prejudice and hatred left unaddressed have served as the foundation for many atrocities against targeted groups around the world.”
The letter referenced the Israeli-Hamas conflict but in neutral terms before noting that their hope was that Rutgers-New Brunswick could “serve as a model for institutions that respect and value the dignity of every human being”:
Although it has been nearly two decades since the U.S. Congress approved the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, the upward trend of anti-Semitism continues. We have also been witnesses to the increasing violence between Israeli forces and Hamas in the Middle East leading to the deaths of children and adults and mass displacement of citizens in the Gaza region and the loss of lives in Israel.
At a time when the ravages of the pandemic and the proliferation of global conflict are leading to death, destruction, and ethnic strife, the university stands as a beacon of hope for our community. We have the opportunity amidst the turmoil to serve as a model for institutions that respect and value the dignity of every human being.
They also condemned violence against all people, regardless of race, religion, or background:
-We call out all forms of bigotry, prejudice, discrimination, xenophobia, and oppression, in whatever ways they may be expressed.
-We condemn any vile acts of hate against members of our community designed to generate fear, devalue, demonize, or dehumanize.
-We embrace and affirm the value and dignity of each member of our Rutgers community regardless of religion, race, ethnic background, sexual orientation, gender, and ability.
Unfortunately for Molloy and Conway, their denouncement of anti-Semitism along with their blanket condemnations of violence were not appreciated by the Rutgers-New Brunswick chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine group, who announced their disapproval via an Instagram post in which they complained about how the letter of condemnation focused primarily on anti-Semitism instead of focusing on the alleged experiences of the Palestinian people.
The group then demanded an apology:
UPDATE: It appears the apology from the @RutgersU chancellor for condemning anti-Semitism came in response to a long statement on Insta from the school’s SJP chapter. (The statement made very brief mention of Israel/Gaza conflict and focused solely on anti-Semitic incidents) https://t.co/Yj4ukmCQxj pic.twitter.com/LpyjeeH0FX
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) May 28, 2021
Not long after the group’s rant went up, Molloy and Conway were back with a letter simply titled “An Apology” in which they apologized for “the hurt” their message condemning anti-Semitism caused:
We understand that intent and impact are two different things, and while the intent of our message was to affirm that Rutgers–New Brunswick is a place where all identities can feel validated and supported, the impact of the message fell short of that intention. In hindsight, it is clear to us that the message failed to communicate support for our Palestinian community members. We sincerely apologize for the hurt that this message has caused.
Rutgers University–New Brunswick is a community that is enriched by our vibrant diversity. However, our diversity must be supported by equity, inclusion, antiracism, and the condemnation of all forms of bigotry and hatred, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. As we grow in our personal and institutional understanding, we will take the lesson learned here to heart, and pledge our commitment to doing better. We will work to regain your trust, and make sure that our communications going forward are much more sensitive and balanced.
It sounded like a hostage video – just without the video.
It will surprise no one reading this that their apology letter was not enough for the SJP group, which I should note are also proponents of the anti-Semitic BDS movement:
View this post on Instagram
The university’s apology letter was also not well-received by people like Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, and others, but for much different reasons:
Under pressure, the Rutgers chancellor *apologized* for condemning the surge of anti-Semitic violence.
How can someone this weak lead a university? https://t.co/8pd1nRFOkD
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) May 28, 2021
In which the chancellor of Rutgers says the quiet part out loud: that anti-Semitism and hatred of Israel are intertwined, and that you can't condemn anti-Semitism without offending the Israel-haters https://t.co/yT6G5aHWZI
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 28, 2021
So condemning #Antisemitism in America directed against Americans after an 80% increase in hate crimes here in the US is politically incorrect. That’s #antisemitic @RutgersU @cjmolloy1 https://t.co/yRv75Dxh7X
— Rabbi Andrew Jacobs (@RabbiJacobs) May 29, 2021
We live in a world where it’s unpopular and even wrong to call out Jew hatred. @RutgersU has one of the largest Jewish populations and a past with antisemitism on its campus and they’ve made it clear that Jewish students aren’t safe there… https://t.co/Hane1y3F7X
— Jennie Taer ✡️🇮🇱 (@JennieSTaer) May 28, 2021
There are times in a person’s life when a moral stand needs to be made, regardless of whatever pushback they anticipate they will receive. The fact that Molloy and Conway felt the need to so quickly backtrack on their statement condemning anti-Semitism after facing heat from an anti-Semitic group tells us all we need to know about the Rutgers-NB university leadership – with none of it being good.
Sunday Morning Update: Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway provided an updated statement sometime Saturday, claiming that “Rutgers deplores hatred and bigotry in all forms. We have not, nor would we ever, apologize for standing against anti-Semitism.” The original two letters posted to the website by Rutgers-NB’s Chancellor Christopher J. Molloy and Provost Francine Conway now redirect to Holloway’s.
Note: The headline of this post has been updated to reflect the precise campus. Also, Holloway is the president of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
We have no political power in NJ but there are surely Republican Alumnii who could exert some pressure by refusing to contribute again?
Your contribution to a college is just a self imposed tax if you chose not to try to use it to exert influence. These are not divine places and you have as much of a right to influence as a Democrat despite what Democrats say about board of trustees having no right to reject an offer made to CRT liars in NC.
So they are admitting that hatred of Israel isn’t just a political thing. It really does involve anti-Semitism. Nice that they admit it.
But why in the world do people apologize for speaking the truth just because some people can’t handle the truth? Is truth so worthless?
Oh, but isn’t that the point? Make the school unsafe for conservatives, freethinkers, Jews …?
College administrators are drawn from the invertebrate phylum.
Not enough of us see we are living in a repear of the Weimar Republic, and BLM and Antifa are repeats of the Nazi Party’s Brownshirts. (The Nazis this time around, being the democrat party).
The Nazi Party was a political party. They got VOTED into office. The “enabling act” that allowed them to subsequently govern by dictatorship is exactly what obamacare is, if you read the bill. Which I did.
We have several things in our favor that the Wiemar Republic did not. We are a well-armed citizenry, we are not beaten and humiliated as a people, we have Republican governors doing the right things in their states to protect us from federal overreach, and we have a Constitution–supported by the people and by Republican govs–that precludes any form of an Enabling Act.
We actually have the power here, and the only way we lose it is to dance to the commie leftist tune: hate people based on their race and/or religion, become violent, nurture and ingest divisive lunacy like CRT and the 1619 project. They need us to be filled with racist animus, to violently oppose their crazy anti-white, anti-capitalist, anti-family, anti-American provocations.
They are trying to “nudge” and control us with all of this, it’s so freaking obvious. When the left says, hate POC, we are supposed to say, “how much?” not “um, no thanks, I love my fellow Americans of all races.” When the left says, “be less white,” we are supposed to comply, to abandon who we are and what we believe and act like the barbarians they truly believe POC are not say “um, naw, I’ll be just as ‘white’ as I am if that means having morals, values, and a belief in America.”
Never ever do what the left wants you to do; that way lies evil, complicity in their genocidal fantasies, and the death of our own souls. Never comply. Never jump through their hoops, never hate who they tell you to hate, never lash out at your neighbors for some left-created Orwellian slight. Never do the left’s bidding. It will not end well; it’s not meant to end well.
When I think of #Resistance these days, I think of resisting the path we are being herded down like a bunch of mindless lemmings. Their whole commie plot depends on us bending to their will, reacting with hate and fear and violence. Becoming the racists they insist we are, succumbing to their bullying insistence that we are hate-filled racists bent on genocide . . . this is required for them to gain full and total control, and we must never let that happen.
They must quickly backtrack and make it clear that they support Palestinians because there is one chance in 150 million that a Jewish student might attack of of them.
On the other hand, the chances that it might happen the other way around are a little better than 50 50 and by making this new statement they have moved the needle further in that direction to the point where, if I was a Jewish student, I might want to consider going elsewhere to study.
Half of American Jewry is suicidal. It’s that simple. To say it pisses off the other half is an understatement.
With respect, I believe it’s more than half. It is one of several reasons I abandoned “my” people and the culture of pessimism and cloud-finding long ago.
Criticizing Israel and being anti-Semitic has no downside..accolades really
Criticizing “Palestinian” actions gets one threats and a Molotov cocktail
For 70 years, the left-wing press and academia spent hundreds of thousands of column inches whining about, “how could any Good German just go along with that stuff?” Finally, they decided they just needed to show us how.
This isn’t comparable to Nazi Germany.
Yes, it is. Nazi Germany did not break out into genocide all at once. This kind of crap is how it started.
Did the parliament of Weimar Germany reject Hitler’s reaction to the Reichstag fire (By the way thank our not so liked Cat Herder for that)? Did governors across Germany stand up to Hitler telling him to shove it and use a wide variety of powers against him?
Because I could bring up more counter-points and you know the answers to all of them I think maybe you should stop the Hitler comparisons.
Antifa is a lot like Mussolini’s black shirts and has about the same amount of support from Democrat localities, but even for a comparison to fascist Italy there was no jurisdiction in Italy that didn’t back the Black Shirts (so no Italian equivalent to Florida’s anti-rioting bill).
You could compare Antifa to the Blackshirts that is a good comparison (although even that has Florida like limits) but Mussolini’s Italy was never in the same league as Hitler’s Germany, you degrade yourself when you do a Nazi comparison.
BULLSH*T IT ISN”T! What an ignorant statement. Try backing that up with facts.
Name a governor of any German state (you could include Austria post Anschluss) who attempted to or succeeded at stopping Hitler at anything post Reichstag Fire.
An excellent point.
Why? What’s your point? I’m not talking about governors, or dogcatchers, or milkmen. I’m talking about how the mainstream media and academia is putting on a fine example for us of exactly how the German people bent over for the Nazis.
As to our own “parliament,” tell me — when exactly did it reject Biden’s reaction to our own January 6 “Reichstag Fire?” Still waiting for that.
If this does not show antisemitism is a big problem, and now at Rutgers, what does?
Must apologize for triggering antisemites.
Something fishy at Rutgers. Why do the two links to the chancellor’s statement condemning anti-Semitism and the apology to SJP go instead to today’s. statement by the president of Rutgers that they apologized for standing against anti-Semitism?
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2021/05/rutgers-fecklessness-and-deceit-in.html
Welcome to the American Weimar Republic, just as the American Nazis are gaining power.
Memory hole, of course! Cannot let the ungoodspeak version survive!
Correction to the above comment. The president of Rutgers stated today that they did NOT apologize for standing against anti-Semitism.
Correction. Molloy and Conway are not chancellor and provost of the university, but only of the New Brunswick campus.
“However, our diversity must be supported by equity, inclusion, antiracism, and the condemnation of all forms of bigotry and hatred, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”
Not only did he apologize, he embraced “equity” and “antiracism”. The stupid Failestinians won 1000%.
This is why we must insist that no white person have any role in any leftist-controlled, woke venue. This includes the Democrat Party (no white candidates, staffers, consultants, oppo researchers, not even interns or janitors, ever, because 1619), all Democrat media outlets (no white staff, editors, or ownership/share- and stake-holders of the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, and etc.), and of course, all “woke” businesses.
We cannot suffer an evil white supremacist who is born evil (and white) to profit on, as they all insist they do, the backs of the oppressed, on the blood, sweat, and tears of the black and brown bodies they insist they exploited. They must PAY for this evil they did, this evil they embrace as their own doing, their own fault.
They must all, each and every one, step aside immediately. For anti-racism. For racial and social justice. For reparations. And for, you know, for other CRT stuff.
This is important. Stop this insanity by demanding more of it. All day, every day. Complain loudly and often about every white person who is in any way connected to any woke company or to the leftist, activist media arm of the Democrat party. I’m sorry, but WHY is any white person making the most money / getting the most face time on these woke networks? They insist that white = evil, so what gives? How do they get away with all those white supremacists (being born white = white supremacy, they insist!). Evil whites are the problem, fgs, these very outlets insist . . . as they foreground over-paid white hacks. Enough. This cannot stand. Stop doing nothing and hold them to their own rules.
Post-update observation: Rutgers could save considerable money by simply firing their chancellor and replacing him with a “Magic 8-Ball.”
Such utterly feckless and contemptible moral cowardice and bankruptcy. I can’t even keep track of the Left’s disgraceful dhimmitude and total kowtowing to Dhimmi-crat/Islamic supremacism, Jew-hate and Israel-vilification, the incidents are so numerous and frequent, now.