At Harvard, the fix is in
The professoriate regime has carefully designed a Harvard antisemitism committee to do just enough damage, but no more.
Generally speaking, the dictatorship of the professoriate is not particularly subtle. Well aware of the extent of its totalitarian grip over academia, it tends to employ the blunt instrument rather than the scalpel to do its dirty work. If you cross the regime, you find yourself slandered, ostracized, blacklisted, deprived of your livelihood, and possibly murdered. The regime acts like this because it thinks it can get away with it. This is understandable. For the past half-century, no one has given them much reason to think otherwise.
Post-Oct. 7, however, this is no longer the case. The regime’s open and publicly declared support for murdering Jews, while welcomed in certain disreputable circles, has thankfully prompted a massive backlash. For the first time in decades, the regime has discovered that its impunity is not absolute. Jewish students sued, donors rebelled, and the US Congress forced three of the regime’s leaders to admit under oath that they had no particular problem with genocide so long as the target was appropriate.
The epicenter of the tremor now shaking the bones of the regime is Harvard University. After its now ex-president Claudine Gay unwillingly admitted her ambivalent feelings about killing Jews to Congress and was then exposed as a blatant plagiarist, the reckoning was inevitable and she was resigned. Harvard donors and students have gone to the barricades. While the university’s guzzle on taxpayer dollars is probably safe, even the possibility that the money spigot might be cut off has the regime terrified.
The regime is evil but not stupid. It knows that it desperately needs to do damage control. Its leaders and minions, despite their protestations of economic egalitarianism, very much enjoy their perks and privileges, and all of them cost money. Moreover, it is impossible to destroy Western civilization on the cheap. Thus, the regime knows that if it loses its donors’ dutiful billions and its appropriated tax funds, or is faced with paying out massive settlements to the Jewish students it has relentlessly persecuted, its hold on power could be in existential danger.
This, needless to say, cannot be allowed to happen. As Orwell pointed out, the only purpose of any totalitarian regime is power. The professoriate is no different. It loves money, but this is mere hypocrisy. Its love of power is pure and passionate, untainted by anything other than the corruption inherent in it.
So, Harvard has done what it does best: Establish a committee. This committee is reportedly tasked with investigating the problem of antisemitism on campus—as if it were somehow difficult to locate—and presumably suggest remedies for it.
The idea that the regime can investigate itself is, needless to say, dubious at best. It is not a good sign, for example, that Harvard simultaneously established a committee on Islamophobia, implying that Islamophobia is as serious a problem as antisemitism (it isn’t). Such a committee, moreover, is essentially required to ignore that Muslim students are often the worst and most violent antisemites on campus.
Possibly worse, however, is the professor appointed to lead the antisemitism committee. The appointment of Derek Penslar, who is Jewish, has already occasioned considerable controversy, which is quite understandable considering Penslar’s statements on the subjects of Israel and antisemitism.
Penslar has reportedly written that “Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians from their land and oppression of those who remain have made it one of the most disliked countries on the planet” and signed a letter accusing Israel of apartheid and “Jewish supremacism”—the latter an accusation frequently made by neo-Nazis and white nationalists.
More concerning is that Penslar has falsely claimed that antisemitism at Harvard is exaggerated, thus gaslighting hundreds if not thousands of Jewish students and faculty. He also opposes the IHRA definition of antisemitism—which has consensus support in the Jewish community—because it dares to point out examples of antisemitism directed against Israel.
Needless to say, it is all but impossible for a person with such beliefs to lead any objective or effective investigation into a systemically antisemitic institution. Indeed, this is precisely why he was appointed.
It is not impossible, of course, that Penslar will put his prejudices aside and actually investigate the problem he is tasked with investigating. In all likelihood, however, the regime has already gamed out that scenario. After all, it needs the committee to find something. It cannot engineer a total whitewash. If it does, any prospect of holding off government accountability and returning rebellious donors to the fold will disappear.
As a result, Harvard has appointed someone who will find something, but not very much. In all likelihood, the committee will conclude that there is antisemitism at Harvard, but it’s a fringe, extremist phenomenon and not a systemic issue (which it is). It will recommend a few meaningless reforms and possible disciplinary action against a handful of students. Then, the Islamophobia committee will declare that Islamophobia is an epochal threat to the entirety of human civilization and demand that Harvard allocate millions of dollars to antisemitic Muslim student organizations to fight it. The regime will happily comply.
In other words, Penslar and his committee have been appointed to do just enough damage to make it look real, but no more than that. The fight has already been thrown.
Thankfully, it is very unlikely that the regime’s plan will succeed. Its moves are so crude and obvious that very few of those who need to be fooled have been fooled. Indeed, Penslar’s appointment itself has already discredited the committee in many circles.
For example, former Harvard president Lawrence Summers—who was hounded out of office by the regime—responded to Penslar’s appointment by saying, “I have lost confidence in the determination and ability of the Harvard Corporation and Harvard leadership to maintain Harvard as a place where Jews and Israelis can flourish.”
Harvard megadonor Bill Ackman, who has led the fight against the regime’s genocidal antisemitism over the last several months, simply said: “Harvard continues on the path of darkness.”
If Harvard thinks its machinations will be enough to sate the justified anger of Jewish students, donors, and faculty—not to mention congresspeople outraged that taxpayer funds are going to support racist incitement to genocide—it is sorely mistaken. Most of those students and donors are already gone for good, and an exodus of enraged faculty is not unlikely. If the Republican party continues to hold either house of Congress, further congressional hearings are very likely. The reckoning is coming, whether the regime likes it or not.
The truth, however, is that the regime had no choice in the matter. It is trapped by the very fact that it will do literally anything to preserve its power. Now, it feels its power slipping away. Thus, it cannot avoid the attempt at damage control.
At the same time, however, the regime knows that if it allows an investigation that actually goes the distance, the regime will be decimated. Almost all its enforcement arms, from student groups to activist faculty to its totalitarian speech codes will be indicted and possibly destroyed by any serious investigation.
This means accountability, and accountability is unthinkable. Without impunity, the regime has nothing, and the vengeance of its victims will be swift. So, the regime will do what it must. It will submit to investigation, so long as it is certain that the investigation will not find much of anything. It likely believes that, in the end, it can rely on its foot soldiers and the extent to which it has embedded itself into the foundations of American academia to ensure its survival. Whether it is correct or not remains to be seen.
My weekly column has been published at JNS, dealing with the increasingly common use of the term “Palestine” and the word’s genocidal origins.
It was only then that the Land of Israel was officially given the name “Palestina,” replacing the term “Judea.” Clearly, the Romans were making a point: Judea, they were saying, is dead; and it is dead because its people dared to challenge the power of Rome. The word “Palestina” was, in effect, the last nail in the crucifixion of a people. It was genocide.
The same is true today. This is proved by the simple fact that “Palestine” does not exist. That is, there is no sovereign nation-state called “Palestine.” Nor, in fact, has there ever been one. To refer to “Palestine” as if such a nation did exist is rather like referring to France as “Gaul” or Iraq as “Babylon.”
The only reason to use the term is as a statement of intention. That is, people refer to the Land of Israel as “Palestine” in order to assert that the real country on that land—the Jewish state—should not exist and that eventually, through their efforts, it will not.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around exactly how ANYONE at Harvard thought this scheme would work. Who is going to take this committee's report seriously once Penslar's history was publicized? Anyone who has signed the "Jerusalem Declaration on [Leigitimizing Most Forms of Leftist] Antisemitism" is unfit to serve on any such committee.
The antisemitism of the Harvard administration must be brought to light, otherwise Jews will never be free in American academia. Just as an example, Harvard already prioritizes vandals over religious Jews.
https://open.substack.com/pub/tedgoldstein/p/harvard-administration-blows-out?r=1828mw&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post