New ‘Jews and Power’ Course at Oberlin College Questioned by Rabbi
“The belief that Jews operate as a single, hostile unit, disloyal to society and manipulating others to serve their own ends, is a telltale sign of antisemitic bias”
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The rabbi is warning that Oberlin is setting itself up for another Gibson’s Bakery style lawsuit.
The College Fix reports:
Oberlin College ‘Jews and Power’ course questioned by rabbi
Oberlin College students can learn about “Jews and Power” this spring in a four-credit course.
“Popular conceptions” of “Jews and power” can focus on “sympathetic accounts” that “view Jews as perennial victims,” the course description states.
Or the conceptions can focus on a “hostile/antisemitic” view that “Jews” are “overly or preternaturally powerful,” according to the course description at the private Ohio college.
Instead, this class will “complicate that bipolar framework by exploring a more diverse range of encounters between Jews and power from antiquity to the present,” the course description states.
Matthew Berkman, a Jewish Studies professor, will teach the course.
He did not respond to an email and phone call from The College Fix in the past several weeks that asked for his motivation behind the class and for a syllabus.
In addition, Berkman (pictured) is set to teach a course titled “The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” this semester. He has been affiliated, including as an organizer, with Jewish Voice for Peace, which tends to support pro-Palestinian efforts and oppose Israel.
Spokeswoman Andrea also did not respond to an email and phone call in the past several weeks.
An Orthodox rabbi criticized the course in emailed comments to The Fix.
He also brought up the lawsuit the college lost to local Gibson’s Bakery after school officials falsely maligned it as racist after a family member and employee stopped three black students who were stealing alcohol.
“Oberlin recently got a $36 million lesson in how using DEI to decide what is or isn’t racism and bigotry is a bad idea, yet it is setting itself up for another costly lawsuit,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken told The Fix via email.
“The belief that Jews operate as a single, hostile unit, disloyal to society and manipulating others to serve their own ends, is a telltale sign of antisemitic bias,” Rabbi Menken said.
“In accordance with annals of Jew-hatred, the course takes for granted that ‘Jews’ can be seen as a block, who have a ‘relationship’ with power that is somehow different than that of the Irish, Italian, or even German communities,” Menken said.
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Comments
I don’t see how.
First of all, it is impossible to defame “Jews”. US law does not recognize the concept of group libel; once a group is larger than about 25 people, any statement about the group as a whole is automatically understood not to refer to literally every single member, and thus no member can claim to have been defamed.
Second, nothing in the description of the course as cited in this post makes a factual statement, that can be true or false. It all seems to be opinion, which is inherently not defamatory.
Oberlin’s big mistake in the Gibsons case was when Raimondo, acting for the college, went beyond merely calling Gibsons “racist”, which is not actionable, and passed out a flyer that made specific factual statements about Gibsons, were were not true. If Oberlin had been on the ball it would immediately have apologized for Raimondo’s action, told her not to do it again, and made the statement the Gibsons were demanding at the time.
Poor Oberlin. It’s not easy to be a progressive center for Social Justice when you’re trapped on the outskirts of Cleveland, Ohio. The college actually is the home of a well known conservatory of music, and has always had a good reputation as a liberal arts college. Then the Gibson Bakery incident happened in 2016, and the college lost its mind attempting to demonstrate its commitment to its black students and to fighting racism wherever it may be found. Sadly, it turned out that these particular black students really did try to shoplift two bottles of wine, and then punched and kicked a Gibson family member who tried to stop the theft. LI reported extensively on the incident, which did not end well for Oberlin. Today there is a new item on the SJW agenda, historical injustices faced by Palestinian victims of Israeli oppression. I have little doubt that that is the point of Professor Berkman’s course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I personally would like to be there for the lecture justifying the October 7 raid into Israel, but I suppose I will have to miss it. I understand from other progressive sources that it was all Israel’s fault, and didn’t happen anyway. The good news is that Israel is unlikely to sue the college. The bad news is that their legal advisors are so incompetent, they may find another way to lose $33 million dollars.
Their concern for the ‘oppressed’ Palestinians is about as well placed as their concern for the ‘innocent’ student shoplifters.
As an alum I call tell you that 99+% of the staff and faculty are “not” on the ball there. Only a couple of emeriti faculty (IIRC) even challenged what the college was doing at the time (2016-19). They keep talking about being open-minded and tolerant, and then display actions which are the complete opposite.
If I were to hazard a guess here, it would be that the college has been hijacked by the board as a giant social experiment laboratory, where they could build the revolution and have it spread outward from there. But people saw through that pretty quick and now the college is suffering the consequences of what they sowed. What was a nationally ranked top-10 school in the 70’s is now third in Ohio, and likely soon to be fourth. The only say in operations that the alumni have is through donations (only 6 out about 30 board members are elected by alumni), which I suspect are going down every year, since they don’t seem to bring it up any more.
Since the whole BLM grift thing didn’t work out, it seems as though they have signed onto the up and coming Jew-hate bandwagon to regain relevance. But by living in a bubble and being really out of touch with the world, they did not and still do not seem to be aware that the world changed around them. Well, it didn’t change that much in reality. What happened is that the world according to the MSM crumbled, and Oberlin is still living in denial about what they have to sell, and what the consumer wants. As a student famously said in 2016, “I don’t know how Trump won. I don’t know a single person who voted for him.”
They will never change as long as clueless parents pay them well to indoctrinate their kids. There is a market for this, and they want to remain competitively progressive. Lawsuits aren’t going to deter them, but loss of Federal funding for their racial discrimination practices might better get their attention. Meanwhile, the crazier they get, the more crazies they get.