“Cornell did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Jacobson’s call to evaluate antisemitism on campus”
“I renew my call for the Board of Trustees to take action to examine the antisemitism problem on campus and the connection to the ‘intersectional’ racialist ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ advocacy and programming which isolates and marginalizes Jews.”
On Friday, October 20, 2023, I issued a Call To Action For The Cornell Board of Trustees after the controversy regarding a Cornell History Professor who said he was “exhilarated” when he heard of the Hamas attack on Israel. I pointed out that the professor in question was a symptom of a deeper problem on campus that the Board needed to address:
The Cornell Board of Trustees is meeting this weekend, and no doubt the controversy will be a topic of discussion. But those comments by that professor are merely an outward manifestation of a much deeper problem on campus that the Board must address….
I call upon the Cornell Board of Trustees at its meeting this weekend to: (1) pause all new administrative DEI initiatives for the remainder of this academic year, until the Board can consider permanent changes, (2) adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, and (3) form a special independent commission to investigate antisemitism on campus and the negative effects of DEI, comprised of dissenting voices among faculty, students, staff, and alumni, to make recommendations to the Board for corrective action. This cannot be an exercise in public relations or a cosmetic repackaging of the current policies.
Cornell can be better, but it will take urgent and serious Board action to turn this ship around.
Fox News picked up the story, but Cornell declined to comment. There is no indication whether the Board of Trustees took up the issue.
The History Professor was back in the news because he has taken a “voluntary” leave of absence. Fox News pursued the story, including my call for the Board of Trustees to take action on the underlying campus problem:
Russell Rickford, who taught post-Civil War African American history at the prestigious university, came under fire earlier this month after footage of him celebrating the Hamas surprise terror attack that left 1,400 dead, including women, children, and elderly civilians, went viral.
“Professor Russell Rickford has requested and received approval to take a leave of absence from the university,” a Cornell spokesperson told Fox News Digital….
Cornell Law professor William A. Jacobson, who has blasted the school’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative and called for an independent commission to evaluate antisemitism at the Ivy League school, believes Rickford is “a symptom of a deeper problem” in higher education and at Cornell.
“The demonization of Israel on campuses has reached the extreme extent that a professor in front of a large crowd including students felt no hesitation at expressing his ‘exhilaration’ at a bloody and brutal attack on civilians. That crowd then broke into the genocidal chant ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’ Against what other people other than Jews is mass rape, torture, and kidnapping of children deemed exhilarating? Against what other people is such brutality ‘contextualized’ and excused? This anti-Jewish agitation flourishes on a campus and culture where the Big Lie is spread daily that Jews have no legitimate claim to the land of Israel and are outside occupiers and colonizers in their own historical homeland, when in fact the opposite is true,” Jacobson told Fox News Digital via email.
“The Jewish claim to the land, which would be celebrated if it were any other indigenous people, is reviled and used to stoke and spread the Jew hatred masquerading as anti-Zionism and decolonization. Cornell needs to examine its campus culture and the direct and indirect demonization of Jews,” he continued. “I renew my call for the Board of Trustees to take action to examine the antisemitism problem on campus and the connection to the ‘intersectional’ racialist ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ advocacy and programming which isolates and marginalizes Jews.”
Cornell did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Jacobson’s call to evaluate antisemitism on campus.
That makes two no comments. I still don’t know if the Board of Trustees is planning to take up my call to action.
I also appeared on Fox Business Evening Edit Show with Elizabeth MacDonald to talk about the national campus walkout today organized by Students for Justice in Palestine, among others:
Featured Image: Cornell Student Assembly BDS Vote Fails, April 2019]
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Comments
I guess the threshold for what constitutes microaggressions against Jewish students is extremely high.
Thinly veiled calls for genocide against Jews? Still won’t get you disciplined.
There is no threshold.
Microagressions are BS, but why would anybody not want to address hate against our Jewish brethren?
It seems that the dumbing down of education has had the effect of making many fellow citizens amoral morons.
Morals have to be implanted in a person early in their childhood.
Woke will set you free.
The Progressives have loved the idea of people “transitioning” from male to female (or whatever) and female to male (or whatever).
Their commitment to the “T” process has now been extended to their political aims: from “progressives” to “Nazis” and they don’t even see it!
(Disclaimer . . . IMO, in principle, the far left and far right are far more alike than different . . . but I do find it ironic that the label they once despised [Nazi] is the very label that best describes progressives now.)
You have bought into the false premise of left vs right, where Nazis are at the far right and Communism is on the left.
First, National Socialists were never what might be called rightwing but quite the opposite, by both philosophy and actions.
Second, the real political spectrum is NOT right vs left but liberty vs totalitarianism. Note where all of histories worst players fall, and look at which direction our own government is heading.
This is far more instructive than trying to parse where fascism and corporatism differ, and exactly where they should be placed on the false right;left teeter totter.
More accurately, the “real political spectrum” is two-dimensional: one social, one economic. Check out the Nolan Chart.
Thank you Henry. Had totally forgotten the Nolan Chart.
It is brilliant.
No response, no surprise.
Most of the universities are just hoping that there is a cease fire, and that this will all die down and go away–they’re not really interested in addressing antisemitism
“Did not immediately respond”
Did not respond later, either.
Like a good sports commentator, you have to assess the team’s offense and defense capabilities. Some people consider administrators resisting the pro-Hamas demands (defense) to be sufficient success. Prof. Jacobson is obviously making moves directed toward improving the campus climate (offense). I would be interesting to attend a debate where these issues were addressed in a dispationate way.
Hamas conducts a terrorist attack on Israel killing 1400 people mostly civilians, slaughtering over 200 innocent people at a music festival, killing women and children, burning babies alive, decapitating, raping, mutilating and dragging 200 hostages to Gaza.
And Professor Rickford found that “exhilarating”.
On Jan 6th, a few hundred people trespassed on the US Capitol, most let in by the Capitol police and most walking around peacefully taking selfies..with the whole incident lasting only a few hours, nothing burned down…and the only person killed by violence killed was an unarmed female vet protestor shot in the neck at point blank range by a Capitol police officer as she crawled thru a window!
I’d love to see Mr Rickford’s Facebook and Twitter posts for the past 2 years about Jan 6th!
I’d bet a small fortune that he was calling THOSE people terrorists and insurrectionists trying to conduct a coup!
Anyone have any of those on record?
If leftists didn’t have hypocritical standards, they would have none at all!
Yup!
Twitter 🙄
https://x.com/rickfordrussell/status/1348625854096691201?s=46&t=RR-mkqqRtCrhUezwM213Ow
The whole matter of how any college campus is responding to this is beyond disbelief. Perhaps they didn’t think to watch the videos that Hamas took of itself conducting the atrocities. Hamas isn’t even trying to hide or cover up with they’re doing. No one in a right state of mind would support such behavior. Cornell should immediately fire this professor. Cornell should apologize for their miss behavior and change course. International students protesting on behalf of Hamas should be immediately deported.
My apologies-any college campus that is speaking in support of Hamas or supporting any organization, in support of Hamas… there are a handful of campuses and a handful of states who are morally doing the right thing. Any college president, who is supporting Hamas or not actively speaking out against the support of Hamas on their campus, should be called upon for immediate resignation.