Hamas and Universities in Connecticut
Willful blindness to genocidal anti-Semitism.
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“O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
In this injunction in Article Seven of the Hamas Covenant, ratified in 1988, one finds the reason for the invasion of Israel that began on October 7. Hamas does not merely seek the extermination of Jews. That is why it exists. That is why its fighters decapitate Israeli babies, rape Israeli women and burn them alive. That is why they humiliate Israel children and grandmothers before killing them. That is why they slaughter over two hundred Israeli teenagers gathered peacefully at a concert. Everyone in Israel Hamas has murdered were murdered for one reason and one reason only – because they were Jews. According to the same covenant, which reads like an addendum to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Jews are devoid of humanity, a demonic people responsible for everything Hamas objects to in human history, from the French Revolution to World War II.
The atrocities Hamas has committed are not a regrettable byproduct of warfare that occur in all wars. They are its purpose.
In the face of such unmitigated evil one might expect the leaders of colleges and universities in Connecticut, and the students who attend them, to respond with moral clarity: distinguishing good from evil, virtue from moral depravity, and an organization committed to the extermination the Jewish people from the nation-state of the Jewish people, the state of Israel, which is the only democracy in the Middle East, and the only country in the Middle East that affords all of its citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, the civil liberties we enjoy in America.
But they did not.
The President of Central Connecticut State University [CCSU], Zulma Toro, noted in a public statement rightly disavowing an incendiary message from anti-Israel students how “deeply upsetting” she found “the recent tragedies in the Middle East.” One would not know from her statement what these tragedies were, who were their victims, and who was responsible for them.
The President of the University of Connecticut, Radenka Maric, called the attack on Israel “horrific,” but then described it generically, as a form of “hate, violence, and conflict” like that which afflicts “society” today.
Worse was the puerile rhetoric of “Yalies4Palestine.” In the world of fantasy the Yale students inhabit, Gaza has been an “open-air prison” since the Israelis left it in 2005, notwithstanding Israel supplying Gazans with food, electricity, and other essential commodities, excluding only those with military purposes, such as cement for tunnels dug under the border with Israel. Not surprisingly, the students’ statement said nothing about the 1,200 Gazan children forced by Hamas to construct these tunnels who were killed when some of them collapsed.
From Terrence Cheng, the Chancellor of the Connecticut State University System, there was silence.
By the end of last week the only formal entity on a Connecticut college campus I am aware of to respond honestly and fairly to the Hamas invasion was the Committee on Anti-Semitism and Education at CCSU, which rightly denounced it as an atrocity. President Toro deserves credit for having created the committee.
There are lessons one can draw from the Hamas invasion that are relevant to higher education in Connecticut and in America. It makes nonsense of the conventional wisdom in academia that speech is violence, and that speech that makes one feel unsafe can be prohibited. Everyone in Israel knows what real violence is.
No less welcome would be an awareness that America and its allies, such as Israel, are not the instigators of the evils – racism, imperialism, colonialism — that are claimed to afflict the world today. In comparison to the rest of the world, they are exemplars of moral virtue. It is Iran, not the United States or Israel, where the government publicly hangs homosexuals from construction cranes, and shoots women in the streets for removing the hijabs obscuring their faces. And it is Gaza and the West Bank where Hamas and the Palestinian Authority arrest, torture, and execute political opponents. No one does this in the United States or Israel.
Should students in Connecticut and around the country learn these lessons from the atrocities of which Hamas is incontestably guilty, the deaths of their victims will not have been entirely in vain. This would be small consolation for their grieving families and friends. But in times like these, when the worst of what human beings are capable is being demonstrated so horrifically, it would be something to be grateful for.
Jay Bergman is Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University and serves on the Board of Directors of the National Association of Scholars.
It's Not Just Students: Meet the Professors Leading the Academic Embrace of Hamas
Ohio State's Pranav Jani, a Students for Justice in Palestine faculty adviser, has long praised Palestinian terrorists
An Ohio State University student group last week held a "day of resistance" rally that saw organizers defend Hamas terrorism and condemn Israel's "apartheid system." Behind that group is a socialist English professor who has long supported Palestinian terrorists and advocated for the end of the Jewish state.
Ohio State's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter counts as its faculty adviser Pranav Jani, a card-carrying socialist who began teaching at the university in 2004. Jani, who specializes in "Marxist theories of nationalism and colonialism," is a vocal supporter of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which seeks to wage economic warfare on Israel. Jani has also praised Palestinian terrorists—in 2013, he called on the Obama administration to help free Samer Issawi, a convicted terrorist who manufactured pipe bombs and fired at Israeli citizens during the second intifada. Years later, in 2019, Jani criticized a Canadian church for canceling an annual event held in celebration of Ghassan Kanafani, a leading member of the terrorist organization Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Jani's role as an Ohio State associate English professor and Students for Justice in Palestine faculty adviser reflects the rise in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiments among university faculty, not just students.
At Cornell University, for example, history professor Russel Rickford told a crowd of students during a pro-Hamas rally that the terror group's attack on Israel was "exhilarating" and "energizing." At Albany Law School, assistant professor Nina Farnia praised the "Palestinian resistance" in the wake of the attack, which saw Hamas kidnap and execute women and children. "The Palestinians are a beacon for us all," Farnia said.
Israel on Campus Coalition CEO Jacob Baime urged university leaders to confront professors who glorify terrorism, telling the Washington Free Beacon that Students for Justice in Palestine and similar campus groups are "Hamas in America."
"They need to condemn and confront anyone who glorifies or minimizes the deaths or celebrates Hamas," Baime said. "And that especially includes SJP and its enablers in the faculty."
Jani, Rickford, and Farnia did not return requests for comment.
In addition to its rally, Ohio State's Students for Justice in Palestine chapter issued a statement following Hamas's attack that defended the terror group's "right to resist" and condemned "Israel's continued settler colonial violent murder of Palestinians." The chapter was one of many across the country to hold rallies and issue statements in support of Hamas following the attack.
At Yale, for example, student group "Yalies4Palestine" held an "All Out for Palestine!" rally, during which students called for Israel's eradication. The group also released a statement that expressed its "unwavering support of the Palestinian people’s right to resist colonial oppression" and accused "the Israeli Zionist regime" of being "responsible for the unfolding violence." At Stanford, meanwhile, pro-Hamas activists littered the campus with chalk messages and tapestries. "Viva Intifada," one message said. "The illusion of Israel IS BURNING," said another.
Lecturers at both of those schools have spewed similar rhetoric. Hours after Hamas's Oct. 7 attack, Yale professor Zareena Grewal—who teaches American studies, ethnicity, race, migration, and religious studies at the Ivy League institution—called Israel a "murderous, genocidal settler state" that terrorists "have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity." Stanford lecturer Ameer Hasan Loggins, who taught Colin Kaepernick at the University of California, Berkeley and credits himself with driving the former athlete's liberal activism, told some Jewish students to stand in a corner like "Israel does to the Palestinians."
That rhetoric has prompted some schools to lose support from top donors. Former U.S. ambassador to China and Russia Jon Huntsman said he will no longer give to the University of Pennsylvania, citing its "silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel." The Wexner Foundation similarly pulled their financial support from Harvard. It's unclear, however, if Ohio State and other top institutions will face similar reckonings.
Ohio State, which did not return a request for comment, openly touts Jani's role as "faculty adviser for the Students for Justice in Palestine" and promotes the English professor's Medium page, in which Jani has expressed support for both the academic boycott of Israel and for convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal. Jani also leads Ohio State's Association of University Professors, an informal faculty union that is "active in reclaiming higher education as an affordable and equitable public good."
"When you join the boycott of Israel you are responding to a call from Palestinian civil society and saying that no, we, as part of a global community that is committed to human rights, will not be silent while atrocities under a military colonial occupation go on month after month, year after year," Jani wrote in a 2016 essay. "If you refuse to see this line, you are also taking a stand: for the status quo. You are free to do so, of course. But then please don't speak to me about your anti-racism."
Students for Justice in Palestine is far from the only campus group defending Hamas. At Northwestern University, the school's Community for Human Rights last week said it "stands in solidarity with Palestinian freedom fighters" and described Hamas's attack as the first time "Palestinians have returned home" since "the imprisonment of 2 million Palestinians in an open air prison 20 years ago." The group's faculty adviser, global engagement programs associate director Patrick Eccles, did not return a request for comment.
Days later, on Tuesday, the university's Asian American Studies Program faculty issued a statement defending Hamas as a "political group."
"Over the last week, NU's campus has been plastered with anti-Palestinian war propaganda mimicking the Israeli state," said the faculty group, which is led by black studies professor Nitasha Tamar Sharma and anthropology professor Shalini Shankar. "One poster claimed that 'Hamas beheaded babies,' a statement that has been widely dismissed as false."
Neither Sharma nor Shankar returned requests for comment.
Hamas and Amoral Clarity
What College support for Hamas reveals.
One unexpected blowback from the medieval Hamas’s barbaric murdering of hundreds of Israeli civilians is the revelation of current global amorality.
More than 20 Harvard university identity politics groups pledged their support to the Hamas murderers—to the utter silence for days of Harvard President Claudine Gay.
Americans knew higher education practiced racist admission policies. It has long promoted racially segregated dorms and graduations. And de facto it has destroyed the First Amendment.
But the overt support for Hamas killers by the diversity, equity, and inclusion crowd on a lot of campuses exposes to Americans the real moral and intellectual rot in higher education.
Democratic Socialist members of the new woke Democrat Party openly expressed ecstatic support for Hamas’s bloodwork.
Their biggest fears were not dead fellow Americans or hostages, or some 1,000 butchered Jewish civilians. Instead they were fearful that righteous Israeli retaliation might destroy the Hamas death machine.
Palestinians for years fooled naïfs in Europe and the Obama and Biden administrations into sending billions of dollars into Gaza.
These monies were channeled to tunnel into Israel, to obtain a huge rocket arsenal, and to craft plans to wipe out Jews.
The Biden administration has blood on its hands.
As soon as Biden took power, he resumed massive subsidies to radical Palestinians, canceled by the prior Trump administration.
He ignored warnings from his own state Department that such fungible moneys would soon fuel Hamas terrorism.
His administration dropped sanctions against Iran, ensuring that Tehran would enjoy a multi-billion-dollar windfall to be distributed to Israel’s existential enemies—another fact well known to the Biden administration.
If the Biden administration had announced overtly that it was rabidly anti-Israel, it would be hard to imagine anything it could have done differently from its present nihilist behavior.
Biden and company quickly restarted the defunct Iran appeasement deal—a leftover from the anti-Israeli Obama administration. No surprise, they appointed radical pro-Iranian activist Robert Malley to head the negotiations.
Malley allegedly has leaked American classified documents to Iranian officials and is under investigation by the FBI. He did his best to place pro-Iranian, anti-American activists into the high echelons of the U.S. government.
Biden was intent on forcing South Korea to release to Iran $6 billion in sanctioned frozen money.
That expectation of cash ensured Iran would be reimbursed for its present terrorist arming spree.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken shamefully tweeted that Israel should settle for an immediate ceasefire. No wonder he soon withdrew his unhinged posting.
That idiocy would be the moral equivalent of an American ally in December1941 urging the U.S. to seek negotiations with imperial Japan after its surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor—to avoid a “cycle of violence.”
The Biden team has drained strategic arms stockpiles in Israel, designed to help the Jewish state in extremis.
It recklessly abandoned a multibillion-dollar arms trove in Kabul, some of which reportedly made its way from Taliban killers to the Hamas murderers.
Once the mass murdering started, the amoral clarity of our “allies” was stunning.
NATO partner Turkey openly sided with the killers. It —along with Blinken—called for a cease fire—at the moment the Hamas death squads had finished, and Israel was ready to hold Hamas to account.
Qatar, where the U.S. Central Command is based, proved little more than a Hamas front.
It offers sanctuary to the architects of Hamas killing. And Qatar ensures a safe financial pipeline to Hamas from Iran and the radical Arab world.
Some of the most vehement current supporters of the Hamas death squads were immigrants to America from the Middle East.
Oddly, they apparently had fled just such illiberal Middle East regimes to reach a tolerant, democratic, and secure United States.
Yet they now endorse the Hamas butchering of Jewish civilians. Its savagery is aimed at executing, raping, and beheading Jews, and then mutilating their bodies.
Hamas apparently hopes to shock the Israeli government into voluntarily committing suicide—in line with the ancient Hamas agenda to destroy the Jewish state.
In a strange way, this reign of death has become a touchstone, an acid test of sorts that has revealed the utter amorality of enemies abroad and quite dangerous people at home.
It is past time that Americans deal with the medieval world that was revealed this week rather than keep dreaming in the fantasy world of our government.
Americans need to stop illegal immigration and restore their southern border, while ceasing all immigration from unhinged, hostile nations.
The military must return to its deterrent role and fire its woke commissariat.
Our leaders must accept that in the last three years of the Biden administration, serial American appeasement abroad, disunity at home, and social chaos have encouraged an entire host of enemies —China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Middle East illiberal regimes, and former friends like Turkey and Qatar.
And our enemies dream of doing to us what we just saw in Israel.
Harvard Defends Students’ Right to Free Speech – When It’s Anti-Israel
Harvard University claimed that it supports free speech after several of its student groups voiced opposition to Israel, despite the school's notoriety as one of the most censorship-prone universities in the country.
In the wake of expressions of anti-Israeli sentiment by individual students and groups at the school, Harvard President Claudine Gray issued a statement, in which she declared “Our University embraces a commitment to free expression…that commitment extends even to views that many of us find objectionable, even outrageous.”
However, an examination of Harvard University’s existing record on freedom of expression seems to indicate otherwise.
In its 2023 rankings of America’s colleges and universities by freedom of expression, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) ranked Harvard dead last out of 254 schools examined. Among the actions which earned Harvard this unique dishonor are nine attempts to deplatform speakers, faculty, and students – seven of which resulted in sanctions. Furthermore, “just over a quarter of Harvard students reported they are comfortable publicly disagreeing with their professor on a controversial political topic; only roughly a third think it is ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ clear the administration protects free speech on campus.”
Beyond its abysmal free speech record, Harvard has made its political bias readily apparent in its choice of commencement speakers over the last decade. Among those chosen to deliver the address include Oprah Winfrey, gun control advocate Michael Bloomberg, Mark Zuckerberg, far-left New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, and Attorney General Merrick Garland. During that time, not a solitary right-leaning celebrity or politician of equivalent stature was featured.
Thus, Harvard says some speech it considers objectionable (such as supporting terrorist attacks against civilians) is allowed, but other speech (like advocating political principles that fall even slightly to the right of center) is not.
The Problem Of Totalitarians Using Our Freedoms Against Us
By Vince Coyner
Like most Americans, I was shocked by the vicious inhumanity that the coward terrorist group Hamas carried out in Israel last weekend. Unfortunately, organized evil is neither unique nor surprising. The Nazis were equally evil across Europe, as were the Japanese at Nanking, Stalin with Ukraine, and Mao with his own people. Sadly, evil happens, devils exist, although, thankfully, they are rarely celebrated.
But “rarely” doesn’t mean never, and the most shocking thing last week wasn’t the evil Hamas perpetrated but, rather, the extraordinary support it has received. Not only is Hamas’s evil finding exuberant support in places like Iran and Qatar where you might expect it, but there were tens of thousands of Muslims—and their liberal comrades—in places like New York, Detroit, and Washington out en masse vocally demonstrating their support for these monsters.
And it wasn’t just on the streets, in places like Harvard and Yale and NYU, you had students and professors and organizations blaming Israel for Hamas’s inhumanity. Even as the full extent of the carnage emerged, days after the world was able to see the barbarity of what the savages carried out, the rallies in support not only didn’t diminish, but they seemed to grow. I couldn’t help but wonder what that portends for our future.
As an American, I shook my head, stunned as I watched the scenes unfold. I wondered how so many people, with smiles on their non-hidden faces, could cheer such evil and how supposedly intelligent people could put their names in support of such barbarism. My reaction to a few posts on Twitter was, “Send them to Gaza.” Not that it was going to happen, but it’s one thing to cheer the beheading of babies and raping of women from five thousand miles away, it’s another thing to do so when there’s a realistic possibility of the IDF ending you.
Image: Pro-Hamas march in Chicago. YouTube screen grab. (Note, please, how it’s filmed so the reporter covers the sign saying “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea,” which is a call for the genocide of all Jews in Israel.
Of course, that’s not going to happen, but then I wondered to myself, what is wrong with these people, and why are they allowed to do this? Before the words even formed in my head, I answered my own question: Free speech… that extraordinary thing we have that Muslim countries don’t.
All of that led my brain to a quote that is often falsely attributed to Winston Churchill: “When Muslims are in the minority they are very concerned with minority rights, when they are in the majority there are no minority rights.” The British Bulldog may not have said that, but a look at a map of nations with Sharia law suggests that it’s correct.
“But we don’t live in one of those countries, the ones with the radical Muslims,” you might say, “these people are just fringe wackos.” Not so much. A 2015 poll of Muslims in America showed the following:
More than half (51%) of U.S. Muslims polled also believe either that they should have the choice of American or shariah courts, or that they should have their own tribunals to apply shariah. Only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts.” It also found “nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, ‘It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.’” and “Nearly one-fifth of Muslim respondents said that the use of violence in the United States is justified in order to make shariah the law of the land in this country.
Anyone watching the thousands of protesters in Atlanta, Chicago, and Tampa could easily see that it’s likely the percentages listed above have only grown, something troublesome in a free republic.
Now, support for Sharia doesn’t necessarily equate to support for Hamas’s actions last week, but a Venn Diagram would likely demonstrate a great deal of overlap.
But then you say, “Muslims are barely 1% of the population, so they can’t be a threat.” Maybe, but think about this: trans people are far fewer in number yet, today, we find ourselves amid national fights about bathrooms, sports, and the “medical” butchering of children. Interestingly, most of the people who support the LBGTQXYZ123 agenda also support “Palestine.” The irony, of course, is that Gazans would almost certainly throw the alphabet people off the tops of buildings were they to go there. Note, too, a fascinating essay summing up Peter Hammond’s analysis of the effect Muslims have on a country as their numbers grow.
So, the question becomes, how does a pluralistic, secular state that values individual liberty deal with vile ideas that are repugnant to the basic elements of the culture, as well as with those who espouse those repugnant ideas? Is the Constitution a suicide pact that allows those who object to its foundational principles to use the document’s freedoms to take power in order to eliminate our constitutional republic?
In his autobiography, Malcolm X talks about being invited to speak at Harvard and other prestigious universities when he was still spewing much of his anti-white racist venom. He marvels that, while he was invited to speak and said things that most of the audience disagreed with, they were always courteous and usually engaged in a healthy, respectful dialogue.
Contrast that with today’s conservative speakers such as Heather MacDonald, Ann Coulter, or Ben Shapiro, who have had events canceled or found themselves drowned out and threatened by leftists who equate speech they don’t like with violence. Not surprisingly, a recent poll showed that 66% of college students find this acceptable, while another showed that 65% of Democrats supported censoring “misinformation.”
Now, maybe this vile and public championing of hate will be a tipping point where the Democrat coalition fractures as the various victim classes it has nurtured twist themselves into pretzels trying to be good team players. I doubt it, though, because Democrats in toto hate America, hate freedom and, most of all, hate Donald Trump and MAGA. They are bound together by these hatreds and will always put power above everything else.
Nonetheless, what we saw over the last week should, I hope, cause more people to take notice of those who would use our freedoms to end them for everyone else. The adage of “One man, one vote, one time” refers to the idea of someone or some group using the democratic norms of a nation to win an election and then using that victory to eviscerate freedom. Think Hitler in Germany, Chavez in Venezuela, or Erdogan in Turkey.
If we’ve learned anything since the reign of Barack Obama, it’s that America is not immune to the danger of political parties weaponizing government for their own purposes. Given that the people cheering on the butchers of Hamas are a core part of the Democrat coalition, we should not be too quick to dismiss them as fringe. If we do so, we could all live to regret it.
Follow Vince on Twitter at ImperfectUSA or you can visit his new website Gratitude for America.
UPenn Loses Another Major Donor over Antisemitism on Campus
The fallout over the University of Pennsylvania’s (UPenn) response to antisemitism on campus in the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel continued this week when it lost yet another major donor.
David Magerman, who helped build the trading systems of Renaissance Technologies, scolded UPenn President Elizabeth Magill and Chair of the Board of Trustees Scott Bok for hosting Palestine Writes Literature last month and for a poor response to the Hamas terror attack in Israel, which left 1,400 people (mostly civilians) dead.
“People who care about morality and ethics should just leave institutions that show they don’t,” Magerman told Bloomberg in a phone interview on Tuesday, adding that he is “deeply ashamed” of his association with the university while planning to cease donations.
Magerman jumping ship comes after UPenn lost a major donor and a board member due to antisemitism on campus. Jon Huntsman, former U.S. ambassador and a major donor to the university, said he would no longer be funding the school, citing its silence in the face of the horrific terrorist attack.
“The University’s silence in the face of reprehensible and historic Hamas evil against the people of Israel (when the only response should be outright condemnation) is a new low. Silence is antisemitism, and antisemitism is hate, the very thing higher ed was built to obviate,” Huntsman said in a letter obtained by the Daily Pennsylvanian.
“Consequently, Huntsman Foundation will close its checkbook on all future giving to Penn — something that has been a source of enormous pride for now three generations of graduates. My siblings join me in this rebuke,” he added.
After a three-hour emergency meeting, Vahan Gureghian resigned from UPenn’s board of trustees for the same reason.
“Just as at so many other elite academic institutions, the Penn community has been failed by an embrace of antisemitism, a failure to stand for justice and complete negligence in the defense of our students’ wellbeing,” Gureghian said in his resignation letter.
UPenn President Liz Magill said that the university does not support antisemitism.
“The University did not, and emphatically does not, endorse these speakers or their views. While we did communicate, we should have moved faster to share our position strongly and more broadly with the Penn community,” Magill said.
“I stand, and Penn stands, emphatically against antisemitism. We have a moral responsibility—as an academic institution and a campus community—to combat antisemitism and to educate our community to recognize and reject hate,” she added.
Scott Bok said in a Daily Pennsylvanian column Monday that Penn “strongly condemns antisemitism in all forms and everywhere.”
“The diversity of views and perspectives means there will be disagreements and not everyone will be satisfied — particularly in fast-moving, horrifically tragic situations where emotions are understandably raw and inflamed,” he wrote.
Paul Roland Bois joined Breitbart News in 2021. He also directed the award-winning feature film, EXEMPLUM, which can be viewed for FREE on YouTube or Tubi. A high-quality, ad-free stream can also be purchased on Google Play or Vimeo on Demand. Follow him on Twitter @prolandfilms or Instagram @prolandfilms.
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